Some Reconsiderations on Same-Sex Marriage
Jason Kuznicki on Jun 11th 2008
Jennifer Roback Morse recently published this piece offering a number of arguments against same-sex marriage. Several are old and unconvincing, but others I think are worthy of more consideration, even concern.
Legalizing same-sex “marriage” is not a stand-alone policy, independent of all the other activities of the state. Once governments assert that same-sex unions are the equivalent of marriage, those governments must defend and enforce a whole host of other social changes.
Unfortunately, these government-enforced changes conflict with a wide array of ordinary liberties, including religious freedom and ordinary private property rights.
It began with the persecution of Catholic Charities in Boston. The archdiocese eventually closed down its adoption program, because the state of Massachusetts insisted that every adoption agency in the state must allow same-sex couples to adopt.
As our own Ed Brayton wrote when this issue came around the first time,
They could have filed a suit in state court and, under multiple Massachusetts SJC precedents, been entitled to a heightened scrutiny review of the policy. Under such scrutiny, the state would have been forced to show not only that the law mandating that adoption agencies place children with qualified gay couples served a compelling state interest (which it does, as even Gov. Mitt Romney admitted yesterday), but also that it was the least restrictive means of achieving that goal (which, I would argue, it’s not).
Essentially, the courts would have had to apply the same standards found in the Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Under that standard, the burden of proof is really on the side of the government that passed the statute to show that the policy goal cannot be achieved unless the religious group is refused an exemption from the generally applicable rule and that is clearly not the case here. Because there is a wide range of groups providing adoption services for the state of Massachusetts and only one of them, Catholic Charities, objects to facilitating gay adoptions, granting them an exemption will not impede the goal of allowing gay adoptions.
The Church cut off its nose to spite its face. It chose, voluntarily, not to contest an easy win of a case, so that it could continue to claim persecution. How this helps religious liberty is anyone’s guess. If they cared so much about being able to continue to offer adoptions, one might think that they would put up at least a nominal resistance, which would almost certainly have won.
Morse continues,
Recently, a Methodist organization in New Jersey lost part of its tax-exempt status because it refused to allow two lesbian couples to use their facility for a civil union ceremony.
This is a distortion at best. Here’s the real story:
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced on Monday that it was stripping the Methodist Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association of its tax-exempt status for part of its property. The Methodist camp made the news earlier this year after it refused, for religious reasons, to allow a lesbian couple to hold a “civil-union” ceremony at a pavilion on the camp’s property.
The pavilion, said Scott Hoffman, the camp’s chief administrative officer to LifeSiteNews, “is a facility we have used exclusively for our camp meeting mission and worship celebrations since 1869.”
Until recently the camp held tax-exempt status on its entire boardwalk property under a New Jersey program that gives tax-breaks to organizations that open up their property to the general public.
In other words, the group appears to have lost a tax break that they never even professed to qualify for. If their facility was used “exclusively” for private gatherings since 1869, then a tax break for public gatherings shouldn’t even be at issue. (Clearly, they should continue to get the tax exemption that goes with being a nonprofit religious group, if in fact that’s what they are. But that break isn’t clearly at issue here. If this is a facility that rents out its space to a church group for profit, then all bets are off. Two reasons for suspicion are the very ambiguity of the story, despite its being posted at a sympathetic website, and the history of Christians eager to claim persecution over imagined offenses.)
But admittedly, Morse does find a disturbing anecdote — from Canada:
In Quebec, a Mennonite school was informed that it must conform to the official provincial curriculum, which includes teaching homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.
At last report, the Mennonites were considering leaving the province rather than permit the imposition of the state-sponsored curriculum on their children.
The Canadians are completely, 100% wrong about this. They also have a totally different constitution from ours, one in which the freedom of expression is not protected nearly as strongly as in our own, and in which the spurious freedom from being offended receives official recognition. Perhaps the Mennonites would do well to move to California, or Massachusetts.
But then, near the end of the essay, I have to admit that I am left deeply troubled. After a lot of hyperventilating, Morse gets around to making what I think are some quite telling points. Even as someone who professes to be in a same-sex marriage, I don’t care for the following, and I’m left wondering about whether asking for state recognition is even worth it.
