The California Supreme Court, in striking down the state’s ban on same-sex “marriage,” has issued a declaration of independence from the human race. Progressives have inevitably compared it to the legalization of interracial marriage, but the same progressives just as inevitably will hail the legalization of cross-species marriage as the next giant step for mankind. After that we can expect to see a whole series of taboos collapse like dominoes: incest, pederasty, and cannibalism–consensual, of course. We’re not savages, after all.
Conservatives are naturally shocked by this latest proof that this is not the America found in their McGuffey Readers or in back issues of National Review. The conservative delusion is that America, despite a few kooks in high places, is really a sound, decent, Christian nation. All we need to do, as one of Rush Limbaugh’s callers said recently, is to get “our message” out to the American people, and before long we will rule the planet from our safe haven of offshore drilling, low taxes (and high deficits), and good old public schools (c. 1959) with pretty, drug-free cheerleaders and the Ten Commandments displayed proudly on the walls. This may be all that conservatives have left to cling to. But, for that reason, it is all the more pernicious. We are not going back to the 1950’s.
If...