Steve Chapman: An Odd Silence on Gay Marriage
“Unlike most public policy debates, this one is the subject of a gigantic experiment, which should definitively answer whether same-sex marriage will have a broad, destructive social impact…
“[I]n the next few years, we will have a chance to compare social trends in the states permitting same-sex marriage against social trends in the others…
“But with the experiment looming, some opponents seem to be doubting their own convictions. I contacted three serious conservative thinkers who have written extensively about the dangers of allowing gay marriage and asked them to make simple, concrete predictions about measurable social indicators — marriage rates, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, child poverty, you name it.
“You would think they would react like Albert Pujols when presented with a hanging curveball. Yet none was prepared to forecast what would happen in same-sex marriage states versus other states.
“Maggie Gallagher, president of the Virginia-based Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, has declared that losing this battle ‘means losing American civilization.’ But she politely declined my invitation…
“What’s equally striking is that when I made similar inquiries to people on the other side of the debate, I encountered no such reluctance. They forthrightly asserted that granting gays access to matrimony will have no discernible impact…
“In a few years, we won’t have to rely on such forecasts, because the facts will be there for all to see. And they should settle the issue once and for all.
“But I have a strong suspicion that both sides of the debate are right. The supporters of same-sex marriage are right in predicting that it will have no bad side effects. And the opponents are right not to make predictions.”
http://townhall.com/columnists/SteveChapman/2009/08/20/an_odd_silence_on_gay_marriage
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