I found this back forth exchange interesting as well.
The second article is a response to the first one.
Why Gay Marriage is the Wrong Issue It’s just plain sad what the gay and lesbian movement has come to. Nov. 4 was so extraordinary, so magical. The whole world seemed to come together, except for gays and lesbians in California. We were supposed to feel crushed over Proposition 8. And now that entire scenario is gearing up to repeat itself on Jan. 20: the whole world will celebrate the inauguration of the first black American president and the end of the George Bush insanity - the whole world except gays and lesbians who will be protesting Rick Warren’s presence at the inaugural.
How is it that queers became the odd ones out at such a momentous turning point in history? By pushing an agenda of stupid issues like gay marriage.
“Gay marriage” turns the real issues of equal rights for sexual minorities upside down and paints us into a reactionary little corner of our own making. Yes, married people get special privileges denied to others. Denied not to just gays and lesbians, but to many others. Millions of straight people remain unmarried, and for a huge variety of reasons, from mothers whose support networks do not include their children’s fathers, to hipsters who can’t relate to religious institutions. We could be making common cause with them. We could be fighting for equal rights for everyone, not just gays and lesbians, but for all unmarried people. In the process we would leave religious institutions to define marriage however their members see fit.
Marriage matters, no matter that skeptics like Bob Ostertag would have it otherwise [Comment, “Why Gay Marriage Is the Wrong Issue,” Jan. 14]. While straight conservatives would agree about the importance of marriage and use that as an argument to exclude gay men and lesbians from the institution, from the opposite side we have gay liberals who would deny the premise and eliminate marriage altogether. As that is not likely to happen, the practical effect of their arguments is the same: heterosexuals will continue to enjoy access to marriage and its benefits, with gays remaining strangers to this right.
Ostertag is far from the first gay man to belittle the push for same-sex marriage. Michael Warner made the same arguments both earlier and better in his The Trouble with Normal (Free Press, 1999). What these jaded naysayers have in common is membership among a social elite who view marriage either as a way for others unfairly to claim part of their material wealth, or as a hindrance to their promiscuous pleasures - what Ostertag euphemistically refers to as his “various men.” While these are valid reasons for any individual to refrain from choosing marriage, the error comes when, without comment, they are offered as reasons also to eliminate marriage altogether. Mired in their self-centered values, they would elevate their personal preferences to a normative social good.
