Now and again,
I like to check in with Maggie Gallagher, a woman who co-founded the
National Organization for Marriage, the leading advocacy group opposing
same-sex marriage. Gallagher has long served as one of the intellectual
pillars of that movement.

She weighed in on
what's next for the social conservative movement and the growing number
of religious Americans in favor of same-sex marriage, among a range of
other issues, not excluding the recent St. Patrick's Day controversy.
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil
Rights in the United States, has proposed a boycott of Guinness beer
after the company withdrew support from New York's St Patrick's parade
due to organizers barring gay and lesbian groups from marching with a
banner identifying themselves as LGBT.
This week, Bill
Donohue, of the Catholic League, announced he was putting all of his
organization's energy into a boycott of Guinness beer. It's hard to
imagine such a boycott affecting Guinness' bottom line. What do you make
of efforts like that?
Consumer boycotts are not usually
an effective strategy. As YouTube celebrity Antoine Dodson (back when he
identified as gay) said, when asked why he was eating at Chick Fil-A, "Them Waffle Fries are banging."
At this point, what do you think is the most effective way to push the message of "traditional marriage" forward?
As
I said last summer, it was clear to me from reading Windsor [the U.S.
Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor], gay marriage
advocates now have five votes for inserting a right to gay marriage in
our Constitution. We are now in the 'gay marriage in all 50 states'
phase whether we like it or not. What's next? In my view people who
believe in the traditional understanding of marriage, and believe that
it matters, have to become a creative minority, finding way to both
express these sexual views, culturally, artistically and intellectually
and to engage with the newly dominant cultural view of marriage
respectfully but not submissively.
Lots of thoughts packed into the latter sentence.
As
for social conservatives as a political movement, even to retain
religious liberty protections is going to require a new and more serious
engagement with politics. Gay rights people donate enormously more
money to direct political action than Christian conservatives who tend
to prefer giving to [501(c)(3) nonprofit, tax-exempt] ministries who do
research, pastor-organizing and spokespersoning -- which is fine as long
as you don't imagine you are going to have sufficient political
influence that way. It's a failed strategy on its own.
But I
suspect the initial reaction among evangelicals is going to be retreat
and hope to be left alone rather than engaging in building new
institutions. Will they be left alone? We'll see.
Do you support the religious exemption legislation that several southern states have been pressing?
I
haven't read the legislation in question -- it was vetoed in Arizona
practically before I became aware it existed, but assuming the religious
liberty scholars (including Prof. Doug Laycock) who wrote about it were
correct, yes I would support it. I do not think religion should be used
to discriminate against gay people in everyday life and I also do not
think whole professions should be closed to people who cannot affirm gay
unions as marriages, because then, once in a while, a gay person will
have to find another photographer.
The comparison of these efforts
to "Jim Crow" is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Jim Crow was a
system where powerful elites tried to crush the ability of black people
to live their lives as part of ordinary society. Melissa of Sweet Cakes
(like Elaine of Elaine's photography) [both businesses that denied
services to gay couples] is not trying to keep the gay people down. She
is trying to live her life, not run lesbian people's lives.
If it
were likely major corporations were trying to push gay customers to the
margins and discriminate against them, I would feel differently about
it.
But right now what I see, as I suspect you do: powerful
corporations, elite institutions are all lining up to protect and
proclaim the dignity of gay people. Small numbers of unusually devoted
Christians are just trying to feed their kids. I do not see who is
benefited really by putting them out of business. Melissa has five kids,
her husband (I was told) now hauls garbage. I understand it would be a
rude shock to realize the woman happy to bake you cupcakes doesn't want
to bake your happy wedding cake, but I really don't get deciding to put
her out of business. It is abstract justice versus real concrete and
unreasonable harm.
Have you seen this recent survey showing a really dramatic shift in public opinion among religious groups, and what do you make of it?
Religious
people do not exist in a vacuum and as opposition to gay marriage
becomes defined in the public sphere as a bigoted and discriminatory
impulse, many religious people want to get good with the newly dominant
public morality. The new rule is: the only way to express concern and
care for gay people is to be for gay marriage, so of course many
religious people wanting to express concern and care for gay people
generally and for the gay people in their lives will go that route. If
responses to previous cultural/sexual/moral clashes (like abortion or
the sexual revolution) are any indication, religions that embrace the
dominant morality and reject core Biblical teachings will fade, fast,
like the Episcopalians in this country. Whether the traditional
religious denominations are able to create the institutions necessary to
"keep the faith" is an open question.
But I would not expect
religious people to remain insulated, which is one reason of course I
thought the fight over [same-sex marriage bans] matters culturally and
broadly. It is not just a matter of making some gay couples happy by
providing benefits to help them live their lives with no consequences
for anyone else. It's a broad cultural shift redefining not only the
place of gay people in society but of traditional religious believers as
well. And also of what marriage is and what it means.
A lot of
people are going to want to escape from the moral disapproval and really
sometimes the open hatred directed at you for maintaining the classic
view of marriage -- the view that I would say goes something like this,
at least in my head and heart: "We are born male and female, our bodies
contain a call to come together in love to make and raise the next
generation as their mothers and fathers. Yes, many people, for a variety
of reasons some, under their control and many not, are not going to end
up being married; we should be as kind to one another as we can
manage."
This is the view being discarded and many people will
try in a variety of ways to reconcile the new culturally dominant
marriage narrative with their religious views and their views about
human nature. I am one of those who believe my job is to explain, first
to myself and then possibly to others, why I cannot.
Has
this been a difficult time for you? Does it come up often in
conversation with others who oppose legalizing same-sex marriage, and if
so, how is it talked about?
No, it's really not been a
difficult time for me personally. I went into this fight, in good
conscience, because I believed it mattered and that I had something to
contribute. I did not promise myself I would win. I promised myself I
would do everything I could see, to do this good, to fight for marriage
as a universal human institution with certain goods and goals. I feel a
great deal of contentment about that. I can see some things I might have
done differently, but basically I was at post. One cannot do anything
better with one's life than stand up for what you deeply believe in,
i.e, to speak truth, whether in power or to power.
I have a lot more freedom now to figure out what I want to do with the next 20 years of my life. Thank-you for asking though!
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