Much of modern Conservatism vigorously sprouted from the fecund mind of William F. Buckley. In 1955 he succinctly expressed, for many, the role of modern Conservatism to "stand athwart history, yelling STOP, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who do." That was almost 50 years ago. Not even Buckley's inventive mind could have predicted the social and cultural changes that have reshaped our lives in the intervening time.
Given the congenital libertarianism of most Americans and the concerted effort by the entertainment industry to favorably portray homosexual behavior, it is politically inevitable that we will in some way grant legal recognition to same-sex partners, despite the loudest protests of "STOP." One important concern now is of process. We are at a point where we may repeat the same mistakes with respect to same-sex unions that we made with regard to abortion law.
The Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 forbade states from regulating abortion (at least in the first trimester). At that time, 17 states were already permitting abortions and the trend was in the direction of further liberalization. In 1972, the year before the Supreme Court acted, there were nearly 600,000 legal abortions so the procedure was not rare. If the Supreme Court had allowed individual states to come to grips with the issue, it is likely that virtually all states would now have some form of legal abortion. Some would be more liberal than others. Different states would have regulated abortion during different periods of pregnancy. Different states would have written different laws concerning parental notification and the age when a young woman (girl?) could opt for an abortion. There would have been different rules concerning counseling requirements and waiting periods. These laws would have reflected different solutions and approaches and we could have empirically observed which were the most effective.
Importantly, everyone would realize that the laws represent the collective wisdom of the polity as opposed to the social preference of judges who succumb to the temptation of the law and conjure up rights that do not exist in the Constitution to create the outcome they want. The level of political animosity would have been reduced. The selection of judges for the higher courts would not involve the same rancor and political combat they do now. Major changes in social policy would not depend on the decision of a few judges or the president that might appoint them, but rather by the democratic process. Changes would arrive through political persuasion, not through endless infighting to produce judges that will rule a particular way on one particular issue - a corruption of the judge appointment process introduced in the last couple of decades of the twentieth century.
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