I don’t really have much to say about it that many, many people haven’t said before, but I wanted to point out an interesting exchange about same-sex marriage that’s been bouncing around the blogosphere. I’m quoting brief snippets of each, for flavor, but there’s lots, lots more if you read the posts in full.
First of all, Megan of Asymmetrical Information (who “Alas” readers may remember I debated on a certain movie star’s radio show), a libertarian, argues that same-sex marriage advocates have been too easily dismissing the potential downside of legal same-sex marriage.
A very common response to this is essentially to mock this as ridiculous. “Why on earth would it make any difference to me whether gay people are getting married? Why would that change my behavior as a heterosexual”
To which social conservatives reply that institutions have a number of complex ways in which they fulfill their roles, and one of the very important ways in which the institution of marriage perpetuates itself is by creating a romantic vision of oneself in marriage that is intrinsically tied into expressing one’s masculinity or femininity in relation to a person of the opposite sex; stepping into an explicitly gendered role. This may not be true of every single marriage, and indeed undoubtedly it is untrue in some cases. But it is true of the culture-wide institution. By changing the explicitly gendered nature of marriage we might be accidentally cutting away something that turns out to be a crucial underpinning.
To which, again, the other side replies “That’s ridiculous! I would never change my willingness to get married based on whether or not gay people were getting married!”
Now, economists hear this sort of argument all the time. “That’s ridiculous! I would never start working fewer hours because my taxes went up!” This ignores the fact that you may not be the marginal case. The marginal case may be some consultant who just can’t justify sacrificing valuable leisure for a new project when he’s only making 60 cents on the dollar. The result will nonetheless be the same: less economic activity. Similarly, you–highly educated, firmly socialised, upper middle class you–may not be the marginal marriage candidate; it may be some high school dropout in Tuscaloosa. That doesn’t mean that the institution of marriage won’t be weakened in America just the same.
Megan goes on to give a number of somewhat dubious examples of government policy causing Bad Things (no-fault divorce caused a high divorce rate, that sort of thing).
Galios responds (in part; read the whole thing):
[Megan speculates that, if same-sex marriage is legalized,] some people might no longer choose to marry as it will no longer be an expression of an explicit gendered role. I had thought, however, that in such a conflict where one person wants a role to be explicitly gendered and another wishes to take that role in spite of his or her gender, the latter’s equality rights would generally trump the other’s interest in maintaining gender roles. If not we should reconsider a lot of issues. Perhaps women should no longer be allowed to be policemen as some men at the margins are no longer joining the force because it does not afford an opportunity to step into an explicitly gendered role. In this case it is not that I arrogantly suppose nobody would react this way. I simply feel the need for explicit gendered roles is far outweighed by the need to be free of them.
Tom at Family Scholars Blog, also responding to Megan, writes:
Hear, hear. Same-sex marriage could weaken marriage in numerous ways. I think there are clear reasons why marriage has always been understood as being between a man and a woman. Marriage has been about regulating sexuality and procreation (and property and other things), and we live in”“and always will live in”“a heteronormative world.
But not allowing same-sex marriage could also weaken marriage. (Marriage could increasingly be seen as a discriminatory institution, the compromise of civil unions could undermine marriage far more than same-sex marriage, and so on.) Just as many gay rights activists should think a bit more seriously about marriage, many opponents of same-sex marriage should think a bit more seriously about fairness and equality for homosexuals. I see no reason why society should condemn homosexuality and stigmatize homosexuals, and most opposition to same-sex marriage is rooted in opposition to homosexuality (Elizabeth and David are in the minority there, I’m afraid). I’m not sure if there are any rational arguments out there against homosexuality, either. That’s not to say that our ancestors were bigoted, repressed bastards. But sometimes societies make progress, and it’s difficult to see how the growing social acceptance of homosexuality can be categorized as anything other than progress.
Jim at Unqualified Offerings gets in the deal; answering Megan’s examples and also her Chesterson quote (which I’m not even getting in to here, space being limited and all), and also writing:
The form of the social conservative argument against gay marriage is entirely different: easing couple-formation among Class A is supposed to make couple-formation less attractive to Class B. One version of this argument would hold that Class B so reviles Class A that they will, at the margin, want less to do with any institution Class A has contaminated. Social conservatives on their best behavior are at pains to avoid this one. Instead they argue that marriage is deeply attractive because it is an opportunity to “step[] into an explicitly gendered role,”?as Megan puts it, and opening the institution to Class A, gay couples, compromises that.
I can’t say definitively that it doesn’t, because one can’t prove a negative. I can say that the “gendered roles are the it thing about marriage”? claim has a distinctly after-the-fact air about it; that is, it feels like the opposition to gay marriage comes first, and the reasoning afterward. […]
Social conservatives either need a more compelling causal explanation of how gay marriage would harm straight marriage, or they need closer analogies than Megan managed. Give me compelling historical cases of the form “We opened Institution X to Class A and that caused it to weaken among Class B”? and you’ll have at least a level of surface plausibility that social conservatives currently don’t have. You won’t have won the argument by any means – at that point we have to weigh your story against the justice claims that have been patiently waiting to be brought back in to the discussion. But at least you’ll have an argument.
