This diary is an expansion to a comment I made this week by a very thoughtful diary by Think Harder, called "Why Gay Marriage is the Wrong Issue." Although I don't agree with ThinkHarder on everything, diaries like his are the reason I keep coming back to DKos.
The problem with gay marriage is that we've been painting it entirely the wrong way, and aiming our message to the wrong audience. We've been seeing gay marriage as an issue of justice, of equality, of civil rights. And we've been losing. Time to change our outlook, change our tactics, and change our audience.
First, let's agree on something: gay marriage is a wedge issue. The Repubs have been great with wedge issues, and you can expect them to continue to ride gay marriage for all it's worth. It's been working for them for the last 15 years, so why should they stop now?
Gay marriage works as a wedge issue because: (a) most Americans are religious; (b) most religious Americans are opposed to homosexuality per se for moral reasons. We can only win by peeling away a segment of this group of religious Americans, and the current strategy isn't working. We need a new and better argument, an argument that will hit religious Americans where they live -- an argument that resonates with them.
Here's the argument we should be using with this group:
Those who are against gay marriage are -- perhaps unwittingly -- encouraging homosexual promiscuity.
One of the reasons we have marriage at all is to act as a counterweight to promiscuous sexual behavior -- to encourage long-lasting, stable, monogamous relationships. That's just as much true for gays as for straights. We can and should use marriage as a tool for reducing promiscuity, not just to reduce the spread of HIV and STD's, but also because monogamy is morally superior to promiscuity, and that moral superiority works for gays the same way it does for straights.
Obviously, this argument won't work with everyone -- but it doesn't have to. Yes, there will be those who will say that all gay sex is equally bad whether monogamous or not. But I'm willing to bet that there are some in the religious community that have been waiting to hear an argument like this -- just waiting for a moral reason in their hearts that reinforces the logical reasons they already have in their heads.
After all, we're not asking that gay marriage be blessed by the church, only that it be sanctioned by the state for the good of civil society. So let's put a moral face on "the good of civil society." We only need 5% of Californians (maybe 10-15% in other states) to change their opinion, and we can swing this issue.