The Times Book Review, got Christopher Caldwell of The Weekly Standard to review Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, Good for America by Jonathan Rauch. I'm not surprised that he hates the book, but I didn't expect anything in his review to be out-and-out stupid -- yet here he is, snarking off after quoting Rauch and getting egg on his own face:

''If the possibility of procreation is what gives meaning to marriage,'' [Rauch] writes, ''then a postmenopausal woman who applies for a marriage license should be turned away at the courthouse door. What's more, she should be hooted at and condemned for breaking the crucial link between marriage and procreation.'' Not necessarily. The state's reluctance to engage in purposeless Maoist persecution of the infertile does not mean the state has no interest in fertility.

Does Caldwell really not know what Rauch is doing here? Does hereally not understand that Rauch is imagining an older woman who wants to marry being treated precisely the way gay people are treated right now under the same circumstances? Can it really be that Caldwell describes as "purposeless Maoist persecution" precisely what he and his fellow conservatives want society to do to gay people in perpetuity?