–by Sebastian
Now that Prop 8 has provided a temporary setback to marriage rights in California, I was thinking about what the best positive step next would look like. Eventually there will probably have to be another vote, and the best thing I can think of for that is rather mundane. In the next weeks and months, talk to some generally good but misguided people you know about why marriage is so important. Talk about how the commitment of two people is just as important for those people no matter what sex they are. Talk about how the community benefits from the commitment by allowing the joy of the public commitment to be shared. Talk about how much it can hurt for the ceremonies of love to be denied. You can preempt some of the stupid lies about schools and tax exemptions that were spread by the "Yes on 8" campaign, but ultimately focusing on the human aspect is best. It may seem boring compared to other forms of political activism, but ultimately it is how we win.
If you don’t think you know any otherwise good people who are also against gay marriage, look again.
Let’s get government out of the marriage business. Too many religious folks think that marriage is a religious institution. Fine. Let them have it. Let them know that the only sensible solution is to change the name of what the government does and make absolutely certain that there is no discrimination when the government does it. From now on, we can make certain that your social security and all other government benefits will be dependent on a civil union contract that you write with your significant other.
If the religious zealots want marriage for themselves, let’s give it to them.
Integrate the military. It will be much harder to deny gays rights once they have decorated, openly-gay veterans out front. And there’s a lot of indicators, both inside and outside the US Mil that now* is a good time to do it.
*Not expecting it in Obama’s first year, but sometime in the next four would be good. Perhaps after we withdraw from Iraq in three years?
I’ve already had this conversation with several fundamentalists.
Many of my clients are very religious and attend rightwing chruches. They are very poor and are overwhelmed with serious problems. Religion is a slolace and a support network. it is also the source of pridefulness, a sense of moral superiority.
The degree to wihich a fundamentalist is approachable about issues like gay rights is linked to the degeree thier relipion is a source of personal pride. Those people who retain a since of humility are in my experience very approachable and very open to the Deomcratic agenda once they understand what it is.
My ex mother in law was a fundamentalist but when she found out that her son was gay she got her church to pass a resolution condemning those whocondemn gay people. She didn’t get her fellow chruch members to acceptance but she got them to formally renounce condemnation. They agreed to leave it up to their God to do the judging.
My client Susie was disgusted by gayness and gay marriage but soften when I told her about the tow gay couples in my neighborhood. She had never knowing met a gay person. Sebastian was right in the previous post when he said that desensitation by contact is key to ending prejudice. Talking to people who don’t know anyone who is gay is part of that desensitation and I am happy to do it.
I appreciate hearing from Seb. I appreciate his desire to undo a wrong. I appreciate his “feet on the ground” approach. What I fear, though, is that his approach is based upon rationality and fairness, while the opposition is based upon faith and authority.
Reasoned arguments for rebelling from authority are viewed very suspiciously be the religiously and authoritarian motivated among us. I fear that such discussions would merely undermine their already shaky connection to the rational world.
And I AM talking about good people who believe the anti-gay message. Rational arguments are too suspect with these folks.
I like Freelunch’s approach, but I suspect that the real solution is in motivating moderate religious folks to call this “cherry picking” of a religious proscription out for what it is. The Bible condemns divorce more strongly than it does homosexuality, for example. Religious folk have come to grips with this issue.
In other words, instead of rational arguments, talk religious arguments with them. At least this is true for many anti-gay people that I have known….
Sebastian, I don’t think this can be charactorized as a ‘temporary setback’.
Discussions on civil rights for gays do not occupy the high ground in our national discourse. Unlike the struggle for black civil rights we have no Truman, Kennedy, or Johnson on the national stage willing to lead the way and to pay the political price for doing the right thing for gays as these presidents did for blacks.
Have you ever heard a national leader give a speech for gay civil rights like Johnson or Kennedy often did for black civil rights?
Ever since Bill Clinton was demonized for his attempt to change the policy on gays in the military there have been no non gay leaders for gay civil rights in the Democratic Party.
In fact the nation just elected two people, Obama and Biden, who are not at all sympathetic to gay civil rights. Obama could, on his first day in office, take the next step prepared for him by Clinton by allowing gays to serve openly in the military. Gaining the right to serve openly in service to our country is much easier to optain than is gaining the right to marry. All it takes is the willingness of the CIC to order it done. But it will not happen with Obama.
Any time Obama opens his mouth on the subject he gives aid and comfort to those who oppose your rights. He shares the black bigotry against gays and has repeatedly made that clear.
I wish you the best of luck. You have my support, but I am only one liberal who is sorely disappointed in my party’s choice of leaders.
If you do not have the support of the Democratic leadership in this country you will never achieve your goals for full civil rights. The Republican party will never be an ally in your struggle. It will fight you every step of the way.
But I will do my part and talk to people. I always have and always will.
freelunch is absolutely right. Domestic partnerships, which specify a certain “default” set of economic rights and responsibilities, as well as personal rights (such as being designated “next of kin”) could be supported by government. The government should not support adults’ sexual preferences, sexual practices, or try to determine matters of sexuality and affection. Only private (perhaps religious) entities should be chosen to do this. What’s civil marriage about anyway? It’s ridiculous to have the state regulate or even recognize matters of love.
A lot of religiously based anti=gayness is knee jerk, and comes from the church (obvioulsy). It’s part of a bubble. Many of the people inside the bubble are actually receptive to information from outside. They just often get that information.
Yes relgious arguments work best. I walked one of my clients through the centuries of human interferencein the Word of God. She said that God revealled the Bible. I pointed out that the revelation came back in prelierate times and the the Bible in her living room id the English verson of a Laitin verson of texts written in a variety of Middle Eastern lanugaes which were the written down versions of oral texts–so what made her belige that that who long chain of people, mostly men, got everything right?
SHe then started pointing out all the contradictions and discrepencies that had been needling the back of her mind for years.
There can be other reasons people voted for such a proposition. I personally have no problem with the idea of gay marriage. As far as I am concerned, heterosexual couples have undermined the sanctity of marriage without any involvement from gay couples. If a gay couple wants to get married, it is of no particular concern to me, even though it may be counter to my faith.
But, what concerns me, as a Catholic, is whether this starts us down a slippery slope to the point where churches could be forced into performing marriages that are counter to the church’s doctrines. Then it does have what I consider aan unacceptable consequence. And that really causes me pause.
If that potential problem could be averted, I think a lot of Christians would have no problem with gay marriage.
I agree with the “desensitization by contact” idea. The best way of advancing the cause of gay marriage is by introducing people to gay couples who want to be married. It’s much easier to support bigotry in the abstract than when it involves denying specific people you know their rights.
Oyster Tea: “Reasoned arguments for rebelling from authority are viewed very suspiciously be the religiously and authoritarian motivated among us. I fear that such discussions would merely undermine their already shaky connection to the rational world.”
I wouldn’t really take either approach. I find that emotional arguments (that is to say arguments with an emotional grounding, not heated arguments) tend to be very effective. Ask a mother how she would feel if her daughter spent years alone, wondering if she would ever find love, and then when she finally found that she really deeply loved another woman she still couldn’t get married. Some people might say “that’s too bad” but even they might reconsider it a year or two later if you don’t go out of your way to piss them off. I think a lot of it is about planting seeds. You don’t have to win the discussion right this second. Mention how wonderful a recent gay wedding you attended was and how great it was that they could publically affirm their love. A year later talk about the wonderful gay couple who is doing so much work in the charitable area that is a special interest to your friend. Some of the seeds will fall on fallow soil. Others will grow in time. A very few will grow right now. The only thing we know for sure is that this is the type of issue where we can’t reap if we don’t sow.
ken: I do not normally delete comments. But next time you show up here, I will delete or disemvowel yours. You have been banned repeatedly. Please do not keep sneaking back.
Also: you are aware that Obama has spoken against homophobia at black churches, right?
Don’t answer that by commenting here. Just don’t.
Bob B., ideally churches should perform whatever marriages suit their doctrine, and the state should support domestic partnerships (of whatever people, including non-couples, who want to have a domestic economic relationship). The Catholic church doesn’t need to be forced to recognize gay marriage if gay marriage violates Catholic doctrine – that would offend the separation of church and state. The civil law, though, must give equal rights to every person whether or not it angers Catholics or Mormons to do so.
the fight is far from over
we fight on.
Ken!!!!
Hey Ken, you were right about California going for McCain!@!!eleven!one!!!
Let’s get government out of the marriage business. Too many religious folks think that marriage is a religious institution. Fine. Let them have it. Let them know that the only sensible solution is to change the name of what the government does and make absolutely certain that there is no discrimination when the government does it.
Actually, let’s let all government-recognized unions between couples (or, hell, triples, or what have you) continue to be called “marriage” and let religious folks come up with their OWN word. Covenant, or cleaving unto, or somesuch.
But, what concerns me, as a Catholic, is whether this starts us down a slippery slope to the point where churches could be forced into performing marriages that are counter to the church’s doctrines. Then it does have what I consider aan unacceptable consequence. And that really causes me pause.
Um, can the government currently force Catholic churches to marry two people who are eligible to marry under state laws but not eligible to be married by a Catholic priest in a Catholic church? Of course it can’t. So why would this be any different?
I wish people would just think this stuff through.
Bob B:
The Catholic Church isn’t currently required to marry non-Catholics or couples with children conceived before the marriage, why would they be required to marry same-sex couples? I don’t see how civil recognition of gay marriages puts the church on that slope at all.
I appreciate the comments made by both Sapient and Jiminy Jilliker. I have read articles that indicate that pressure has been put on churches in Canada along these lines, and I also recall reading about issues of gay adoption in Massachusetts being forced on Catholic charities involved in adoption. Maybe I’m being an alarmist, but it is something that concerns me, to the point of being reluctant to recognize gay marriage.
I have thought that some sort of civil union distinction might solve the problem, but I understand that this can be viewed by gay couples as not being treated equally.
I made the comment mianly to point out that not everyone who might vote for such an amendment is insensitive to the interests of gay couples.
Not to pile on, Bob B, but my husband is (nominally) Catholic. I’m a childfree atheist Jew. I’m guessing that any Catholic church would laugh us out the door if we came in asking for a religious marriage ceremony. Heck, I think most synagogues would turn us down too, and I don’t think there’s any legal recourse (not that we considered anything but a totally secular ceremony with a judge). So how would allowing same-sex marriage on the civil level be any different?
I am catechizing my children, (7 and 5) and we do discuss, “what does the Bible say?” There are about 4-5 verses that attempt to control male desire/sexuality; (I don’t think there is anything concerning lesbianism). I attempt to be blunt, put it in context, Old Testament demands death, however it demands death for a host of sinful behaviors, which we no longer accept…and the New Testament describes certain types of male prostitution…”gay” “homosexual” were not operating within the same context as we know them today.
So the question for my family is “Why would someone/communities/societies, decide that these verses should be interpreted in a certain way?” Divorce, and many other “sins” are given higher priority, so then why the turmoil over passages that are very arcane or a blip?
One’s cultural context gives the frame/lens to interpret the scripture…the scripture/religion does nothing, until somebody interprets it, and gives it priority. There are reasons concerning power and sexuality and desire which color these lenses.
I think a lot of it is about planting seeds. You don’t have to win the discussion right this second. Mention how wonderful a recent gay wedding you attended was and how great it was that they could publically affirm their love. A year later talk about the wonderful gay couple who is doing so much work in the charitable area that is a special interest to your friend. Some of the seeds will fall on fallow soil. Others will grow in time. A very few will grow right now. The only thing we know for sure is that this is the type of issue where we can’t reap if we don’t sow.
IM(very)HO there is a great deal of both wisdom and patience in this approach, admirably so. I think that the slow process of cultural change and generational turnover is on the side of equality for gay people in this country, recalling Dr. King’s aphorism about the moral arc of the universe being long but bending towards justice. It seems to me that visibility is a key to planting these seeds – gay people need to be visible as such in order for their homophobic neighbors to stop imagining them as something scary and start seeing them as real people. Fear of the unknown is the worst kind.
Which leads me to ask: what can we do either personally or in terms of supporting changes in public policy, to make it safer and more comfortable for gay people who are in the closet or who may be reluctant to more openly show their sexual orientation in public, so that they may become more visible. Because it seems to me that what will keep driving our culture in the direction of being more accepting is the sheer boring ordinariness of increasingly large numbers of gay people – friends, neighbors, coworkers and other associates, who for ever larger numbers of Americans are simply no longer a novelty or even particularly noteworthy, they are just one of us.
In the next weeks and months, talk to some generally good but misguided people you know about why marriage is so important.
I generally approach this from the other direction. (With non-fundamentalists anyway.) Essentially – what’s it to you? Why should you object? Give me one single way* in which gay marriage could impact your marriage or your life. How does a gay couple down the street getting married affect you in any possible way? Generally they don’t have any good answers, or you can tell that they’re just mouthing something they don’t necessarily believe to be true.
As Sebastian noted – plant a seed. I’ve seen folks go from “no way no how never” to “well, I suppose it’s no big deal but I wouldn’t want them moving in next to me, I don’t need to see that.” (What – you’re going to peek in their windows? You think they’re going to have sex in the back yard? You do realize that they don’t have to be married to move in next door right?) Finally to: “whatever – I guess it’s no skin off my a**”.
*The one semi-legitimate argument I’ve encountered is that small group rates tend to rise for the entire group when an insurance carrier covers same-sex couples. I don’t know if there is underwriting to justify that or not. Possibly same-sex couples are being treated as two single people (riskier) for underwriting purposes?
