All in the Gay Family
Same-sex marriage existed long before it was legalized.
"I can't go that far; that's the year 2000! Negroes [and whites], okay. But that's too far!"
—President Richard Nixon on gay marriage, speaking in August 1970; quoted in John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power
No one knows the names of the first gay couple to exchange wedding vows. You should keep that in mind as same-sex marriage becomes law in New York: The earliest milestones on the road to marital equality were made quietly, privately, and far from any civil authority. The public recognition of gay unions emerged gradually, reaching wider and wider circles until finally even governments started climbing aboard. Contrary to the rhetoric you still hear from some of the idea's opponents, gay marriage was not cooked up in some D.C. laboratory and imposed on America by social engineers. It was built from the bottom up, and it was alive at a time when the typical social engineer thought homosexuality was a disease.
Members of the same gender have been coupling off for centuries, sometimes with ceremonies that look rather marital to modern eyes. Here in America, gay marriages predate the modern gay rights movement. Six years before Stonewall, the 1963 book The Homosexual and his Society described informal gay weddings where "all the formalities of [a] legally certified and religiously sanctioned ceremony are aped with the greatest of care." Those unions didn't always last (the authors noted that it "sometimes takes no more than a week or two" before the lovers "recall that their marriage has no legal, religious, or moral sanctions" and take off), but as the resilience of the euphemism longtime companion suggests, a match between two men or two women could be as lasting and loving as any heterosexual coupling. As gay life became more visible, so did those permanent partnerships, and as social tolerance of homosexuality grew, more people accepted the partners' marriages as real. In 1992, long before any state recognized gay marriage as a legal right, Suzanne Sherman could fill a big chunk of a book by interviewing gays who had married and officiants who had blessed their unions. Such marriages were eventually honored by institutions outside as well as inside the gay community. By 1993, the list of companies that allowed domestic partners of the same sex to share benefits included Microsoft, Apple, HBO, Warner Bros., and Borders. By 2007, gay couples who wanted to get married at Disneyland were free to purchase the Fairy Tale Wedding package.
The numbers on public support for gay wedlock show a slow but steady surge of support for the idea. A decade and a half ago, according to Gallup, just 27 percent of Americans thought gay marriage should be legally recognized. This year the figure was 53 percent. It is often suggested that this sea change reflects the fact that more Americans know people who are openly gay. While I don't doubt that that's a major factor, I think another change is important too: More Americans know people who are openly gay and married. If you mentioned gay marriage to the average American three decades ago, he would have thought you were making a joke or spouting a science-fiction scenario. (Indeed, three decades ago the science-fiction comedy Airplane! 2 included an apparently married gay couple as a throwaway gag.) Today gays living as married are a part of everyday life, whether or not those unions have been licensed by the state. If you're an American, there's a reasonable chance that you've met a committed, cohabiting gay couple, and whether you like the duo or not it should be hard to see them as a threat to the sanctity of marriage. After all, they want to get married. That isn't necessarily true of the cohabiting straights who live next door. The gay couple may even want to have kids—and with restrictions on gay adoption falling away, that option is ever more possible.
And so a social institution took hold: first among gays themselves, then in the larger community and marketplace. Finally the government took notice. Judges started upholding gays' right to wed each other, then legislatures began to come around. In many places the foes of gay marriage have pushed back through ballot initiatives, a path that isn't open to them in New York. But even where a public referendum is possible, it's probably just a matter of time in most states before the votes against same-sex marriage just won't be there. As Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips recently pointed out in the American Political Science Review, it's the youngest American adults who show the strongest support for gay marriage. The strongest opposition is in the demographic that will be next to die off.
So I give credit to the legislature of New York, which just made life easier for gay couples who want to adopt a standard marriage contract. But even more than that, I give credit to the couples themselves, and to all the couples who came before them. They're the ones who started this revolution rolling.
Jesse Walker is managing editor of Reason magazine.
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[Gay marriage] was built from the bottom up
If I were even more immature than I am, I would snicker at that. Heh heh…
It was built from the bottom up… by Top. Men.
But even more than that, I give credit to the couples themselves, and to all the couples who came before them. They’re the ones who started this revolution rolling.
And, on a serious note, well captured, Mr. Walker. This is it, stated concisely.
couples who came…
That photo depicts interracial same-sex marriage.
