text: David Blankenhorn, founder of the Institute for American Values, has written a thoughtful short essay for the New York Times on why he has devoted considerable effort to defeating efforts to legalize same-sex civil marriage and why he has decided to embrace a new strategy. He notes that he had hoped that our national conversation about same-sex marriage would evolve into a broader conversation about the centrality of marriage and child-rearing, yet he sees no sign of that happening. So he concludes on the following note: 
   
   Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that marrying before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation? Can we discuss whether both gays and straight people should think twice before denying children born through artificial reproductive technology the right to know and be known by their biological parents? Will this strategy work? I don’t know. But I hope to find out. 
   
   Blankenhorn’s current position closely parallels my own. It is worth noting, however, that Blankenhorn’s new strategy actually represents a harder road than opposition to the legalization of same-sex civil marriage. Opponents of same-sex civil marriage will from time to time achieve concrete political victories. Those who want to reestablish the cultural centrality of marriage, in contrast, won’t have concrete victories to celebrate. Rather, they will have to navigate a fragmented cultural landscape in which it is crucially important to understand the difference between simple contagions and complex contagions, an idea a very good friend explained to me relatively recently. 
   
   The following is the abstract of a paper by Damon Centola and Michael Macy: 
   
   The strength of weak ties is that they tend to be long—they connect socially distant locations, allowing information to diffuse rapidly. The authors test whether this “strength of weak ties” generalizes from simple to complex contagions. Complex contagions require social afﬁrmation from multiple sources. Examples include the spread of high-risk social movements, avant garde fashions, and unproven technologies. Results show that as adoption thresholds increase, long ties can impede diffusion. Complex contagions depend primarily on the width of the bridges across a network, not just their length. Wide bridges are a characteristic feature of many spatial networks, which may account in part for the widely observed tendency for social movements to diffuse spatially. 
   
   Crudely, it is interesting to think about “wide bridges” in the context of the diffusion of various social practices. In the United States, divorce levels have decreased among college-educated women since 1980, as Kay Hymowitz has observed. Yet this hasn’t translated to non-college-educated women, in part, presumably, because we don’t (to overgeneralize) have “wide bridges” in U.S. society between the college-educated and the non-college-educated. 
   
   This has important implications for cultural conservatives. Family disruption in the United States is increasingly pervasive, yet it remains concentrated in groups that tend not to see elite non-black and non-Latino conservatives as culturally credible. That is part why the message Blankenhorn is articulating isn’t resonating with the constituencies for whom it is (arguably) most relevant. There are, of course, many cultural conservatives in the communities most heavily impacted by family disruption, but it’s not clear that these individuals have the kind of cultural and spiritual authority they’d need to make a significant difference, partly because social uplift is seen as primarily state-driven and not community-driven. That is, I don’t turn to the pastor or deacon to weather a family crisis. I turn to the state for transfers or for other forms of care, as alternative social networks are too weak by comparison or too overburdened. So why would the pastor or deacon hold sway? I should stress that this is a serious oversimplication, but I do think it helps explain the larger landscape. ||||| David Blankenhorn, a national figure in the movement against same-sex marriage, has recanted his opposition, saying “the time has come for me to accept gay marriage and emphasize the good that it can do.” 
   
   Mr. Blankenhorn, the founder and president of the Institute for American Values, wrote an influential book that argued against same-sex marriage in 2007, called “The Future of Marriage,” and served as an expert witness against the constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8, which limited marriage to heterosexuals. On Friday, he said in an opinion article for The New York Times, published online, and in an hour-long documentary on NPR that his concerns about same-sex marriage remained, but that “the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same-sex relationships is over.” 
   
   “I opposed gay marriage believing that children have the right, insofar as society makes it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world,” he wrote in the article. He said he still held that conviction. But he added, “Whatever one’s definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness.” 
   
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   Mr. Blankenhorn’s onetime allies said they were troubled but unimpressed. 
   
   “He’s dead wrong,” said the Rev. Jim Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in La Mesa, Calif. “I am a student of history. Christianity has made clear that marriage is between one man and one woman. And what we have seen is that when you change marriage for some, you change marriage for all.” 
   
   The focus on same-sex marriage has grown rapidly in recent years, both legislatively and legally. Two requests for review of same-sex marriage rulings in federal courts, including the Proposition 8 case, are headed to the Supreme Court this summer. Other cases are being argued in lower courts, and referendum initiatives will be on the ballots in November in four states — Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. 
   
   Last month, President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage after nearly two years of saying that his views on the topic had been evolving. Polls show public opinion has also been shifting rapidly toward acceptance of it, although about 30 states have passed constitutional amendments in recent years defining marriage as between only a man and a woman. 
   
   Six states — Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont — as well as the District of Columbia permit same-sex marriage. Nine others — California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Oregon and Washington — allow comprehensive domestic partnerships or civil unions granting same-sex couples full rights except in name. 
   
   Mr. Blankenhorn, who was raised in the South and attended Harvard, had long stood out among opponents of same-sex marriage because he did not invoke a biblical or religious justification and did not oppose civil unions for gay men and lesbians. Instead, he argued that marriage was society’s most important institution and had in recent decades come under attack, and that same-sex marriage was only adding to its decline. 
   
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   He said that he had long hoped the debate over same-sex marriage would center on parenthood, not private relationships, but that in the public’s mind today the issue was simply about equality for gay men and lesbians — in other words, civil rights. 
   
   “And to my deep regret,” he wrote, “much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying antigay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing.” 
   
   Mr. Blankenhorn has long had his fans in the pro-gay-rights community. Andrew Sullivan, who writes for The Daily Beast, wrote on Friday that Mr. Blankenhorn was “perhaps the most clearly decent, intellectually honest, nonhomophobic opponent of marriage equality.” He praised him for his switch. 
   
