AMERICA AND EUROPE: Andrew Sullivan replies to Maggie Gallagher

Maggie Gallagher's latest argument about same-sex marriage is not much more than a splutter. But it does have an error. As part of her attempt to portray equal marriage rights for gays as some kind of path toward an un-American Gomorrah, she says the following: "Europe, which gave us the idea of same-sex marriage, is a dying society, with birthrates 50 percent below replacement." But the first movement for marriage equality was in America in the 1970s. And the first major breakthrough was in America, in Hawaii. And the intellectual arguments in favor were forged in America, not in Europe. And that is how it should be. It is the American constitution that guarantees not some pragmatic device to help gay couples, but the bedrock principle of civil equality and civil rights. This is a quintessentially American reform, which is why it is so appropriate that Massachusetts, the home of the Pilgrims, should be the pioneer. And so fitting that the day for the breakthrough will be the fiftieth anniversary of Brown vs Board of Education.

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posted by Eve at 8:42 PM VOTE

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