Unless I'm missing something, in the 31 states in which voters had a say on whether or not gay marriage was going to be the law of the land, they all rejected it. Every single state. Even California, the national bellwether state on liberalizing social trends. Even Maine, in the most liberal region of the country.
You can come up with all kinds of theories about why this is, blaming the voters for being bigots, accuse the churches of playing dirty, whatever. The plain fact is, every single time it's been put to a popular vote (as opposed to allowing a tiny number of elites to vote on it), gay marriage has been a loser.
Do I think it always will be? No, I do not, in part because homosexuality is far more accepted by young Americans, and in part because heterosexual America has already conceded the philosophical grounds on which traditional marriage was based (which is why younger Americans are more comfortable with gay marriage). Nor do I believe that the voters are always right. But unless you're prepared to call more than half the country bigots -- and I have no doubt that many, perhaps most, gay marriage supporters are, and let that self-serving explanation suffice -- maybe, just maybe, you ought to ask yourself if there's something else going on here. And that maybe, just maybe, serious attention should be paid, instead of paying attention long enough to insult people who disagree with you as evil people who deserved to be excoriated and harrassed.
I probably wouldn't use the word "bigot." I don't think, for instance, that half this country thinks hate crimes against gays is a good thing. But I have no problem believing that half the country--maybe more--is deeply prejudiced against gays. This generally fits into my view of all -isms. I think prejudice is part of who we are as humans, and thus as Americans. Following from that, I think prejudice is one of the many forces that influence how we vote. Hence the notion that half this country is deeply prejudiced against gays really doesn't shock me.
The obvious parallel is civil rights. It's quite clear to me that Jim Crow in the South could not have been struck down by a majority vote; interracial marriage was banned in Alabama until 2000, and even then, some 40 percent of Alabamans voted to keep it. It's quite clear to me that Jim Crow in the North, enforced through housing segregation, restrictive covenants, block-busting realtors, and the federal government red-lining could not have been defeated by a majority vote.
But more than that, the sense that prejudice is actually not a common and potent force among straight people today, and white people then, that the group intent on discriminating is "essentially good" is the most remarkable parallel. Rod believes that most of the people voting against gay marriage aren't prejudiced against gay people per se. That reminds me of National Review, in 1957 arguing that most of the people intent on preventing blacks from voting weren't actually anti-black:
The central question that emerges--and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal--is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically?Thus those who are known to be primarily motivated by ethnic prejudice were, in their time, seen by conservatives as guardians of civilization. Likewise heterosexuals now are presumed to be about something more than base prejudice.
National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.
Conservatives pride themselves on their skepticism, and generally dismiss liberals as soft-headed Utopians. But in so many ways, political conservatism is Utopianism for the powerful. It isn't broadly skeptical of human nature, so much as it's broadly skeptical of people its agents don't particularly like. Hence the sense that Americans are intrinsically "good people," that this country "is the best nation that ever existed in history," that the South is home to "the greatest people that have ever trod the earth," and that the murder of four little girls in Birmingham was the work of a "Communist" or "crazed Negro," which had "set back the cause of white people."
Hence the notion that those voting against gay marriage, are not actually, in the main, motivated by bigotry, but a belief in tradition and family. But very few people would actually ever describe themselves as bigots. We think we know so much about ourselves. This is a country--like many countries--which is deeply riven by ethnic bias, and gender discrimination. And yet we don't seem to know any of the agents of that discrimination.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Makes me think of that Kant quote that people like so much (for good reason): "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made."Or, alternatively, the most recent episode of 30 Rock, where Alec Baldwin has to learn the hard way that people in the heartland are just as awful as people in New York.
One of the things that I like most about writers is that it's their job, sort of, to go around reminding us that we're a lot more screwed up and irrational that we think we are. It's always disappointing to see someone like Dreher, who's not a bad writer, fall into the "people are basically good" line.
I will come back to your post in a second, for you are thoughtful and rational and sensible, but for now, my first reaction to Rod:
FUCK YOU. I am calling you a bigot, because you are one. Humanity is not determined by a popular vote. The rights of my friends should not be dictated by the whims of a faith, or a 'trend.' If that means calling more than half the country bigots, then so be it.
Now my rational and sensible side will comment: Thank you for this post. You have it, exactly. People won't call themselves bigots, or prejudiced; but that doesn't mean that's not exactly what they are.
That National Review quote is shameful.
Actually, it's kind of an odd quote for TNC to pick in this context. Re-read this part:
"If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority."
Isn't that essentially the pro-gay-marriage argument? Read the 1st sentence again with this edit:
"If the majority votes against giving marriage rights to gay people, then to thwart the will of the majority may be, tho undemocratic, enlightened."
I find it interesting that this is the passage TNC quoted in reference to the question of referenda on this issue. The National Review piece in full is abhorrent. Yet the section he highlighted contains what looks to me like an argument that gay marriage advocates embrace.
The justice of the peace in LA who refused to marry interracial couples doesn't think he's a bigot, either. Doesn't change the facts. If you act like a bigot, if you _vote_ like a bigot, guess what?
I'm in Maine. I knocked on doors, I phone-banked. The campaign was great--organized, smart, energetic. But sometimes the bigots win. Fear is powerful.
Thanks for what you did, Guster. And hey, it wasn't a blowout. Progress is slow.
Eh, I didn't do much, to be honest. But there were some incredibly impressive people in that campaign. I'm just heartbroken.
I think it was less than 10 years ago that gay marriage was wending its way through the MA high court, and I was mildly rolling my eyes--come on, never happen for at least 50 years, focus on civil unions where you have a slim shot. I was wrong--and I'm pretty liberal and was forced to conclude that I supported gay marriage once it was demonstrated it might be an actual option rather than a hypothetical exercise. (I embrace Tuchman's description of politics as the art of the possible.) The pace of change has been astounding.
You can tell historic sci fi because women put on gloves and hats before leaving in the flying car. We are very bad at guessing where social change is going to go a generation down the road. I really think in another decade the oldest opponents will have died off and gay marriage will be gaining everywhere.
Yeah, waiting another 10 years sucks and isn't fair. But look at how likely it appeared just 10 years ago.
Thanks, Guster.
Deborah: I was wrong--and I'm pretty liberal and was forced to conclude that I supported gay marriage once it was demonstrated it might be an actual option rather than a hypothetical exercise.
That's exactly what I was forced to conclude, too, and I'm queer.
Over the course of about the last 10 years I went from assuming that I wouldn't get married or would get married to a man and act straight to realizing that I had the option of marrying a woman as well. That's been a huge, strange adjustment for me: it was quite a head-trip for me to recently figure out that I wasn't always in support of my own rights until I understood that I could have them. Maybe somebody is suprised by the fact that I had to change my mind, politically, but it's not like I popped out liberal and came swaddled in a pride flag.
Well said, TNC, and thank you for GOTV'ing, Guster. But you're right - sometimes, the bigots win. What I fear now is that the Yes on 8/1 people will now take this to New Hampshire, to Vermont, to Connecticut and Iowa (and New Jersey if the legislature passes that SSM bill and Corzine signs it before he leaves office in January). If they do that, I have little doubt they will succeed every time, and it makes me ill.
I doubt they'll get anywhere in Vermont, not with that level of out-of-state money. We have no patience for that bullshit.
I thought that about Maine...
I didn't think that about Vermont until Fred.
Amen. But I would nuance that a little bit.
Change, even a little, generates that powerful fear in people.
Peoples lives move at such rapid paces that anything seen changing as just something else to be scared of.
And that change is what they vote against.
"And that change is what they vote against."
Fair enough, but in the case of gay marriage people are voting against a change that does not directly effect them. That makes zero sense. But no one said the electorate was mostly rational.
AMT, I'd look to all the "if this passes, they will teach our first graders in public schools to be gay" ads. The opponents of gay marriage are committed to portraying this as evil sex predatorish types taking over the schools, which does affect people. If they just talked about feeling kind of uncomfortable about gays marrying, but okay with Larry marrying 4 times as long as they were all women, this would be a different argument.
The funny thing about statements like this is that many of the people making them actually do think that most rights can be curtailed by popular vote.
For example, I currently have the right not to buy certain financial services (health insurance not meeting certain requirements). This will very likely be curtailed by popular vote. My right to negotiate for labor with whoever I choose is already curtailed by popular vote. So is my right to self-medicate, my right to enter into polygamous marriage, my right to purchase sex and my right to gamble.
Why are some rights dictated by a trend and the popular vote, but not others? All the activities I've mentioned are private acts and
contracts which harm no one besides the voluntarily involved parties.
I guess my question is this: what makes certain private contracts/actions the province of government and popular vote, but not others?
Before anyone accuses me of being a bigot, I'll clarify my views: I don't believe that marriage is a legitimate function of government, and I want to end state recognition of marriage (gay and straight).
(Note: Persia, I don't really know your views on the other private acts I mentioned, I'm simply using your post as a jumping off point to ask my question.)
Not all those acts are private, though-- we've decided as a society that there are other social costs (like those involved with health insurance) that reach beyond that.
Homosexual marriage is not "private" either, there would be social costs that reach beyond the private parties involved.
@amichel
What exactly are the social costs of gay marriage? Please explain.
@Maya
There would be a whole host of social costs to homosexual marriage, but I'll just use one as an example. Homosexual marriage would force religious organizations that provide services to the public, such as churchs that rent out reception halls, to treat homosexual marriages in the same way they treat heterosexual marriages or face legal action.
Yeah, I guess more foster kids might get adopted or something into loving homes. We just can't afford that.
Just stop lying. And check the bill that passed in NH
@amichel,
Conservative talking point much? My sense is that that's actually the only example you have that doesn't smack of absolute bigotry. First, the notion that churches would suddenly have to start celebrating gay marriages is not true. As Dan W. said, check the bill. Then check out the 1st Amendment. If the ERA had been passed, churches would not have to ordain female ministers. There is equal protection legislation regarding discrimination in hiring, and that certainly hasn't compelled the Catholic church to hire women clergy (who are PAID EMPLOYEES). Check your facts and get back to us.
@amichel
The costs you talk about re: churchs renting out halls, etc. don't exist. Churches and similar organizations would be protected by the 1st Amendment and such protection would prevent them from being subject to legal action for refusing to treat gay marriages like straight marriages. The names of the cases that support this escape me, but one involved the Boy Scouts of America.
@Maya
I'm not talking about having to recognize homosexual marriages by performing ceremonies or recognizing them in a religious sense. I am also not talking about hiring exemptions. I'm talking about churches that provide services to the public, such as adoption services, rental of church property for private events, etc. They would not be protected if they did not want to rent to an homosexual married couple, or to place a child with same homosexual married couple.
@ AMT
They would NOT be protected under the first amendment. And not only churches, put private citizens. For example, a professional photographer who refused to take pictures of a gay couple’s commitment ceremony because of her religious beliefs was ruled to have violated New Mexico discrimination law.
@amichel
I don't have time to debate this further, so I'll take your word re: New Mexico. A private citizen is not a church and the protections are different. And you are wrong about the churches/1st Amendment point. Either accept it or provide some back up that a church would not be protected under the 1st Amendment to practice its religion as it sees fit.
@amichel
I will take your word that a photographer was already prosecuted in New Mexico for refusing to take a picture of a gay couple at their commitment ceremony. If that is the case, it seems that she must have been prosecuted under anti-discrimination statutes, not via the legalization of gay marriage (I'm assuming that if the couple was having a commitment ceremony, that's because they don't have the right to, you know, actually marry). In other words, the photographer was prosecuted UNDER ALREADY EXISTING LAW. So essentially you're not only arguing against extending marriage rights to gays, but you're also arguing for rolling back existing anti-discrimination legislation that incorporates LGBTs.
With regards to the 14th amendment issue, if this photographer has already been prosecuted in New Mexico, then ostensibly churches could also be prosecuted under anti-discrimination statutes, not gay marriage laws. In other words, if churches haven't been prosecuted already for refusing services to gays and lesbians under existing anti-discrimination statutes, why would they suddenly be prosecuted now via gay marriage statutes?
@amichel: sorry, the 14th amendment issue is irrelevant here. I'm arguing with you on two fronts without my morning coffee.
Those aren't social costs. Those are social rewards.
Unless you think that it's also a social cost that a justice of the peace can't refuse to marry an interracial couple.
So how is this a problem for gay people exclusively? If what you're saying is true, and a church is renting out things to the public, wouldn't it already be forced to rent it out to Satanists or Atheists or Communists or (name your group of people opposed to that church's teachings) who wanted to have an event there? So it's okay with all of those people, but not with homosexuals? For real? If a conservative church is renting out its property at all, it's already risking the possibility of "unfriendly" groups doing business with it. I have no problem forcing them to add another one onto that list. After all, if a homosexual group rents out property, it runs the risk of the reverse happening to them.
Apparently we've decided as a society that there are other social costs of gay marriage. We've had what, 10 or so votes on it, all of which come out the same?
Once we give society permission to decide "private action X has social costs", I'm not sure how you can turn around and say "society, you don't have the right to say private action Y has social costs."
My question is this: what is the principle for determining when society can make such decisions?
"Homosexual marriage would force religious organizations that provide services to the public, such as churchs that rent out reception halls, to treat homosexual marriages in the same way they treat heterosexual marriages or face legal action."
The case you are probably thinking of as a basis for this bit of paranoia comes out of New Jersey.
New Jersey didn't have legal same-sex marriage. I think they only just passed a civil union bill.
A Roman Catholic Church had a piece of beachfront property that they rented out for wedding receptions. They rented it out without any stipulations to the particulars of the bride and groom. They didn't have to be Roman Catholic or even Christian. You could be a thrice-divorced Hindu, marrying an atheist who is getting hitched only because they lost a bet and there would be no problem. It was only when a homosexual couple wanted to celebrate their civil union that objections were raised.
Yes, the church lost the case, at least on the state level. A simple way to avoid this would have been to only make their facilities open to members of their own church or particular denomination. Yes, it might mean that the church in question would have to lose out on some revenue from non-icky straight people.
But.....does a church making money outweigh people's civil rights? Because when you argue against marriage equality on such grounds, that is in essence what you end up doing.
Nuada,
If this is the same case I read about the problem for the church was even more stark. The land in question received a tax break from the state under a provision designed to increase the land available for public accomodations. So the church maintained ownership of the property but allowed the community free usage.
When the church decided that it did not want its property used by a gay couple, the state said, pretty obviously, that the land was no longer being used as a public accomodation and so did not qualify for the tax break associated with private property being used as a public accomodation.
You are right it does not show anything about the passage of gay marriage. In fact it does not say anything beyond that if one gets a benefit based on qualifying for a particular program, one loses that benefit when one no longer qualifies.
The simplest answer is that no one has the right to do the things you mentioned, but some people are allowed to marry. It's not as if just Asian people are allowed to pay for sex or just Black people are allowed to gamble. I guess it depends on whether you consider gay marriage to simply be marriage or the creation of a new right like polygamy/polyandry.
@janinedm
I think you've hit on the crux of the issue here, is homosexual marriage the same as marriage, or is it the creation of a new right?
@amichel
What strikes me is how uninformed you are on gay people. I'm going to go out on a leap here and say that you don't have any gay friends. The only difference I have noticed between my relationship and straight relationships around is that I'm guessing the sex is more...reciprocal. Maybe "pegging" has changed that, but I doubt it. Oh, and we can't have kids. Maybe that's it, too. But I'm guessing most people aren't as concerned about the reproductive side of marriage as they are about the thought of "reciprocal" sex acts. Otherwise, my boyfriend's grandpa wouldn't be getting married next year.
@Ryno
What have I said at all about homosexual people? I admit, I don't have any close friends who are homosexual, I'm not gonna go with the old "some of my best friends are black/gay/etc!" route. I do have several co-workers who are however, and I don't have any animosity towards them. What strikes me is how you automatically assume I am ignorant, uninformed, and have no experiance with homosexuals; just because I disagree that marriage should be redefined to encompass same-sex marriage.
@amichel
the reason i jumped to that conclusion is your statement that the crux of the issue is whether homosexual marriage is the same as heterosexual marriage. if you knew and loved someone who was gay and in a committed relationship, this would probably not be a question. i can say with some certainty that few of my close relatives (many devout catholics) would have approved of gay marriage before i came out.
also, i doubt they would have approved of gay marriage if i weren't in a committed relationship. i think bearing witness to this concrete reality, rather than thinking of it in the abstract, is what makes the difference.
i think the same is true of racism as well. familiarity has made the cause of civil rights for blacks self-evident in a way that it was not fifty years ago.
amichael, to some extent, it's irrelevant whether the "real you" is ignorant and bigoted or not. What matters is that the political you, in its consequences, is bigoted. The fact that you think what other people think of your precious little self is more important than the civil rights of gays and lesbians is pathetic.
@Lemmy Caution
If you think that supporting the traditional definition of marriage is bigotry, then I am a bigot. And I'm ok with that.
@ amichel, in what way would homosexual marriage be different than marriage... how would it be the creation of a new right? You would have two consenting adults in exactly the same kind of legal arrangement as currently exists?
Sorry, misplaced question mark there.
@amichel, defending "traditional definitions" has always been very core to bigotry. Traditional definitions of citizenship, of privilege, of people's "proper" place. So, we agree. You are a bigot.
You know... government does not say what marriage is, really. Government can't really do anything about a philosophical definition like that. It's *society* that says what that means. Government in this case is merely taking up the question of whether it should provide homosexual couples with the same rights, protections, and responsibilities it provides to heterosexual couples who get married. From that perspective, I don't see how it's even a question: how can the government keep from doing its duty, providing equal protection under the law, to some of its citizens on the basis of their sexual orientation? They're gay human beings, citizens who pay taxes, and they're asking the government to ratify a contract between a pair of them, something which has far more social benefits (such as encouraging gays to enter into stable relationships with legal protections) than social costs (the alleged lack of freedom for those opposed to these gay unions or the very existence of homosexuality to express or act upon this opposition freely under the law).
@Janinedm, first off, gays are permitted to marry people of the opposite sex just like straights. They may not want to do this, but so what? Many activities are preferred by some groups over others.
