People who worry about the effects of "undefining" marriage to satisfy the LGBT movement must spend a little time thinking about how to deal with the question below: "How dare you conspire with homophobes?" The sentence above is thrown at me quite often.  Usually it comes from people who want gay marriage legalized but who cannot respond to my complex arguments in favor of civil unions and against gay marriage.  (Many of these arguments are available here.) My arguments address (1) the long-term impact of same-sex parenting on children and (2) the global impact of replacing male-female lovemaking with commercial contracts based on surrogacy, insemination, and adoption on demand. Numbers 1 and 2 above are tough issues to dismiss glibly or paper over with platitudes.  So the most effective retort against me is "how dare you conspire with homophobes?," as if the social context of the argument is all that counts, and the content of the debate doesn't matter. Over...(Read Full Post)