Bob B.,
Just to add an example to the one provided by JJ:
Many rabbis refuse to perform interfaith marriages. The fact that it is perfectly legal and fairly common for a Jew to marry a non-Jew has not led to even the faintest call for legislation to force rabbis to alter their practices.
Not only is the slope not slippery, it’s not even a slope.
I still say, putting the rights of a minority in the hands of majority is horrible.
Phil, you say that “actually, let’s let all government-recognized unions between couples (or, hell, triples, or what have you) continue to be called “marriage” and let religious folks come up with their OWN word. Covenant, or cleaving unto, or somesuch.”
Why not do what we have control over, like get the government out of the marriage business? Why should civil law support marriage, which originated as a religious institution (at least the way it was imported into the law of the thirteen colonies)? Think about it, and if you know any lawyers ask them: what is the most noxious, counterproductive area of civil law? You got it: divorce law, starting with issues such as who was unfaithful to whom. It’s a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money for society to get involved in that issue.
What’s needed is leadership. By definition, that cannot be provided at the grassroots level.
We have a president-elect and a congress-elect that are nominally in favor of, and should implement, (1) civil unions and (2) a repeal of DADT. Public opinion is about 50-50 (or better) in favor of each. The best way to move the ball forward is to pass both. When the sky fails to fall, you will see even greater majorities in favor of each and growing support for gay marriage.
Touching personal story time!
I can remember 5 yrs or so ago when my sister met a guy named Kory at school, and they became pretty good friends. Kory was as far out of the closet as can be, and in high school nonetheless (which was pretty brave, IMO). One day, he has dinner at our house, and its obvious that my parents are freaked out that their daughter is friends with a gay kid.
That night, I have a private conversation with the old folks, since I know the guy and I don’t want them to worry. As it turns out, Kory is the first gay person they know (Liberace and Paul Linde don’t count). I ask them the standard stuff, like when they ‘chose’ to be straight, and they started to get it. They were still a little leary, but they slowly got over it.
Fast foward to August, when they were invited to Kory’s marriage (more like a ‘commitment ceremony’ in IN). My mom was excited, this was her first gay wedding! My dad, in his curmudgeonly manner said, “Well, if they’re are dumb enough to get married, then what the hell.”
I think, for them, it was personally knowing a gay person and being able to see them as a person. It took time for them to grow comfortable with it, but all new things take time. So as per Seb’s advice, just sit down and talk to people who are uncomfortable with gays and give it some time. Its unfair that I have to tell gay people to have patience and keep working, but I’m dead certain that my kids or grandkids will be able to marry whoever they love, as long as we keep working towards equality.
Here is part of the reasons for my concerns:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/03/11/catholic_charities_stuns_state_ends_adoptions/
As far as the issue of same-sex marriage issues with the Catholic church in Canada, I was mistaken. The problem there has been with Catholic priests who oppose same-sex marriage for religious reasons being investigated by the Canadian Civil Rights Commission for hate speech. Sorry for that mistake.
Great post, Sebastian: thank you.
(Even the completely stupid comment immediately following could not spoil it: someone always moronically burbles that an institution older than the United States of America itself ought to be abolished, having clearly never thought even once – or not for more than say 30 seconds, when drunk or stupid – about the impossible complications that would follow if no one in the US could get married any more, only have religious unions without force of law.)
Oh, and I see freelunch isn’t the only person who has never thought at all about the complications that arise – just for starters – when no American can go anywhere outside the US without first finding out if the country they visit will recognise “civil unions” (which, I can tell you in advance, most won’t).
I also recall reading about issues of gay adoption in Massachusetts being forced on Catholic charities involved in adoption. @Bob B.
The Church wants to have things both ways. They want to accept the state’s money for providing adoption services, but they don’t want to obey the state’s rules requiring them to allow gay couples as adoptive parents.
It’s really a matter of “render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s”. If you accept state money, you also have to accept the state’s rules. They could, if they chose, refuse the state’s money and continue to manage adoptions privately. Other churches that oppose gay adoptions have done exactly that.
Bob: I appreciate the comments made by both Sapient and Jiminy Jilliker. I have read articles that indicate that pressure has been put on churches in Canada along these lines, and I also recall reading about issues of gay adoption in Massachusetts being forced on Catholic charities involved in adoption.
No, you have that the wrong way round. The problem was that Catholic Charities in Boston was assessing same-sex couples as adoptive parents, and had placed children with those couples. They were doing this slightly covertly, because the official position of the Catholic Church has been since about 1995 that for a same-sex couple to parent a child is exactly like child abuse.
When Massachusetts recognised same-sex marriages, the church hierarchy in Massachusetts declared that they didn’t want Catholic Charities to be “compelled” to assess same-sex couples as adoptive parents exactly as they would mixed-sex parents, and then it came out that this was exactly what CC had, in fact, already been doing: and then the church hierarchy – not the state of Massachusetts – forced Catholic Charities to close down.
Joseph Ratzinger, who is heavily implicated in several cover-up operations with regard to abusive priests, wrote the doctrinal instructions to the faithful that they must regard same-sex couples as child abusers – and not the priestly sort who can always be supported and given a second chance, either.
Very good post. Talking NEVER hurt!
I think, for them, it was personally knowing a gay person and being able to see them as a person.
I agree. For some (maybe many?) people, the issue isn’t so much marriage per se as it is recognizing that homosexuals are normal people. My parents did a 180 regarding gay marriage when they learned that one of my brother’s school teachers was gay. Once they had someone in their lives that they could connect with the word gay, they were going on and on about how stupid it was to keep those people, their friends, from getting married.
And Seb, this was a good post. I especially like the planting seeds comment.
I’ve seen several people suggest that the solution to the problem is to make marriage a purely religious institution; then we can implement “civil unions for everyone” to handle the legal side. I think these proposals are well-intentioned, but they ignore the importance of symbolism in human life. I’m not religious in any conventional sense, but would I be content with a civil union rather than a marriage? Um, no. Call me a hopeless romantic, but the symbolic aspects of my marriage are very important to me. From speaking with my gay family members, I know that they feel the same way.
Also, I don’t think that the civil union proposal really gets at the core of the problem, which is the notion that gay partnerships are somehow “less” than heterosexual marriages. It is the underlying bigotry that we somehow need to address, and I think that Sebastian is right about the best way to tackle it.
The fundamentalists are going to be tough, though. Many of them can be brought around to the idea that gay people are “okay,” but it will be much more difficult to sell the idea that gay marriage is just as meaningful and important as heterosexual marriage. I think that even those who are more tolerant than their peers are still likely to vote for things like Prop 8. Supporting gay marriage really amounts to relinquishing their fundamentalism, which is a major shift in their worldview. Some will do it, but many will stop short of a full embrace of gay couples as equal in every sense.
in the meantime:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/06/doma/index.html
Oh, and I see freelunch isn’t the only person who has never thought at all about the complications that arise – just for starters – when no American can go anywhere outside the US without first finding out if the country they visit will recognise “civil unions” (which, I can tell you in advance, most won’t).
But if the government lets the churches take the word “marriage” and choses, say, “hinterpix” as the definition of the civil contract, then it can write the definition of “hinterpix” to conform with international law.
====================
Call me a hopeless romantic, but the symbolic aspects of my marriage are very important to me. From speaking with my gay family members, I know that they feel the same way.
There would be nothing stopping someone from finding a church (or other group) to perform a “marriage”. Such a ceremony would be personal and symbolic, but wouldn’t have any civil meaning.
=============
The salon article requires a site pass. Can you summarize?
The institution of marriage does not predate the state–at least not the modern institution. Lets not throw around words without grasping their meaning. Marriage–that is a legitimate sexual union between two or more people–always involves a community bigger than those involved in it and only sometimes involves religious communities or duties. Marriage isn’t necessarily a religious sacrament at all. But for the entire history of the US, including the colonies, it has always been a *state function*–that is, the state liscences people to marry, determines who may marry (age of consent laws, consent laws at all) and what marriage means for children and in cases of adultery. OK? Without state definition and control we could have no orderly way of apportioning rights over children, marital property, and marital dissolution. Religious groups have their own rights in determining who they will marry, and who they will divorce or consider divorced, and how they will handle legitimate and illegitimate offspring of unions within and outside their own religious community but those have no force of law that the state can enforce or effect. If the Catholic church wants to call its nuns “married to christ” and the nuns want to come to the state and ask for a divorce the state just throws up its hands and says “we can’t divide the property.” Conversely, if someone has a civil marriage and divorce and wants to get married in the catholic church its up to the church to decide whether they count the first marriage as a marriage or the divorce as a divorce or not for its own purposes.
The logical thing to do is for the state to demand the right to issue liscences to all couples wishing to register their unions legally, wishing to avail themselves of tax breaks, inheritance law, etc… that the state guarantees and treat religious marriage as utterly superficial and epiphenomenal. That already happens, in effect, with muslim marriages for second and third wives. The state just pretends they don’t exist.
The continued dog in the manger attitude of religious communities in this country is simply disgusting. They are protecting rights they aren’t losing, and hurting real people in the meantime. And all because they simply don’t grasp the obvious distinction between sacred marriage and secular marriage.
aimai
Jesurgislac, what makes you think that other countries of the world will recognize gay “marriage”? Problems such as this, regarding international interpretations of United States law, are solved through treaties. As to your view that “marriage” is a recognized institution that can’t be done away with: actually, marriage started out being a religious institution and only became a civil institution to provide a legal remedy for the problem of women being abducted and raped, with the perpetrator claiming the right to do so because the parties were “married”. Statutes regularized a procedure (and evidence) for “marriage” in order that society would know when to prosecute sexual intercourse as a crime. If intercourse occurred after certain formal requirements were met, it was legitimate, even if it occurred in circumstances that we would now call rape. Honestly, except for the religious “sacramental” view of marriage, the history of the civil institution of marriage is tawdry and shameful, based on the idea of women and children are property.
Many people believe the arguments you make for gay marriage are met with a civil union ceremony. Do you have a cheat sheet of federal and other rights granted by marriage that are not granted by a civil union that i could memorize for my conversations with some of those “many people” that i reference? I want to fight for gay marriage, not just civil unions.
Back in the 60’s, when towns in the South were told to integrate public facilities like swimming pools, the response was often to close the pools down.
Let’s not try that with marriage, please. If you don’t like the institution of marriage, there are times and places to express that dislike–but please, not in response to a call for marriage equality.
Back in the 60’s, when towns in the South were told to integrate public facilities like swimming pools, the response was often to close the pools down.
Let’s not try that with marriage, please. If you don’t like the institution of marriage, there are times and places to express that dislike–but please, not in response to a call for marriage equality.
aimai says that: “Without state definition and control we could have no orderly way of apportioning rights over children, marital property, and marital dissolution.”
Actually, “rights” over children exist or don’t exist completely independent of marriage, for children are born quite frequently to couples who aren’t married and the parents’ rights and responsibilities to those children are quite specifically defined in the law. As to property owned by people living in a household, that can be and would best be governed by the law of contract, with certain default “partnership” assumptions being operative without a contract. Any licensing of domestic partnerships should encourage mindful and deliberate partnership agreements. The original purpose of legal marriage (which preceded statutory “divorce”)
oops, got carried away… Sorry. But rea, the problem with marriage is that it is intrinsically flawed as an institution that supports human rights. The last sentence in my last post should have read: “The original purpose of legal marriage (which preceded statutory “divorce”) was to regulate sexual conduct and to “legitimate” children. The first function is a violation of privacy; the second should now simply be a matter of determining parentage – something that can be done with acknowledgment and/or DNA testing.
If we’re faced with a large and politically powerful segment of the population who fear that same-sex marriage will mean the end of marriage as an institution, it seems to me that’s it’s not the best idea to argue that we do need to end marriage as an institution in order to bring about equality.
On the other hand, if you just want to argue that civil marriage and religious marriage are two different things that should be kept separate in our thinking, you’ll have plenty of religious folks on your side, including C.S. Lewis (though he likely never considered extending his argument to same-sex marriages).
As to your view that “marriage” is a recognized institution that can’t be done away with: actually, marriage started out being a religious institution and only became a civil institution to provide a legal remedy for the problem of women being abducted and raped, with the perpetrator claiming the right to do so because the parties were “married”.
This doesn’t sound correct, the part about religious marriage predating civil marriage. Can I see some cites to that effect?
Jeff, the Salon Site Pass just means that you have to watch an ad before being directed to the site. You don’t have to enter any personal information etc.
I imagine a majority of the DC council would vote for same-sex marriage except that such a vote would instantly lead to an unpleasant reaction from Congress, which has the power to overturn anything the council passes. I fear we’re going to have to wait for a while, maybe until Maryland has same-sex marriage and it’s not such an explosive issue.
Thanks for a great post, Sebastian.
I agree that, regardless of what legal steps are taken to secure equal civil rights for gays, the heart of the matter is for people to recognize gays as people like themselves. With that, the legal aspects fall into place fairly easily. Absent that, some folks are going to feel like something is being imposed on them.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s actually appropriate for folks to have certain agendas imposed on them. It’s just much easier for everyone concerned if it’s done through the winning of hearts and minds, rather than through fiat (whether legislative or judicial).
I think the idea of engaging people personally, on the topic in a natural and non-adversarial way — “planting the seeds” — is superb.
