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Interesting stuff on Lord Devlin, but his comments refer to "core values". Sometimes, when values conflict under situations not imagined by even nearly infinitely wise people, we decide which of them is core, and which is peripheral. The debate has been shaping up as Western society's age-old prohibitions on homosexuality, versus fairness to people whose condition has morphed in the public eye from sin, to illness, to lifestyle choice, to nearly-immutable personality characteristic. Disagree with the transformation, if you wish, but find a way of dealing with others seeing it this way.

Yes, the gays have a political agenda. These days, who doesn't? There are only three potential alternatives: power by force, power by political process, or no power. I've heard a few on the gay marriage threads advocate some level of force to "take back the courts", but I expect that they will either not try, or not succeed. That leaves lobbying for political power, or being swept aside to powerlessness.

If those who oppose gay marriage want to avoid the latter, then they had better find an effective method of achieving the former. There may be ways of making the mushy middle see most all gay and lesbian people as promiscuous, disease-ridden, benefit-grubbing, deceiving child molesters, but you'd better hurry, and be quite effective at it, because by 2005 it will probably be way too late.

You've obviously decided that even "core values" are "peripheral", as long as your checks keep rolling in.

The debate has been shaping up as Western society's age-old prohibitions on homosexuality, versus fairness to people whose condition has morphed in the public eye from sin, to illness, to lifestyle choice, to nearly-immutable personality characteristic. Disagree with the transformation, if you wish, but find a way of dealing with others seeing it this way.

Is that how you see a dishonest contest, waged by secret polemicists in "journalism", by closet fifth-columnists and cabalists, and by gutless, self-hating Western liberals traduced in darkness of mind? Are you really -- can anyone really be -- that incredibly complacent? That wilfully phlegmatic? You're unbelievable. Do you care about anything?

"Yes, the gays have a political agenda. These days, who doesn't?" Translation: So what? That's what the French said to one another, during the "Phony War", the "Sitzkrieg", of 1940. Blow the wax out of your ears and listen to yourself, and while you're at it, blow your nose so you can smell the moral rot in your position.

There may be ways of making the mushy middle see most all gay and lesbian people as promiscuous, disease-ridden, benefit-grubbing, deceiving child molesters, but you'd better hurry, and be quite effective at it, because by 2005 it will probably be way too late.

I think we both know whose side you're on now. You're telling me that there is absolutely no way you're going to change your mind -- hell, you sound like a Loggie. "Mushy middle"? You're it. See you around, liberal.

As a last comment, something that occurred to me later, you might, if your deracinated sense of urgency will permit it, spend some time thinking about what the progress so far of this tiny cabal of the Two Per Cent and its great success implies for the idea of majority rule. The implications for the idea of democracy are catastrophic, to say the least, but I know you'll want to save up your energy and what's left of your indignation for the eventual denouement -- not of this issue, but of the contest between arrogant tyranny and democracy.

When those times arrive, inevitably, think back to today, when your sense of right and wrong in public mores had already departed, exposing the majority to the drivenness of a very wicked few.