The transcript of the Brookings panel is now up, which allows me to post David Blankenhorn’s position:
And so, you know, I take second place to no one in my passionate, personal opposition to gay marriage. A lot of times people in debates and discussions, they’ll come up to me afterwards on the other side, and often they’ll tell me about their kids, and they’ll say:
This is really personal for me, and I usually say to them, I understand, I understand that it is, but what I’m actually thinking in my head when I say I understand, I’m saying, of course, it is, as it is for me.
As a father of three, as a husband, as someone who spent 20 years trying to put in a good word for marriage as a social institution, I take this very personal. And so – but I do think that there is perhaps another principal at stake which ought to outweigh that for me at this time. That’s a hard thing to say, that ought to outweigh that for me at this time. And that principal is that we have to find a way to live together. We’re Americans, and we’re diverse people, and we value and treasure that as part of the strength of our society, and rather than – even as we continue to argue this issue out, I think Jonathan is right, this is probably a long term discussion, with strong feelings on both sides, but can we take this principle that we have to try to live together and look for ways, maybe better than ours, I think ours is a good one, I think the world will be a better place tomorrow if we were able to make this change.”
Nathan Diament makes a passionate case for why religious people are so suspicious about whether the religious liberty impositions of gay marriage are a side effect — to be mitigated by compromise — or simply the real point.
Lara Schwartz of the Human Rights Campaign asks “Is morally serious compromise possible?” says yes, and declines to compromise, on the grounds that courts generally get this right.