And why not?

The inimitable Dan Savage penned an article for Salon.com about a year ago concerning the then recent coming-out-of-the-closet and resignation of New Jersey Governor James McGreevey. Having somehow missed it when it was first published (odd given that I'm a regular reader of Salon) I finally read it after linking to it from another article about Savage's new book, The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family, and thought it a particularly well written and argued piece on the absurdity of those so against same-sex marriage. Key quote:

According to the Falwells, Robertsons, and Santorums of the world, I'm supposed to think less about the South African Olympic men's swim team and more about hell (hot!) and eternity (long!). Then I'm supposed to go find a woman I can trick into marrying me. So what if the foundation of my marriage is a lie? So what if I have to struggle against my sexual and emotional needs all my adult life? Do what you gotta do, faggot: If you need to think about other men -- like, say, all those nice boys on the South African Olympic swim team -- in order to perform sexually for your wife and make some babies, Sen. Santorum says go for it. And if the truth about my sexuality were to ever come out -- if I were, say, threatened with a $50 million lawsuit by my same-sex piece on the side -- the poor woman I've lied to will feel humiliated and violated but, shit, no one ever said that marriage was all sweetness and light, right?
If it does nothing else, the McGreevey marriage highlights the chief absurdity of the anti-gay-marriage argument: Gay men can, in point of fact, get married -- provided we marry women, duped or otherwise. The porousness of the sacred institution is remarkable: Gay people are a threat to marriage, but gay people are encouraged to marry -- indeed, we have married, under duress, for centuries, and the religious right would like us to continue to do so today -- as long as our marriages are a sham. As long as we're willing to lie to ourselves, our wives, our communities, our children, and for someone like McGreevey, our constituents. A closeted gay man like McGreevey can even marry twice and have both his marriages regarded as legitimate. Even as an openly gay man, McGreevey can remain married to his wife and smoke all the pole he likes on the side. There ain't no law agin' it, Sen. Santorum. But how does this state of affairs protect marriage from the homos, I wonder? If an openly gay man can get married as long as his marriage makes a mockery of what is the defining characteristic of modern marriage -- romantic love -- or if he marries simply because he despairs of finding a same-sex partner, what harm could possibly be done by opening marriage to the gay men who don't want to make a mockery of marriage or who can find a same-sex partner?

Read the whole thing here: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2004/08/17/savage_mcgreevey/index.html, though you might have to watch a commercial first.