Sen. Portman Backs Into Relativism

This morning, the Columbus Dispatch broke the news that Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, a former defender of DOMA, has evolved so to speak and now backs gay marriage.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Rob Portman has renounced his opposition to gay marriage, telling reporters from Ohio newspapers yesterday that he changed his position after his son Will told him and his wife, Jane, that he is gay.

[...] 

In an interview in his Senate office, Portman acknowledged that his support for same-sex marriage is a “change in my position that I have had in Congress and also here in the Senate the last couple of years.” But he said that change “came about through a process” after Will, now a junior at Yale University, told his parents in February 2011 that he is gay. 

“It allowed me to think about this issue from a new perspective and that’s as a dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister have,” Portman said.

But even if one is a die-hard supported of gay marriage, Portman's argument is so vacuous that it does nothing to further the argument why gay marriage should be legalized across the nation.  (I realize Portman wants to leave it up to the states but because of the current legal landscape, this is really a moot point.  Like Lincoln said, we are either going to be all of one thing or all the other.)

Kate Pitrone at Postmodern Conservative tells us why:

The state of Portman’s son’s sexuality has nothing to do with what is right for society. If his son were a womanizer who had many children by many different women, do you suppose Portman would promote polygamy so his son could marry all of those women and make “honest women” of them and save his grandchildren from the stigma of illegitimacy? I don’t think so. Anyone following his heart when it means ignoring his head becomes muddled; we want to love our children whatever they do. We do love, despite what they do, but that does not mean we must condone what they do. Portman has fallen prey to relativism, as the word can be variously understood.

Portman's mind was changed based on something personal to himself and his family; but in no way does that justify why it would be good for anyone else.

Arguments today tend to revolve around the personal, which is then transmogrified into a political argument, which even on a cursory inspection fails to truly justify any change whatsoever (see my  posts on political language).  As Mollie Hemingway has observed, Portman's argument for his change of mind represents "the Oprahfication of political philosophy."