Kip Esquire makes a solid point as well:
The mile-wide blindspot in Jane’s tome is that all her examples are non-discriminatory. Look at the income tax: two clones with exactly identical financial profiles pay exactly the same income tax … whether that tax is too high is an entirely different discussion. Yes, libertarians … or anyone … can disagree about whether “taxes are too high,” but I would hope that a tax policy that discriminated against gays … or blacks or women or immigrants or any other group … would unite libertarians in saying “Now hold on a minute…” […]
I don’t give a damn whether recognizing same-sex marriage affects anybody else’s behavior “at the margin.” I’m being discriminated against, and I want it to stop. The margin be damned.
Over in Obernews, Brooke writes:
But I ask again, what does any of this have to do with gay marriage? Traditional marriage supporters seem to be flocking to this essay because it supposedly makes a compelling case for not allowing gay marriage. But do we learn anything at all about the possible consequences of gay marriage in this essay? No. So what have we learned? That change means change and incentives matter. Both good lessons with no discernable relationship to gay marriage. Because what are the incentives to marriage that are likely to change? Companionship, having children, economic security, fulfillment of religious duty, and, as McArdle says, “stepping into an explicitly gendered role”? (which, incidentally, I think is increasingly rare and likely to become more so, and also, bullshit)? For heterosexual people who want any or all of those things, how are the incentives changed by allowing gay people to marry, even to people on the margin? What disincentive to marriage does allowing gays to marry create? McArdle doesn’t suggest any.
In the comments to Obernews, Jesse made what I thought was an on-target comment:
But Megan, the position you’re targeting doesn’t boil down to “Because I wouldn’t change my behavior, it is therefore true that no one else will change their behavior.” It boils down to “Why would this cause any heterosexuals to change their behavior?” Put another way, the point isn’t that the speaker doesn’t see how incentives that won’t affect him could affect anyone else. It’s that gay marriage doesn’t change any heterosexual’s incentives in the first place.
The proper response, if you object to the argument, is not to point out incentives that were pooh-poohed in the past but which turned out to be important after all; it’s to note some negative incentives that exist in the first place.
Since I haven’t seen any compelling examples of such incentives, I can’t say the argument strikes me as stupid at all.
In contrast, Justin at Dust In The Light argues that what this all shows is that gay marriage is a slippery, slippery slope.
…It’s true that the social mixing will remain intact even should the genetic mixing be withdrawn from the essential definition of marriage. However, McArdle’s point about each step making the next easier comes starkly into play: there are currently two reasons for the fence against consanguineous marriage: procreative and social. At the very least, same-sex marriage would invalidate the former, leaving only vague notions of clannishness that a society (or judiciary) that takes individual choice as the supreme principle would surely deem an inappropriate basis for the law.
Stepping outside of the narrow point, though, we observe that Henley has made the repeated assertion that he is leaving out the “justice claims” of same-sex marriage supporters. Those claims, and every other argument that Henley puts forward on behalf of same-sex marriage, would apply equally to any other couple or group that wished to have the government recognize its relationship as “marriage.”
One of Justin’s comment-writers argues that it’s not true that we have to be against same-sex marriage because it would be the end of the world. No, no – we have to be against same-sex marriage because it would led to the Muslims taking over.
You two are overstating our arguments. I’ve never claimed that humanity will die out. I don’t think any other commenters here have ever made that claim either. The real argument is that this particular society that you will have radically modified will become unviable and will be replaced. What the replacement will be nobody can guess. Some believe it will be replaced with a fundamentalist muslim society. In which case your ssm couples would have to start hiding again, only not from fear of being ostracized. Whatever replaces American society will not be as friendly to homogamous relationships as you hope to enjoy. It won’t happen overnight of course. It may not even happen until your ssm grandchildren, but it will happen just like it is happening in Europe.
Although it’s too difficult to find a bit to quote, Sebastian Holsclaw also has some interesting thoughts on the nature of reforming any institution.
Anyhow, with the exception of Justin’s (which is just more of the old “same sex marriage will lead to incest” fearmongering), all the above posts – including Megan’s original post – are well worth reading.
I can’t help but infer from Jane/Megan’s initial post that gender-roles in marriage are in her view, considered a necessary component of marriage. God forbid those gays should get married, I might end up having to toss away my frilly pink apron, and stop posing demurely while I go about my daily vacuuming. Err, wait, hasn’t it been established that gender-roles in marriage are pretty much optional, or am I missing something?
This has got to be one of the biggest strawmen arguments masquerading as a thoughtful justification I’ve seen yet.
Edit: Actually, come to think of it, the essay also lacks acknowledgement for the marginalized that have chosen to not get married due to the discriminatory nature of the institution. While the issue has just begun to become a mainstream topic of debate, it certainly has affected many views on marriage, and despite what some people might like to think, opinions that include straight people in support of an institution that doesn’t discriminate against gays.
My first reaction is the same as Kim (and Jim from Unqualified Offering) – the marriage=opportunity to fit into gendered roles is just put there as a fact, and its being a Good Thing is implied with no argument whatsoever.
Seems to me it’s still about the idea of “contamination”…
The comparison Megan makes with raising taxes is also another of those unargued assumptions. I guess from an economic libertarian point of view it’s a dogma, but personally I don’t know anybody who individually makes that kind of calculation, ie. who refuses to earn more money, if given a chance, just because 40% may go in taxes. 60 cents rather than 80 is still better than zero… The limit is not about taxes, it’s about sustainable working hours. People generally want some balance between having enough money to be able to have enough valuable spare time to do something with it, that incidentally will cost some money too. No one looks at their tax forms and says, oh bugger, I’m paying so many taxes already, I should work less…
But even if her statement on taxes and spare time was correct, it’s got nothing to do with the question, how would gay marriage affect heterosexual marriage. She’s not really answering it.
