Different voices on gay marriage
Cathy Young | March 17, 2004, 11:11am
A somewhat belated link to an interesting column by free-market economist and social critic Thomas Sowell, addressing and criticizing some of the arguments in favor of same-sex marriage. According to Sowell:
There is, for example, the argument that the government has no business getting involved with marriage in the first place. That is a personal relation, the argument goes.
Love affairs are personal relations. Marriage is a legal relation. To say that government should not get involved in legal relations is to say that government has no business governing.
Homosexuals were on their strongest ground when they said that what happens between "consenting adults" in private is none of the government's business. But now gay activists are taking the opposite view, that it is government's business -- and that government has an obligation to give its approval.
I strongly support, as I have before, legal equality for same-sex partners. But there are many troubling and complicated questions surrounding this issue. If we are looking at it from a truly libertarian perspective, all the legal privileges attached to marriage -- whatever the gender of the partners -- are illegitimate, because they represent the government favoring one type of relationship over another. Why should a bond of lifelong platonic friendship be less "privileged" than a sexual relationship? Are single people, for whom such a bond may be the primary relationship in their lives, being discriminated against by the very existence of civil marriage? If the government can favor some relationships over others, can't it also regulate these relationships in some fashion and express majoritarian preferences for certain types of relationships?
Another good column on the subject comes from Tammy Bruce, the maverick lesbian feminist turned right-wing darling. I've been pretty tough on Bruce in the past, partly because I felt that she was avoiding taking a stand on same-sex marriage so as not to alienate her conservative friends. I hereby offer a partial apology: Bruce's column on the subject is a good, thoughtful attempt to reconcile the case for equal protection with respect for the traditional cultural meaning of marriage. Her answer is civil unions with all the "legal incidents" of marriage, which is what a number of other nations (such as England) are adopting.
Is this discrimination? When the debate is over semantics rather than actual rights, we are talking about two different groups wanting to legislate their values: societal acceptance of same-sex relationships as fully equivalent to male-female ones, versus the view that male-female marriage should hold a special place in our culture because it cements the bonding of the two sexes and is (normally) related to childbearing. That, it seems to me, is a subject for debate in a democratic society, not a civil rights issue. (Again, from a truly libertarian standpoint, neither goal is legitimate and neither group should look to the government to validate its beliefs and identity.)
Jean Bart | March 18, 2004, 3:25am | #
Andrew,
"Our popular culture has always supplied lots of 'reasons' -- variously sentimental and glamorised [or bigoted, racist, prejudicial, etc.] -- to encourage straight men to marry, as opposed to merely sleeping around...and that is basically why hetero marriages unlikely to produce offspring receive the 'benefit of the doubt' (apart from it is also more convenient)."
Which is hardly an argument against gay marraige; indeed, its neither an argument for or against the practice.
"We WANT women to be married when they elect to have children -- as overwhelmingly most will out of every generation -- because the advantages of having children raised by the parents who conceived them have now been proven in the negative by the rise of commonplace single-parenthood...with all its disatrous consequences."
What are those "disasterous consequences?" Indeed, I would like you to demonstrate that "disasterous consequences" have ensued. Indeed, I suspect that this is simply another of your numerous unsubstantiated claims.
"Straight marriage where the couples are unlikely to conceive children -- and it is hardly ever AS unlikely as when the couple are of the same sex -- serves as a sort of useful adjunct to the REAL deal...marriages begun by straight couples during their child-bearing years. Same-sex marriages don't."
And why not? Indeed, this differentiation seems strange and utterly artificial; especially in light of the fact that both types of couples can have children via adoption, etc.
"AND part of the 'package' of marital stability is an expectation that couples commit to staying married over a lifetime -- long after any children conceived have reached maturity, and no new chidren are likely to be conceived."
Are you now going to argue for an end to divorce? Because clearly, if you are really concerned about that issue, then abolition of divorce seems to be a far more weighty matter for you to be involved with.
