Thanks for a useful contribution to the discussion.

While – at 13 years old – it is dated and his views may possibly have evolved, unless we hear otherwise I think we should assume that David Frum is not favorable towards same-sex marriage. I’d even say a harsh opponent.

This recent column seems like more of the same material he’s put out for years. Perhaps in rehashing his worn-out expostulations for the umpteenth time he got a bit sloppy and thus the confusion here.

I think that he, like Maggie Gallagher, has always fancied himself on the “can’t we discuss this with civility” end of the spectrum of opponent of marriage civility. That he’s been careful not to be too openly anti-gay, beyond his opposition to marriage equality, shouldn’t lead us to conclude he’s in any way friendly to LGBTs or is our ally politically.

I assume that your response confirms that you don’t actually have a link to an anti-gay Frum article.

Third hand accusation isn’t of any value.

Social scientists have looked at and shown why unwed childraising has increased so much: it’s the low wage jobs (or in this economy, no jobs) that minimally educated young people get.

I’m pretty sure Bristol and Levi will marry eventually. They’re making themselves pretty unmarriageable to anyone else.

But mostly, he is just plain wrong because of what is missing in his essay: the tremendous socio-economic, technological and demographic shifts that we are living through. The old suburban sprawl, oil- and car-based industrial economy is in its death throes. The information age has begun, and we are living right now through an enormous transformation in society that is going to be just as traumatic for society as the early industrial revolution were. The beginning years of the industrial revolution were also a time of great upheaval in social norms, men’s and women’s defined roles and it also broke up a lot of families and marriages. It took some time for a new social consensus to build. Whatever society is being born now, it is going to be unrecognisably different from the society our parents grew up in (so deftly portrayed in the show Mad Men). But eventually there will be a new consensus on marriage and gender roles. Bill Bishop and Richard Florida have written excellent books on this subject – ‘The Big Sort’ and ‘The Great Reset’, among others.

David Frum is mostly wrong because he pretends the current situation of straight marriage is the result of some kind of unwise wish fulfilment, and he cannot see the forest for the trees. This is inexcusable in somebody who would like us to think that he is one of our premier social commentators. But I can see why he chooses to be wilfully blind to the transformations that Bishop and Florida talk about in their work, because those trends contain a lot of unpleasant truths for somebody who wants to cling to the tired old Reagan-Thatcher conservatism.