I’d like to note that giving women the right to own property also increased the divorce rate. The increase in the number of women in the workforce increased the divorce rate. And so on.
I’m betting that Megan might actualy find these to have been compelling, but insuficient arguments against those changes.
My take is that the invention of fire probably can be linked to the atomic bomb, but we’re not playing at James Burke here. We should only consider strongly obvious causal mechanisms, and so far, there are none that satisfy serious social scientists. Only amateur types like Stan Kurtz, who has yet to explain how a similar trend to Norway(?) is happening in Japan, where homosexuality is deep undercover.
I have stated this before, and I’ll state this again, the introduction of civil unions for homosexuals in Denmark (not quite the same as marriages, but close enough for this purpose), has done absolutely nothing to the “institution of marriage” at all, nor has it done anything to morality (whatever that is) in society as a whole.
A few have argued this, but Amp has done a good job in the past shooting down their arguments.
Arguments that ssm will change the institution of marriage for straight couples don’t move me much, not because I disbelieve that it will have an influence, but because I’m unpersuaded that the influence will be negative.
Take no-fault divorce. There was a temporary spike in divorce rated caused by the relaxation of divorce law. The rise has plateaued and has become a decline — divorce rates never quite reached half, and are going down. Further, there’s a huge drop-off in divorces among couples includgin college-educated women — it’s around 16%, I believe, for the first ten years.
Changing the rules always upsets settled expectations. There is a period of adjustment before anew equilibrium sets in.
For marriage, what will be the new equilibrium with the institution integrated (it’s coming, slowly but inexorably)? I’m not entirely sure, but I think it may well include a relaxing of pre-defined gender roles. Since I believe that patriarchy is, at its core, a system of rigid gender roles, I couldn’t be happier with this prospect. (IOW, what Kim said.)
If, and I believe, lifelong partnership is deeply ingrained in most people, and remains highly practical for most people’s life plans, and if the institution of marriage retains social and economic advantages, then I think it will continue to be popular even with substantial change to the larger context of the institution.
Finally, the graying populations of Europe and Japan have to do with several generations of affluence. More money and more choices prolong people’s post-adolescent phase of self-development and reduce the incentives to have children at all, or to have multiple children. It’s a longer conversation, but like Josh said, any explanation has to account for both Western Europe and Japan — the latter being pretty damned socially conservative. The only things they have in common is a sharp rise in material standard of living to the top of the world heap, beginning from a relatively reduced place in 1945.
When no fault divorce was being introduced, one of the arguments against its opponents ran ““
“What do two people getting a divorce have to do with your marriage?”
Well… now the divorce rate stands at 50%, and the rate of new marriages among the young continues to decline.
Simplistic and naïve understandings of foundational social institutions abound on the left.
A sophomoric scientific rationalism inspires calls of “prove it”? along with a callous dismissal of the data on fatherlessness, illegitimacy, divorce and so fourth.
If you can answer the question of-
“What do two people getting a divorce have to do with your marriage?”?
Then you are closer to understanding the way societies work.
If you can’t answer that question (if it leaves you baffled), well, then your probably for same-sex marriage.
If anyone is truly interested in understanding the complex ways that social tradition preserves the common good, the following links may prove helpful.
(as well as those presented in Ampersand | posting)
http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=18-01-038-f
http://marriage.rutgers.edu/%5D
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0408/opinion/bork.htm
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0402/opinion/eberstadt.html
http://www.policyreview.org/apr05/morse.html
http://www.americanvalues.org/html/hardwired.html
McArdle’s argument is flawed in a million different ways, but the most obvious flaw is this: the whole reason why marriage has become attractive to homosexuals is because it is no longer an explicitly gendered arrangement. We’ve started to move beyond “masculine” and “feminine” roles in marriage (obviously we haven’t come close to fully moving on, but we’ve started); most people if asked won’t say that a woman must have different chores from her husband around the house, or that she must subordinate herself to her husband. Most Americans don’t consciously think that way anymore.
There’d be no demand for marriage by gays if it was still officially a gendered (and therefore unequal, a point that McArdle skirts around and does not address) institution.
The social conservative reason for opposing gay marriage is that they want to keep marriage a gendered institution–they don’t want wives to be full equals of their husbands. And legalizing gay marriage would imply that wives are full equals of their husbands because it’s essentially saying that your wife might as well be a man, in terms of her legal rights.
And oh, yeah–since when is it okay to deny a group of people rights because it will make another group of people disinclined to exercise those same rights?
McArdle says:
Which is, logically, the same thing as saying this:
Voting pre-19th amendment wasa gendered act. Should we have not campaigned for women’s suffrage because it might weaken the insititution of elections by making men disinclined to vote?
Me, I’m still wondering why people are saying things like increasing the number of marriages, reducing the number of divorces, etc. are inherently good (rather than being indicators of other more important factors).
Here are two more (extremely timely) examples.
http://claremont.org/writings/crb/spring2005/watson.html
http://claremont.org/writings/050408cella.html
However, I still believe the most important article for understanding the complex ways that society, gender & tradition interact is the touchstones article focusing on the work of George Akerlof a Nobel prize-winning economist, and professor at Berkeley.
http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=18-01-038-f
Warmed over feminism, in an age were women in general shun the term, and a abhorrence for any gendered roles is hardly settled public policy.
