La, La, La, I Can’t Hear You (Getting Gay Married)

  We’re all familiar with the argument that same-sex marriage is somehow going to change the nature of heterosexual marriage as well. This makes no sense whatever to me, but it’s a compelling argument when compared to the one put forth in The Gay Marriage Fantasy by William Murchison. He seems to be saying that even as gays and lesbians get the right to marry, it’s not real somehow.

You really can't have "gay marriage," you know, irrespective of what a court or a legislature may say.

You can have something some people call gay marriage because to them the idea sounds worthy and necessary, but to say a thing is other than it is, is to stand reality on its head, hoping to shake out its pockets.

Such is the supposed effect of the Iowa Supreme Court's declaration last week that gays and heterosexuals enjoy equal rights to marital bliss. Nope. They don't and won't, even if liberal Vermont follows Iowa's lead.

The human race -- sorry ladies, sorry gents -- understands marriage as a compact reinforcing social survival and projection. It has always been so. It will always be so, even if every state Supreme Court pretended to declare that what isn't suddenly is. Life does not work in this manner.

Here’s the thing -  that’s crazy talk. What Mr. Murchison is saying that gay marriage won’t be real to him. He can’t accept it. OK, he doesn’t have to. For a long time I didn’t really believe in Wyoming because I’d never met anyone who’d even been there. I mean it was the only one! The fact that Dick Cheney was supposed to come from there only served to convince me it didn’t really exist. Well, now I’ve met credible people who’ve been to Wyoming and even lived there and I’ve come around to accepting that I was wrong. So it is with gay marriage. Pretending it isn’t real is what’s fantasy.