I really am. I’m not striking an ironic pose here. This bothers me:
Marriage between men and women is a pre-political, naturally emerging social institution. Men and women come together to create children, independently of any government. The duty of caring for those children exists even without a government or any political order.
Marriage protects children as well as the interests of each parent in their common project of raising those children.
Because marriage is an organic part of civil society, it is robust enough to sustain itself, with minimal assistance from the state.
By contrast, same-sex “marriage” is completely a creation of the state.
Same-sex couples cannot have children. Someone must give them a child or at least half the genetic material to create a child. The state must detach the parental rights of the opposite-sex parent and then attach those rights to the second parent of the same-sex couple.
The state must create parentage for the same-sex couple. For the opposite-sex couple, the state merely recognizes parentage.
. . . the state must coddle and protect same-sex “marriage” in ways that opposite-sex marriage does not require.
Precisely because same-sex unions are not the same as opposite-sex marriage, the state must intervene to make people believe (or at least make them act as if they believe) that the two types of unions are equivalent.
Public schools in California are soon going to be required to be “gay friendly.” A doctor has been sued because she didn’t want to perform an artificial insemination on a lesbian couple. A private school is in trouble for disciplining two female students for kissing. All in the name of supporting the rights of same-sex couples to “equality” with straight couples.
The fact that opposite- and same-sex couples are different in significant ways means that there will always be scope for the state to expand its reach into more and more private areas of more and more people’s lives.
Note that Morse isn’t making the crude argument “marriage is just for raising children.” That argument would lend itself to the obvious rejoinder that the elderly and infertile get married too, and no one ever complains. Morse’s argument is different, and it does not fall victim to the usual response. She seems to be arguing that heterosexual marriage grew up around having children, whether children are a part of any individual marriage or not.
Others presumably are welcome to the institution, but there’s a clear element of risk to allowing just anyone in: The long history of allowing infertile heterosexual couples to form marriages is all the evidence we need to continue doing as we’ve always done, and letting them get married. The same can’t be said for same-sex couples.
Homosexual marriage, of course, does not grow up around having children. Children have to be grafted onto a same-sex pairing — by the state — and this in itself is an indication that the government is trying very hard to make equal two things that simply wouldn’t be equal in any other case.
And then there are the thought-police issues, which bother me even more. It’s far from clear to me that the state “must” protect homosexual unions if they are ever to work. But this is indeed how it’s turning out in practice. Much of this protection is just the usual PC nonsense that we’d all be better off without, as in the Canadian case. Yet this sort of protection is supposedly extraneous to any proper marriage contract itself — isn’t it?
I mean, isn’t it? (Or are, as I suspect, many gays and lesbians wanting to get into marriages hoping to gain the freedom from ever being offended — a freedom that no one should have?)
Now, admittedly, it’s fair to turn around a number of these points. For example, the state most certainly forces me to accept — whether I’d like to or not — the validity of certain clearly facetious heterosexual marriages. And even if a marriage is traditional, safe, sound, and morally upright, it is still an attack on my own liberties to be forced by the state to recognize it as such. I’ll make up my own mind, thanks very much. If we’re going to use Morse’s very fine moral sensibilities on this point, then state recognition surely counts as a special favor for heterosexuals, too, and they should learn to do without it.
Make no mistake about it — this recognition of heterosexual unions constitutes “coddling and protection,” even when — a fortiori — heterosexual unions shouldn’t need it. After all, heterosexual marriages aren’t supposed to be creatures of the state, but of civil society. What we have here is perhaps an argument for abolishing state-sanctioned marriage, not for keeping gays out of it per se.
And if we abolished state-sanctioned marriage, what would we be left with? Why, we’d have private heterosexual marriages, regulated by churches and families. And that would likely be all. I suspect — I fear — that we would have virtually no private homosexual marriages. This would perhaps only prove Morse’s point that the one is a natural institution, while the other is generally speaking a grab at state power.
I know my husband disagrees with me, but I do believe that these are serious issues. I wish I saw a way around them. I don’t.
