The Long Road

In responding to my post about a legal victory for same-sex couples being a necessary but not sufficient first step towards broad cultural equality, Andrew Sullivan writes,

An argument that rests on a simple resort to the legal status quo is not a very strong one. It’s perfectly possible (and logically necessary) to craft a compelling and winning case for marriage equality in the absence of its legality in any particular state. That’s especially true once the principle has been established somewhere in America. I think the progress we’ve made in such a short space of time leads to the opposite conclusion: that this is an area which can be won culturally before it is won legally.

So I agree with Andrew that people who premis their argument on the legal status quo aren’t presenting a very strong argument, but, look, that won’t stop them from doing it. As a proponent of marriage equality I might be willing to acknowledge that there are stronger and weaker oppositional arguments, but I hold the views that I do because at the end of the day I believe that are no strong arguments against marriage equality that aren’t eminently out weighed by arguments in its favour.

As mentioned further down the post and, actually, the primary thrust of the post, is my belief that marriage equality proponents must go about making cultural arguments not just against the discrimination against same-sex marriage, but also articulating why legalizing marriages presents a significant boon to society. I think those arguments can be made convincingly and I have on several occasions attempted to make them myself. But I think we need to recognize something about discussions that happen on a cultural plain, especially insofar as those discussion involve discrimination: they are extremely difficult conversations to have.

People whose discrimination is rooted in cultural reasoning are generaly fairly adverse to debating those reasons. There is the pervasive sense that people ought to be allowed to adhere to whatever cultural norms and customs they so choose, without exposure to recrimination. So if you choose to then go ahead and push the issue, the likely outcome is that your interlocutor will respond with defensiveness. People hold tightly to the cultural signposts that help to provide some maning to their lives and are loathe to give them up, even when it has become eveident that those signposts are out dated and poining in an unhelpful direction. So folks will tend to use whatever is within their reach to defend those held beleifs, preferably the more disposable arguments and reasoning first.

At the end of the day, the ball with regards to cultural equality for same-sex marriage lies largely in opponents courts. I say this by way of recognizing that you can’t really force people to alter their cultural beliefs. People may choose to hide those beliefs from the light of day in response to overwhelming pressure, but history shows us that this kind of victory really only gives rise to a more nuanced and insidious forms of discrimination. No, as Freddie warns, people cannot be coerced into accepting same-sex couples, they have to be persuaded. The choice, like it or not, is up to them. So my argument is that the fewer obstacles you have standing in the way of that genuine engagement — and the more you recognize the necessity for that engagement — the better equipped you are to realize your overall goal of full-bodied equality for same-sex marriages.

I also don’t quibble with Andrew around the strides that marriage equality proponents have made in recent decades, but I think it is important that we bear a realistic picture of the work in front of us in mind. While great strides have been made in race relations, culminating in the election of the first African-American President, no one serious about securing broad equality for traditionally marginalized minorities would suggest that the work is done. This more than a century after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation and several decades after the zenith of the civil rights movement. Great strides, yes, but the work of securing broad cultural equality is long, arduous, and pervasively tricky.

So I celebrate with Andrew how far marriage equality and gay rights activists have come, but am conversely humbled by the realization that in this work the hardest and most difficult push always comes at the end.

Tagged as: Andrew Sullivan, cultural equality, engagement, legal rights, persuasion