In the post before this one, I argued that one of the most common arguments against marriage equality is a bait and switch. Rather than arguing against marriage equality itself, opponents argue that ideally children should be raised by a mom and a dad. Then they tell people that in order to insure that children are raised by moms and dads, we must oppose marriage equality.
Marriage equality opponents must know that this is nonsense. All over the country, and (outside of Massachusetts) without legal marriage, same-sex couples are raising children. They are not waiting for legal marriage, nor will banning legal marriage give the government a new right to take children away from same-sex couples. The policy marriage-equality opponents propose – banning same-sex marriage – does not in any way solve the problem they claim to be responding to, which is children growing up in homes without two biological parents.
This fundamental disconnect between their (stated) goals and their policy is a problem for marriage equality opponents. They want the law to discriminate against same-sex couples; at the same time, they genuinely don’t want to be seen as anti-gay bigots. So they have to somehow connect “protecting the children” (a goal that’s not anti-gay) with discrimination against lesbians and gays.
The way some of them make the link is to argue that whenever the law treats two things with legal equality that sends a message. According to this worldview, by allowing marriage equality, Massachusetts has “sent a message” which says that no child needs a mom or a dad.
There are two problems with this point of view.
First of all, it’s simply, factually wrong: equal legal treatment sends no such message. If it did, then by allowing criminals in prison to marry, the US has sent the message that convicted murderers are just swell as parents and mates, and that kids don’t need two parents out of prison. By allowing the KKK a legal right to march, the government says the KKK is just as good as Veterans marching on Veterans Day. And so forth.
In fact, no such message is sent. I defy you to locate one non-KKK member who has been convinced that because the KKK has an equal legal right to march, they must be just as admirable as all other groups that march. People simply don’t think that way.
The paradox is, although no particular message is sent by equal treatment, a definite message is sent by prejudicial treatment. As long as marriage inequality continues, the US is sending a message that lesbians, gays and their children are second-class citizens (a message that’s particularly harmful to lesbian and gay teens). This may seem like a contradiction in my position, but it’s not. The discrimination marriage equality opponents favor is active discrimination; in contrast, equal treatment is a government’s way of being neutral, sending no message at all.
So, for instance, if the government bans all paintings of clowns (wistful thinking, I know), that sends a message that clown painting deserves contempt and lesser treatment. Does it follow that by not banning clown paintings, the government is saying a clown painting has just as much value as a Mary Cassatt’s The Bath? Of course not; the government is simply remaining neutral and letting the culture decide for itself what to value.
* * *
I said there were two reasons the “we can’t allow marriage equality because that sends a message that moms and dads are unnecessary” logic is flawed. One problem is that it’s factually wrong; equal, neutral treatment sends no message. The second problem is that the anti-equality logic treats the lives and rights of lesbians, gays and their children as tools to be used to benefit heterosexuals.
The lives of same-sex families aren’t post-it notes! If marriage equality opponents wish to send a message, they should by all means write opinion pieces, or agitate for more healthy heterosexual families on TV. But don’t use lesbian and gay lives for your op-ed statement. Same-sex families are human beings, as precious as any heterosexual family; injustice to them cannot be justified by saying injustice sends a valuable message.
The anti-marriage equality case rests on the implicit belief that any harm to same-sex families, however huge, is justified if it prevents any difficulty to heterosexuals, however tiny or theoretical. That view is simply not compatible with a worldview that sees lesbians, gays and their children as human beings equal in value to all other humans.
* * *
(Note that I haven’t addressed the question, “are mothers and fathers necessary?” That’s a topic for another post.)
It does nothing but divide people who should be allies.
The problem Amp, is that the Black community and many other “minority groups” do not think Blacks and homosexual community should be allies. Unfortunately, many blacks look at the negative portayals of the homosexual community from gay rights parades and “gay” sections of town and shun their decadence. The irony is that it is just like suburban whites looking at the “thugs” and “drunks” of the black community and use that as a representative sample.
I knew Kelli was gonna get hammered for that one.
Barry, you reminded me of something that was gnawing at me. The achievement of legal equality.
A good indicator at the oppression that the LGBT community faces is the legitimacy of ‘gay panic’ as a defense within our courts. We need only to look at the Gwen Araujo trial and subsequent hung jury that occurred after what can only be described as torture and execution. The defense argued ‘gay panic’ as the motive.
hmm. time to find and read that new book by Martha Nussbaum on shame and legal philosophy. Goes into the “gay panic” defense.
