{"id":988,"date":"2004-07-21T08:59:55","date_gmt":"2004-07-21T16:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/07\/21\/are-anti-ssm-and-pro-ssm-folks-saying-the-same-thing\/"},"modified":"2004-07-21T08:59:55","modified_gmt":"2004-07-21T16:59:55","slug":"are-anti-ssm-and-pro-ssm-folks-saying-the-same-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=988","title":{"rendered":"Are Anti-SSM and Pro-SSM folks saying the same thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Family Scholars Blogger Tom Sylvester (who is pro-SSM) has posted a two-part series, “Whose Insight Is This?” (Part 1<\/a> and Part 2<\/a>). Here’s a sample:<\/p>\n

WHOSE INSIGHT IS THIS?:<\/p>\n

Same-sex-marriage advocates have argued that marriage is nothing more than a personal choice, that what gay people were denied is the “freedom to marry.” But marriage — or any legal or social contact — never concerns only one or two people. It concerns the entire fabric of the society in which they live.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maggie Gallagher? Stanley Kurtz? Some other opponent of “marriage equality”? Nope, it’s queer theorist Michael Bronksi<\/a>, questioning the campaign for same-sex marriage in the Boston Phoenix. So the next time someone asks, “Why would allowing two gay men to marry affect anything else?” quote Bronski.<\/div>\n

Anyone quoting Bronski to make that point would be misunderstanding Bronski rather badly. To quote Bronski, from two paragraphs before the bit quoted above:<\/p>\n

…the fight for marriage equality… bears little resemblance to a progressive fight for the betterment of all people.<\/div>\n

Galligher and Kurtz are arguing that same-sex marriage will change too much; straights will stop marrying, illegitimate children will overwhelm society, the words “father” and “mother” will be wiped from the dictionaries, etc.. Bronski, in contrast, is arguing that same-sex marriage won’t change society nearly enough. The out-of-context quote Tom uses is funny, but the truth is that Bronski’s view could not be more opposite Galligher’s and Kurtz’s, and Tom’s post (unintentionally, I’m sure) obscures that fact.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

More generally, Tom seems to be arguing that certain views – that same-sex marriage might make monogamy less a part of marriage, for example – aren’t necessarily homophobic, because if you look you can find gay people saying more-or-less the same thing.<\/p>\n

There are vital differences between the gay scholars Tom quotes and anti-SSM folks; most importantly, neither Bronski nor Jonathan Katz (the other gay scholar Tom quotes) advocate unequal laws for straights and gays (Bronski questions whether SSM should be the movement’s highest priority, but he doesn’t question whether or not equal treatment is worth seeking at all).<\/p>\n

So an idea like “the inclusion of lesbian and gay same-sex marriage may, in fact, sort of de-center the notion of monogamy and allow the prospect that marriage need not be an exclusive sexual relationship among people…” is not, in and of itself, bigoted or homophobic. However, using that idea as a pretext to advocate that lesbians and gays be second-class citizens is bigoted, in my view (regardless of whether or not the person making the argument personally has any animus against lesbians and gays).<\/p>\n

However, if I were criticizing the homophobia of the anti-SSM position, that’s not the main criticism I’d make. I’d focus instead on how most anti-SSM arguments seem to share an unstated assumption that the needs of same-sex couples and their children simply aren’t important, while the needs of heterosexual couples – however far-fetched or theoretical – are of overriding importance. Johnathan Rauch <\/a>put it well (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

Another objection cites not certain catastrophe but insidious decay. A conservative once said to me, “Changes in complicated institutions like marriage take years to work their way through society. They are often subtle. Social scientists will argue until the cows come home about the positive and negative effects of gay marriage. So states might adopt it before they fully understood the harm it did.”<\/p>\n

…Notice how the terms of the discussion have shifted. Now the anticipated problem is not sudden, catastrophic social harm but subtle, slow damage. Well, there might be subtle and slow social benefits, too. But more important, there would be one large and immediate benefit: the benefit for gay people of being able to get married. If we are going to exclude a segment of the population from arguably the most important of all civic institutions, we need to be certain that the group’s participation would cause severe disruptions. If we are going to put the burden on gay people to prove that same-sex marriage would never cause even any minor difficulty, then we are assuming that any cost to heterosexuals, however small, outweighs every benefit to homosexuals, however large. That gay people’s welfare counts should, of course, be obvious and inarguable; but to some it is not.<\/b><\/div>\n

Tom is well aware of this, of course – he made a similar criticism of Maggie Galligher<\/a> only last week.<\/p>\n

That said, I should clarify that it doesn’t matter to me if SSM opponents are homophobic or not. Even if every SSM opponent in the world is a saint with absolutely no animus in their heart, the policy they support is still a policy of legal inequality between gays and straights, and that would still be wrong.<\/p>\n

In the end, this issue isn’t about if SSM opponents are homophobic in their hearts, or if (as prominent SSM opponents often imply) SSM advocates have selfish hearts and don’t give a damn what happens to children. It’s not about what’s in people’s hearts; it’s about what’s in the law. The bottom line is, regardless of hearts, it’s unfair to use the law to discriminate against same-sex couples and their children..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Family Scholars Blogger Tom Sylvester (who is pro-SSM) has posted a two-part series, “Whose Insight Is This?” (Part 1 and Part 2). Here’s a sample: WHOSE INSIGHT IS THIS?: Same-sex-marriage advocates have argued that marriage is nothing more than a … 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-988","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\/988","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=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}