Václav Havel was an anti-communist dissident who was repeatedly imprisoned for his efforts before eventually becoming the President of Czechoslovakia and being awarded the International Gandhi Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Maggie Gallagher is a right-wing activist who defends people like Dan Quayle for his attack on fictional television characters and secretly took tens of thousands of dollars from the Bush Administration to pimp its marriage initiative and eventually became the head of the National Organization for Marriage and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy.
What do the two have in common? According to Gallagher, quite a lot:
Rod Dreher: Maggie, you and I are on the same side of the gay marriage issue, but I am pessimistic about our chances for success. You, however, are optimistic. What am I missing?
Maggie Gallagher: Vaclav Havel mostly. “Truth and love wlll prevail over lies and hate.” On that basis Havel took on the Soviet empire. Where is that invincible empire now?
Same-sex marriage is founded on a lie about human nature: ‘there is no difference between same-sex and opposite sex unions and you are a bigot if you disagree’.
Political movements can–sometimes at great human cost and with great output of energy–sustain a lie but eventually political regimes founded on lies collapse in on themselves.
Gallagher tells Dreher that people are flocking to her organization “not because we try to scare them about how bad things are going to be–but because we offer them a chance to come together with other people of all races, creeds and colors to stand up for a core and timeless good.” But you don’t get much of a sense from this interview that she has much to offer beyond scaring people:
[T]the redefinition of traditional religious faiths as the moral and legal equivalent of racists. The proposition on the table right now is that our faith itself is a form of bigotry.
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I think civilizations that can’t hang onto an idea as basic as to make a marriage you need a husband and a wife aren’t going to make it in the long haul.
So I’m not worried about the progressive myth that 200 years from now gay marriage will be the new world norm. I’m somewhat more worried about the kind of cultures around the world that might survive.
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Gay marriage is going to effect a lot of people besides Adam and Steve. Because if you disagree with the government’s definition of marriage you can expect to be treated like a bigot who opposes interracial marriage.
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The proposition on the table is your faith is a form of bigotry and Americans don’t grant religious liberty protections to bigots. There is no offer on the table for compromise at this point.
