No small part of the extraordinary success of the pro–“gay marriage” movement has been its ability to sell the idea that this really is No Big Deal. Same-sex-attracted men and women, the claim goes, simply want what other people want — stable, loving relationships, in which responsibility is assumed for those for whom we care. When the state recognizes that, all will be well, calm will prevail, and we can all get on with our lives.

It’s a culturally powerful argument, especially when wrapped in the mantle of the classic civil-rights movement, and the polling numbers suggest that a lot of people who couldn’t have imagined “same-sex marriage” even five years ago have been persuaded. Yet the notion that agitations would stop when “gay marriage” was legalized from sea to shining sea never made a lot of sense, not least because that assurance abstracted the “gay marriage” argument from its deeper context, which was, is, and always will be the sexual revolution and its fierce, Jacobin determination to bend, break, and then grind into the dust the proponents of a biblically based sexual ethics, a natural-law-based sexual ethics, or both.

Read the article “The New Normal Gets Down and Dirty After Obergefell ” on nationalreview.com.