By Andrew K. Boyle

The change has begun to accelerate. What began as audacious hope is now being revealed as an unquenchable and all-encompassing re-founding of America. This is not change within a system, but a creation of a new system. It is now not a political strategy of risk and reward, but a scorched earth plan -- obscured behind a thin veil of conspiratorial mockery it is at once invisible and in plain site. It is no longer Madison and Chicago where this progressive move marches, but in Norman and Stillwater. It's about marriage, and it's a war being secretly waged in plain site.

By now the well informed readers of this newspaper have learned about the federal judge in Tulsa who found Oklahoma's same sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional. This decision was the latest in a swelling movement of similar rulings in California, Utah, New Mexico and New Jersey. To date there are 43 same sex lawsuits winding their way through various courts, most already at the federal level. The frequency of these suits grows by the day, with each successful case seeming to birth another suit in a more unlikely state than the previous.

The reaction within Oklahoma and nationally to this latest in a long line of victories has been predictable in sitcom like fashion. The vast majority of Oklahoma's elected officials have publically and quite emphatically condemned the case as one of judicial activism and of undue meddling in the obvious and overwhelming expressed will of the people. The other side, a minority of Oklahomans, cheered the news and focused their attention on easy targets like Sally Kern, condemning her clear bigotry, homophobia and Bible-induced hatred of people different than her. This hackneyed story is a boring update of the culture wars which have raged for my entire life. What is even more coma inducing is the pre-scripted responses, by both sides, to rally and redouble efforts for the war the other side has brought to us. Depending upon your political persuasion you have undoubtedly read that editorial several times already. I shall spare you that experience here.

To understand the striking down of Oklahoma's marriage amendment, and the strange opportunity for the union of Pistol Pete and the guy who dresses up as Boomer, or Sooner (or dare we say both?), we must turn our attention east to another, more intrepid claim. In New York, while Oklahoma was busy arming to enforce or deny same sex marriages, one governor revealed where this energy and activity concerning gay marriages will soon be focused, and the siren song of war Oklahoma is now hearing in the mist of politics.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo used a local radio address to redraw the lines of the marriage debate in his state, a harbinger of a national story to be sure. As reported by The Blaze, Cuomo, a noted progressive, gave a lengthy explanation of the state of conservatism in the empire state. In encouraging the party opposite him to rid themselves of the cancer which apparently keeps them from winning elections (to his benefit), the governor identified the radical elements among conservatives as those "right to life, pro assault weapon, and anti-gay" who also "have no place in the state of New York, because that's not who New Yorkers are."

Setting aside the obvious insanity of taking political advice from an adversary, this is a shocking story. New York is a state which took roughly 4 years worth of partisan to pass legislation recognizing same sex marriages. When the effort first began, public polling on the issue found a near perfect split across the state for and against. By the time the law was finally passed, by an overwhelming state Senate vote of 33-29, New Yorkers had moved drastically in favor of same sex marriages with as many as 53% supporting the move in polling. Now, with the law being codified for more than two whole years, the governor of the state feels able to publically declare the tiny minority of 47% of his state to be "extreme conservatives" -- publically disreputable and entirely unwelcome in his state. Giving license to gay marriages quickly lost the ability to satisfy the desires of progressives; they now demand unquestioned patronage and celebration of such marriages with a zealotry even the reactionary Bible thumpers can only marvel at.

Using the New York model of public expression, the 75% vote margin by which the 2004 constitutional ban on same sex marriages passed in Oklahoma would give Governor Fallin overwhelming authority to sanction a culture war posse and drive Pistol Pete, Boomer and any other gay person in the state into the waiting arms of Governor Cuomo. What's good for the empire goose is good for the red-dirt gander -- right?

Casting aside the societal evil and the probable civil war such insane actions would unleash, this satirical sitcom does expose the problem of fighting a culture war using political weapons. Just as the red-dirt anti-gay posse would guarantee Oklahoma devolved into a backwards and bigoted state, so too does the pronouncement of Governor Cuomo ensures the coming failure of the progressive movement. The conglomerate of disassociated causes and groups, fueled by their insatiable hunger to completely affirm and enforce every progressive virtue, has placed the progressive movement on a path which can only end in complete tyranny. It is a religion of state; one which requires perfect devotion and punishes heretics. Their puritanical permissiveness and forced universality will be their unachievable ends, and in their madness they will come undone.

Those of us, who for long have condemned the progressive left as delusional Utopians suffering from a severe secular manifestation of a God-complex, we must avoid the urge to follow the same self-destructive and tyrannical path. It is a seductive song the sirens of the right sing, to arm for cultural war; but we must note the unintended consequences wars always bring. In this war of culture, we must understand the danger of engaging our enemy with the weapons of the state and the nature of the foe which confronts us.

Just as the progressives, today with clear advantage in the culture war, have doomed themselves to failure by joining their fate with the ship of state, so to we will doom ourselves should we seek remedy by like-means. In the case of marriage, it was dangerous and probably fool-hearted to ever involve government in enforcing and legitimizing this matter of religious duty in any fashion. The same power which for so long has protected the institution of marriage in America today imperils it. Marriage stood as a pillar of our culture not because the government recognized our unions and subsidized them in the tax code, but because of the individual importance and respect it garnered from sea to shining sea. Likewise, marriage can only be undermined by the culture, not our laws. Marriage today is wildly unhealthy among heterosexual people -- more so in Oklahoma than in other places. Adding homosexual marriages and divorces will have little impact on a culture already overrun with widespread-cyclical divorce and unhealthy marriages.

Most sane people have no problem affirming the liberty for people to do as they please between the sheets. These same people also tend to have distinct and firm understandings of the limits nature and nature's God place on our appetites and consumption. Conservatives who seek to use the power of the state to give validity to these assertions will lose the war to those who seek to shape an entire culture by defending on an individual basis those who exalt marriage through reason, religion and most importantly by example.

This is the profound beauty of America, that we are a good people. We are tolerant because we understand the fallen and evil nature that lurks within each soul. This understanding caused us to be forged in liberty, knowing that it is only through experiencing the evils which imperial our freedom can we find the divine blessings that same freedom allows. We are a people given protection under which we can work out our own salvation with our God. That salvation could never be found in constructing the perfect government, that's what progressives are seeking in vain to do. There is no virtue in crafting ironclad law to govern marriage; likewise there is incredible goodness in creating a culture which affirms and protects marriage as the holy institution it was intended to be.

You want to save marriage from the corrupting hand of progressives? Take it entirely out of the hands of the state. Don't seek to validate the marriage of Jennifer and Stephen through the state and there will be no risk of that same body blessing the union of Pistol Pete and Boomer. In marriage as in every other question of society, the profound danger of surrendering the minute details of our lives to the control of the state is always relieved in the generousness of liberty we apply to individuals.

If given the opportunity, the wise and honest can repair the high standard of marriage we long ago abandoned. May it begin where the dirt is red.