Cue weeping baby Jesus!
Daddy, What Will I Look Like?
I slap my knee upon clicking that link, SugarFree. Chuckles and guffaws ensued shortly thereafter.
And now begins the reason that Gays insist on “Marriage” instead of “Civil Union”; a minimum of ten years of tiresome lawsuits to make assorted bureaucratic sphincters treat Gay married couples like other married couples. Not because the sphincters in question are very anti-Gay but simply because nothing gives a sphincter more pleasure than clenching up and saying “no” to somebody the sphincter imagines he has power over.
If it was “Civil Unions” instead of “Marriages”, that would be twenty years minimum.
Gays don’t need to be formally married as unions meet their needs and anyway they don’t procreate.
Thank goodness heterosexual coupling only ever produces children when the partners are married.
Blacks don’t need to drink at the same fountains as whites as they already have their own fountains.
? hey, just applying your own logic.
Applying that logic would mean that black couples need to get into a different marriage line than white couples.
Since black couples were permitted to marry same as white couples, the logical comparison fails.
For the comparison to be valid mixed race couples would have to get into a different line than same race couples, which was not the case.
Furthermore, the motivation behind prohibiting mixed race marriage was to discourage mixed race children.
Since same sex couples cannot have children without the aid of a third party of the opposite sex, the comparison fails even further.
But I know none of that matters since your comment is intended to be an ad hominem argument that the person who opposes redefining marriage is motivated by hatred of homosexuals, and the only possible way to prove that they are not motivated by hatred is to support the redefining of marriage.
Dunno about hatred but it takes a lot of convoluted bullshit to argue against an obvious, inevitable advancement in equal civil rights that most Americans now favor and that will do no harm to anyone.
Are you aware that shifting the burden of proof is a logical fallacy?
Yes.
Hey are you the Michael Ejercito that called gays “shit stabbers” over at NOM, think I screen saved that one. Gotta see if I can find it.
Poor Maggie and Brian, epic, epic fail on Friday, I guess they’ll just have to take same sex marriage and like it. LOL
I’m aware that you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. Formal logic is for grown ups. Why don’t you argue your point instead of distracting from its obvious flaws by throwing out terms for things you don’t understand?
I will help you get started. Finish this sentence: Gay people aren’t entitled to the same legal rights as straight people because…
Which is to say, IMO the 14th amendment puts the burden of proof on you. The reason people may think you’re a bigot is because there simply does not exist an argument against equal marriage rights that is not based in bigotry or religion (bigotry with the stamp of approval from an invisible man in the sky).
Nice copy/paste skills you got there. I guess you are equally intolerant of elderly and infertile couples being married as well? Maybe we all should undergo a fertility and parental fitness test before qualifying for a marriage license? I mean, if we’re using fecundity as a litmus test for marriage, the same test should be extended to all citizens, correct? Or is it just the homosexual that needs to be singled out?
Maybe the State should have the right to remove the children of widows and widowers because they’re no longer being raised by a traditional family? After all, if we’re all about protecting the children, those poor motherless and fatherless children would be in far better social, financial and moral circumstances with a XX Mommy and an XY Daddy, right?
As I said, nice cut and paste job but the semantic and moral value to the argument is precisely null and your point is absolutely pointless.
His point is that separate but equal is inherently unequal.
Therefore civil unions will never be equal to marriages.
Marriage is the subset of civil unions including those civil unions between members of the opposite sex.
Homosexuals are not excluded from entering into the civil union called marriage.
They just can’t enter into it with a member of the same sex.
All apples are fruit, but not all fruit are apples. Wouldn’t it be absurd to call all fruit “apples” in the name of equality to oranges?
All sedans are cars, but not all cars are sedans. Should we call hatchbacks “sedans”, so people without trunks don’t feel slighted?
All marriages are civil unions, but not all civil unions are marriages. It seems to me patently ignorant to use the name of a subset to describe the superset because otherwise someone’s feewings might get huwt.
Marriage is not a subset of civil unions including those between members of the opposite sex.
Marriage is a legal contract that is distinct from a civil union, another legal contract. They share many elements in common but are not equal. More specifically, the legal contract of marriage grants more rights than a civil union does.
The state has absolutely no reason to place restrictions on the identity of those who consent to the contract.
