Not quite. Olson was dismissing the traditional marriage argument and its proponents as knee-jerk. I was simply pointing out that Olson seems to have abandoned the conservative side on this particular case which makes him, in my opinion, a turncoat. The content or length of his argument is irrelevant to that description.
I believe Olson is a conservative in his tight interpretation of the original intent of the constitutional and declarational goal of this nation, that all men (and by extension, women)are created equal. I believe Olson makes a solid reasoning for how denial of government sanctioned opportunities and advantages (and disadvantages as in the marriage tax), ought not be denied to one group of people versus another because of how they self identify.
To use situational ethics to overcome the clearest and strongest tenant of the central faith of our great republic reduces us to the civic equivalent of “cafeteria Catholics” picking and choosing which things we truly believe in and rationalizing away which are unsavory to us. It produces things like 1/8 human, or Octaroons or people as chattel or separate but equal...all used by occupants of a particular era to cocoon themselves in denial, deprive their neighbors of dignity and hide their faces from universal truth. Lincoln said it, Olson repeated it and it deserves to be shouted loud enough to echo through history:
IT WILL NOT STAND! IT WILL NOT STAND!
We all had better get used to it.
Denying rights to individuals we deem somehow less than ourselves will not stand.