So why is holding a traditional view of marriage make one into a bigot?

After all, most people, for most of history have held the commonsense view that marriage was for children and to have children you needed to have a man and a woman.  The fact that we now have 'moved beyond' the common sense of the notion of marriage to a broader sense of what marriage means and is for doesn't invalidate the core assessment.  Indeed it highlights it.  Because everything else doesn't deliver what the core does and what society needs above all else:  well raised children.

Hunter Baker, an academic at Union University takes a child's perspective on the problem:  how do children acquire racial sensitivity and how does that relate to how they gain gender role sensitivity:

I think one way I could try to defend opponents of gay marriage from charges of rank bigotry is to examine the moral intuitions of children. In the course of raising mine, I have noticed that they had no underlying matrix of reason by which to understand racism. When they were a little younger, they never talked about a child as being black or white. The racial awareness simply wasn’t there. If I heard them telling a story about a classmate and wanted to know more about the child, I would ask them to describe the child. They would then include a description which might include something like light skin or dark skin, straight or curly hair, tall or short, etc. The implication is that bigotry must be cultivated.

Same-sex marriage is susceptible to a similar analysis. Because of a situation in our extended family, my children became aware of a man who wanted to be with other men instead of women. They simply did not understand why a man would want to share romantic love with another man. The idea violated their concept of what a man is. A man shares romantic/marital love with women rather than men. I learned this about their reasoning before I ever tried to explain things to them or to help them understand it. Just as a child’s natural understanding tilts away from racism, I would suggest that it tilts toward a complementary view of the sexes. In other words, men go with women and women go with men. Just as bigotry must be cultivated, so, too, must the appreciation of same sex pairings. In other words, bigotry is the result of intentional cultural work and so is the appreciation of same sex pairs. Neither is a natural understanding from the child’s point of view. (Please understand that I am not morally equating bigotry with cultural advocacy of gay acceptance. That is not the point.)

One of the problems with thinking in this way is that the left, whom we are begging for tolerance are naturally intolerant.  They are totalists - everything must be subjected to political audit and if it 'fits' it must be implemented everywhere and if it does not it must be eradicated everywhere.  The notion of 'diversity' has always been the left's most thoroughgoing and elaborate fraud.

One of the things that distinguishes Andrew Sullivan from the left's totalism is his Oakshottian conservatism.  Conservatives accept paradoxes and different ways of thinking.  They don't assume that the new is good simply because it is popular.  Conservatives don't need everything be tidy:  if I'm white you don't have to be black and so on. Andrew benefits from those attitudes.  But he obviously feels social pressure from his leftier confreres to toe the party line - hence the perjoratives - 'bigot', etc.  Which is sad.  It would be much better if Andrew could preach forthrightly to his left about the benefits of a more tolerant rhetorical approach.  But what do I know? Nothing really but like any rational father I hope my kids marry someone of the opposite sex. But I'll love them regardless.  I guess that makes me a bigot.  A proud one.