“When I was young and stupid,” said George W. Bush, and we have no reason to doubt him on it, “I was young and stupid.” It is a double tautology. He might as well have said, “When I was young,” and left it at that.
When I was young, back around 1989, I believed that if only homosexual men were permitted to “marry” by law, and if only the Church could see her way clear to blessing such arrangements, then the force of custom and legal expectations would take effect, and the men would be domesticated. They would take their part in society with everybody else, with neat front lawns to mow and lemonade for Wally, and everything else.
Indeed, that is what Catholic sentimentalists hope will happen. Nobody wants to come out openly in favor of a sexual free-for-all, and everybody wants to assume that marriage implies exclusivity, fidelity, and even—though liberal Catholics may view this one with a hang-dog look—perpetuity. So we pretend; and if homosexual men are loosey-goosey about extramarital affairs, as homogandists like Dan Savage say they are going to be, recommending adultery for everybody else too—well, boys will be boys, and after all, don’t many normal men do bad things also? Nor will we listen to those who, like Michelangelo Signorile, frankly declare that the aim is to destroy marriage itself. We will tame...