Jason,
I don’t agree with Eve Tushnet (more on that below) and don’t consider myself a conservative (no more on that, I hope, ever), but, yes, I am cheering for the Eve Tushnet profile in The New York Times. I’m cheering because I think it’s great journalism. (Disclosure: The reporter, Mark Oppenheimer, invited me a couple times to help lead a unit of a polisci seminar that he teaches.) Eve’s perspective is not well-known to the average Times reader. As a proudly gay, celibate, anti-same-sex-marriage Catholic, she is not even supposed to exist. Yet Oppenheimer writes about her sympathetically and in a way that takes her seriously. By doing so, he has introduced his readers to new ways of thinking about Catholicism, same-sex marriage and being gay. Bravo New York Times!
As for Eve’s arguments against same-sex marriage, I find them flawed. But, Jason, surely you recognize that your post only confirms Eve’s points? Essentially, you argue that your love and affection for your husband is so important and meaningful to you that you consider your relationship with him a marriage (and wish to have others, including the government bureaucracy, do the same.) But Eve argues that marriage should not be based on love and affection. On the contrary, she believes that a married couple should commit for life even when love or affection runs out (or even if they were never there to begin with). You believe in the very “individualized” theory of marriage that Eve rejects. Thus, you add creedance her view that SSM is not compatible with sound marriage norms.
Now, you may say, as you said already (in effect) in your post: “So what? We already have an ‘individualized’ institution of marriage. All I am saying is that gay couples should be able to participate in that institution on the same terms as straights.”
You are quite correct that marriage has become much more individualized, to the point that there is little difference these days between the norms under-girding straight marriages and those under-girding long-term same-sex relationships. But that does not mean that the case against SSM evaporates. On the contrary, the very malleability of marriage norms strengthens it. SSM marriage advocates are in one way the real conservatives in the marriage debate. That is, they approve and indeed champion a status quo that sees marriage as no more than a mechanism for signaling of one’s love for another adult. Marriage traditionalists, by contrast, are the radicals, since they wish to change marriage norms so as to downplay the important of love and affection. In their view, since marriage norms could change — including, perhaps, in a traditionalist direction — then the current popularity of “individualized” marriage is no reason to take it for granted. Precisely because the anti-SSM marriage side believes that a revolution in marriage norms is possible, they fight against any reactionary move to ratify or “lock in” current marriage norms.
Nor are they wrong to see SSM as such a reactionary move. Marriage traditionalists wish to restore such norms as that young people should abstain from sex before marriage, marry earlier in life, and when they do marry, have children sooner and more frequently. We know from our experience of SSM so far, however, that, of the total population of gays, only a small fraction of them are interested in getting married at all. It is quite far-fetched to think that large numbers of gays would make a lifetime of sexual and reproductive decisions in anticipation of getting and staying married. To be sure, it may be equally far-fetched to think that straights will begin taking traditional marriage norms seriously. But again, whether you support SSM marriage or not depends in part on how malleable you think marriage norms are. If you’re a marriage traditionalist who thinks that marriage norms can be reformed, the last thing you wish to do is to introduce populations of unmarrieds who are unlikely ever be persuaded to accept traditional marriage norms.
I find Eve’s arguments flawed precisely, unlike her, I do not believe marriage norms can be reformed. Eve may be right that there ought to be different norms for straights and gays. But that doesn’t mean that gay and straight marriage norms can’t all fit under the same rubric “marriage.” Are the marriage norms of, say, Sikhs much affected by the marriage norms of, say, Hollywood celebrities? I doubt it. Likewise, straight marriage norms are not likely to be affected much by the marriage norms of gays. Bare government recognition of some relationships as “marriages” just does not shape attitudes all that much. Hence, Eve’s argument that we should keep the gay and straight cultures separate does not actually amount to an argument against government-recognized SSM. Her premise is (or may be) true but is also irrelevant.
Tim Kowal 
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{ 66 comments }
I did find the journalism of the piece very good. Did you imagine otherwise?
