"What sort of retaliation? Violence against gays?"
Yaelle, you are right to question this post. It would be reprehensible for people to take the law in their own hands or to commit violence. But it is something I often worry about for two reasons: first, the gay movement's determined use of the courts to force this decision on a majority Christian country is a little like passing a law mandating that all Orthodox Jews must now eat pork because pig farmers feel excluded from 14th Amendment protections. It just isn't right to force people to violate their conscience with the same Constitution that guarantees their right to that conscience in the first place.
Second: when you research the claims made by the gay rights movement that were instrumental in propelling it to greater visibility, you find Big Lies, such as Kinsey's claim that homosexuals are 10% of the population (wrong -- 2.5% at most, and some of those are bisexuals) and the American Medical Association's methodology behind declaring homosexuality "not a disorder" -- it was a political decision due to internal pressure from gay doctors, not a scientific decision based on research. And the AMA went on to suppress further research, especially any type of recovery therapy.
There are many more examples I could give as to why the rallying cries of the movement are based on false premises and lead vulnerable people into believing that they are the victims of bigotry, when in fact they are the victims of their own eagerness to believe things that are not true and never were true.
Going forward, even in the best of circumstances and conditions -- even if a socialist totalitarian government like the one the gay rights educational lobby wants to impose were to take over completely, homosexuals will always remain a very small percentage of the population. Reproduction depends on material from a male and a female, and most people would prefer the old-fashioned way. Those are the folks who have most of the babies and bring them up, teaching them by example what genders are, and what they are supposed to be.
Instead of understanding the true proportion of their minority status and adjusting accordingly, gays and lesbians are trying to take on 98% of the society and convert them to gay orthodoxy. Most people truly are tolerant, and that is why they have been silent from the 60s until this election. But the push-back has started, and this election's many plebiscites against gay marriage are one indication that Americans will use their legal franchise to uphold the best conditions for their children and grandchildren's future.
The Reconstruction period after the Civil War is an example of the dangers we face as a society. Immediately after the Civil War, former slaves enjoyed more freedom and even held public office in various locales. But cultural tensions soon gave way to ugliness -- too much change, too soon, and an overinterpretation of Lincoln's objectives in ending slavery, which stopped far short of overnight integration. To be truthful, we have not achieved integration to this day, nearly 140 years later. I'm not endorsing this situation, but I am observing its reality.
If I were to move to Italy tomorrow, I could not in good conscience expect to force the Italian government to provide English-language instruction for my children, silence the church bells in the steeples, or print my telephone bill in English. Why? Because I would be part of a very small minority. That's an irreducible condition of humanity. Sometimes you're the dog, and sometimes you're the hydrant. Our American commitment to equality is to provide opportunities, not guarantee outcomes.
Most Americans have moved far beyond the violence that characterized the Jim Crow era which followed Reconstruction (and which will be a blot on our history forever). But resistance to gay indoctrination in schools can be expected, via legislation or organized protests. Excluding homosexual parents and children from private social events, children's birthday parties and neighborhood play dates is another reaction gay parents can expect. Soon, gay "families" will have to ghettoize themselves to avoid the exasperation of biological families who do not subscribe to gay orthodoxy and cherish their freedom of association.
Women also tried to force equality through the ERA in the early 70s, and it failed. Although some women have become more visible, the average pay of women still lags behind men, after 30 years of politicking. The gay rights movement is going to have to accept some limitations and some compromises. Clearly, their goals are not dear to most people, and they are outright offensive and sinful to many people. This is not going to go away, just as opposition to abortion cannot go away, for the same reason: it violates the sacred covenant between humans and their Creator.
And just because a minority of Americans don't believe in a Creator doesn't mean there isn't One.
I think the tolerance Americans show for gays today is a credit to American goodness of spirit. Americans today show much more tolerance for differences among people than most other places, notably Europe (as liberal as their newspapers sound, get out of the big cities there and people are quite xenophobic).
Tolerance for individuals who are different is a good thing. I even see remarkable tolerance for muslim men here, even when Americans have good reason to not be quite so tolerant to that group.
It just isn't right to force people to violate their conscience with the same Constitution that guarantees their right to that conscience in the first place.
But we already are forced to face it. What about abortion, which clearly to anyone with the slightest common sense is murder? Accepting gays parenting is FAR less odious than having to accept that the current "enlightened" thinking is that every child should have been wanted by the biological female parent before birth or should be killed.
I too am dismayed they made a film like Kinsey, when his "research" has been thoroughly discredited and the movement started at that time took sex from being private to being far too public, and devalued human life while glorifying the cheapest parts of sex. Not to mention the shakeup of the traditional human family.
You make a wonderful analogy with the slapdash way the homosexual lobby has forced its way in to Reconstruction. I think this is the way new social trends will keep hitting us: fast and furious, like our technology. Hopefully, we can start to develop conservative hides and try to sift the good from the horrible from each new wave. There are good things about accepting homosexuals the way whites learned to accept blacks and other racially different people.
A last anecdote: I have a little buddy (a little brother of my son's friend) who is 4. He is crazy about Barbies and dolls and carries a little hairbrush around with him to brush his Barbie's long tresses. His mother wears a cross around her neck so she must be Christian. This sweet, smart little boy knows NOTHING of sex, yet he is as effeminate as you can be. He cannot help the way he is. He is a delight as a human being, even though he will spend hours finding just the right dress and hairdo for his Barbie. (I have three young sons and none of them ever spent more than a minute with a Barbie and then only to try and force her into a toy car.) You cannot convince me that he is any less a child of G-d than any other.