With 70% illegitimacy rates among the black underclass, both the preservation & promotion of traditional marriage takes precedent over further radically egalitarian experiments.
As in the past, the most pejorative effects will fall on women, children & the poor.
Linnet
Women got a constitutional amendment in order to vote. (as you pointed out the 19th)
Men being the only ones who could vote at the time means: men themselves voted to give women the franchise.
That says something in itself about the proper workings of government concerning systemic social change. (Its both possible without court interference & preferable)
Other than that ““ I find your analogy falls flat. Marriage is the primary institution for bringing men & women together and keeping them together in cooperative childrearing and family arrangements.
Its pre-democratic, and often called the first form of goverment.
Fitz, your facts are wrong.
The divorce rate does not “stand[] at 50%.” See this NY Times article.
Your own cite to Rutgers’ “Top Ten” list supports me on this:
Also, I’m sure you’re aware of the red state-blue state disparity in divorce rates.
Therefore, us feminist, latte-drinking progressives with college educations who partner late with people whose worldview we share are the ones keeping the marriage statistics up. If you want to see how to save the institution of marriage, as an empirical matter we are the ones doing it successfully, and you First Things readers should get your head out of your latin texts and figure out what it is we’re doing right. Or, you can follow that Bavarian guy.
Jeff, you and me both.
My argument in favor of gay marriage is that it undermines marriage while strengthening families — by allowing for the recognition of a wider variety of forms families can take, it increases the freedom of people to order their own lives as they see fit.
Possible without court interference? Sure–after a long, long time has passed and many people have been oppressed who otherwise wouldn’t be. But I don’t think it’s necessarily preferable .
So what? Voting is the primary institution for allowing citizens to be involved in their government. Are you saying that marriage is more important than voting? If so, I disagree.
far below fifty percent for educated people going into their first marriage, and lower still for people who wait to marry at least until their mid-twenties, haven’t lived with many different partners prior to marriage, or are strongly religious and marry someone of the same faith.
This seems extremely callous to me Thomas.
It also reinforces our faith argument & our arguments against cohabitation.
(all supported by the Bavarian guy)
Those mentioned above sound like social conservatives to me. (some of us have even been to college)
None of the articles I cite are in Latin.
Generally speaking I find the “feminist, latte-drinking progressives with college educations who partner late with people whose worldview we share are the ones keeping” the rates of marriage of the uneducated, lower middle class, and minorities low to non-existent because you find it impossible to have a discussion concerning a.) sexual norms b.) gender norms c.) personal responsibility d.) any norm or responsibility
Linnet
gays allready have the right to vote (its called due-process)
or this
http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/login.aspx?ci=15889
recent gallup poll numbers
So, 57% supported an amendment banning same-sex marriage — suggesting a very large minority oppose such an amendment, and much of that group would support same-sex marriage.
Given that we’re advocating a radical change to the traditional form of marriage, it’s impressive that we have such high support. I think we could win in a few years with a determined effort.
I hate to admit it, but I’m starting to wonder if the real reason these people are adamantly opposed to same sex marriage is that they’re afraid that these marriages may be more stable and gays could possibly have a lower divorce rate. That would make all of those holier-than-thou fundagelicals and repugs look even worse with all their cases of adultery and high divorce rates, wouldn’t it?
I find all the arguments–Fitz’s included–against gay marriage to be nothing but a series of dodges. Marriage is, and should be, optional, first of all. It is not an inoculation against crime, infidelity, or AIDS for that matter in our society–or rather, it could only function in that way (and even then imperfectly) if it were still as rigidly enforced as it once was. Which means going back to strict gender roles, stigma for the divorced and single parents, and other one-time societal norms that we have decided infringe on personal liberty. Yes, this has brought upheaval; it has also brought tremendous freedom to women (and men also) that we are loathe to part with. We are willing to work throught the upheaval rather than take up the dubious comforts of our old chains.
Unlike conservatives aching to return to the past and bitterly critical of the uncertainties of freedom, I am an optimist. I think the world we can create with this freedom will be better than the old one.
Letting free adults freely choose how and with whom they enter into relationships with other consenting adults is something a society should be proud of. That doesn’t mean doing so won’t take hard work and a great deal of debate. But in the end, anything less is a prison, and all human beings, including gay people, deserve to be free of that prison.
For the record, I just celebrated my 7th wedding anniversary. We have a very un-traditional marriage in terms of gender roles, we married late, and are expecting our first child. We are ridiculously happy, and regard each other as complete equals. And nothing would make us feel happier than seeing our gay friends meet and marry people that they love just as much. It would enrich our happiness, not detract from it.
Fitz, you are just wrong again. You say:
But this entire blog consists of discussions of sexual norms, gender norms, personal responsibility and norms of responsibility … unless of course you refuse to acknowledge that we are discussing these things when our ideas are those you reject.
I followed your links and I know none of your cites were to latin articles. I was shorthanding for a comment on the doctrinaire thinking of folks that read First Things. I thought you would have recognized the sarcasm when I referred to your Pope as the Bavarian guy.
Oh, and I’m not impressed by your Gallup numbers. There was a time when a majority opposed miscegination, too.
OK, Fitz, let’s assume for the sake of argument you’re right, and same sex marriages will impact current marriages badly.
