# Why are conservatives obsessed with same sex marriage?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156
**Category:** Politics & Elections
**Created:** [July 23, 2020, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156 "2020-07-23T19:57:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 11
### Author:  [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/201 "2020-07-28T11:36:05Z")
> [@I-AM-WABI-SABI](#):
>
> No one, it was started to control interracial marriages and became a great revenue stream for government and then finally votes for both sides to make promises.
Seriously, take off your American blinkers (and this comment is nonsense, anyway). Marriage isn’t an American invention. Shocking I know!
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/202 "2020-07-28T12:15:50Z")
They tried, they tried as hard as ever they could, and failed. See: California 2008, Proposition 8.
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/203 "2020-07-28T12:31:12Z")
Not quite sure why, but this thread reminds me of an anecdote a female friend related of her husband (this was at least 25 years ago). She was clothes shopping and her husband was sitting in a chair waiting for her next to the dressing rooms. She came out and he hissed, I have to get out of here! All these clothes are so GAY.
I believe what I am trying to get at is that, besides the squick factor that a lot of people have about really, any sex that isn’t their brand, there is the buried fear and disgust many men have for, not merely homosexual sex, but femininity itself.
Queers of all kinds must move in a world of fluid ambivalence which is anathema to the rigid black and white world view which is the key hallmark of reactionary belief systems. That is one of the horrors of homosexuality for them.
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/204 "2020-07-28T12:36:31Z")
Are you withdrawing your claim then? I’ve never understood why people go to the effort of stating something as fact, but find it to be too much effort to provide evidence.
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### Author:  [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/205 "2020-07-28T15:18:35Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#):
>
> I’ve never understood why people go to the effort of stating something as fact, but find it to be too much effort to provide evidence.
But isn’t that what the internet is for 🙂 ?
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### Author:  [@SingleMalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SingleMalt)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/206 "2020-07-28T15:58:53Z")
Google it, you say?
> **[The origins of marriage](https://theweek.com/articles/528746/origins-marriage)**
>
> The institution of marriage is now the subject of a bitter national debate. How did marriage begin and why?
Marriage started out as secular, to preserve the legitimacy of one’s heirs. Marriage is a legal, contractual relationship. Religion didn’t enter into it until the legal trappings had already been established.
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### Author:  [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/207 "2020-07-28T19:52:40Z")
Well, Monica is the one who told her friends that she was going to Washington to “earn her presidential kneepads.” Wrong of Clinton to agree, but Monica was no innocent child.
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/208 "2020-07-28T22:20:20Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#):
>
> Queers of all kinds must move in a world of fluid ambivalence which is anathema to the rigid black and white world view which is the key hallmark of reactionary belief systems. That is one of the horrors of homosexuality for them.
Your views, there — would it be fair to refer to them as _rigid?_ Or, possibly, as _black-and-white?_
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/209 "2020-07-28T22:46:01Z")
To which views do you refer? My ideas about reactionaries or my ideas about queers?
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/210 "2020-07-28T22:53:03Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#):
>
> Which ‘them’ are you referring to?
You flatly stated that something “is anathema to the rigid black and white world view which is the key hallmark of reactionary belief systems.” Would you say that your — absolutist? — claims about those belief systems reflect, as it were, some kind of rigid and black-and-white view?
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/211 "2020-07-28T23:02:45Z")
Ah. Yes, I too am very prone to absolutism, at least about things that I find ugly. That doesn’t make me wrong though. Mind, I am not speaking of conservatism, which does not require punitiveness, anger, or fear, which reactionism does, at least in my view. I think that whenever one gets angry, nuance flies out the window.
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2020, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/212 "2020-07-28T23:29:32Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#):
>
> Yes, I too am very prone to absolutism, at least about things that I find ugly. That doesn’t make me wrong though. Mind, I am not speaking of conservatism, which does not require punitiveness, anger, or fear, which reactionism does, at least in my view. I think that whenever one gets angry, nuance flies out the window.
Well, maybe I’ve had it wrong all these years. I figured it was like this: we try some new policy or whatever, and if I’m solidly in favor of what strikes me as an improvement you’ll soon enough hear me expressing what I’d call a _conservative_ attitude to it; but if I think it’s proving to be _worse_ than what we did before, then I’ll (a) start talking like a right-winger upon figuring we should go back to doing what we did before, or I’ll (b) push for something new and different while talking like a left-winger.
To the best of my knowledge, that means I’m a conservative on some issues, and a reactionary on others, and a liberal on yet others — but, as far as I can tell, the same sentiments seem to be in play each time, regardless of which conclusion I happen to be reaching on any given issue.
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [July 29, 2020, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/213 "2020-07-29T00:03:46Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#):
>
> Well, maybe I’ve had it wrong all these years. I figured it was like this: we try some new policy or whatever, and if I’m solidly in favor of what strikes me as an improvement you’ll soon enough hear me expressing what I’d call a _conservative_ attitude to it; but if I think it’s proving to be _worse_ than what we did before, then I’ll (a) start talking like a right-winger upon figuring we should go back to doing what we did before, or I’ll (b) push for something new and different while talking like a left-winger.
>
> To the best of my knowledge, that means I’m a conservative on some issues, and a reactionary on others, and a liberal on yet others — but, as far as I can tell, the same sentiments seem to be in play each time, regardless of which conclusion I happen to be reaching on any given issue.
That’s not what any of those labels mean. What they indicate is a generalized stance toward the world, not a case by case assessment.
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [July 29, 2020, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/214 "2020-07-29T01:38:38Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#):
>
> That’s not what any of those labels mean. What they indicate is a generalized stance toward the world, not a case by case assessment
That seems unworkable. I of course go case by case; I’d hope that you do, too; and I suspect that anyone you’d hang the ‘reactionary’ label on could truthfully reply that, _oh, hey, on **this** issue, sure; but, well, I go case by case, see, and could name issues where I’m **not** reactionary._
Who the heck _doesn’t_ go case by case?
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [July 29, 2020, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-conservatives-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage/916156/215 "2020-07-29T17:31:24Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#):
>
> That seems unworkable. I of course go case by case; I’d hope that you do, too; and I suspect that anyone you’d hang the ‘reactionary’ label on could truthfully reply that, _oh, hey, on **this** issue, sure; but, well, I go case by case, see, and could name issues where I’m **not** reactionary._
>
> Who the heck _doesn’t_ go case by case?
You’re the only person on earth who is completely objective and dispassionate, then. Everyone else relies on their society, leaders, mentors, what they’ve read, their culture, previous experiences – we often call this, “political identification”. Generally without even noticing.
For example, I was strongly shaped by being raised by a pair of politically alert and active liberal journalists during a time of intense societal change (1960’s & early 1970’s), and spending a lot of early adulthood in radicalizing environments like hippie communal farms, leftist colleges, participating in such things as protest marches, reading Franz Fanon, Malcom X , Betty Friedan and other feminists … living through the Watergate hearings, JKF assassination, other huge events. I cannot look at the world except through the lens of my past, my education, and my personality. Congratulations on rising above all that yourself.
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