   Peter S. Sprigg, the senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council in Washington, which opposes same-sex marriage, said Mr. Blankenhorn’s new position was unfortunate but was, in his view, a result of social pressure and his eagerness not to be seen as antigay. 
   
   “He has thrown marriage under the bus for the sake of the homosexual movement,” Mr. Sprigg said. ||||| IN my 2007 book, “The Future of Marriage,” and in my 2010 court testimony concerning Proposition 8 , the California ballot initiative that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, I took a stand against gay marriage. But as a marriage advocate, the time has come for me to accept gay marriage and emphasize the good that it can do. I’d like to explain why. 
   
   I opposed gay marriage believing that children have the right, insofar as society makes it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. I didn’t just dream up this notion: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which came into force in 1990, guarantees children this right. 
   
   Marriage is how society recognizes and protects this right. Marriage is the planet’s only institution whose core purpose is to unite the biological, social and legal components of parenthood into one lasting bond. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its children. 
   
   At the level of first principles, gay marriage effaces that gift. No same-sex couple, married or not, can ever under any circumstances combine biological, social and legal parenthood into one bond. For this and other reasons, gay marriage has become a significant contributor to marriage’s continuing deinstitutionalization, by which I mean marriage’s steady transformation in both law and custom from a structured institution with clear public purposes to the state’s licensing of private relationships that are privately defined. 
   
   I have written these things in my book and said them in my testimony, and I believe them today. I am not recanting any of it. 
   
   But there are more good things under heaven than these beliefs. For me, the most important is the equal dignity of homosexual love. I don’t believe that opposite-sex and same-sex relationships are the same, but I do believe, with growing numbers of Americans, that the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same-sex relationships is over. Whatever one’s definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness. 
   
   Another good thing is comity. Surely we must live together with some degree of mutual acceptance, even if doing so involves compromise. Sticking to one’s position no matter what can be a virtue. But bending the knee a bit, in the name of comity, is not always the same as weakness. As I look at what our society needs most today, I have no stomach for what we often too glibly call “culture wars.” Especially on this issue, I’m more interested in conciliation than in further fighting. 
   
   A third good thing is respect for an emerging consensus. The population as a whole remains deeply divided, but most of our national elites, as well as most younger Americans, favor gay marriage. This emerging consensus may be wrong on the merits. But surely it matters. 
   
   I had hoped that the gay marriage debate would be mostly about marriage’s relationship to parenthood. But it hasn’t been. Or perhaps it’s fairer to say that I and others have made that argument, and that we have largely failed to persuade. In the mind of today’s public, gay marriage is almost entirely about accepting lesbians and gay men as equal citizens. And to my deep regret, much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying anti-gay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing. 
   
   I had also hoped that debating gay marriage might help to lead heterosexual America to a broader and more positive recommitment to marriage as an institution. But it hasn’t happened. With each passing year, we see higher and higher levels of unwed childbearing, nonmarital cohabitation and family fragmentation among heterosexuals. Perhaps some of this can be attributed to the reconceptualization of marriage as a private ordering that is so central to the idea of gay marriage. But either way, if fighting gay marriage was going to help marriage over all, I think we’d have seen some signs of it by now. 
   
   So my intention is to try something new. Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that marrying before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation? Can we discuss whether both gays and straight people should think twice before denying children born through artificial reproductive technology the right to know and be known by their biological parents? 
   
   Will this strategy work? I don’t know. But I hope to find out. ||||| If you've been immersed in the marriage equality debate, you'll know who David Blankenhorn is. He is perhaps the most clearly decent, intellectually honest, non-homophobic opponent of marriage equality. He has played a huge role in elevating the debate, in getting the right to take it more seriously, and in pioneering civil discussion. Along with Jon Rauch, he really tried to find common ground, rather than polarize or hyperbolize. And I think many involved in this intellectual combat can be proud of themselves for maintaining greater civility than exists in many other emotional, personal debates. In the grass roots it can get brutal, as it can online. But the arguments we've had in person have been usually civil. Jon Corvino's book with Maggie Gallagher is an example of this, as is their dog-and-pony show on the debate circuit. 
   
   But I bury my lede. Blankenhorn has switched sides and is now in favor of marriage equality, and explains why on NPR right now. Click here for the audio. He has an essay in the NYT on the subject as well. Money quote: 
   
   I had hoped that the gay marriage debate would be mostly about marriage’s relationship to parenthood. But it hasn’t been. Or perhaps it’s fairer to say that I and others have made that argument, and that we have largely failed to persuade. In the mind of today’s public, gay marriage is almost entirely about accepting lesbians and gay men as equal citizens. And to my deep regret, much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying anti-gay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing. 
   
   David was a good man when he was opposed to marriage equality and he is a good man now. We need more like him.
target: – One of the most respected opponents of gay marriage has changed his mind, arguing that too many of his political comrades are simply prejudiced against gays and lesbians, the New York Times reports. David Blankenhorn, who wrote The Future of Marriage and argued for California's Proposition 8 as an expert witness, revealed his new opinion in the Times yesterday: "Whatever one's definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness," he wrote. He also hopes that by embracing gay marriage, he can "help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same." Reaction is, of course, mixed: "He has thrown marriage under the bus for the sake of the homosexual movement," said Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council. Sprigg blamed Blankenhorn's position on a desire not to be seen as anti-gay. "Blankenhorn's current position closely parallels my own," writes Reihan Salam in the National Review. But "Blankenhorn's new strategy actually represents a harder road than opposition to the legalization of same-sex civil marriage," because he "won't have concrete victories to celebrate." "David was a good man when he was opposed to marriage equality and he is a good man now," writes gay marriage advocate Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Beast. "We need more like him." Click for the full Times piece, or Blankenhorn's op-ed.