Rod Dreher interviews Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage, who draws a positive outlook for the future based on past experience.<\/p>\n
Rod Dreher: Maggie, you and I are on the same side of the gay marriage issue, but I am pessimistic about our chances for success. You, however, are optimistic. What am I missing?<\/p>\n
Maggie Gallagher: Vaclav Havel mostly. “Truth and love wlll prevail over lies and hate.” On that basis Havel took on the Soviet empire. Where is that invincible empire now?<\/p>\n
Same-sex marriage is founded on a lie about human nature: ‘there is no difference between same-sex and opposite sex unions and you are a bigot if you disagree’.<\/p>\n
Political movements can–sometimes at great human cost and with great output of energy–sustain a lie but eventually political regimes founded on lies collapse in on themselves.<\/p>\n
I don’t think of myself as optimistic: just realistic. What does losing marriage mean? First the rejection of the idea that children need a mom and dad as a cultural norm–or probably even as a respectable opinion. That’s become very clear for people who have the eyes to see it. (See e.g. footnote 26 of the Iowa decision).<\/p>\n
Second: the redefinition of traditional religious faiths as the moral and legal equivalent of racists. The proposition on the table right now is that our faith itself is a form of bigotry.<\/p>\n
Despair is gay marriage advocates’ prime message point. All warfare, including culture war, is ultimately psychological warfare. You win a war when you convince the other side to give up.<\/p>\n
So now you want to decide we’ve lost on an issue where, in the March 12 CBS News poll two-thirds of Americans agree with us. I mean, does this make sense?<\/p>\n