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Tom Jackson is in a 12-step program for recovering sports writers; as part of his rehabilitation, he writes a column centered on the people, politics, passions and peculiarities of Pasco County. Email

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Pasco County News | Breaking News

Who’s next to demand nuptial rights?

Posted Jul 20, 2011 by Tom Jackson

Updated Jul 20, 2011 at 06:49 PM

This, we readily concede, is a bit belated, but the nature of time off is that a certain amount of catching up is inevitable. And when both the National Review and certain liberal sectors find themselves in agreement, and that agreement harmonizes with an argument we issued in one or the other digital galaxies we inhabit, attention must be paid.

From “Unmade in New York” – regarding the arrival of same-gender “marriage” to the Empire State – in the July 18 edition of the National Review, comes this (familiar) refrain:

The latest canard is that the defeat of the conjugal conception of marriage is inevitable because there isn’t even an argument for it. But the core argument is simple, and pieces (in the New York Times) like (lesbian left-winger Katherine) Franke’s bolster it: As many liberals now concede and even embrace, redefining marriage leaves no principle reason – none at all – not to recognize relationships of every size and type. As normative features of marriage, permanence, exclusivity, and sexual complementarity are a package deal. The first two norms make sense – are intelligible as norms – only because of the link between marriage and procreation. The only question, increasingly, is whether the loss of these once-defining attributes of marriage is bad. For clearheaded and candid liberationists, it’s only just. (Think: Which argument for same-sex “marriage” wouldn’t easily extend to any relationship that someone, somewhere, finds most fulfilling? Non-discrimination among loving relationships? Non-stigmatization? It won’t hurt anyone else’s marriage?)

So, who’s next to come banging at the state house door, demanding government set aside, as the National Review puts it, “the 2,300-year-old intellectual tradition originating with Plato and Aristotle for the 60-year-old liberationist ideology descended from Hefner and Kinsey”? Polygamists? What’s the matter with big love, when you get right down to it? It’s big, and it’s love. How about romantic first cousins, or even siblings? They wouldn’t even have to change the monograms on their luggage.

In New York, the Legislature and governor – usurping the likely outcome of a referendum on same-sex marriage (rejected in 31 other states where it’s been on the ballot) – has seen fit to indulge the “personal dignity” of gay and lesbian couples aching for nuptials. They dare not object (on what grounds?) when other lovers beyond tradition clamor for their share of the dignity pie.