It’s one thing to see someone on TV, or read about someone in a newspaper or a magazine, and adopt a hostile attitude toward them. It’s much harder to do that about someone you know, or at least have met, personally and face-to-face.
Boogiemen tend to fade away in the plain light of day.
This is a politically-oriented blog, so the discussion is often in terms of the political dimension of things that are, like this, essential human and social. It’s good to be reminded of the human dimension, that is so accessible to all of us.
Thanks again Seb –
With regards to how to approach people who oppose gay marriage, I think OCSteve also has a good method.
To expand on my earlier story, I used both approaches (emotional and confrontational) with my parents. My mom would’ve felt as if I were attacking her if I said, “What’s it to you?” By appealing to her emotional side, ala Seb’s method, and explaining how Kory just wanted to be happy, just like anyone else getting married, she connected and empathized with him. With my dad, on the other hand, an appeal to his emotions would’ve worked, but asking him how would it affect him was more effective.
How you talk to people all boils down to being wise enough to understand who you’re talking to. Simply by virtue of knowing someone well enough to be comfortable discussing gay marriage usually means you’ll know their personality and how they think.
But, what concerns me, as a Catholic, is whether this starts us down a slippery slope to the point where churches could be forced into performing marriages that are counter to the church’s doctrines. Then it does have what I consider aan unacceptable consequence. And that really causes me pause.
Given that, for years now, the Catholic Church has been able to refuse to perform marriages for divorced people, I don’t see how this is a legitimate fear. Religious groups can always refuse to perform weddings on whatever grounds they like, as I understand it.
If there are religious freedom issues, surely they are on the other side. There are a fair number of liberal religious organization which perform gay marriages. By not recognizing them, and, in particular, not recognizing them on grounds that are, effectively, religious, the state is basically establishing a religion, declaring that conservative religious groups that refuse to marry gay people are more legitimate than liberal religious groups that are happy to do so.
Sapient: Jesurgislac, what makes you think that other countries of the world will recognize gay “marriage”?
You mean like Israel, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, France… just off the top of my head, this is. I know there are more on the list. A couple who are legally married have the strongest possible legal claim in another country to be recognised as legally married.
Jeff: But if the government lets the churches take the word “marriage” and choses, say, “hinterpix” as the definition of the civil contract, then it can write the definition of “hinterpix” to conform with international law.
I think you’re a little confused. The US government cannot rewrite the legislation of other countries to require them to accept a US hinterpix as equivalent to legal marriage. A country that wants to do so, could: a country that feels it’s a complete piece of nonsense need not: most countries would probably just ignore the situation until something happened, like an American dying in a foreign country and his/her hinterpix trying to convince officials that because they’re registered hinterpix that really does mean the same thing as marriage: which, if that means omitting inheritance tax, is not going to happen.
Warren Terra: On a related note, Jes, unsubstantiated accusations that millions of votes were discarded seem deeply inappropriate.
Unsubstantiated claims that you’re sure that – unlike in 2000 and 2004 – that just didn’t happen – seem equally inappropriate.
But, what concerns me, as a Catholic, is whether this starts us down a slippery slope to the point where churches could be forced into performing marriages that are counter to the church’s doctrines.
This is one of those arguments that supporters of gay marriage find absurd, but opponents believe wholeheartedly (probably because their priests and ministers tell them it’s true).
Churches aren’t obligated to marry anybody and can freely discriminate against heterosexual couples today – most obviously against anybody who isn’t a church member, but also against anybody who doesn’t live according to the laws of the church. They can refuse to marry divorced people. They can refuse to marry couples of mixed religions. They can refuse to marry ex-priests or nuns. They could even refuse to marry interracial couples.
This is a difference between the state’s recognition of marriage and a church’s recognition of marriage. They aren’t the same thing at all, but most Americans don’t see the difference.
But rea, the problem with marriage is that it is intrinsically flawed as an institution that supports human rights.
I don’t care; at least, not in this context.
The flaws of marriage as an institution are not relevant when the topic under discussion is whether GLBT couples ought to be allowed to marry. If there were a rule providing that only straights are entitled to elephant manure, I’d stand up and demand that my inalienable right to elephant manure be respected.
Actually, no: claiming with certainty that the electoral rigging that went on in 2000, 2004, and 2006, just didn’t happen this time, seems grossly inappropriate. Obama has a narrow window during which he can call for an investigation / electoral reform, having just won the election. Don’t presume it didn’t happen just because it didn’t work this time.
Churches aren’t obligated to marry anybody and can freely discriminate against heterosexual couples today
Heck my wife’s church wouldn’t marry us because we were living in sin at the time. We would have had to go through some bizarre cleansing process first (live apart, abstain from sex, get church counseling…). Yeah right…
But rea, the problem with marriage is that it is intrinsically flawed as an institution that supports human rights.
I don’t care; at least, not in this context.
The flaws of marriage as an institution are not relevant when the topic under discussion is whether GLBT couples ought to be allowed to marry. If there were a rule providing that only straights are entitled to elephant manure, I’d stand up and demand that my inalienable right to elephant manure be respected.
I think John makes an interesting point here. I’m not sure how effective it would be at persuading fence-sitters. However, it could be an interesting legal argument at the federal level. Any thoughts from lawyers or other legal types?
The flaws of marriage as an institution are not relevant when the topic under discussion is whether GLBT couples ought to be allowed to marry.
I’ll second that. Whether marriage is a flawed institution is irrelevant. Married couples are given distinct rights and privileges under the law. I don’t care whether anybody in particular recognizes equal rights or not, but I do care that the government does.
KC in DC, I believe in equality, and I certainly don’t believe in passing measures such as Prop 8 to deny people equality. I merely question why a large segment of the population wants to buy into a very flawed institution instead of taking advantage of initiatives to encourage a new kind of institution, available to all, which is nondiscriminatory and not based on religious views of how sexuality should be regulated. After all, homosexuality is one of many traditionally forbidden modes of sexual expression. Sexual regulation (through marriage, birth control and abortion laws, prostitution laws and otherwise) has caused all kinds of nasty consequences to various people. Why not look at the source?
As to cites about the history of marriage, since “marriage” is a cultural institution taking many forms throughout the world, it’s hard to generalize, but in western culture, marriage was (in Rome) a private contract, then when the church became involved in governing Christian Europe, marriage was institutionalized as part of the church then made its way into statutory law from there. I did research on this subject many years ago, but important for everyone, gay and straight, to read is the work of John Boswell, particularly _Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality_ and _The Kindness of Strangers: Child Abandonment in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance_. These works, while not dealing exclusively with the history of marriage, certainly touch on the issues involved, and made me question how marriage evolved and why we “cling” to it as some kind of social good, when in fact it can be an isolating force in our society that protects domestic nightmares for many people. Obviously, good relationships between loving people are wonderful, but whether the institution of marriage really supports good relationships is a legitimate question and one that should be answered before extending the institution to even more potential victims.
I believe in equality under the law, as I’ve stated. I think when we’re having a discussion about whether marriage should be extended, it’s important to discuss what marriage is. Many people in our society believe that marriage is an institution between a man and a woman that regulates the natural procreative function. Certainly if that’s a legitimate definition of what marriage is, it makes sense to limit it to those who can naturally procreate together. I have argued that marriage is not that, but is a religiously based institution that regulates sexual conduct in such a way as to violate the constitutional rights of all people. I do not believe that an unconstitutional state institution should be recognized or extended. As I said, I would never support legislation (or propositions) that would deny equal rights to gay people or any other people, so I certainly would not have supported Prop 8. And sure, talking to bigoted people about one’s gay friends, and introducing everyone around is way cool.
There would be nothing stopping someone from finding a church (or other group) to perform a “marriage”. Such a ceremony would be personal and symbolic, but wouldn’t have any civil meaning.
I think this rather misses the point. Marriage is a societal symbol. It is one way (not the only way, but certainly a very important one) of signaling that you are forming a new family. The fact that marriage is recognized as such by society as a whole is part of its symbolic power.
I believe that many gay couples would like to be regarded as families in the same way that married heterosexual couples are. If we grant the full symbolic significance (as well as the legal protections) of marriage to these couples, it sends a powerful message. Otherwise, we are signaling that committed gay relationships don’t have quite the same status as heterosexual relationships do. Either way, the signaling is very important. This is one reason that gay marriage is such a big deal for both its proponents and its opponents.
“But, what concerns me, as a Catholic, is whether this starts us down a slippery slope to the point where churches could be forced into performing marriages that are counter to the church’s doctrines.”
But Catholic marriage is a sacrament (as you know, & surely far better than I, who had to double-check). For the gov’t to force Catholic churches* to perform un-doctrinal marriages would (surely) be equivalent to the gov’t insisting that Catholic churches must allow anyone to take Communion, on anti-discrimination grounds – not just grossly inappropriate, but wildly unconstitutional (the whole 1st amendment thing, y’know). In the rather unlikely circumstance that there was a serious attempt to make Catholic clergy perform gay marriage, you and the Church would have the support not just of this pro-gay marriage atheist, but the ACLU, etc.
“They’re going to make your church perform gay marriages” was and is an ungrounded fear that was encouraged by the Prop 8 campaign (knowingly bearing false witness or not). I hope the comments here have reassured you, and that you’ll help keep others from being misled. If you’re still concerned on this specific point, what is it that has you worried?
In the next weeks and months, talk to some generally good but misguided people you know about why marriage is so important.
I think the key is to understand why people voted for Prop 8 in the first place.
The “Yes on 8” forces put a lot of effort into making a winning argument. Notably their campaign didn’t dwell on gay marriage, gay sex, or pictures of characters dressed like the village people. They personalized the issue to potential supporters (your children being taught about lesbians; unelected courts forcing gay marriage on you; the threat to your marriage; preservation of your “traditions”; forcing your church to violate its own doctrine, etc.)
They also explicitly argued that civil unions were entirely equivalent to marriage, they just wanted to keep the word itself.
The authors of Prop 8 undoubtedly believe that gays are an abomination, but many of those who voted “Yes” don’t. Those are your persuadable voters. Convince them that the above arguments are false, personalize those who are the targets of Prop 8 and you’ll find a winning coalition to reverse it.
You don’t have to convince people to like gay marriage, just to hate bigotry.
I merely question why a large segment of the population wants to buy into a very flawed institution instead of taking advantage of initiatives to encourage a new kind of institution, available to all, which is nondiscriminatory and not based on religious views of how sexuality should be regulated.
Because they’re practical. Marriage as a legal institution in the United States is going precisely nowhere. The notion that there will be a political consensus for replacing marriage with some sort of universal civil union is ridiculous. People are irrational. They are especially irrational when it comes to things relating to their most intimate affairs, like, oh, societal recognition of their life long marital vows. Right now, many many people have all sorts of intense emotional associations with the word marriage, and they’re not going to give that word up no matter how wonderful a bundle of legal rights you construct under the term civil union.
Right now, there is no consensus for building a totally new institution which is not based on religious views at all. And while the institution of marriage may seem deeply and fundamentally flawed to you, most married people don’t see it that way, or at least don’t see lots of problems that could be easily rectified with a different legal definition.
Politically, there is a lot more support for the notion of expanding this institution, however flawed it might be, that many people consider to be absolutely central to their lives than there is for abolishing it and creating some new strange institution just to help the gays out. Do you see the distinction?
After all, homosexuality is one of many traditionally forbidden modes of sexual expression.
Homosexuality is not legally forbidden in the US.
Sexual regulation (through marriage, birth control and abortion laws, prostitution laws and otherwise) has caused all kinds of nasty consequences to various people. Why not look at the source?
Because there is no political consensus for radical changes in all those areas of law. If there was, we should have no difficulty getting any single aspect of those laws changed.
Many people in our society believe that marriage is an institution between a man and a woman that regulates the natural procreative function. Certainly if that’s a legitimate definition of what marriage is, it makes sense to limit it to those who can naturally procreate together.
Yes, and those same people who argue that marriage “regulates the natural procreative function” and is banned to all those who cannot procreate together, get all pissy when you point out that in that case, no man with a vasectomy and no woman with her tubes tied/who is past the menopause can legally get married in the US. Nor do they explain why in their view adopted children and foster children are better off with unmarried parents.
I have argued that marriage is not that, but is a religiously based institution that regulates sexual conduct in such a way as to violate the constitutional rights of all people.
You are as wrong as the homophobes who claim that their justification for banning same-sex marriage is that same-sex couples aren’t interfertile. Civil marriage is not a religiously-based institution, and makes no attempt to regulate sexual conduct.
All the “why don’t we just let the churches take the word ‘marriage’, and make up a different secular thing” arguments, and the similar-but-different “why do you want to buy into such a flawed institution” thing, remind me of a certain type of engineer.
This type of engineer, if asked a question like “How do I get MIDI synthesizer X to work properly with Computer Y, so I can play my music on it?”, will give one of the following answers:
“Get rid of that synthesizer and get brand Z. No serious techie would use that kind of synthesizer.”
“Get rid of that computer. No serious musician would use that kind of computer.”
“Get two other computers and hook them all up together in the following way. You won’t be able to play music, but it’ll be great for analyzing radio signals from space.”
“Why do you want to play music? I don’t like your music.”
