Today In Calm, Measured Analysis of Same-Sex Marriage

Roy finds Dreher predictably beside himself over the SSM vote in Ireland. This led me to a particularly perverse entertainment from the Irish version of Dreher. To borrow a wonderful Edroso phrase I plan on later originating, every graf is, “in every sense, the nut graf.” A sample:

This has been the most comprehensive betrayal of democratic principles by an establishment in living memory. And it is not that most politicians actually care one way or another – many have simply either caved in to the bullying or are playing to the “cool” vote, perhaps thinking that they’ll be safely over the line to their pensions before the consequences kick in. But the consequences will come, and sooner rather than later, devastating families and individual citizens in thousands of tragedies played out in the courts, in proceedings in which neither nature nor biology will any longer feature as a criterion of parenthood.

[…]

One acute difficulty is that the discussion is so surreal that most people are unable to see how serious the danger is, or even get their heads around why we are having this conversation at all. How did a tiny minority manage to impose its will on the entire political establishment, when most causes and grievances don’t rate a Dáil question?

The “betrayal” of democracy, as you’ve probably guessed, is that when some people oppose same-sex marriage, others will disagree with them vociferously. And then, there might be a public vote, which will involve a “tiny minority” ramming its rights right down the throats of the 62% of the public that agrees with them! And then one can imagine will result in apocalyptic consequences that there is no reason to believe will happen and have not happened in any of the many jurisdictions that have already legalized same-sex marriage.

There is in this nonsense a lesson worth keeping in mind for when the Supreme Court rules later this month. Some people will argue that opponents would accept a negative result as long as it isn’t announced by courts. In fact, to opponents there is never any right way of legalizing same-sex marriage. A nearly two-to-one referendum vote in favor can still be characterized as elitists imposing same-sex marriage on the country while destroying free speech.

Why, I wonder, did the Irish people disagree with Waters’s compelling, rational arguments by a nearly 2-to-1 margin?

We find ourselves asking each other questions that in a million years we’d never have dreamt of wasting a moment on – like, does a child really need his father and mother or might not the schoolmistress and the milkman, or the fireman and the milkman, be just as good? People are dizzy with this because when you try to answer an absurd question you come up only with absurdities.

“And next thing you know people will ask whether a lamp trimmer and a soda jerk can raise a child, and the answer will make you dizzy. I am not a crackpot.”

Clearly, the only reason Waters’s side could have lost is a massive establishment conspiracy.