Sodomy Monday

Andrew Sullivan kindly published the e-mail I sent him after watching the White House press conference pushing for gay marriage:

Having just watched George Bush speaking in his desultory way about gay marriage, I felt a secret glee rise up within me. I think we just watched the death of the opposition to gay marriage.

When a hugely unpopular President rises and speaks with the megaphone of the Presidency about an issue that most consider to be deeply personal, he drags this issue from the realm of family, morals, and religious tradition, into the crass world of politics. By tying gay marriage to the fading star of contemporary 'conservatism', the President has given many people who may otherwise be uncomfortable with the idea of same-sex relationships the concrete reason they need to change their minds. 'If these guys are so hard against it,' millions of Americans without a direct stake in this debate must be thinking, 'it may be a good thing'.

Just as George Wallace's extremism nailed shut the sarcophagus of Jim Crow, so this George will be trotted out as the personification of the bigotry of an era passed. Sometimes, a man's reputation rings louder then his arguments. George Bush's failed Presidency will drag this issue down as does a drowning man a healthy swimmer.

Here's what I put in the last unpublished part of the letter, which went off on a bit of a tangent:

Oh, the conservative political machine will continue to trot out this red cape with regularity, to rise up the baying amongst the Christian Pharisees and whip them into an angry mob, but no matter how many times they cry Barabbas and seek the blood of another queer scapegoat, they will never have their lust satisfied. To actually pass this law would be the worst possible outcome for the conservative manipulators. The dog must never catch the rabbit, lest it never race again.