That's like saying laws against gambling are sexist because more men than women want to gamble.
I'm also not sure how one can consistently support gay marriage but not polygamy. What's the principle behind this?
(Note: I've got no beef with polygamy or gay marriage. I just really don't understand the liberal case for gay marriage. Is "gay marriage is good" simply a first principle, or is there some reasoning behind it?)
@sv
How can the government keep from doing its duty, providing equal protection under the law, to some of its citizens on the basis of their relationship status?
The government is already picking and choosing people to reward. Married people get rights under the law that single people don't get. I can see a very solid argument for ending special privileges given to married people.
What is the argument for slightly increasing the category of people those special privileges are given to?
This reminds of me a Despair poster: "I want either less corruption, or more opportunity to participate in it."
NinjaZombie,
The step from gay marriage to polygamy is not nearly as straightforward as you suggest. If one is defending same-sex marriage on anti-discrimination grounds (and that seems to be the primary defense here) then the link really goes nowhere. There are privileges of marriage which do not naturally extend to relationships of more than two people, for example the right to make decisions for ones spouse in medical cases in which the spouse can't make the decision. How does that extend to the three person marriage case? How would divorces be extended? Would the marriage to the third person require the consent of both of the first two people or just one of the first two people and the third. The point is not that polygamous relationships could not be defined, they could be defined in a variety of ways, but none of them would be a natural extension of two person marriage.
By contrast the change needed to make same-sex marriage work is that on the legal forms "husband" and "wife" needs to be changed to "spouse" and "spouse."
What complicates the issue is that many supporters of same-sex marraige do so on more libertarian grounds. And on those grounds there is a natural extension of the argument for same-sex marriage to polygamous marriage. Although given that there are benefits and priviliges that society grants with marriage, the straightforward libertarian argument runs into some problems as far as whether these benefits and priviliges can be extended fairly to multiple marriage. (But then the true libertarian position should be that marriage should not have the benefits and privileges and should simply be a contract taking whatever form the participants want it to take.
But the anti-discrimination basis for supporting same-sex marriage does not support polygamy. There is no link there to be broken. The libertarian basis does, and advocates of it generally shouldn't want to break the link.
@lon, if you simply want to argue on antidiscrimination grounds, then you still need to justify the continued discrimination against single people. The antidiscrimination argument feels to me like "hey, we Asians want to be included in White, it isn't fair to call us Colored, we are just as pasty as you."
As for the logistical issues with state recognition of polygamy, those strike me as a really weak reason to continue discriminating against the polygamous. It seems that any reasonable extension would be an improvement on the current situation.
Incidentally, there is a logistical problem with gay marriage. The stable straight marriage problem has a solution, but the stable gay marriage problem does not. :)
(I'd link to the wikipedia pages, but then the blog will conclude I'm a spammer. Look up stable marriage and stable roommate problems.)
I don't know if you seriously don't see the differences you are denying or not.
One of the benefits of marriage is having a unique individual of your choice who represents you in making medical decisions when you are incapable of making the decision for yourself. That of course could be agreed to by contract outside of marriage but it is an example of one of the general benefits that society generally includes in marriage. This is not a benefit that can coherently be had by an individual with him or herself or in a three person relationship. One is not discriminating against single people by disallowing them from making decisions for themself when they are incapable of doing so.
I pick this just as a clear example of a binary aspect of marriage. Marriage also gives some protections at the point of separation. There are aspects of exclusivity to marriage which again are incoherent in the case of an individual, and must be something completely different in the case of three party relationships. (It is not clear if a three person marriage is meant to be thought of as three people having relationships equally with each other, or the more historical version of one person being married to two others who are not really married to each other).
In none of these ways does it even make sense to say that single people and polygamous people are being discriminated against. Our marriage relationships simply cannot be extended, although they could be altered to different relationships which are similar in many ways.
It is not insignificant that to come up with something parallel for gay marriage one needs to use a joke.
I am not offended by the idea of polygamy or polyandry. I am open to good arguments for these things. But they simply do not follow from any serious non-discrimination argument.
And serious non-discrimination arguments do not say people can't be treated differently, but rather that people can't be treated differently (under the law) without some defensible reason. If you can come up with a serious difference that applies to the people we let marry (all of them that is) and same sex couples then you have a point. But the fact that our marriage institution would have to be altered in fundamental ways to accomodate polygamy is not an insignificant difference.
It might be a difference that could be overcome by some other argument, but it cannot be overcome by appeal to discrimination.
None of these are benefits of marriage, nor is inheritance. These can both be had by single people or gays simply by writing an appropriate contract. I'm unmarried, but I have a designated medical proxy.
Perhaps the discrimination is that straight couples can get them for $30 at city hall, whereas gays have to buy a Blumberg form? In that case, to end discrimination, all we need is a standardized contract bundled with notary service available at city hall for $30.
The benefits of marriage I'm referring to are those you can't create via a contract. For example, straight single-earners (and gay single-earner couples) get 33% less social security money than straight married single-earner couples. There is also a large financial value to medicare spousal benefits, which single people and gays lose.
"None of these are benefits of marriage, nor is inheritance. These can both be had by single people or gays simply by writing an appropriate contract. I'm unmarried, but I have a designated medical proxy."
Take just the rights automatically conferred upon legally married couples, regardless of what they are exactly. Perhaps gays can establish certain kinds of contracts in an approximate attempt to obtain similar rights. Perhaps unmarried straights can do the same. Are not all legal contacts often subject to review by some sort of arbiter, like a magistrate or a judge?
Gay couples can sign all the contracts they want. If one of them dies, the estranged family of the deceased can challenge said contracts in pursuit of momentary gain. Or they can do so just out of loathing for homosexuals, which is why they might have been estranged from their gay relatives in the first place.
If the judge is unsympathetic to the living gay partner's case, perhaps also out of loathing for homosexuals, can't they overrule the contracts? I've heard of such occurrences, on more than a few occasions. It may not always happen but why should a grieving gay partner ever be forced to rely on the benevolence of a government bureaucrat? It does not sound very humane to me but it also doesn't sound very conservative.
Neither myself nor my wife would ever have to go through any of that crap. We are each other's spouse. Nothing else need be said; not to any doctor, to any lawyer, to anyone.
Nuada, a judges could just as easily ignore/rule against a marriage contract. I know of a case where a judge ignored the law because they find one heterosexual partner in a marriage unsympathetic (the case involved giving alimony to a man rather than the woman). Judges also overrule prenuptual agreements fairly often.
Are we now going to suppose that gay marriage will prevent judges from ignoring either the law or contracts when straight marriage doesn't?
"I know of a case where a judge ignored the law because they find one heterosexual partner in a marriage unsympathetic (the case involved giving alimony to a man rather than the woman)."
Oy!
Alimony is not legally guaranteed upon the state recognizing your marriage, then you ending said marriage.
"Judges also overrule prenuptual agreements fairly often."
Once more with feeling, prenuptial agreements are private contacts that do not automatically come about upon the state recognizing your marriage.
"Are we now going to suppose that gay marriage will prevent judges from ignoring either the law or contracts when straight marriage doesn't?"
Why don't you first try to give us all examples, with citations, of judges ignoring the law (not contracts) and depriving the surviving spouse of a straight couple the rights guaranteed to them by law. Such relevant cases would include the barring of a spouse from a hospital room in favor of estranged in-laws, as well as relevant probate/inheritance and custody cases. (And for that last one, let's not even entertain odd cases with proven histories of child abuse, suspicious wills or any other mitigating factor that would make an argument completely disingenuous.)
To further illustrate my point, let me call to mind the well-known examples of Schiavo, Terri and Gonzalez, Elian.
Ninja Zombie,
I guess I have a better idea where you are coming from, but I think you are confusing two issues. One is, can the state favor an institution like marriage? Another is, can the state having chosen to favor an institution like marriage allow this group of people to get the benefit while excluding that group?
In each case the answer is that they can if they can come up with a relevant reason to justify the differential treatment (or discrimination). But beyond that these are different questions. There do seem to be reasons why the state would want to favor marriage. There are social ills that seem to be associated with low levels of marriage, at least in our society. This can depend on numbers of other factors, but there seems to be significant research supporting the idea of government recognition of marriage (although this could be called civil unions without harm).
But having decided to recognize marriage, which we have in every municipality in the country, it is a different question as to whether it is discriminatory to exclude same-sex marriages from the institution. And here it is possible, in the sense that there is no contradiction in the idea, that there are actual social ills which accrue from same sex marriage. But it is obviously bigotry to discriminate on these grounds without solid evidence. And there is nothing like that.
The institition of marriage, as we now understand it, is a relationship between two equal partners (at least from a legal perspective the government cannot make that true in practice) and at that level the exclusion of same-sex couples is arbitrary. There is nothing about our current notion of marriage which is different. (This was different historically when marriage was more of a transfer of wives from fathers to husbands, but fortunately we have put that notion behind us).
The same is simply not true of polygamy. There is no natural way to fit polygamy into the current notion of marriage. To make modern marriage encompass polygamy would require changing more than just the number of people involved, it would require changing how people get into the institution and how they get out, and many of the privileges that currently go with marriage. That is simply a very different situation than with same-sex marriage.
Nuada, the specific case I'm referring to happened to someone I know personally (that's why I'm not citing it). Essentially, the judge ignored precedents in which a similarly situated woman was granted alimony and ignored the "marital standard of living" provision in alimony law.
(Don't get me wrong, I don't think he deserved a penny. But neither did the woman in the nearly identical case his lawyer cited. )
In any case, let me see if I can summarize your argument: our judicial system is highly flawed, and judges apparently don't do what they are supposed to do. Gay marriage will constrain judges more than contracts, so we should have gay marriage. Is that right?
While I suppose that's a fix to one symptom of the problem, I'd much rather just fix the judicial system if it is as horribly broken as you claim.
Incidentally, when a judge ignores a valid contract (as you claim they do), they ignore the law.
@amichel
Just what is traditional marriage? One man, several wives, an the use of servants (read slaves) if he cannot get sons from his wives?
Perhaps an arranged union for political or social reasons, where the couple has little or no choice?
Maybe an old wealthy man and a very young girl? Or vice versa?
Or perhaps two people who meet in a bar, have sex, get pregnant, marry, fight, abuse each other and the kids?
Or two people who love and respect each other, do their best to raise kids who will be successful in this world; perhaps even make it a better place?
Our concept of one woman, one man, nuclear family in one house, is a pretty new concept in the history of marriage, and all of the other examples have been, and many are even now, normal in parts of the world, and in the US.
I do not think that we have the right to say that this privilege belongs to this group and not to that. And if plural marriages (with ALL parties willing) want to have a go, ok. But understand that, if a marriage between two people is hard work, sometimes; between 3 or more, it is REALLY hard. Not too many poly marriages last, so I really do not think it is that much of a problem. (The problem that arises is when someone else decrees who will get spouses and who will not. AND with the idea that women are property. And if people are free to choose, I'll bet there is not a large problem, as people decide one is enough! But that is a discussion for another day)
Lon, you seem to implicitly grant the government the power to discriminate against some in favor of others given a "relevant reason" (the legal term is "rational basis", I think).
Fine - but once you give them that power, why can't they use it against gays? It's fairly easy to come up with a rational basis for straight-only marriage - simply justify marriage itself as being intended for creating a stable home for children.
ninja,
long thread, so i'll cut/paste what you wrote:
"And what about the voluntarily single, for that matter? By denying single people the benefits of marriage, is that a "denial of who and what you are" and do we "insist[-] the person forfeit their humanity...in order to enjoy the fruits of citizenship"?
I get the impression you have a gut feeling that "marriage is special", and are simply looking for justifications. But maybe "gay marriage is good" is simply a first principle for you? We all have first principles (e.g., "harming people against their will is bad"), and it's best to recognize and explicitly state them.
[1] Personhood simply implies that they are an entity which can have rights at all. A big part of the abortion debate is over whether the unborn have personhood, for example."
Despite being married, I personally don't believe married people should have a higher social status than single ones, but the fact is that they do (how many single, never married people do you know who hold high elected public office?). But as the law is now, if a straight person wants marry, they can do so in the eyes of the law. A gay person cannot. Now your argument against that is, yes they can, they can marry a straight person, but in any meaningful sense, they cannot. For someone who is gay to marry a straight person and pretend that's who they want to spend the rest of their life with, they have to deny who they are, making a mockery of marriage and, indeed, their very own lives.
Black Yank, you are not answering my question.
"For someone who is gay to marry a straight person and pretend that's who they want to spend the rest of their life with, they have to deny who they are, making a mockery of marriage and, indeed, their very own lives."
For someone who is voluntarily single to marry and pretend they want to spend the rest of their life with another person, they have to deny who they are, making a mockery of marriage and, indeed, their very own lives.
I'm not arguing that a ban on gay marriage is good policy or legitimate. I'm simply asking for a consistent justification of why discrimination against the single is acceptable, but discrimination against gays is not.
It's the same question I'd ask of a person claiming (in the Jim Crow era) that "Asians should be promoted to White, it isn't fair to treat Asians as badly as other colored folk. See, they are the same color as whitey."
And (separately), I'm also asking why marital preferences are considered special in a way that others are not. I understand that marital preferences are strongly held, perhaps more so than homeownership preferences. But what is the difference in kind (rather than degree)?
Ninja Zombie,
It is not so easy to give a rational basis if one grounds ones arguments in good faith. That is the problem that the opponents of same sex marriage had in the California courts.
Given that many opposite sex marraiges do not include children, and many same-sex marraiges do, saying that the point of marriage is to protect children doesn't really help.
As I said, if you can show that children in same-sex marriages are harmed because of it, then one would have a reasonable case. But there is no evidence supporting such a claim. And fortunately most courts don't recognize pulling such claims out of ones ass. (Ok the California courts didn't, maybe some others would).
You are right that it is very easy to come up with such justifications if one is acting in bad faith. But I am still waiting for an actual good faith justification of such discrimination.
You are right that if by non-discrimination one means that government cannot ever make distinctions, then this would lead from same-sex marriage to polygamy (and I suppose even to marrying ones pets). But nobody is actually arguing for such a thing.
And the fact that there are real differences between polygamy and two party marriage and are only phony ones between same-sex marriage and opposite sex marriage does make a difference.
Lon, a rational basis is not the same as an airtight proof. It's simply a plausible argument that the policy makes sense, and this is the basis the courts use.
For example, "it is illegal for the wind to blow across your property" has no rational basis.
Do you really want to demand proof that a policy is beneficial before the government is permitted to implement it? That's close to Burkean conservativism but very far from liberalism.
Given such a requirement, it seems as if you should be arguing against every government program not supported by strong evidence: minimum wage, cash for clunkers, Obamacare, etc.
In the contemporary US, we believe that deciding such questions is explicitly the province of the legislative process. If congress/ballot initiatives/etc say minimum wage is good and gay marriage is bad (based on murky/incomplete evidence, intuition of legislators, etc), so be it.
Ninja Zombie,
I do want laws that discriminate against a particluar group of people to have a rational basis with some support. So, for the most part, do the courts which is why same-sex marriage tends to do better in the courts than in referenda. I am not sure why you find this surprising or why you think it would lead to Burkean conservatism. In many cases discrimination has been the default and demanding a justification for discrimination is the change.
So far as argument you tend to argue that applying a principle in this case will lead to bad consequences if applied in general. But I have not seen one example of this from you that is plausible. If this was a real danger than it should be easy to come up with cases. But bad faith arguments like failing to note that gay couples raise kids does not establish that there is some problem in applying the principle.
Can you come up with a single example of an actual case in which a law discriminates against a particular group using a rational basis as flimsy as that used to oppose same-sex marriage? Maybe you have a point, but absent an even marginally compelling example I don't see any reason to think so.
Lon, any law which subsidizes one activity over another discriminates against those who prefer the unsubsidized activity. I'll take a current example:
Obamacare (if it passes) will discriminate against those who prefer minimal/no health insurance in favor of those who prefer mid-level health insurance. (There is even considerable evidence that risk preferences, like sexual preference, are more or less determined biologically.)
Should we apply to Obamacare the same level of scrutiny you seem to wish to apply to gay marriage? I.e., require the government to prove it's a good thing otherwise the law is invalid?
Incidentally, I'm not defending my stated rational basis as a justification for discrimination against gays. I'm simply saying it is a rational basis. The rational basis test simply asks whether a policy is rationally related to a legitimate government objective, not about the certainty of the relation.
For example, if I sue the government arguing that there is no rational basis for a CO2 tax, the court will say "the legislature believes CO2 causes global warming, so the CO2 tax promotes the general welfare." The court will not actually try to verify whether CO2 really does cause global warming.
Ninja zombie you really think that not getting ones preference is similar to not being allowed to marry the person of ones choice? I don't know how to answer that because it seems so silly I can't get into the head of someone who believes that.
Thrill seekers are being discriminated against because one of the thrills they might seek to obtain is made illegal for public policy reasons. And you think this is parallel to same sex couples being excluded from the institution of marriage.
You really believe this? You are not just saying it for the sake of argument? You think there is an actual similarity there?
Again, I suppose I could imagine a world in which there was some similarities here. I can't imagine believing the actual world to be such a world.
ninja zombie,
I have answered your question twice now. what is it that I'm not saying that you want me to say?
"Why are some rights dictated by a trend and the popular vote, but not others?"
"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." --
Robert H. Jackson, writing for the Supreme Court in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.
"Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man"..." -- Earl Warren, writing in Loving v. Virginia.
If you truly believe your right to snort coke and buy bad insurance is fundamental, on the same level as the right to marry- well, I feel sorry for you. But that's not what we're talking about here.
There is a difference between marrying and having the state recognize that marriage. While I agree that marrying a person is a private act that is not the business of the state (like snorting coke or paying less than minimum wage to a consenting employee), I'm really not seeing your distinction.
Are you simply taking it as an axiom that state recognition of gay marriage is a fundamental right?
By the way, the bill of rights doesn't enumerate any right to marriage (gay or straight). What puts state recognition of gay marriage into the list of unenumerated rights, but not snorting coke?
