Gay marriage is not inevitable. Legalized marijuana is probably inevitable. But not gay marriage.
Maggie Gallagher at the National Review gives us seven reasons that gay marriage is not inevitable. Here are the top five:
1. Nothing is inevitable.
We are talking about the future here. It’s weird to have “reporting” that something that has not yet happened will certainly happen. The future is never inevitable.
2. Young people are not as unanimous as most people think.
In California, the young-adults vote split 55 percent to 45 percent. Is it so hard to imagine 5 percent of those young people changing their minds as they move through the life cycle?
3. The argument from despair is bait and switch.
They are trying push the idea that gay marriage is inevitable, because they are losing the argument that gay marriage is a good idea.
4. Progressives are often wrong about the future.
Here’s my personal litany: Progressives told me abortion would be a dead issue by today, because young people in 1975 were so pro-choice. They told me there would be no more homemakers at all by the year 2000, because of the attitudes and values of young women in 1975. Some even told me the Soviet Union was the wave of the future. I mean, really, fool me once shame on you. Fool me over and over again . . . I must be a Republican!
5. Demography could be destiny.
If there is one force that directly contradicts the inevitability argument, it is that traditionalists have more children. Preventing schools and media from corrupting those children is a problem, but not necessarily an insoluble one. Religious groups are increasingly focused on the problem of how to transmit a marriage culture to the next generation (see the USCCB’s recent initiatives).
And don’t get complacent. Don’t give up the fight.