What will happen to marriage once the government and the law insist that same-sex unions ARE marriage, “whether you like it or not”?

First, this set of ideas about marriage will necessarily be privatized: that male and female point to each other, that marriage has deep roots in the necessity of bringing men and women together, because society needs babies, and babies need their mother and father in one family.

Next, because the prime argument for gay marriage is an equality argument, this traditional view of marriage will also be stigmatized: that is, treated as a discarded and discredited relic of bigotry that we have happily overcome.

I remember most vividly — it’s just an anecdote, yes — a very smart young Harvard law student asked me, her voice dripping with suspicion and disdain: “Why are you so upset about same-sex marriage; how is it going to affect you anyway?”

When I pointed out to her how the law treats people who oppose interracial marriage in our society — professional licenses at risk, school accreditations potentially denied, state and federal tax-exempt statuses put into play — I watched her eyes open wide. She had never thought of this at all. And then I watched her turn on a dime and say, “You’re right. That’s how bigots SHOULD be treated in our society.”

Ideas are powerful things.

Evan Wolfson, one of the lead architects of the gay-marriage movement, understands this very well. That’s why he told National Journal, according to Neil Munro: “Once same-sex marriage is accepted across the board, he said, there won’t be any need for a term to distinguish gay or straight couples who marry to raise children from those who wed to love and help each other.”

It’s quite an interesting article. Among the other folks quoted is my old pal, Fred Karger, who founded Californians Against Hate. He’s right now in the middle of trying to prove that the National Organization for Marriage was secretly founded by the Mormon church as a front group — good luck with that one Fred — as part of a broader personal campaign to harass, threaten, and intimidate members of the LDS church who exercize their core civil rights to support marriage. He’s very open about it. ‘That is my goal . . . We’re chasing them now, and they don’t like it,’ he said. “They better get used to it.’”

“The word ‘marriage’ needs to be used to describe all relationships of two people who are loving and committed to each other,” says Sara Beth Brooks, the lead organizer of a march in San Diego on November 15. “To deny that semantic attachment to our relationships is the exact same thing as denying an African-American person the right to attend the same schools as a white person.”

Right. Why do they keep saying that? Because they mean it.

Gay marriage will not leave marriage undisturbed. If gay marriage becomes the law of the land, then this thing called marriage that I care about, and that most human societies have specially protected, will become nameless in the public square — also, unmentionable in polite society.

(Will polygamy be next? For me, this is a side issue. But Evan Wolfson would say — he said this one time when I debated him on Long Island — that’s up to the polygamists to launch a movement and find out. I say: Don’t ask me, ask the guys at Harvard Law school. Because as far as I can tell they work these things out for themselves and let us know afterwards.)

(To be continued . . . )