“Well, then,” the Cat went on, “you see a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.”

“I call it purring, not growling,” said Alice.
 —Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

all it what you like,” the Cheshire Cat tells Alice, and the advice recommends itself in the case of this political season’s favorite distraction. In the midst of a war we seem to be losing, on the brink of an election certain to be the most consequential since (at least) Nixon-McGovern, what do we find ourselves talking about? Gay marriage, of course. Smoldering since the 1996 law named, in vintage Doublespeak, the Defense of Marriage Act, the controversy has recently flamed up into national headlines as gay couples, applying for the one license that has traditionally been the easiest for everyone else to get, have been variously approved, denied, approved and then denied, or denied and then approved. Meanwhile lovers of the Constitution, ever ready to improve upon it, have proposed an amendment, which the President supports, “defining marriage as between a man and a woman.”

Since no one questions that gays already do marry in all but name, the debate to a surprising degree resolves into pure semantics, a pitched battle for possession of a word. The situation thus cries out for the Cheshire Cat’s sly equanimity, and John Kerry seems to have found just that solution, declaring that he opposes gay marriage (along with three quarters of the electorate) but supports “civil unions”: a game attempt to cut the Gordian Knot of November by splitting March Hares, but how will it play in Peoria?

Of course, as always with disputes over symbolism, matters of substance are not far off. Shall gay couples be recognized as one another’s next of kin for inheritance purposes? And in custody determinations for natural children of deceased partners? Such questions are raised incessantly by advocates, but somehow, in this asymmetrical war, battle never gets joined on such terms. Instead the right has staked its opposition on a contention which, for sheer metaphysical murkiness and cant, rivals the best work of the Middle Ages: allowing gays to marry, it is said, will “devalue” or “dishonor” or “weaken” the sacred institution of marriage.

Say what? Marriage is surely what its defenders claim—the most central of institutions, the most inevitable—but for that very reason it is also the most Protean and accommodating. Marriage can mean anything from a shared history of seventy-five years to a quick chapter in the adventures of a Johnny Carson or Elizabeth Taylor or Larry King. It can entail cohabitation or not, lead to children or not, require parental permission or not, be premised on a prenuptial agreement or not. It is commonly proposed in bed, in church, in living rooms, in ball parks, on beaches, and in midair, and it is celebrated in all these same places, in a ceremony that tolerates endless adaptation and whimsy. Through most of history the institution has had rather more to do with property and family politics than the passions and wishes of the principals, and this has led to all-but-official systems of hedging the basic bet, whether through a thriving bordello culture in Victorian England or liberalized divorce laws in contemporary America. Currently something like half to two-thirds of spouses cheat at some point, including a minority who do so with the express permission of the primary partner. Sacred? Maybe so, but the average duration of the sacred bond is right around fifteen years, much what it was before the Industrial Revolution tripled the average life span; and in America today, as everyone knows, marriage ends in divorce roughly half the time.

To suggest that marriage can weather such endless reinterpretation by heterosexuals, but will somehow sink the moment gays begin cutting cakes and tossing bouquets, is simply preposterous. By what chain of causality is the marriage of two men in San Francisco supposed to make my wife start cheating on me, or induce either of us to begin neglecting the kids? How is it that the misadventures of Cher or Donald Trump or Tom Green (the Utah polygamist) have no similar effect? The idea is so silly that one has to conclude its purpose is not to persuade anyone, but to hide the real motives beneath the ground swell of opposition to gay marriage.

These motives as I understand them—decidedly not as they are presented—consist of a purely visceral distaste for homosexuality, coupled with a mean-spirited need to revile gays themselves. On the face of it, the desire of Gay America to come to the wedding feast seems an act of shy friendliness, imbued with the implicit flattery of imitation. But Straight America is not having any of it. The specter of a civilized, law-abiding, affectionate homosexuality apparently alarms it more than the seamiest images of the bath house. The Gay has a job to do, a key function to fulfill in the psychic economy of the Straight (not unlike the Jew, the Negro, or the Savage in other fantasy systems), and the Straight is not about to let him resign the post.

The fag, the bull dyke, the drag queen provide flattering images of what the Straight has managed not to become, and cautionary images of what he might yet become if certain urges are not clamped down. Then, too, such images are used to depict what a general collapse of moral restraint might look like, so that we get the age-old association of homosexuality with Sodom and Gomorrah, together with current toboggan rides down the slippery slope from gay marriage to (for instance) legalized polygamy. Straight America seems convinced that gay sex, of an especially tacky and fulfilling kind, would be the trademark of an overall defeat of inhibition: an odd idea because its necessary premise—that inside every Straight a Gay is screaming to come out—has not been noticeably popular on the right. Stigmatized on the one hand as effete, sub-sexual, less than masculine or feminine, gays are at the same time associated with the triumph of the libido. None of it makes sense, but it is not supposed to, for homophobia is less a coherent belief than a character defense, a frightened mythological riff on the urge to button one’s sweater on the other side.

It is this ambivalence that gives the present discussion its nasty edge. So long as Straight America is tormented by fears of swinging the other way, it will not muster that tolerance that is the true watchword of American morality, but will need to act out its hostility to the overtly homosexual. It will invent high-sounding rationales for its aggression, appealing to the Bible, feigning the defensive (“They’re attacking marriage! Help!”), or masking its inchoate aversion as intellectual concern. “Marriage throughout history has been defined as between a man and a woman,” one of the Straightniks said on my TV the other night, in tones of sweet reasonableness. “You just can’t start defining it as between two people of the same gender.” Helpless shrug, knowing grimace, shaking head. The argument is just sufficiently wooly and perfunctory to evade the critique of common sense, reassuring the faithful that, somehow, what motivates us is innocent concern for the welfare of a word; but that, somehow, far-reaching systemic consequences will follow from any change in that word’s traditional definition.

English teachers have to welcome a concern with language on most terms—but not on these terms. Our job here is to cut through the wool, pointing out that words do change over time—incessantly—without causing moral or physical earthquakes. And like the Cheshire Cat, we need to insist that there is a time to quit fussing over terms and engage with what lies beneath: in this case, the plain truth that gay marriage costs nothing and hurts no one. Unlike Straight America, with its pained ambivalence and bizarre leaps of illogic, Gay America seems to know perfectly well what it wants: the most elementary recognition, the briefest nod of encouragement. It’s just an idea, fellas, but here’s what I’m thinking: how about we put away the axe-handles and bumper chains and say yes.