Now, how about civil unions that subsume all of the rights and responibilisies of marriages, but have a differnt name. Will those impact marriages badly?
I’ve been sitting here stewing on Fitz’s posts. Considering refuting, but realizing that he hasn’t made any bright or new arguments that need refuting. But realizing that didn’t make the irritation go away with his tone and his words. So here’s my response, as civil as I can possibly make it:
Fitz, I don’t like you.
I don’t like you because you personify the unknown stranger that seems intent on invading and molesting my privacy and life.
I don’t like you because your own fear and weakness makes you cling to a patriarchy and patriarchal roles that hurt me, other women and others in general that aren’t willing to yeild to the power you falsely feel entitled to.
I don’t like you because you infringe upon my right to religious freedom or lack thereof with your outspoken attempts at forcing your religion down my throat and into my life.
I don’t like you because you are bigoted and unfairly discriminating and try to cover it up with strawmen arguments and a patronizing attitude.
I don’t like you because you try to define my marriage based on your morality instead of respecting that the right to define a marriage belongs soley to the people entering into the contract.
I don’t like you because you cling to gender-roles because of how they empower you without giving any consideration to how they disempower women.
I don’t like you because you attempt to use feminism and liberalism as dirty words without even fully understanding them.
I simply don’t like you. And I want you out of my marriage. I want you out of my bed. I want you out of my religious privacy. I want you out of my decision making when it comes to what role I will choose. I want you out of my family when it comes to deciding whether my family is abnormal because we have married gay relatives. I want you gone with all of your judgements and molestations of my life. In my eyes, you’re a cultural and societal rapist of privacy and personal rights.
I don’t like you.
I was going to suggest to Fitz that illegitimacy rates among the “black underclass” might actually be caused in part by 1) the fraying of social institutions in general as a result of poverty, 2) a shortage of candidates deemed economically or romantically acceptable, and 3) the fact that far too many young poor black women see having a baby as the *only* way for their lives to have meaning and purpose.
But Kim’s comment was such an astonishingly definitive smackdown, maybe we should just let him be alone for a little while . .
Oh, and Fitz, the Claremont institute has funded Paul Cameron, noted faker of statistics on gay mortality and other topics and proponent of forced “reparative” therapy.
Nice try slipping that in, but I actualy pay attention to sources. Your sources reveal youragenda for what it really is, and it has nothing to do with truth, or protecting families.
Linnet said,
I’d had the impression that same-sex marriage started to be raised seriously as a political issue during the height of the AIDS crisis in the US in the late 80s and early 90s, because of the frequency with which committed partners of gay men with AIDS were barred from hospital rooms by homophobic (biological) families, were unable to make medical decisions for their partners, and so on. I’m not sure if that’s accurate.
But that aside, I think Linnet made an excellent point. The legal issues about marriage are rising because the structure of families has already changed. There are already same-sex couples in committed, lifelong relationships, sharing homes, raising children together, and everything else.
By changing the explicitly gendered nature of marriage we might be accidentally cutting away something that turns out to be a crucial underpinning.
Now there’s a sound, logical argument for you. We might mess up a vague, undefined “something” that is a crucial underpinning–mind you, we don’t know how crucial or in what way, but it COULD HAPPEN! So, no marriage for you queers.
I don’t know whether McCardle falls into the social-conservative camp or the gender-role eroticizing camp. Pat Califia made the excellent point (some time ago) that many people are very insistent on gender roles because their romantic/erotic preference centers on those roles. They aren’t emotionally and physically aroused unless they are girly girls and their partners are manly men (or vice versa). The problem is when they try to enforce that erotic preference on others: not merely “I want the girl I marry to be sweet and feminine and love housekeeping,” but “Women are genetically predisposed to like ‘feminine’ things,” or “It’s not healthy for girls to choose a ‘career’ over being a mommy,” etc.
Yeah–when I said that equality in marriage is what makes marriage attractive to gays, I didn’t mean that it was the precipitating cause. I don’t know enough about the gay rights movement to say what the precipitating issue is.
What I meant was, if marriage was still widely understood as an unequal relationship (as McArdle thinks it is and/or should be), it would be a less attractive arrangement for gay people. No one would want to be the subordinated wife, whereas it’s okay to be the equal spouse now because of societal changes.
Exactly. I would argue that laws against domestic violence, against marital rape, allowing married women to keep their property and sovereignty, preventing husbands from getting automatic child custody in case of divorce, etc. were much more radical changes to the institution of marriage than gay marriage is.
No one would want to be the subordinated wife, whereas it’s okay to be the equal spouse now because of societal changes.
Except that you can’t have a subordinated wife if there’s no clear way to say who the ‘wife’ is. That’s precisely why social conservatives freak out about same-sex marriage.
The staggering rate of HIV infection among married women (and their children) in Africa is proof that even marriages with “rigidly enforced” gender roles, in which the woman is completely subordinate to the man, in no way innoculate against AIDS. In fact, the wife’s inability to refuse her husband sex is directly responsible for her infection. Of course, the husband’s adultery, which is often how the disease first enters the family, is not exactly a “family value,” but although it’s not usually overtly accepted, when men are in charge of enforcing gender roles in relationships, their own adulterous behavior is rarely considered a problem.
And another thing:
So let me get this straight. Some people are so opposed to same-sex marriage that if it’s legalized, they themselves will not get married and have children. What’s the problem?
