I don't have to prove that marriage is a man and a woman in a relationship for life. They have to prove that two men can have an equally definable relationship called marriage, and somehow that that can mean the same thing.

Mike Huckabee also said a lot of other stupid shit, but the statement above is perhaps the most-level-headed of the quotes he gave a college publication in New Jersey. So let's give him the benefit of the doubt and focus on the statement that makes, at least, grammatical and logical sense.

We could even grant him his first sentence, if it weren't so ridiculous on its face. "Marriage is a man and a woman in a relationship for life." Uh huh... We'd have to leave aside the logical implications of that -- am I married to my mother? -- or just assume he was talking about legally defined marriages, although marriage is now defined differently in some states. Huckabee's conception of marriage is like a shrinking glacier. Everyone always assumed the glacier would last forever; it's just there, seemingly from the beginning of time. But then it starts shrinking and changing and pretty soon you just see a rocky mountain peak, not a glacier. Add the universally known statistic that 50% of all marriages end in divorce, and what he "doesn't have to prove" actually becomes more and more difficult to prove.

How about his second point, that "they" (those who support gay marriage) "have to prove that two men can have an equally definable relationship called marriage, and somehow that that can mean the same thing." It's the "equally definable" part of his statement that becomes ironic in light of the disappearing definability of marriage as a whole. But we can even put that aside -- what I want to focus on is his demand that "they need to prove" that gay marriages "can mean the same thing."

It's odd that he's wrapped up in these Clintonesque questions* -- how marriage is "defined" and what it "means," as if once there was general agreement on semiotic issues the whole gay marriage thing would just go away. It's because he has faith that that glacier will never shrink. Just as conservatives don't believe in global warming, and ignore the shrinking glaciers, they don't believe that definitions of marriage will ever change.

But in the end, he believes, or purports to believe, that the burden of "proof" is on teh Gays. As if "they" could somehow present some collection of evidence that Huckabee (who really is a mainstream, non-crazy person), much less those to his right, would accept. Suggesting he would accept some sort of evidence, whatever that would consist of, makes him look fair-minded. I think that's another reason he's stressing these semiotic issues. He's taking the position that this is all a matter of consensus, as if there were some committee which would examine definitions and proofs and come up with a decision.

Of course, there is no such committee, and there is no set of evidence that most of the people who oppose gay marriage will ever accept. And indeed this is not how we make decisions about how to make changes in this country. The real process is so much messier, involving a court decision here, a state initiative there, lawsuits galore, executive orders from governors and agency administrators, and so on until a new consensus really does form.

To take an example, let's look at how we made decisions about allowing gay people in the workplace -- something which is a matter of both law and consensus now, but was not fifty years ago. Everything from federal lawsuits to National Coming Out Day helped change the reality, such that now being gay in the workplace is a federally protected right -- with far-right haters fighting over scraps like whether the teachers in their fundamentalist day care center are allowed to be gay -- and also the focus of a consensus on the issue. People accept openly gay co-workers now as a matter of course. Almost no one believes that qualified gay people should be denied employment; the coming change to the rules in the military is only the last piece of the puzzle.

So Mike Huckabee, even taking his most reasonable-sounding statement, is full of it. He can't possibly believe what he says. His statement is just political, designed to make him look like a reasonable person acceptable to moderate Republicans even as the anti-gay content is designed to make him appeal to conservatives.

* They were both the governor of Arkansas -- I wonder what it is about that post that makes one a semiotician. 

** And even the fact that there is such a thing as a fundamentalist day care center shows how much things have changed, as a day care center is a fundamentally liberal, feminist concept.