To start off, I've updated my post on Mona Charen's piece. Now we can go on to Joe Carter's piece, which is, at least in part, a response to this post by Sullivan. Carter starts off with a bang:
[T]here is no conservative case to be made for gay marriage. Gay marriage is one of the most radical changes to a social institution in the history of the world. Whether that is good or bad is debatable. What it is not, by any meaningful definition of the term, is conservative.
To be brutally honest, I don't care whether there is a conservative case for same-sex marriage or not. This is one of those areas in which ideology is only getting in the way of clear thinking. (If you think I'm overstating my case, take another look at Mona Charen's embarrassing effort.) I also dispute that gay marriage is one of the most radical changes to a social institution in the history of the world. I suppose, if you really want it to be that way, you can say so, but that doesn't necessarily make it so. I think taking marriage out of the realm of contracts and basing it on love is equally radical, if not more so, as is taking the decision to marry out of the realm of the wider family and making it purely individual.
Carter goes on, responding to this post by Conor Friedersdorf (Friedersdorf, by the way, does a much more detailed take-down of Charen than I did -- read them in tandem):
Conor writes:
1) The compelling reason to redefine marriage is to extend its benefits to gays and lesbians, not to "suit their feelings."
“Suiting their feelings” is precisely the reason that gay activists push for marriage rather than civil unions. If it was solely about benefits, then civil unions would be adequate. But as Andrew Sullivan wrote when rejecting my proposal for civil unions, “Carter’s proposal is actually designed to render gay relationships invisible and asexual. They are neither. It is designed to entrench the inferiority of the commitment of a gay person to his or her spouse in the law. It codifies inequality.”
Extending the exact same benefits is not “codifying inequality.” But for Sullivan, et al., it is not about benefits but about forcing the acceptance of gay sex as “normal” and equal to heterosexual sex. This is an absurd reason and nothing the government should be involved in.
We're dodging the chief benefit of marriage here, which is not something the government can provide and is also implicit in the word itself: the social recognition and weight of the married state. I think you'll find that's something "conservatives" don't want to address because they have no argument here. Creter's reductivist comments fits in with the religious conservatives' mechanistic view of human relationships -- except their own, of course.
Carter is also betraying his own anti-gay bias here with his comments about "forcing" acceptance of gay sex. I bet there's no "conservative" argument in favor of civil rights guarantees for gays, either. Any takers? (And do notice how once again he reduces our relationships to sex.)
You can tell that Carter is desperate here -- he quotes David Blankenhorn, and then he goes on to quote David Benkof, neither of whom has said anything intgelligible on the subject at all. (I dealt with Blankehorn's arguments here, and Benkof here -- Benkof made the mistake of commenting; it's quite entertaining.)
Carter's arguments are pretty much nonexistent. He's shocked! shocked! (along with Blankenhorn) to discover that a large number of gays don't particularly value monogamy.
I belabor this point because so many people who claim to be familiar with this debate seem shocked to find that for many (if not most) gay men “monogamy” doesn’t me sexual fidelity. David Blanekenhorn, a liberal Democrat and gay rights supporter who came around to opposing same-sex marriage, was shocked to find this out for himself:
When I had lunch with Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry in 2003, I casually used the word “monogamous” in describing what I viewed as an important norm of marriage. Evan asked, “Do you mean monogamous, or exclusive?” I had no idea what he was asking me, and I must have looked puzzled, so he explained: Monogamous means that you are committed to one person. Exclusive means that you have sex only with that one person. The two are not intrinsically connected. A couple could be monogamous but not exclusive; it all depends on how they privately define the relationship. The Future of Marriage, p. 149.
Since we’re in the process of redefining long recognized terms, let’s add “monogamy” to the list. Once same-sex marriage is legitimized we will also be legitimizing the idea that sexual fidelity is not necessary, or even expected, in a marital relationship.
Two points: why should exclusivity be an integral part of this mix, other than it has been in this mythical "definition" that conservatives keep referring to? And second, please tell me, in your most authoritative tone of voice, that heterosexuals all practice sexual exclusivity in their marriages. Please. I'm waiting. Yes, we have another non-issue here.
(Personal disclosure: I favor exclusivity. That's just the way I am -- if I love someone enough to shack up with him, as annoying as living with another person can be, I'm at the point where I can only quote Paul Newman: "Why go out looking for hamburger when I have steak at home?" I think this has a great deal to do with the way people see sex in general, and particularly in a relationship: I suppose you can get bored with the same old partner, but that just means to me that you're no longer really engaging with your partner. Sex is not the central pillar of marriage, at least in my mind, although it's an important part of reinforcing and deepening the emotional bonds in a love relationship. Duh. As for the rest of it, granted, I have very high standards at this point, which is probably a major reason I'm still single -- the one man who met those standards is straight -- sadly. The degree of engagement and communication there was incredible.)
