Federalist Society debates gay marriage.

A fascinating "debate" between a small handful of relatively prominent conservative academics on the subject of gay marriage recently hosted by the Federalist Society.

On the one hand, I'm rather happy that the anti-marriage half of the debate clearly lost – the 'Fed Soc' is hugely influential in conservative academia, which as a result their views tend to 'trickle down' into the broader conservative movement (and thus, eventually, the Republican party). So the idea that the GOP might sooner than latter get over their objections to gay marriage is a big win in my book.

On the other hand, I do kinda wish the anti-marriage side had presented their case a little bit better. Frankly, I think that this really "the best they can do," and that is why I think they're just plain destined to fail. It has been my experience – anecdotal and not rigorously scientific, of course – that conservatives tend to reject policy positions that cannot be advocated without resorting to emotion; Conservatism seems to me to be grounded more in logic and rationality than liberalism.

Consider the "gun control" debate; time and time again, the anti-gun rights movement attempts to advance their position through scare tactics, misdirection, exploiting freak tragedies, and the constantly repeated liberal battle-cry of "It's for the children!" The pro-gun rights side refutes all this with statistics, reason, and rational debate.

For the curious, I support the extension of legal marriage – as marriage and not "civil unions" or any other bureaucratic handwavium – to homosexual couples. I do not support the (admittedly incredibly fringe) minority of homosexuals that want to a) force churches opposed to doing so perform the ceremony, b) make non-monogamous marriages normal or widely accepted, or c) extend marriage to anything other than a union between two, consenting, adult humans.