Typical queer-bashing events include bashers going to gay districts or bar parking lots to jump and beat gays. This is considered a fun activity. No panic involved, these are entirely premeditated incidents, often involving alcohol on the part of the straight bashers.
What I was getting at in the “passing” note a few posts earlier is that integrity is honorable, and often seen as honorable when people think it through. I would think that the effects of passing would be devastating on the family members involved. jstevenson, I do know a little (in a general way, secondhand) about a certain level of cattiness and conflict about skin color within many segments of the A-A community. I am not denying shared basic experiences in the A-A (or gay) communities, but once you get beyond the basics, there is a huge diversity. Which I think is what you were saying.
how many white gay men do you know have been lynched (government sactioned I might add) for just looking in the direction of other men
How many white gay men do you know, period? Because if you talked to any more than to spit at, you might hear more than a few stories about gay-bashing, government sanctioned and otherwise. The notion that it’s not OK to beat, torture or kill a suspected ‘fag’, or to rape a lesbian for daring not to want your cock, is a rather new one that hasn’t quite infiltrated all of America yet.
No, it’s not the same as lynching. Not in any way. But I really do not and cannot understand this mentality, that because things have been so terrible for African-Americans, that they cannot possibly be bad for lesbians, gays and bisexuals; that civil rights only extend to the most oppressed and to no one else.
Older feminists tell me this happened back in the early days (when it was called “women’s lib”); they were scolded and accused of taking energy away from the real oppression, told to shut up and concentrate on important issues, that what white women suffered was nothing like what black men suffered (the same convenient pretense that the two groups never intersected), and so on.
There is, by the way, a great deal of sexism in the African-American community, just as in other communities, and sexism and homophobia feed each other like nothing else.
You know what annoys me about this argument? What we generally call “marriage” is a civil union. I didn’t have a church wedding, and I could have just walked in with two friends, signed a document, waited for my partner and my friends to sign the document, and walked out. Less fuss than getting a driver’s license, right? And I wasn’t doing it because I was in love or any of that, I was doing it because in order to live in a foreign country with the person I wanted to build a home with, I had to get legally married to him.
For a “marriage” to be legal, you don’t have to have any religion involved, don’t have to mention god, don’t really have any real obligation except to not be married to anyone else. Nothing in my “wedding ceremony” even stipulated that I wouldn’t have sex with anyone else, or that I would have sex with my partner. There was nothing about children or about property – just the promise that I would not legally marry anyone else while I was legally married to my partner.
And despite the fact that we are legally married, I almost always refer to him as “my partner”. It seems more true to me.
Given that marriage is a legal contract regarding property and certain powers of attorney, and given that those same powers/rights are achievable through separate legal contracts – with any other person, whether your own sex or the other – I have no political/ideological problem with conferring on all legal marriage the name “civil union”.
Now, many people, by tradition, cement their union with a church wedding or some other ritual that accompanies the legal union. But all that ritual is not legally binding – and many people have had weddings that didn’t include a legal contract. Churches can make their own decisions about who they will marry – that’s already true in law. Whether the state recognizes it is something else. (I have a couple of friends who were married in a Klingon ceremony. It’s not legally binding because one of them is still married to someone else. She doesn’t want a divorce, she just wants both husbands. But the state won’t recognize a second husband. However, her friends do. I also have many gay friends who are similarly married in spirit but not in law. In addition, I have straight friends who don’t believe in “marriage” per se but who have had a spiritual ceremony of committment and have drawn up legal contracts conferring powers of attorney and joint ownership of property, rather than getting legally married.)
So why don’t we just separate the term “marriage” from the legal union? Let’s insist that the term “marriage” has to refer to a ritual that took place separately from the legal contract, and if you didn’t have a church wedding, you’re not “married”, you’re …well, something else. I haven’t really worked out a term for that, yet. “Civil unioned” just doesn’t have the right ring.
