Now, unfortunately for same-sex marriage advocates, Hollywood is busily shifting those minds back.
On Sunday, the Grammys tooted its self-proclaimed righteousness by trotting out Queen Latifah to officiate the mass wedding of 33 couples, including gay couples. She did so as new Grammy winner Macklemore shouted cloyingly sanctimonious antireligious slogans into his microphone: "The right-wing conservatives think it's a decision / And you can be cured with some treatment and religion ... Playing God, aw nah, here we go / America the brave still fears what we don't know / And God loves all his children is somehow forgotten / But we paraphrase a book written 3,500 years ago." To top off the marriages, Madonna then staggered out to warble "Open Your Heart."
This wasn't an argument for same-sex marriage. It wasn't even attractive image-making on behalf of same-sex marriage. It was hatred of Biblical values cloaked in pietistic nonsense.
Begin with the marriages themselves. The only rationale for getting married on the Grammys en masse would be either attention-seeking or spite toward Americans with traditional values, or both. Neither of these rationales scream "love," "commitment" or "societal building block."
Move on to the cheering audience -- a group of anti-marriage Hollywoodites who largely see the institution itself as patriarchal. The same folks standing up for same-sex marriage at the Grammys largely scorn the institution of marriage itself. The only time they embrace marriage is when it is being mocked, undermined or perverted. That's not a cuddly case for same-sex marriage.
Finally, look at the artists: Macklemore, who rages against religious Americans for cash and Grammys; Madonna, who is happy to glom onto the marriage bandwagon after selling her body for decades, and running through a raft of unsuccessful marriages and relationships of her own; Queen Latifah, acting as a stand-in for the government, offering up salvation via paper licenses from the state. None of this warms hearts or changes minds.
But this is Hollywood unmasked: angry, vindictive, self-righteous, anti-Biblical. The case for same-sex marriage rests on an application of Biblical principle -- monogamy and commitment -- to actions condemned by Biblical text. For years, Hollywood was able to get away with perverting the Bible by ignoring it. But in its rush to congratulate itself for overthrowing Biblical values without a shot, Hollywood spiked the football and revealed its true agenda. And that agenda is not the agenda of tolerance for individuals, but an ugly agenda of unearned moral superiority via destruction of traditional values.