Do Conservatives Need Someone to Hate?

My last entry was August 5. The announcement that Russia would stop exporting grain was on that date, but so also was the announcement that a federal judge overturned the California law banning same-sex marriages.

I have very little personal interest in this topic. I like women. I really like women (and, if you didn’t check my bio, I am a man). On the one hand, what do I care if some men like men, or some women like women? I will not go as far as Thomas Jefferson and say that it does not matter so long as it “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my bones,” but almost.

On the other hand, I do not feel that gays and lesbians are being severely abused if they are denied the opportunity to call their civil unions marriages. Perhaps it would just make sense to allow privileged tax status to go to civil unions, without using the term marriage. There are many more important things to talk about, like how to stop global warming. So, until now, I have never written on this topic.

And I have little to say about it now except regarding what the issue tells us about conservatives. The federal judge was unable to find any reason why gay marriages would harm other people, or why the state of California would have any legal interest in the matter. Exactly what is the harm that a gay-marriage-ban law is designed to prevent? No answer from the conservative side except this. Legalizing gay marriage would prevent them from foisting their views on others. That is what they said, only they didn’t use the word foist.

I think conservatives either need to have someone to hate, or else want to use this issue to divert our attention away from global warming, and financial reform, and health care, all of them problems that have lots and lots and lots of victims. From what I have observed of the psychology of conservatives that I have known, I would tend to favor the first explanation, but the second is more likely to be true.