Takedowns

Why Miss CA is Wrong

Jon Chait demolishes the anti-gay-marriage positions.

Look out, Miss California: Jon Chait demolishes the anti-gay-marriage position in The New Republic. Arguments like the one put forth by the National Organization for Marriage, which alleges gay marriage harms “the people of this state who lose our right to define marriage as the union of husband and wife,” boil down to, “Expanding a right to a new group deprives the rest of us of our right to deny that right to others,” Chait writes. “If making a right less exclusive devalues it, then any extension of rights is an imposition upon those who were not previously excluded.” He also tears down the argument that gay marriage would weaken the link between marriage and child-rearing. “[M]arriage proponents might worry about anything that expands childbearing to the non-married, but they have no reason to fear expanding marriage to the non-childbearing.”