Bill Bennett vs. Gay Marriage

William Bennett, everyone's favorite moral scold, is, uh, betting that gay mariage will be a good culture war issue for the GOP this year. He doesn't think the party should gamble on watering down the issue:

Marriage is about many things, but it primarily ties together three purposes: protecting women, domesticating men and raising children. These purposes should not be subjected to a laboratory experiment, and they should not be redefined out of existence.

Whatever the ultimate identifying label — be it "marriage," "domestic partnerships" or "civil unions" — protecting the family and preserving marriage is a legacy the Republican Party should be proud of, not one it should whittle away with half-measures justified by a faulty notion of states' rights or unrestrained individual autonomy.

The prig factor runs pretty high in this particular article. And I actually think it would be a real roll of the dice for the Republicans to make this a prominent issue in the Presidential election. Especially if Bill Bennett is a visible spokesman for the issue.

Do they really want people to start turning over the cards on a concept like the purpose marriage being "domesticating men"? The Reps would be taking a chance that even the most devout Promise Keepers fan might think that sounds an awful lot like being "PWed," to use an AOL terms-of-service-friendly abbreviation.

And what are the odds that a given independent swing voter has someone in their life - a family member, a friend, a work colleague - who is currently or at some point in their lives not adhering precisely to Bill Bennett's particular standards of a traditional family? Someone who's gay, who lives with someone of the opposite sex without being married, who has sex outside of marriage, who is a single parent, who had a child without benefit of wedlock, etc.? Pretty close to 100% in most places, even rural areas.  I mean, come on: what self-respecting single Republican man is going to admit to being a virgin?

Even libertarian-minded conservative Republicans - especially them in many cases - can understand that legal provision for civil unions is recognizing a human reality.