It’s perhaps the strongest indictment of same-sex marriage that virtually no homosexuals even tried to form married familial units before the idea of state-sponsored same-sex marriage caught on. Creature of the state? For the most part, we’re guilty as charged.
I never thought I’d ask myself this, but: Is this an institution I really want to be a part of? Sure, Scott and I considered ourselves “married in spirit” long before we could get married legally, and long before it even seemed likely to happen. Maybe that should count for something, but a cynical outsider would still be likely to see this as simply a political ploy, designed to wring favors from the unwilling taxpayers. And wring we will, even if that’s not what we care about or profess to be doing.
There’s a problem with that, isn’t there?
(Yes, I know, it’s oversimplifying to say that “heterosexual marriages are part of civil society” and “homosexual marriages are mere creations of the state.” There’s an awful lot of “state” in heterosexual marriages too. And there’s even some “civil society” to same-sex marriages. But we’re talking about general contours here, not about covering every particular case.)
Ultimately, I’d like civil marriage simply to be a form of contract, combined with some clear, legally binding advance directives about property and family affairs. Such an arrangement would have no room at all for gender, and thus same-sex marriage contracts would be accepted as a matter of course. But that’s not what marriage really is, whether for gays or straights. That’s one thing this whole debate has brought to light.
Morse is wrong when she claims that marriage doesn’t give any special rights to heterosexuals. It does, and this remains a problem. The bigger problem, right now, for our whole society, is whether we ought to expand this sort of entanglement. A reform of marriage in general, or a separation of all of this cultural baggage from the state, could be more important even than same-sex marriage, both for the concerns raised by Morse and also for the sake of finally getting the state out of our private lives, whether gay or straight.
Filed in The Boudoir, The Bureau
I can give three strong counter-examples to this argument, though.
One: a gay couple I know care for the developmentally-disabled niece of one of the men. Nobody else in the family is able or willing to do this.
Two: another gay male couple has adopted 4 special-needs kids out of foster caare. None of these kids had any parental rights severed that weren’t already severed.
Three: I was made legal guardian of one of my brothers’ kids. If anything had happened to him and his wife, her care would have fallen to me.
And here’s a fourth, BTW: may gay people - myself included - care for their own and each others’ elderly parents.
The couples in these situations have agreed to take responsibility for people who need caring for, so I’m not clear why they shouldn’t have some legal protections.
(And of course in the case of opposite-sex parents, the state creates parentage in the case of adoption as well. For the protection of the child, I’d think, and the health and well-being of everybody in the family.
Things happen in the lives of human beings; this isn’t just theoretical. Yes, anybody could probably do all this without the benefit of state sanction of marriage - but of course, that goes for opposite-sex parents, too.)
I’d also like to point out that only one of the U.S. cases the writer offers as “evidence” against same-sex marriage occurred in a state in which same-sex marriage is actually legal.
So again, I’m not clear about the logic here at all. Marriage is, yes, a natural outgrowth of procreation - except that, well, it has for thousands of years come in the form of polygamy, something that I’m sure the writer would argue to forbid. (But perhaps not? It would be interesting to know, in fact, because polygamy has also seemed quite “natural” in many cultures.)
In addition, most marriages until the modern era were of the “arranged” variety. Marriage has indeed changed quite a bit over the centuries, despite the implication here.
bls, as you probably know, I’m on your side here. But this is a serious argument, and worth considering. You’ve offered anecdotes, when what seems to be required is a more thorough examination of same-sex relations as a whole. Even the idea of monogamous couplehood is pretty rare, isn’t it? Much less caring for children?
Morse’s argument, or at least what I take it to be, is better than any other I’ve seen. I think it fails completely when we view marriage solely as a form of contract, but that’s not what marriage is, and not ever what it has been. Getting past this argument — if I can — isn’t going to be easy, and I say this as someone actually in a same-sex marriage.
I’ve offered examples of what happens in real peoples’ lives. These things did and do occur; why are they now reduced to mere “anecdotes”? They’re not rare in my own life, at least; I know dozens of gay couples who’ve been together for decades, and quite a few who have kids, either from previous marriages or by adoption (or by sperm donation). I don’t really see why you prefer talkng about “same-sex relations” in the abstract, when there are (and will continue to be) many cases like this. And of course this all happens quite frequently in the heterosexual world also, you know.