"That a straight couple might GET married in their advanced years reinforces the notion that elderly couples would want to STAY married. Again, gay marriages undertaken at any age are simply irrelevant."
And why are they irrelevant; again, another unsubstantiated assertion on your part.
thoreau | March 18, 2004, 3:28am | #
Andrew-
We've been through this before. As near as I can tell, your argument is this:
Civil unions for gays will lead to civil unions for straights. This will lead men to flake out on women even more than they do.
A few problems with your argument:
1) Will outright marriage for gays have the same implication for heterosexual marriage? Yes, yes, I know there is opposition to outright marriage for gays and that if it happens it should happen via the legislative process. The question is, if that opposition is overcome by via civil debate (hypothetially speaking), will your dire prediction of crumbling hetero marriages still come true? The answer to that question might have some impact on the ongoing debate over gay marriage.
2) Even if the legal institution of hetero marriage were supplemented or replaced by the legal institution of civil unions, the social and religious institutions of marriage (which are not under the government's authority, like so many other aspects of our personal lives) would remain. You seem to think that women would acquiesce to men who demand to only have a civil union rather than a full marriage (blessed by a church, or by family or other social institutions for those who aren't religious).
Well, consider another battle that a lot of men fight: A lot of men offer to enter into a full-fledged marriage (both religious and legal), but they ask to do so in a minimalist ceremony, perhaps eloping or something. Most such men (myself included) are shot down and forced to go through a 3-ring circus of a wedding. They have to get a tux, pose for pictures, do an overly elaborate ceremony, do the silly cake-cutting, stand in a receiving line while lots of people gush and hug them, dance, do a faux strip-tease of their wives during the silly garter-tossing ceremony, and for the year leading up to it every family gathering or even meeting with friends (if the woman and her female friends are present) turns into wedding talk. (Can you tell I'm not a big fan of weddings?)
If most men can't even persuade their fiances to accept a less elaborate wedding, how will they persuade women to accept a civil union without the social and/or religious aspects of marriage (i.e. a vow to love, honor, and cherish, in addition to a legal contract to share property)?
BTW, I told my wife that if we have a daughter, the only way I'll pay for a big wedding is if I don't like her fiance. If I like the guy I'll refuse to put him through the torture of an elaborate wedding, but if I don't like him I'll make him endure a wedding that would put the royal family to shame.
Andrew | March 18, 2004, 5:23am | #
OK thoreau
Now we are getting somewhere. Suppose whenever a couple goes to City Hall, in the same office there are two stacks of forms-- one called Marriage for unrelated straights, the other called Civil Unions for partners who do not qualify for the Marriage form (as unrelated straights would not qualify for the Civil Union form).
If you and your partner qualified for the Civil Union form, after getting it you may go to any church that is otherwised qualified to perform such ceremonies, and is theologically willing to sanctify such relationships (the Unitarians are willing to bless sibling Civil Unions, eg) and get the whole shebang...or just go down the hall and get the civil ceremony.
After that, you would enjoy most (if not all) of the leqal privileges domestic law now extends to married couples. These priveleges are unlikely to change rapidly over a lifetime-- most have been around since before your parents were born, and are variants of the privileges accorded to blood kin and/or the rights enforced in contract disputes.
However, wisely or unwisely, many jurisdictions (local, state and federal) promote the interests of married couples in all kinds of ways that extend way beyond family or contract law: the provision of medical and old-age insurance benefits, family oriented zoning and tax breaks of various kinds come immediately to mind. Many private employers base benefit packages on similar considerations.
THESE benefits are very unstable over even short periods of time...tax laws can be changed annually.
They are a matter of social policy. In almost every case the provision of these benefits are intended to promote straight Marriage (and effectively discourage single-parenthood) for reasons that are nearly irrelevant in the case of same-sex or other kinds of Civil Unions. And for these policies to work at all, an unmistakeable distinction is necessary.
