gay marriage
PIB standing for polygamy, incest and bestiality, and the challenge being answering the slippery slope argument of gay marriage.
Rogers Cadenhead: “Even with the marraige bans, social liberals must be winning the battle for gay rights if a scripture-quoting small town sheriff in Alabama is proudly stating the number of abominations he has hired.”
KFX: “As far as I am concerned all the gay couples around the world campaign to be allowed to perform a legal ceremony of marriage, the ones who have a sense of love and committment between them......they're already married. For all intents an purposes they fulfill the most important part of a marriage. What they are campaigning for is legal recognition of the fact, and as such I fully support them.”
The following is the text of a comment I wrote to that article, though the links have been added.
I'm with Jonathan Rauch, who wrote an excellent book on marriage (and not just gay marriage, but marriage in general), and he argued that marriage has more to do with creating a home and family as well as making a commitment to the community than it does with two people making a commitment to each other. People (not just a man and a woman, but adults of all sexual orientations) who get married are saying to the community "I promise to be the first person at this other person's side when they are in a crisis and I also promise that I will be faithful to them at all times". Sometimes people break promises, and the second promise is especially easy to break. There are social punishments for people who break them. How many people do you know that have slept with someone other than their spouse who have a good reputation in the community because of it?
Rauch in his book argues that marriage has been history's most successful tamer of wild young men, so he argues that social conservatives should really see gay marriage (especially marriage of two gay males) as a social positive: here are two men who have decided that they want to once and for all not fit the stereotype of the male who cruises for sex. Hello! Conservatives! What better institution than marriage is there for people (straight and not straight) who fit that stereotype? Basically he's arguing that to save the institution of marriage, you have to let gay people do it.
James Moore, Canadian Member of Parliament for Port Moody — Westwood — Port Coquitlam, in a remarkable—for an MP, not for him, evidently—email to his constituents: “believe in equality under the law for all Canadians for civil marriages, which in a perfect world would be termed civil unions. And I also believe strongly in the separation of church and state in order to protect the rights of religious institutions and people of faith from having to embrace or perform same-sex marriages if they choose not to.”
Port Moody and Port Coquitlam are suburbs of Vancouver, British Columbia, which may help understand why he focuses on B.C. in his email. Moore opposes use of the term marriage for the legal union between two homosexual adults, but argues that civil unions cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. It's not a compromise I'm fully comfortable with, but Moore is proof that the Conservative Party at least has some room for diversity of opinion on the subject of gays and lesbians. There is a strong-enough conservative argument (as I outlined above) for gay marriage and a strong enough argument that civil unions (a "marriage-lite" solution) is not good enough. Increasing the amount of types of marriage only serves to weaken the institution, as does the exclusion of gays.
Scott has selected Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America by Jonathan Rauch, which I read earlier this year, as his choice for book of the year: “Amidst all the hubbub, this book has presented a calm, rational basis for allowing equality. It looks at opponents' arguments with rationality and respect - and then quietly and calmly counteracts them.”
Matt: “Here's my suggestion for the No on prop 36 folks: Go simple. Your new slogan is "Support Marriages. Support Families. No on 36." That's it. You don't have to explain these are new marriages or expanded definitions of family, just go with short, emotional slogans. People love marriage. People love family. A no vote on 36 means thousands of marriages don't have to be dissolved.”
That's the message of Jonathan Rauch in his book Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America. Rauch argues that gay marriages are a very conservative-friendly institution, because it will not only encourage gays to commit to one person for the rest of their lives, but that marriage means more than just one partner to have sex with (because a fifth of married men have admitted to an "indiscretion"). It means more than loving just one person (because it's possible to love more than one person). It means being the person that will guaranteed to be there if the other person's world turns upside down. It means making a contract not between each other but between them as a couple and the community around them. Rauch is saying that a couple, gay or straight, that marries is saying to the rest of the world "I had some fun but now it's time for me to settle down and become an adult". That's why I say in my thoughts about the book that it has surprisingly moderated my views on heterosexual marriage. Rauch also says that gay marriage opponents, by saying "a marriage should be between a man and a woman" are destroying marriage—which, in the vows, has more to do with loving and holding and in sickness and death than what reproductive organs the two people might have—in order to save it.
The other point Matt makes in his article is that conservatives have successfully simplified the message so much that it often "makes sense" even though the underlying ideas may not. That has been much of the appeal conservatism had for me: not so much the ideas but the rhetoric. I like nuance a lot too, and that's the force that draws me to the liberal side against the conservative pull, but for liberals to be successful politically, as Matt points out, they may have to try some of the things that made their political enemies successful as well.
Finished reading Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America by Jonathan Rauch.
This book is a must-read for gay-marriage supporters. Why not for people who are against gay marriage? I'm not sure. I think maybe it's because the book is better suited as not so much preaching to the converted but supplying nuance and moderation to an overheated debate. It has, a little surprisingly, moderated my somewhat radical views on heterosexual marriage. Rauch comes very close to straw-man arguments on a few occasions, and he has received some criticism for his treatment of the Hayekian argument. Quibbles. This is an excellent book.
I've made reference to this book in several weblog entries since reading it:
Niall Ferguson: “The lesson of British history is that a second Bush term could be more damaging to the Republicans and more beneficial to the Democrats than a Bush defeat. If he secures re-election, President Bush can be relied upon to press on with a foreign policy based on pre-emptive military force, to ignore the impending fiscal crisis (on the Cheney principle that "deficits don't matter") and to pursue socially conservative objectives like the constitutional ban on gay marriage. Anyone who thinks this combination will serve to maintain Republican unity is dreaming; it will do the opposite. Meanwhile, the Dems will have another four years to figure out what the Labour Party finally figured out: It's the candidate, stupid. And when the 2008 Republican candidate goes head-to-head with the American Tony Blair, he will get wiped out.”
Eve Tushnet: “Boys look to their fathers to figure out who they might become and how to achieve manhood. Both sons and daughters learn from their fathers what a man's place is in the family, and what women can expect of men. (This is one major reason that girls raised out of wedlock are more likely to make bad choices about sex: They don't think they can set standards and demand responsibility from men, because they haven't seen that type of responsibility in their own families.) No "male role model" — no uncle, teacher or friend — can fill a child's need for a father.”
Tushnet is reviewing Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America by Jonathan Rauch. Tushnet says that Rauch, in an otherwise important book, does not spend enough time discussing the issues of children in marriages, gay and straight.
Chickpea has some notes and a review of the book, and notes the diversity in possible relationships, gay and straight: “If Rauch points to infertile couples and says that this shows that marriage is not really about fertility, then I can just as easily point to uncaring marriages or open marriages to show that marriage must not really be about caring for each other or about fidelity. Marriage is promoted in order to encourage mutual-caregiving, fidelity, and procreation, even though particular marriages may not attain those ends.”
(Jonathan Rauch is the author of one of the most important articles I've ever read, "Caring For Your Introvert".)
