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11/07/2011
Those darn 'elites' with their legal training and all
Populism at its most reductive:
"If you look at elections, we're winning the war on marriage. No doubt about it. We're winning the war at the ballot box. Anytime marriage goes up on a straight up-or-down vote, it wins.
Where we keep losing is in the courts, and the reason has to do with the way the elites of our society view marriage. The people who go to the top law schools, who teach at the top universities, the advertising departments of many of the major corporations – those people have already decided that marriage has nothing particularly to do with children and is really just about how adults feel with one another … and if that's all that marriage is, well, then, of course two same-sex people should be allowed to get married.
So, we have to articulate for the elites of our culture a coherent and attractive view of marriage as an organic institution that does include children and that is a social institution – not just a glorified private institution. That's what we're about at the Ruth Institute, and that's what the Alliance Defense Fund is involved in. We're all trying to create that coherent vision that is appealing that people can embrace, rather than this kind of consumerist view, which is "Marriage is about me and how I feel and what I want, and when I'm done with the person I can just throw them away." Because that's what's behind the whole decay of the marriage culture."
-Jennifer Roback Morse of the National Organization For Marriage's Ruth Institute
Sure, Jen: You're still winning the "war" in the arena where you can still dupe enough people into believing it's a "war." But just barely, even there.
Call me an insightful student of civil rights history if you must, but I'd much rather be on the side of growing court consensus than I would on the side of slipping poll numbers. To some that view might be elitist, though I'm convinced it's much more crystal ball than it is crystal champagne flute.