Final witness called for Prop 8 challengers on day 9 of trial

San Francisco, District Court:  Proposition 8 Trial;  Day 9

Challengers call final witness;  Defenders will go next 

Opinion and Commentary

The Proposition 8  Federal trial  -  being held to determine if the California state ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional  -  is given a keyhole glimpse and an overarching view, both,  of marriage and its meaning to men and women (and dare I say its import for children)  in the 21st century.  

The trial and its meaning for American culture is full of stunning contradictions:  

I find it amusing when, for instance,   Huffington Post journalist and commentator Audrey Bilger reveals to readers that ,  surprise, surprise, there is actually a social conservative agenda behind Proposition 8 backers, which is not against gays so much as it is against our postmodern culture.    The proponents of Proposition 8 are really aiming much of this at unwed mothers,  Bilger states, with an earnestness which is stunning.  Are people really unaware of the connection between postmodernity and the current culture wars?  

Be that as it may,  one of gay marriage's biggest advocates -  the intellectual, Oxford educated,  philosophical ,  Mr. Andrew Sullivan  -  is an arch conservative on most social issues, and a Catholic to boot.  His would be the paradoxical stance of a conservative in all manners and means, but for his gayness. 

 In this sense,  there is a strange contradiction which lies at the crux of the entire gay marriage movement:  It was conservatives such as Sullivan and Bruce Bawer who really launched and furthered the movement.  I have read both Sullivan and Bawer extensively  - even obsessively  -  and theirs is the conservative mindset:  Spiritual, devoted, traditional, solid, masculine.  They "stumble"  only on gay marriage.  Anyone who has ever read Bawer's A Place at the Table:  The Gay Individual in American Society  will comprehend just how old-fashioned, traditional,  and absolutely turned off by modern culture Bawer is.  

For all that,  it is the  liberal minded  -  and yes, postmodern  -  ideology and doctrines of feminism and political correctness ( so foreign to Sullivan and Bawer's thinking and philosophizing)  who have ridden on the gay movement, as it were;  tagged along for the side benefits and unintended consequences.