New York now joins Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont and Washington DC in having legalised gay marriage. Internationally, the club also includes Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden.
So we should not pretend the decision of the New York legislature is ground-breaking. Once implemented in a jurisdiction, gay marriage fades into the background. While its introduction is controversial, its existence is mundane.
Yet there’s still a lot to learn from the New York decision for supporters of same-sex marriage reform.
One reason the New York decision is interesting has been the muted reaction of the conservative movement – varying from resigned acceptance to warm support. Nowhere was this clearer than on the website of the National Review.
The National Review is the rock on which the American intellectual conservative movement was built. Unambiguously conservative, its founder, William F Buckley, nevertheless described himself as a libertarian – his magazine can take large credit for melding the post-war conservative fusion between anti-communists, libertarians, and social conservatives.
For the full article, click here