Turbulence and others, Sebastion tells me that (if I support gay rights): “In the next weeks and months, talk to some generally good but misguided people you know about why marriage is so important.” No. Marriage is not important. Marriage is a crock. And Turbulence, just because people have irrational emotional attachments to the concept of marriage does not mean that it’s a good thing or that I need to support it. By the way, Turbulence, I didn’t say that homosexuality is currently forbidden in the U.S. I said that it’s a “traditionally” forbidden form of sexual conduct. In very recent history (most of my lifetime), it has been taboo and illegal. I’m not condoning that “tradition”.
Also (and pardon me if I’m repeating myself – I can’t remember which blog I said this on before)… the argument that “churches got involved in marriage at an early date, so that word is inextricably tied to religion now” could also produce the following conclusion:
– People have always disposed of dead bodies in various ways.
– From the dawn of history, religious traditions have had their own preferred methods of disposing of dead bodies, and rituals around same.
– To be a truly secular society, we must either avoid burial and cremation and come up with some all-new method, or stop using the words “burial” and “cremation” and make up new words.
Jesurgilsac, apparently you’ve never practiced domestic relations law in Virginia where adultery is grounds for divorce.
Sapient: What makes you think there aren’t gay people who totally agree with your view of marriage, and would like to have the option of explicitly choosing not to partake?
I know at least one person who was really happy that he could finally just be a single guy with a steady boyfriend, and not have people assume that he would naturally get married if only he could.
Also: I have trouble believing that you would have applied the same principled stand to interracial couples 50 years ago, and told the Lovings that marriage was a crock and that they had to be more radical to deserve your support. I don’t know, maybe you would have. I know it’s not uncommon for queer radicals to express something along the lines of: stupid social constructs are fine for straights, but we must be better than that, we are the vanguard… I say phooey. No one’s making you “support” anything, but I think it’s neither respectful nor humane to simply dismiss some people’s basic desire for some good version of the kind of life they understand, just because you think it’s not cool.
Sapient, couples divorcing in many states can use “adultery” as official grounds for quick divorce.
They are not, however, compelled to do so.
You would have a case that the government uses marriage to regulate sexual behavior if the government forced divorce on any married couple when one had committing adultery. Since it’s entirely up to the couple concerned if they divorce, or if they even cite adultery as the grounds for divorce, clearly it’s not the government regulating sexual behavior…
I lost a few comments I was going to make, but they’re largely over-shadowed by this:
The notion that there will be a political consensus for replacing marriage with some sort of universal civil union is ridiculous. People are irrational. They are especially irrational when it comes to things relating to their most intimate affairs, like, oh, societal recognition of their life long marital vows.
I have to agree with this. For all the logical reasons that separating “marriage” (as a Church function) and “civil union” (as a State function), they don’t over-ride the fact that a heck of a lot of people are invested in “marriage” as a hybrid Church-State function.
Oh, and Turbulence, adultery is also a crime in Virginia (and probably elsewhere).
People who argue that marriage should be supported because “society is invested in it” should not be offended by the idea that slavery should be supported because “society is invested in it”. The idea of progressive society and, at least, intellectual inquiry is to question whether society should be invested in it. I’m not anxious to persuade anyone not to get married, just as I’m not anxious to persuade anyone to get an abortion. But to try to persuade people to expand the institution of marriage because lots of people, for irrational reasons, support it seems kind of absurd. Again, I decline to do what Sebastian asks, although I’m happy to commune with gay folks and introduce them to bigoted folks if it helps everyone get along.
Why not do what we have control over, like get the government out of the marriage business?
You got it all backwards: get the churches out of the marriage business.
They discriminate against people on a large scale and they always want to have it both ways: operate as a business, but claim tax exemptions, get their share of the adoption market, but not be bound by the requisite laws, have catholic priests molest little children, but solve the problem “internally”. These gray areas have to be cleaned up by the state and the hypocrisy has to stop.
Because it seems to me that what will keep driving our culture in the direction of being more accepting is the sheer boring ordinariness of increasingly large numbers of gay people – friends, neighbors, coworkers and other associates, who for ever larger numbers of Americans are simply no longer a novelty or even particularly noteworthy, they are just one of us.
Yeah, that’s an interesting point along with the touching personal stories. The truth about how we’ve won our rights so far is that we have to come out and be really dull. Typical. Boring.
And the good news is, for those in my generation this is easy.
The hard news is, it seems that those who are only slightly older have a hard time taking the emotional risks that accompany living a happy, healthy, well adjusted openly gay life.
I guess now that we have a Congressman who was elected while gay, and a state treasurer, the argument that I’m limiting how far I can go in life because everyone who’s ever met me knows I’m gay…might begin to die out.
That would be nice.
In answer to your underlying question, you don’t need to do a lot more, though your help is appreciated; we need to live our lives with patient and fearless love.
Jesurgislac, “couples” don’t use adultery as a quick way to get a divorce. One party uses “adultery” as grounds for divorce in order to humiliate and coerce the other into agreements that the “guilty” spouse might not otherwise make. Again, you obviously don’t have experience in places where this is an issue. Or perhaps (like lots of people who refuse to look at progressive arguments for change) the issue just hasn’t affected YOU in a negative way.
Actually, Hob, I assume that there are gay people who agree with me. I am a citizen. I pay taxes to support a very expensive system where courts are clogged with nasty divorce cases with people fighting over responsibilities they didn’t even understand or knowingly agree to. If it’s “sacred” go to church and get married, for God’s sake. If you want certain, defined rights, sign a contract.
Marriage is not important. Marriage is a crock.
OK…I don’t think this is the majority viewpoint in the US. I think many many people believe that marriage is very important to them. If you disagree, then by all means, ignore Seb’s request. I think that Seb (quite reasonably IMHO) assumed that most people believe that marriage is important and not a crock. The fact that most people think marriage very important does not necessarily mean that those people are right, but it does mean that any political campaign predicated on the opposing belief will be extremely unlikely to succeed.
But perhaps I’m wrong. Do you think that people who think marriage is important and not a crock will be interested in supporting major political and social change geared to eliminating marriage as we know it? And do you think that a large fraction of the electorate share your belief that marriage is not important and a total crock?
Turbulence, I don’t propose to “eliminate marriage as we know it”. I’m suggesting that people who post on this blog (who seem to be people who like to think about things rather than merely accepting them as being what “most people want”) might consider that gay and straight people who support equal rights might consider joining together to support a nonsexist celebration of their union through domestic partnership laws, which would require mindful, knowing assent to certain contractual terms between parties who are committed to sharing their lives (permanently or not). I don’t see what’s wrong with encouraging people to think about what all of this actually means. Over half of the voters in California, a “progressive” state, didn’t accept the concept of gay marriage. Maybe it’s not because they don’t accept “gay” – maybe it’s that they (that majority of society whose unthinking support of marriage you respect) see marriage as the limiting and undesirable institution that I believe it is.
“Actually, “rights” over children exist or don’t exist completely independent of marriage, for children are born quite frequently to couples who aren’t married and the parents’ rights and responsibilities to those children are quite specifically defined in the law.”
This is not entirely true and where it is partially true is the result of changes, fairly recent changes, in the laws to permit illegitimate children to have legal claims on their fathers regardless of the marital status of the parents. Until fairly recently such children did not have rights of inheritance or support from their fathers. And absent marriage such children don’t have full rights now although they may have some rights. Child support and court ordered visitation rights are all ways in which the state steps in where marriage doesn’t exist or has dissolved but the position of the children of married couples is substantially different from the position of illegitimate children.
aimai
Over half of the voters in California, a “progressive” state, didn’t accept the concept of gay marriage. Maybe it’s not because they don’t accept “gay” – maybe it’s that they (that majority of society whose unthinking support of marriage you respect) see marriage as the limiting and undesirable institution that I believe it is.
I think this is a highly dubious proposition.
I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley — one of the areas of California that voted for Prop 8. It’s quite conservative. I certainly didn’t see much evidence there of the kind of thinking you suggest.
Remember Occam’s Razor. In this case, the simple and obvious explanation is probably the right one.
I believe that many gay couples would like to be regarded as families in the same way that married heterosexual couples are.
I think this is the heart of it.
And the reason they would like to be regarded in that way is because they *are* families in the same way that married heterosexual couples are.
I hope the gay folks here will forgive me if I speak for them, but from what I can see the “gay agenda” consists of wanting to be treated like everyone else. No more and no less.
Marriage is not important. Marriage is a crock.
That’s an interesting perspective, but I think you’ll find that it’s a non-starter as a basis for public policy.
Thanks –
aimai,
In what way do “illegitimate” (no longer a term widely used in the law) children have fewer rights than children of married couples?
Sapient: Jesurgislac, “couples” don’t use adultery as a quick way to get a divorce.
In any jurisdiction where it’s much faster to get a divorce if you claim adultery happened than it is to go the “no fault” route, yes, indeed they do.
One party uses “adultery” as grounds for divorce in order to humiliate and coerce the other into agreements that the “guilty” spouse might not otherwise make.
Ah: the bad divorce syndrome. Yes, people often are mean to each other when breaking up. Sorry, you’re still not making your case that this is the government using marriage to regulate sexual behavior.
Over half of the voters in California, a “progressive” state, didn’t accept the concept of gay marriage. Maybe it’s not because they don’t accept “gay” – maybe it’s that they (that majority of society whose unthinking support of marriage you respect) see marriage as the limiting and undesirable institution that I believe it is.
Good God. If you actually believe this, you are stupider than I thought. Do you?
Marriage is not important. Marriage is a crock.
It doesn’t matter if you feel this way. What matters is whether people who want to get married can get married.
Like it or not, it’s an legally recognized option that the majority of us can take or leave as we wish. Our objection is that people are passing laws to explicitly prohibit others from doing the same.
russell, others,
If gay people desperately want to get married, keep fighting by all means! If gay people need the imprimatur of society on their sexual unions, go for it, by all means! If straight people never want to examine social institutions (no matter how expensive and fruitless, and in many cases destructive) because they are political “nonstarters”, please go ahead and ignore! Don’t ask questions, keep supporting idiocy! There’s not one substantive comment here that argues why “marriage” is desirable, why people should support it over domestic partnerships, why gay people (who represent at least 10% of the population) shouldn’t take their straight friends in the direction of something better… No. Instead, on this progressive, smart people’s blog, all I’m seeing are remarks equivalent to “ooo – that’s weird”. Does it ever occur to anyone that Muslims might feel discrimination because they’re allowed four wives? Or that the Supreme Court decision against polygamy was discriminatory against Mormons? What does marriage mean to you guys exactly? If it’s just a celebration of love, why not have a party? Do you (progressive?) people really believe that two sexually faithful people should have superior legal rights to people who can’t make that commitment? Why?
Jesurgislac: You obviously don’t know anything about domestic relations law. But that’s okay with me – I’m convinced that the people who comment here aren’t interested in the substance behind the marriage issue. Yes, I’m stupid as hell, Jusergislac. If I had a line item veto over my tax expenditures, I’d cross out any support for the subsidies I spend on other people’s domestic arrangements: marriage and divorce. Party all day long about your love affair – but when it dies, don’t tax me. And I’m NOT a libertarian. (P.S. Why should I care whether you want to get married?) Although I would have voted “No” on Prop 8, after this discussion and the mindless support of marriage by the people commenting, I think I’d vote yes now.
There’s not one substantive comment here that argues why “marriage” is desirable, why people should support it over domestic partnerships, why gay people (who represent at least 10% of the population) shouldn’t take their straight friends in the direction of something better…
Marriage is desirable because I like it and I have a one or two hundred million friends that agree with me. I could go into detail about why I like it, but given that I have hundreds of millions of people who agree, I don’t feel the need. We might be stupid, but that’s OK. If you want to make the case that we’re all wrong and that life would be so much better if we replaced marriage with…what?…then go right ahead. But until you do, I’m not going to just assume that marriage should be replaced by some unspecified institution simply because you insist.
Does it ever occur to anyone that Muslims might feel discrimination because they’re allowed four wives?
Not particularly. The reason Islam allows men to have multiple wives was so that widows and orphans might have an option besides death by starvation 1300 years ago. Since then, our society has changed dramatically and woman and children can now survive perfectly well without a husband/father. One might examine the rate of multiple wife households in various Islamic countries to see how relevant this aspect of Islam has proven to be in the modern world.
Or that the Supreme Court decision against polygamy was discriminatory against Mormons?
Again, not particularly. The last time I looked, all the break away Mormon fundamentalist communities that embraced polygamy looked to me like hell on earth. I would rather die than live in one of the FLDS communities.
If it’s just a celebration of love, why not have a party?
Marriage is not just a celebration of love, it is also a structure of interlocking legal obligations. There does not appear to be a large enough movement of polygamous people seeking legal recognition to justify changing family law. If you have some statistics indicating otherwise, I’d love to see them.
Well, Turbulence, aren’t you just a “majority rules” type of person? Fine – sad about that Bill o’ Rights though. Since the majority (in CA, and overwhelmingly in the US for that matter) just told me that they hate gay people and they’d like to tell them to fuck off, you should, by your own logic, be in favor of that too! By your formula, that’s A-OK! Since I’m following your logic, I’ll be against gay people – after all, what is a “large enough” movement anyway? Is it a small or fairly small or kind o’ big group of people who actually think about what it is they’re supporting?
BTW, I wasn’t really championing polygamy, although how many polygamists do I need to start a legitimate movement?
Oh, and Turbulence: as to the “structure of interlocking legal obligations”: what are they exactly? And if you can’t name them all, don’t you wish you could know what your obligations are before you enter the commitment? Like a contract? I mean a domestic contract? I mean … a domestic partnership contract? I mean what I said before?
