On Feb. 9 The Blaze published an article by Chris Enloe entitled: “Is same-sex marriage about to get the Dodds treatment?” It concerns the effort of various states to overturn the Supreme Court’s Obergefell vs. Hodges ruling which legalized same sex marriage throughout the U.S.. Enloe focuses on the Jan. decision of Idaho’s judiciary to ignore the Supreme Court’s edict and attempt to “restore the natural definition of marriage.”
Is heterosexuality Nature’s Norm? Of course it is. But paradoxically, given the biological diversity of the species, is it also not perfectly Natural that a certain percent of our populations will deviate from that norm? Do such people not have every right to be happy? The notion that homosexuality is inherently wrong has its roots in religious fundamentalism. As Enloe points out in his article, those in Idaho who would ban same-sex marriages maintain that the definition of Liberty endorsed by the framers of the Constitution included no such right. To some extent this may be true, but surely our concept of Basic Human Rights has evolved significantly over the last two and a half centuries. The argument that same-sex marriages are “unconstitutional” is inane. They harm no one save those addicted to arbitrary religious principles with no real basis in morality. Enloe highlights this very point by contrasting the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s assault on Roe v. Wade with what he clearly feels is the unwarranted attempt to have that Court ban same-sex marriages.
However violently radical feminists may argue that Roe v. Wade protected their basic rights as Women, the simple fact is that abortions involve more than one living being. While I won’t dare express an opinion on the complexities of this issue, I can say unequivocally that abortions after a certain point in a pregnancy constitute Murder. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade, in other words, was rooted in a legitimate moral concern. This argument, however, cannot be made by those who would de-legitimize same-sex marriages.
The irony of Enloe’s Blaze article is that it impugns the agenda of a sector that is generally identified with the political Right. But the “conservatism” of The Blaze, and indeed of yours truly, is, as I have stated repeatedly, of the Rational Centre. The dozens of commentators I admire are neither racists or misogynists or homophobes, but intelligent Humanists barely distinguishable from “liberals” before they succumbed to the inanities of Karl Marx and the sentimental delusions of the Woke. This defence of Same-Sex Marriage, in other words, is not a betrayal of Conservatism’s principles, but a validation of its rational approach to the complexities of the human condition.