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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2004-03-12

Another Success for Incrementalism

I am heartened to see the two court cases from yesterday stopping the issuing of same-sex marriage licenses. But something occurred to me today:

It seems to me that just three years ago when Vermont approved Civil Unions, and that event was met with outrage from conservatives. Please correct me if my memory is wrong here, but civil unions used to be the standard for overreaching on the gay rights front. Of late, it seems most of the debate has occurred along purely semantic lines: don't call it marriage, and we may concede the union point. In fact, this is what the Massachussetts legislature wanted to do.

And the point is?. . . The left has succeeded in moving the ball down the playing field to the point where civil unions may be acceptable, where it wasn't three years ago. This may be the great lesson of liberalism over the past thirty years--when you get something against opposition, ask for more. The opposition will have to fight that new thing, while you have taken everybody's attention off of the first topic. And this has worked on just about every social front in the last thirty years.

Of course, the President has proven that it can work both ways: he got his tax cut, so he asked for more. Now John Kerry has been forced to make a case that he would cut taxes, too--a thought that I'm sure never once popped into his head even up to one year ago. The President should keep doing this.
Posted by: Michael / 3/12/2004 10:58:00 PM

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