Free thought versus Thoughtcrime.

Maggie Gallagher at NRO  observes that the stake of the homosexual marriage debate is defining  as "bigots" those people who continue to hold the traditionally obvious position that marriage is an institution that is essentially connected to the project of "making babies." She writes:

At a private conference last year, I was asked why I did not begin my talks by acknowledging in some fashion the legitimacy of same-sex relationships — either through support for civil unions or some other way. “Like it or not,” I am told, “that is the currency to be taken seriously.” I wasn’t fast enough to think of this at the time, but what I should have done was whip out my birth certificate and say, “Here, here’s the currency I need to speak up in defense of marriage. I was born free. I may or may not die free. Power is a reality. But I will not volunteer to live in a world where an idea as good and reasonable as ‘to make a marriage you need a husband and wife’ gets treated a radioactive proposition that you need to ‘pay some price’ in order to express.” Marriage deserves its unique status, because these are the only unions that can make new life and connect children in love to their mother and father. On that ground, I will stand or fall.

Amen.

On the same subject, Vox Day observes that a Massachusetts federal judge has ruled that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional as violating the Equal Protection rights of homosexual couples. Day correctly observes that if there is nothing sacrosanct about the "man and woman" part of "one man and one woman", there is equally nothing sacrosanct about the "one" part either:

  And now that the one man, one woman definition has been arbitrarily struck down on nonsensical grounds, there can be absolutely no question that the one man, one woman part will be challenged and struck down as well. All of the homogamy supporters who claim otherwise are already wrong, as anyone who happens to have read a pro-polygamy press release will know. That's a done deal. It's a bit more of a stretch to be able to tell if people will also be able to marry animals due to the presumed consent issues, but you can bet that some horse-loving freakshow is going to try. It's legal in New Zealand, you know.

Well, why not?  If the purpose of "marriage" is not related to "making babies," then why not 10 men or a man and an ocelot.

Wintery Knight links to an article pointing out what happens when the truth is ignored, in this case, ingoring the complimentary of men and women in favor of the specious belief that men and women are fungible:

Ultimately, she said, the emotional rollercoaster forced her to reconsider her lesbian plunge – something she clearly says she “chose,” and was not born into. “Unlike most men, women, of course, offer each other endless support and there’s hardly ever any lack of communication,” she said. “But – bizarre as it may seem – I found myself longing for exactly the opposite.”


Following “a calculated decision to try men again,” Clune says that she found in her future husband Richard a “quiet kindness” and “lack of neediness” that appealed to her. “I felt we were walking alongside each other rather than spending life locked in face-to-face intimacy or combat,” she wrote. “It felt natural and not at all scary. He was sanguine about my past and never suffered the insecurities I had come to expect.”

From the article:

Clune, who is also known as a cabaret performer, actress, and broadcaster, says she was raised in a "very traditional Irish Catholic" home and and fell in love with a man at 17. It was in college that she stumbled upon a pamphlet claiming that heterosexuality is a mere construct to be altered at will, which prompted her to break up with her boyfriend and live the typical lesbian lifestyle for the next 12 years, until she was 34 years old.


"I was excited by the close bond a relationship with another female could bring," she writes.

But the experience was not as she at first envisioned it to be. In an interview with the Times' Penny Wark in October 2005, Clune called lesbian culture "dictatorial and intimidating" and "the opposite of the sapphic fluffy nirvana I expected."

Despite the closeness of her relationships, Clune admits that the hyper-emotional world of a female-to-female sexual bond was "exhausting." "The women I went out with were by and large more inclined to be insecure and to need reassurance and I found myself in the male role of endlessly reassuring my girlfriends," she writes. "The subtle mood changes of everyday life would be picked over inexhaustibly."

So much for "sapphic fluffy nirvanas."

The article also alludes to a secret side of homosexual relationships that is carefully ignored in the lovingly nurtured stereotypes - the high level of gay on gay violence within homosexual relationships:

"One of the key criteria of lesbianism is emotional dependency," said Goldberg. "In male gay relationships, it's much more about sex. More typically [with] lesbian women ... it's much more serial monogamy.


"Your relationship lasts 2-3 years [in which] you can't live without the other person, your whole world is this person, which is why there's so much jealousy in the lesbian world, and why there's so much violence in the lesbian world."

Goldberg said it was also not uncommon for women, often more "sexually fluid" than men, to choose to enter the lesbian lifestyle after some experience of disillusionment with men, before returning to heterosexuality.