Frank Schubert writes: “You can’t support gay marriage and claim to be a conservative any more than you can be ‘pro-choice’ on abortion and claim to be a conservative.”
A few thoughts:
1. Mr. Schubert should read Jonah Goldberg more often. Gay marriage and abortion really are not all that similar.
2. Was Mr. Schubert invested at some point with the unilateral power to determine who counts as conservative? Was there some kind of Torquemada-for-a-Day lottery? Did I miss a meeting? Because if we’re punching tickets, I have a list.
3. If our choice is between 1.) a movement that includes Mr. Schubert but excludes Jonah, Dick Cheney, Rob Portman, a few National Review staffers who come to mind, David Koch, Peter Thiel, Deroy Murdock, and 70 percent of the people born after 1980, or 2.) a movement that includes Jonah, Dick Cheney, Rob Portman, a few National Review staffers who come to mind, David Koch, Peter Thiel, Deroy Murdock, and 70 percent of the people born after 1980, but excludes Mr. Schubert — can we take a vote?
For the record, Jonah has written only that he has become more sympathetic toward gay marriage over time; I don’t know if that was intended as a full-on endorsement. But I suppose people who are sympathetic toward gay marriage are out, too.
Gay marriage is somewhere around No. 8,373 on the list of things I care about, as I think I’ve mentioned before, but I think I’d still go with Cheney and Portman and Deroy. The tendency among conservatives to read out those who disagree with them on one issue out of every hundred is tedious and self-defeating, not to mention distasteful.
Mr. Schubert’s post is headlined: “Why gay marriage and conservatism are incompatible,” but he never says why. He only declares, as though from on high, that it is so.