A Marriage/Civil Union distinction would give legislators and other actors a handy tool for making such distinctions as they choose...a distinction they can neglect to make any time, simply by making the relevant benefit (or even liability) applicable to BOTH.
thoreau | March 18, 2004, 5:43am | #
Andrew-
OK, I think we're zeroing in on your objections.
Do you fear that the legislated benefits surrounding marriage would be unsustainable if too many other people signed up to get them? I hope we can agree that if these benefits were only claimed by gay couples it wouldn't be much of an issue, since gays are a tiny portion of the population.
But perhaps you fear that single heterosexuals will start to claim these benefits too. (e.g. a single guy loses his job, so his single hetero friend gets a civil union and then asks his employer to extend health insurance to his friend)
I don't have an easy answer there. I actually agree with you that it's just a tad too easy to say "Oh, none of those things should exist in the first place." One thing is that some of those benefits are
not legislated, but are instead offered voluntarily, and with the rise of civil unions for everybody the private sector might decide to stop offering those benefits. And everybody here could say "Hey, that's their right" and it is. But at the same time I see Andrew's point.
At the risk of sounding too optimistic, marriage has survived for millenia, and for most of those millenia there were few (if any) legislated benefits or employer benefits. Sure, those were different times and different economies. But we've already gambled on the private sector's ability to cope with plenty of other innovations, e.g. letting women learn to read, letting women get jobs, letting women own property, etc. In fact, many here would suggest that it is in our national security interest to encourage Muslim nations to adopt those same innovations. So I'm going to be a wide-eyed optimist and predict that, one way or another, society would adapt and survive and find ways to cope with civil unions for same-sex couples.
Finally, if your most compelling argument against gay marriage is "employers might not offer hetero couples health insurance anymore", it seems like your objection is more easily surmountable than most. I don't claim to have all the answers on how to solve it, but somehow I think a reform of health insurance (both the regulations and the private sector aspects) is not outside the realm of possibility.
It's certainly less daunting than the claims of some gay marriage opponents, who basically believe that civilization as we know it will collapse under the wrath of God. Unless you believe that employer-provided health insurance is the linch-pin of society. Given the quality of your posts, I doubt you'd say that.
There, that wasn't so hard.
dj of raleigh | March 18, 2004, 9:01am | #
"Why should a bond of lifelong platonic friendship be less "privileged" than a sexual relationship?" Cathy
You wouldn't even have to live together!
You could be a pen pal, even, or a cousin!
Lawyers are going to get rich off this
when it comes to breakup and inheritance.
If gay couples rights have been denied up til now,
could it be that law suits could go back and right some wrongs?
IF a gay couple lived together for a few years,
broke up, and parted ways, couldn't, shouldn't,
one be able to go back and claim some compensation
for whatever was lose or left from the de facto marriage?
Lawyers will prosper from civil union/marriage/divorce.
Let your old lover know,
Y O U M E A N B U S I N E S S!!!
Call the offices of J. Thurston Wadd, now!
Scott Harris | March 19, 2004, 12:30pm | #
The question keeps arising "What harm does allowing gays to marry do to other marriages?" Its seems like a fair questions, but it puts the burden of proof on the wrong party. Those advocating for gay marriage have the burden of proof to show that it would not cause harm. They are the ones trying to make the change that we will all ultimately have to pay for if real harm is caused.
In times past, there was a direct and immediate DANGER to having sex. 1) a fertile woman regularly engaging in sex had an almost 100% chance of getting pregnant. 2) Dying in childbirth was a real risk. 3) Abortion was mostly unknown, and at best an extreme health risk. 4) Having a child outside of marriage endangered the child to poverty and starvation since 5) the father had no obligation to care for it, and could legally deny paternity without consequence. 6) promiscuous sex exposed one to STD's which were disfuguring, sterilizing, stigmatizing, and many times fatal.
