{"id":824,"date":"2004-04-28T10:17:58","date_gmt":"2004-04-28T18:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/04\/28\/ssm-opponant-changes-his-mind\/"},"modified":"2004-04-28T10:17:58","modified_gmt":"2004-04-28T18:17:58","slug":"ssm-opponant-changes-his-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=824","title":{"rendered":"SSM opponant changes his mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s an interesting discussion going on at the Family Scholars Blog. David Blankenhorn – one of the leading opponents of marriage equality – has in the past favored hetero-only marriage but with “civil unions” for same-sex couples. But now he’s changed his mind, deciding (correctly, in my opinion) that civil unions would actually weaken marriage as an institution<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I don’t think civil unions or domestic partnerships for SS couples is a viable solution to this crisis, for three reasons. The first is that gay and lesbian leaders strongly reject this solution, viewing these special categories as badges of second-class citizenship, which of course in some ways they are. The second is that, as a legal matter, it seems highly unlikely that these statuses would remain gay-only. It just makes no sense — I don’t see how it could stand, over time — to create a package of benefits and responsibilities that is effectively identical to marriage, then say rather arbitrarily that heteros can call that package “marriage,” but SS couples cannot. The much more likely outcome is civil unions and domestic partnerships open to all couples.<\/p>\n

The third reason is that, as this story <\/a>suggests, creating a two-tier marriage system — official marriage and sort-of marriage — is likely to accelerate rapidly the weakening of marriage as social institution. The whole marriage idea becomes slightly ridiculous, and more and more people just opt out, with official marriage becoming sort of like the Church of England — much rigmarole and lots of official pews, with no parishioners in them. I used to think that some version of civil unions was a reasonable, let’s-all-live-together compromise solution. But the more I look at it, the more it looks like a slow-moving disaster.<\/div>\n

David now seems to be leaning towards “disestablishment,” AKA “leave marriage to the churches” – the proposal that the government provide only “civil unions” and provide them to same- and opposite-sex couples alike. Marriage would lose legal significance; couples could get “married” instead of or in addition to getting, er, civil unionized, and churches could choose for themselves which couples to perform weddings for. As David writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I am… seriously considering the idea. All <\/i>of the five possible legal solutions to the issue of same-sex couples — redefinition of marriage, civil unions, domestic partnerships, federal marriage amendment, and what I am calling disestablishment — strike me as seriously flawed and likely to be harmful to children. I’m just wondering whether disestablishment might be, in the long run, the least harmful.<\/div>\n

From a marriage equality point of view, either disestablishment or “redefinition of marriage” (by which David means “legally recognized same sex marriage”) would be acceptable, and none of the other solutions are. Both of them give equal legal rights and recognition to same-sex and opposite-sex couples, which is (I’d bet) the main goal of most marriage equality advocates.<\/p>\n

(In the past, I’ve gone back and forth between calling myself a “SSM” proponent and a “marriage equality” proponent. However, it makes no sense to say that you’re in favor of SSM, therefore you want to disestablish marriage from the law. So the term “marriage equality” makes more sense.)<\/p>\n

I do wonder, however, if David’s goals are really better served by disestablishment than they would be by legal SSM. David’s co-blogger Tom Sylvester wonders the same thing<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Looking through the list of 5 options below, I’m as certain as ever that redefining marriage to include same-sex couples is the best option. Leaving marriage to the churches would weaken marriage considerably, as the shared public understanding of marriage would be further diluted. Religion is an important public good that the state should pretty much stay out of. Partly because of this, religious beliefs are also seen mostly as private, personal matters of conscience. But is the social institution of marriage similar to religion in this way? I don’t think the state should care whether or not a child is raised to be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, agnostic, or whatever. But I do think the state has an interest in whether or not children are being raised by two parents.<\/p>\n

Because of the separation of church and state, discussing religion publicly is often seen as inappropriate. Would the same thing happen to marriage?<\/p>\n

And wouldn’t leaving marriage to the churches result in a “redefinition of marriage” anyway? Some churches would have same-sex marriage, some will even have polygamous marriages. So there would be one civil union, and many types of marriage. Why not just have one type of marriage? And for Americans who aren’t connected to a church, would they only get “civil unionized,” and not “married”?<\/p>\n

I’ll have to think about it more, but disestablishment still strikes me as “closing down the pools<\/a>.”<\/div>\n

Although David may or may not think of himself as on the side of “marriage equality,” I think his change of position puts him (tentatively) on our side; so, hooray! (I also have to say, it speaks very well of David that he has the intellectual flexibility to change his mind; I’m not aware of any other major voice in the debate who has done so, on either side of the debate.) There’s interesting back-and-forth between David and Tom at Family Scholars Blog; to read the whole thing, start with David’s initial post <\/a>and scroll upwards..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s an interesting discussion going on at the Family Scholars Blog. David Blankenhorn – one of the leading opponents of marriage equality – has in the past favored hetero-only marriage but with “civil unions” for same-sex couples. But now he’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-same-sex-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}