Slavery used to be among the “foundational social institutions”, yet society didn’t come crumbling down when the practice of it was stopped. Nor would the society have been worth saving, if it had come crumbling down.
You know what? I don’t really care about the data on fatherlessness, illegitimacy, divorce and so forth, except in the sense that much of that data carries its own sad story. The fact that some people’s sense of morality (for lack of a better word) seems to condem people who has experienced such a sad story is not really relevant. Nor has neither the sad stories nor the codemnation anything to do with same sex marriage.
There is absolutely no meaningful way that one can argue that same-sex marriage leads to any of these things, and even if it could, this doesn’t mean that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed. There is nothing in that line of argument that shows this.
Oh, and one comment about illegitimacy – what the hell is the problem with that? It just means that the parents are not married. Unless there is some kind of social stigma, caused by people with an out-dated concept of morality, there shouldn’t be any problems with that. Of course, there are obviously times where there are other issues, but illegitimacy per se is not a problem.
I am in a similar camp with Kim, except I don’t feel dislike, but rather disgust.
Mythago got quite simply and clearly to the heart of the opposition to ssm:
If your neighbors, that nice lesbian couple next door, don’t seem to have explicit roles about who does what in their family, it’s kind of in your face all the time that you don’t have to either. So, in fact, ssm does pose a challenge to other people’s marriages, or at least to the gendered nature of the roles within most marriages. It’s a daily obvious challenge that makes many straight people uncomfortable.
This is of course not a reason to deny gay couples the right to marry. I think it is, however, important to understand that either consciously or unconsciously, this is what’s going on for most (if not all) straight folks opposing same-sex marriage. Understanding that discomfort, confronting it directly and talking about it openly might just enhance our ability to sway those folks.
Fitz is a highly energetic troll for the Religious Right.
Since Pope Ratzinger’s election, I’ve visited a good many blogs (slightly to the right of Ampersand, but well to the left of the MSM) discussing religious and sex / gender issues, and Fitz has appeared on many threads.
He was afflicting a thread at Kevin Drum’s blog with theology.
He is a somewhat smarter version of Bevets, the troll at Fark and Metafilter who spams comments in much the same way.
A “Summon Bevets” and “Dispel Bevets” cards, as in the old paper version of D&D, were quickly photoshpped.
Ignore Fitz. He no doubt thinks you’re all going to hell anyway.
I realize that this advice seems rude, and not respectful of personalities and different political views, but you cannot have a discussion with someone whose role is to hijack, spam links, make other people angry, and then leave without taking any responsibility (the “responsibility” he trumpets) for the melted-down thread.
Ignore him.
I actually thought one of the most interesting things about Meghan’s orginal post is that in each of the three examples she makes pains to say that each of those decisions (raising the tax rate > 1%, the welfare benefit increase, and no fault divorce) are all GOOD THINGS – the last two on moral grounds – despite the effects she claims they have.
So to me, it seemed she was actually making (perhaps subconsciously) an argument that changes that effect institutions poorly are still worth doing if it is the “moral” thing to do. If my interpretation of her argument is correct, then in the end we are just back to “is granting homosexuals equal marriage rights the morally correct thing to do?” I say yes due to equality issues, others say no due to their biblical interpretation issues. Square 1.
There are some fascinating things in that article. One: “which follows three welfare mothers through welfare reform, is when he reveals that none of these three women, all in their late thirties, had ever been to a wedding. “… fascinating since I am 41, university educated, white, middleclass homeowner, and I have been to ONE wedding (a cousin when I was 18) since 1980. This is written about as if it is a scandalous inner-city black welfare-mom phenomenon when it is not. It hooks into this: ” failing to predict that women willing to forgo marriage would essentially become unwelcome competition for women who weren’t, and that as the numbers changed, that competition might push the marriage market towards unwelcome outcomes.”
Now, how, if marriage is such a marvelous thing, are all these women willing to forgo marriage? WHY is there this competition for men where women who want to get married are trumped by women who will “give it away for free without demanding the men carry any responsibility”??
Is it because of the lack of stigmatisation of unwed mothers and premarital sex? (Do we want people getting married only to avoid stigmatisation??) Or is it because married women have the burden in the marriage of taking care, not only of the children, but of the man as well? That married women were subordinated to the desires, and life and career plans of their husbands? That married women often cannot refuse sex, and have many more children than they’d like? (the pill was perhaps more of a boon to married women than to unmarried ones.. my own grandmother had 9 children, the last two of which the doctor warned her, could cost her her life) That married women live shorter lives than unmarried women, whereas married men live longer lives than unmarried men?
I fail to see why a decline in marriage rates, or an increase in divorce rates is worse than young people getting married too early or to quickly(like my parents), in order to have sex, or because of unwanted pregnancy. Or worse than staying in unhappy marriages (like my grandparents). I myself have chosen not to get into a traditional male/female marriage. I would be a single mother by choice outside of wedlock if I hadn’t turned out to be infertile. I also would be more likely (I am bisexual) to marry a woman than a man, since the societal gender role pressure is less stifling.
As someone pointed out, enforced marriage expectations (such as in Africa) do not guarantee lifelong monogamy. Enforced gender roles (such as women being compliant and feminine in Thailand for instance) does not guarantee societal stability… look at the rate of prostitution there for young women. Stigmatisation does not stop illegitimacy (foundling homes were overflowing in Victorian Europe).
