On the old Slate Books-o-Meter, Himself is being philosophical today.
Boy Douthat is trying to catch up to the Teabaggists and explain how they fit his intellectual terrain.
Douthat, btw, is to be remembered for this other bit of catch-up rationalization:
The reason that gay rights became a political issue in a way that various other frankly more important issues having to do with marriage and family life did not -- particularly issues about divorce and heterosexual divorce rates and single parenthood -- is that, clearly, it is easier to demonize gay people. And it is much more of an electoral winner...
The only kind of "morality" that this movement knows or embraces is politically exploitative, cost-free morality. That is why the national Republican Party rails endlessly against homosexuality and is virtually mute about divorce and adultery: because anti-gay moralism costs virtually all of its supporters nothing (since that is a moral prohibition that does not constrain them), while heterosexual moral deviations -- from divorce to adultery to sex outside of marriage -- are rampant among the Values Voters faithful and thus removed from the realm of condemnation. Hence we have scads of people sitting around opposing same-sex marriage because of their professed belief in "Traditional Marriage" while their "third husbands" and multiple step-children and live-in girlfriends sit next to them on the couch.
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