@ninja zombie,
the "liberal case for gay marriage" is simple. In denying gay citizens, or any other individuals, the right to marry the one other person of the age of majority whom they choose, we guarantee institutionally that they are and will remain second-class citizens, for numerous reasons. Some of the legal reasons have already come up but I would argue that the even more important reasons are not legal, for example, the fact that eliminating the possibility of marriage to a partner of their choosing ensures that they will never feel that any relationship they enter is on equal footing with the majority of others around the country. Society does not recognize them as individuals worthy of entering into one of its favored institutions.
In short, bans on gay marriage say, pretty explicitly, "you're gay, we're not, our lives and relationships mean more than yours".
How such policy can stand up to the scrutiny of "equal protection under the law" is beyond me.
Black Yank, this would argue against all sorts of policies.
For instance, by denying renters the same tax advantages as home-buyers, don't we guarantee institutionally that they are and will remain second class citizens? That the living conditions they choose ensure they will never be on equal footing with the majority of homeowning americans?
How such policy can stand up to the scrutiny of "equal protection under the law" is beyond me.
(A renter could, of course, choose to buy a home, just as a gay person could choose to marry a person of the opposite sex. But that goes against their preference.)
Your argument seems to imply that having the government favor any preference (owning a home, marrying same-sex partners) over any other preference (renting, marrying opposite-sex partners) violates equal protection. What am I missing here?
@ninja zombie
what you are missing, is that forcing someone to buy a house to enjoy homeowner's rights and forcing someone to marry someone they do not want to marry in order to partake of marriage rights are two completely different things. The first requires a mere choice in living arrangements, the second involves a denial of who and what you are, and as such amounts to insisting the person forfeit their humanity -- or completely suppress it -- in order to enjoy the fruits of citizenship that the majority of us take for granted.
as someone noted earlier, the legal system in the US is supposed to be specifically designed to keep the majority from doing exactly this sort of thing to any minority group. I think the fact that we have majorities in over 30 states now voting to shoot down gay marriage illustrates just how important it is for us to be vigilant in upholding that principle.
Black yank, I think you are completely wrong about marriage and home ownership being two completely different things.
Renters could buy, they just prefer renting. Similarly, gay men could marry women, they just strongly prefer marrying other gay men. That's a different in degree, not in kind.
Does the government no longer have the right to subsidize behavior X when personal preferences for behavior Y are really strongly held? That would be a strong liberal argument against heroin illegalization, since heroin addicts have a very strong preference regarding heroin use (much stronger than sexual preferences, from what I've heard).
@ninjazombie
my explanation for the differences between decided what kind of home to live in and marriage rights.(cut and pasted from my previous reply, btw)
The first requires a mere choice in living arrangements, the second involves a denial of who and what you are, and as such amounts to insisting the person forfeit their humanity -- or completely suppress it -- in order to enjoy the fruits of citizenship that the majority of us take for granted.
There is no less than personhood at stake here. That is why, IMO, our gov't is hypocritical if it does not intercede at the federal level, in favor of gay marriage, and in gay rights in general. Another way to approach this, as others have said, is to strip the state of the power to recognize anyone's marriage, making all partnerships "civil unions" in the state's eyes, and leaving the term marriage to churches and other social institutions. I'm not sure that does enough though. I think part of the solution has to be an explicit statement that a gay union and a straight one are on an equal footing. Otherwise, the second-class status persists.
Black yank, I don't know what you mean by "personhood" - you obviously don't mean it in the usual sense [1].
You seem to be implying that subsidizing certain preferences (for gay marriage) are a "denial of who and what you are" (a person who prefers renting/gay marriage) whereas subsidizing other preferences is not. If we subsidize homeownership, we don't strip renters of their humanity. But if we subsidize straight marriage, we do strip gays of their humanity.
And what about the voluntarily single, for that matter? By denying single people the benefits of marriage, is that a "denial of who and what you are" and do we "insist[-] the person forfeit their humanity...in order to enjoy the fruits of citizenship"?
I get the impression you have a gut feeling that "marriage is special", and are simply looking for justifications. But maybe "gay marriage is good" is simply a first principle for you? We all have first principles (e.g., "harming people against their will is bad"), and it's best to recognize and explicitly state them.
[1] Personhood simply implies that they are an entity which can have rights at all. A big part of the abortion debate is over whether the unborn have personhood, for example.
Ninja Zombie--
I actually agree that marriage has nothing to do with the government. The government should issue Civil Unions and they should allow anyone who is of age and does so voluntarily to enter into said Civil Union. The parties should have full rights of hospital visitation, the ability to determine their partner's health care should it be necessary, the ability to have or adopt children (though perhaps one should have to prove some responsibility in that case. Trouble is, any 2 heterosexual idiots can MAKE a baby, but not all of them have the ability to actually RAISE a human being. I know many same-sex couples who would (and often do) make wonderful parents.
THEN, if people want to get married they should also have the right to do so in a church of their choosing (and that definition is pretty loose as well. Why should a practitioner of a Native American religion have to marry in a Christian church? ) And the decision of who may marry in any given church is up to the church.
Persia, I was trying to craft something clever to say about/to Dreher, but you've said it all.
FWIW, I am fully "prepared to call more than half of the country bigots." Why does Dreher find that so unimaginable? The only thing he's right about here is that "serious attention should be paid" (as if we haven't been doing that!) to their bigotry. We should pay attention to this question: how can we get that huge, bigoted chunk of our society, which includes Rod Dreher, to change their minds? or, at least, how can we end up outnumbering them?
You just end up outnumbering them. Clearly we don't live in a society anymore where judges mean anything (or the law in general). I'm fully prepared to call them bigots too. Not only that, I'm compared to call them stupid...the tactic that always works for these scum is "they are going to teach it to kids." How dumb do you have to be to think anyone would teach gay sex, hell, sex at all, to a child?
But this is what we're dealing with. I'm tired of being called obnoxious for my views. I'm tired of being called an elitist. These people are the ones creating second class citizens for fucks' sake.
One of my gay friends posted to his blog the other day that he just felt so discouraged-- that he doesn't regret for a second being gay but that being hated just for who he is is really hard to deal with sometimes. And I just...God. This guy's an artist-- does commercial graphic design-- with a partner and two dogs. He pays his taxes. He helps out his family and his community. He is a person. And he's so much a better person than Rod Dreher I hate even putting them in the same sentence together.
I edited that incorrectly, while I was writing something else. it should be prepared.
Dan W, that's just it. In their minds, they're not creating second-class citizens. The citizens they target are second-class to begin with, so their treatment of them is justified, to their way of thinking. It's just that sick.
This really is about personhood and refusal to acknowledge "the other" as human. Put whatever label on it you want, it's still wrong.
What he/she said.
"I call Bullshit"
That said, we live in a real world, where these things happen by votes.
Keep the faith.
What's Plan B? Violence?
It
Will
Happen.
I don't have any clichés, top of head - but, most of us know the difference between Shit and Shinola.
and, so, I remain optimistic - and I'm Old.
Well said. So depressing. But things do change.
Domestic partnerships survived in Washington State, so that's a huge relief. I have to remind myself it's not all bad.
That and the citizens of Kalamazoo, Chapel Hill AND Houston came through with some LGBT-friendly votes, too:
*Kalamazoo, MI - voters approved hate crime legislation to protect LGBT's
*Chapel Hill, NC - the newly-elected mayor is an out gay man. North Carolina! Sure, a more liberal part of the state, but still - North Carolina!
*Houston, TX - last night's mayoral race is headed to a runoff. One of the two runoff candidates is an out gay woman. In Texas! If she does win, she will be the first lesbian mayor of a major US city.
And of course, there is the DP law in Washington. None of this will make me feel better about Maine, but they will make me feel better about the state of gay rights.
I live just over the Kalamzoo City line, the ordinance there was an employment and housing non-discrimination thing, with a lot of protections for any organization that claimed to be at all religious, not just churches, but homeless shelters and the like. The city commission passed it last year, then people-Rod-says-we-can't-call-bigots collected enough signatures to force it being put it on the ballot and it passed pretty easily. Kalamazoo City is quite liberal and the pro-ordinance group was trying to take advantage of a lot of Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College students having registered to vote last year for Obama. In 2006, Kalamazoo City voted against the Michigan Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage (and domestic partner benefits, though the supposed moral paragons bore a lot of false witness during that campaign about the second one) so it's not hugely surprising. The PRSWCCB tried to get the local black churches to jump in, but their leaders were publically lukewarm at most, and the out of town "family" groups didn't put in anywhere near the money proordinance groups did.
People Rod Says We Can't Call Bigots are free to take the message that they're not welcome in Kalamazoo. Live in Zeeland, if you like. I wouldn't.
Even if I didn't care about my fellow man, I know the Rods of the world are after the gays today, but they'd get around to me eventually.
The human mind is a marvelously flexible thing, able to convince/delude oneself of the correctness of almost anything. Of course someone will vote against legal equality while thinking they are not prejudiced. I know of well educated people who not only _think_ the earth is 6000 years old, they can give you airtight philosophical reasons why it _must_ be 6000 years old, etc. I think this is one issue whose resolution will change only by the passage of time.
I said exactly that to a black person I grew up with, as seniors in high school the year and month Martin Luther King got killed.
She was impatient. She was enraged. I explained each of our parents and grandparents to her.
I posited (not that fancy word, then) that we have a responsibility to teach our children better than our grandparents and our parents.
One of the greatest tragedies of my little life is that we (our age group) have probably not managed to do that.
But, is there someone here that can tell me there is some other way?
Yes, these things take time. But some of these things are so manifestly fucked up that it's wayyy past time of consideration and high time to keep it moving.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident"
That means, obvious, even to retards (not you).
Here's what I know about Americans:
It takes us forever to acclimate to change. Once it happens, bang - it's almost like someone hit a switch.
Do not ultimately despair for what you believe is right. When it finally happens, it lands like a feather.
And, it will.
Ta-Nehisi,
When you say "but I have no problem believing that half the country--maybe more--is deeply prejudiced against gays", what do you mean?
What kinds of anti-gay opinions count as deeply prejudiced, and what kinds do not?
Isn't "anti-gay" in itself a form of bigotry?
If I am "anti-woman", or "anti-French", or "anti-Chinese", simply because of who these people are, not because they've done something to hurt someone else, just because they are women or French or Chinese, wouldn't that make me bigoted? If I say "chinese people are not allowed to marry white people because they are chinese", is that not a bigoted act?
I fail to see why "anti-gay" and "anti- gay marriage" would not bigoted stances.
omg lebecka, do not feed it. I don't think you were around for the madness that occurred on open thread a few weeks ago regarding Rush Limbaugh's bid for nfl ownership. Trust me, there is no good faith to be found.
Oops, sorry, wasn't there. I retract. Trolls be gone!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, trolls, whatever.
But the question is real. And lebecka gave one of the standard answers: that all negative opinions of homosexuality, or of gay marriage in particular, are inherently bigoted. I just don't know if that's TNC's perspective as well.
As for good faith, and madness, well...
The quote pulled from the National Review was, to me, gobbledygook. I can't even understand what they are trying to say, what with the poor syntax, run-on sentences, and overuse of jargon. This is a good example of someone trying to use big words to pull the wool over the eyes of the less educated, or to give smart bigots a way to feel like "Bigotry is ok, because we can use big words to say it is."
The fact of the matter is, if you deny people civil rights because of who they are, that is a bigoted act. If you don't allow people to get married to another _consenting_ adult, that is a bigoted act. It doesn't matter how you couch the phrases; you are behaving in a bigoted way.
does that make you a bigot? Maybe, if you act that way enough times.
It's not too bad to parse if you remember what the goal is:
whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically?
translates pretty easily to
"Can't we make sure the darkies don't overwhelm us poor white folks?"
Quibble: While I can't find anyone but Salon giving numbers, I was in AL when this vote went down and I remember the losing side being more like 10%.
But to Rod's point: He's saying that if more than 50% of people share a prejudice, than it is not a prejudice. This fails on every level.
Could be wrong, but here's an MSNBC story with the same numbers:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18090277/
No, no, it's that we should listen to those people because clearly, as the majority, they might have something to say...and might just be right.
The comments over there are giving me a little faith in humanity. A little. And thank heavens for you guys.
When Rod jumped on the "omg kid beaten on bus it's a sign that in Obama's America it's a new race war going the wrong way" train, his commenters were a reminder that there is sanity and compassion and objectivity in the world.
While I may be in the small minority of gay men, I don't see the point of wasting more time and energy on gay marriage in the short term. While it would be nice to have the option, I will never use it. Rod is right. The country has made it clear it's not ready. We have anti-discrimination and hate crimes legislation to protect us. We should keep up the pressure, but more ballot questions will simply lock the bans into more state constitutions.
We've made huge gains in the last 20 years. I'm content to let the rest of the country catch up. Time is on our side.
This isn't about gay marriage, this is about equal rights. This is about letting bigotry turn my fellow citizens into second-class citizens.
I'm straight. I'm as married as anyone I know. I don't have gay friends. I don't care about the 'gay community,' if such a thing exists. But I care more than I can say about equal rights.
I explained this to my 5-year-old son. If a girl wants to marry a boy, she's allowed. But if a boy wants to marry a boy, people won't let him. Just because he's a boy. I don't think that's fair. My 5-year-old understands: he learned these basic lessons of fairness in _preschool_. And now he lives in state where people voted their fear and bigotry, where a majority of the grown-ups reject the very simple lessons that I hope to teach him, and to show him by example, of kindness and caring and fairness and equality.
I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you wanna marry. I care about my son, and his country.
My daughter was ahead of MA--her best friend in preschool had two moms, who were obviously committed adults partnered in caring for children just like her dad and I, so they were married, duh. Trying to explain why that wasn't so was an early taste of how my views on gay marriage would change from "It won't work, give up" to "Oh...okay. Then I guess I'm in favor."
My partner and I are oppositely gendered and the same race, but laws that restrict other committed couples from marrying do matter to me.
I'm happy for you that you are satisfied with the status quo, but i am not satisfied. I will not be satisfied until I can tell my children that, de jure, instilled in the legal system of the united states, is the principle that all people are equal under the law, that no person can be legally discriminated against, and that civil rights for all is the truth in this country, not just an ideal.
My children are young, but who knows? One of them may grow up to be gay. I would rather have this fight now that 20 years from now.
Thanks to both lebecka and Guster for their comments. I suppose my comment was prompted by Andrew Sullivan's commentary yesterday:
"It's one more sign, I fear, that the Democratic establishment's opposition to marriage equality is real; and the president's peeps are increasingly determined to do what they can keep us from the right to civil marriage."
So Andrew is turning his anger against our only friends. It's the right that is our enemy on this issue. If our anger at continued losses makes us turn against our friends, what have we gained?
Andrew's complaints about Obama's failure to step up on Maine are illogical, since Obama is opposed to gay marriage but in the less damaging, leave it to the states, sense. I hope he changes his mind. But putting it on him is illogical.
This isn't really logical. The fact that the right wing is the enemy of the LGBT community doesn't prove that the Dems are the friends of that community. You have to evaluate each Party, independently, hopefully by some kind of objective measure. You determine whether the Dems are "your only friend" by what the Dems do, not by what the GOP does.
I'd like to think-- hope anyway-- that most people can be frustrated with setbacks and still work productively toward the future. I still want to press the Obama administration on DADT and DOMA, but I'm happy he signed the hate crimes bill. I think in worlds more sophisticated than Sullivan's, we can enjoy the good and be frustrated with the bad. (I do enjoy Sullivan's writing most of the time, but sometimes....)
Shouldn't you focus more of your anger and attention at your friends? If they are your friends and they have the same view as the Morman church, why is only the Morman church worthy of a rebuke on the issue?
If your friends and allies voted with you, you wouldn't need to worry about conservatives, but they didn't. You are holding your enemies to a higher standard than your friends.
I think our civil rights gains over the last 20 years has proven the Democrats are our friends.
Neal, it's not for me, as a straight man, to judge who the LGBT's community's true friends are, but it does seem to me that fair amount of that progress was the result of a good deal of pressure and struggle against the institutional Democratic Party (e.g., DADT).
"No permanent friends, only permanent interests" strikes me as a useful axiom in politics.
My children are young, but who knows? One of them may grow up to be gay. I would rather have this fight now that 20 years from now.
This. Precisely. During that glorious, all-too-brief season between when the California Supreme Court declared a ban on gay marriage a violation of the state constitution and the passing of Proposition 8, I attended my dear friends' Jack and Jonathon's wedding. It was beautiful, their tears and joy so familiar of my own at my wedding. And for that one shining moment, their marriage was as equal before both community and state as my own was.
It is deeply personal, as a friend and a parent. The thought that my son, should he fall in love with a man, would not be able to enjoy the same rights and privileges and recognition my wife and I do enrages me. And I am enraged that Ron and John or Tom and Steve or Jinni and Anne will not be able to enjoy that same feeling, or that Jack and Jonathon's marriage might seem somehow cheapened by our state's rejection of their love.
It is an assault on my friends' -- and maybe some day my son's -- very humanity to deny them equality before the law, to say to them that their love is not equal to my own when that is so clearly not the case. And yes, denying another person's humanity is bigotry, Mr. Dreher. That is the very essence of bigotry.
It is deeply personal, as a friend and a parent. The thought that my son, should he fall in love with a man, would not be able to enjoy the same rights and privileges and recognition my wife and I do enrages me
Same here. (Only I have a daughter.) A man in Dreher's comments makes the same point-- referring to his beloved gay son.
I think that the sort of prejudice, like that against homosexuals, that's characterized by a consistent affiliation with the strong against the weak his to be anti-skeptical to its own motives in order to maintain any pretense of morality and to keep the nastiness of the position at arms length. Start viewing the situation from a point of moral equity to your fellow human or god forbid empathy and the whole thing falls apart.
Very good point. What's amazing is how often the "strong" - the majority - use a sense of victimization of themselves by the "weak" or minority as a rationalization for their prejudice.
See the point that now institutions would be forced - forced! - to treat gay people the same as straight. How awful for them.
