history—the decades following the sexual rev-
olution—when the contingency of marriage
began to show through and its role as the basic
building block of society came to be called into
question. Pervading the arguments for marriage
equality made by eloquent defenders such as
Andrew Sullivan is the idea that gay marriage
will not, as the conservatives fear, cause us to lose
our moral bearings, so much as it will bring gays
into the fold of a single gay-straight community
of shared moral values. over the past fifteen
years, the liberal mainstream has begun to move
toward this view. But Sullivan is, in the end, a
conservative himself, and it is one of the great
wonders of the past few decades of public debate
that his conservative argument has won over so
many who otherwise despise this political orien-
tation. The same people who claim to dislike talk
of family values will defend gay marriage on the
grounds that it contributes to the strengthening
of those values.
The Blessed Virgin Chastising the Infant Jesus Before Three Witnesses: A.B., P.E., and the
Painter, by Max Ernst, 1926. A.B. is André Breton; P.E. is Paul Éluard.
