I’ve read quite a bit today about David Blankenhorn’s lack of bigotry. Blankenhorn, best known for his opposition to same-sex marriage, argues that he can be anti gay marriage without being antigay.
Some of David’s friends — including Dale Carpenter and Jonathan Rauch, both prominent supporters of marriage equality (and gay themselves) — have taken pains to say that David is no bigot. Carpenter lays out the argument:
On the subject of same-sex marriage, I believe David is a man at war with himself. He has spoken publicly, in a forum of anti-SSM conservatives, of the equal dignity of homosexual love. Note the words dignity and love. This is not the language of liberal toleration of some hateful thing, like Nazis marching in Skokie […]
David doesn’t oppose gay marriage because he opposes gay people. He opposes it because he’s worried it would have unintended negative effects on marriage. […]
What I can’t say, as Frank Rich has now repeatedly suggested, is that David is an anti-gay bigot. I don’t see how anyone who has reviewed David’s writings, speeches, and California testimony, could honestly say such a thing.
I suspect that if I met David socially — which seems, put mildly, unlikely — I’d like him. He seems like a pleasant guy, and he’s interested in a lot of the same things that interest me. And he’s able to have friendly discussions about policy with people he strongly disagrees with, a trait I highly value.
Nonetheless, David’s preferred policy harms same-sex couples, harms their children, harms lesbian and gay kids, and makes lesbians, gay men, and their kids into second-class citizens. That David is personally a very nice guy doesn’t mitigate the harms of the policies he defends.
David is obviously not a simple hater of gays. He doesn’t wish gay people harm for the sake of harming gay people.
But is simple, direct hatred the only kind of bigotry that exists?
Decades ago, William F. Buckley argued that it was not; discussing antisemitism, he used the example of a man who genuinely loves his Jewish friends, but also supports his country club’s restricted (no Jews allowed) policy. The point is, even someone who is not personally antisemitic in the sense of rabidly hating all Jewish people, might be antisemitic in other ways — such as supporting an antisemitic policy.
David Blankenhorn doesn’t hate gay people, and that’s good. But he engages in antigay bigotry by supporting a bigoted and antigay policy. ((Yes, the same thing is true of Barak Obama.)) It’s not unfair to say so. What would be unfair is taking all discussion of bigotry off the table, when moral opposition to bigotry is one major reason to favor marriage equality.
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Further reading: David Blankenhorn responds to Frank Rich; XXFactor; Equality Loudoun; Zack Ford.
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