The reason that people would flip if we took the word “marriage” out of the law completely is that skirts too close to an authentic separation of church and state. They don’t want to acknowledge that “what God has joined together” and “what state has joined together” are much different things.
if you want to see an anti-ssm person’s face drop, run this argument by ’em:
the whole “kids should have a mom and a dad” thing is just ridiculous.
throughout the millenia and for myriads of reasons, women have had kids without a “dad”.
the first thing these people need to do is do some serious and deep research on the history of the institution of “marriage”.
to follow the “mom and dad” argument to its logical conclusion, the mothers who are now single because of the iraq debacle should have their children taken from them because they no longer have a ‘dad’. the mother should be re-married within a year or the kids go.
same for single women who choose get pregnant and choose–CHOOSE–to keep the child.
no ring, no child.
same for any woman who loses their husband for whatever reason: divorce, widowhood, no matter what.
Oh, goodie. I was waiting for “different historical definitions of heterosexual marriage” – levirate marriage, for instance. A man’s brother dies without an heir, the man must – MUST – take the widow, marry her, and give her an heir OF THE BROTHER. At least one ancient Israelite, one Onan, tried to get out of this duty by “spilling seed” (coitus interruptus?), probably because he wanted his brother’s property for himself and not have to give it to the brother’s future heir. God smote him double-quick for failing his duty. Apparently some conservative people cite this Onan story as against masturbation. Now, levirate marriage, clearly heterosexual, seems wierd to modern folk! Plus, in order to accomplish this, widow would undoubtedly have been wife #2 for the surviving brother if the brother was of age in the first place. So, polygamy.
Now, myself, I am holding out for same-sex Klingon marriage. Rrr. Or, for laughs, same-sex Betazoid marriage, just to watch the guests blush.
Jstevenson,Funny I don’t feel hammered.
I guess what I was trying to point out and obviously not clearly was what Amp said about all blacks excepting homosexuals.
The comment was made that someone didn’t understand why Blacks didn’t accept homosexuality. And I was originally trying to point that out, but somewhere in the midst it got into a debate of whose prejudice was worse.
The bottom line is this. As an African-American I can’t say that I feel the same about the fight against prejudice that homosexuals have.
The fight to me is different in many ways and truthfully I don’t think I can verbalize it in a way that everyone would be able to understand.
Because the suffering was different the pain is different and the reason for the fight is different and to me that makes the fight different.
The other factor is quite obvious. When a homosexual walks out of their house and goes out into the world people don’t look and say things like “look at the fag” or “there goes the queer” unless they know the person is gay.
I can guareentee you that at least once a day someone sees me and says “there goes another nigger.”
Of course it is pointless to assume one-to-one congruence between various forms of discrimination. But in this sound-bite world, that seems to be what happens in the media or in the heads of people who don’t like examining their own assumptions. I am white, so maybe I am talking out of the side of my hat on this issue, and I freely acknowledge that I might not know much – but I am willing to listen and learn.
I think the gays have assumed that African-Americans might respond favorably to an argument that meant “since you know what it is like to be hated without reason, you are capable of understanding that others might be hated without reason, and are likely to sympathize”. Unfortunately this argument runs into fundamentalist Biblical interpretations, a desire to be perceived as respectable in the eyes of majority culture, and a need to strengthen group cohesion by comparing oppression and saying “we’ve had it worse than anybody”. Even if the lgbt states explicitly that they aren’t in the business of comparing oppression, this statement may not be taken on face value, because some A-As’ feeling of group cohesion depends on need for respectability and need to proclaim more suffering than others. Ie, there isn’t a thing that lgbt can do about it. People will do a lot to ensure group cohesion, identity, and will react very badly if they perceive that that group identity is threatened.
There is another psychosocial difference between lgbt and A-A experience. For many white lgbt, the most important oppressors are their blood family (even if they get beat up by a stranger, being rejected by family is worse), and their consolers are the newfound lgbt community. And of course they can choose to blend in at work, talk about non-existent heterosexual dates, be very private and unfriendly, etc., for safety – an ambiguous luxury that A-A simply don’t have, except for the few who could physically pass. I would be willing to bet that most A-As find refuge and consolation and solidarity in their family against the oppressions of the outside racist society. So the experiences are necessarily different, and interpreted differently by the two groups.
NancyP: I think you hit the nail on the head in regards to the desired for a shared cause. Why that fails is not fundamentalist biblical interpretations. Most AA are religious, deeply spiritual people. They are not by any stretch fundamentalists. Many AA christians drink, their women work and they have abortions. It is important to understand that on a historical level, black women (the real power in the black community) just don’t like to talk about their sex lives (in public) and don’t like it when others do. I think history of American blacks’ sexual exploitation and the strong sense for the need of black families making black babies go much further than any bible in AA’s opposition to SSM and homosexuality.