And as autistic as you might be, “hurting people’s feelings” is negative and something the state shouldn’t actively try to do. Particularly if it’s “hurting the feelings” of a group by denying them equal rights.
So heterosexuals have a fundamental right to enter into a contract with a partner they wish to have sex with, but gays do not.
Thank you for succinctly highlighting the discriminatory elements of the law.
A married couple has many more rights than a couple in a civil union. It’s not just hurt feelings.
Equivalent legal protections are not sufficient if they do not come with the power to take people to court for disagreement over the meaning of the word “marriage”.
That is why civil unions are not good enough, and the legal definition of the word must be changed.
So true.
They ARE good enough, and gays could save themselves a lot of hassle and just get a non-marriage-licensey ceremony instead.
Fuck that piece of paper, anyway. It’s just a permission slip.
I’m sure all the unmarried gay couples thank you for deciding what’s “good enough” for them.
It’s just a permission slip.
Indeed it is. And the whole point of this exercise is who gets to sign that permission slip and who has to beg for one.
In the same vein, polygamy (polyandry, polygyny) existed long before the (eventual) legalization in the US.
Same can be said about human interspecies relations.
Same can be said about cannibalism (Soylent Green coming sooner than you think).
So, what? Same can be said of human compassion, except that the more it becomes widespread, the more old-timers are screeching because it threatens their place at the top of the theocratic patriarchy.
Only one of those involves two consenting adults…meaning only one of those is comparable to heterosexual marriage. The rest is slippery slope fallacy nonsense.
Because that’s not a word they levied at anyone in the 19th and (early) 20th centuries.
Of course, polygamy should absolutely be legal everywhere. But since polygamists are usually Mormon, and Mormons usually oppose gay marriage, it’s at least a fitting injustice.
What a fine reasoned take on the issue. Gay couples have indeed existed forever — and without a shred of societal support we do quite fine (there are no fairy tales for fairies, after all) while the strong support for hetero marriages seems to not have taken hold among the divorced and shacked up. Yes, we have no biological children — we do adopt many abandoned children however (apparently many heteros are incapable or unwilling to take care of their own progeny) which seems to be one of our evolutionary purposes for our gay existence, and taking care of the elderly too I suppose, since we have the time. And we do have inheritance issues, for we have wealth, homes, businesses — so we leave them to our nieces and nephews if we don’t adopt.
But still, for some reason known to God and Nature there is the same percentage of gay folks all over this world — this is not an American issue — it’s human. Apparently, with 105 boys born for every 100 girls, when the 95 hetero guys marry the 95 hetero girls, there’s 10 boys left over and 5 girls — um, us gay folks. Ah, but joy today like not in a long time.
You are right in asserting that a very small percentage of human beings are exclusively homosexual. Kinsey, whose research techniques have been challenged by reasonable critics, put the number at 10%. More recent surveys have put it closer to 3%. That’s about 330,000 in the US and about 210 million worldwide. Interestingly, the number of gays seeking marriage or civil unions is currently a subset of less than 10%.
Debating whether or not same sex couples should be able to marry is about as valuable as debating whether married couples ought to divorce. Makes for much heat but no light. Live and let live is the principal I try to live by.
Can’t anybody understand. When Bob fucks Ted in the ass, it’s different than when I fuck my wife in the ass.
But, is it different than when your wife straps on a dildo and fucks you in the ass?
Good luck getting that cake past the NYC nannies.
A union in law is for tax and other benefits such as inheritence. A marriage is a religous concept. So until Christians change gays will never marry.
“Marriage” is also the term used by the state to bestow the legal benefits of a union, which is all this was ever about. If the state insists on being the gatekeeper for Civil Marriage, it must be marriage for all couples who wish it. In an ideal world of course, the state would not be a gatekeeper.
As for the christians, many denominations do solemnize same-sex marriages. And many that don’t are reconsidering their stance. In the end it will be only the fundamentalists and the papists clinging to ancient, man-made dogmas.
So which christians exactly will have to change before christians can be considered “changed”?
I keep hearing “social engineering” lately, I’m kind of disappointed my college didn’t offer it. It sounds way more interesting than electrical or mechanical.
Probably still harder than civil.
