Success Quote by Earl Blumenauer

The line plays defense by changing the battlefield. Blumenauer concedes the obvious anxieties people actually feel about marriage - money, instability, divorce - then pivots to name what, in his view, is the fake villain: gay and lesbian Americans. It’s a neat piece of rhetorical judo. By listing economic strain and “social cross-currents,” he acknowledges cultural unease without endorsing its most convenient scapegoat. The sentence structure matters: problem, problem, problem, then a clean negation that lands like a verdict.

The intent is legislative and cultural at once. As a politician speaking in the era when same-sex marriage was framed as an existential threat to “traditional” family life, he’s trying to drain oxygen from the panic. The subtext is an indictment of moral outsourcing: if marriages are failing, the causes are internal and systemic, not imported from a marginalized group seeking equal recognition. His use of “our” is strategic, too - it claims gay and lesbian citizens inside the civic “we,” while also reminding nervous listeners that these are neighbors, taxpayers, family members, not an invading force.

Contextually, the quote belongs to a period when “defending marriage” operated as a proxy for defending a certain social hierarchy. Blumenauer reframes marriage not as a fragile relic to be protected from outsiders, but as an institution stressed by economic precarity and shifting norms. It’s less romantic than political: stop blaming the wrong people; start addressing the conditions actually breaking households.