Thaddeus Russell On Why Gay Marriage Isn't Worth Celebrating

Back in the days when there was an identifiable counter-cultural movement in the United States, Thaddeus Russell writes, feminists, gay activists, and much of the left identified the institution of marriage as the foundation of conservative American culture and therefore something to oppose, not seek. But now, with more and more gays gaining official permission to marry, the left is celebrating a right that it used to compare with the right to be imprisoned. From Puritan laws aimed at restraining the "promiscuous lusts" of the "un-Christian" to state laws requiring government to become "deeply interested in the private business of its citizens" to a federal bureau charged with making sure unmarried freed slaves were "prosecuted and punished," governments have been regulating marriages for a long time, and the results haven't been pretty.