In any case, anecdotes are precisely what the writer offered, too - and mostly inaccurate ones at that. As you have already pointed out, the Methodist story was inaccurate; the Methodists are the plaintiff in the lawsuit here, and BTW they take state money for the upkeep of their property.
I find this woman’s “arguments” to be filled with all the usual sad persecution-complex stuff: “Perhaps some people think it is okay to shut down Catholic adoption agencies, because the Catholics have it coming to them: The Church’s enemies are many. Perhaps some people don’t care for Methodists, and don’t care whether they lose their tax-exempt status.”
Are we to understand this as a “serious” argument? Who has said any of this, except the writer? It doesn’t seem serious, to me.
Yes, there are problematic issues in some of these cases - most of which I’d say stem from temporary “culture warrior” conditions. And of course, there are lawsuits about all kinds of stupid things; it’s only when gay people sue that we begin to hear about the fall of Western Civilization.
What if my brother and his wife had died? What if I had become the only parent my niece had left? Why shouldn’t she have the same protections any other child would have? This may be an abstract situation to you, but it’s not to me and it’s not to many other people either.
How else are we supposed to talk about this?
Listen, I just don’t take what she’s saying seriously because the conclusions don’t follow from the examples she’s given. Gay marriage can’t be causing the problems she claims it is in at least half the cases above because it doesn’t exist in those states.
And as you noted, the Catholic adoption agency would likely have won if they had contested the decision; there’s another erroneous conclusion drawn.
What about something like adoption, BTW? Should the state be involved there, in your estimation, in the case of heterosexual adoption? And should heterosexuals be able to use sperm banks? Because parental rights are severed in that case, too?
The Catholic Church, BTW, says “No” to the last thing - but that’s a religious position, and something nobody but Catholics have to be concerned about.
Also: this:
has literally nothing to do with same-sex marriage. It is a freedom-of-speech-and-religion issue and would be occurring if marriage of all types were abolished in Canada tomorrow. Homosexuality, after all, is “an acceptable alternative lifestyle” to most Canadians. Canada does not view freedom of speech in the way we view it here, as pretty much sacrosanct.
There have been official same-sex marriages in history, too, as John Boswell and others have pointed out - which goes to show that marriage is also about alleviating loneliness and the forming of partnership and companionship. It is about stability and happens for a number of reasons - and again: gay people can and do care for others who can’t care for themselves. Stabilty is a good thing, under those conditions. Same-sex partnerships would thus continue to exist, too, with or without state sanction.
Sorry, Jason, but I completely disagree.
Uh, no. Same-sex “marriage” is pre-political and naturally emerging, and the only reason it isn’t a social institution — admittedly, not as common as heterosexual marriage — is because it’s been aggressively crushed because gays are a minority.
It’s not really more complicated than that.
These are certainly some interesting arguments, and much more serious criticism than the usual fare. I think you reached the conclusion that I have held for quite some time here:
“What we have here is perhaps an argument for abolishing state-sanctioned marriage, not for keeping gays out of it per se.”
As a matter of fact, I find it hard to come up with a decent argument for state-sanctioned marriage that doesn’t fall into the “don’t rock the boat” category. As you have mentioned, both here and in the past, there certainly are rights, obligations, and duties that play a vital role in ensuring respect for a person’s expressed will in moments of incapacitation, after death, or in absentia, but isn’t there a much stronger argument to allow access to these for everyone, not just those willing or able to get married?
There is a small, but well documented, minority of people who have little to no sexual interest in anyone… should we really force these people into marriage in order to easily access this bundle of rights? On top of that there are a number of people of all sexual orientations who eventually give up on finding a life partner, or are never interested in one in the first place, and resign themselves to life absent any continuing romantic relationship… but in a tolerant society shouldn’t they still be able to access these rights as easily as anyone? Further, it is easy to imagine a case when a person might want to grant some of these rights, say financial ones, to one person, while granting others, say medical decisions, to a different person… shouldn’t we allow for this in our policies, without excessive hurdles?
