How The Marriage Debate Has Shifted

On Saturday, Lauri and I drove her new RAV4 out to Front Royal to visit Skyline Caverns. It was the first road trip with her new car. Everything aligned to make for a wonderful day. Traffic was light, the weather was beautiful, and the cavern tour was fun and enjoyable.

Afterward, we stopped at the Main Street Mill Restaurant & Pub for lunch. The food was good and the eavesdropping was even better. Not that we intended to eavesdrop but the gentleman’s voice carried clear across the top floor of the restaurant to where we were sitting.

The gentleman in question had a problem with gay marriage. However, to my surprise, his problem wasn’t with anything but calling it marriage. In his loudly broadcasted view, we should get all the rights but shouldn’t be so stuck on using the word “marriage.”

Lauri and I had a hard time not joining in the conversation but he was clear across the restaurant and it would have been a challenge. We don’t know what got him started nor do we know what his conversation companion thought. The other gentleman’s replies were inaudible across the restaurant.

The thing I found most interesting was how far the debate has moved. He was dead set against “gay marriage” but he was “100% in favor” of “unions”. He said we should have all the rights but just use a different word. That’s a far cry from just a few years ago when Virginia passed it’s anti-marriage amendment.

I would have loved to engage him in a real debate to see if I could get to the root cause of his objection. It’s almost certainly an emotional reaction. It would have been nice to see if he could be reached by a rational discussion or if he was locked into his gut reaction.

Even with his anti-marriage stance his pro-civil union stance is a fair distance from where someone in Warren County was just six years ago.