And denying lesbians and gays the right to marry only makes them less likely to be stable in their relationships vs not having relationships at all. The nice lesbian couple next door will undermine the nice married het couple’s views of gender roles in relationships just as much if they are living together “in sin” as if they are joined in wedlock.
Anyways, brilliant discussion over here. And I think I am in love with basement variety Kim. That was a wonderfully restorative retort to Fritz.
I recently read an editorial in a conservative European publication decrying as “despotic” the law recently passed by Zapatero in Spain to allow same-sex marriages, the argument was slightly more sophisticated than Fitz’s here. What both fail to consider, amongst many other things, is that two thirds of Spanish people were very much in favour of the law. No amount of reiteration of how marriage is a “pre-democratic institution” is going to be enough to dismiss that little detail. Many other institutions were pre-democratic, and have gone through even bigger changes.
As for divorce, single parenthood, “illegitimacy”, I’m with Leanne and Kristjan here. All the talk of marriage as “institution” ultimately becomes an abstraction, as if marriage was some platonic idea that existed in a separate sphere, as an entity in itself, and not something made up of individuals and therefore, different in each case. How can we say marriage in the absolute is good, and divorce or single parenthood is bad? Two people can stay married all their lives and have a very unhealthy relationship, is it ok just because the formal institution of marriage is preserved intact? A marriage is only as good as the people in it. If this is “moral relativism”, then it is the good, practical, humane kind of relativism. Absolutising an institution places it so above the individuals in it, it makes it a form of tyranny, a kind of despotic god to worship regardless. Marriage is supposed to serve people, not the other way round.
The perception of the value of an education at an elite college hasn’t declined since they started accepting minorities. Anyone ever heard of a kid deciding not to apply to Harvard as a result? Prices certainly haven’t dropped.
Marriage is several things, some of which depend on sanction and support of the state.
If state-sanctioned things like visiting rights in hospitals, inheritance, tax advantages, etc. were not attached to marriage, then gays/lesbians would have less incentive to seek the religious/political joining of two people into a ‘lifetime’ of togetherness.
Or, put another way, without the benefits bestowed by the state in marriage, would hets seek a formal marriage in greater or lessor numbers?
The state does have some interest in providing a stable ground for the raising children, but as long as that stable ground is buttressed with many other state-provided benefits (that don’t clearly relate to the stable family issue), then there is very legimate reasons for ensuring that non-het couples have ‘the equal protection of the laws’.
Society would have been far, far better off if we had started out saying that ‘civil unions’ for all couples were the province of the state, and marriage was a religious supplement to those unions that is optional.
It is probably too late to separate the state’s civil union from the church’s marriage, so the question becomes which institution must bend – the church allowing for ‘equal protection’, or the state reinforcing a discriminatory religious principle. In that equation, I’ll choose the state prevailing for equal protection, but many others would not. That is the heart of the question, IMO.
Here’s another question McArdle doesn’t address: if same-sex marriages would ruin the gendered nature of marriage, then why wouldn’t the increased acceptance of equal heterosexual marriages in which both partners see gender as an irrelevant issue and do not regard their partnership as gendered also destroy the gendered nature of marriage?
Social conservatives would say, of course, that it does, but McArdle is a libertarian, not a conservative.
This discusion is very interesting, specially for the presence of hard core social conservatives like Fritz. To which I have some questions…
Who said that divorce is necesary a bad thing to start? I mean, even assuming that divorce rates has increased after divorce laws where made available, why should we consider it as a bad sign? What is worse…to remain in an abusive and unhappy relation as many couples have done for centuries, or have the right to rectify?
Fritz, why do you say we can´t have a discusion on” a.) sexual norms b.) gender norms c.) personal responsibility d.) any norm or responsibility”? Just because we don´t happy to agree with your conception of all those? Just cause we don´t buy the sickenning and hypocrite moralism of conservatives in all those areas?
Those questions to start….
Damn..sorry for all the gramatical and spelling errors…I don´t know what I was thinking.
Look, I understand that some people who post on this site were women studies majors. I understand that they believe in a bogeyman called the patriarchy that has oppressed women for centuries and most be abolished at all costs.
I also understand that most men & women don’t subscribe to this current and dying intellectual fashion.
That most women abhor the term feminist. That they like men and want children, and want those children to have their fathers to raise them. That they want to be married to the father of their children and want to be able to afford to raise those children themselves.
I further understand that the gay marriage project stands as the ultimate cause in your genderless utopia.
But I simply cant subscribe. Never have women and children been more likely to live in poverty than when the father is absent from the home. Never have prison populations been larger and filled with the children of broken homes.
In the words of Mary Eberstadt (I quote)
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0402/opinion/eberstadt.html
The sophomoric undermining of this compelling evidence with such a tortured human face by simplistic postmodern reductionism is the height of inhumanity.
And me and Mary are not the only ones who think so.
57-43 = Oregon.
59-41 = Michigan.
62-38 = California.
62-38 = Ohio.
66-34 = Utah.
67-33 = Montana.
71-29 = Kansas.
71-29 = Missouri.
73-27 = North Dakota.
75-25 = Arkansas.
75-25 = Kentucky.
76-24 = Georgia.
76-24 = Oklahoma.
78-22 = Louisiana.
86-14 = Mississippi.
Believe it or not these are people defending marriage & the family. If they were all that concerned with the behavior of homosexuals they would have been up in arms against Lawrence and NOT Goodrich.
In (partial) response to Emjaybee –
This is only preliminary response to the unbelievably self centered, overly emotive and warmed over Marxist radical egalitarianism.