I like this point. My father always, through words and example, taught us that the measure of a man is not how he treats people who are stronger than him, but how he treats people who are weaker. This is the essence of good manners and fine behavior. And I have to say that Mr. Dreher does not seem to be much of a gentleman.
One of the cornerstones of Liberal Democracy is that it will uphold the rights of all its citizens via the principle of equal treatment under the law. It's a concept specifically designed to prevent tyranny of the majority – be it 50 or 95% of the population.
So yes, the US Federal Government was upholding democratic principles when went about eliminating Jim Crow and it will be doing so now if it extends full marriage rights to homosexuals.
Of course, it comes as no surprise that NRO thinks tyranny of the majority (only, of course, when the majority happens to be their type of people) is just ducky.
Jackasses…
One thing about the National Review article that is worth pointing out is how they very cleverly turned reality on its head. Since the "conservative" view is that the basic rights of a minority should not be infringed upon by the will of a majority (Madison wrote of something to this effect in The Federalist Papers), the article has to invent some theoretical example where civilized whites are a minority in some barbarous black-majority community that seeks to overwhelm them with integration. Of course, by the 1950s not a single Southern state was majority black any more, thanks to a century of represssion and terrorism plus the Great Migration. But don't let that get in the way of a good whites-are-the-real-victims story (sadly this seems like a hard one for the Right to shake).
I guess the moral is: beware these tricky, smooth-tongued arguments about why it's right and good to deny a group its basic rights. Rod is arguing now that some small elite is pushing these rights on a good and wholesome American people. However, let's remember that ALMOST half of the Maine and California electorate still favored same sex marriage, and that Washington state electorate upheld everything but the actual name of SSM. Once voters cross that threshold and start supporting a more open form of SSM, we will hear the same people say that an oppressed, moral minority is having IT'S rights trampled on by a majority favoring same sex marriage.
The "I should have something you do not" attitude comes first, then the arguments are built around the numbers.
You have this exactly right. People have this desire to believe that most people can't be bigoted. But it takes a weird sense of history to not realize that as recently as 40 years ago the great majority of Americans were bigoted with regard to interracial marriage.
We do have this sense that bigots must be people who also beat up puppies and are otherwise identifiably bad people. But the reality is that bigots can be otherwise good people who are bad simply for being bigots. It is also true that people can be bigoted through conditioning in which they have never taken seriously the non-bigoted position.
It might be possible to make the case that these things do not apply in the case of opposition to same-sex marriage. (I doubt it, but I will wait to see an actual argument before criticizing it). But one would actually have to make the case. To appeal to the clearly false idea that the majority of Americans can't be bigoted against a group they think of as the other does not accomplish anything.
In Houston, the openly lesbian city comptroller won a plurality of the vote for mayor, and will be in a runoff with an African-American council member. The rich-white-guy candidate came in third and is out of the running. Although city elections are normally non-partisan, all four candidates are Dems.
Gay marriage is a non-starter here politically, but this mayor's race still seems relevant to me. Or am I just grasping for good news?
I read somewhere this morning that a handful of openly gay candidates had won local contests all over, to no fanfare. The focus on marriage equality does draw away from the real other strides that have been made.
What's truly galling to me is the presumption of demanding to have it every damn way possible. This desire to both want to deny somebody something and then also wanting to be absolved from people coming to the logical conclusion as to your motivation - now that's bold. Rod should at least have the intellectual honesty to recognize something base within the anti-marriage movement.
Yes indeed, something else going on here; a radical challenge to an entire history of institutionalized homophobia combined with an identity politic wedge being driven between people appealing to our most irrational fears and demons about the future of our species wrapped up and scapegoated into a particular group of people. The issue is always being packaged as part of an agenda to turn the nation gay, especially vis a vis small school children: you know, the gay agenda, special rights, and so on when the issue really pivots on privilege and the invisiblity of privilege, which for a wide swath of heterosexuals, remains invisible to themselves under the cover of turning the issue into something that pits one group against another.
There will always be resistance to change, and indeed rather than as Dreher views this whole affair, as a "loser," in fact, there is something happening that those who are in opposition to gay marriage have yet to really understand. We are with these first elections seeing a tidal change of possibility--and it is not so much about the nature of marriage, but the inclusion of all members of a free and democratic nation; it's coming, and unless we go through some form of political dictatorship, legalized gay marriage in the US is an inevitable outcome.
I guess one of the tactical issues is that the privileges of marriage are so commonplace as to be invisible to most people.
Which raises the question whether the effort should focus on getting marriage as a right, or on picking off the real privileges of marriage one by one.
I find it astonishing that the self-proclaimed "real Americans," or in softer tones, those who "understand" America, are also those who seem to know the least about it's history. Has Dreher never read Alexis de Tocqueville, and his warnings about the tyranny of the majority? Does Dreher not understand that the Supreme Court is around precisely to make sure that prejudices of the majority (and consequent tyranny over minorities) do not form the basis for laws? Does he not comprehend the judiciary-legislative-executive structure of our system and what the purpose of each branch is?
Real Americans* don't need no fancy book-larnin'.
* Registered trademark, Palin 2012. All rights reserved.
This is a HUGE and typical shortcoming of the so-called "real Americans." These folks not only know very little or nothing about other peoples' history, but they know just as little about their own. Everyday, everywhere, we hear these folks espousing from the airwaves and writing from their "heart of hearts" about the ways and means of life with no understanding of origin or no ability to put current issues in any historical context. They don't have time. They must react. So they talk and write for shock value and attention. They jump on bandwagons and they wave banners; both tangible and conceptual.
Dreher pines over his own words like he's trying to show us his broad-mindedness. But, he writes from a platform that is steadfast in it's position with no pretense of understanding historical context. Shame on him; but this, I am sad to say, is typical.
I'm losing more faith in this country with almost every passing day.
Then step back and ask whether 10 years ago you thought openly gay candidates would be elected all over the country in local races, or whether 20 years ago you thought we could have a black president. Things change. Progress is made.
It's a fair point. I should have given more context. Right now we have a health care bill that, best case scenario, will create a public option that will fail due to higher premiums, because god forbid, we raise taxes on rich people to pay for it. We have a president that is being bullied by the military in wasting more money and lives in Afghanistan (and eventually Iraq too). Torture charges aren't going anywhere. We have a media that has already said that the pathetic excuse for an opposition is already back on the rise. And we have people in various states that think it's ok to create a second class citizenry, against the 14th amendment, because somewhere, a gay couple might want to get married and this grosses them out because a zombie carpenter told them it's wrong.
I'm sorry, this is a moment of emotional weakness. I'm sure it will get better. If it doesn't, we're pretty screwed.
Well, yes, I do ask myself "if there's something else going on here." I have desperately wanted to hear an argument against gay marriage that doesn't appeal to religion or other things on which we do not base laws, such as "it's icky," "that's how we've always done it," or "so you're ok with people marrying their dogs?"
So I clicked to link to Dreher's piece and once again, nothin'.
The opposition may or may not be bigots, but I am at least as irked that they can't make a cogent secular argument as to why gay marriage should be illegal.
They don't have one. It doesn't exist. They have Jesus and their poor understanding of history. That's all they've got.
ouch Persia. I have Jesus too. I also believe that all American citizens should have the same rights. I find it abominable when people hate in the name of my faith. We are all just people, trying to figure out how to live in this world and not fuck up ourselves and anyone else in the process (yes, I believe in Jesus and I enjoy profanity).
But I completely understand what you mean. And respect your anger and frustration with citizens denying consenting adults the rights to express themselves in the same manner that other citizens can - and basing their votes on religion, tradition, or (as amygd put it), the "ick" factor.
@GAPeach7: I bet Jesus thinks some of this shit is fucked up, too.
Yeah, I'm kind of puzzled at the right's current insistence that Jesus hated health care.
Actually, I would say they have a poor understanding of Jesus, as well. Jesus's teachings pretty much boil down to: Love God, love your neighbor as/and yourself, and focus on fixing your own flaws and faults before you start thinking about the flaws and faults of others. And there's nothing in the New Testament attributed to him regarding homosexuality. Nothing.
Absolutely, Michelle and GAPeach, and sorry I gave that impression-- I in fact know a lesbian Congregationalist pastor. The people of (Christian) faith arguing against Dreher prove the point too.
@Persia -- I'm re-reading my comment and it seems overly harsh and directed at you; I apologize for that. My aggravation is with people who claim to be Christians, yet follow a religion that seems to have no relation to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Yeah. I'm looking for that too. I have a relative whom I love dearly. And he is the biggest man-whore you ever want to meet. We have conversation after conversation about his "inability" to keep it in his pants and remain faithful to the woman he is in a relationship with. He's young, life is short, he was drunk, shit happens, blah blah blah. Essentially no practiced standard for what constitutes a healthy, adult relationship.......until gay relationships are brought up. And THEN he's a damn Rhoades scholar on morality.
LOL. We might have a cousin in common.
The town clerk a few towns over resigned when civil unions went through in Vermont. This would have been a better moral objection if everyone in town didn't know about her extramarital affairs.
This. Exactly. The best way to protect freedom of expression -- including religious expression -- is to keep our legal system neutral, as much as possible, toward all religious beliefs. When we start imposing our religious beliefs on state functions -- and marriage in a civil sense is a contract between consenting individuals -- we endanger our right to self-expression in other realms.
It bothers me that opponents of gay marriage cite tradition as support for their argument. I, too, can cite tradition: political tradition, particularly the tradition espoused by Jefferson and Madison. I'd think that conservatives, who are usually so fond of calling up dead presidents to support their ideas about limited government, might also want to look at the political philosophy of the separation of church and state.
Does anyone in the religious right -- by that, I mean those who actively work for the institutionalization of their personal religious beliefs -- not understand that the separation of church and state was built into our system to PROTECT religious expression? When Madison and Jefferson wrote about the separation of church and state, they feared that should any one religious belief dominate, religious expression as a whole would suffer because ideas contrary to the religious belief in power would be censored. This is just another riff on Madison's Federalist No. 10 -- that a multiplicity of factions is the best mechanism for protecting any one faction from becoming tyrannical. There's a reason that Jefferson wrote his letter about the "wall of separation" between church and state to the Danbury Baptists (and not agnostics or deists). And there's a reason that the Danbury Baptists applauded Jefferson for his stance. They all believed that the best way to protect the diversity of religious beliefs in the early republic was to support a separation of church and state.
The religious right's attempt to gain political power is short-sighted. Do they not fear a backlash that will lead to a triumph of those who are against religion completely -- a group that allows for no public religious expression? That might seem far-fetched, but think of the debates in France over students wearing not just headscarves but yarmulke and crosses to public school. That may work for the French, but I am grateful that I live in a society where, thanks to Jefferson and Madison's ideas, my children could decide to to wear signs of their religious belief as a personal choice.
I support the right of gays and lesbians to marry because, when anyone goes to their local courthouse to apply for a marriage license, they are engaging in a civil, state function -- one that should not be based on the religious beliefs of the individuals involved. Gay marriage initiatives are not attempting to bang down the doors of religious institutions and force them to recognize gay marriages. This is about the state recognizing the contract right of consenting individuals and calling that contract the same as it's called for straight people who also agree to enter into that contract.
Also, that was an INCREDIBLE post, TNC. I want to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant. No, in all seriousness, it was beautifully written and politically astute. On an otherwise bleak morning, a really inspiring way to wake up.
Maya,
You are hilarious. Always. That is all.
Oh TNC, were I actually that funny... I just watch too much 30 Rock.
Zat's Awful!
No there's too much 30 Rock for you...
well, between rod dreher and bill buckley, i'd say the conservatives have a very consistent view:
when my bigots are in the majority, then majority rules, sucker.
when my bigots are in the minority, then fnck the majority.
it's really just a variation on the republican view that elections have consequences, unless democrats win them, in which case bipartisanship!
Well, let's be honest. It is not just the R's that have that kind of thinking. Do you really think you couldn't say the exact same thing about the D's.
Douglas Adams had a bit about sitting on a horse:
It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion on them.
On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.
This is true of human nature. It takes a lot of self-examination to know when we are the monk and when we are the horse, and most of us, most of the time, are not up to it, regardless of our political stripes.
What disturbes me, and I think TNC alluded to with the comparison to the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, is that this clearly not a states rights issues. This is a 14th amendment issue and the marriage equality groups need to do exactly what the NAACP and other civil rights groups of the 50s and 60s did, they took their fight out of the states where the cause was hopelessly deadlocked and to the courts. Unfortunatly groups like the HRC seem unwilling to force the issue and take any risks. I live in Georgia and have a better chance of hitting the Lotto twice in a row than I do to ever see marriage equality on the ballot here...the states will NEVER get this done. Equal rights for all Americans is a Constitutional right...period.
MikeCee wrote:
This is the central argument in David Boies' and Ted Olson's case. They, and you, are correct. But I am skeptical of their chances with the current makeup of the Supreme Court.
Scalia has already said publicly that the 14th Amendment does not provide for same sex marriage. In other words, he has pre-judged the case. We all as humans think about all kinds of stuff and form opinions about it - but it does bug me when conservatives in particular get all high and mighty about lack of prejudgment.
Anyhow, on to the IANAL-legal side: so long as "equal protection under the law" actually means "equal protection under the law," Same-Sex Marriage is protected under the 14th Amendment. Given this, there are effectively three arguments against SSM. The first, that lack of SSM does indeed constitute equality, is basically nonsense. Only the ignorant will believe this, with emphasis put on the root ignore. It is theoretically possible that various kinds of domestic partnership and civil union sorts of arrangements could suffice, but it is laughable to suggest that non-marriage alternatives as they exist now constitute equality.
The second is that some aspect of SSM ripples out and a negative impact on society to the extent that SSM should be banned despite causing an inequality. Proving harm if a right is allowed to stand is a common enough reason for the violation of many rights, and fair enough when there is an actual harm. However, most SSM opponents construct elaborate fictions about agendas and indoctrination and other malarky.
The third argument is what I will call the Scalia-argument which would say that "equal protection under the law" doesn't mean just that, but instead we need to substitute a 19th century understandings of equality is and who needs to have their equality protected. In short - the constitution doesn't mean what it says, but instead means what legislators apparently meant but didn't include in the actual constitution. This is the real danger with Scalia's method of constitutional interpretation - it substitutes what the document *ACTUALLY SAYS* for some other meaning. I understand he doesn't want a "runaway" constitution, but to that "equal" doesn't mean "equal" because they didn't like gay people in the 1860s is itself a wretched devaluation of the constitution.
@MikeCee,
I disagree that this can be considered a civil rights issue under the 14th amendment. Homosexuals are already guaranteed equal marriage rights in every state, including Maine. They have the exact same right as all other citizens, to marry a member of the opposite sex who is of the age of consent and not related by blood. Homosexuals would not want to exercise this right, as they are sexually/emotionally attracted to members of the same sex, but that doesn't mean they are being denied rights. What they are being denied is legel recognition of "marriage" between people of the same sex. I don't see how this can be an equal protection issue, as heterosexual people are also denied this "right".
This same argument was used to justify not marrying an interracial couple this year. The same argument was used in defense of a ban on interracial marriage. Blacks and whites have the same rights, they just have to marry somebody of the opposite sex and the same color skin. That's not bigoted or racist because everyone has the same right? Blacks and whites have the same rights, neither one is allowed to use the wrong colored bathroom.
It is not the same argument. Homosexuals are not a race, and equating the homosexual rights movement with the black civil rights movement is disingenuous.
@amichel
The 14th amendment is not about race, it's about due process. The point here is that there is a group of citizens who do not have access to marriage because marriage is defined in a way that excludes them. Now, you could argue that the state has no business legislating marriage, gay or straight, but when states make a set of civil rights (because marriage is a civil right) accessible to one group of citizens in a way that specifically excludes another group of citizens, then that is a due process issue and the courts have the constitutional mandate to step in.
@Maya
I agree, the 14th amendment is about the due process of law and that no citizen may be denied life, liberty, property, or their rights and privileges without due process of law. Marriage is one of those rights and privileges, and homosexuals are not prevented from exercising this right. They are prevent however from exercising a right that has never existed ( in the majority of states), that is, the right to "marry" someone of the same sex.
@MikeCee:
So you're saying that denying some people a right they want to exercise (when a gay person wants a homosexual marriage) is the same as denying a right they don't want to exercise (the straight person's right to a homosexual marriage)? Is that really "due process of law"?
I don't have the right to paint your house blue. So, therefore, you don't either. QED.
It seems a little lacking, from the standpoint of 14th amendment analysis.
Or, in other words, "Maya is right."
Marriage is one of those rights and privileges, and homosexuals are not prevented from exercising this right.
Again, since the 14th amendment doesn't cover race this is the same argument. For interracial marriage nobody was denied their right to marry, just their right to marry the consenting adult of their choice. Doesn't it bother you just a little bit that these same arguments were trotted out in defense of a ban on interracial marriage this year? Not 50 years ago (which it was used then as well) but this year by a justice of the peace refusing to marry an interracial couple.
@amichel
You do realize that previously marriage laws had largely left the question of heterosexual/homosexual orientation aside, right? I.e. they did not make mention of marriage as the right of a citizens to marry a member of the opposite sex. That is why so much legislation on state and federal levels specifically define marriage as an act between a man and a woman, so as to get around court decisions that interpreted original laws as leaving room for same-sex marriages. The effort to define here is an effort to purposefully exclude a certain category of citizens, i.e. to legislate a category of people as less than citizens so that they do not have access to previously existing constitutional rights. In that sense, it is much like the Dredd Scott decision, which, not incidentally, was made obsolete by the 14th amendment. In other words, the 14th amendment goes to the heart of the gay marriage issue: the question of citizenship, and the protection of a person's civil and political rights from being abrogated by any state in the union.
Is the right to marriage held by an individual, or is it held jointly by the couple? The 14th Amendment has been used extensively in the past to protect rights held collectively as well as individually, often to protect the collective right of a group of people to set up a corporation. To that end, the 14th Amendment does protect the right of a same-sex *couple* to marry.
