Conservative columnist David Brooks’ has a piece on gay marriage in today’s New York Times (The Power of Marriage). After reading such nuggets as “Anybody who has several sexual partners in one year is committing spiritual suicide” and “Marriage joins two people in a sacred bond” and marriage is a “sacred vow till death do us part”, it is interesting to find this conclusion:

The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn’t just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

His idea is that if conservatives are really against “the culture of contingency” which, they think, treats marriage as shacking up with somebody until something better comes along, then they ought to do everything they can to ensure that the bonds of marriage and family are strengthened and extended as much as possible. I don’t agree with the conservative cultural analysis, but I think it’s pretty interesting to note that, based on conservative principles like the ones cited by Brooks, a pretty good argument can be made for legal recognition of gay marriage. This highlights the fact that those who object to gay marriage don’t really do so to protect “family values” or “the sanctity of marriage”, but to codify their often religiously-inspired prejudices into law.