David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values and a the chief witness for Proposition 8 in the court hearings two years ago, has written a New York Times online op-ed in which he says that he now supports gay and lesbian marriage.
In the 2010 hearings, Blankenhorn testified that he believed that marriage would help gay and lesbian couples, but he feared that it would undermine the institution of heterosexual marriage as an institution. Unlike most public opponents of marriage equality, his objection is not biblical or religious but more sociological."Whatever one's definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness. . . . The time has come for me to accept gay marriage and emphasize the good it can do . . . ."
Andrew Sullivan has called him "probably the most clearly decent, intellectually honest, nonhomophobic opponent of marriage equality."
Now Blankenhorn says that he has come to believe that much of the opposition to gay marriage stems from anti-gay bias, and he finds that "profoundly disturbing." Besides, he says, opposing it has not helped heterosexual marriage, as he had hoped.
"If fighting gay marriage was going to help marriage overall, I think we'd have seen some signs of it by now. . . .As I look at what our society needs most today, I have no stomach for what we often too glibly call 'culture wars.' Especially on this issue, I'm more interested in conciliation than in further fighting."The dominoes are starting to fall, faster and faster.
Ralph
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