Hell, it doesn't even stop at a couple, as children are benefited by the legal protections of marriage, and mothers-in-law, and so on. Far and away, the most compelling speakers for No On One were the parents and children of gay and lesbian couples asking for these de-facto marriages to be recognized de-jure. Marriage Inequality hurts the whole family, not just one of the two individuals in the couple.
@Maya
The New York court of appeals would disagree with you. From their decision in Hernandez v. Robles " The historical background of Loving is different from the history underlying this case. Racism has been recognized for centuries as a revolting moral evil. This country fought a civil war to eliminate racism's worst manifestation, slavery, and passed three constitutional amendments to eliminate that curse and its vestiges. Loving was part of the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, the triumph of a cause for which many heroes and many ordinary people had struggled since our nation began. It is true that there has been serious injustice in the treatment of homosexuals also, a wrong that has been widely recognized only in the relatively recent past, and one our Legislature tried to address when it enacted the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act four years ago (L 2002, ch 2). But the traditional definition of marriage is not merely a by-product of historical injustice. Its history is of a different kind. The idea that same-sex marriage is even possible is a relatively new one. Until a few decades ago, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between participants of different sex. A court should not lightly conclude that everyone who held this belief was irrational, ignorant or bigoted. We do not so conclude"
If we remember that "the pursuit of happiness" is also guaranteed to all Americans then what you have described is not at all "equal."
Nicely put. I fully see that homosexuals are not denied rights. They are asking for special or additional rights. Their desire is based upon a choice that they have made to be gay, not upon an inate condition, like the color of their skin or their gender, etc. Just because they have chosen wrong, they want the rest of society to approve it. We should not succomb to this thinking.
"Chosen wrong"? So you believe that homosexuality is indeed a choice, and a "wrong" choice at that? I also have some issue with you calling skin color or gender (actually a choice in itself) a condition. I do not believe that they want special rights, just the rights that most other citizens enjoy. And even if they do want the right to marry , and that is an additional right, what negative effect does it have on you?
I think it's time for Anti-Gay Bingo!
http://blog.mattalgren.com/2008/08/anti-gay-bingo/
At this rate it shouldn't take long for someone to win!
luzabdrob,
Can you describe how this choice was made by you when you made it? I am a heterosexual male. From my experience I can't imagine anything sillier than the idea that I made that choice. The idea of homosexual sex (male that is, female is a different matter entirely) has always had a strong ick factor to me. I have never confused my preference for some kind of moral guidance from God though. I also find peanut butter icky, but have never concluded that peanut butter must the work of the devil.
Are you saying that when you were a teenager you had sexual attraction to both men and women and you decided (assuming you are male) to develop the attraction to women?
I honestly have no idea what the experience could have been like of heterosexual men who think that homosexuals had a choice in being homosexuals. Was your experience really different than mine?
Certainly to someone with my experiences the claim that sexuality is a choice seems to be something one can only argue for in bad faith.
Yes, yes...because if we allow gays to marry they'll start GAYING UP ALL THE PARKING LOTS. Or something.
So wanting the right to get married = "asking for special or additional rights." Who knew?
Win. I guess it used to be that black people that wanted to marry white people were just making the wrong choice.
Even though you are wrong that sexuality is a choice, it is a farce to bring up such an argument anyway.
Religion is choice, and it is still very much illegal and wrong to discriminate based on religion.
Believe, plenty of people make what I consider wrong (and sometimes even morally represensible) religious decisions. But it is not my place to try to change their religious practice, and I would never dream of denying them the same rights I enjoy.
And so what if being gay was a choice? I'm quite happy being gay, thank you, and don't think I should have to give up my gayness in order to avoid discrimination.
The law taking account of GENDER is the issue, not orientation. If Robert is free to marry unrelated adult Jane but Roberta is not free to marry unrelated adult Jane, then Robert and Roberta are not equal under the law. That's why "They're free to marry someone of the opposite sex" is irrelevant.
D'oh- mine above was to amichel. My bad.
@rakehell
In response to your earlier comment, denying all people a right that some want to exercise and some do not is completely legitimate. We are all denied certain rights. As long as this denial of rights is applied equally to all, there is no due process issues under the 14th amendment. Everyone is denied the right to marry those of the same sex, just as everyone is denied the right ro marry those who are related to them, just as everyone is denied the right to marry those who are under the age of consent. That some people want to exercise these "rights" and some do not has no bearing.
So if I denied everyone the right to a fair trial that would be fine? If I denied everyone the right to speech, that would be fine? If I deny interracial couples marriage that's fine as well?
Again, you're using the exact arguments used to deny interracial couples marriage. Don't you see the problem with that?
What if the state only recognized Christian marriages (a marriage between two faithful practicing Christians)? Under your logic, that would not be discrimination, since afterall, everyone could be married in the Christian church of their choosing.
@Elizabeth -- yes! Or, what if the state only recognized Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or [insert religion of your choice here] marriages? That is exactly why pushing a particular religious belief on a civil system is dangerous. (I wonder how many people in the religious right are big fans of Iran's theocracy, for example?) Your beliefs are only protected when your people are in power. The idea behind due process and separation of church and state is that, regardless of the personal beliefs of those in power, there is equality before the law.
You keep leading back to this: an obvious belief that same-sex marriage somehow involves some sort of harm to society, as would marriage between close relations or marriage to a minor. But you haven't articulated that harm. What is it?
My point of view is that no such harm can come from same-sex marriage. Believing that it would cause harm shows a prejudice against homosexuals, that somehow they cause harm to society.
You wrote far above that you're OK with being considered a bigot for your views. You have the right to be a bigot.
Talking about forcing religious institutions to honor same-sex marriages in some way, or about how homosexuals have the right to marry, just not each other, is all disingenuous skirting of the issue. It's all rationalization for the simple prejudice that homosexuals don't deserve to marry each other, because... why?
@amichel
You guys are so predictable.
"As long as this denial of rights is applied equally to all..."
Substantive due process. Look it up. You're not applying the denial equally to all. That is the whole point. You are imposing a greater burden on gay citizens who wish to marry than you are on straight citizens who wish the same.
The 14th amendment does not mention race, does not mention sex, and most certainly does not mention sexual orientation, a term of art I don't believe had been coined at the time. But it has been held to prohibit many forms of discrimination.
The Supreme Court hasn't agreed with you since 1937.
I really thought this thing was going to go the other way. If one thinks of gay marriage in similar fashion to other movements, it seems different in that it lacks a well identified leader. I don't want to get into an argument about the mythical "spokesperson for all things gay", but movements do have those who are seen as at the forefront and it seems lacking.
The issue not only lacks a movement leader, but its supposed allies want nothing to do with the issue. Most of the Democratic candidates last year opposed gay marriage. So whatever infrastructure that is available to get people to vote for democrats is largely not being used to help this cause. If the issue on the ballot were related to a pro-union issue, I would wager there would be much more DNC and party leader involvement, but they punked out on this issue.
serious attention should be paid, instead of paying attention long enough to insult people who disagree with you as evil people who deserved to be excoriated and harrassed.
Until he has something to say about the incessant claims by the anti same sex marriage crowd that same sex couples want to destroy marriage, are a worse threat than terrorism, are evil, are disgusting, are perverts, are out to sodomize children (think I'm making that up? I'm not) and are about to bring God's wrath down, Rod can shut the hell up.
He feels bad about people being called bigots? Really? Excoriated and harrassed? Dreher is like a whiny little child with a tiny boo-boo who's acting as if someone cut his arm off.
TNC said, "I think prejudice is part of who we are as humans, and thus as Americans."
I'm on board with this idea, but I wonder if it's that simple. I don't want to distract too much from the general points of the post and of most comments so far. But I do want to talk about this rather common understanding of prejudice as innate.
While I believe that prejudice is part of who I am as a human, I have a really challenging time seeing how my prejudice measures up to be as bad as that of almost everyone else I know--and particularly those I don't, like opponents of gay marriage or my grandfather who so resisted civil rights and integration.
So, because I also know logically that I can't be that much more enlightened than the rest of you (enlightened=more immune to prejudice), I have to ask what is it that I feel, at my core, that is prejudiced or, heaven forbid, bigoted?
The majority of my white South Carolinian neighbors pop into my head as a distinct possibility. An army of Sarah Palin voters runs in behind them, trailed by a bunch of tea baggers. I've sometimes flipped off people who drive by me with McCain/Palin stickers--not so anyone could see but just expressing my anger and frustration in my own cockpit. If you drive me by the parking lot of our local mega church, I have to admit a wave of revulsion courses through.
I know that in my neck of the woods I'm in no position to exert actual negative power over these dominant groups, but the prejudicial feelings I have are part of my everyday life. Hell, I go to church with my wife because I know it matters to her, and I spend a significant percentage of my time there silently chanting "love and tolerance, love and tolerance, love and tolerance." All the while, I judge her fellow members to be folks who don't know what these words mean.
I guess I'm just interested in the use of this gesture, rhetorically: "I think prejudice is part of who we are as humans, and thus as Americans." I think people say this a good bit, normalizing the feelings behind out-and-out discrimination, but for what purpose?
When people say this--and I mean no knock on TNC because I know I'm off on my own tangent and not talking precisely about the subject of his post--they almost never then proceed to identify with the actual experience of prejudice. What do I do that's on a par with someone voting against gay marriage? Do I really believe that prejudice is as much part of me as it is of you?
I hate to sound Orwellian, but IMO we're all prejudiced, but some of us are more prejudiced than others. Those of us who are, hopefully, a bit further to enlightenment have to work harder sometimes, because we don't realize what we may be subconsciously accepting or passing on. And we just have to hope some of the people at, say, your wife's church can listen to you or follow your example and get a little closer, too.
I agree that all have at least a little prejudice. I would add that there are those who seek to recognize and overcome thier prejudices, and those who cling to them as an image of how the world really is/ought to be.
I think you've hit on the crux of the issue here, E.
The problem is far less being prejudiced, far more denial of that prejudice, complacency, and refusing to take steps to correct for it. (Or, what you said!)
I think what is part of human nature is a kind of tribalism in which we identify people as being us and not us. Prejudice is a natural outgrowth of this that is generally socially conditioned. Prejudices that would never have been questioned in the past can seem so obviously prejudiced to people growing up under different conditioning.
In that sense I think your reaction to people who have different political views and religious views is an example of this. But then not all examples of this seem to be equivalent. Being intolerant of intolerant people is not the same as being intolerant of people who simply want equal rights.
But the us vs them thinking does seem to be innate. And prejudice does seem to be just a special case of it.
Okay all you rock and holy constitutional rollers, the pause with which the majority approach is primarily one of jurisdiction. The concept of marriage is pregnant with all manner of implied import which cannot be adequately address by a simple conference of rights. It is the obligations of said union which the 'State' is incapable of speaking to. I wouldn't be too damning for a long overdue pause for contemplation. All of y'all who want to pretend this to be an exclusively civil rights issue are indeed missing the fullness of import.
Wow. I like the meter and the rhythm of this, but I have no clue what you're saying.
I think we may have a troll. One who is apparently very, very stoned and thus potentially interesting, but a troll nonetheless.
Sounds like Christopher Hitchens or McWhorter in disguise. :P
I was thinking more like Damon Wayan's prison intellectual from In Living Color:
http://www.spike.com/video/in-living-color/2681989
"You must put your transvestite in jeopardy if you want to become a cunning linguist."
I just spit my coffee.
Win.
@ Goldenapples
I was thinking the exact same thing when I read it, then scrolled down a bit a read your comment.
Win+1
10.
Getting past the bad writing, the point is off as well.
It is true that marriage is a complcated issue and there are reasons why the privileges and responsibilities that go with it might be best left to the states.
But the question of whether the institution, however those details are worked out, should be applied in a discriminatory manner is a simple civil rights issue. There is nothing in the way that marriage rules vary state to state in a legitimate way that affects the civil rights nature of the same-sex marraige issue.
I did a blog post about 5-6 years ago, lost to the ages, which actually researched the popularity of interracial marriages pre-Loving v. Virginia. They were pretty unpopular, by much wider margins than the 53-47% vote in Maine. That has fuck-all to do with equal protection.
It isn't the same. Not even close.
"It isn't the same. Not even close."
That ornate argument may be enough to convince Scalia, but I remain skeptical.
It's because Teh Gay Sex is icky, norbizness. To contemplate otherwise is to to miss the fullness of import, which cannot be adequately address [sic] by a simple conference of rights.
Well done, Pesto.
Thank you Pesto, I just choked on my coffee while laughing at your comment.
Agreed. That was perfect.
I sorta agree with Rod, in this sense: gay marriage amendments are failing in all these states. Even in states that are generally liberal, gay marriage fails. So gay marriage supporters in those states have to ask themselves, why did we fail, and what changes do we have to make to succeed?
It's easy to say "oh, they're bigots," or "oh, I've lost faith in the people here, etc." But that doesn't get you any closer to legalized gay marriage. If you're strategy is failing everywhere, don't complain about the bigots, change your strategy.
We know they're bigots. It's no secret. But what are you gonna do about it? Like TNC said, the Civil Rights Movement wouldn't have won any elections. They found a strategy that worked to overturn the Jim Crow system.
It's easy to say "oh, they're bigots," or "oh, I've lost faith in the people here, etc." But that doesn't get you any closer to legalized gay marriage.
Excuse us all to hell for getting pissed off from time to time.
Getting pissed off is fine, but then what?
I agree, it's a good point to make. That being said, the night after something like this, I think we're entitled to some bitching and moaning.
You're right, Dan. I have no problem with people being pissed. They should be pissed. But at some point after today, you have to step past that and review your strategy and decide what changes need to be made.
It is far from clear that some other approach would have been better. Your argument requires the assumption that some other strategy would have succeeded. But one only has to remember back a few years for a time when Massachusetts getting gay marriage was only going to be temporary and was going to create a huge anti-gay backlash. Instead there are now 4 other states with gay marriage. And there are married gay couples in CA and movement in some other states.
These referendums have only been bad for the cause if other tactics would have worked better or if when gay marriage gains acceptance these referenda make it harder to implement it.
But a decade ago the Washington referendum would have failed. The Massachusetts movement simply moved the playing field.
It is not that proponents should not try to figure out what they could have done better. But the assumption that this is a record of failure is not as clear as you suggest. When referenda on gay marriage are getting close to 50% one can suspect that other issues about homosexuality are doing better. And the fact that to defeat these referenda the opponents have to go to fear of corrupting our children shows that old fashioned moral arguments are losing their appeal.
I'm sorry, were you under the impression that was *all* we were doing?
The problem is that No on 1 ran an awesome campaign on all accounts. They recognized the mistates of CA's No on 8: they responded faster to attacks, actually showed real live gay people in their ads, and had a pretty impressive ground game.
The campaign and its public spokesmen never resorted to calling our opponents bigots.
Sure there will always be people in anonymous blogs, or rallies or whatever shouting bigot (and for everyone one of them there are at least 2 anti-gays calling gays perverts/sodomite/degenerates/evil), but what is a campaign supposed to do about that?
I think that I would like to see more activities at the local level.
I never hear of any rallies, or protests, or sit-ins (I guess you would have to call them wedding-ins--"i'm not movin' 'til i get my marriage certificate!") here in Pittsburgh, and it's not like we lack gay people. I would attend.
Until people in the states see commitment (and a lot of it) at the local level, it think these referenda are never going to go our way.
There *were* activities at local levels.
The real inequality seems to be this:
For those in the majority (white people, straight people, whatever), none but the most overt acts of bigotry will ever be seen by them as actual bigotry (and even those will be arguable). In any event, no act of bigotry will be seen as an outgrowth of anything systemic -- it will always and only be attributable to a singular moral defect on the part of the actor, with no larger social implications or origins. The self-reported motivations of the actor are always relevant to assessing the moral worth of the action, and the actor always gets the benefit of the doubt when stating his or her motivations.
For those in the minority (people of color, gay people, whatever), it's quite different. Any mention or analysis of historical and social patterns of discrimination and oppression are themselves oppressive ("reverse racism," and that kind of thing). And any time a person of color or gay person asks for (let alone gets) anything that a person in the majority has or wants (and especially if a person in the minority gets something instead of a person in the majority) we instantly find ourselves in the conversation about "reverse racism" and "special rights."
An argument can be made that the big winner in the elections last night was the status quo, if you really think about it.
Are you high? Incumbents lost in VA and NJ, the Dems have their first guy in NY-23 in a century, and Yes on One was a campaign to change the existing law, not preserve it. The status quo took a kick in the pants.
TNC, I completely agree with your posting. I live in Temple, Texas, so I'm in a state that has banned both gay marriage and civil unions. I used to live in an even smaller town for a number of years where it wasn't unusual to hear nice, kindly folks say the cruelest, most dismissive statements about gays. They would never have done a thing to harm me personally, and yet, they did. People are capable of monstrous acts and banal cruelties, of little kindnesses and large moral gestures. Prejudice is real, even if it's not KKK lynchings and police actions at gay bars. It's both quotidian and unremarked-upon, until it happens to you.
At this point, it's time for marriage equality efforts to consider a strategy change. For one, there have been remarkably few times that they have selected the battleground, as in the timing of the election. Most of the initiatives have been set up by anti-marriage equality groups. The challenge to Prop 8 will probably be the first one where pro-equality gets to pick its battle (and a war between Gay Inc. and the grassroots could mar this chance).
Second, the message isn't working. No on One ran amazing, heartfelt ads that intended to run at the gut of internalized biases. The ground game was also top-notch. Churches, which are the ultimate grassroots groups of the right, played roles in organizing the Yes side.
NOM needs to be painted as the carpet-bagging meddlers that they are.
Marriage needs to be defined early and often as civic marriage or as a contract. Take the church out of it, unless you can mount enough religious support to speak out for marriage equality.
You can call us BIGOTS, you can kick and scream. You can cry and play the victim. You can march in the name of "rights". You can even convince the majority to be on your side. You cannot, however, turn a sin into a righteous act. We, who are against gay marriage (now there's an OXYMORON for you), are on the side of right. You who are for this abomination are on the side of wrong. Who makes the judgement on this? God of course. He created the family unit and it is wickedness that is attacking the family on all sides. I applaud America in all 31 States that have voted this down unanimously. It is comforting to see that the majority still has a conscience and is not afraid of the backlash that is getting louder and louder against those that stand for truth and righteousness.
