Will somebody please answer the question?
by Bob Kerr, Providence Journal columnist.
01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The mantra continues, recited so easily and automatically that it barely takes a thought.

“We have to protect traditional marriage.”

And the question comes barreling back like one of those line drives that upends Charlie Brown on the pitcher’s mound.

“Protect it from what?”

The question is the great un-doer. It shows how empty and fact-free the campaign against gay marriage really is.

The question has never been answered because there is no answer. In all the attempts to obscure and confuse and mislead, no one has yet to offer one solid example of harm done by gay marriage. And thousands and thousands of people can provide living proof that gay marriage makes life richer and fuller.

It is so dishonest and deceptive, this campaign to deny gays and lesbians the right to marry in Rhode Island. It’s absurd and silly too. And insulting.

It has become a tired springtime ritual to watch people wrap themselves in tattered hand-me-down moral trappings and try again to portray gay marriage as a threat. What it threatens is never clear. There is just this vague cloud of doom that seems to float in and out as the occasion requires.

Is it possible that a heterosexual couple living next to a homosexual couple will somehow feel an ugly anti-marriage vibe slipping through the hedge on the property line? Will the heterosexual marital foundation start to crack under the stress of homosexual happiness openly displayed just a few yards away?

Yeah, I know, that’s really stupid. So is the whole argument against gay marriage.

One of the strangest chapters in the effort to keep the state’s gays and lesbians from enjoying the rights wisely and justly approved in other states was the appearance of Governor Carcieri and his wife, Sue, in the rotunda of the State House last month. They joined something called the National Organization for Marriage in its kickoff of a media campaign to keep gay marriage on the other side of the state line.

That’s when the governor spoke of the need to protect traditional marriage. His wife did, too, even though she had originally intended to be a “silent witness” for those gay marriage opponents who couldn’t be there.

The Carcieris departed, as have so many from such gatherings, without offering a single solid reason why traditional marriage needs protecting or what harm gay marriage would inflict.

Then there’s House Speaker Bill Murphy, who apparently doesn’t feel any need to get all bogged down in details when it comes to gay marriage. In a story by The Journal’s Cynthia Needham last Saturday, Murphy shifted into auto-reject and said that, in his eyes, a marriage is between a man and a woman.

OK, so personal preference becomes public policy? That seems a slippery little slope.

It looks as if this will be another year when gay marriage will go down to defeat, although several legislators will no doubt profess great respect for gays and lesbians. Some might even go so far as to admit having gay friends.

And if it is defeated, it will be more about numbers than personal conviction. I bet there’ll be a bunch of people at the State House who know gay marriage is right and just and fair and will vote against it anyway.

Many will no doubt remember the words of Rhode Island’s Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, who said that Rhode Island should take pride in being the only New England state not to recognize gay marriage.

What a fascinating idea — a state taking pride in denying thousands of its residents equal rights.