Interestingly, with the exception of the danger of STD's, the danger of having sex was primarily to the woman, and primarily because the inevitable result of sex was a child. Those who advocate gay marriage conveniently ignore the fact that in nature, without the interference of science and technology, sex is a dangerous activity with extreme consequences. Could it be that marriage was created in all cultures and all societies to deal with the natural consequences of sex - namely children.
Science has attempted to overcome the consequences of sex. Marriage alone accomodates the consequences of sex. Some suggest that modern science, including contraception, medical care, abortion, and DNA testing for paternity, combined with modern law allowing no-fault divorce and forcing involuntary servitude on fathers until children are grown had obviated the need for marriage. They argue that with modern science and modern law, marriage has simply become a voluntary cultural arrangement between consenting adults that is outdated.
But this ignores the fact that children are still born. They still need their parents. And they still suffer when their parents are not together - for whatever reason, be it illegitimacy, divorce, or death. It ignores that the primary result of sex is still children, and society has both a need and an obligation to provide for the creation and development of the next generation.
Cathy asks, "Why should a bond of lifelong platonic friendship be less "privileged" than a sexual relationship?" A good question since gay relationships more closely resemble friendships than they do marriage.
The promise of gay couples to raise children, and become "families" is specious because 1) few gay couples will actually raise children, 2) we should not allow them to raise children, and 3) we all know that what gay couples REALLY want is access to the legal privileges of marriage without any of the concurring responsibilities.
So back to the question "what harm?" The harm is not to the adults who already made their choices to be gay or straight, to copulate or not, to cohabitate or not, to marry or not. The harm is to children specifically, and to society generally in that we will have further encoded in law that marriage is primarily about the adults, not about the children. This will further denigrate the value of children in the view of society at large, reinforcing the notion that life is all about self-indulgence and self-fulfillment without self-sacrifice. It is a charge-card philosophy of enjoy now, and pay later.
And pay later we will. That is the insidious threat. The fact that the consequences cannot be immediately known obscures the nature of the threat. Those advocates of gay marriage who point to adultery and divorce as equally or more destructive are correct in their analysis. And perhaps we should thank them for clearly bringing attention to our folly. But the conclusion that creating same-sex marriage is proper course of action - as if validating the destruction of marriage "for the kid's sake" is desirable - in insane.
Only extreme narcissistic libertarians could agree, because they see no further than their own temporal self-indulgence. At least gay people have an understandable agenda - trying to grab benefits to which they have no moral right. Libertarians just don't want to be bothered with sustaining our society for future generations. After all - they won't be here. As for future generations, let them eat cake (that is if we have future generations.)
chairm | March 24, 2004, 6:37am | #
I said, "The way I see it, there are two issues being conflated. 1) The call for the equivalence (not equality) of homosexuality and heterosexuality; 2) the acknowledgement that marriage is based on the procreative model. This is less about values than about objective truth."
Objectively, homosexuality is not the equivalent of heterosexuality; these are different. And, objectively, the procreative model is acknowledged in civil marriage. That is explicitly denied in the new SSM model.
Another poster responded, "Clearly marraige is not based on the procreative model; if it were, then all people who married would procreate."
That is a misleading statement. It mistakes procreation itself for "the procreative model". And it confuses particular instances of marriage with the social institution of marriage. The statement presents mixed terms and meanings and knocks a straw man.
[ Competing in the Marathon is not based on running the distance; if it were, then *all* who ever enter it would cross the finish line. ]
"Indeed, this reductionist approach to the notion of marraige ignores values and issues which are related to marraige and are equal or even more important than procreation."
The approach is objective. Marriage is a social institution. Its normative ideal is procreative (even if there are exceptions that test the rule) and it entails values and traditions that flow from the bonding of men and women with each other and with their children. It is a public act with private motivations.
Which values and issues are not included in such a model? Is the SSM model a superior notion of marriage since it excludes procreation and the bonding of men and women and their children?
Maybe the newly espoused model is a better norm for "gay union" than it is for civil marriage.
