Thursday, May 21, 2009

Re: The Trouble with Social Conservatives   [Mark Steyn]

Maggie's post is absolutely right. For all that they're demonized as the ruthless shock troops of the Right, social conservatives have been extremely ineffective in advancing their causes politically. By contrast, the gay marriage thing is a campaign that ought to be taught in military staff colleges: A mere decade ago, the overwhelming majority of the American people thought it was either an abomination or, more benignly, just kinda wacky. Now it's a fait accomplis. That's an amazing victory in nothing flat.

As Maggie says, activists need "to make it easy for politicians to do what they ask, not the other way around." But, like the gay guys do, they also need to win the broader cultural space, so that even those politicians who find it necessary to oppose them do so only in pro forma and ineffectual ways — like Obama on gay marriage.

05/21 10:26 AMShare