Nov 21, 2008  |  By: ROBERT A. BERNSTEIN  | COMMENTS     

WHEN CALIFORNIA VOTED to ban gay marriage, my thoughts turned to something seemingly light years removed from that issue: fluoridation of water.

In my first job after college, as a daily newspaper reporter, fluoridation was a hot media issue. Among opponents’ arguments was the claim that fluoridation was part of a sinister “Communist plot” to subvert our democracy.

The plotters’ aim, one spokesperson said, was to “deplete the brainpower and sap the strength of a generation of American children.”

While no one in the mainstream media believed this patent nonsense, we loved to quote such comments without regard or reference to their obvious empty-headedness. Our excuse was that we were merely providing “balance” to our reports. In fact, of course, we did it to spice up our stories’ readability.

So now it goes with the anti-gay marriage arguments quoted again and again by the media: “It would jeopardize the institution of marriage.” “It threatens the welfare of children.” “It would destroy the moral fabric of society.”

Rationally, those arguments are as unfounded and just as silly as the claim of a fluoridation “Communist plot.” And I suspect that many, perhaps most, of the media types who repeat them in the avowed interest of coverage “balance” are aware of their inanity.

HOW COULD THEY be unaware that every serious study, and virtually every leading professional organization involved with the welfare of families and children, endorse equal rights for same-sex partners and parents and their children?

It’s been nearly five years, for example, since the American Anthropological Association adopted a statement declaring that “a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and human societies.” Nearly seven years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics went on record urging its members to support “the right of every child and family to the financial, psychological, and legal security that results from having legally recognized parents who are committed to each other and to the welfare of their children.”

INDEED, THE ACKNOWLEDGED leading expert on studies of children of same-sex parents, New York University Sociologist Dr. Judith Stacey, years ago said that “there are lots of reasons to think that on average gay and lesbian parents … are better parents for a whole host of reasons” based on the studies and social science principles.

There is, however, one significant difference in the reactions to the fluoridation and marriage issues. It’s what I describe as the “Cheney syndrome” — the widely held cultural assumption that to be gay is to be shameful.

In one of the 2004 presidential debates, in response to the moderator’s question as to whether homosexuality is a “choice,” John Kerry replied that, “If you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was.”

It had long been common knowledge that Mary Cheney is lesbian. Nevertheless, not merely the media, but Dick and Lynne Cheney themselves reacted as though Kerry had outed her.

This torrent of denunciation remained void of any explanation as to why it was so ungentlemanly for Kerry to mention a simple, long-known fact. For the why needed no explanation: Most Americans beyond a certain age shared a tacit cultural assumption that it’s shameful to be gay.

So perhaps my analogizing gay marriage to fluoridation is only partly correct. So far as I know, at least, there is no cultural assumption that fluoridation is inherently unspeakable in polite company.