Gaah! Sorry -- I get so tired of hacking my way through the same drivel over and over again -- I may just stop writing about marriage completely.
OK -- let's have a little fun with this:
What non-arbitrary principle would you set? If the concept that marriage is between a man and a woman is too exclusionary what test could you provide that would pass muster?
Again, this weird notion that if you favor gay marriage you simply must favor incest too — does the anti-gay marriage lobby really want to argue that the only problem with incest is that it isn’t traditional marriage?
The idea is not that you must favor incest, but that you no longer have a non-arbitrary reason to exclude adults who are related from entering into marriage. Indeed, you even strengthen the case for it in some instances. For example, opposite-sex incest carries many health-related concerns (most notably, birth defects) that allow it to be justifiably prohibited. But the same reasoning cannot be used to restrict same-sex incest. If two brothers decide to enter into a lifelong commitment, the arguments in favor of gay marriage make it clear that they should have the right to do so. What would be your reasons for excluding them from the benefits of marriage?
"Non-arbitrary" -- another qualifier introduced without examination. Let's just assume for the sake of the argument that arguments against SSM are arbitrary --because they are. If you don't believe me, check out the opinion of the California Supreme Court in In re: Some Marriages. It's as I noted in my comments on Charen's piece: cultures set the boundaries wherever they damned well please, and "arbitrary" and "non-arbitrary" aren't relevant at all -- they are all, looking at it one way, arbitrary; looking at it from the standpoint of cultural ideals, of course, the opposite is true, but I suspect that we'd rather call that "functional."
And, just to be a bitch, why shouldn't two brothers who love each other and want to spend their lives together get married? Works for me. (Both Carter and Bankenhorn would, I'm sure, be even more shocked to learn that a small but persistent thread in yaoi is two brothers who fall in love -- of course, they're not usually really "brothers" in that mechanistic, genetic sense so favored by the right, but given the way that the whole phenomenon of exogamy works, they might as well be.)
Carter's summation, which is just as specious as the rest of his post:
Here’s a prediction: once gay marriage is firmly established law, and enshrined in our legal principles, the same legal arguments used to rationalize gay marriage will be used to expand the definition to incestuous, polygamous, and any other type of relationship. In essence, once gay marriage is codified into law, the anti-marriage activists will have achieved their goal of delegitimizing and deinstutionalizing marriage. Once marriage is no longer about love or sexual exclusivity or raising children — when it is no longer about anything other than a set of “rights” — then it will no longer be an institution worth preserving.
As I've noted, this has no bearing on anything, aside from being pure bullshit: if society is against polygamy, it's not going to be legalized; neither will incestuous marriages. The conflation of anti-marriage activists with pro-SSM activists is even more ridiculous, but I suppose it's convenient if you have no substance to rely on.
I'm going to take a break -- Sullivan has also referred to a post by Daniel Larison on this subject, but I have to come back to that. I do want to leave you with this, though:
A reader at Andrew Sullivan lays it out very plainly. Read that post, because it's pretty much unquotable -- here's a taste:
Historically, marriage has never been solely about procreation; it was about extending kinship ties and the concomitant financial security of an extended family. That's why in the west, in-laws once played such a significant role in selecting mates and in rearing the Ringjustinsullivangetty children. In the 1700-1800s, when the idea of marriage become associated primarily with the couple, the nuclear family grew in importance, & the industrial revolution changed the role of the extended family in financial security, the nature of marriage changed significantly. Once we stopped being an agrarian society, large families went from being an economic plus to a minus, which is a major reason the push to develop effective birth control became so important.
These bottom-up changes in the definition of marriage far surpass anything proposed by gays seeking equal access to the institution. And that is why the only way to strengthen the older form of marriage so prized by social conservatives would require repealing no-fault divorce laws (not something that likely to happen, insofar as conservative men seem to enjoy their trophy second & third wives as much as liberals do), repealing all opportunities for women to earn wages independently of their husbands, outlawing any corporate policies that allow or encourage people to move away from their parents' homes, etc. Those kinds of explicit social, legal, and economic changes are just not going to happen.
And this, in place of our usual dessert. For me, personally, this song has a lot to do with what marriage is about.
No comments:
Post a Comment