So gay marriage is almost a reality in Massachusetts. This is highlighting a "cultural chasm," blah, blah, blah. On a related note, here is Jay Manifold commenting on a the recent article on Sugar Land, Texas:

Finkel nonetheless strives to make all this sound as alien, unpleasant, and un-Blue-State-like as possible. The resulting transparent failure has me wondering if Darwinian selection isn't on the verge of simply putting the Blue States out of business.

Let's ignore the reality that many "blue" and "red" people switch over at some point in their life, there is still a way of looking at the divide as if they were two immutable tribes. But despite their general tendency to live apart, in both mind and real space, the two groups do try and influence each other ("blue" pushing for more "tolerance" and "red" pushing for more "morality" in the backyard of the other through the power of the federal government). Recently Stanley Kurtz has been talking about gay marriage in Sweden, and how it is affecting straight marriage (negatively). I know there are issues with the interstate commerce clause and gay marriage in Massachusetts, but I am trying to communicate a bigger point, conservative activists who argue that liberal social policies are resulting in the collapse of a society, and attempt to ameliote these conditions through legislation, might be delaying an inevitable cultural implosion and precipitous decline in TFR in "blue" (due to more gays, more working moms, etc.) regions that will usher in a time of the ascendancy of "red" culture (conversely, banning abortion on the federal level and repealing laws against sex discrimination that might reduce the incentive for women to have careers might have the impact of increasing birth-rates in those very states that favor abortion rights & gender equity, eventually leading to a re-legalization of abortion and re-imposition of anti-discrimination laws....) .

Update: Over at View From the Right Lawrence Auster expresses apocalyptic sentiments, but again, gay marriage is going to be a most salient where the populace is most sanguine about it (though even in Massachusetts it isn't popular). Most of "red" America will be fine, the quarterback on the local high school football team isn't going to be sashaying down the aisle with the nose-guard anytime soon.

Update II: Jay emailed me, and I have posted his comment below:

Returning to the original subject ...

1. Thanks to Razib for a largely undeserved link.

2. Randy McDonald has done some great work on the possible history and anthropology of space colonies. Having said that, it seems to me that the article I quoted had the inadvertent effect of showing that conservatives avoid precisely the errors he lists: assuming there aren't any gays or feminists nearby, etc.

3. I note that immigration is a far less contentious issue in the red states than the blue states. Texas has a far better relationship with Mexico than does California. A positive-sum mentality helps.

4. My motivation in writing what I did was my frustration at seeing gays, in particular, appear to concentrate themselves in the blue states, where their pockets get picked by those states' interventionist economic policies and high taxes. My theory is that the red states, insofar as they are freer economically and have less expensive public bureaucracies, are better places for creative, entrepreneurial people. No, you won't have politicians saying they love you all the time. But your house will cost a third as much and your taxes will be far lower. Just why someone of my background (WASP heterosexual male evangelical) would, in effect, advocate gay immigration to my part of the country is, well, just one of those red state complexities that don't get much media attention. ;)

5. Now for my big mistake: committing the besotting Libertarian sin of almost-hoping for a positive feedback loop leading to the collapse of the Evil System. In reality, the blue states have considerable strengths and are unlikely to go completely down the drain. There is an enormous degree of homeostasis in American society, even in the midst of breakneck technological advance and economic dynamism.

Perhaps as Jay would say, "we are all sinners...."