My First Marriage Series for 2009 (Updated)

Skipping through Andrew Sullivan's blog -- a little catch-up after a week-end off -- and ran across a post that let a bunch of "conservative" commentators out from under their collective rock (I'll come back to Sullivan's post and the post by Joe Carter that he's responding to).

After digging through several layers, I decided to start with this post by Mona Charen in, of course, the National Review, the home of the mediocre right. It's full of the usual arguments, with an added layer of mendacity, and not much in the way of rigor -- not to mention the overt disdain for gays in general and especially those who are working for equal civil rights. The first example happens fairly early on:

But wait, Barack Obama opposed gay marriage, didn’t he? He stated explicitly during the campaign that he believed marriage to be the union “between one man and one woman.” His supporters clearly assumed he was being disingenuous. Based on Obama’s other beliefs, the atmospherics of the campaign, and their own hopes, they dismissed his opposition to gay marriage.

Let's give this one a bit of reality check: Barack Obama stated unequivocally that he believes, as Charen notes, that marriage is between a man and a woman. He also stated, equally unequivocally, that he opposed Proposition 8. He has also stated that he favors repeal of at least part of the federal DOMA and will formulate rules that recognize as "marriage" whatever the various states recognize, and also bring civil unions and domestic partnerships into full legal equality with marriage on the federal level.

You can, if you really want to, translate this into "opposition to same-sex marriage" -- if you leave out half the facts. I think a much more accurate take on Obama's position is that, while he personally believes the word "marriage" should be reserved for heterosexuals, he doesn't think his personal religious beliefs should be enshrined in the law. Which is more than you can say for Mona Charen.

What particularly outraged gay rights activists was a comment Warren made in a TV interview when he compared two homosexuals getting married to a brother marrying a sister or an adult marrying a child. Those were not the most felicitous comparisons and probably unnecessarily hurt the feelings of gays and lesbians.

And yet, the point Warren was making was a valid one. Once you abandon the traditional definition of marriage to suit the feelings on an interest group, by what principle do you stop redefining marriage?

First, the comment about Warren's point being valid: what exactly was his point? Not, I think, anything about traditional marriage, as Charen claims. It as a bald attempt to once again place gays and their relationships with criminals and pathologies -- no more, no less. Charen's obviously in sympathy with that attitude.

And we're back to the "traditional definition" argument. The problem with this one, which I have certainly referred to in the past but may not have explicitly stated, is that no one is prepared to tell you what this "traditional definition" is, except that it's about heterosexuals. No one's offering -- at least, no one opposed to same-sex marriage -- a definition that even attempts to describe what marriage is. That seems to get consigned to those on the left, who have quite a bit to say about social recognition, acceptance into the community, assumption of a particular social role, giving families solid social and legal support, and the other consequences of marriage, none of which anti-gay conservatives want to bring up because it blows the hell out of their so-called "arguments" against extending a fundamental right to all citizens: far from wanting us to be accepted as members of the community, they want us to disapper. Consequently, until someone offers a definition of "traditional marriage" that is something more substantial than a formula for a 50% divorce rate, Charen's argument goes right into the dustbin with all the others. (And please note that she seems all too ready to rely on your basic slippery slope as justification for her non-definition of marriage.)

To call Charen's piece shallow and self-serving is to be extraordinarily charitable. Get this paragraph:

But consider the name that many gay activists have adopted. You no longer see gay and lesbian alone. Instead, the new terminology is LGBT — lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Lesbians and gays say that without gay marriage, they cannot fully express themselves as they really are. But what about bisexuals? I ask this not to poke fun or to hurt anyone’s feelings, but in all seriousness. How does gay marriage help a bisexual? I assume that if you are bisexual, you believe that you need to have sexual relationships with both men and women. If you are a bisexual man married to a woman, don’t you need to break the marriage bond to express your bisexuality? If you choose to express just the homosexual side of your bisexuality, then aren’t you gay? Likewise, if you choose to express only the heterosexual side, how are you a bisexual? Why is bisexuality not a recipe for infidelity? As for transgender people who believe that they are “assigned” to the wrong sex, their sexuality seems a deeply complicated matter. According to Wikipedia, the term “transgender,” which is always evolving, today encompasses “many overlapping categories — these include cross-dresser (CD); transvestite (TV); androgynes; genderqueer; people who live cross-gender; drag kings; and drag queens; and, frequently, transsexual (TS).” We are now in the realm of a multitude of sexual deviances.

WTF? This is nothing more than a collection of the most bizarre imaginings of someone who is a) obviously obsessed by other people's sex lives, and b) afraid of everyone who's not exactly like her. Just as an example, she either doesn't understand bisexuality as an orientation or is deliberately misrepresenting it -- yes, bisexuals are attracted to people of both sexes, but they don't establish important relationships with one of each at the same time. (This is very revealing, by the way, of the absolutely mechanistic stance taken by the anti-marriage brigade to issues of emotional involvement, love, and relationships: we're all little machines, in their book, put on earth to make more of us, although Charen at least leaves the procreation rationale alone.) By the same token, if a bisexual is married to a woman and meets a man he falls in love with, he'll most likely do what anyone else would do in that situation -- divorce his wife, if the circumstances seem to warrant it. You can demolish everything else in this paragraph by the same means. Just how stupid does this woman think her readers are? (Scary thought -- maybe she's right.)

here's her summation, after the requisite forays into ever more outlandish scenarios and what-ifs that have less and less to do with reality:

Where do you draw a line? Once traditional marriage — supported by centuries of civilization and the major Western religions — is undermined in the name of love, there is no logical or principled reason to forbid polygamy, polyandry, or even incest. Gay activists recoil from incest. But on what grounds exactly? Suppose, after we formalize gay marriage, two 25-year-old sterile (to remove the health of offspring argument) twins wish to marry? Let’s suppose they are loving and committed. What is the objection? That it offends custom and tradition? That it offends God? Isn’t that just bigotry?

The point is, of course, that you draw the line wherever it seems reasonable: that's a cultural decision, and cultures, in case Charen hasn't noticed, change. (Of course, since she bills herself as a conservative, it's probably an idea that she hates to think about.) There is a growing sentiment in this country, as there has been in other countries, that excluding same-sex couples from marriage is no longer reasonable, particularly in light of our stated commitment to equal rights for all. (And the idea that traditional marriage is being undermined in the name of love is just too funny for words -- and a perfect illustration of the intellectual resources Charen brings to the discussion.)

"Traditional marriage" arguments posed by the likes of Charen pretend that there has been one definition of marriage throughout this legendary "5,000 years" when the only common factor -- and that within the Judaeo-Christian tradition, if there can indeed be said to be such a thing (and I've heard objections to that terminology from both sides of that divide) -- is heterosexual supremacy. The debate is about where to draw that line, with the anti-SSM forces spearheaded by religious conservatives who don't believe in the American system to begin with: if you really believed in America, you wouldn't be trying to put your religion on the law books, now would you? And if you were really Christian, you wouldn't be lying about it to do it, either.

That pretty much does it for Charen and her apologia for nonsense. As I mentioned, I had to dig down through layers to get to this one -- This is the column that Joe Carter called excellent and persuasive, so you can imagine the degree of intellectual rigor we're dealing with here. Charen's post is merely another rehash of the old arguments that the right has been using since 1993 in Hawai'i, and they have no more validity now than they did then. "Excellent and persuasive"? Snicker.

I'll come back to Carter's post later.