On the issue of gay marriage, I have always been skeptical about state involvement. I realize my position is hardly the conventional libertarian one, but I have long had misgivings, and I vacillate between sympathy towards those of good will on both sides and general apathy. Analyzed in terms of freedom, I could almost go either way. However, I find myself easily irritated by the shrill tactics of activists, and I don't like political harangues. What this means is that when gay activists throw hissy fits, they not only fail to persuade me, they actually make me less sympathetic to their cause, and more sympathetic to the cause of the people who just want to be left alone. Perhaps that's because I'm a live-and-let-live person who (in an ideal world) would like to be left alone.

How I can be that way and also be a daily political blogger is one among many of the endless contradictions that inspire my blogging.

Here's what I am intrigued by today. When I woke up, I thought about the last thing I wrote last night -- about the evolution of the gay marriage issue from something which had been a joke not long ago into something that came respectably close to winning in Maine:

Frankly, I'm surprised it's this close, and I'd have been amazed if it won. Just a few years ago, the vote could easily have been expected to be 70-30 against gay marriage.

Why is Matt Barber of all people trying so hard to convince me to support gay marriage?

Like I say, I've long been a skeptic, and I can understand the arguments on both sides, but I worry that it could be a back door for creeping statism -- government getting into the very bedrooms where it supposedly did not belong.

But the way Barber frames the gay marriage issue, he makes it very difficult for me to sit on the sidelines, whether in the spirit of laissez faire or in the spirit of old-fashioned compromise. He sees it as a battle involving the "forced affirmation of homosexuality" in which brave truth tellers combat radical deviancy:

This is an historic battle for the minds and souls of our children - for our very culture. The mealy-mouthed approach must end. This is not just about 'marriage.' It has everything to do with forced affirmation of homosexuality - under penalty of law. Indeed everyone who fought hard to defend marriage in Maine is to be congratulated, but if it weren't for a brave group of truth tellers - Paul Madore, Peter LaBarbera and Brian Camenker - who came to Maine in the final hour to hold a press conference and address the pink elephant in the room - homosexual deviancy and the radical 'gay' agenda - counterfeit marriage might have prevailed."

I don't know, but my advice to the gay activists would be to send money to Barber and La Barbera and the boys, because I suspect that the more they scream, the more the ordinary people who want to be left alone will be inclined to vote against them.

And what the gay activists need to do instead of throwing their usual hissy fits is absolutely nothing. Go indoors, go on vacation, and let the straight people be convinced by Matt Barber, who is so convincing that he's making me feel like going wobbly.

But I won't. Because even though I might be wrong in my gay marriage skepticism, I don't want it said that Matt Barber changed my mind.

MORE: While it didn't attract much attention, it just so happens that the top vote-getter in Houston's mayoral race was gay, and Michael Petrelis argues that the key to winning is to avoid support from what he terms "Gay Inc.":

The immediate lesson I saw from tonight, other than the boring old one of Gay Inc really knows how to lose these things, was that if you want to be a top vote-getter, avoid lots of public backing from or be seen as the darling of the HRC/NGLTF/GLAAD/Gill Action/DNC axis.

[...]

Obviously, Parker is doing something very right, and in Texas, of all places, and coming out on top, without any overt push from Gay Inc that I am aware of. To win the run-off, it's best to continue to keep our national orgs far, far away.

While I don't intend to give advice to the other "side" in the gay marriage debate, I like Petrelis's characterization of the HRC/NGLTF/GLAAD/Gill Action/DNC axis as "Gay Inc." And I think the Barber/LaBarbera/Camenker/AFT axis people have probably earned the title of "Anti-Gay Inc."

I think that when seen together (and what would they be without each other?) "Gay Inc." and "Anti-Gay Inc." represent another axis of sorts -- an axis of axes to grind.

Working together to build a more contentious world.

AFTERTHOUGHT: I may not have been making myself clear enough, but the process I describe is called collusion, and I think Gay Inc. and Anti-Gay Inc. provide a classic illustration of it. They need each other badly, because whether they will admit it or not, both are working toward a common goal --

the continued stigmatization of a minority for political ends.

Both sides need this stigma, and both sides want being gay to matter, but for different political purposes.

Without the stigma, who on earth would care about gay identity politics?