Heterosexual marriage on trial

A federal judge has recently overturned the ban on sodomitical marriage in California.  About judge Walker’s decision, and the conservative reactions to it, I have a few things to say

1. Conservatives are right to draw attention to Walker’s claim that nonutilitarian moral arguments are irrational and invalid for the purposes of public reasoning.  What better illustration could there be of the swindle that is Rawlsian “neutrality” in action.  Liberalism is neutral toward all ethical views so long as they are “reasonable”, where “reasonable”=”identical to utilitarianism”.
2. One shouldn’t treat Judge Walker as a complete imbecile.  In one sense, he grasps the key point better than most of his opponents.  I mean that he clearly connects gay marriage with the eradication of normative gender roles.  His reasoning is this:  rational people have come to realize that gender has nothing to do with one’s parental duties.  Therefore, there’s no reason not to have two parents of the same gender.  Now, I actually think that this chain of reasoning is valid.  I just disagree with the premise.  Most opponents of gay marriage seem to accept the premise (gender roles are bad) but simply deny that one can get from there to the conclusion (marriage has nothing to do with the gender of the parties).  This shows that they don’t realize what it is that they’ve really been fighting for.  The whole reason to oppose gay marriage, the reason that I will oppose it with every fiber of my being and curse it with my dying breath, is that it is fundamentally an attack on the social recognition of distinct gender roles.  We patriarchists declare that the role of mother is distinct and complementary to the role of father.  Furthermore, these roles aren’t just something we do, they’re something we are.  Our identities are bound up in them, as is the sense of meaning we find in our bodies.  This is the core issue:  are motherhood/femininity and fatherhood/masculinity arbitrary social constructs?  Are they to be regarded as mere lifestyle choices, to be assumed and discarded to suit our pleasure?  Nobody really cares about the sodomites.  I don’t.  I doubt many liberals do, whatever it is they say.  What we really care about is the other 95%.  Shall they be forced to abandon the ideas through which they understand their own marriages?  Whether or not buggery is wrong only directly affects a few lost souls.  Whether masculinity and femininity are arbitrary games or sacred callings affects each of us to the core.  Conservatives would say that androgynism is robbing us of something precious.  Liberals would say that it’s freeing us from something onerous.  Either way, this is the real issue, and this is where we should take our stand.
3. One positive feature of the gay marriage debate is that it should cure us all of any residual individualism we might be harboring.  It’s perfectly obvious in this case that people can’t just agree to disagree and go their own way.  Society must either recognize gender roles, or resolutely deny them.  Either way, it will be intolerable for one group of people.  Let us imagine what life in America will be like a decade after gay marriage is universally legalized.  When commercials want to show happy families buying their products, concerns for diversity will force them to use straight couples, gay male couples, and gay female couples equally.  To make sure they get every permutation in, heterosexual families will quickly become a minority, just as male soldiers are now a minority in military recruitment commercials.  Every television show will need a token gay couple, just as they all now have a token black, a token Asian, and a token Hispanic.  This will carry over to children’s books.  Many will be about unnatural families.  Those that aren’t will be sure to have their token gays.  If your children isn’t read these stories at home, he or she will be forced to read them in school.  Catholic schools run by communist nuns will lead the charge.  Your five year old child will come home from kindergarten one day and announce that he’s decided to be gay when he grows up, because teacher says that gays are wonderful people.  If you object, you’ll be teaching your child “hate”, and, well, the government just might decide that he would be better off in foster care, with some nice homosexual couple who will encourage him to “explore his sexuality”.  Your local priest or minister will insist to the press that you didn’t pick up your “hate” from him, or from his boyfriend.  Public opinion will have moved on to newer and more exciting topics.  Is it discriminatory to only sleep with people of one sex?  (I believe Larry Auster forsaw this coming debate some time ago.)  Since parental roles have nothing to do with biology, why don’t we take all children from their parents and have them raised by government-paid child-care professionals, who would presumably know how to do the job so much better?  Respectable conservatives gathered to fight this latest assault would point to all those happy homosexual families and say “this is what we’re defending!  How unjust for the State to take away gay peoples’ children, when they have just won the right to them from the evil, bigoted Christians.”  Smiling lesbians will be on all their campaign posters.  And, worst of all, I myself will still be alive to see all of this.