There’s not one substantive comment here that argues why “marriage” is desirable
It appears to be something humans like to do. Some other species, too, although certainly not all. It appears to be a social expression of an adaptive strategy that humans find useful. It works about as well as any other human institution does, and better than lots.
why people should support it over domestic partnerships
I don’t think anyone does. Whatever floats your boat.
why gay people (who represent at least 10% of the population) shouldn’t take their straight friends in the direction of something better…
As above, whatever floats your boat. If you want to go somewhere better, have at it.
Gay folks are just asking that they be allowed to float the same set of boats as the rest of us.
No. Instead, on this progressive, smart people’s blog, all I’m seeing are remarks equivalent to “ooo – that’s weird”.
No, I think what you’re seeing is “ooo – but lots of folks want to get married, regardless of your opinion of marriage”.
We’re not all at your level of consciousness, apparently.
Does it ever occur to anyone that Muslims might feel discrimination because they’re allowed four wives?
Yes.
Or that the Supreme Court decision against polygamy was discriminatory against Mormons?
Yes.
What does marriage mean to you guys exactly?
Marriage means I get to begin and end each and every one of my days by my wife’s side. That does it for me.
If it’s just a celebration of love, why not have a party?
We did.
Do you (progressive?) people really believe that two sexually faithful people should have superior legal rights to people who can’t make that commitment?
That’s actually a very reasonable question.
Why?
It appears to result in some benefits to society at large. Stability, mostly, and a structure for raising children, and a structure around which communities seem to organize themselves.
Probably not the only possible one, just a very common and, historically, popular one.
Dude, if you don’t want to get married, nobody will make you. But lots of other folks do. Call us deluded if you wish, but there it is.
Pretty much anyone that wants to, can, if they so choose, except (in most parts of the country) gay folks.
They’d just like the same deal as the rest of us.
That is all.
Thanks –
Sapient, did you go through a messy divorce? As in, the kind of divorce where you discover that you’re on the hook for all sorts of obligations, obligations that you would have avoided by writing a prenuptial agreement if you had known they exist.
Well, Turbulence, aren’t you just a “majority rules” type of person?
When it comes to evaluating feasibility of political change, then yes, yes I am a majority rules kind of person. I’m open to the possibility of change where most of the population currently doesn’t agree with you, but I think that can only work when you can credibly argue that the public will agree with you after you explain things to them. Your proposal fails that test. So far, all you’ve done is convince me that its advocates are really bad at convincing anyone of anything.
Since I’m following your logic, I’ll be against gay people – after all, what is a “large enough” movement anyway? Is it a small or fairly small or kind o’ big group of people who actually think about what it is they’re supporting?
Well, 48% of CA voters were against prop 8. Show me that even half that number of people agree with you that marriage is not important and that marriage is a total crock and then we can talk.
as to the “structure of interlocking legal obligations”: what are they exactly?
I’m not your wikipedia. If you want to learn about legal obligations associated with marriage in your jurisdiction, I suggest you check your state goverment’s website or better yet, consult with legal counsel.
And if you can’t name them all, don’t you wish you could know what your obligations are before you enter the commitment?
I find your speculation as to what I might or might not wish to be…boring. I know my legal obligations well enough, thank you very much.
russell,
First of all, thanks for your answers, which are thoughtful. But…
Do you really think that communities organize themselves around people who are “married” in the legal sense? I know of communities which organize themselves around work, around single people, around friends, etc. It’s kind of creepy that many feel that they have to find a “forever” sexual partner in order to be part of a community. I think that ancient cultures did have certain marriage and family customs, mostly as an economic necessity. But now, single or alternative lifestyle people feel left out or discriminated against. Do we really think that single parenthood is less “legitimate” than married parenthood these days? I mean, my first reaction to the Palin pregnant child and her marriage plans was “Is this really your idea, and is it well-considered?” But, of course, the fundies would say: Oh, procreation is so great, but you must get married!!!! (And this is totally skipping the abortion issue.) I just think it’s incumbent upon thinking people to question whether a state sanctioned “marriage” is a good idea. A Catholic sacrament? Sure. A Baptist celebration of fidelity? Sure. A Mormon whatever? Whatever. But a City Hall “you gotta have sex with him and not him” ? Nope – what’s the point except to regulate sexuality? How can that be good?
Turbulence, No, I did not go through a messy divorce. I have, however, been counsel in many messy divorces. I know full well what my own rights are, and am glad that you know (or claim to know) what yours are. I have met many people who had no idea what they were doing (legally) when they got married. I won’t bore you further by asking you to consider through this discussion what exactly marriage means.
Interesting: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/15/america/web.1015wed.php
Not hundreds of millions, Turbulence. At least not in the U.S.
Sapient, you are correct, I should have said tens of millions.
The thing that kills me is that the government has no role to play in marriage. Marriage is a religious thing, and it should be left there. The government’s job is to sanction civil unions to allow people to come together and enjoy rights as partners. They should leave it at that.
The thing that kills me is that the government has no role to play in marriage. Marriage is a religious thing, and it should be left there. The government’s job is to sanction civil unions to allow people to come together and enjoy rights as partners. They should leave it at that.
My Informed Opinions Profile
Well, okay, Turbulence. Let me propose a definition of marriage as it was (and is in many cases) traditionally perceived: A contract between a man and a woman whereby any child conceived by the woman would be considered to have been fathered by the man.
Divorce, property rights, etc. – those all came with divorce law – something that wasn’t invented until much, much later. Okay, gay people! Tell me why you want to buy into that – OWN THAT UTERUS!
Thank you, Chris W!!!!
“Do you really think that communities organize themselves around people who are “married” in the legal sense?”
I don’t know what russell thinks, but that really does often seem to be the case. Part of the confusion is that you seem to be taking “communities” in the (for example) “online communities” sense, as opposed to the “these are the people in my neighborhood” sense. Gesellschaft vs. Gemeinschaft. Sorta kinda.
Not exclusively, with a great deal of cross-cutting and overlay, and there are a range of exceptions: the bohemian archipelago, and what seems increasingly to be a generalized low-income pattern, but . . . yeah.
Dan S, I guess it depends on what neighborhood you live in. Most of my friendships were formed through work. I would hate to think that the 1/2 of people who aren’t married aren’t involved in any sort of community, or that they don’t have neighborhoods, or that their neighborhoods don’t welcome them. If so, this issue is a way bigger problem than I first suggested.
Do you really think that communities organize themselves around people who are “married” in the legal sense?
Yes, definitely. It’s the oikios. It goes back a long, long way.
I know of communities which organize themselves around work, around single people, around friends, etc.
Same here.
The question is not whether marriage is the ONLY social structure. The question is whether marriage, as a social structure, should be denied to gays.
It’s kind of creepy that many feel that they have to find a “forever” sexual partner in order to be part of a community.
That’s really not where I’m coming from.
Married couples are a very common form of household unit. Not the only possible one, just a very, very common one. Human communities quite commonly organize themselves around household units.
That’s all I’m saying.
I think that ancient cultures did have certain marriage and family customs, mostly as an economic necessity.
I think “necessity” is too strong. To be quite honest, I think it’s just a natural human tendency. Not the only possible way to go, but a common one.
It’s common enough, and useful enough, that lots of governments grant it some privileges. Gay folks just want to be granted the same privileges as those that are granted to straight folks.
But now, single or alternative lifestyle people feel left out or discriminated against. Do we really think that single parenthood is less “legitimate” than married parenthood these days?
I do not.
As mentioned above, an exclusive couple bond, recognized as such by the community, is not the ONLY possible family structure. It just happens to be a common one, one with a long human history, and one to which we grant some legal privileges.
The question on the table is not whether other forms of family structure should also receive equal respect and/or legal sanction. That is an interesting question, but it’s not the question raised by Prop 8.
The question on the table is whether the legal sanction granted to STRAIGHT married couples should also be available to GAY married couples.
But a City Hall “you gotta have sex with him and not him” ? Nope – what’s the point except to regulate sexuality? How can that be good?
The idea here, as I understand it, is that two people agree of their own free will to assume certain obligations and responsibilities toward each other. Sexual fidelity is one of them, but it’s not the only one.
And, you know, nobody makes you do it. Noone is required by the state to marry. Nobody is going to regulate your sexual behavior against your will. At least, not as regards whether you get married or not.
I’m not trying to talk you into getting married. I’m just pointing out that marriage as an institution exists, has a very, very long history, appears to be fairly natural to human beings, and receives certain privileges under law.
The question of whether those facts *should* exist is an interesting one, although one that I, personally, think is kind of academic. But it is interesting.
But the fact is that those facts *do* exist, and the privileges that accrue to married couples under law are denied to gay couples.
I can’t think of any good reason why that should be so.
If you are interested in fighting the marriage powers that be, go for it and good luck to you. I, personally, think marriage exists as an institution because human beings tend toward exclusive pair bonds, so it doesn’t bug me. But do not let my point of view stand in your way.
My only point here is that, since we do recognize marriage, and give it certain legal privileges, those privileges should not be denied to gay couples who decide that they’d like to be married.
Thanks –
“? I mean, my first reaction to the Palin pregnant child and her marriage plans was “Is this really your idea, and is it well-considered?””
Sure – same here, more or less – but for a lot of folks, it’s not so much a legitimate/illegitimate thing (in either sense), but more of a timing/life cycle issue. Not so much that she was planning to get married to her baby’s daddy, but that they were both kids. It’s a very tiny bit like had decided to buy a relatively substantial house with a hefty mortgage together, (except for all the ways it isn’t) – a big challenge for anyone, and not one that kids have the best chance at. There’s a certain middle class model where you spend these years and more getting education and experience, then get married, spend time getting to a good solid place in one’s both professional and personal life and then – probably, but not guaranteed – have a small number of children (or just one). As Margaret Talbot put in it a recent New Yorker piece on Red Sex. Blue Sex,
“Of all variables, the age at marriage may be the pivotal difference between red and blue families. The five states with the lowest median age at marriage are . . . all red states, while those with the highest are all blue . . . The red-state model puts couples at greater risk for divorce; women who marry before their mid-twenties are significantly more likely to divorce than those who marry later. And younger couples are more likely to be contending with two of the biggest stressors on a marriage: financial struggles and the birth of a baby before, or soon after, the wedding.
There are, of course, plenty of exceptions to these rules . . .. Still, Cahn and Carbone conclude, “the paradigmatic red-state couple enters marriage not long after the woman becomes sexually active, has two children by her mid-twenties, and reaches the critical period of marriage at the high point in the life cycle for risk-taking and experimentation. The paradigmatic blue-state couple is more likely to experiment with multiple partners, postpone marriage until after they reach emotional and financial maturity, and have their children (if they have them at all) as their lives are stabilizing.”
Some of these differences in sexual behavior come down to class and education. Regnerus and Carbone and Cahn all see a new and distinct “middle-class morality” taking shape among economically and socially advantaged families who are not social conservatives. In Regnerus’s survey, the teen-agers who espouse this new morality are tolerant of premarital sex (and of contraception and abortion) but are themselves cautious about pursuing it. Regnerus writes, “They are interested in remaining free from the burden of teenage pregnancy and the sorrows and embarrassments of sexually transmitted diseases. They perceive a bright future for themselves, one with college, advanced degrees, a career, and a family. Simply put, too much seems at stake. “
Of course, for lots of other kids, it’s as if they looked at their likely future, not unreasonably decided that wasn’t gonna look anything like the ones those teen-agers saw, and made what seemed like the best fitting choice. (I stress as if).
“ Let me propose a definition of marriage as it was (and is in many cases) traditionally perceived: A contract between a man and a woman whereby any child conceived by the woman would be considered to have been fathered by the man.”
Traditionally marriage has had a lot to do with that; of course, it’s increasingly, here, shifted into being about two adults who love each other in a fairly specific set of ways, in a shared situation of mutual support. That’s one of the reasons gay marriage is even thinkable – once marriage is mostly about love, it becomes really hard to come up with reasons why it’s absolutely bad wrong and harmful if the two adults happen to share some of the same bits.
Funny – Mrs. S and I are both atheists, but we went and got married! We must be confused.
Don’t worry Sebastian, you got the gist of it. Society is coming you’re way, give it five years. Most of the right wing dudes I work with get it now, did not 5 years previous. Classic example a few days ago, from a hard religious right friend. “It’s about the values people teach their children to avoid that lifestyle, regardless of their rings.”
Me not being religious at all, and not agreeing at all with his views, he did vote No on 8. More of those please, at least on personal freedoms.
“Funny – Mrs. S and I are both atheists, but we went and got married! We must be confused.”
Which seems kind of random, but was supposed to be in response to this:
“Marriage is a religious thing, and it should be left there.”
I’m starting to nod off, and I think deleted it by accident . . . .
Meanwhile, after failing in 2006 with a similarly-intended but less-simply-worded proposition to restrict marriage rights, Arizona just passed this POS proposition 102:
“Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state.”
Because Polygamist/Convicted Accomplice to Rape Warren Jeffs has his FLDS church and F’d up community on the AZ Utah border, the pro-102 PAC spun it that this simple, clean, 20-word definition of marriage, written into the state constitution, would forever protect us from Polygamist scumbags like Jeffs.
Oh, yeah. And did we mention? As an added bonus, teh gay can’t get married either!
