As a reasonably intelligent person who finds himself routinely flummoxed with most of the run-of-the-mill “arguments” against gay marriage, this quote from a spectacularly nonsensical screed (written, naturally, by a male triple-divorcee) against same-sex unions reveals an undercurrent that generally dares not speak its name:

[T]here is a difference between a married couple and a same-sex couple in a long-term relationship. The difference is not in the nature of their relationship, not in the fact that lovemaking between men and women is, as the Catholics say, open to life. The difference is between the duties that marriage imposes on married people–not rights, but rather onerous obligations–which do not apply to same-sex love.

Even in modern romantic marriages, a groom becomes the hunting or business partner of his father-in-law and a member of his clubs; a bride becomes an ally of her mother-in-law in controlling her husband.

When it comes down to it, many opponents of gay marriage simply haven’t gotten over the decades-old fight against redefining gender roles into anything that doesn’t lock a woman into a child-bearing role in the home while the husband ventures forth to hunt work to put food on the table. I’ve often suspected a subtle hidden agenda like this (which really has nothing to do with gay people per se) but I’ve never seen it laid bare in such a blatantly obvious way before.

Isaac Chotiner remarks:

Schulman’s article, like others of its kind, is further proof that people who are unhappy or sexually frustrated or just angry will never stop lecturing the rest of us about what is proper and right. We can at least take comfort in the fact that a generation from now, the fight for gay rights will have advanced even further, and people like Schulman will be more marginalized and laughable than they are today.