Agreed. Propriety matters more when the outside world says that you don’t know how to behave and that you are sexually available or rapeable without consequence to the rapist (yoo-hoo, Strom). The Spelman girl had to be ten times the lady than an equivalent white college girl in the old days. Old-time club women. Current church women. In the present day, not enough educated law-abiding sensible employed African-American men to go around for equivalent e-la-s-e A-A women (a friend of mine has decided to expand her pool of dating to Hispanics, a choice made also b/c one side of her family is from TX). I have heard (not from my friend above) jealousy when apparently eligible men take themselves out of the running by going for men or for white women.
But it was still my impression that homosexuality is actively preached against and glbt prayed over or shunned in a lot of A-A-predominant churches. Are anecdotes of rejection experiences of A-A glbt who left those churches or chose to be 100% closeted to those churches typical or atypical?
Nancy, Thank you for clearing up what I couldn’t find the words to say. I guess when you are too close to a subject it is hard to express in words.
I hate to say that the rejections of glbt in the African-American churches are typical. I have many times seen it with my own eyes. The sad part is that many of these people are much more spiritual than the ones rejecting them.
But it is wrong to think that African-Americans are not fundimentalist. They are, the problem is that most do not have the wealth to practice the Fundimental teachings.
Abortions are kept on the DL even more than homosexuality. I believe that one of the reasons you see more teen Mom’s in the African-American community is because they are so anti-abortion. And if you ask an AA woman who is pro-choice how she feels about abortion she will tell you that she would talk the young woman out of it and suggest adoption before she would ever recommend abortion.
The working woman thing is truly a matter of finance. I bet if you asked an AA-woman would love to stay home and take care of her family and the men would love to be able to do that for their wives, but that is not the way life is in the AA community so we deal with life the way it presents itself.
The real question for me is, why DOESN’T the government ban the painting of clowns?
Personally I am planning to home school, if only to protect my child from clown paintings.
and to me that makes the fight different
Of course it is different. But reading “different” for “unimportant” is a mistake.
And I’d add that just as an awful lot of white people have no clue about what it’s like to be African-American, and on the receiving end of racial discrimination; Kelli, as a straight woman you have no idea what it’s like to be queer, so I’d appreciate it if you stopped telling people what gays go through.
Kelli:>>The other factor is quite obvious. When a homosexual walks out of their house and goes out into the world people don’t look and say things like “look at the fag” or “there goes the queer” unless they know the person is gay.>>
Um, that happens to me and my LGBT friends all the time. Total strangers constantly yell epithets at me. And it’s the same way with all of the less-visible queers I know. I’m not entirely sure why they get picked on as well, or what it is that marks them out as different, but it happens. A lot. Thing is, people very frequently do know.
Also, there are people who are visibly queer, and people who cannot help being visibly queer. Many transpeople, in particular, cannot “pass.” And they are in danger because of it.
It is true that many gay people have “passing privilege,” insofar as they refrain from any sexual or romantic behavior and don’t dress or act in such a way as to seem “gay.”
Another BAIT and SWITCH…with major consequences (though they will perhaps lead to some invalidations, if Oliphant is right):
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/11/07/the_gay_marriage_deception/
Piny if strangers are yelling rude things to you then there is someway they know that you and your friends are glbts because as far as I know you can’t go on that thing based on outward appearance only. Then again some folks don’t mind make fools of themselves.
Bean this whole thing about prejudice and types of oppression started with a comment that suggested that AA should not have a problem with homosexuality.
And If you read what Nancy wrote you might understand what I was trying to say. Just because one group is oppressed doesn’t mean and one should not assume that they would identify with every oppressed group. That’s just not how it works.
And part of the reason for that is how the group was oppressed and unfortunately until you have walked a mile in some oppressed person’s shoes you can not know their thoughts and feelings.
I’m not saying that gays are not oppressed or for that matter Native-Americans, Mexicans and any other minority you wish to name. What I am saying is that you can’t assume that I should or do sympathize with that oppression because I too have been oppressed. It just doesn’t work that way the reason it doesn’t is because of the way the oppression has been put upon the oppressed people.
Hi Paul,
You asked me to respond to the post on legal gay marriage that began this discussion.