Now as for this conclusion:
“I suspect — I fear — that we would have virtually no private homosexual marriages.”
I’m not as certain as yourself here. I’m pretty certain of the opposite, in fact. I imagine that there would be a fair number of “progressive” churches, some of the same ones that are ordaining women, who would recognize and perform homosexual marriage ceremonies. On top of that, I’d imagine there would be a number of other institutions, just take a minute and take a look at the sorts of institutions offering weddings these days… In my current hometown, Portland, Oregon, you can get yourself married at a donut shop of all places! Now I’ll admit you probably have a better understanding of the general homosexual community than I do, so perhaps you’re correct that the demand would be low, but I certainly think that the supply would be there (of course this is going to be relative to the community in general… I imagine there would be more opportunities in Portland, OR than say rural Alabama or West Virginia.)
Lastly, though bls has proffered a good deal, I’ve only got the steam to get to one issue in particular. Again, not being Canadian I may not be an authority, but if I were to wager, I’d say the smart money is on “most Canadians” not agreeing that homosexuality is an “acceptable alternative lifestyle,” and if they do it certainly isn’t a vast majority. Of course it would depend on the wording of the question, but I’m all but certain that “most Canadians” wouldn’t be accepting of their child coming out, at least not immediately and without reservation. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King: state-mandated curriculum anywhere is a threat to curriculums everywhere!
Jason, take a deep breath. I would think that given that you are already married yourself, without benefit of a state license, that you’d be able to see through the false dichotomy here. If I may paraphrase and collate Ms. Morse and yourself, I’d say something like this:
My own marriage was created nearly seven years ago, and has been robust enough to sustain itself as an organic part of civil society. It is self-evidently not state created, as it was not state-sanctioned (although it will be this summer!). To take Ms. Morse’s description seriously, you’d have to imagine that first the state decided to offer gay marriage licenses, and only after that legislative act of creation did we gay folks decide to inhabit the new space created by the state. Does that sound like the nation we live in? Um, no. A fair number of us have created marriages socially and are eagerly waiting for the state recognition to catch up. With this, as with most anything, policy is lagging, not leading, the facts on the ground.
The only legitimate difference that Morse might claim is that gay marriage is a more recently emerging social institution. Though in fairness, it should be noted that straight marriage as it exists in our society today, i.e., an equal partnership selected by the partners themselves with personal fulfillment being one of the primary drivers, has also emerged relatively recently. It is an evolution from previous institutions carrying the same name, which were substantively different (e.g., unequal with differing gender-specific roles, arranged by the partners’ parents, with perpetuation of familial control over property being one of the primary drivers). The extension to same-sex unions is merely an organic extension of the same institution.
To Morse’s point about the state having to force-fit the definition to make unlike things appear like, that is nonsense. As evidence, look to the technical legislative modifications required by California Sup Ct’s recent decision. If gay marriage does such radical damage to the concept of marriage, then how is it that the Court was able to make this sweeping definitional change, affecting hundreds of legal rights and responsibilities, by striking exactly four words in one sentence in the entire California Code? Analytically, the elimination of the opposite-gender requirement was about as radical as tweaking the age of consent or the degree of consanguinity allowed. Once it’s decided that we’re allowed in, it’s perfectly clear to everyone what it means. (Contrast this with the allegedly slippery slope to polygamy, which would raise all sorts of thorny questions. That would require a great number of substantive code modifications, as the ramifications of having multiple partners would have to be reconsidered for each aspect of marriage’s legal implications.)
How is it possible for the extension to same-sex partners to be such a minimal evolution of the concept? Because the more radical evolution of marriage, into the egalitarian institution it is today has already occurred. Back in the day, when there were gender-specific roles embedded in the law (e.g., coverture), extending marriage to same-sex participants would indeed have been far more problematic (e.g., which partner is the “master” and which one cedes control over their property?). Marriage is indeed a naturally emerging (n.b. present progressive tense) social institution, and the extension to include same-sex spouses is just another part of its continued natural emergence.
I thought I’d start a firestorm here. It had been too quiet on my posts lately, and I can’t allow the others to have all the fun.
