Opposing other people's marriages

Madame Cura and I awoke this morning to find that, in the minds of a growing number of fundamentalist Christians, we pose a serious threat to marriage, family...heck...society itself.

As the Grays will tell you, ''gay'' is only one-half of the gay marriage issue. If homosexuality is a heavily laden notion for conservative Christians, so, too, is marriage. Evalena Gray handed me a copy of ''Marriage Under Fire: Why We Must Win This Battle,'' a small, pithy volume written by Dr. James Dobson, the influential leader of Focus on the Family, whose radio commentaries are heard by 200 million people a day worldwide. ''Marriage Under Fire'' has been available at Focus on the Family events since it was published last year. Dobson begins his book by rooting marriage in the same biblical passage that graces the marriage shrine at the Family Research Council headquarters -- ''Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh'' -- and then goes on to add, ''With those 22 words, God announced the ordination of the family, long before He established the two other great human institutions, the church and the government.''

To see marriage as in any way a secular or legal union of two individuals is to miss utterly the point and conviction of the Christian forces lined up against gay marriage. As Dobson states in his book: ''To put it succinctly, the institution of marriage represents the very foundation of human social order. Everything of value sits on that base. Institutions, governments, religious fervor and the welfare of children are all dependent on its stability.'' Every activist on the ground I spoke with said something similar. ''Marriage was defined thousands of years ago and has served us well,'' said Rebecca Denning, a retired secretary in southern Maryland who volunteers alongside Evalena Gray. ''I think marriage is about procreation and families. And I think we're getting into something that we don't truly understand what the ramifications will be.''

Russell Shorto's look at opposition to gay marriage is notable for cutting through the usual sheen of moderation that attends to this topic. "We don't hate gays," we're told. "We hate the sin, not the sinner." Turns out, though, that this really isn't the case. They don't simply see gay marriage as a threat to their own marriage, they see gays as a disease. In fact, it becomes clear that as more and more fundamentalists are informed by their religion not just in their spiritual lives, but in their political lives as well, that anyone who doesn't conform to their idea of a good Christian person committed to a good Christian family is really an enemy to be destroyed.

There is no longer a middle ground for these people. "Reasonable people," it's said, can differ on such issues as non-traditional familes. These are not "reasonable people."

But it struck me, reading the article, that gay marriage is only one front in a movement that those of us who believe in the enlightenment and progressivism in general need to start paying attention to. There are a lot of people in this country who flat out reject the enlightenment -- secularism, they spit. It's nothing new, nor is it new for politicians to pander to these people. It explains the vehemence in the move to teach "Intelligent Design" and in growing opposition to evolution, and it also explains the determined effort to enshrine the idea that this country's foundation was based on religion rather than on enlightenment ideas of democracy.

Those of us who believe in letting people live their lives, who believe in science, in keeping religion out of the statehouse, in evolution, and, indeed, in social and scientific progress -- we are a threat to these fundamentalists' world view. Make no mistake, they are just as great a threat to ours.