Though I did what I could to help defeat this defacing of The Arizona State Constitution, still, on behalf of the sane and civilized denizens of this corner of the desert, I sincerely apologize for my state.
Sapient, if you’re actually interested in staying here and talking to people, then I suggest you take these two statements back right now:
“I’m convinced that the people who comment here aren’t interested in the substance behind the marriage issue”
“Although I would have voted “No” on Prop 8, after this discussion and the mindless support of marriage by the people commenting, I think I’d vote yes now”
“Mindless” is a pretty serious insult; “not interested in substance” is just hilarious in this setting; and saying you’d switch your vote on a measure affecting thousands of people because you’re pissed off at a half-dozen strangers online… I can’t really express what I think about that without breaking the posting rules, but “not funny” is a start.
I know you haven’t been around here long, but unless you just like starting fights, you have a very strange idea of what places like this are about and how to talk to people who disagree with you.
“I would hate to think that the 1/2 of people who aren’t married aren’t involved in any sort of community, or that they don’t have neighborhoods, or that their neighborhoods don’t welcome them.”
Me too! But that’s not what we’re talking about, I think. Rather,the question was whether (U.S.?) communities organize themselves around married couples – which I took to be more about building blocks and stability (of communities in the ‘where you live’ )sense, and less consignment to the outer darkness. There are other models – organization around female-centered extended families is one big one, and certainly there are sometimes specific in- or semi-formal roles for (esp. younger) singles. But . . . .
(if we’re talking about people in general, throughout history and across continents, it gets trickier. )
I’m exhausted too. I don’t care whether people get married. I support gay rights and am glad to see all gay people who want to get married to get married. But after everyone has the right to marry and all who want to marry do marry, mark my words: marriage will go out of style. Why? Because it no longer serves a useful purpose. Men don’t need to own women’s uteruses anymore, since DNA testing can find out who the father is. Relationships are too complicated to have a simple set of rules anymore. We aren’t tribes anymore (at least not in the U.S.). And our “neighborhoods” are increasingly formed at the workplace, or in places other than where we happen to live. Marriage currently excludes gay people, but it will always exclude people who don’t accept the predominant stereotype. That’s why I don’t like it, and think that the state should not support it.
Hob, okay, I’ll take those statements back. But I do think that many people arguing this point are buying into a myth without really scrutinizing it. And I shouldn’t be going on, but see how Dan S really thinks about what’s being said? He’s describing female communities, etc? There are so many real life social models that deserve societal recognition. Why should a couple, of whatever gender combination, be rewarded by society when, say, two sisters are also struggling – maybe living together – to make a home for their children whose fathers are gone? Why should those sisters not have tax benefits and the right to see each other in the hospital. Do they both have to go find a sex partner? What I’m saying is that it doesn’t make any sense (to me) why the state has any business making a statement about any of this. Goodnight – sorry to be cranky.
Sapient: Okay, thanks. I’m sorry to be cranky too.
I don’t have much to add except: please don’t assume too much about what people here have or haven’t considered, or that our opinions must be due to having narrow horizons. For instance, quite a few of my friends are in committed relationships involving more than two people. Some would like to marry all their people if they could; others don’t care about that at all; others have married one just for convenience; others have married one and not the other because that feels emotionally appropriate to them. Some, including me, would really like to see society become able to acknowledge these bonds both informally and, if desired, formally; sometimes I think that might even happen in my lifetime. But none of us (that I know of) think less of anyone else for having a more traditional relationship; and there’s a commonly held belief around here that same-sex marriage does more to open people’s minds than to close them, that it’s at least a foot in the door for people with more complicated goals.
My point being, I guess, that it is actually possible to question some of the things you’re asking people to question, and yet come to different conclusions than you did.
My personal feeling about the best steps to take towards eventually having gay marriage is for hundreds and thousands of people to rise up against the mormon church and have its tax exempt status pulled.
The amount of money that the mormons shunted into MY state to screw around with our constitution was absolutely shameful. And poor precedent.
Here’s the petititon:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/review-the-501c3-status-of-the-church-of-latter-day-saints-the-mormons
BTW, I tried asking the fundamentalists down the street if it was OK to put a No on 8 sign in their front yard, but they demurred because “we don’t know how to explain it to the kids.”
Sighhhhhh.
My personal feeling about the best steps to take towards eventually having gay marriage is for hundreds and thousands of people to rise up against the mormon church and have its tax exempt status pulled.
The amount of money that the mormons shunted into MY state to screw around with our constitution was absolutely shameful. And poor precedent.
Here’s the petititon:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/review-the-501c3-status-of-the-church-of-latter-day-saints-the-mormons
BTW, I tried asking the fundamentalists down the street if it was OK to put a No on 8 sign in their front yard, but they demurred because “we don’t know how to explain it to the kids.”
Sighhhhhh.
I’m not trying to talk you into getting married. I’m just pointing out that marriage as an institution exists, has a very, very long history, appears to be fairly natural to human beings, and receives certain privileges under law.
You used to be able to say the same thing about slavery. I don’t find the argument convincing.
If people want the government to enforce the contract of marriage, let’s enforce it. Till death you do part means just that and the government will use its monopoly of violence to ensure that is what happens.
Sound good?
If not, stop asking the government to pretend to sanction a contract that was made with no intention of anyone ever attempting to enforce it. Get that crap back in the church or wherever else, but get it out of my government.
sapient, I think you might want to consider that as a counsel in divorces that have gone messy, you meet an awful lot of people who, at that exact time in their lives, are exploding with rage over what “marriage did to them”.
To argue from this that “most people hate marriage” is like a counsel who specialises in defending people accused of murder arguing that “Most people want to kill someone at some point in their lives”.
I apologise for accusing you of stupidity: it’s a bit more complicated than that. It’s certainly not very bright of you to think that the highly selected group of people whom you deal with represent what the average person thinks of marriage, but it’s a trap that many people whose work is their life often fall into. Suggest you… get out more.
Meantime, could you just avoid pontificating about something you don’t really know very much about? You obviously know a lot about viciously unhappy divorces, and equally obviously, you don’t know anything about the usual run of marriage or even of commonplace, equable divorce.
All the legal crap aside, marriage is and always has been society’s recognition of two people’s love and dedication for one another. Obviously two people truly in love don’t necessarily need that recognition, but the only reason for society to withhold that recognition is to discourage that particular behavior. Societal norms develop specifically to encourage certain behaviors and discourage others.
I don’t need society’s approval to love my wife. But if society (for some reason) discouraged men from loving brunettes, I wouldn’t ask my wife to dye her hair. I’d walk around every day with one big darned chip on my shoulder.
I personally am all in favour of the institution of marriage since I love weddings – as long as I’m not best man (tough, especially the speech) and the church part is either skipped altogether or kept short and snappy. There’s simply no other social gathering that’s quite as entertaining, in a multitude of ways, as a wedding.
“but see how Dan S really thinks about what’s being said? ”
More, how Dan S. wrote sleepily about what was being said, in between yawns and involuntary nodding-offs. With a bit more rest, let me clarify: in the U.S., the bulk of communities (used here in a rather residential sense; I’m not talking about workplaces or bowling leagues or fraternal orders or fandoms or etc.) are (primarily) “organized “around married couples. There are certainly other kinds of communities here that organize themselves around different relationships. Although a big chunk of them are . . . well, neither “artificial” nor “temporary” work; to say they float on top of a more marriage-oriented society is maybe a bit better. (For example, specific areas with very high concentrations of singles, but mostly between the ages of 18-35, with constant movement in and out. Then there are another set that are just “permanently” (wrong word again) different; throughout the lifecycle, they’re built around other models. Thing is, they’re just much less common. I’m not making grand claims about what intrinsically, essentially is, or what morally/practically should be. It’s quite possible that marriage is on its way out, and either way I certainly support recognition of alternatives (I’ve argued elsewhere, badly, for a formalized legal/social bundle of rights &responsibilities built around parenting. (Although I should add your “sisters” example does hit a bump with the hospital thing, if we are talking literal blood kin – but otherwise . . . )
This does seems to be wandering away from what we can do for gay rights. But c’est la intenet.
Good morning. Just want to clarify: I have nothing against marriage as a social institution. And I love weddings too. It’s touching and heart warming to see long-married couples who still care for each other. But marriage should not be a legal institution. As a legal institution, it constrains people’s freedom in ways they don’t expect and don’t prepare for, as well as necessarily excluding people whose beliefs about sexuality and relationships are at odds with the majority of society. Right now, the focus is on gay people, but it’s as big a problem (in my opinion) that the law doesn’t support legitimate religious arrangements.
One more recent example of a bad marriage issue that I’ve witnessed, and then I’ll let my participation die: two elderly widowed people met in a retirement home when both were physically and mentally healthy. They got married (very sweet story so far). Things were okay for a year or so until one partner had a severe stroke, causing him to need care on a totally different level, but not disabling him to an extent that he was unable to want to go to his own apartment with his new wife, etc. The man’s children were willing to make care decisions, but their right to do so was suddenly complicated by the new wife’s (understandable) needs and feelings. (The wife – in increasingly frail health herself – got a bit more “for better or worse” than she’d anticipated.) What good did marriage, as a legal institution, do in that instance? As a social institution, it made the couple feel that their intimacy was legitimate (a religious issue). But as a legal institution, it caused nothing but complications, expense and misery. The idea of divorce would be horrifying to them, but the wife didn’t want the newly disabled husband to live with her, etc. See what I’m saying? Countless problems. Anyway, I’m not going to convince people of this view, and I’m off to find out if someone is blogging about the NYT article on the Georgian conflict. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/europe/07georgia.html?hp
Why should a couple, of whatever gender combination, be rewarded by society when, say, two sisters are also struggling – maybe living together – to make a home for their children whose fathers are gone? Why should those sisters not have tax benefits and the right to see each other in the hospital.
That’s a very good question, to which I have no very good answer.
You used to be able to say the same thing about slavery. I don’t find the argument convincing.
Look, I wasn’t making an ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF MARRIAGE. I was MAKING AN OBSERVATION.
Human beings have been getting married, and organizing their lives around family groups, for a very, very, very long time. Like, as long as there have been humans. It appears to be something humans like to do.
If you, personally, want to get married, get married. If you don’t, don’t.
If it bugs you that married folks get certain privileges under the law, you need to take it up with your Congressperson. If you have a really good case to make, maybe you’ll get somewhere with it. Good luck.
I don’t need society’s approval to love my wife. But if society (for some reason) discouraged men from loving brunettes, I wouldn’t ask my wife to dye her hair. I’d walk around every day with one big darned chip on my shoulder.
As is so often the case, OC wins the internet.
Perfectly said.
Thanks –
I think Seb is right that it is important to make being gay more normal, more socially acceptable. Talking about couples you know, famous people coming out, meeting with gay people, soaps with sympathetic gay couples, ads with all kinds of couples, etc. I know in our road to more acceptance for quite a few people in my environment it made a difference to learn about gay couples that had been together for a very long time, since they were prejudiced that being gay was all about the lust and not about the love.
What’s civil marriage about anyway? It’s ridiculous to have the state regulate or even recognize matters of love.
I think it is different things for different people. These days the romantisized idea is that it is all about love; it definately is why I got married. But political marriage is a known concept, parents seeking partners for children is a known concept and in my parents generation marriage often was the only way for women to leave home. So maybe talking about what marriage means ought to be part of the discussion you have with the people in your environment.
In the Netherlands marriage is a legal procedure. You have to have a legal procedure, with a civil servant, before you can have any kind of religious ceremony and they can’t be both performed by the same person. Our Christian parties negotiated that when gay marriage became legal civil servants could not be fired for not performing same-sex weddings – but every commune has to have opportunities for gays to marry. And since with new civil servants they know in advance that they might have to do it, the idea is that the problem (and discrimination) will solve itself and this pragmatic solution is preferrable to the legal struggle to have them all fired. Pragmatism is an important part of our national character.
Sapient,
I think a lot of the resistance you’re seeing has to do with the original topic of the thread – that is, what practical steps can be taken to decrease the resistance to gay marriage. Your jeremiad against marriage is interesting, and I agree with some of it, but I also agree with russell that it’s essentially academic. As a practical matter, it’s not very useful. Marriage is a long-standing social institution, and isn’t going anywhere. That’s not to say such cultural traditions can’t change – we did away with slavery, after all – but such change doesn’t come easily. Slavery ended because western culture changed during the Enlightenment to the point that slavery became an unsustainable contradiction and obvious injustice. I don’t see any comparable societal shift on the horizon that might cause a similar change in attitudes toward marriage. Most people like marriage, they like weddings, and they’re likely to resist any attempts to change that. Particularly in an increasingly secular society, leaving marriage to the churches is likely to decrease, rather than increase, the opportunities for marriage. It might increase the opportunity for civil partnerships, but I’m doubtful that the complex of cultural traditions surrounding marriage can be shifted over to civil partnerships. And it’s those traditions, not the religious sanction of the relationship, that most people like about marriage.
Leaving marriage to the church and involving the government in simple civil partnership contracts might be an ideal system if one were designing a new society from scratch. But I don’t see any easy way of getting there from here, and I don’t think there’s any really compelling reason to undertake the journey. And to get back to the subject of the OP, it’s incredibly unlikely to be helpful to gays, and very likely to hurt, because it feeds into the “threat to marriage” hyperbole that anti-gay marriage types like to throw around.
I voted against Florida’s Amendment 2, not that it did any good.