Geezus. Why do I have the suspicion that you are some sort of 'plant'. Probably because you reason like a plant.
You don't think people like luzandrob exist? You think he's a plant because he expresses a sentiment that, unfortunately, a lot of Americans believe?
But boxo, luzandrob is just dealing with "the fullness of import" of this issue. Isn't that what you want all of us to do?
You can use vague language and evade the issue all you want, boxo, but this is what your side of the issue boils down to. You can side with this, or oppose it.
It seems you've made up your mind. You don't like being associated with outright hatred and prejudice when you argue your side of the issue? Then change your opinion on the issue. Otherwise, tough shit. You and Rod Dreher stand with the luzandrobs of the world. Wear it.
Nicely put, Pesto.
Can someone explain to me why wanting to create more families is anti-family?
Jesus spent a lot of time talking about the correct and acceptable formation for a family.
(checks bible)
Okay, he didn't. Not word one. The man just kept hanging with all the people who were looked down on by the establishment of the time, speaking up for the downtrodden, healing the ill, arguing for separation of church and state, and such liberal stuff. Doesn't mean he wasn't secretly a Club for Growth Republican.
"all 31 States that have voted this down unanimously"
In what world is 53% unanimous?
In Real America, dontchaknow?
Sigh. If we had an election, and turnout was at 20%, and every single vote was for Obama would you call that unanimous? I think you would. If not, you don't know what the word means. If 31 States have had elections and 31 have voted the same way it is unanimous, its just not 100% turnout.
Eww. Your comment deserves nothing more than that.
luzandrob,
Your statements/arguments against equal marriage are religious--and specific to certain types of religion as not all religions/religious people agree w/ your POV. The United States of America is not a theocracy. Indeed, the elevation of one type of religion (in this case anti-gay religious belief/groups) over and above another type (like my own who support marriage equality) is verboten. Why do you believe religious arguments should hold a lot of weight in discussions about a secular, state matter?
Ah, I love the smell of theocrat in the morning.
Like someone said upthread, it's time to take this to the courts.
Well luzandrob, I'm not sure you actually want to bring God into this. I mean, you remember how God told the lukewarm church he was going to spit them out of his mouth back in Revelation? If you really believe God wants you to bring all U.S. law into perfect harmony with His uncompromising standards of right and wrong (holiness is pretty uncompromising after all), you had better be working on the following:
1) Criminalization of divorce. God hates divorce, and Jesus said that people who get divorced and remarry are adulterors. Are there divorced people in your schools and churches, teaching children about divorce and trying to convince your children that it's a perfectly ok lifestyle? Well that's wrong. God said it is a sin, why should we give them the right to a divorce? Are you on God's side or do you not really care?
1) Shellfish. I mean, God did say that it's an abomination back in Leviticus. And Jesus came to fulfill the law, not destroy it. Not one jot and not one tittle, remember? Are there shrimp-eaters in your schools and churches....maybe in your own family? Expel the immoral brother!
2) God's punishment regime: Marital infidelty, death by stoning. This would certainly creath an 8th Amendment problem, but do you care about what God says or what the stupid Supreme Court and our great not-deist Founders have to say? That's what I thought. Death by stoning for homosexuals and unfaithful married couples.
3) Greed is clearly a sin. I suggest you lobby for criminal punishment of people who put their own profit above the interests of others.
4) Polygamy: Actually God doesn't seem to have taken much of a stand on this issue. You should lobby for the reversal of laws criminalizing polygamy.
5) The Geneva Convention: God told Saul to kill every man, woman, and child, even the animals of his defeated foes. Clearly this is in conflict with the provisions in the Geneva Conventions forbidding the targeting of civilians. Who are you going to listen to, God or man?
6) How to get into heaven: Remember what Jesus told his disciples about the people who get into heaven? They feed the hungry, visit people in prison, care for the sick, the widow and the orphan? The sheep care for the "least of these," while the goats ignore them? Since it's obviously more important to you that teh gays not redefine marriage than any of the things Jesus said when he described his followers, consider lobbying to put yourself in prison. Or maybe spend more time DOING WHAT JESUS SAID than getting involved in self-righteous taunting on the internet.
To paraphrase the Shawkshank Redemption: "Politics is the study of pressure and time...that's all it takes really."
Those elites are otherwise known as either elected representatives or a judiciary appointed by those so elected. Representatives are in place not to determine specific outcomes like marriage or what-not, but to walk the line between the anarchy of mob rule and the misrule of dictatorships.
In a REPUBLIC that is to say, a representative democracy, there is no pattern of levers, buttons, winches and pulleys or any other mechanistic process by which desired outcomes are reached. Neither are the representatives present to either dictate outcomes or perform some measure of proxy voting for a noble citizenry who are, somehow, better than the people they elect...
You know, I'm certain that if you counted up all the people who voted for the legislators in Maine who passed the Marriage Equality law in the first place, it'd total more than the number of people who voted against it in the "people's veto."
Especially in an off-year election.
Thats not a fair count though. You would have to count only the people who voted in favor of the legislators who voted in favor of the Marriage Equality law, then compare THAT to the Yes on One vote. To do otherwise is obfuscation.
Thanks for this nuanced, beautiful essay. Your ability to recognize the humanity in everyone, even those who are deeply prejudiced, while still holding firm to your belief in equality -- well, I think we should all strive for that.
Co-sign this 100% - I love it when Coates drops the science.
I gotta say though, if you vote against gay marriage, you're a bigot tried and true. You earned that shit with your vote. Now, do I think it's gonna help things calling out all these folks and saying bigot bigot bigot? No, not at all. But while I agree that these folks motivation is important to understand if we're all gonna walk down the same streets every day, I don't think it matters in the least. Most bigots act the way the do because they are afraid and impotent, and pissing on other people gets their dick hard. And yes, our beautiful country is full of assholes like this.
Anyway, Rod's and a lot of other's saying "there's something else going on here" strikes me as dense. Why does it have to be something other than bigotry? Just because you don't want to admit that your father or brother or friend or whomever is a bigot? I agree with Rod that calling everyone "evil" is not gonna help things - but do not accept the premise that being a bigot and being evil are even close to the same.
Anyway, the only thing happening IMO is that old angry white guys are slowing dying off and being replaced by their more open children. Each election proves this, and gay equality will eventually reach most of the states. It's just a question of time. And yesterday's votes did nothing to change that.
There is a lot of talk about a Bradley effect on gay marriage issues. But calling it a Bradley effect implies that people are lying about what they believe. More likely is that only hardcores go out to vote in any election that doesn't pick a President. And voting on gay marriage isn't enough to get a lot of otherwise (semi) supportive people to the polls. That seems to clearly be the case in Maine, where turnout was a big issue.
Even if this is a "Bradley Effect", that means the pro-gay marriage has already won the philosophical battle- people are feeling social pressure to at least pretend to support it, even if deep down they really don't. That's huge- it says momentum is on our side.
I used to have a (Lutheran) pastor who firmly believes that in his lifetime (he was born late 1970's) he will be persecuted for proclaiming God's hatred of the sin of homosexuality. Despite my disgust and exhaustion with the whole "persecuted Christian" mentality (in the U.S.? For reals?), he's probably right in the social sense- if he keeps that line, he will probably be as popular in the community as the local Klan leader.
Which is as it should be. The only thing worse than bigotry is bigotry in the name of Jesus Christ. Such a distortion of the man's teaching.
You are right about momentum being on our side. No doubt.
Put a philosophical or political spin on the issue if you want.
People's prejudice is their way of coping.
We are in a time of perpetual adolescence - people want to tell their adult children who they should fall in love with and marry. And they want their neighbors to reflect their choices.
Children don't want to leave home and their parents don't want them to either. This is how Americans cope with reality, today. They vote to reassure themselves - to belong to something. It makes them feel safe and "adult."
Pathetic
Constitutionally speaking, marriage is a fundamental right.
Constitutionally speaking, consensual sex between adults and one's sexual orientation (I'm thinking Lawrence v. Texas here - whatever the specific language was) are fundamental rights.
One plus one equals two. Gay marriage fits easily into this equation. Can someone that works in constitutional law get to work on this argument please?
Bigot is a pretty loaded word.
Can we somehow distinguish and say that some people are good people who have a particular opinion that is bigoted. Like you might say about someone, "he's a good man, but he drinks too much."
Some of the strongest opponents of gay marriage are probably very bigoted and will stay that way.
Many of the people in the middle are generally non-bigoted people who still have some bigoted beliefs. Maybe gay people make them a little uncomfortable, maybe they're worried about how to explain gay marriage to children. We need to engage these people - sit down and talk to them. Convince them one at a time.
pronk:
I am as a Catholic an opponent of legal recognition of same-sex marriage, though as an American not necessarily an opponent of the establishment of a useful alternative legal structure open to all, and I think your comment is charitable and sensible.
I'm not sure what the definition of "bigot" is supposed to be -- this reminds me of the "what is a racist" thread from some time ago -- but I fully accept that the religious beliefs that lead me to use the term "marriage" only for an opposite-sex couple will be perceived as bigotry by those who don't share those beliefs. M-W.com says "a person obstinately... devoted to his or her own opinions or prejudices," and I suppose I *am* obstinately devoted to my opinion that marriage is between a male and a female. If that be the definition, so be it. From pronk, however, I appreciate as always the distinction between the dehumanizing labeling of a person and the appropriate labeling of an action or a belief.
I won't drop any of my religious beliefs because of their unpopularity -- or even because of their supposed "bigoted" nature, however negative the connotation.
I'd rather see the state pull out of the marriage business entirely. Perhaps that is the only solution I could support in good conscience which would satisfy everyone's equal-protection concerns. Legal recognition of marriage is rather obviously a privilege granted by the state, and maybe it's so that marriage *inherently* violates equal protection.
I love how you say "as a Catholic" like it's some sort of defense of your prejudice, and then go on to argue about semantics as if there weren't real lives being affected here.
Plus the idea that you're complaining about being dehumanized while defending the dehumanization of your fellow citizens is disgusting. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
No one wants you to give up your bigoted beliefs because they are unpopular. We want you to do it because they are barbaric and un-Christian. But mostly because it would be the right thing to do.
Lastly, the "take my ball and go home" argument that maybe the state just shouldn't recognize "marriage" at all...this is the type of argument you hear when everyone knows the tide has turned and the game will soon be over. It's a great sign for those of us who think everyone should be treated equally under the law.
"As a Catholic" is not a defense, it is simply a succinct and truthful description of my reason, given so that you know where I am coming from. You may take it or you may leave it.
I second this
Really? Why? No one cares what you or Bearing call two people who are seeking legal recognition of their committment to each other who happen to be of the same gender. What makes both of you bigots is that through voting against equal marriage laws and working to deny these couples legal recognition of their commitment you are working to actively hurt them and their families, and to confirm their second class status in our country.
Bigotry is when your insistence it is all important how you feel about another person justifies hurting that person, particularly when, as here, you are part of a numerical majority acting to hurt the interest of a minority.
I love the fact that rather than extend legal recognition to all couples similarly situated, you would prefer that there be "no recognition by the state" of marriage. Do either you realize the major investment the state has in encouraging persons to form committed families, by imposing obligations as well as granting privileges? Funny how marriage is important enought to set it up with a host of legal rights and responsibilities when it concerns couples you are comfortable with and suddenly becomes unimportant when couples you dislike want to be included. Chat with a divorce attorney some time about what would happen if the break up of couples were left solely to the interests of whoever turned out to have the most power in the relationship, without the assistance of family law rules.
And your earlier point, that there is no deprivation of rights because gay people can marry people of the opposite gender just like straight people, how can you completely lack empathy? I mean empathy in the Sotomayor meaning of the word, where you actually try to put yourself in the shoes of another. If the world were run by the gays, and you were told you could marry anyone you wanted, just so long as they were of the same gender, would you feel you had been deprived of an important right and, perhaps, feel somewhat imposed on?
I am straight and I am continually disheartened by the willing of people in power, straights, whites, men, whoever in their unwillingness to give up even a little bit on their own prejudices and righteous theoretical arguments in the face of the actual harm caused to the less powerful.
bearing, I disagree with you vehemently on your view of what marriage is, but I appreciate you trying to find an acceptable solution to everyone.
i left the Catholic Church because I could not stand its exclusionary policies anymore. I cannot look my gay friends in the eye and say, well, your relationship is not good enough to be recognized as a marriage. i can't exclude them from the privilege that I had when i married my intended. Their relationships are as valid as mine is.
My one request to you is: sit down, and think through the whole issue. Think about what it would be like to walk in a gay person's shoes for a while. Think through what your life would be like without a societal and legal recognition of your relationship with the person you love. Then tell me again why you why you don;t think gays should call their relationship marriage.
I am a member of the Catholic Church not because of its policies, but because I believe Christ founded it. As such, I'm staying put: "to whom else shall [I] go?"
But I *am* thinking about this issue. I agree with the "thefoulness" above who said that my thought, that perhaps the state should pull out of marriage altogether, at least when coupled with the thoughts of others, is a sign that the tide is turning. Or rather, it's clear that the tide is turning, and I believe that it's high time to consider what sort of fair legal structure can be supported in good conscience, rather than considering only how to hold back the tide.
I am gay and I am a Catholic. You need not leave the Church over this issue. The Catholic Church is a big tent, it is not a static institution, and it does need people who can change it from within. There are masses where I live run by the Sisters of Mercy who minister to gays without judgement.
As a Jew living in a time when the Pope of the Catholic Church was formerly a soldier in the Nazi army, I think that it would be interesting if Catholics would not be allowed to get married on the basis of their being Catholics. Now it's everyone's choice whether they want to be Catholic, but if Catholics want to get married, then they better give up their right to be married. However, I do think that we should have a special law by which Catholics can engage in a "Catholic Partnership," in which Catholics have access to the same rights that people who are married get. I just don't think--call it the icky factor--that a church that imposed an Inquisition on people for hundreds of years should be allowed to get married.
Really read about the history of marriage and the family throughout humanity. While heterosexual marriage has been the custom, it has not been the only custom, and how that custom has been enacted has varied considerably from one society to another. Slavery was a custom; humanity outgrew it. The second we substitute any particular human group for homosexuals, we can see the issue in a different light.
Yes, this means building upon our understanding of civil rights and notions of marriage; the strongest example we have from Jesus was his ability to differentiate between the essence and letter of morality. Your horse is drowning on the Sabbath; don't just sit on your ass; get up and save the poor creature. You want to stone adulterers? Look to your own transgressions and work on them. He spoke in metaphors and parables. Custom allows the pharisees to use the temple as their own personal credit card company scheme to fleece the poor; throw the suckers out. The founder of the church denied Jesus three times; the Church has spent centuries denying his fundamental message ever since.
I'm not normally one to defend Joseph Ratzinger. I am a Roman Catholic who will soon be a former Roman Catholic, in large part because of the church's politicking against gays. I'm also a married heterosexual male by the way.
But I am, nevertheless, compelled to point out that he was not in the Nazi army. He was in the Hitler Youth. Yes, the Hitler Youth did mix a good degree of para-military flavor with their Boy Scout activities. But at the time that Razi was in the Hitler Youth, membership was not exactly voluntary.
@Nuada--thanks for the point of correction. Of course, my point was analogical, playing the stupid of one who generalizes about a particular group, and thus without thought dehumanizes them, giving myself legitimacy by my own group identity. And, as we have discussed earlier, I find it particularly galling how organized church members seem to disregard Jesus' whole approach to humanity and scripture, his profoundly radical and humane spirituality, while taking on the cloak of his mantle as if that alone conferred to them some moral high ground when history has so often proved otherwise.
The Catholic Church wasn't the only group in the world who were complicit with the holocaust. The best, most compassionate history professor (taught social history of the American west, and was the only history prof I had there that really spoke to the lives of people rather than simply giving me the accomplishments of generals and rulers and the rich folks who funded them) I had at Berkeley had, in fact, been a member of the German army in WW2.
Were it not for fortune of place and time, that is but for being in a place where I had the opportunity to learn about the causes and rationales of the the war and thus reject them, I could have just as easily been a soldier in the American army that perpetrated a massacre of a Vietnamese village. When asked why he did not as a result of his experience in WW2, like so many Berkeley profs at the time, condemn our presence in Viet Nam, Professor Barth told us that he felt that given his own experience, he did not feel it ethical to cast moral judgment on others. One can disagree of course, but if one was there to hear him say it, one got the sincerity and humility in the commentary.
I have little truck with the Hitler youth--my reaction to it is visceral, and it does not improve my opinion of the current Pope to find out he belonged to that organization rather than the army. However, my experience, the experience of my people whomever they are, doesn't give me license to treat others inhumanely; that was my point.
And while my uncle did not marry the love of his life because she was Catholic, a team of horses couldn't have kept me from my Scots-Irish Okie mystical Christian wife when we were first married. Marriage is a human right.
Bearing, here's the problem:
Whether or not you're a bigot is irrelevant to me.
If you vote against marriage equality, then in practical terms, it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re Fred Phelps or whether your best friend/co-worker/son/daughter/second cousin twice removed is gay. I don’t care if you’re a Catholic, Baptist, Mormon, Orthodox Jew, or Muslim. Because from where I sit, the result is the same: you believe that my relationship with the person I’ve been with for five years, the person I moved 3,000 miles to be with, the one who goes out at 3 AM to get ginger ale and crackers for me because I have stomach flu, the one who’s held my hand and been there while I’ve dealt with my mother’s dementia and Parkinson’s disease—you’re telling me that because that person is the same gender as I am, our relationship is less valid and less worthy of respect than that of a man and woman who met in Las Vegas, got drunk and decided to get married in front of an Elvis impersonator.
I don't care whether you did so because you believe that God ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman, or because you think the state shouldn't be involved with marriage, or because you're worried about what to tell your children, or because you think two men having sex is icky and gross. What matters to me is that you've taken a conscious, deliberate action to say that I, personally, do not deserve the same shot at being happy with the person I love that any straight person does. Your reasons for choosing to make my life more difficult and more painful are much less important to me than the fact that you've made that choice.