Apparently I stand as the oppressor against her oppressed.
The master to her slave, in this dialectic.
As much as I would like to play the bourgeoisie to Emjaybee proletariat : there is to much real pain in this all to real world. Someone has to do the serious work of defending family structures against the radical innovators that have led to nothing except, illegitimacy, divorce, and bareness, and all the poverty, crime, loneliness, physiological and physical pain involved.
Emjaybee writes
I don’t like you because you try to define my marriage based on your morality instead of respecting that the right to define a marriage belongs soley to the people entering into the contract.
Well then.. You and you sympathizers on this blog may agree with this then
http://students.law.umich.edu/mlr/
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/basham200504180745.asp
A straightforward response to exactly how far you wish to take this little experiment is not an unfair question.
Is this on the inevitable path of our evolution?
(more later)
I don’t want to take our troll’s bait, but as a college instructor, I’ve seen how true it is that “most women abhor the term feminist,” which is a rather ironic sentiment coming from 18-year-old girls who attend a co-ed university and live in co-ed dorms. Of course, this is due to the fact that far from being a myth or delusion, the partriarchy, in response to second wave feminism, was powerful enough to launch a very successful anti-feminist campaign whose effects, known as feminist backlash, are pervasive in our society today. Hence the simplistic notion that a woman who’s aggressive enough to challenge normative gender roles must therefore abhor every single traditionally feminine characteristic. That sort of binary thinking is one of the greatest ideological plagues in our society. Oh, and for the record, I’m a feminist who is married to the father of her child, a man who is also a feminist and who, like me, voted against the amendment banning same-sex marriage in our state.
Ditto, with baby #2 on the way. So much for that theory, eh?
Of course the next step after same sex marriage is legalising polygamy and bestiality, it’s so obvious. Spain has already started debating that.
Those with good historical memory will also recall how the very first legal acknowledgments of worker’s rights led to the collapse of the free market in the space of five years. In 1815, to be precise. (What is currently known as free market is only a set of elaborate virtual reality system that works in persuading us we’re still living under capitalism, when in fact, it’s already been destroyed by socialists.)
After gay, polygamous, and man-gerbil marriages, post-post-postmodern microchips will be implanted in conservatives to force them to accept the absence of absolute truths.
Beware, the glorious dictatorship of relativism is only just starting…
muttley laugh
(Don’t tell anyone, but I have it on good authority that it’s the freemasons, not those nasty unfeminine baby-eating feminists, who are behind this machiavellian scheme…)
Moica
David Chambers & Martha Ertman dont share your laughter.
See, what’s facinating (I think) is that Fritz confuses what the word “boogeyman” means. It’s a monster that someone is afraid of that doesn’t really exsist. Worrying that gay marriage is going to through the social order into chaos is a “boogeyman”. Acknowledging that their is a patriararchy isn’t.
Exactly what is a “feminist”? Is there such a creature as a “masculinist”? If so is it contrarian or complimentary to the feminist?
My latest favorite take on it is Adam Felber’s, which gave me all kinds of WAFFyness when I recognized it on the radio the other week. (It’s a more elaborate version of John Scalzi’s blog entry the days after MA legalized it.)
…Back in the simpler days of 2002, when we were planning our wedding, Jeanne and I used to coo fondly at each other about the joys that lay ahead. It wasn’t that we were unsupportive of our gay friends, no. We were just looking forward to the government’s validation of our relationship’s specialness – a license that affirmed that the two of us had made a unique and personal eternal vow to each other. Something uniquer and specialer than any of our homosexual acquaintances could ever even hope for.
We’re all for the separation of church and state, naturally, but if the government doesn’t define marriage as the sacred union between a man and a woman, who will? Are Jeanne and I expected to treasure our union solely on the basis of our deep love, personal beliefs, public vows, and the government’s blessing? Sorry, Judge Pinkypants, but that’s just not good enough. Not for us. We need to know that we’ve got something that’s only available to 90% of the population, the select and upstanding few…
Warning – not drinks safe. (Nothing on Fanatical Apathy is.) If you can find the audio from the This American Life braodcast, it’s actually even funnier, because Adam is a very good reader – and they mixed it with excellent music choices, after the fashion of the old Warner Bros cartoons.
On a more serious note, I recommend everyone who hasn’t yet, read J.S. Mill on the Polygamy Problem and the whole “consenting adult”/legal rights business – and the problem of trying to write your squicks and mores into law for everybody. It radically reshaped my thinking on this and made me much more receptive to same-sex marriage, when it became an issue – even though as a disgruntled, betrayed Catholic from the Archdiocese of Boston I was alreaed starting to look squiggled -eyed on being told that gayness was the worst threat to morality to come down the pike…
Something happened that made me think of this subject again. I post in a forum where a person X also post. X had a daughter which she got to post there as well. This daughter was planning on getting marriaged with her girlfriend soon (I don’t know all the details, and it’s not really relevant).
A truly tragic thing happened, and the daughter, who was only 19, was killed by a car just a couple of days ago. All of us are of course in shock, but we could help notice that while all of the family was mentioned in the obit, including her stepfather, her wife-to-be was not.
I know that the mother wouldn’t not have left her out, so someone else must have done that. I just can’t help thinking that if it had been a husband-to-be there was no chance that he wouldn’t have been included.
It’s a minor thing, but it struck me and others really hard.