I have tried approaching this topic reasonably. I attempted to craft a logical, facts-based argument in favor of gay marriage. The impact was unfortunately negligible. My mistake was in treating gay marriage as an issue for which reason plays any role. Living in San Francisco has also changed my attitude towards the issue. I had spent a lot of energy trying to understand the conservative viewpoint, but it turned out I didn't adequately understand the liberal viewpoint. The following is an adapted version of a letter I wrote to my uncle. Pierre, I apologize for singling you out when you are no more guilty than anyone on your side, you were just the catalyst.
I know it's surprising and potentially upsetting to think that so many Catholics are ignoring the Pope, but excluding Hispanics from the statistics in the article wasn't actually that disingenuous. The second article I sent says, "For all the opposition by leaders in the Catholic Church, their flock isn’t following. 'Nearly six-in-ten white non-Hispanic Catholics (59%) favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry,' Pew reports, 'as do 57% of Hispanic Catholics.' This shouldn’t come as too surprising. Catholics have been leading the way on same-sex marriage for some time now."
I agree that the emphasis on white Catholics of the first article raises an eyebrow, but at a
2% difference it's hardly something to get up in arms about. Considering that both Hispanic Catholics and non-Hispanic Catholics are roughly 10% more in favor than the national average of 48% from the same report, it doesn't seem far-fetched to generalize that Catholics as a group are a major demographic leading the charge on gay marriage.
As to the question of whether or not these are "real" Catholics, the pollsters do their best, but it would be much more difficult/expensive to parse an additional variable for cross-control (ie. churchgoing rates of respondents). By the flip side of the coin, are you really so interested in disowning the vast majority of those who call themselves Catholic? "You're not a real Catholic unless you single-issue-vote for theocracy, have had sex the same number of times you've had children and flagellate yourself every morning before coffee."
The argument that legalizing gay marriage represents a slippery slope or opens a Pandora's box is absurd. California or New York would sooner pass Jim Crow laws than legalize first cousins marrying (both are cut from the same Southern cloth, in our minds). There is no other "rights" group looking for an expansion of marriage law with even a trace of the sincerity, fervor or political legitimacy of the gay rights movement.
Based on your own very technical definition of "deviant", I will disagree that gay marriage is "merely an attempt to make themselves non-deviant." By your definition, they will never be "non-deviant", but they can be treated like first-class citizens and granted rights that cost the rest of us nothing. Gays are looking for their (theoretically secular) government to acknowledge that they exist in the most sensible legal way available. Don't tell me extensive legal documents or civil unions are the same thing. They are clumsy workarounds to a glaring hole in contemporary law. The hole is one generated by a social reality that's at least 40 years old: gay people act remarkably like heterosexual people. They find someone they want to spend their lives with, they own houses together, they adopt children, etcetera. The elegant solution staring us in the face is legal marriage-- but that's not the argument to endorse it. The real argument to endorse it is that to willfully ignore and actively lobby against that elegant solution is insulting. You're telling people, "fuck you, this may be a secular government, but it's a democracy and you will play your charade of open, legally-recognized homosexuality over my dead body and every other REAL christian this country can muster."
Do you have any idea how ugly your side is? Do you have any idea how many people hate Middle America, the Pope, Jesus because of people like you? I have heard so many people in this city speak fervently about how ugly religion is and, coming from my background, I didn't understand at first. Living here for awhile you realize that nobody cares if a person gay. People don't play guessing games, they don't gawk, they don't ask, they just don't care. That is true non-judgement, not the silly mainline christian charade of "hate the sin, love the sinner". Do you have any idea how liberating, how utopian that feels, even to someone who isn't gay? It becomes very easy to understand why people here think of Middle America as a hell pit of judgement and scorn. I've seen it from both sides and I know your heart is in the right place, but I understand people here when they wrinkle their nose at the idea of living in Louisiana-- too much racism and religious zealots and judgement, they say-- and it's true! Isn't judgement for the afterlife? When did Jesus say that good people should tell other people how to live with their words and, when that becomes socially uncouth, with their votes? Y'know, I don't even care what Jesus said, because that wouldn't make it less ugly.
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If you want a logical way to look at gay marriage think of it as a Pareto optimal move and one that reduces externalities caused by other social phenomenon.
As nearly every social conservative will remind you, married people tend to have better outcomes than singles. By enlarging the first group you enhance the total welfare of society without materially hurting any other group or society as a whole (and no, society wide religious objections without any sort of actual harm caused don't count).
Of course the religious set will argue that the same criteria applies to granting people the right to marry animals or inanimate objects, positions which no credible interest group will foreseeably lobby for, and which would establish relationships that have never existed between people and property.
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