If you're standing on my neck, I'll worry about why you'd do something like that later. My first priority will be getting you to stop standing on my neck.
Faggot is a pretty loaded word.
Can we somehow distinguish and say that some people are good people who have a particular preference that is gay. Like you might say to someone, "He's a good man, but he likes good men too much."
Some of the strongest opponents of Government mandated sexual preference are very faggy and will stay that way. Many of the people in the middle are heterosexual people who experimented sexually in college, and still occasionally use gay porn. Maybe the rabid theocrats make them a little uncomfortable, maybe they're worried about having to explain why the government regulates their bedroom practices. We need to engage these people- sit down and talk to them. Convince them one at a time.
Thank you. This vote is another emotional blow to me. But your comments are the first to make me feel better. Right now I don't really need optimism or anger. A reminder that this is not a political battle as much as the centuries long fight against human nature, our tribal, petty, self-centered nature, is strangely comforting.
BTW, the right word to replace bigoted is probably self-centered. A year of conversations here in California has convinced me that people aren't so much the usual descriptions of the bigot: hateful or scared or mean. Many of them are, no doubt. But the majority are just self-centered. They are unwilling to endure any inconveniece, any discomfort, any worry, in order that a "them" may have fuller equality. That is why the anti-marriage equality groups focus on such clearly petty issues: for most, any reason will do. It is the exact same attitude, on a different scale, that allows us as a county to largely ignore civilian war casualties and generations of men locked in prison. Any sacrifice is too much.
I think with only 2-3% of the population being gay, most people just don't care about gay marriage. It doesn't affect them and it doesn't affect anyone they know. The anti-gay marriage campaign always says how gay marriage will affect non-gay people. I think it is time pro-gay marriage crowd changes their campaign strategy and message. Give a straight people a reason to be pro-gay marriage because right now I believe most straight people could care less.
Only 2-3%, you say? Can you cite your source, please?
How people marry in their church, mosque, synagogue or temple is their business and government rightly stays out of it. But no one should be defining and legislating for me who I can love and what kind of relationship I have with another consenting adult. Period. Can any anti-marriage equality advocates explain why the thousand federal rights available to and exercised by heterosexual couples should not be available to everyone? And by the way, the "freedom" of a gay person to marry an opposite sex person just for appearances isn't really a freedom if you're not doing what you want. Freedom exists in the exercise of a right, not just in the presentation of a hypothetical choice, which is no choice at all.
Isn't this rather obviously a straw man? (At least post-Lawrence.) Laws against legal recognition of anything have nothing to do with whom you can love or what kind of relationship you have; they have to do with who gets public, legal privileges.
Anti-sodomy laws and their ilk were another matter. But it's only reasonable here to appreciate the distinction between "this law wants to prevent me from loving whoever I want" and "this law wants to prevent me and my lover from access to public privileges that are routinely granted to other pairs of lovers."
But "what kind of relationship" is related to public, legal privileges. The kind of relationship is a legally recognized marriage.
Just because anti-sodomy laws were even more fundamentally invasive and discriminatory doesn't make same-sex marriage bans non-discriminatory.
And it is really a lot rougher to be on the receiving end of discrimination than on the end that's dishing it out, so I doubt MaddogPHL really cares much about your distinction, intellectually valid though it may be.
It's also a lot more dehumanizing to be denied a right belonging to millions of people than it is simply to be labeled a bigot. How about being labeled as a second-class citizen under the law?
Like being near your loved ones when they are dying?
That's a great example of a basic "fairness" problem that needs to be solved -- next-of-kin type arrangements. There's no rational reason why someone shouldn't be able to designate any next of kin person they want. And there are a whole slew of other privileges that, *if* they are available to people who can currently access them by being married, ought also to be available to other pairs of people through a similarly easy-to-obtain legal status, there being no rational reason to deny them fair access. I might not agree with you on the exact set of such privileges, but it's obvious that it's a nonzero set.
I can't support legal recognition of SSM because of what I believe about marriage, not because of what I believe about the human beings who understandably desire it. But that is not the end of the story, and it seems clear the status quo is going to change. I would like to see Catholic intellectuals, canon lawyers and theologians move on to discussing what fair legal structures we *can* support in good faith and without compromising our beliefs about marriage, rather than only insisting upon what we *can't* support.
It's fair to make that distinction, and if anti-sodomy laws were the only obstacle for people in gay relationships, we wouldn't need this discussion. But if civil recognition of marriage and the many legal financial benefits that derive from it constitute a significant, meaningful component of that relationship, then the denial of such recognition is a big deal. If people accept that the government has an interest in promoting marriage as a social good, why deny people the ability to form long-term economic and romantic partnerships (many of whom are raising families), just because they're gay? Why privilege only straight couples? Where's the justice in that?
So the question in my mind is what do we do about this? Rod has a point in 31 states voters have rejected the idea that people have the right to marry whomever they chose. In a sense the vote in Maine, as is the case with the vote over proposition 8 in California, calls into question a fundamental that we as Americans have about our country. As Americans we like to believe that we believe in democracy. We believe in our bones that “the people” are always on the side of truth, equality, and right, and that if they make a bad decision then they must have been deluded by “an interest.” However the truth is that various points in time our country has allowed popular prejudices to shape public policy. In the 1880’s the Chinese exclusion act bared immigration from China directly repealing the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. In the 1924 the National Origins act excluded immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. Of course, the most famous of the examples that springs to mind the institution of segregation and
Jim Crowism–most famously with the 1896 decision in Plessy but having precedents in law and custom before that—following the aftermath of civil war and reconstruction. Each of these measures, grounded in prejudice as they were, succeeded in large part because they had either large scale public support or the tacit acquiescence of a majority of people. Unfortunately, for true believers in the ability of popular will to be egalitarian and for democracy to foster equality of opportunity for all individuals the cards have often been stacked against the extension of rights to persons excluded.
The question after every battle in which, whether for the sake of votes, or prejudice, or inertia, rights have failed to be extended that one has to ask oneself is where exactly do we go from here? What does it mean for our idea of ourselves as Americans if the people of 31 states don’t want Jennifer to marry Jessica, or Sean to marry Steve? As a country does it mean that our ideals don’t matter anymore? Do we write off the members of 31 states as bigots? Do we rationalize and say to ourselves that the people who voted against gay marriage did so because they have been brainwashed? Or do we face the bullet head on and ask ourselves what the current debate over gay marriage teaches us about the validity of our assumptions?
The basic contest in American History has always been between our image of ourselves as apostles of justice, and our reality in which we have often failed to live up to our ideals. The results of the referendum in Maine once again bring to the forefront that quintessentially American debate between theory and practice, a debate which has existed since the founding of this nation. In our declaration we said that “All men were created equal”, but in our constitution we declared that some of our men were property and in addition only 3/5s as good as other men. After the civil war had freed the slaves the rights of freedom were effectively taken away for a century. Presently, in a country where we take it as a fundamental right that “My privacy ends where your nose begins so keep your nose out of my business” we deny a significant minority of people the right to live lives free from government interference, and the push towards government regulation of marriage is led by a party whose patron saint said “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem." Once again our idea of ourselves as Americans has failed miserably to live up to the practice of how we live our lives. The ever-present contradiction of American history rears its ugly head again. The question we have to ask ourselves is what are we going to do about it?
Sorn, good thoughts. I haven't said much on this thread because everyone else already said it for me. The fact that I and most of my friends and family strongly believe in gay marriage doesn't change the fact that so many people don't. So, where do we go from here is a really good question. To which I don't know the answer, but am thinking about this morning.
"our image of ourselves as apostles of justice"
This turn of phrase just delighted me.
Keep trying. Rome wasn't built in a day. I have lived long enough to tell most of you that the idea that gay marriage has been voted upon in 31 or whatever number of states, let alone enacted by legislatures in several, was not even a gleam in someone's eye during the so called radical sixties.
We teach open mindedness to our children; we broadcast to the world that falling in love with another human being and consummating that love in a life long commitment to each other, the community and state of which that couple is a part, and to whatever force in creation that couple deigns to find truth in are laudable and humane, whether that couple is of the same sex or different, and is no one nor no group's privilege to prohibit or define that by their own lights, whatever their own particular belief systems and/or tunnel vision might throw out there as a rationale.
Marriage is a human right, whether the individuals are gay or straight, or some combination thereof, whether the issue is one of biology or individual choice. Period. If you don't think so, forego the privilege yourself; otherwise, please stop inflicting me with your prejudices about the nature of marriage.
American history says that when you put the rights of any minority group to public referendum, that group loses. In the past, it has been the courts that dragged this nation, kicking and screaming, closer to its stated ideals, bit by bit. I don't see why it's going to be any different on the subject of gay rights.
I agree with all those who said that simply calling people bigots and lecturing them on the ills of bigotry will do nothing to improve the lives of those actually being harmed by that bigotry. This strategy should also be applied to racism. In one article, Ta-Nehisi writes about how a "do the right thing white people" discussion needs to evolve into a "this is good for America" discussion. As a white person (I don't presume to speak for all white people), one of the reasons why I find myself getting annoyed at anti-racists is because of their insistence that the only reason why I enjoy any comforts today is because of the suffering of others. They also act as if I am some deluded and ignorant person who can only be human by "deconstructing" my whiteness. By speaking of racism as a zero-sum game, you are GUARANTEED to turn white people off. After all, if whites prospered at the expense of blacks, many whites reason that if blacks prosper, it will be at their expense. In his now heralded speech on race, Obama mentioned the need to get beyond this zero-sum mentality. There are several good reasons why whites should help black people (make our overall population more productive, reduce our prisons and their costs, alleviate racial tension, make us more competitive on a global scale, etc) that don't have to involve a self-righteous lecture on white privilege and the horrors of whiteness. Perhaps I am just speaking for myself, but people tend to despise self-righteous people. Therefore, those seeking to abolish racism and homophobia need to appeal to the pragmatic ethos of whites/straight people and let them know how providing them with greater rights and opportunities will ultimately be mutually beneficial.
You make some really thoughtful points here. But I can't help but wonder if this approach -- detailing pragmatic, rational reasons why gay marriage is good for everyone -- could possibly win out (in the short term, at least) over the emotional, even fear-mongering approach (your children could become gay; they will teach your children about gay sex in kindergarten!) that some opponents use. But I agree that simply calling someone a bigot isn't likely to get anywhere, either. It seems like a good approach (and one that's being used and hopefully working, if slowly) would be to evoke empathy. I don't know how successful this ad was in Ireland, but I saw this a few weeks back on AdFreak and thought it was a great example of reaching out to straight people: http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2009/10/a-gaymarriage-ad-done-right-from-ireland.html
One moves to a strategy of calling bigots such when it becomes apparent that the battle will be multi-generational. In the 60's, the generational gap between those white adults who accepted segregation as natural and traditional and those who did not was substantial - and the generational change included directly charging the older ideology as bigoted, as anti-democratic, as archaic, and as unjust. I think that we are not a point where we are going to get 50% +1 by treating opposition to marriage rights for gays and lesbians as a reasonable position which merits respect and dialogue - that only perpetuates the lifespan of an attitude which needs to become as embarrassing to most people as explicitly racist language is.
Beautiful. Exactly. Thank you.
The big, red, foam TNC #1 hand is coming out for this post.
I said this upthread but fear it got lost:
--------
You know... government does not say what marriage is, really. Government can't really do anything about a philosophical definition like that. It's *society* that says what that means. Government in this case is merely taking up the question of whether it should provide homosexual couples with the same rights, protections, and responsibilities it provides to heterosexual couples who get married. From that perspective, I don't see how it's even a question: how can the government keep from doing its duty, providing equal protection under the law, to some of its citizens on the basis of their sexual orientation? They're gay human beings, citizens who pay taxes, and they're asking the government to ratify a contract between a pair of them, something which has far more social benefits (such as encouraging gays to enter into stable relationships with legal protections) than social costs (the alleged lack of freedom for those opposed to these gay unions or the very existence of homosexuality to express or act upon this opposition freely under the law).
Here's the thing.
31 states have rejected the proposals because we're finally getting on the ballot. The fact that many are rejected narrowly means we're almost there. It's an uphill battle, but the votes ARE HAPPENING. That's a big deal. Even if you lost, the fact that you got to vote for it has altered the landscape irreversibly.
We are doing something about it. Change is happening. It doesn't happen overnight, and while Maine is a setback, it's merely another step down a long road to equality.
Ultimately, as many people have already pointed out, this is going to have to be resolved through the courts in the same manner in which all the pre-Brown litigation set the legal landscape for Brown and Brown II. Although marriage has been defined by the Court in Loving and elsewhere as a fundamental right, DOMA defines that fundamental right as between and woman. This is where the proverbial rubber hits the road. There needs to be a series of lawsuits that can setup the Court to declare DOMA unconstitutional. Pick some cases to bring in the 9th Circuit (traditionally very liberal) and make your move. Honestly, once it gets to SCOTUS, I don't think it will be that hard to get a fifth vote.If the issue is properly framed as a violation of Equal Protection and Due Process (which it is), I think Kennedy has to come on board since he's usually been deferential to 14th Amendment issues, at least as compared to Scalia and Thomas, as well as Alito and Roberts to an extent.
Incidentally, people thought Thurgood Marshall was nuts for bringing Brown to the Supremes because they thought it would get decided the other way and make segregation virtually impregnable.
Also, it's not all that unreasonable for the Court to tilt left by 2012. Scalia isn't getting any younger, not that I'm wishing ill will on anyone. Just sayin'.
Scalia is 73, younger than Ginsburg (78) and Stevens (89). If you're waiting for someone on the conservative half of the court to leave, that's a pretty poor strategy for the near future. (Although, I hear Scalia likes to go hunting with Dick Cheney- that's a known health risk.)
Props 1 and 8, and similar campaigns, reinforce my desire to know who is signing petitions and who is funding campaigns. I don't want to patronize businesses seeking to harm me, and I need to know which individuals will be expunged from my life for seeking to harm me.
This genuinely puzzled me in the Maine kerfuffle, because whenever I sign a petition to put a person or prop on the ballot I had assumed that I was entering this into a public record--you have to establish that the 5000 signatures or whatever are genuine, and all.
Yeah, but Stevens will probably step down at the end of the term, and will be replaced by an Obama appointment, which I'm assuming will be someone liberal. Same with Ginsburg. It's like when Sotomayor replaced Souter, it's essentially a wash. Scalia is the oldest of the conservative justices, Roberts and Alito will likely be on the court for well over 20 years, as will Thomas. Scalia's the best bet for someone from that wing of the court to step down.
But you're right- hunting with Cheney is a health risk
I do realize that, but Scalia does to. Unless he suddenly drops dead or develops a devastating health condition, you better believe he's going to cling to the court until the next Republican makes it into office. For all his claims about "original intent", he seems to be easily the most politically motivated member of the court.
I do worry about Thomas, though. The two of them are such jurisprudence BFFs. Who's he going to sit with at lunch if Scalia leaves?
It seems that it would be useful to define exactly what is bigotry. My personal take would be that merely hating a person,their ideas, and/or everything they stand for is not enough. You would have to hate them for something about themselves that they cannot change. Their race for example. Now gays would pretty much fall in that category according to themselves. The majority of Americans who keep voting down these gay marriage laws would disagree on that point. And that point is very central indeed. The "I was born this way I can't help myself" defense was never much appreciated in this country in a court of law or at the polls.
This is a somewhat odd definition in that it makes religious bigotry incoherent. And I don't see why one would want to rule out that kind of bigotry.
But is the definition hating a person because of something they can't change about themselves, or hating a person because of something one believes people can't change about themselves.
If it is the former then you are not establishing that opposition to gay marriage is not bigoted but rather that it is both ignorant and bigoted.
And I am still puzzled by this. Do you believe that you could change your sexuality even to the degree that you could change your religion? I think I could choice to be a Unitarian, but I don't think I could choose to be homosexual. Is what is going on in your head really conistentent with your choosing to be homosexual (assuming that you are not which seems a safe assumption).
Why are posters here, and the media generally, ignorong the fact that these results were driven by Maine's overwhelming number of black churches?
Eat a Dick!! The African American population in Maine is less than 3%!!!! Are you serious?
No, NYCnotDC, stuntvehicle is not serious at all. Go back and read TNC's previous posts about black churches and Prop 8 in CA, then find a dictionary and look up the word, "satire". Hopefully you will then see the humor in this and take back your menu suggestion.
While I got the satire, let's not be hasty about menu suggestions. After all, there are some culinary traditions that make various uses of genitalia and gonads. In the area of Minnesota I grew up in, one of the local American Legions had a monthly Rocky Mountain Oyster feed. Although I never went--nor have I eaten said oysters--I often came home to find a bowl of salt water and bull testicles in the refrigerator (Dad was a veterinarian, and sometimes he'd save the results of a mass castration for my uncle, who seemed to like the things.)
Did you seriously just offer a gay-related insult to someone for being racist in a thread about anti-SSM voting?
Marriage demagoguery is as old as the institution itself; queer folk are just the latest targets. Cure the cancer of sexism, and homophobia will have no teeth with which to bite. As a married queer Christian in Massachusetts, I am even more thankful today that the leaders in the Massachusetts legislature had the foresight, the will, and the ability to keep same-sex marriage off the ballot. When all we really have to fight fear-mongers is that queer people are normal human beings too, we're not kicking anyone's ass with that argument. Human rights should NEVER be brought to a popular vote. My mantra today is "The arc of history bends towards justice. Lather. Rinse. Repeat."
Just as there are no bigots in America, and no racists "anywhere. ever." (i do love that one), there are no xenophobes in Australia. Witness this column from a rightwing opinionator, and related commentary, in the mainstream Australian press (published by Rupert's competition, in this case): http://www.nationaltimes.com.au/opinion/politics/migration-the-true-story-20091101-hrjq.html
Maybe we do need to rethink the rhetorical impact of words like racist and bigot, much as we don't want to.
