Meanwhile, in California . . .

If you haven't been following the fight over the anti-gay marriage Prop 8 out in California, the New York Times has an interesting article about it. What particularly interested me, were three quotes from Prop 8 supporters buried in the middle:

“This vote on whether we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon,” said Charles W. Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries and an eminent evangelical voice, speaking to pastors in a video promoting Proposition 8. “We lose this, we are going to lose in a lot of other ways, including freedom of religion.”

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobby based in Washington, said in an interview, “It’s more important than the presidential election.”

“We’ve picked bad presidents before, and we’ve survived as a nation,” said Mr. Perkins, who has made two trips to California in the last six weeks. “But we will not survive if we lose the institution of marriage.”

It's as if they're saying, should Prop 8 fail, the ground will open up and swallow up the whole country. The lack of perspective is breathtaking.

I've always been a bit puzzled as to why some people get so worked up over the idea of gay marriage. So a same-sex couple some where wants to get married, what of it? How does it affect the marriage of anyone else? I guess my question for the opponents of gay marriage is, why do you care?

Maybe the problem is that marriage is really two institutions in one. On the one hand, it's a civil distinction tying two people together for the purposes of taxes, property, decision making, etc. On the other hand it's a religious union (even for some non-religious folks, sort of like Christmas). Maybe the answer is to just get the government out of the marriage business altogether. We can just call the civil institution something else (there's always civil union, I suppose), and leave marriage up to individual religions (which would, of course, essentially mean that gay marriage would be available everywhere. It would only be a social convention, so there would be no one who would have the power to object to a same-sex couple having a wedding). And, of course, civil unions would be open to anyone. There, problem solved.

Yeah, yeah, I know, the right will never give up this particular political football. I guy can dream, though, can't he?