I will have a detailed follow-up either late this evening or tomorrow.
I’ll start by seconding what Tom said. The existence of same-sex marriage* is a natural outgrowth of opposite-sex marriage. The state is involved only because the current state is so omnipresent as to be involved in everything.
Even then, is state-sanctioned marriage really a bad thing? Because it seems to me that today’s state-sanctioned marriages are primarily a defense against the state.
Think about the benefits conferred:
•Joint tax returns (the government can take less of your money)
•Exemption from estate tax (ditto)
•Social security benefits (the government has to return to your heirs money it’s already taken from you)
•Immigration and residency benefits (the government can’t tell you where to live)
•Co-parent and stepparent adoptions (see where I’m going with this?)
I can think of only two circumstances where the legalization of gay marriage will impose significantly on third parties. First, private entities will be forced to allow gays and lesbians to make decisions for incapacitated spouses. And second, employers will be forced to recognize same-sex spouses for the sake of insurance benefits and the like.
I’m not going to be losing sleep over either one. In the first case, my basic right to decide what happens to me (or to delegate those decisions to others) trumps other interests in my fate.
In the second case, those benefits only exist because the tax code makes them more desirable then just paying employees more money (and now we’re back to state interference again). Worse, those tax codes penalize those employers that already do provide benefits to same-sex partners. As long as someone’s getting the short end of the stick, it might as well be the jerks instead of the nice guys.
*Was anyone else bothered by California Court’s use of the terms ‘gay marriage’ and ‘heterosexual marriage’ throughout ‘Marriage Cases’? I understand their desire to avoid the pejorative-tinged ‘homosexual’, but the resulting asymmetry mars the otherwise outstanding opinion.
Jason said:
“And if we abolished state-sanctioned marriage, what would we be left with? Why, we’d have private heterosexual marriages, regulated by churches and families. And that would likely be all. I suspect — I fear — that we would have virtually no private homosexual marriages.”
I also suspect we would have far fewer heterosexual marriages. While I am married according to the state, I didn’t get married in a church here. I think most non-religious people would just go about the business of living together and raising families without all the bother. That trend exists in Europe already. I don’t see a problem with this - let’s get the government out of our lives and just settle things with normal contracts.
Aside from that, there would still be some church-sponsored same-sex marriages - look at Gene Robinson for instance.
I know you’re worried now (and I definitely admire your ability to fairly assess a counter-argument) that same-sex marriages are an imposition of the state, but in a sense, so are heterosexual 2-person marriages. If they weren’t regulated by the state, I suspect we’d see a lot more (not a lot overall though) polygamous and polyamorous marriages, which also have historical precedent.
So would any of our new interlocutors like to attack the challenge that I posed: to come up with an argument supporting state-sanctioned marriage as a whole, without resorting to an acceptance of the status quo as legitimate?
Mr. Scott has at least laid the groundwork, but again I would claim that it would be more respecting of liberty and individuality to allow these rights to be delegated by any individual to any other consenting individual.
Why should the state grant more respect to a person that wants to import a “mail-order bride” (to straw-man a little,) or even an actual loving, child-generating marriage? Shouldn’t we offer the same liberties to a person that seeks the companionship of his business, or fishing partner? Wouldn’t that make his life more productive, which is the basis of allowing such a right in the first place?
As for adoptions, joint tax returns, estate taxes, and social security, what makes a married couple more deserving of this than say a widower and their live-in housekeeper? Or any other platonic partnership that serves the same purpose of marriage, excepting the child-generating?
For the sake of clarity I’m going to call the spiritual union of two people “personal marriage” and the thing that lets you file a joint tax return “legal marriage.”
Homosexual marriage, of course, does not grow up around having children. Children have to be grafted onto a same-sex pairing — by the state — and this in itself is an indication that the government is trying very hard to make equal two things that simply wouldn’t be equal in any other case.
A lesbian couple can certainly have children without the assistance of the state, and many do. True, the child is only the genetic offspring of one of the spouses (for now; biotechnology will change that soon). So what? Historically speaking, paternity is unknowable. Today, as always, the most common way to be legally recognized as a child’s father is to be married to the child’s mother at the time the child is born. A marriage in which the bio-mother’s spouse is a woman
functions on the same principle. No state grafting is involved, or no more than in the heterosexual case.
