There’s no doubt the President’s endorsement of gay “marriage” was stage-managed: The timing was the key.  He did it hours after the news that North Carolinians had voted to put a ban on the practice in their state constitution.  Pressure from his supporters—and some of his biggest donors, I have no doubt—contributed to the decision.  Like all decisions made by this administration, this one was purely political.

This catapults the issue to center stage in an election year, and serves the Obama­ites well: As long as we aren’t talking about the collapsing economy, the endless wars, the undoing of the social fabric, etc., the Democrats are in good shape.  It’s clear what kind of campaign the Obama camp wants: one that will target the GOP as the party of bigots, not just antigay but antiblack.  George Zimmerman’s trial will commence in August, just as campaign season is getting into high gear.

The gay-marriage campaign is not something that sprang from the grassroots of the “gay community.”  The early gay-rights movement was concerned almost exclusively with two big problems: Homosexual behavior was illegal, and homosexuals were routinely abused by the police.  If you were in a gay bar, you were taking a chance it might get raided that night, and the consequences would be catastrophic.  Aside from the legal problems incurred, public exposure could mean losing your job, and perhaps your friends and family.  Aside from the social opprobrium attached to homosexuality, the immediate problem for gay people was the looming possibility of coercion—either by the state or by nonuniformed gay-bashing thugs.

That world is gone forever.  Now they’re teaching Heather Has Two Mommies in second grade, and homosexuality has been normalized—i.e., domesticated.  You’ll note that Obama, in his interview endorsing gay marriage, said he knew many gay couples “in monogamous relationships,” and this is key.  This is the point of pushing gay marriage: to underscore the modern egalitarian doctrine that we are all virtually identical.  Gays are just like straights, we are told.

Except they—or, I should say, we—aren’t.  Rather than trying to define that difference in a short column, I’ll just say that I find the egalitarian argument odd coming from those who claim homosexuality is genetically determined, and therefore gays have no choice about their “sexual orientation.”  If it is genetic, then the idea that we are all essentially the same won’t fly—because the difference is inherent.

And although the “gay community” is seen by outsiders as a single entity, in reality the gulf between the gay male and lesbian factions is just as wide—often wider—than the gap between gay and straight.  The promiscuous gay male may be a stereotype, but that doesn’t make it untrue.  Marriage—in Obama’s usage, meaning “a monogamous relationship”—is the last thing on the mind of the typical gay man, for the simple reason that he is, after all, a man—one not subject to the taming influence of women.  The whole point of male homosexuality is a flight from marriage, from monogamy, from the responsibility of raising a family.

Lesbians, on the other hand, are notoriously monogamous.  The old joke about what they do on a second date (hire a moving van) isn’t far from the truth.  They embody the female values of stability, vulnerability, and fear of the unknown, and around these values they build their nests.  This is where the real agitation for gay marriage is coming from: the lesbian community and the thoroughly politicized—and feminized—gay-male politicos, who are using the issue to cement their role as high priests of identity politics.

The idea that gay men, given the option, are suddenly going to rush to the altar and get hitched in droves is absurd; one might as well imagine them turning into lesbians en masse.  Aside from contradicting the very impulse that makes them what they are, marriage makes no economic sense for two men who may choose to live together.  Most gay men of a certain class are too intelligent to invite the state into their bedrooms.  With gay marriage comes gay divorce, and the financial consequences are potentially devastating.  This kind of risk outweighs the tax advantages.

Yet the gay-marriage campaign has little to do with marriage: It is really all about being deemed socially acceptable.  And in our corrupted culture, this means being accepted by the state.  Having joined the ranks of officially designated victim classes, along with racial minorities and women, gays are now seeking that Ultimate Sanction, and this presidential anointing is of enormous symbolic importance.  Appearing on the Rachel Maddow Show, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, declared that “there are teenagers in my city who now feel validated” by Obama’s endorsement.  Those poor kids.  That their sense of self is so fragile as to require the presidential seal of approval is a pathetic commentary on the value and meaning of identity politics.