The thing we keep coming back to in these same-sex marriage discussion is whether or not extending marriage rights to gay couples will strengthen gay unions or undermine the concept of marriage.
(Actually, that's not strictly true. For people who believe there is a right to gay marriage, it doesn't matter whether it would strengthen or weaken anything; the right is absolute, regardless of its consequences. But one fundamental issue that gets argued about is the effect same-sex marriage would have on defining marriage as an institution).
I've come across several articles from National Journal, by reporter Neil Munro, reporting on the debate. Alas, they are behind the subscriber firewall, but I'll put some of the passages here. Quotes from some leaders in the SSM movement put the lie to the idea that this thing is only about tweaking marriage, not thoroughly revolutionizing it.
For example, in "Despite Defeats, Gay Groups Not Dispirited" (4/16/05), a NYC-based activist named Daniel Carlson says gay marriage activists need to emphasize the "mutual obligation" between same-sex couples, as a way to win over the middle-grounders who feel threatened that gay marriage would destabilize a social institution that's already on shaky ground, thanks to heterosexuals. And then:
But an emphasis on obligation is not readily accepted by leaders of many major gay-rights groups."We're not interested in moral judgements about the way in which people have sex ... [in part, because] it would be the antithesis of our movement's origins ... [and] we still have very strong roots in gay liberation," said [National Gay and Lesbian Task Force director Matt] Foreman.
Moreover, gays give no ground on the conservatives' insistence that allowing gays to marry inherently weakens heterosexual marriage as an institution. Marriage as an institution will be strengthened, Foreman said, especially if people can choose from among a wide variety of partnerships, each with its own obligations. A greater variety of arrangements is needed, he said, because "marriage is a profoundly conservative institution, and in many states it works against women in a very significant way."
Added [Human Rights Campaign president Joe] Solomonese, "This is America, and everyone's personal realtionship and marriage is a different one ... [not] some sort of lifestyle that meets the [conservatives'] definition of what is Happy Ever After."
Right-wingers did not make those quotes up, and National Journal is not an ideological magazine. These are two of the top gay leaders in the country, saying that they are not interested in making marriage open to gays, but in redefining the entire institution to allow for sexual liberty and institutionalizing polymorphous perversity. If the concept of marriage should apply to any and all kinds of relationships, then marriage cannot be said to exist in any meaningful sense.
There's more:
On 2/14/09, Munro reported on the fallout from the Prop 8 vote. Excerpt:
Sara Beth Brooks was the lead organizer of a march in San Diego on November 15 that drew 20,000 people to protest the outcome of the Proposition 8 vote. "A marriage is two people committing to loving each other and is defined differently by every single person," she said. "That's the core difference between us and our religious opponents."
That is an incoherent statement, obviously, but what she means, I think, is that there is no fixed definition of marriage. Later in the piece, a lesbian named Jennifer Pizer called the vote "a profoundly hurtful personal rejection and judgment ... It breaks people's hearts. How can people do that to other people."
I fully credit that this is how Pizer and many others experienced the vote, but this is emotivism. We cannot make public policy based on whether or not it hurts someone's feelings. The California Supreme Court's ruling declaring a right to gay marriage was profoundly hurtful to traditional Christians, Orthodox Jews and social conservatives. Alas for us, our emotions have nothing to do with whether or not gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry, nor should they. And vice versa.
In that same piece, there's this important passage:
"The word 'marriage' needs to be used to describe all relationships of two people who are loving and committed to each other, countered Brooks. "To deny that semantic attachment to our relationships is the exact same thing as denying an African-American person thet right to attend the same schools as a white person."
Actually, that's not true at all. Gender is not the same thing as race. But if people come to believe that, it conveniently allows them to ignore any substantive argument made against same-sex marriage as solely an expression of bigotry, and therefore safely ignored. More from the report:
"I could support some version of partnership benefits, but not if they're oging to endanger marriage," Gallagher replied. "I don't know how you persuade young men and young women that children need a mother and a father if that idea is viewed as racist."