The Maine legislature might be somewhat enlightened, but as a native of the Pine Tree State, I can promise you that homophobia, ignorance and apathy is alive and well here as is a certain degree of bigotry and prejudice. I was disappointed, but hardly surprised by the outcome of yesterday's election. Take a ride around this so-called independent minded state and you will find that this notion is a myth that needs dispelling. Mainers are no more independent in their thinking than folks are all across this land. Perhaps they were in the past before the arrival of the 24 hour news cycle, right-wing talk radio, Fox's bloviating demagogues like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity etal, but I am sorry to say that Mainers are not immune to believing in the tripe that passes for news, nor are they without fear and prejudice. Historically, homosexuals have always been an easy target. The hope is that the next generation will be more tolerant and accepting of gender differences. Signs are that this is already becoming a reality, but only time will tell. Meanwhile, the struggle will continue and one can only hope that those who believe in human rights and dignity for all will not give up this good fight. As another poster wrote, back in the radical 60's,the notion of SSM wasn't even a consideration. Thanks, TNC for your thoughts on this all too painful issue.
Take a ride around this so-called independent minded state and you will find that this notion is a myth that needs dispelling. Mainers are no more independent in their thinking than folks are all across this land.
Oh, do I understand this.
I moved to North Dakota this year. (for a job) When I got here, I picked up a map at one of the local visitors' centers, and there was the governor touting how North Dakotan's consistently come out on top of surveys for the "nicest" people. That niceness is a cover for some very real and very virulent hatred. A very large chunk of the population of this state absolutely despises the Native American population here (the largest non-white group, at around 5 1/2%) It just so happens that the three counties with the highest poverty rates (between 22-28%) are all on reservation land, but folk here get LIVID about the amount of stuff "they" supposedly get for free from the government. I had students who were stunned to read Julie Schor's work on consumption and teens, and particularly her comparative survey between mostly African-American students and white suburban students. She found that, among her respondents, white suburbanite youth tended to be more materialistic and have lower opinions of their parents. These "nice" people were stunned that black folks actually had family values. One of my white students was recently in my office telling me about being called a "nigger lover" by another student for discussing her friends from home. I got called "homo" walking down the street the first week of classes. I've also received tales from other new faculty of the sorts of blatant racism they've been encountering.
The "niceness" here is little more than a cover for "keep those other people away from us." These are some of the most hateful people I've ever encountered.
I'm stubborn enough (and the academic market is bad enough) that I'm not going anywhere for a while. But damn, these folks are already making me crazy.
Preach
At some point, any person's humanity makes its case to the rest of us (and for the rest of us).
At some point, the rest of us acknowledge that humanity and .....(wait for it) .....vote....and contact our representatives and converse here and with our own ... groups... and....finally...figure out...that it costs more to be....ignorant and frightened than it does to honor the best aspirations of the things we claim to value most and wish to live by -
This will all come up again, won't it ??
At some point, it will settle or we will destroy each other - because it isn't natural to stand on someone's head and expect tranquility.
I will not try to plum the inner depths of Rod Dreher's mind for a second time in the very same calendar year. To quote Frank White, "there are some things I just don't do".
I will make a cursorily assessment of his view here.
Rod Dreher strikes me as a guy very comfortable with his ability to discern right from wrong. Even if he doesn't look upon himself as a "good" person, I bet he thinks that he is a very moral person. It's largely from the big security blanket he wraps around himself called Natural Law. He's used to looking down upon liberals judged to be reprobates. Recently, he's found himself looking down upon conservatives as well. That is something he finds more uncomfortable to do.
At first I thought he was saying, "gays and straight gay rights supporters, stop trying for marriage equality, America has spoken".
Then I saw something different. He once expressed relief at living in Texas, where it is legal to shoot anyone who trespasses on your property if you think that they mean you harm. This statement came in the context of the Prop 8 issue in California, where websites featured search engines so you could see the areas where those who donated money to the "Yes on 8" campaign lived. (It didn't give exact address, it was only broken down to the point of zip codes.)
Rod just wants to do his moralizing without anyone giving him any sort of grief over it. He thinks of himself as a moral person, expressing a proper view. He basically just doesn't want anyone calling him names. He is a public person who gets paid to take public stances on controversial issues. But because he believes that he means well, he doesn't want to face any sort of consequences, even if it just means that some people write him unpleasant e-mails.
I call to mind the spirit of Mr. Coates' great point once again. Not all white racists are to the level of your average KKK member. Not all homophobics are to the level of Fred Phelps' crowd either. It does not make them any more right or "good".
Still, it is a little unsettling to see Rod make an argument that just because a majority of people voted for a particular concept, it should be regarded as morally defendable. Our country has a relatively short history, too short to be so ignorant of it.
Yes, the result in Maine is discouraging. But talking about bias, given commenters' exclusive focus on Maine's result, might we conclude that TNC's readers share an East Coast bias? I jest - I think...
Shift your eyes -- and hopes -- to the West, because Washington State's gay rights ballot issue, Referendum 71, is still alive. The tally is close and counting votes will take another week, but the closeness of the vote is already an improvement over what happened to an anti-gay discrimination ballot measure in 1997, which lost by a 60/40 margin. Check out Danny Westneat's article in the Seattle Times:
"The take-away: The gay-rights movement has won over to its side 10 to 12 percent of this state in the past dozen years.
That's about 1 percent per year. That may not seem like much. But sweeping political change occurs when the center 5 or 10 percent shifts to the other side."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2010196272_danny04.html
From Rod's commenters:
"I still take comfort in knowing that sooner or later Gay and Straight couples in the U.S. will be treated equally.
-----------------------------------------------------------
They already are.
Nothing stops a man who claims to be homosexual from marrying a woman who also claims to be homosexual.
Nothing stops a woman who claimed to be homosexual from marrying a man who also claims to be homosexual.
Heterosexuals can't do anything those who claim to be homosexual can't."
This is disgusting. That anyone can say something like this and actually consider the people opposing such an oppressive view to be the true bigots just shows how capable humans are of self-delusion.
Sure, you can get married, just deny everything that you are. I mean, how is this any different from the government simply assigning everyone a marriage partner?
"But i don't want to marry him, I want to marry him."
"Too bad!"
Do y'all remember the work of Konrad Lorenz on imprinting among geese? Before Lorenz it was assumed that little chicks "instinctively" followed their mothers, but then Lorenz showed that chicks reliably followed the first suitable stimulus during a critical period after birth. In nature this is almost always momma goose. For Lorenz, it was sometimes (tragically) his boots. Tragic, because the chicks never could break free from those boots.
Let's just say, for the sake of crazy argument, that sexual preference is "imprinted" in roughly the same way as Lorenz' chicks imprint on their mother. The details differ, of course. But the rough outline might be the same.
Let's say further that I would not like my child to grow up gay, perhaps for roughly the same reason that a greylag goose would not like its gosling to imprint on Lorenz' boot.
Is it possible that I will resonate with the "what of the children?" argument out of Maine re: the normalization of gay relationships, not due to bigotism or racism or thisism or thatism, but rather due to...
...pragmatism?
(If the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail...)
You know, if I lived in Maine, I would have voted in support of the full equal status of gay marriage, as civil rights trump just about all other concerns. But I would have done so with some trepidation, as the father of young children, in consideration of what the full normalization of the gay experience might mean for imprinting on my tots. An incremental increase in the likelihood of my kids imprinting "gay" does not justify preventing others achieving full equal status.
However, if one of my peers drew a different conclusion, I would not fire back that he or she was a "hate-filled bigot". By resorting to such language, one effectively argues that homosexuality, unlike Lorenz' chicks mother-following behavior, has no circumstantial component to it.
Among other things, that's a pretty strange conclusion for this community to draw, given its priorities. As you well know, there are many many whites out there who believe that the struggles of minorities in the inner city are reflective of inherent flaws in the character of said minorities, that imprinting plays no role in the difficulties therein.
On this thread, we find that opposition to full normal status for gays is tantamount to hate-filled bigotry, even where children are concerned, therefore disregarding the importance of imprinting in the development of sexual preference.
Does this community really want to dispense with the concept of imprinting?
Not for geese.
But human sexuality is innate, like eye colour or handedness; one is born a certain way. If sexual orientation were learned from the surrounding culture, there would be no gay/lesbian people my age. I had never heard of either til I was in college, and would certainly never have gotten an inkling from my schoolroom, tv, cinema or radio. Seems to me the persistence of gay/lesbian identity in the face of constant cultural condemnation and discouragement is a good argument for its naturalness.
If you think your children are going to be taught sexual behaviour in the classroom, American schools have gotten an awful lot more interesting since my day. Of course, even in my day, the lesson that all humans are heterosexual didn't take for a substantial number of people.
msb,
FWIW, the implication of Lorenz/Tinbergen is not that homosexuality is "learned" or "a choice", any more than those chicks' attachment to the supernormal, unhelpful stimuli was a choice. Surely those chicks weren't 'choosing' attachment to the supernormal stimuli, but said attachment was nevertheless permanent. There's just a critical window in which such attachment forms, much like there is a critical window for humans in which sexual preference identity forms.
I've yet to encounter a convincing explanation for why sexual preference develops in a substantially different manner in humans.
Petel, when did your heterosexual preference form, and based on what stimuli?
Dear PeteL,
I don't understand your answer. The chicks responded to Lorenz, rather than geese, because he was intervening with them. How is this not learning?
I think the word "preference" is determining your view of causes. Try "orientation" and see where it leads you. It leads me to laugh when people talk darkly of "the homosexual agenda"; for me, they might just as well talk about the blue-eyed or right-handed agendas.
I have to go now, but I'll check in tomorrow to see what the community members in the western hemisphere have to add.
msb, on the off chance you read this: my whole point is that the chicks' behavior is contingent on certain critical experiences early in life. If a behavior as essential to survival as following momma is not hard-wired in a simple organism like a chick, what gives you any certainty that a second-order behavior like your sexual preference is hard-wired in your much more nuanced brain?
To AJH's question, of course I don't know when my heterosexuality was imprinted, nor does anyone else, nor even do I know for certain that imprinting explains the origin of sexual preference. Imprinting does a far better explanatory job than the utterly silly "gene for homosexuality" that is the primary alternative, but there is simply no ethical or practical way to design an experiment to prove either explanation correct.
But proof is not my burden here. I am reacting to TNC's final paragraph, which suggested that my apparent fear of imprinting stimuli for my children is merely a defense mechanism to hide my hatred of gays, apparently I am suffering from the "ism" du jour and my feelings are not based on any reasonable motive to protect my child.
As an aside, for me this is a real negative of this blog, and why I can only take it in limited doses. I love TNC's honesty, and I love the openness of this community, but frankly, if I were him, I would use my bully pulpit to throw out accusations of racism, bigotry or prejudice far less frequently than he does. This is not to say that such issues don't exist or are not widespread.
Rather, it is to say that the danger of overreaching is real. And you can see from this very thread, that once you start accusing the masses of bigotry or prejudice or whatever, the thread becomes like the Lord of the Flies, with the people lining up to throw stones at whomever is deemed to be the bigot or racist Simon of the day (ironic, isn't it?)
This becomes especially painful to witness when it turns out that the bigot of the day is, in fact, not quite a bigot but instead motivated by some previously-unforeseen but nevertheless reasonable intent.
For what its worth.
"I'll check in tomorrow" is a little more than an "off chance", but here I am.
What I heard you do is fear that your children might learn to be gay/lesbian; I can't describe imprinting in any other terms. And I hear you applying the open anger of many commenters above to TNC's post, in which I found his usual precision and generosity. I agree with him and many other commenters: prejudice is part of being human and we must continually combat it in ourselves and society.
I'll finish with a comparison. When I look at history, I see lots of people opposing freedom for others (women, people of different colours, etc.). They may have thought they were acting for truly good and objective reasons, but they were choosing to preserve their own privilege on the backs of other people and using remarkable similar arguments in each case. This is wrong, and bigotry is not too strong a name for it. (I can think of worse.) After this realization, I had to wonder how much these were objective reasons and how much excuses for the defense of privilege.
I'm not the first or the last to say this, TNC, but this is an amazing piece of writing. Thanks again.
Mr. Coates (or TNC) the clarity you bring to your articles is always amazing. I love what you have to say. And I also love what so many of the bloggers on here say! Right on, friends! I couldn't read all the comments and would love to have responded to so many that I did read(wow, what a long thread!)but basically I think of it as the idea that in America, as long as ANY of us have fewer rights than any others we are not free. We still have to fight. Bigotry is a powerful force, and is entrenched in the conservative mindset. To all my gay brothers and sisters, I wish you peace, and the strength to keep carrying on. Keep up the great work, TNC!
Petel, "(If the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail...)"
In your case, your double-headed hammer is these twin notions of "preference" and "imprinting" with regard to human sexuality. You dismiss any genetic link to sexuality as "silly," though you don't say why you think this is silly. Is it silly because you just plain don't agree with it, because it doesn't fit with your view of humanity, because you don't want to travel that particular slippery slope? There has been plenty of scientific work performed and published that indicates that, like handed-ness, sexuality is genetically determined, which makes a hell of a lot more sense than "imprinting" or "preference." The vast majority of queer people in the world are "imprinted" by heterosexuals, we move through a world that assumes heterosexuality, that is saturated with heterosexual propaganda. If "imprinting" were at play, there simply wouldn't be any queer people like me, because I am not exaggerating when I say that I didn't meet any queer people until I was well into my college years, but I had homosexual feelings beginning at age 6.
So try, if you will, to view it as an immutable characteristic, like handedness. In handedness, there is a spectrum of traits, as it is with sexuality. The vast majority of the people are right-handed (just as the vast majority of people are heterosexual.) There's a small percentage of people who are ambidextrous (just as there is a small percentage of people who are bisexual.) There's a small percentage of people who are left-handed (just as there is a small percentage of people who are homosexual.) People are spread across the spectrum of handedness, between the extremes of strongly right-handed and strongly left-handed, with the vast majority of people being on the right-handed end of the spectrum. Same with sexuality, with the vast majority on the heterosexual end of the spectrum.
You say the burden of proof isn't on you, but you are the one dismissing genetics out of hand, and persisting on using the clinically outmoded term "preference" to refer to sexuality. And you are the one saying that your fear of your children either being imprinted on gay people or becoming gay themselves does not make you homophobic, which is literally the fear of or prejudice against homosexuals. If your fear isn't of the homophobic variety, what is it?
Here's my story, as one of countless illustrations for why sexual identity is doubtlessly not genetically encoded: I am a guy that's empirically a heterosexual, with a sexual "resume" that is probably a bit thinner than average, but only involving women. Happily married, couple of awesome kids, and there's a 99.9%+ chance that I will die having never experienced anything more intimate with another male than an awkward hug.
However, when I was in high school years ago, I had a brief, bizarre and untoward crush on another guy - not a particularly attractive guy mind you - but the type of crush that was certainly different from the proverbial man crush. I never spoke to the person in high school; I never spoke about the person in high school; I'm certain he would not remember who I was.
But to our discussion: do I have the gene for "exclusively-heterosexual-but-for-the-brief-incongruous-obsession-with-that-one-relatively-unattractive-guy-in-high-school?" If I did, how would that gene propagate in the population (to say nothing of how any gene coding for gay intent would propagate in a population)? Further, if I have that gene, then some number of my close relatives must also have that gene, which could create an interesting experience at Thanksgiving if I try to root out which of my relatives had a brief, unacted-upon, same sex interest in an unattractive male that shared material characteristics with my own version. Full disclosure: not sure how you would bring up such a topic. But I digress.
Look, of course my exclusive-heterosexuality-with-oneoff-random-interest-in-odd-high-school guy is not contained in my genetic code. Nor is yours or anyone else's. Genes just don't work that way. I was born with a particular inclination toward sexuality, which ended up mapping through circumstance on heterosexuality, but within life's rich pageant, having a curious side effect leading to a difficult-to-explain high school intrigue. Everyone's story plays out roughly the same (though the particulars are obviously different).
In fact, all sorts of behaviors are encoded by experience. Many are easy to isolate (unlike sexuality), and at this point, many are beyond dispute. A classic example is language development. My young child and I listen to Japanese CDs when driving in the car. My child can hear all phonemes in the Japanese language; I physically can not. If we drove around long enough, my child could learn to speak Japanese without an accent; I physically never could, because I can never incorporate the Japanese-only phonemes my brain cannot process.
I was born with the undifferentiated capacity to hear all potential phonemes, then my brain coded the phonemes associated with the English language. My inability to hear those Japanese-only phonemes is not a "lifestyle choice" or a "preference", I can no more hear those Japanese phonemes than I can sprout wings and fly to the moon.
If we are comfortable with imprinting in the context of language development - among many other developmental domains - what is so offensive about imprinting in the context of development of one's sexual identity?
One other thing - if you accept my premise that your peculiar sexual profile, different from every other human's peculiar sexual profile, is not contained in your genetic code (which otherwise, incongruously, no other human would ever have had given your sexual uniqueness), then there are significant implications that cut in several directions.
I will grant, as I did several posts ago, that the actual mechanism of imprinting is much too uncertain to restrict another's civil rights by preventing gays from marrying. Even if one could draw a straight line from the normalization of gay marriage to imprinting sexual profiles, I still favor legalization. But this doesn't mean that imprinting is a non-concern, or that those who worry about it are definitionally haters.
Consider: Andrew Sullivan is a famous openly-gay commenter, who runs a generally pretty interesting blog, on which he has spoken at great length about the tremendous psychic toll that homosexuality has taken on his life. Today he posted a letter from an unidentified, anonymous individual claiming that we shouldn't worry about childrens' exposure to homosexual matters since "Kids will always do what they do when it comes time to experiment".
So if we know that imprinting determines sexual identity, even if we don't understand the mechanism, and Sullivan informs us that homosexuality has been an avenue to suffering in his life, and I as a parent wish to spare my own child suffering, I should nevertheless set aside my concerns because some random, unidentified, anonymous person that Sullivan cherry-picks asserts there's nothing to be concerned about?
Y'all are probably going to have to put me over with the haters I guess. They're not a particularly appealing crowd, but I don't have much confidence in the other group...
Fixed that or you.