Look at the examples he chooses. He's not really arguing that anyone should be able to wear veils, not have pictures on their IDs, carry sheathed knives, etc. He's arguing that if voters wouldn't see any random person as needing/deserving to be able to do something, then nobody should be able to do it based on religion.
Myself, I'd say sure, let kids carry knives, whether pocketknives (as people in my neck of the woods happily let kids in prior generations) or kirpans. On the other hand, the writer's dog-whistling, saying that we should only do something as crazy as let Sikh kids carry kirpans if we'd be willing to have a stabby bloodbath in our (well, Canadian) schools.
While I'd love to be able to skip legal protection of enumerated rights, knowing that the government would respect my freedoms in every conceivable formulation, it ain't gonna happen. The best-case situation in Western society is that the government remains leery of obviously stepping on the rights that people most object to having abridged - free speech, religion, etc.
ETA: And yes, that means that some people will have a "privilege" - ie, they'll be exempted from some stupid law that would harm or impair them even more than it does everyone else. In that case, the answer isn't to attack the privilege, it's to attack the thing the privilege protects against.
However, I'd only buy that as the writer's real message if he wasn't going for a subtext of Gee, look at all the unreasonable privileges people get on the grounds of religion!
I'm reminded of the argument that we shouldn't support gay marriage, but instead should support getting government entirely out of marriage and letting any consenting adults form any arrangement they want. I absolutely agree with that ideal, but it's not happening anytime soon - so I support gay marriage. However, there are people who make this argument and use it as a reason to oppose gay marriage as a "privilege" we should not be establishing.
I can't help noticing that people giving that objection are uniformly straight.
That says something about your powers of observation.
I note that most people giving that objection are unmarried, and a large fraction are "uncoupled".
As I implied with my first sentence, some folks making that argument are not straight, so they don't "remain straight".
Yes, most folks making that argument are straight, but since most folks are straight....
> Do you have a point?
My point is that your gaydar is broken at least wrt this issue.
You're welcome to point it out, but I sure don't see any such argument made by Graff in this interview.
You cited your personal experience, so you don't get to complain when I do exactly the same thing.
At this point, I simply don't believe that you've met gay people who argued against supporting gay marriage on the basis that we have to get government out of the business of marriage first. It's a highly dubious claim, and you seem less than entirely honest.
Not at all. I believe that you have described things as you saw them. I'm suggesting that reality was different.
> At this point, I simply don't believe that you've met gay people who argued against supporting gay marriage on the basis that we have to get government out of the business of marriage first.
Good for you. I don't believe your claim either.
> It's a highly dubious claim,
Based on what? Your perception of the political uniformity of gays?
> and you seem less than entirely honest.
Based on what?
I'm not relying on gaydar. I'm relying on "I'm gay and I think ..." statements. How do you know that they were lying?
What's the basis for your "uniformly straight" claim? Did they all say "I'm straight and I think ...."?