Sky not falling; tape at 11

Ah, nostalgia. This post, from immediately after last year’s passage of the Virginia so-called “marriage amendment,” generated the following comment from occasional reader Sophrosyne (she of the relentless posting of gauzy heterosexual wedding photos):

If the tide was turning your direction, why do the same-sex marriage activists in Massachusetts have to work to block a constitutionally prescribed vote that would bring the definition of marriage to the people (as opposed to some unelected judge)? Surely Massachusetts is “blue” enough to be on the cutting edge of this growing tide you claim exists?

As we predicted at the time, the window for leveraging “gay marriage” as a wedge issue has been shut (although, sadly for our now defaced Bill of Rights, not by Virginia). From an editorial in yesterday’s Washington Post:

WHEN THE high court of Massachusetts ruled in 2003 that the commonwealth’s constitution gave same-sex couples the right to marry, detractors railed against “activist judges” who were “imposing” their will on the people. Only the people, through their elected representatives, should decide something so fundamental, they said. Thus began an effort to amend Massachusetts’s constitution by referendum to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Four years and about 10,000 same-sex marriages later, here’s what the people have said: never mind.

Meanwhile, according to this Time article, “After winning constitutional amendments in 11 states to ban gay marriage in 2004, conservatives put gay adoption in their crosshairs last year–and misfired in every state they targeted.”

Shamefully, a Focus on the Family spokesman is quoted in the article as saying “I don’t see any shortage of heterosexual parents willing to adopt,” when in fact there are as many as 120,000 children in the U.S., many of them special needs children, waiting to be adopted.

After Congress ordered states in 1997 to move faster to find more families willing to take in these kids, “child-welfare organizations banded together to get legislatures to allow any qualified parent to adopt, irrespective of sexual orientation,” says Rob Woronoff, gay and lesbian program director at the Child Welfare League of America in Washington.

The reality, regardless of the anti-gay zealots with their fingers stuck in their ears, is that same sex couples are providing secure, loving homes to children who would otherwise be in foster care. There is simply no argument to be made against this that doesn’t place the best interests of the child far, far behind the desire to prevent GLBT families from assimilating into our communities. In fact, for those who are making the argument that their special right to have their viewpoint protected from marginalization, the sky is falling. They would do anything, including harming children, to prevent it. The simple moral authority of this fact is stunning.

“Being able to give our children that kind of legal, two-parent security,” says [Hollie] Seeley, 36, a medevac nurse, “means more than being able to marry.”