Precisely. Finally from the National Journal trove, here's a portion of a 10/7/06 piece about a new legal doctrine being promoted by the American Law Institute ("a presitigious private association of active and retired judges and lawyers") that would radically change the way judges have to deal with family law, to deprivilege traditional marriage and its structures when dealing with child custody cases and related disputes. Excerpt:
But many jurists disagree, among them Leah Ward Sears, the chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. "I'm an African-American and I saw how important law was in moving the culture in the era of desegregation," said Sears, who opposes the ALI's recommendations. The law can "help shape the behavior that we want," she said, adding that social-science data show that parents should "have more of a duty to their children, and that duty includes staying together to rear their children."
So what does this have to do with same-sex marriage? Read on:
A central theme of the final [ALI] report, according to [UCLA law professor and co-author Grace Ganz] Blumberg, is that people in all forms of relationships -- including adults in nonsexual relationships-- deserve legal protections. "They shouldn't be ignored just because they don't conform," she said. "They deserve to be treated like married people."
More:
The ALI's emphasis on supporting diversity is welcomed by a new network of more than 250 gay, lesbian, and other liberal activists and academics. In June, the network released a statement, "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families and Relatioinships," that declares: "Our vision is the creation of communities in which we are encouraged to explore the widest range of non-exploitive, non-abusive possibilities in love, gender, desire, and sex-- and in the creation of new forms of constructed families without fear."
Read the whole statement here. Is this a fringe group? Look at the list of signatories. Some pretty big establishmentarian names there.
My point in all this is simply that you cannot take marriage, a social institution that developed over a very, very long period of time, and redefine it out of existence, without taking an enormous risk. The agenda of some of these leaders is precisely to do that -- to rid marriage of anything normative, to make it a free-floating legal condition that has no meaning beyond whatever it is they want it to mean today. What I don't understand is why, if marriage has no transcendent meaning, we should stop, as Sara Brooks wants us to do, at two people. Why two people? What's the reason there? Why oppress those who want to live in a threesome? Wouldn't the same logic that freed up a same-sex couple to be married also justify, as a matter of logic, other arrangements based on mutual consent? If not, why not?
Many people aren't thinking about the consequences of these ideas as they play out over time. They had better. And they had better start looking more deeply at what some of these leaders really mean to achieve. Look at their own words.
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Rob,
I don't think a polyamorous identity has developed in our society they way a gay identity has developed. Nonetheless, there are thousands of people who live this lifestyle. I've read that in suburban alone Utah there are thousands of "normal" (read non-fundamentalist Mormons) polygamous families who live their lives without the state recognition of there marriages. Are these people "hardwired" for these relationships? Maybe, maybe not. But again, I'm not convinced that whether or not one is "hardwired" for a certain attraction should mean very much. After all, child molesters may be "hardwired" for their attraction. It is a very dangerous principal to affirm a sexual behavior as acceptable just because someone is "hardwired" for it.
The only thing that should matter for the state is rights. And if consenting adults want to enter into plural marriages, why should the state be able to tell them no?
rr
rr: There are millions of people who report that they can only feel attraction to or romantic love for members of the same sex, that their attempts at heterosexual relationships were shams, and that it was a tremendous relief to "come out" as gay. By contrast, we aren't seeing millions--or, indeed, any--people reporting that they can only feel attraction or love for two people at once, that their attempts at monogamous relationships were all shams, and that it was a tremendous relief to "come out" as polyamorous. If there were people deeply wired for polyamory, why wouldn't we be hearing from more of them?
Regardng the definition of marriage and "redefining" it.
Marriage has several definitions, some of which have nothing to do with people. Throughout time, marriage has had meanings changed. It has never simply meant "between a man and a woman". Sometimes it was several women and one man(which still occurs in some parts of the world). It also had the meaning of "one white woman, and one white man". The word marriage comes from the Latin 'maritare', which means "give a husband to".
