My wife and I were invited to a nice wedding. The reception for this event in the South was a most elegant affair. I enjoyed sampling the new and different foods and drink. Moving around the historic outdoor location on the water, I enjoyed exchanging pleasantries with the genial crowd of well-wishers.
Until, that is, I was accosted. A beautiful lady whom we and our friends knew socially from our town made a beeline for me. She had asked others if I still worked for that group. I hadn’t seen “Petra” in the years since she moved away, but I greeted her warmly.
“You’re losing, you know,” she said, referring to Family Research Council’s fight to preserve true marriage. Realizing that others may be watching and not wanting to create a scene, I simply smiled and said, “Well, Washington, Lincoln, and Churchill were all losing for a while.”
Petra was not amused. Unsmiling, she said, “It’s all about Marriage Equality.” Warming to the topic, I replied: “So you are okay with twin brothers who are gay marrying? Is that your idea of marriage equality, too?”
“Why would they want to?” she said, not taking the bait.
“But if they do want to, you would not have a legal objection to their marrying. They truly love each other and have had a continuing relationship since before they were born. So that’s good?”
Clearly, she thought I was playing the fool. She didn’t want to continue down the clear path to what would be my next point: If twin brothers may marry, why not a twin brother and sister? And how about three spouses?
Fanciful? Not really. Prof. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law Center has already pressed openly for polygamy. He rushed into federal court in Utah to have that state’s anti-polygamy law struck down—as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Windsor that the federal definition of marriage in the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional.
I knew that the marriagenders don’t just want to expand or re-define marriage; they want to abolish it. In fact, they’ve said so in their manifesto, “Beyond Marriage.” You can read their plan to destroy marriage here.
Petra changed topics. “I suppose you think fetuses have property rights?” She wanted to drag me into the debate on personhood of the unborn. I replied: “The unborn child’s inheritance rights have been recognized in law for centuries.”
Then, I got inspired, especially considering these lovely surroundings and this glittering company:
“Petra, you remember the scene in Downton Abbey where Lady Grantham is getting out of her tub?” (All liberals watch the great English soap opera, shown in the US on PBS.)
I continued: “Her maid, O’Brien, puts a bar of soap on the floor and the pregnant Lady Grantham falls. Her fall causes her to suffer a miscarriage. She might have been carrying the heir to the Downton Abbey estate. We are all meant to see this as a wrong and O’Brien as an evil woman for causing this death.”
Petra is not happy with this turn of the conversation as it heats up. She is beginning to get angry I can see—very angry.
Then it dawned on me: In her social set, she probably never had anyone disagree with her politically correct notions before. Thus, the fury.
They don’t need reasons; they only need rage.
Then, the ladies of our group—like an intrepid bomb disposal unit—intervene to take Petra away. They want to show her the fresh waffle cone making for the homemade ice cream.
Petra’s husband “Walt” takes me by the arm in a brotherly way. He is a fundraiser for a major college. His manner is of a practiced and soothing smoothness.
With hearty goodwill, he waves his arm and airily pronounces: “You know, this whole thing could be solved if we just got rid of marriage in the law and adopted civil unions. That’s the reasonable solution,” Walt pronounces.
I’m actually enjoying this back-and-forth. Agreeably as I can, I rejoin: “Except that the California Supreme Court used that state’s civil unions law as their pretext for overturning the marriage law that the people had voted on. They ruled that, since California gives all the same privileges and immunities to same-sex couples through civil unions, there is no rational basis to deny them marriage.”
Walt seems unfazed by this inconvenient truth. So what do I think about the view? And the weather? Both are superlative, I assure him. We drift apart.
An hour later, as my wife and I were preparing to go, I mentioned to our small knot of friends that I’d like to say goodbye to Petra and Walt and pay them my respects.
Someone in our group says Bob wants to “apologize.” I try not to be disagreeable or contentious in this amicable social setting. But, still smiling, I assure our friends I want to apologize for nothing. I will never apologize for standing for marriage.
And neither should anyone else.
