The Other McCain

“The evidence shows conclusively that moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples.”
— U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker,
Aug. 5, 2010, San Francisco v. Schwarzenegger

Joe Marier called yesterday to tell me about the California decision and my initial reaction was to note the anti-democratic nature of the ruling. As with Roe v. Wade, once the elite make up their minds about a subject, they go to court to impose their will on the rest of us, and then subject us to lectures about how benighted and backward we are for not sharing their enthusiasm for Progress.

As I told Joe, decades of this sort of legal compulsion have brought us to the point where people feel they no longer have the the right to form their own opinions, and certainly are not free to express beliefs that contradict legally sanctioned dogma. 

Being an outspoken critic of feminism, for example, disqualifies me from consideration for an executive or managerial position in a large firm because, if ever any disgruntled female employee were to file a discrimination suit, everyting I’d ever written on the subject would be considered germane as to the plaintiff’s case.

People who do not understand such legal considerations explicitly and consciously are nonetheless aware that Sexism Is Bad. That simplistic thought has been so thoroughly drilled into the heads of everyone under 40 that they never think to disassemble it, examine its components and analyze it as a species of egalitarian ideology. Rather, the category “sexist” is so rigidly reified in their minds — and so stigmatized as a moral failing — that they consider any debate on the subject of male-female relations to be ended once they attach the label “sexist” to the opposing argument.

La mort à la différence!

Well, why this long discourse on feminism, when the subject is supposed to be “homophobia”? (Note that the scare-quotes are necessitated by the dubiously diagnostic nature of the term.) Because, as I explained in January 2009, it is vital to understanding how we got here:

The answer can be boiled down to one word, equality.
Are men and women equal in the fullest sense of the word? If so, then equality implies fungibility — the two things are interchangeable and one may be substituted for the other in any circumstance whatsoever. . . . Therefore, it is of no consequence whether I marry a woman or a man.

Even with a clear majority of the American people on their side, conservatives can argue against same-sex marriage until they’re blue in the face and never gain an inch of intellectual terrain until they are willing to make a direct argument against the fallacy of “gender equality.”

If conservatives are losing this argument, then, it is through their own cowardice, perhaps motivated by the guilty consciences of those who have long stifled their doubts about the egalitarian parameters within which modern American public discourse is confined. To say that men and women, as such, are different enough that they cannot be made truly equal in a free society is today such a controversial assertion as to seem wildly irresponsible — even though it is demonstrably true.

‘Tomorrow the accomplished fact’

So it is that Judge Walker thinks he can assert without fear of contradiction that religious and moral beliefs are “the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples.” Having long ago surrendered crucial high ground in the battle against radical egalitarianism, conservatives now find themselves as hopelessly surrounded on low ground as the French army at Diên Biên Phu.

The fantastical project of yesterday, which was mentioned only to be ridiculed, is today the audacious reform, and will be tomorrow the accomplished fact.

Evidence that men and women are indeed unequal can only be cited now as an argument for further government compulsion (or perhaps, moralistic lecturing) to rectify the difference because — to those trapped within the egalitarian worldview — inequality is always evidence of injustice.

There is no disadvantage so minor, no disparity so enduring, nor any harm too insignificant, as to be explained by reference to the egalitarian formula. Poverty can only result from the malevolent rapaciousness of the wealthy, every misfortune of racial minorities must be explained by reference to “white supremacy,” and if a lesbian stubs her toe, surely homophobia is to blame.

The Grand March of Progress is led by those ideologues who tell us that we are leaving behind the benighted ignorance of the past on our way to the Utopia of an enlightened future. All of which may seem plausible until you visit your ancestral graveyard and ponder the headstone declaring that your great-grandmother lies “in loving memory” next to your great-grandfather — her hateful misogynistic oppressor!

All of your ancestors were homophobes, of course. When Washington crossed the Delaware that snowy night in 1776, every oar on the boat was manned by a homophobe, and you may go see the headstones of many hundreds of homophobes at Arlington or Pointe du Hoc.

The Tautology of Elite Superiority

Anyone who reads Judge Walker’s decision must conclude that he arranged his ruling with the specific purpose of creating a “finding of fact” that would prejudice any possible appeal, clearly hoping to establish a historic precedent based on the “due process” and “equal protection” clauses of the 14th Amendment. And if you complain too loudly about it, you will need to be reminded that there are five A’s in “raaaaacism.”

This perverse conflation of racism and homophobia strikes many conservatives as a startling non sequitur, only because they have never come to grips with the inflexible orthodoxy of egalitarianism involved in the analogy.

Insofar as you do not address every disparity between racial groups in terms of social injustice, you are indeed a racist in the eyes of progressives, and your unwillingness to endorse a political remedy for disparities between gays and straights is analogous. You cannot evade this kind of accusation by denying personal malice toward any oppressed group — “Some of my best friends are dyslexic Latino lesbians!” — because if the personal is political (as feminist sloganeers tell us), then the political is also personal. Your refusal to support elite-approved political solutions for inequality implies your personal moral inferiority to the elite.

Here we arrive at the tautology at the heart of the problem: The elite are your superiors because they are the elite. Whatever beliefs and attitudes prevail among the elite enjoy a privileged status that no non-elite person is permitted to question without being judged to have demonstrated his inferiority. Such judgments are imbued with terrifying power through the elite’s control of academic, cultural, political and legal institutions.

Judge Walker belongs to that part of the elite empowered to impose its beliefs and attitudes as a matter of law, and is therefore understandably praised by elite power-worshippers. The fact that such power effectively disenfranchises a majority of Americans — negating the authority of elected representives at all levels of government — is inarguable. We have lost not merely a district court ruling, but everything for which the patriots of 1776 took up arms, most especially including the Rule of Law.

“Believe me, sir, those who attempt to level never equalise. In all societies, consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levellers therefore only change and pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of society, by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground.”
— Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

Forgive me if I lay aside this argument without exploring every objection to Judge Walker’s ruling, but I am distracted by the troubling sound — heard distinctly, yet quietly, as if at a distance — of tumbrels rolling toward the bloody guillotine.