And if we abolished state-sanctioned marriage, what would we be left with? Why, we’d have private heterosexual marriages, regulated by churches and families. And that would likely be all. I suspect — I fear — that we would have virtually no private homosexual marriages. This would perhaps only prove Morse’s point that the one is a natural institution, while the other is generally speaking a grab at state power.
My basic problem with this whole line of thought is that you assume churches and families should have the final authority on what constitutes a valid personal marriage. I disagree, and I certainly don’t see why you think such an arrangement would facilitate individual liberty. A country in which you need your father’s permission to marry is not a country I’d call free. Give me the state any day; at least there are enforceable limitations on its power.
I don’t see why third party approval is a requirement for personal marriage. Before the Catholic Church decided to hijack it as a sacrament, all that was necessary to form a binding personal and legal marriage in Europe was the agreement of the parties and consummation. No permission, no authority figures, no witnesses. The absence of witnesses raises obvious problems in legal marriage unless there’s a written contract, but I don’t see why personal marriage can’t be performed that way today. I think that’s how I’d like to do it, if and when the time comes.
It’s perhaps the strongest indictment of same-sex marriage that virtually no homosexuals even tried to form married familial units before the idea of state-sponsored same-sex marriage caught on. Creature of the state? For the most part, we’re guilty as charged.
Gay people only started coming out in large numbers forty years ago, long after state-sponsored marriage was the standard everywhere on earth. In the minds of virtually everyone in this country who doesn’t hang around political blogs having these kinds of angsty philosophical conversations, personal marriage and legal marriage are the same thing. The end. You may not like that fact, I know I don’t, but it’s a fact nonetheless.
The demand for legal marriage among gay people didn’t precede the formation of a significant number of personal marriages among gay people, it happened pretty much simultaneously—because the vast majority of gay people seeking legal marriage see it as identical with personal marriage, just as the vast majority of people opposing legal marriage for gays do. It’s an American failing, not a gay one.
Do you really not understand why everyone didn’t start cheerfully gay marrying the day after Stonewall? The Stonewall generation did amazing things, but they grew up in a world that told them they were sick, and came of age in a time when furtive sexual contacts were easy because they could be hidden, while committed public relationships were punishingly hard. The gay people with the courage to come out tended to find themselves most at home in the counterculture, which was at best suspicious of marriage for anyone. Marriage at that time was still heavily gendered and oppressive to women. A lot of gay people saw that as an unchangeable part of the institution. No doubt there was an element of sour grapes, too. It’s not amazing that gay people didn’t start personally marrying en masse in 1969, it’s amazing that soon after so many are.
Ultimately, I’d like civil marriage simply to be a form of contract, combined with some clear, legally binding advance directives about property and family affairs. Such an arrangement would have no room at all for gender, and thus same-sex marriage contracts would be accepted as a matter of course. But that’s not what marriage really is, whether for gays or straights. That’s one thing this whole debate has brought to light.
This is where I lose your train of thought entirely. You seem to be saying that you think legal marriages for gay couples should be permitted as a matter of course, even though legal marriage is what contains the fresh squeezed taxpayer favors you feel so guilty about enjoying. So . . . what’s the problem? Is your essay questioning the justice of legal gay marriage, or the spiritual validity of personal gay marriage?
Hi Greyson.
This page at Wikipedia reports numbers from recent Pew Forum surveys on the topic, and reports that 70% of Canadians answered “Yes” to the question, “Should homosexuality be accepted by society?”
I haven’t been able to find the reference to Canada at the Pew site itself, nor the charts that show the numbers, but I did find this paragraph there:
Majorities in every Western European nation surveyed say homosexuality should be accepted by society, while most Russians, Poles and Ukrainians disagree. Americans are divided – a thin majority (51%) believes homosexuality should be accepted, while 42% disagree.
So even in the United States, the majority believes this.
Will try to find the raw data about Canada and will post again if I do.