But as to Eve Tushnet being someone who shouldn’t even exist, nonsense. She is precisely what the Catholic Church says every gay or lesbian person ought to be. And many are. The fact that she’s the only one I know of who isn’t a priest or a nun makes her a bit interesting, but saying that she shouldn’t exist at all is doubtful, given the strong authority of the Church for so many.
Now here’s where you somewhat lose me, though. Since when did declaring one’s love become a reason to mistrust a marriage? What kind of backwards reasoning is that?
I’m going to go around asking, and the next time some straight guy tells me he loves his wife, I’m going to say, “Well then, you don’t have a real marriage. You’ve got one of those newfangled love marriages, just like the homosexuals. It’ll never last, you know.”
I’ll probably get punched for that, and I’ll deserve it. But I’d have proved a point.
No one ever — ever — condemns straight marriages for being based on love. Only the gay ones get faulted on such frankly bizarre grounds. The love marriage only became a problem at all when gay people wanted to get married, and when some pretext had to be found to prevent them.
Further, there are some seriously dodgy things going on here with the multiple definitions of love. I trust that you know these definitions already, so try to keep them in mind. In what way, exactly, am I proving Tushnet’s point? By saying that my marriage incorporates love (both physical and non- )? But all marriages do this. Or is it by saying that I look forward to the time when the physical component of my relationship is only a fond memory? Was that wrong of me to say? (What if I’d said the opposite, and declared that I looked forward to dumping my husband for a much younger new partner?)
Or did I err by talking about all that we’ve built together (which includes, by the way, raising a child)?
The presence of eros doesn’t drive out all the other kinds of love or even cheapen them. If it did, virtually no straight marriages would be acceptable either.
And tell me, do conservative spouses really sit around and say to one another, “I’m so glad our relationship isn’t based on love, but on the grim compulsion of childrearing?” It would be terribly sad, if I could believe it.
@Jason Kuznicki, For the record, I pretty much agree with you and Austin, particularly that love marriage has become the norm and that ship has sailed. However, I do want to note that, while nobody condemns married couples for being in love, when you talk about the romantic aspect of your marriage, you do end up hearing a bunch of crap to the effect that you’re still in the “honeymoon phase” and that it won’t be a “real marriage” until you’ve weathered a period of time in which you wanted to kill each other! Claire and I have been together for eight years and are still told frequently by older married couples that we’re not “really married” yet. It’s annoying.
It’s even worse when you’re engaged because then friggin’ everyone feels compelled to tell you that your love for each other is starry-eyed and unrealistic and that you don’t really know what tremendous work marriage is- as if you’ve never heard tell that adult relationships require effort before!
So, the weird nonsense about gays overemphasizing love and that being a problem in itself might be related to the nonsense the rest of us get when we decide we want to get married about how “reality” hasn’t sunk in yet.
Finally, I should point out that our straight friends weren’t totally discouraging when Claire and I decided to get married; but our gay friends, many of whom are older and married, were the only ones we knew who were 100% encouraging. So I’ve often suspected that the enthusiasm among gays about marriage might well strengthen the institution culturally, which is sort of what Austin’s saying anyway.
@Jason Kuznicki,
David’s recent post on the Clintons is quite to the point here.
Austin, I hear what you’re saying about the ship of individualized marriage having sailed and, certainly, there are plenty of examples- like Tipper and Al- that suggest that people do take it for granted now that marriages should be rooted in romantic love and end when that ends.
However, I’d sort of lean more towards what you’re saying about several different things fitting under the heading of “marriage”. I know plenty of older married couples who have longstanding partnerships that aren’t particularly romantic and plenty of older married couples- like my in-laws- who are still over the moon about each other. While my wife and I plan to be like my in-laws- and not like my parents!- we’re still planning to stay together if we’re more like old business partners in thirty years time. I would agree with you, however, that society probably won’t go back to that being the norm, however.
Interestingly, I know a lot of older married gay couples here in Ontario, and I have to say that I can think of one such couple that serves as a sort of pillar of the local gay community, who quite likely will stay together for just that reason, even if they lose affection.
Two cheers for the piece as journalism then!
