Outside the intellectual nursery of academia, nobody cares about your feelings. Generally, feelings are tolerated in the real world, but this is merely a diplomatic act intended to keep the gears of commerce from grinding down.
Yet when the outspoken members of the left are confronted with views contrary to their own they reference their emotional response as reasoned argument.
So we have Exemplar-In-Chief, Perez Hilton. A classless man-child who thinks the appropriate response to someone who disagrees with him is to slander her as a dumb b-word (but only because he had the good taste to not call her a c-word). I would probably agree that his question to Miss California was an appropriate one. But a contestant should be judged upon her ability to articulate a position, not her ability to pander.
I see all this as speaking to a polarizing generality between those on the left and those on the right. It is emotionally uncomfortable - in this era of social and linguistic political-correctness - to entertain any differences between the sexes. And the more strongly a person believes in such equality the more likely they will be found gravitating to the left, ideologically.
This is the great impasse. Are men and women fundamentally the same? The left says yes; the right says no. And the question can never be about what either side "wants" - that is an emotional plea. It must be about what "is." A question of greater magnitude than most recognize.
For the sake of argument, let's say science somehow proves that men and women are no different; then gay marriage is a no-brainer. However, if gay marriage is universally adopted, society must be prepared to accept other forms of marriage. If the type of parents a child has raising them doesn't matter, then why should the number? Do children with a single parent grow up to be lesser individuals than those children with two? Why not four parents?
If two divorce and remarry then a child would have four parents. Why not let them all live in the same house - especially if there are a large number of children. It would be economically prudent. Not to mention the benefit of spreading the responsibility of child rearing around.
Unlike gay marriage, polygamy actually has historical precedence.
Hilton, in an interview with Larry King, denied the emotional context of gay marriage saying, "I think it has nothing do with compassion and it has everything to do with equality." He claims that this nation was founded on equality. In a non-specific sense, I would agree.
But that form of equality was about a person's creation, and not their outcome. Moreover, this was a political ideal - not a social contract.
Now, if my position couldn't be extrapolated from the above, let me be clear: I don't believe gay marriage is an appropriate pursuit of an intellectually honest society. Neither is polygamy. I also believe that I am not equal with others.
I believe that there are people out there - of both sexes, of all ethnicities - that are better than me and are more deserving of certain opportunities than I ever will be. Just as there are those that are less deserving. And that does not offend me, because I am not so nave as to believe that people are monolithically unidimensional, that one issue could determine a state of worth.
And I can accept this so readily because I don't let what I "want to be" dominate "what is." Men and women are different - to the benefit of the species - and that truth, that simple, politically unnerving truth, doesn't hurt me. It does not belittle me, and it does not render me inferior.
For those of you who advocate for gay marriage, you must first prove the interchangeability of men and women before you could hope to make a valid argument. Love is not argument. Love in marriage is a luxury of societal stability. But that stability is predicated on not denying our nature. This is the core of the debate, and we must be intellectually honest about that.
(As an aside, I'm left wondering whether Perez Hilton feels the same about Obama. Our president publicly announced that he was not in favor of gay marriage. Is the man that has inspired so many messianic depictions of his likeness a social Neanderthal?)