What I learned at AEI.(Conservative Policy Dilemmas)(American Enterprise Institute)

Publication: Public Interest

Publication Date: 22-JUN-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 The National Affairs, Inc.

THE official topic of today's discussion is: "Should conservatives support same-sex marriage?" The unofficial subtitle, at least of my talk, is: "Everything I Know About Gay Marriage, I Learned at the American Enterprise Institute." Though I'm now at the Brookings Institution, my first think tank appointment was at AEI. It was here as a guest scholar that I learned so much from so many of the leading lights of conservatism, and I'd like to think that many of my arguments for gay marriage are, in fact, conservative arguments.

Too many people on the Right are panicking instead of thinking when it comes to same-sex marriage. The president of the United States, unfortunately, is someone I put in that category. But it seems to me that if you apply the kinds of principles that I first learned at AEI, and which folks like AEI's president Christopher DeMuth have done so much to advance over the last 20 years, I think you reach two conclusions, or at least I do: The first is that same-sex marriage is an idea that conservatives ought to support. The second is that even if you still reject gay marriage in principle, a national ban on same-sex marriage, which is what the president and many other conservatives are advocating nowadays, is a very unconservative approach.

My book Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America ([dagger]) is largely about why same-sex marriage is what I call the "trifecta of modern American social policy": a win, a win, and a win--good for gays, good for communities around them (that is to say, the straight world), and above all, good for the institution of marriage as a whole. If gay marriage is enacted, gay couples will get the legal protections of marriage, but that's hardly the most of it. They also get a more profound love, a destination for love that enriches their lives whether they ultimately get married or not--the knowledge that romantic attachment properly points toward something larger than itself. They also get the enormous personal benefits that marriage alone conveys: Married people are healthier, happier, more prosperous, and...

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