So would any of our new interlocutors like to attack the challenge that I posed: to come up with an argument supporting state-sanctioned marriage as a whole, without resorting to an acceptance of the status quo as legitimate?
Jim Babka posed that question a couple of months back, and there was a lengthy discussion. I forget the post title, but if you look through the archive you should be able to find it.
(Ah, I found the chart. It’s on page 39 of this quite large PDF file.
There are quite large majorities in the West these days that are quite accepting of homosexuality. Civil union legislation has been passed recently on a national level in Uruguay and several other South American countries as well.)
Here’s something else that might be of interest: “Gay and Lesbian Youth Want Long-Term Couple Relationships and Raising Children.” It’s a (small, admittedly) study of young gay people’s attitudes towards marriage/partnership and family. Here’s a short quote:
“When asked about expectations of future relationships, 66 percent of males and 80 percent of females rated future long-term relationships as “extremely important” or “very important.” Eighty-two percent of females and 61 percent of males hoped to be partnered during the next five years. Ninety-two percent of females and 82 percent of males expected to be monogamously partnered after age 30, and 79 percent of females and 73 percent of males expected to live with their partner. Sixty-four percent of females and 37 percent of males said it was “extremely likely” they would marry if allowed by law.
When asked about expectations of child-raising, 36 percent of females and 20 percent of males said it was “extremely likely” they will raise children. Overall, 67 percent of males and 55 percent of females expressed some degree of likelihood that they would raise children. Of those who expressed some likelihood, 58 percent of males and 54 percent of females expect to be raising their own biological children. Forty-two percent of males and 32 percent of females expect to adopt. Sixteen percent of males and 14 percent of females expect to be foster parents. Thirty-six percent of females and 17 percent of males expect to help their partner raise her or his biological children.“
Hey bls, thanks for the data there. As I said it really is all about the phrasing of the question. “Should homosexuality be accepted by society?” is a very different question than “Should homosexuality be taught as an acceptable alternate lifestyle choice in schools?” From the bare data it appears that Canada has a more accepting outlook than America, but I would still be surprised if even a meager majority would agree that it should be taught as an alternate, and equal, lifestyle choice in schools. Beyond that, you get into problems when you delve into specifics: is homosexuality a choice? (huge topic of debate there) At what age should these questions be broached? etc. etc. This is just another example, amongst millions, why educational choice is paramount to a free society.
I guess nationally mandated curricula are just one more reason for me to add to the list of reasons not to move to Canada.
And thanks to tilts, I’ll have to search that one out once I have more time on my hands… Meanwhile, we’ll see if anyone else manages an attempt… cause I simply have never been able to come up with one.
Well, that’s not really what I said, Greyson, and it’s not what I meant. I said, simply, that “Homosexuality, after all, is ‘an acceptable alternative lifestyle’ to most Canadians.”
I didn’t say this should be taught in school - and the reason I didn’t say this is because I doubt very much that what this writer says accurately describes the situation. It’s my suspicion that this is just more propaganda, and what’s really happening is that the Mennonites are upset because homosexuality is not strictly condemned. I doubt very much that anything about homosexuality is taught in any Quebec public schools.
I’m used to hearing statements like this from religious conservatives like Jennifer Roback Morse, and this is the way things are usually spun. So I take what she says with a grain of salt, especially because of the other inaccuracies in the article.
I could only find this article about the Mennonite thing, and it seems to say that the Mennonites don’t want to send their kids to public schools. They started their own school, and the teachers there are not certified; the government demands this. Here’s a quote from one of the Mennonites: “We don’t agree with the emphasis on evolution, which we consider false; we don’t like the morality standards; and we don’t like the acceptance of alternative lifestyles.”
There’s nothing there about teaching acceptance of ‘alternate lifestyles.’ They don’t want to send their kids to public schools because they don’t like the atmosphere - and primarily the teaching of evolution. Of course, there could be more to it than this, but I expect not.
As I said, I’m always very suspicious of statements like the one made in the Morse article, and this often turns out to be the correct approach. (My quarrel is not with the Mennonites starting their own schools, though; they should of course be free to do so. My beef is with anti-gay propaganda and non sequiturs in argument, of which this article was chock-full.)
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