You state in your article that “[a]s Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips recently pointed out in the American Political Science Review, it’s the youngest American adults who show the strongest support for gay marriage. The strongest opposition is in the demographic that will be next to die off.” Two things come to mind: 1) the “youngest” are usually the ones lacking in wisdom, and 2) I will gladly “die off” rather than live in the relativistic insanity that now masquerades as civil rights.
Oregon and Washington have assisted suicide statutes. Just so ya know.
Yes, because “consenting adults should be able to form contracts” is such a morally relativistic view.
Hell, we’re practically sanctioning Sharia law here!
Ah, that red herring again. Listen, I would much prefer if the state wasn’t involved in “blessing” marriage contracts at all. But since it is, and that blessing carries legal weight, the least it can do is not deny it to people.
Would you defend anti-miscegenation laws with similar gusto?
I have no intention of following you down whatever socon rabbit hole you’re trying to lead me. So why not make whatever argument you’re hinting at now.
Yay! So die already you piece of shit.
So Michael, supporting marriage equality is the moral equivalent of support for mass killing and genocide. Why dont you go back to posting in bigots corner aka NOM where as I recall in one of your posts you referred to gays as “shit stabbers”. Please correct me if I’m wrong here.
Your intent was transparently clear, associate one group with two completely unrelated issues one of which has highly negative connotations. Its a very familiar and disonhourable rhetorical tactic. I have no idea whether those others have uttered vicious and bigoted statements, maybe they have, maybe they haven’t.
You on the other hand have, and that is why you are a bigot.
Thanks for the confirmation by the way.
OK so all those people were bigots then.
Hey wasn’t Byrd even a member of the KKK?
60 years ago it would have been brave an very progressive to support interracial marriage. Today it is a requirement of anyone considered remotely civilized. That’s why your “old people are wiser” excuse is flawed. Not about the proper way society should treat gay people they’re not.
Ah, reducio ad hitlerum. How, . . . typical, and expected.
Argument from authority is also falacy of induction when used in argument. Listening to people argue against gay marriage is a good text book of what not to do in argument.
Indeed, and Michael “gays are shit stabbers” Ejercito’s posts over at NOM represent an excellent primer here.
Michael “gays are shit stabbers” Ejercito are you as subliterate as the NOMies. No argument was referenced, rather a logical fallacy. One you just comitted.
And Michael “gays are shit stabbers” Ejercito please remember where you are, this is the “Reason” site, got that? Not crank-biogot-homophobe NOM land.
More evasion from Michael “gays are shit stabbers” Ejercito.
Mikey boy if you dont want to be labelled a bigot stop making bigoted statements, e.g. calling gays “shit stabbers”, simple really.
In one of your many posts at NOM-land you termed gays “shit stabbers”.
I screensaved the web page, will find it.
That classifies you as a bigot.
I invite all here to check out the NOM blog over at NOM-land.
Warning, be prepared to take a long hot shower after.
The bigotry, hysteria and homophobia you will find there is off the scale and remember, this blog is moderated, this is the stuff they let through.
Revolting, vicious, ignorant stuff.
On the other hand, purely in the interest of accuracy mind you, gay men do in fact, stab shit, at least on occasion.
Just say’in.
and in the interests of yet a finer degree of accuracy so do some heterosexual men…
So, why does it matter what we call it? I’m more concerned with equality in substance rather than name. Let the churches and religious institutions keep marriage and let everyone else get their civil unions. It’s not like a gay couple is going to be forced, at gunpoint, to introduce his/her partner as his/her “domestic partner” at the cocktail party rather than “husband/wife”.
Sadly, the fight for equality, fairness, and just plain decency under the law often brings out the ugly and vicious in some people
Funny how there is absolutely no secular argument against equal marriage rights, and you’ve done nothing to change that on this thread.
Funnier yet that it took you so long to join the debate on a subject you know so much about.
I was away this weekend. At a gay pride festival.
Reynolds deals with bigamy–it is irrelevant–and I really don’t think gay marriage case law will be ultimately decided by Benson v. Alverson. Why not try making your own argument? If you want to play “cherry picked case law says so” then I bet you have a lot more sacred cows that don’t pass muster.
And now we’re working to correct the oversight that excluded gay couples from that formulation. Let’s not go down the road of making gay couples defend polygamy, which is an entirely separate issue and, if polygamy is a right, let polygamists do the work in courts for themselves.
