Over at the conservative Frontpagemagazine.com website, my article Gay Activists and Religious Conservatives: Through the Looking Glass has triggered some heated online comments. A defender of my views, who posts under the name "Kansas," has taken on some of the more vehement religious rightists and even encouraged IGF's own John Corvino to enter the fray with this amusing posting that's well worth reading.
Waiting for the Supremes.
IGF contributing author Carolyn Lochhead
writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that the upcoming Supreme
Court sodomy decision may put Bush in a bind, if the religious
right goes bonkers over a ruling that throws out same-sex sodomy
laws (as is, in fact, widely anticipated). She quotes Ken Connor,
president of the conservative Family Research Council, who
says:
"Regardless of their desires to the contrary, Republicans will not be able to duck-and-cover on this issue." -- "The debate will elevate to a white-hot temperature about what the role of marriage is in society."
Yet, writes Lochhead,
Gay Republicans and social conservatives alike predict the Bush administration will try to avoid comment on the high court's ruling, however it comes out. "They are very disciplined in their message and in their priorities, and they would probably rather avoid getting mired in this issue, but I'm not certain they'll be able to avoid it," said a leading gay Republican close to the administration.
Reality check time: I strongly suspect the religious right has
wildly overestimated public interest in sodomy laws -- and, in
fact, John and Jane Q. Public would for the most part be surprised
to learn that these musty old statutes are even still on the books.
Anti-gay activists can howl all they want that ruling against
sodomy laws is somehow an assault on hetero marriage, but it's
clearly a stretch. The fight over marriage rights will be
controversial and bruising, but sodomy laws will go out with a
whimper, not a bang.
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