As for Eve Tushnet’s existence, I’m pretty sure that it does come as a surprise to many people. In the worldview of the average Times reader, it’s not possible to be both proudly gay and proudly Catholic Trad. Hell, in any almost any worldview, it’s hard to fathom. That Eve is so unusual is of course why she’s a good subject for a religion column.
On to the more important points. Needless to say, marriage traditionalists do not consider a *marriage* suspect because the couple happens to love each other. What they do think is that set of marriage *norms* is suspect if they elevate love over other goods. Perhaps I misunderstood your post, but I took it that reason you so eloquently expressed your love for your husband is that you deemed this love to be a good reason for recognizing your relationship as a marriage. In other words, I thought you were in part offering an argument for SSM (marriage should be open to all couples who are in love in some relevantly deep way; SS couples love each other in just this way; therefore they should be permitted to express their love through marriage). To a marriage traditionalist, the popularity of this argument, especially among SSM advocates, just goes to proves why SSM is a bad idea.
As for love, yes, there are different kinds. I think many on all sides of the SSM question will recognize that eros is a pretty bad basis for marriage. But the case for marriage traditionalism goes even further — it says that not even affection (storge) or friendship (philia) is a sufficient basis for marriage. These things can call run out. Again, no marriage traditionalist would deny that it’s good to have all these types of love in a marriage. But what sets the marriage traditionalist apart is that he doesn’t think any of these is sufficient (and perhaps not even necessary). I realize that it sounds pretty grim (though I don’t think that it has to be). As I said, I don’t see a return a traditional marriage norms to be in the offing.
@Austin Bramwell,
I hadn’t thought of myself as offering a defense of my love for my husband. I thought I was offering a defense of our sex life, in response to Tushnet’s plea for chastity.
That’s why I said what I did about still loving my husband even if the physical component were to fade away. Even if that were to happen, I still wouldn’t regret having had it. I wouldn’t look back and feel regret for it, I don’t believe.
What I remain puzzled about is this — if love is the wrong reason to be in marriage, what is the right one? Children? A marriage with children and with no love is hardly a formula for success. We would call more successful, I think, a lifelong marriage based on both physical and spiritual love, even if the couple never managed to have kids. Perhaps some traditionalists might have said otherwise, but even they would have admitted that love was important, too.
@Jason Kuznicki, I did misunderstand then. I assumed you were making a pro-SSM argument in addition to an anti-celibacy argument — but now that I read your post again in light of your correction, I see that you weren’t addressing SSM.
As for what’s a good reason to get married, I believe that the answer for the marriage traditionalist is indeed children. Marriage existed to solve dynastic problems and that’s about it.
How then to justify marriage being open to couples who can’t reproduce? I don’t think marriage traditionalism makes sense unless it admits that marriage is only open to all as a concession to those who can’t control themselves. I’m reminded of Ben Franklin’s advice to a young man burning with lust — get yourself a wife (not a mistress).
Again, I freely admit that marriage traditionalism, properly understood, sounds crazy these todays. Yet, though you seem to claim that marriage was about love even before SSM was invented, I think marriage traditionalism was pretty much taken for granted until relevatively recently. Hence such quaint customs as the loveless shotgun wedding. If you wanted to have sex, you were supposed to get married.
@Austin Bramwell,
Marriage is one of those complex social phenomena, I think, with multiple causes. Ideologues of all stripes would prefer that such phenomena each had only one cause, but I think they’re bound to be disappointed. Yes, there are shotgun weddings, but there are some very love-affirming passages (indeed, whole books) in the Bible about marriage and about how a good marriage incorporates love. (Does it begin with love? That’s a more complicated question, and marriages beginning in love alone seem a relatively recent phenomenon. But growing to love someone can still produce genuine love, can it not?)
Also, Ben Franklin’s advice is sound, mutatis mutandis, for gays and lesbians too. Commit. Perhaps you won’t be perfect at it. Commit anyway. There are disciplines that are good for the soul even if they aren’t perfectly followed.