Of all the arguments that can be deployed in debate the weakest and laziest is the “argument from tradition” which simply amounts to “things should remain the way they are because that’s the way they’ve always been”
The NOMies truly lost a big one Friday and made possible by a Republican controlled legislative body to boot!
Now they are in full spite/revenge mode trying to raise funds from their gay-hating ignorant base by claiming they intend to reverse the new SSM law and punish the “traitors” who were courageous enough to put petty politics aside and act as true statesman.
They will fail.
The probablity of their being able to overturn the new law is zero and promises of politcal assistance have been made to those “traitors” by Cuomo and Bloomberg.
By all acounts Cuomo played this one much as von Karajan conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, any attempt to nix his victory and he’ll swat the NOMies down fast and hard much as the irritating little gnats they are.
What kind of paranoid disconnected dickless moron would need to worry about whether a different type of person has access to rights you already have? You’re obviously a person who just dislikes gay people because they don’t fit into the provincial stupidity you call a life. So get educated instead of making increasingly ridiculous excuses for a position that can only come from bigotry but that you want to pretend, despite the desperate bullshit distractions that don’t pass a laugh test, is somehow compatible with an outlook meant to be radical for liberty.
Michael “gays are shit stabbers” Ejercito.
I accurately estimate the NOMies to be the repulsive/bigoted/cranks any fair minded individual would assess them as.
And please that old “they have the same rights to marry as anyone” is as tired as it is pathetic. It may get you credits in NOMland but not here.
Once CA gets SSM, and it will, all that remains is mopping-up the remaining bigots, homophobes and various assorted cranks.
PS The “cut and pasting” is quite hilarious though, more attempts to argue from authority and hide your bigotry behind ancient and irrelevant case law.
And all arguments are ultimately derived from reasoned speech rather than the “cut and paste” function which, in your case, has obviously displaced genuine critical thinking.
But by all means “cut and paste” yourself to complete failure and utter irrelevance.
No one is under the illusion that centuries-old legal traditions will establish something that is currently being sought for the first time. That’s still quite slim pickings and none of those quotations addresses the relevant question: why should gay couples have fewer rights than straight couples? Because a 400 year old quotation happens to reference the opposite sexes?
Of course, the mere act of trotting out the lamest bigotry excuse in the world “they can just marry to the opposite sex!” firmly establishes your inability to deal with this issue, because this sentiment indicates that you don’t seem to appreciate that gay people actually exist.
I’m sure you apply the same level of deference to case law surrounding the commerce clause. Which is, incidentally, much more firmly established.
The courts are just now getting to this issue in its most relevant aspects. If all you’ve got are “gays can marry people they by definition have no interest in marrying, therefore they are equal,” then I’m confident in the outcome.
Lawyers tried this line of argumement attempting to defend anti-miscegenation laws in front of SCOTUS.
They got shredded.
And once “heightened scrutiny” is applied you’re toast. The previous arguments will again prevail and its game over for the bigots.
You don’t have to dislike gays to argue for maintaining an understanding of marriage that is held by billions of people across every race, culture, and religious tradition. Even some of us who are gay don’t think that the loving relationships of all couples need to be called marriages. In case youhavent noticed, the trend among heterosexual couples is cohabitation not marriage. The topic is actually very complex and, in my view, is not helped along by being reduced to a matter of civil right or bigotry.
I am sorry to I can’t inmage the life
The government shouldn’t be in the marriage business to begin with…
“Built from the bottom up.”
Something often said of me.
“the resilience of the euphemism longtime companion suggests, a match between two men or two women could be as lasting and loving as any heterosexual coupling. As gay life became more visible, so did those permanent partnerships, and as social tolerance of homosexuality grew, more people accepted the partners’ marriages as real.”
Thus demonstrating that what gays have won is not the “legalization” of gay marriages, but the right to the same government regulation of their intimate and household relations as straights, together with the same entitlements that government has given to married straights.
As I have said before, it may be equality, but is it liberty?
Why don’t we start with equality and let individuals decide for themselves whether it’s liberty or not? Nobody is forcing anyone to marry.
I thought this was a libertarian site. Why do we hear applause for another government licensing scheme?
Would that be your point if governments started to allow homosexuals on public highways after previously prohibiting them from using the highways?
thank you
Not Funny
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is good