When was the last time you heard someone called a bastard because his parents weren’t married? When was the last time you heard of a single mother moving to a new town and calling herself “Widow Jones” so that she could get an apartment and a job? How many churchyards have space outside their grounds to bury illegitimate children?
In his opinion piece on the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling, “Pro-life movement has lessons in defeat,” Ryan T. Anderson is ignoring the tectonic changes to society that made it easier to keep the children that might have been aborted in less enlightened times.
The same trends that make it easier to be a single mother have made it easier to be gay.
The tactics Anderson cites to reduce abortions do nothing to stop a well-organized woman with a car, time off, and supportive friends and family from getting an abortion. They only make it hard for women who are less prepared to be mothers to keep from becoming mothers.
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Further, those tactics won’t work against gay marriage. You can’t cut off federal funds for marriage licenses, because federal funds don’t figure into marriage licenses. You can’t make it hard for people to get licenses to perform gay marriages, unless you make it hard to get licenses to perform any marriages.
You could make laws to allow bakers and florists to turn away same-sex couples, but a cake and flowers are not requirements for marriage.
Gay marriage is here to stay. Its opponents will learn to live with it.