Sorry to keep intruding into this discussion. I have to ask though, for either of you, doesn’t she talk about the danger of “reshaping marriage” to become something like individualized love marriage? And aren’t both of you basically saying that this ship has already sailed? I definitely think, in essence, that traditionalists are hoping to return to a norm that has already changed. But does Eve Tushnet really recognize the radicalism of that project? Or does she maybe just assume that straight marriages are still as arduous and self-abnegating as the traditional model she champions? I’m leaning towards the former interpretation based on her use of the word “reshaping”.
@Rufus F., Or, I mean, I’m leaning towards the second interpretation.
@Rufus F.,
It’s not only that the ship has already sailed (long about the eighteenth century if you ask me), but also that having a marriage based on love hasn’t been a cause of reproach for roughly that long, either. Until, that is, someone had to gin up a reason to exclude gays and lesbians. Then, oh boy, love was suddenly a problem again.
@Jason Kuznicki, Not to mention there’s now an international anthem for love marriage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TojTlYNNm9w
@Jason Kuznicki, You’re right that by the early 18thC in Britain we start to see affection as one of the acknowledged elements of choosing a marriage partner in both the upper “classes” and the middling sort. Girls weren’t condemned for rejecting suitors their parents had tentatively arranged for them, and it wasn’t rare for a couple to find each other rather than have parents responsible for selecting a marriage partner. So cultural expectations that compatibility, which includes love/romance, is a key ingredient in marriage are pretty well fixed. It would take some radical socio-economic catastrophes to shift those cultural patterns back.
That being said, the big Trad push-back against “love-and-marriage-goes-together-like-a-horse-and-carriage” has been the growing cultural acceptance of divorce since the 60s, and the recognition that it’s often in the best interest of the children to put an end to everyone’s misery. The Trads had to play down the love/romance element of marriage in order to justify their insistence that “you promised till death do you part, so suck it up!” Of course, the Catholic Church lives in the modern world, so it twists itself in knots with annulments, etc. But they fighting a rear-guard action to uphold the principle that love’s got nothin’ to do with it.
Of course, the increase in divorce tracks the Pill (our conversation in the other thread — it all comes back to the Pill n’est pas). Women’s newly acquired ability to control reproduction had such significant ripple effects on social institutions and expectations, especially the acceptance that women should be able to maintain themselves economically apart from a husband. So I’d say it was the shift in sexual mores that accompanied Women’s Lib that occasioned the initial hysteria about traditional families, non-procreative sex, chastity, adultery, and the essential elements for marriage.
Then a few decades later, along came homosexuals who wanted to live openly and, G-d forbid, even as socially accepted committed couples. By then, the hysteria machine was already well and truly oiled. And that’s before anyone mentioned the goal of SSM.
@Rufus F., Good question Rufus. I’d have to read her stuff more carefully, but I suspect that she does not recognize — or, more likely, strategically downplays — the radicalism of her position, which, I think, requires a thoroughgoing reform of marriage culture.
In law school I met an evangelical who was coming to understand that he was gay. 15 years later I ran into him and he’s still single. He seemed lonely.
In school, he was a happy, warm, empathetic, friendly (if overly religious for my taste) young man, who would have made a great husband and father. But his desire to stay within his family and his faith apparently outweighed his sexuality.
His choice, but still I think he was wrong. But more to the point, his church was wrong to force him to make that choice.
I’ve heard of Eve before, read about her when I was on Marriagedebate.org back when that was where Maggie kicked about debating. Then the debate petered out and it became Marriagehectoring.org but that’s a different subject.
Eve’s position is one that I have no difficulty with for her as a strongly catholic gay woman. Perhaps if any of the Christian faiths had embraced her message when homosexuality first began to arise along with the growth of the modern metropolis things would have turned out differently. After, however, they drove the nascent gays from their congregations with torches and pitchforks the religious discovered to their astonishment that rather than just curl up and vanish homosexuals simply abandoned the faith that had terrorized them and built a new worldview with either a different understanding of the divine or indifference to the same. It was only after their wholesale effort to annihilate gays (through social pressure and legal force rather than lethal force in most cases to their very small credit) failed that suddenly the religious right discovered that maybe their initial cruelty had been ill advised.
