What am I doing reading Mickey Kaus? Rob? I blame you for this.

I actually vowed to leave the LG&M piñata alone when I joined this blog, as I believe that respecting the territorial principles of organized crime syndicates is a good survival strategy. But sweet bleeding Jesus, Kaus is a moron. I realize that statement sounds as if I were just now discovering parachute pants, but holy toasted shit — today’s puff of flatulence was too much. As we know, it’s a well-established fact that Kaus endorses cultural foot-dragging on gay rights because it’s really best for liberalism; today he claims that judicial foot-dragging on gay rights is preferable to actually interpreting and applying state law because the delay will somehow allow cultural conservatives the breathing room to “try worthy experiments like gay unions and gay marriage”. There’s no evidence for this claim, of course, but that doesn’t deter Kaus from insisting that if only Andrew Sullivan weren’t so “self-righteous and condescending,” Karl Rove would be thwarted in his efforts to whip the base up into an angry foam over “activist judges.”

By far, though, the most bovine moment occurs when Kaus relies on Amy Sullivan to claim that

voters are scared of letting scientific research proceed willy nilly with cloning, etc. “without ever having a conversation as a society about the moral issues involved.” Given that concern, framing the gay marriage debate as “law” and “logic” against prejudice is analogous to framing the stem cell debate as “science” and “progress” against faith-based Luddism. The framing itself is what’s most alarming.

I’m not sure by what standard it’s possible to suggest that gay marriage is analogous to recombinant DNA technology, but I’m going to venture a wild guess that it’s not the “framing” but the substance of the issue that’s most alarming to Kaus. To delay stem cell or cloning research in the name of having a “moral conversation” does not, so far as I can tell, deprive anyone of rights that they might claim are fundamental to their full and equal participation in our society; the conversation might at times be stupid and ill-informed and knee-deep in superstitious dogma-crap, but it might also be based on sophisticated, sober, respectable moral and intellectual positions. It seems to me, however, that we’re talking there about something completely incomparable to the claim that we need to continue denying living, committed couples an array of legal rights simply because we need to have a “moral conversation” that includes people whose views are universally stupid and ill-informed and knee-deep in superstitious dogma-crap.

The better analogy — as self-rightous and condescending as this may be — would perhaps be to suggest that having a “moral conversation” about gay relationships is like having a “moral conversation” about evolution. That is to say, if you want to have a debate and get your knickers in a twist over something that is incontestably not dangerous to the social fabric or the boundaries of life as we know it, be my fucking guest.