My response is:
Homosexuals are legally free in this country to live together and adopt children. Why do they fight for further legal recognition in gay marriage? They fight because of the very message a court victory will send to society about the legitimacy of their way of life. Those for, and those against, gay marriage know the social outcome of their legal battle. For one side or the other to claim that there is no social message sent by the courts is to deny the very reason for which they are engaged in conflict. Both sides know the social impact of a legal verdict, and it is for this social message that each side fights.
If, as stated in the 1st post, homosexual couples are already engaged in raising children, why do they want legal recognition to raise children in marriage? It is because they fight for social recognition and they hope to use the courts to attain this goal.
The logic of the post that began this discussion seems solid and irrefutable.
I wonder what would happen if we were to use the exact same method of reasoning on another topic. If the reasoning used in the 1st post is solid it will hold up when applied to a simliar subject. Let’s see what happens when we apply the same argument to another subject.
***
In the post before this one, I argued that one of the most common arguments against slavery is a bait and switch. Rather than arguing against owning slaves itself, opponents argue that ideally people should not be enslaved. Then they tell people that in order to insure that people not be enslaved, we must oppose owning slaves.
Slavery opponents must know that this is nonsense. All over the country, and (outside of Slave Land) without legal slavery, people are procuring slaves. They are not waiting for legal slavery, nor will banning legal slavery give the government a new right to take slaves away from slave owners. The policy slavery opponents propose – banning slavery – does not in any way solve the problem they claim to be responding to, which is people being enslaved by others.
This fundamental disconnect between their (stated) goals and their policy is a problem for slavery opponents. They want the law to discriminate against slave owners; at the same time, they genuinely don’t want to be seen as anti-slavery bigots. So they have to somehow connect “protecting the enslaved” (a goal that’s not anti-slavery) with discrimination against slave owners.
The way some of them make the link is to argue that whenever the law treats two things with legal equality that sends a message. According to this worldview, by allowing slavery, Massachusetts has “sent a message” which says that slavery is OK.
There are two problems with this point of view.
First of all, it’s simply, factually wrong: equal legal treatment sends no such message. If it did, then by allowing slaves the same rights as others, the US has sent the message that slaves are equal to others. Obviously this makes no sense.
In fact, no such message is sent. I defy you to locate one freed slave who has been convinced that because slaves have equal legal rights, they must be just as valuable as every one else. People simply don’t think that way.
The paradox is, although no particular message is sent by equal treatment, a definite message is sent by prejudicial treatment. As long as slavery inequality continues, the US is sending a message that slave owners are second-class citizens (a message that’s particularly harmful to slave owning teens). This may seem like a contradiction in my position, but it’s not. The discrimination slavery opponents favor is active discrimination; in contrast, equal treatment is a government’s way of being neutral, sending no message at all. The government should simply remaining neutral and let the culture decide for itself who to enslave.
***
Some may say that gay marriage cannot be compared to slavery thus rendering the previous comparison invalid. But those who would say this ignore the base of their opponent’s argument: that gay marriage is harmful to society and thus cannot be legal.
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Eventually the pro gay marriage group will probably win. My side is shrinking their’s is growing. I can see the writing on the wall. Unless there is some dramatic reversal.
My question is America has occupied a position of unquestionable power for quite sometime, and it also has the unique distinction of being the only nation(to my knowledge) founded on the Christian God(separation of church and state means little when Epluribus Unum is engraved on everything we can and our legal system is based on puritan society). I don’t see these 2 things as a coincidence. I think God has Literally blessed America(Atheist nations do not do seem to do well).
Will God withdraw his blessing from our country when we finally do allow gay marriage?
Naturally if the United States resurges from this last recession I will gladly withdraw my argument, but what if we don’t? What if God decides to bless a more worthy nation?
If we choose to set Theology aside(something I never like to do) I am a firm believer in majority rule. It alone is what makes the United States a Democracy. If the people of this country voted for gay marriage tommorow and passed it I would accept it(I would have voted against it, but I would accept it).
What I hate is insistences that the Public can’t be trusted with such a matter(basically that we are too stupid to decide for ourselves sounds like a justification for a monarchy to me) or that Gays shouldn’t have to have their rights voted on by others(why do we even have democracy then?)
Some people point to slavery when they say Majority rule cannot be trusted. I point to the fact that the Majority elected Linclon in order to end slavery and that refusing to obey the majorities wishes is what caused the civil war.