Slavery is really a terrible analogy, and I don’t just mean that in the “How dare you trivialize slavery or demonize marriage by… etc.” sense. It’s a terrible analogy because, in focusing on the “But it was a long-standing tradition just like marriage and yet we got rid of it” part, it omits the fact that (a) there was eventually a very vocal social movement against it, which contributed to a major war in this country, and (b) among the people who were extremely unhappy with the institution, and would’ve done away with it instantly if they could have, and sometimes rebelled against it at the cost of their lives, were millions of slaves.
That’s a pretty large omission, if you’re trying to demonstrate either that there’s a groundswell of anti-marriage sentiment (beyond the “my marriage was a crock” kind), or that slavery was something almost everyone was cool with.
I voted against Florida’s Amendment 2, not that it did any good
It gets you a Jesurgislac Special Flame Shield for those extra-hot Internet moments.
Seriously: I’ll work hard at remembering that, greatly as we disagree, on basic principles like human rights for everybody we’re totally at one, and I would bake you peanut butter and kahlua* cookies if you were nearer.
*I’ve never actually baked them. But I have a recipe, and they sound fantastic.
Now this is funny:
The L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center is encouraging people to donate to invalidate Proposition 8 in the following way:
“Make a donation, in the name of the president of the Mormon Church, to support the legal organizations working to invalidate Proposition 8 and to fund grass-roots activities in support of full marriage equality. For every donation of $5 or more, the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center will send the following postcard to President Thomas Monson’s office in Salt Lake City, acknowledging your donation in his name:
Dear President Monson:
A donation has been made in your name by _________________ to “invalidateprop8.org” to overturn California’s Proposition 8 and restore fundamental civil rights to all citizens of California. The money will be donated to legal organizations fighting the case and to support grass-roots activities in support of full marriage equality.
Although we decry the reprehensible role the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints leadership played in denying all Californians equal rights under the law, we are pleased a donation has been made on your behalf in the effort to overturn the discrimination your church members helped enshrine in the California Constitution.
Given that throughout its history the Mormon Church has been subjected to bigotry, we hope you appreciate the donation in your name to fight religious bigotry here in California.
Larv, I find myself returning to this discussion thread because I find the topic of marriage as an institution incredibly interesting, not because I want to continue a jeremiad against civil marriage.
Perhaps you’re right that there is no easy way of getting to civil partnership contracts rather than civil marriage, but the reason it’s relevant to the gay marriage issue is this: It’s when we ARE reevaluating an institution, and changing it (some would say dramatically) that we should analyze and scrutinize its purposes, benefits and harm. As mainstream a politician as Wesley Clark, when asked what he thought about gay marriage, took the position I take, so it’s not such a radical idea.
As I said before, there’s no reason not to have public weddings/commitment ceremonies (or whatever nonsexist/nonhomophobic term is appropriate). This is how marriage in the Anglo-Saxon world began – two parties exchanging the “bans of marriage” before witnesses, typically their friends and families. First a private contract publicly witnessed, and then (slightly later in history) sanctioned by the church as a sacrament, and only after that (centuries later) sanctioned by the civil government. (Divorce was a late breaking service – keep in mind the troubles of Henry VIII.)
So I have learned my lesson that people don’t seem to care about restructuring the law surrounding this problematic social convention, no matter how many ways people are unfairly treated as a result of it. Instead, they want the unfairness to be lifted AS TO THEM ONLY. As much as I applaud the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the gay rights movement, the war on poverty, the union movement… some of those movements would have been better served if their proponents had found more generalized solutions to common problems. Example: why we have the bad health care system that we have: unions fought for workers’ right to health insurance rather than for health care for all people. Now we have a ridiculously incomplete system.
(I’m listening to a Washington, D.C. radio talk show – Kojo Nnamdi – and someone is talking about a Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who has already proposed a civil union in lieu of marriage. )
Sapient, you ask some good questions about marriage. They’re worth thinking about, but it’s a big leap from these questions to the conclusion that “marriage is a crock.”
I believe that I have substantive and carefully considered opinions about marriage, but it would be difficult to do them justice in a brief blog comment. I assume that the same is true of others here.
Before I got married (21 years ago) I read an essay called “Poetry and Marriage,” by Wendell Berry. I’m not generally a Berry fan, nor do I agree with everything in this particular essay, but it definitely shaped my views of marriage in a fairly profound way.
The essence of Berry’s argument is that a set form is an opening to possibility. It sounds paradoxical, but it makes sense if you think about it. By voluntarily restricting yourself to a particular form, you eliminate many possibilities, but you also create the conditions whereby you can discover the deeper possibilities that exist within that form.
Marriage is a communal set form with a long tradition. The form itself is ultimately arbitrary (as Berry willingly admits), but if one voluntarily commits oneself to the form, one discovers certain possibilities of growth that might be difficult to discover otherwise. I’m not saying that these are the only possibilities worth exploring, and furthermore, I believe that they can be found in any long-term committed relationship, whether it receives the designation of marriage or not. But I do believe that we are profoundly social creatures, and that the communal recognition and blessing of marriage — the taking of vows before witnesses, and the living of those vows in the eyes of the world — deepens and strengthens the meaning and power of the form. This has been true in my own life, and I see no reason to deny those benefits to gay people if they want them.
My mother-in-law is a lesbian who has been in a committed relationship for over 22 years. I do not see her relationship as any less meaningful or important than my own marriage. In fact, I have long considered her to be married in the truest sense of the word. Nevertheless, she recently moved to Canada and got formally married there, and this was an important event for her. She did not consider the taking of vows and the societal endorsement of her relationship to be trivial or meaningless things. She is deeply saddened by the passage of Proposition 8, as am I.
For anyone who is interested, Berry’s essay can be read online here. As I said above, I don’t agree with everything in this essay. For example, he briefly sneers about birth control, which I think is absurd. Also, I wouldn’t go nearly as far as Berry in his endorsement of tradition. Nevertheless, I think the core ideas in the essay are beautiful and profound.
Perhaps you’re right that there is no easy way of getting to civil partnership contracts rather than civil marriage,
In the Netherlands they finally updated the laws (we have civil law) to make civil unions equal to marriage (as I said earlier that is always civil here, religious ceremonies have to be performed *afterwards*). But people (heterosexuals *and* homosexuals) still want to get properly married. We had the legal right to those equal civil unions for same-sex couples too, but a lot of groups still fought for the right to get married – and in the end they won. It didn’t give them any more legal rights, but it gave them a social construct they wanted. And I understood completely. I felt that my wedding made a difference. I have many friends that have civil unions, kids, houses, and they feel completely equal to us. Legally they are, we all see them as equally bonded, yet I still feel that it made a difference that we, more than 13 years ago, declared in front of everybody that we loved each other so much that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.
Marshall, thanks for the Wendell Berry essay – which is a reminder, because I also read the essay many years ago. It’s interesting that Berry, in his “Letter to Daniel Kemmis” takes my view that:
In fact, rereading this passage makes me believe that Berry influenced my thinking on this issue in the first place. http://books.google.com/books?id=WdQgwRNeZy8C&dq=Berry+the+way+of+ignorance&pg=PP1&ots=AvRoMDWLtO&source=bn&sig=MlG-U_0gvgFfsj5nwv6r8EpU3Vw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA145,M1
I, too, disagree with Berry on the issue of reproductive choice and other things.
Good point. I’m surprised how widespread this “government out of the marriage business” idea is in the US.
No, the Scandinavian countries have civil unions, not yet gay marriage. This is likely to change soon since most people are positive to gay marriage. The Swedish church now blesses gay partnerships in church but will not use the word ‘marriage’ – this seems mostly an attempt to save face considering their earlier opposition.
Here is a case of two Swedish priests(!) married in Canada seeking legal recognition:
http://www.thelocal.se/11670/20080510/
So the case is not so clear-cut, but as you point out, their case is probably much better than an American couple’s trying to get their “hinterpix” recognised in Sweden.
And a historical tidbit I like to point out, marriage in a church didn’t become compulsory in Sweden until 1734 (since the church wanted to eliminate the actual “traditional marriage” which it had been taking over gradually for centuries) Civil marriages became legal in 1908. So much for the unchanging exclusively religious institution of marriage.
The paragraph by Berry was supposed to have been in quotes. Sorry.
Sapient:
By raising the issue of homosexual marriage, by making it a political issue, I think homosexuals have done themselves and the rest of us a disservice: That is, they have invited the government to make a public judgment of people’s private sexual behavior, which ought to be none of the government’s business, so long as the behavior is not abusive of other people.
Oh, for god’s sake.
It’s not that long since the Supreme Court of the US repealed the government’s right to invade the bedrooms of gay men and arrest them for how they made love.
That is “the public judgment of people’s private sexual behavior”.
Marriage is not.
You’re suffering from extreme heterosexual privilege if you think the freedom to stand up before a notary public and pledge your word to love, honor, and cherish your one true love – with the prospect of possibly going through a painful divorce if you got this pledge wrong – is exactly the same as having your bedroom invaded in the middle of the night and being dragged off to a cell, charged, tried, and convicted.
Hell’s life, I have friends who remember making love in the decades when, in the UK, whatever they did with each other was a crime for which they could spend two years in jail.
That’s the government making a public judgment of people’s private sexual behavior.
You would have to be a privileged, soft-headed, indulged, asshole of a straight guy to think that because adultery can be used as a cause for divorce, this is a terrible awful discrimination that’s just like being sent to jail for making love to your chosen partner for life.
Good point. I’m surprised how widespread this “government out of the marriage business” idea is in the US.
No, the Scandinavian countries have civil unions, not yet gay marriage. This is likely to change soon since most people are positive to gay marriage. The Swedish church now blesses gay partnerships in church but will not use the word ‘marriage’ – this seems mostly an attempt to save face considering their earlier opposition.
Here is a case of two Swedish priests(!) married in Canada seeking legal recognition:
http://www.thelocal.se/11670/20080510/
As you point out their case is probably much better than an American couple’s trying to get their “hinterpix” recognised in Sweden.
And a historical tidbit I like to point out, marriage in a church didn’t become compulsory in Sweden until 1734 (since the church wanted to eliminate the actual “traditional marriage” which it had been taking over gradually for centuries) Civil marriages became legal in 1908. So much for the centuries-old unchanging exclusively religious institution of marriage.
whoops, sorry for the double post.
When I was 18, my best friend’s girlfriend was arrested by the military police for the crime of being a lesbian in the RAF. She wasn’t court martialed because they gave her their standard “out”: name three women you’ve had sex with, and we’ll just give you a dishonorable discharge.
She named the woman who had shopped her, her girlfriend (who told me, years later, that being interrogated by an RAF officer to “prove” her sexual relationship was the most humiliating experience of her life), and, because I was an overt and outspoken pacifist, me – since, she said, I was the one woman she could think of who wouldn’t ever want to join the military anyway. (We hadn’t had sex. She apologised for any embarrassment this might cause. I told her not to worry about it.)
One of the most beautiful moments I had in the weeks before the Civil Partnership Act became law (5th December 2005) was reading up on the background details and discovering that, from that day forth, the civil partner of a soldier who was killed on active duty would receive a war widow/war widower’s pension, just as a husband or wife would.
One of the most beautiful moments I had after the Civil Partnership Act became law, was reading a news report about a para regiment that had organised a regimental wedding for two young women who had met, fallen in love, and intended to wed – and would do so in front of wellwishers from the regiment in which they served. That was the change from 1985 to 2005.
An RAF officer interviewing a woman whose crime is to have had sex with an RAF soldier: that’s government regulation of what is a private personal matter.
An RAF officer organising a regimental wedding for two young women in love: That’s not.
windy: No, the Scandinavian countries have civil unions, not yet gay marriage.
Yes, but they recognise all legal marriages for same-sex coiples performed elsewhere as the equivalent of their “registered partnerships”. So does the UK, incidentally. A couple who are married in California will have more legal rights on holiday in the UK or in Sweden than they would at home.
Sapient,
I think that Berry’s comments in the passage you quoted are inconsistent with the core themes in his essay “Poetry and Marriage.” Frankly, I believe that his deeply conservative temperament is getting in the way of clear thinking here.
If it were possible to get the government out of the marriage business and still maintain the social weight and meaning of marriage, then this might be a good thing to do. I just don’t think it’s likely to happen any time soon. Churches aren’t the answer, because no church has society-wide clout, nor is there any other institution outside of the government which has that kind of authority. So if we think this kind of society-wide endorsement is important (and I do), we’re stuck with the government providing it for the foreseeable future.
The following passage from Berry’s essay is interesting in this context:
But the faith in genius and the rebellions of genius, at the times when these are necessary, should lead to the renewal of forms, not to their destruction. No individual can rightly destroy anything of communal value on behalf of the community.
I would argue that marriage is a form that requires just such a renewal, rather than destruction. It should be renewed by broadening it to include gay people. Such a renewal would be beneficial to society as a whole.
Marshall, since marriage is a form that predates government control of it, I fail to see how the form is dependent on government. Again, this is just an intellectual exercise for me – I don’t have a personal stake in it.
Sapient,
In earlier times religious institutions had much greater sway over society than they do now. The government is the only institution I can think of whose endorsement will be respected by Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, agnostics, atheists, and so on. The form has to evolve. It might have made sense at one time to posit it entirely in the religious realm, but I don’t think it will work anymore.
Why does this discussion remind me of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor? Why can we not handle to concept of personal freedom?
