The New Scarlet Letter is H

(via Kevin DeYoung)

Here’s a good piece by Matthew J. Franck in the Washington Post on the ubiquitous role of the “hate card” in debates over homosexuality and gay marriage.

The upshot:

Marginalize, privatize, anathematize: These are the successive goals of gay-marriage advocates when it comes to their opponents.

First, ignore the arguments of traditional marriage’s defenders, that marriage has always existed in order to bring men and women together so that children will have mothers and fathers, and that same-sex marriage is not an expansion but a dismantling of the institution. Instead, assert that norational arguments along these lines even exist and so no refutation is necessary, and insinuate that those who merely want to defend marriage are “anti-gay thugs” or “theocrats” or “Taliban,” as some critics have said.

Second, drive the wedge between faith and reason, chasing traditional religious arguments on marriage and morality underground, as private forms of irrationality.

Finally, decree the victory of the new public morality – here the judges have their role in the liberal strategy – and read the opponents of the new dispensation out of polite society, as the crazed bigots of our day.

Read the whole thing.