Why do many conservatives have such a difficult time clearly and effectively articulating their opposition to gay “marriage”, especially when large majorities of Americans oppose it? If asked why, most of that majority would likely answer simply “because it is wrong”. It is precisely because many “conservatives” will not use that answer that they are not winning the issue.

Liberals want a debate about things like whether it’s better for society for gays to be married rather than (I suppose) prowling the streets, or whether a gay marriage is better for raising children than say a “domestic partnership”, or whether gay partners are harmed in legal matters such as property and medical decisions. But while both sides of these arguments may gain sympathy, or sway opinion, they don’t win the debate.

If they are to change the law, liberals must fight on different ground; that preventing gays from any aspect of traditional marriage, including the name, is wrong because amounts to a denial of their rights, and that it is discrimination. Ironically, this is the very ground upon which their entire premise can be effectively destroyed, but it’s ground many conservatives have given up.

Conservatives, listen up. What, exactly, do liberals mean by “wrong”?

Yes, they are actually saying that discrimination against gays is morally wrong. They mean it is morally wrong in the same way that racial discrimination is morally wrong. They mean it in the same way that beating up someone just because they are gay is wrong. Wrong, Morally wrong. They mean it in the very sense that conservatives believe; that there is actually a right and wrong. Absolutes. They say it that way, and they mean it that way. They just don’t believe it.

You may be thinking, “that’s pretty cheeky, homosexuals using morality to defend gay marriage!” If so, give yourself a gold star. Arguing that “discrimination” against gays is morally wrong presupposes that there is such a thing as morals in the first place; that is, a set of absolute right and wrongs. In this issue, as many others today, liberals use arguments based on morality to advance ideas and causes that destroy the very idea of morality. Liberals certainly do not accept the idea that homosexual behavior is immoral. How do they get away with this “selective moral enforcement”? Because conservatives today do the same thing.

Morality predates law, and is the basis for law. It’s how we judge law, along with the Constitution, which is itself based on higher morals. This is our whole system. A thing is not right merely because it is legal. Liberals are arguing for a change based on the idea that the law is wrong. Morally wrong. This argument works well in America because the vast majority of us believe (vaguely perhaps) in an absolute standard that is higher than the law, and that if the law is in conflict with what is right, right must prevail and the law should be changed. Thus Californians will vote November 4 whether to change the gay marriage “law” as proscribed by their Supreme Court because it conflicts with what many believe is right.

Although liberals use the moral argument, they certainly do not believe in it. Today’s liberals have utterly repudiated the very concept of an absolute right and wrong and only use it to the extent that it works for their agenda today, this minute. They are lying, but it doesn’t matter; there’s no such thing as wrong. If conservatives began applying the moral argument as underpinning all law, the liberals would be forced to abandon it immediately.

Liberals could not effectively argue that there is a higher moral code that should prevent “anti gay discrimination” in the law, but that says nothing about gay behavior. It is that moral code which gives us the very definition of marriage in the first place. Approached from the other end, if liberals will not accept the moral code that defines real marriage, they cannot use that moral code to decry discrimination. If they cannot use the moral code to challenge the law, they are left with only the law as final arbiter, (in which case they should accept that the law says marriage is between one man and one woman). If they want to say “It is wrong to discriminate against gays in marriage laws,” then the obvious answer is, “No, homosexual ‘marriage’ is wrong. Morally wrong.”

Why then don’t conservatives just get right to the point? Why don’t they stand up and say that if morals are destroyed in one part, they are destroyed in total, and the rule of law with it? In part, it is because the same moral code that says marriage is one man-one woman also says that a marriage is supposed to be for life. It says we are to remain faithful, for life. It says we are to be sexually pure, including what we look at. We are not to abandon our children in divorce, etc., etc. Moderate conservatives do not want to be held to the whole moral code any more than liberals do.

There is one aspect of the absolute moral code that moderates find, well icky. Of course in order to have a higher law you must have a higher law Giver. The founders were not squeamish about acknowledging the source of our rights and law; we “…are endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable rights.” This is the foundation of our rights, our constitution and our laws. Without the higher law, revealed by God, there is really no solid reason to deny gays “marriage”, or polygamists, or on and on.

The truth is, gay “marriage” cannot begin to damage marriage the way forty years of liberal attitudes about sex and divorce has. It is only the next logical step. It will however make repairing the institution much more difficult. Our entire culture will continue it’s downward slide until real conservatives take up the fight on the right ground.