Sapient: Marshall, since marriage is a form that predates government control of it, I fail to see how the form is dependent on government.
Civil marriage, by definition, is dependent on civil government.
Civil marriage as an institution, incidentally, is older than the United States of America.
Again, this is just an intellectual exercise for me – I don’t have a personal stake in it.
We can tell. Though I think “intellectual” is overly self-complimentary.
What does personal freedom have to do with it? No one is forcing anyone to marry. It’s a personal choice. I mentioned Berry’s essay because I think it gives some thought-provoking reasons why one might make that choice.
I respect those who wish to make a different choice. As long as their decisions don’t hurt other people, I have no problem with their choosing different kinds of relationships.
“As to your view that “marriage” is a recognized institution that can’t be done away with: actually, marriage started out being a religious institution and only became a civil institution to provide a legal remedy for the problem of women being abducted and raped, with the perpetrator claiming the right to do so because the parties were “married”.
This doesn’t sound correct, the part about religious marriage predating civil marriage. Can I see some cites to that effect?”
It is incorrect for most societies. In Norse and Celtic material there is no mention of any religious aspect to marriages. In China marriage has always been a civil matter. Confucius didn’t really approve of religion. In India everything is religious, including war, so draw your conclusions from that – and in Rome everything this or that god was invoked mainly for good luck in breeding kids. In Judaism frankly it looks like a religiously sanctioned breeding program, with a whole range of practices such as obligatory polygamy with your brother’s widow, obligatory stoning of adulteresses and so on – some or all of which modern udaism rejects – see Jes comment next above. And all of it is religious rather than spiritual – nothing particularly spiritual about any of it.
For better or worse, we have to deal with marriage as it is now, not marriage as it was thousands of years ago. And marriage today is simply not a primarily religious institution.
The purpose of civil marriage is to legitimize participating unions, and to marginalize nonparticipating unions. Gays can be legitimized, but not all unions can be legitimized. This is really what people who love the institution of marriage want. They want to be legitimate because so many are not. (Next time someone blames society’s ills on single parents, next time someone is public shamed (or worse) because s/he commits adultery, next time someone’s sexuality is cause for his/her professional demise, next time someone calls a child “illegitimate” or “bastard”, think about why sexual partnerships should or should not be legitimized or stigmatized by the government.) You guys want that – fine.
Next time someone blames society’s ills on single parents, next time someone is public shamed (or worse) because s/he commits adultery, next time someone’s sexuality is cause for his/her professional demise, next time someone calls a child “illegitimate” or “bastard”
Sapient, going back to the Scandinavian/Nordic countries for examples again, nobody gives that shit much thought there anymore. There is no stigma attached to having kids out of wedlock. And at the same time, marriages and gay partnerships exist. So something’s wrong with your theory.
The current Finnish president was living in a common law marriage when she was elected and had a daughter from a previous relationship. She had also been the head of a LGBT rights organization despite being heterosexual herself. Luckily not all people share your divisive assumptions.
“ next time someone calls a child “illegitimate” or “bastard””
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone call a child a bastard, at least not in the literal sense.
“You guys want that – fine.”
I think part of the problem here is that you seem to be overly hasty to assume that we’re all heartless ogres who want to keep sisters from visiting each other in the hospital (do they not fall under ‘next of kin’? That’s pretty sucky if true). Meanwhile, when it comes to providing societal recognition for other real life social models, responses here have ranged to non-opposition to outright support – I don’t think anybody’s come out against that. Just because we don’t generally seem to agree that legal marriage is an oppressively religious crock o’ suffering doesn’t mean we’re whatever you seem to imagine we are, maybe?
“Adultery” – as a specially named cause for divorce, heterosexual intercourse with someone other than your spouse – isn’t on the list of causes for dissolution of a civil partnership in the UK. (The government also wanted to remove it from the list of causes for divorce, since most people were just using it as a means of getting a quickie divorce. But the churches struck and the government didn’t care that much about it, so it stayed on.)
Unreasonable behavior (aka mental cruelty) is on the list of causes for both divorce and dissolution, and of course if the non-cheated-on spouse feels that their partner’s infidelity is unreasonable behaviour, they can cite that as a cause for fast divorce/dissolution.
Cheating on your spouse is not the neutral kind of behavior that Sapient seems to think it is. Being upset because your partner had sex with someone else when you had not agreed to it/agreed to that person, is not limited to married couples. Sapient just needs to get out more.
Jesurgislac, I’m not a proponent of cheating on one’s spouse. There are recent studies that sexual fidelity is a genetic tendency, which leads me to believe that some people have more control over abiding by a promise of fidelity than others. Of course, since infidelity isn’t sanctioned by society, one can speculate that people hide in the closet about their tendencies, which leads to lies, pain, and social humiliation, etc. Sound familiar? I myself prefer fidelity, but I know that millions of people live otherwise, and wonder to what social stigma plays a part in personal expectations and promises.
As to European attitudes toward children out of wedlock and unmarried couples generally, I am speaking from the United States where couples living together is well tolerated, but having children out of wedlock is not. Movie stars can get away with it, but African-American communities are frequently called out for contributing to the destruction of civilized society.
I don’t think anyone here is a heartless ogre; I just think that some people can’t look beyond the problem of the moment. Discrimination against gays is intolerable, and equal protection under the law is an essential constitutional value. But you can’t convince me that a government sponsored “marriage” which was designed to accommodate Western European-style nuclear family models offers equal protection for other cultural domestic choices. My own cultural background leads me to prefer the European style, but other people’s choices are stigmatized. As I said, making one model legitimate necessarily makes other models illegitimate. In the law they say: inclusio unius est exclusio alterius.
One other thing that hasn’t been mentioned: Because marriage is a legal function, people expect more than they should of the legal system when a marriage dissolves. As a social matter, love and a general sense of commitment seems enough; as a legal matter, people should know what rights and responsibilities are involved in a marriage agreement. Perhaps other countries do this better than mine.
“. . . having children out of wedlock . . . Movie stars can get away with it, but African-American communities are frequently called out . . .”
So, if it’s judged fine for movie stars (baby bumps!) but not for poor African American women, do you think that government-sponsored marriage is the cause, or perhaps something else?
“ making one model legitimate necessarily makes other models illegitimate.”
Or, of course, one could make a range of models legitimate, no?
“ Because marriage is a legal function, people expect more than they should of the legal system when a marriage dissolves.”
Actually, this is one quite strong argument for having marriage – or at least divorce, which sorta sneaks marriage in through the back door – being a legal matter. Divorce can be ugly and disorderly enough as is – can you imagine what it would be like as a purely social matter? (And who would come off the worst ?)
Anyway, this grows tiring, however sincerely meant. So, what else should we do for gay rights? I kinda wish Bob B. would come back and report on how our comments affected him, if at all . . .
Dan S, I guess you’ve lost track of what I’m advocating: that people who want to have domestic arrangements protected by law enter into their own contracts (which would be culturally neutral since the participants themselves would be agreeing to the terms). The private contracts would be protected by law just as any other contract. Then (or beforehand, or whenever) they could go celebrate away – weddings, more weddings … I’m all for weddings!
Sapient – I’m all for people entering into private contracts re: a range of domestic arrangements, co-existing with legal marriage (which obviously should be open to both same and opposite sex couples). In fact, I’d support some such contracts becoming similarly gov’t sponsored, to the degree that participants generally desire it and a reasonable case can be made.
So – what do you think we can do for gay rights?
What I will do for gay rights is this:
As a political matter, I will work hard to ensure that all people have equal protection under the law, work against and vote against any politician or any initiative that supports discriminatory laws against any person on the basis of sexual orientation, examine existing laws to determine whether they are discriminatory and work to strike them from the books.
My personal life is already very inclusive of gay friends, and I don’t socialize with anyone who is homophobic, so I can’t make any significant changes there. But I will continue to try to open my own heart to other people, especially people who differ from me in their choices, their needs, their struggles, their strengths and their frailties. If I disapprove of their behavior, I will try to determine whether my disapproval is based on whether their behavior brings harm to others, and will try to address the harm.
Although I am not a libertarian, and believe in strong government in areas that affect society as a whole, I do not approve of government regulation of anyone’s body or the consensual sexual choices of adults. To the extent that my relationships with other people affect property and custody, I will perform my responsibilities as well as I can. I will try to manifest those agreements in such a way that if a court or person needs to intervene, it can do so with minimum pain and expense to others.
Sebastian just posted about boycotting Utah. I’m not in favor of that.
Actually, it was Publius who posted about a boycott. Sorry.
Cool.
Oyster Tea gets to the heart of the matter: “I appreciate hearing from Seb. I appreciate his desire to undo a wrong. I appreciate his ‘feet on the ground’ approach. What I fear, though, is that his approach is based upon rationality and fairness, while the opposition is based upon faith and authority.”
We tend to think it’s merely the religious zealots who are opposed to gay marriage. We see them on the talk shows and in the protests. But plenty of “run-of-the-mill” Catholics and other religious folk are against it.
This is both a religious and cultural issue, an explosive mix.
Culturally (which is rooted religiously as well), exit polls in California found that an overwhelming majority of blacks supported Prop 8 (i.e. they are against gay marriage).
This is one of those issues that the right wing sides with factions they normally wouldn’t break bread with.
Sure, we need to plant seeds.
But as von said: “What’s needed is leadership. By definition, that cannot be provided at the grassroots level.”
Obama, Biden, Clinton, et. al., support civil unions, just not gay marriage, mind you. (Deep in their hearts, I wonder if they support both, but realize to do so, would be to lose the votes of many mainstream voters.)
Gavin Newsome is the only politician who comes to mind who has showed true courage on this issue, although I am sure there are others.
In the Age of Obama, it’s amazing we look upon gays as second-class citizens.
I realize the Economy is Issue No. 1 for Obama — and it must be — but eventually he needs to take the lead on what is a civil rights issue.
Sapient: But you can’t convince me that a government sponsored “marriage” which was designed to accommodate Western European-style nuclear family models offers equal protection for other cultural domestic choices.
See how much better it works to be reasonable than to begin by spitting ire and fire at LGBT people who want to get married and anyone who objects to their spouse cheating on them? It’s amazing how this works.
Of course this is still offtopic in this thread – we were actually discussing how to get equal civil rights for LGBT people/same-sex couples until you threadjacked it with your closed-minded conviction as a divorce lawyer that because you only meet people who are bitterly unhappy with their spouses – indeed, reading between the lines, with men who are viciously enraged at the fact that the possessions he had always considered his are in fact community property and will be divided evenly – especially when divorce wasn’t his choice but his sick-of-being-cheated-on wife’s. (Not a divorce lawyer. Just talked to quite a few of them. It’s a quite standard pattern with men.)
Breakups don’t become easier or simpler just because there’s no legal protection for one partner with regard to their family home. Divorce is as necessary a civil right as marriage, though much less appealling. There are plenty of stories out there of women who lived with men for years… and only discovered when the break-up came that because they were not married, and the house was in the man’s name, the man could simply evict the woman from their home, ignore the woman’s years of contributing to their joint home, and leave her very badly off indeed. Divorce law in particular is designed as protection – and men, being generally the partner who is financially stronger and therefore not the beneficiary of this protection, are frequently outraged by it.
Too bad, I say. I liked this outcome.
Actually, my posts weren’t off topic at all. Sebastian suggests that everyone who supports gay rights talk to everyone we know about why it hurts to be denied celebrations of love. The very first post (by FreeLunch, not me) stated that government should get out of the marriage business. I disagreed with Sebastian that if celebrations of love means civil law marriage, I decline to talk it up since I believe that civil law marriage as it exists in many states in the U.S. is a quasi-religious artifact which isn’t designed to provide people with equal protection under the laws, and believe that civil marriage is frought with other problems.
I’m glad that some spouses of wealthy people get lots of money when a divorce is concluded. That can be a very good outcome. On the other hand, marriage and divorce laws sometimes make it extremely difficult for an abused spouse to escape from an abusive spouse, particularly when economic dependency is an issue. In many states, one has to prove grounds for divorce (adultery is one) or “agree” to separate, or separate for a specified time without an agreement. Spouse abusers don’t usually “agree” to a separation without making the abused spouse (and children) miserable. Statistically, it’s women (and children), not men, who suffer financially after divorce. Marriage doesn’t cause abuse, but it can facilitate it.
What purpose does marriage serve other than to make us feel that our relationship is more permanent? In many relationships, permanent comes to mean trapped.
I realize that many, many marriages are happy and fulfilling – and certainly live up to the profound and poetic ideal. But is it the government imprimatur that makes them so?
“Which leads me to ask: what can we do either personally or in terms of supporting changes in public policy, to make it safer and more comfortable for gay people who are in the closet or who may be reluctant to more openly show their sexual orientation in public, so that they may become more visible.”
One simple step is for heterosexual people, when discussing such issues, to scrupulously refrain from ever saying “I’m not gay, but….”
So let them think you’re gay. Deal. See what it’s like. And live with it.
If everyone heterosexual did that little thing when speaking up for gay rights and on gay issues, it would go, it seems to me, a long long way.
And it’s something real everyone can do. As well as simple enough.
You know, the posters and commenters who blog here deserve to be read, and in some cases reread. There’s nothing here that changes my general point of view, but there’s a lot here that informs. Thank you.
I’m not gay, but I think Gary Farber has a point, there.
Slartibartfast? You think you’re not gay?