In the Light of DOMA, Please Help Me Understand, Why Are So Many People So Mouth-Frothingly Opposed to Gay Marriage?

I love learning from all of you.

On an intellectual level, and as a student of American politics, I understand the controversy over the Supreme Court's soon-to-be ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act.

Much of politics is about the mobilization of emotion towards the support of a specific public policy goal. 

In trying to mate those two statements, I am at a loss to relate to, explain or understand, the deep hostility that so many Americans, conservatives mostly, of a certain age, have towards gay marriage. Andrew Kirrel's comparison of how the objections towards gay marriage are almost identical to those historically made against interracial marriage is spot on. Ultimately, I wish I had written that great piece. 

Please do not misunderstand me: In my opinion, I can give a mighty good talk on the public policy aspects of both the debate, as well as the human rights issues involved with gay marriage. On a personal level, I just do not "get" the opposition to something that is so patently obvious to me, in the sense that the State has no compelling interest in narrowly defining marriage, and because the United States is not a theocracy as such, "God's will" should/does not hold much influence over how I view political matters.

Marriage is a type of public good that ought not be able to be denied to adults at the age of consent, and the "consumption" of which does not detract from another person's ability to "use" marriage. The politics of the colorline long-operated with a principle that the ability of people of color, and black Americans in particular, to "consume" freedom took away from that "right" by white people. The opposition to gay marriage works through a similar ugly and specious logic.

The United States, like many other countries is in a crisis of resources, economics, and vision. Given all that we have to worry about, my intuition has always been that we need to mobilize the best of all of us, the full range of human capacity, and to create strong families, which in turn, can build and improve social capital. 

There are many arrangements to that end. 

Our political values are a product of home training and biology. My parents were not perfect people. Nor, were they saints. I most certainly am in neither category. My parents, being of a certain generation--this is not an excuse, rather it is an explanation--made gay jokes.

For example, my dad embarrassed me at an awards dinner by telling one of my guests, who of course was gay, that there were "fairies" he worked with at Yale University. God, I wanted to disappear under the table. My guest wanted to laugh. Good man that he was, he simply winked at me.

Pops, a man in his 70s at the time, then surprised me by saying that there were "queens" and "gay guys" in the Army with him in World War 2, they fought pretty hard, and no one really cared, when as he said, "shit was going down." "Let bygones be bygones and be happy."

 So why do so many people hate on them so many years later? Folks paid their dues leave them alone. I was impressed by my father's practical wisdom.

My mother was a bit more progressive. I do not recall her ever making any gay jokes. She ain't no saint. Trust me. 

But, I have never heard her hate on gay folks. I do however remember her going outside the duplex we lived in and cursing the local police who were savagely assaulting a gay couple and calling them hateful slurs such as "faggot." I was about 8 years old at the time. 

My mom called 911. I distinctly remember her telling the operator that there were police officers beating innocent gay people and laughing about it. The cops were embarrassed. They stopped. Police supervisors appeared. Our gay brothers came and sat on the porch of my family home after moms told them to come be with her so those "pigs" wouldn't beat on them. 

We as citizens are not privy to the internal thoughts and moods of our peers. I am not judging anti-gay types, per se. I am quite literally not able to understand the rage and energy spent on hating other folks who love and desire those of the same sex. Our genitals are not our identity; where we choose to put them is a private matter. Moreover, who we love is not something to be negotiated or arbitrated. It is part of who we are. 

I would hate to be reductionist and suggest that homophobia is driven by repressed self-hatred and same sex desire. As the long arc of history casts a shadow on those who oppose gay marriage, I am increasingly of the thought that such an observation about the psycho-social roots of homophobia may in fact be accurate.

Our country is in decline. Why are so many on the Right (and elsewhere) committed to wasting precious human capital and energy on fighting about how other people have coitus and experience love? Teach me if you would (please spare me any explanation that has to do with religion and "my faith teaches me.." I am not interested in how people use mythology to inform decisions about public policy in a secular society) about the opposition to gay marriage, and how it can be justified through an appeal to reason, the Common Good, and the Constitution.

Why not just say get your freak on, be happy, be married if you choose, and make good, productive, happy citizens to get us all out of this mess?