Enemies of the State

Proponents of gay marriage often defend the innovation on the grounds that it won't affect anyone save the parties to it. Opponents counter this rosy claim by pointing to its dire implications for religious freedom and parental rights. Where gay marriage exists, they argue, those freedoms quickly disappear.

Once homosexuality enjoys the highest approval of the state through the stamp of marriage, no one who wishes to remain in public life can oppose it.

A shadow of this future fell on Angela McCaskill recently. She is the "chief diversity officer" at Gallaudet, a university in Washington, D.C., that serves the deaf. Last week, the president of the school put her on "leave" for committing the high offense of signing a petition that put the question of gay marriage up for a vote in Maryland. An agent of the school's tolerance police, a lesbian professor, had scoured the list (obtained and publicized by a gay newspaper) and found McCaskill's name on it.

It is not even clear if she opposes gay marriage. McCaskill, according to the Washington Post, has "said she rearranged her budget to find money to open a resource center on campus for sexual minorities, hired an openly transgender employee and hosted many events centered around discussing LGBT issues."

At a press conference, McCaskill said that she signed the petition simply because she wanted the people to decide the question: "I thought it was important that as a citizen of the state of Maryland I could exercise my right to participate in the political process. I am pro-democracy."

But to school officials the mere presence of her name on the list called for Soviet-style reeducation and apology notes. To sign such an initiative is "inappropriate," huffed Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz. He demanded that she confess her wrongdoing. She refused, so he put her on leave and found an interim replacement.

For those wishing to defeat the initiative, such as Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, the controversy comes at an inopportune time. It makes a liar of him, as he sold gay marriage in the state on the grounds that it would pose no risk to First Amendment freedoms. So it didn't take long for O'Malley to criticize Hurwitz for complicating his stance.

Apparently complying with this political pressure, Hurwitz announced this week that he will reinstate McCaskill. But it is obvious that he still wants to reeducate her, conditioning the reconciliation on a requirement "that she and the University community work together to respond to the concerns that have been raised."

McCaskill, who is deaf, used sign language at a press conference to express her dismay at the bullying. She noted the irony of the school suspending its chief diversity officer for expressing a diverse opinion: "I am dismayed that Gallaudet University is still a university of intolerance, a university that manages by intimidation, a university that allows bullying among faculty, staff, and students."

Perhaps Hurwitz should rename her position chief uniformity officer. All must submit to the same creed, the one true faith of political correctness, and apparently her job was to enforce it. Hurwitz's only blunder in the eyes of Maryland liberals is that he excommunicated McCaskill too soon: he should have waited until after the vote in November.

Now he has created a political problem for them. But, as in New York, they seek to solve it by aggressive spinning: O'Malley, like Andrew Cuomo before him, touts, in the same breath as gay marriage, the "free exercise of religion," even as it evaporates.

McCaskill joins a long list of victims steamrolled by the gay-marriage juggernaut: in New York, clerks with religious objections to gay marriage licenses must sign them whether they like it or not; in New Mexico, a photographer was fined for not shooting a gay marriage; in Illinois, Chick-fil-A almost lost a business license for not adhering to "Chicago values"; in California, Governor Jerry Brown seeks to punish parents for steering their children away from homosexuality.

Yet gay marriage proponents continue to hoodwink the public into thinking that it is a consequence-free change. They profess astonishment at "all the fuss."

But the reason for it is obvious: gay marriage will mean a wholesale rearrangement of society, as sweeping as the one that followed the demise of segregation laws. The religious will wake up to find themselves enemies of the state, residing in the same moral category as racists and Holocaust deniers.