This sacred institution has gone through a myriad of roles. It's a way to handle property rights, inheritance, etc. It was a contract to gain land and title, and protect bloodlines. A way to end feuds. Woman were used to get a bride price, or a dowry, through arranged marriages(which still occur). Love was rarely involved.
Regardless of all that. The most important thing you must realize: it is not actually possible to legislate a definition. The gov't doesn't have the power to make marriage defined in only one way(be it your way or anyone else's). The nature of language just doesn't allow for that. If this were possible then etymology wouldn't exist, because we'd all speak the same way we did thousands of years ago. Language evolves, we see this throughout our lifetime. Think of the word "web". Did you think spider or did you think internet? How about the word "text", is it a noun or a verb? A hundred years ago "cool" only referred to temperature. Thousands of examples. It's called common usage, and yes sometimes I dislike common usage. Because of this we have words like "irregardless" and "ain't". The point being that if enough people use the word marriage as "2 consenting adults in wedlock" then that's what it's going to mean. You can no more force everyone to use one particular definition no more than you can force everyone to use the word "gay" to mean "happy".
You're and all your anti-gay pals are just going to have to accept that.
I suspect this whole thing isn't about definitions at all. It's more likely because the bible says "god hates gays" and "marriage is good" so you musn't let those evil gays get married. Too bad for you, you have no control over it. The controversy isn't actually about gay people getting married, because they can do that anyway. It's about the gov't recognizing the marriage and giving them the same benefits and rights.
See how I used 'marriage' and didn't have to preface it with gay but you still understood what I was saying? That's common usage.
Someone has probably already mentioned it somewhere (thousands of posts this month!), but I seems the French have devised the perfect compromise:
http://brittany.angloinfo.com/countries/france/marriage.asp
The process in France seems to be that you first register your relationship with the government ... let's not needlessly offend religious sensibilities so we will use the term "civil union" for this since even most American religious conservatives nowadays claim to regard it as acceptable. This is followed by a religious ceremony which is optional, has no legal status and you & your church can call it whatever you want. Brilliant!
MARCU$
Understandably, as you say, there is profound emotional impact on both sides of this issue. What you have failed to explore is the very important fact that they are categorically different in origin.
On the anti-equality side, the impact comes from a fear that allowing other people equal rights will somehow - through a hypothetical cascading avalanche of revision - radically damage the fundamental fabric of society. Like so many other people in the past, they fear that allowing any change at all - even if the change itself doesn't actually affect them directly - will unleash some massive Pandora's Box of subsequent changes that lead to chaos and destruction.
Those who are being denied their civil equality, on the other hand, are suffering tangible, concrete, undeniable consequences. They are being denied access to their dying loved ones. They are losing everything when their lifelong partner dies. They are having the children that they love, nurture and protect ripped out of their homes. They are being denied the right to compensation when their partners make the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our country, and the list goes on and on.
At countless points in our nation's history, people have had to confront their fears of change and the unknown as we have advanced toward being a more just society where all people are cherished and respected equally, regardless of their differences. Had people's fears been allowed to prevent that progress from taking place, huge portions of our society would still be suffering terrible injustices.
History will view your fears no differently.
I am very interested in seeing society's consciousness of marriage change to suit the times. Rod you stated, "My point in all this is simply that you cannot take marriage, a social institution that developed over a very, very long period of time, and redefine it out of existence, without taking an enormous risk." Well, marriage is ever evolving and developing as the world around us changes due to modern choices and perceptions. To deny adaptation is, in my opinion, an even greater risk to the idea of marriage. I have a vision for what I call the New Marriage that I discuss on my blog www.stilllifeathome.blogspot.com
It applies to all people of all race, gender and religious beliefs. Let's get our head out of the sand people and stop denying the inevitable.
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