[Vision2020] Gay Marriage Gains Backer as Major Foe Revises Views

[Art Deco]

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June 22, 2012
Gay Marriage Gains Backer as Major Foe Revises Views By ETHAN
BRONNER<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/ethan_bronner/index.html>

David Blankenhorn, a national figure in the movement against same-sex
marriage<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/same_sex_marriage/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
has recanted his opposition, saying “the time has come for me to accept gay
marriage and emphasize the good that it can do.”

Mr. Blankenhorn, the founder and president of the Institute for American
Values <http://www.americanvalues.org/>, wrote an influential book that
argued against same-sex marriage in 2007, called “The Future of Marriage,”
and served as an expert
witness<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/californias_proposition_8_samesex_marriage/index.html?8qa>against
the constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition
8<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/californias_proposition_8_samesex_marriage/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
which limited marriage to heterosexuals. On Friday, he said in an opinion
article<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/how-my-view-on-gay-marriage-changed.html?hp>for
The New York Times, published online, and in an hour-long
documentary<http://www.yourpublicmedia.org/content/wnpr/david-blankenhorn-and-battle-over-same-sex-marriage>on
NPR that his
concerns<http://www.yourpublicmedia.org/content/wnpr/david-blankenhorn-and-battle-over-same-sex-marriage>about
same-sex marriage remained, but that “the time for denigrating or
stigmatizing same-sex relationships is over.”

“I opposed gay marriage believing that children have the right, insofar as
society makes it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents
who brought them into this world,” he wrote in the article. He said he
still held that conviction. But he added, “Whatever one’s definition of
marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is
a victory for basic fairness.”

Mr. Blankenhorn’s onetime allies said they were troubled but unimpressed.

“He’s dead wrong,” said the Rev. Jim Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline
Wesleyan Church in La Mesa, Calif. “I am a student of history. Christianity
has made clear that marriage is between one man and one woman. And what we
have seen is that when you change marriage for some, you change marriage
for all.”

The focus on same-sex marriage has grown rapidly in recent years, both
legislatively and legally. Two requests for review of same-sex marriage
rulings in federal courts, including the Proposition 8 case, are headed to
the Supreme Court<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/us/court-wont-revisit-ruling-on-gay-unions.html>this
summer. Other cases are being argued in lower courts, and referendum
initiatives will be on the ballots in November in four states — Maine,
Maryland, Minnesota and Washington.

Last month, President Obama endorsed same-sex
marriage<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/us/politics/obama-says-same-sex-marriage-should-be-legal.html?pagewanted=all>after
nearly two years of saying that his views on the topic had been
evolving. Polls show public opinion has also been shifting rapidly toward
acceptance of it, although about 30 states have passed constitutional
amendments in recent years defining marriage as between only a man and a
woman.

Six states — Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and
Vermont — as well as the District of Columbia permit same-sex marriage.
Nine others — California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey,
Rhode Island, Oregon and Washington — allow comprehensive domestic
partnerships or civil unions granting same-sex couples full rights except
in name.

Mr. Blankenhorn, who was raised in the South and attended Harvard, had long
stood out among opponents of same-sex marriage because he did not invoke a
biblical or religious justification and did not oppose civil unions for gay
men and lesbians. Instead, he argued that marriage was society’s most
important institution and had in recent decades come under attack, and that
same-sex marriage was only adding to its decline.

He said that he had long hoped the debate over same-sex marriage would
center on parenthood, not private relationships, but that in the public’s
mind today the issue was simply about equality for gay men and lesbians —
in other words, civil rights.

“And to my deep regret,” he wrote, “much of the opposition to gay marriage
seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying antigay animus. To me,
a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights
movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing.”

Mr. Blankenhorn has long had his fans in the pro-gay-rights community.
Andrew Sullivan, who writes for The Daily Beast, wrote on
Friday<http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/06/david-blankenhorn-shifts-on-marriage-equality.html>that
Mr. Blankenhorn was “perhaps the most clearly decent, intellectually
honest, nonhomophobic opponent of marriage equality.” He praised him for
his switch.

Peter S. Sprigg, the senior fellow for policy studies at the Family
Research Council <http://www.frc.org> in Washington, which opposes same-sex
marriage, said Mr. Blankenhorn’s new position was unfortunate but was, in
his view, a result of social pressure and his eagerness not to be seen as
antigay.

“He has thrown marriage under the bus for the sake of the homosexual
movement,” Mr. Sprigg said.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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