Thoughts in a Haystack

Unlike other hot-button constitutional controversies, conservatives have a hopeless public-relations war to wage. The best they can do, as Michigan did, is to append a table showing “ballot-box votes on the definition of marriage” that a ruling in favour of same-sex marriage would overturn. There are no poster children to be found. Supporters of the death penalty recall gory stories of murder victims, whose killers, they say, deserve the ultimate punishment; affirmative action opponents point to jilted white or Asian candidates who are rejected from their top-choice university because minority applicants with inferior credentials got in; and pro-life activists stick photos of aborted fetuses in women’s faces. But there is just no vivid argument available to match the stories of couples who cannot file a joint tax return, visit one another in the hospital or adopt each others’ children. No innocent bystander was ever dealt an injustice, maimed or killed because a pair of doting gays or lesbians happened to get hitched.