In any event while I respect Eve’s position I find that it has virtually no force beyond the borders of her person and to a lesser degree the social circles of her church. The society in which we live is a largely secular one (legally since the founding of the republic and socially embraced more recently). Her arguments are based on assumptions not only that the existence of the divine is assured but also that the preferred will of the divine towards material human affairs exists and the knowledge of that will is known to mortal men. This is lunacy. Millions died on sword and spear across Europe over just these assumptions of knowledge of the will of the divine until the enlightenment offered the compromise of all religions agreeing to disagree. Marriage, more over, predates every faith that currently tromps the turf of our world. Its meaning and use has evolved right along with the people who used it. It was only in the end of Roman rule that the Catholics took over administrating civil marriage.
Why then should those who do not share the belief of the Catholics et all be forced by our society to adhere to their doctrine that ultimately boils down to the assertion that “God says so”? Maggie especially has spent a lot of time trying franticly to dig up justifications for the ban that can withstand secular examination without resorting to an appeal to faith. In general I haven’t heard her muster much that withstands any careful scrutiny. Usually it’s vague warnings of Christian oppression or the mysterious collapse of “traditional marriage” (itself a strain of the institution that is only a few centuries old). Those that use actual appeals to science use either cherry picked figures from social scientists who are typically appalled at the selective misuse of their research or calls on the pseudo-science from charlatans like Exodus or other faith based “reasoning” institutes.
Maybe if Maggie or Eve can dredge up some kind of secular reason why our society should continue to make all the demands of homosexuals that it does heterosexuals but deny them support for their committed relationships I’ll reconsider. I’ve been reading and listening to Maggie and Eve for years now (and gosh it’s hard to not hate Maggie for all the things she invents) and they haven’t yet.
@North,
> Her arguments are based on assumptions
> not only that the existence of the divine
> is assured but also that the preferred will
> of the divine towards material human
> affairs exists and the knowledge of that
> will is known to mortal men. This is lunacy.
The first two aren’t lunacy, they’re just not subject to empirical, rational evaluation (either confirmatory or otherwise). The last doesn’t quite strike me as outright lunacy, but there’s obviously quite a lot of evidence that, in the last ten thousand years, numbers of groups of people have claimed this and have turned out to be wrong, or changed their minds, so while I can’t say it’s outright lunacy I do take all people who claim that they are the ones who understand the revealed truth to be… suspect.
In any case, none of those three assumptions can be challenged in an objectively measurable fashion; they’re simply not questions that can be resolved by rational empiricism. You either a priori believe they are true, or you don’t. Neither belief is necessarily the result of lunacy.
Not that I disagree in any way with the overall premise of your post (Why then should those who do not share the belief of the Catholics et all be forced by our society to adhere to their doctrine that ultimately boils down to the assertion that “God says so”? ), I fully agree with you.
@Pat Cahalan, Yes, to clarify, the accusation of lunacy I levelled rather broadly in my comment was more towards the idea of taking steps down the path of returning to the mad wars prior to the enlightenment where people killed each other over empirically unprovable points of theology.
> Marriage traditionalists, by contrast, are the radicals,
> since they wish to change marriage norms so as to
> downplay the important of love and affection.
Yeah, I don’t buy this one smidgen of what iota of one bit. The idea that marriage has always been one thing is just not a historically justifiable position.
There’s been marriages of love, convenience, marriages as a political construct, different classes of marriage in some societies, polygamy, monogamy, you name it.
To even suggest that there is a “traditional marriage” pretty much requires you to start playing the “No True Scotsman” game.
@Pat Cahalan, Pat – by “marriage traditionalist” I mean those who wish to see upheld the marriage norms I listed in my post (abstinence, early marriage, etc). Marriage traditionalists do not necessarily deny that marriage norms varied greatly. On the contrary, as I argued, they necessarily assume that marriage norms can change dramatically.
@Austin Bramwell, I’m confused. How do you square” marriage norms varied greatly” with “I think marriage traditionalism was pretty much taken for granted until relevatively recently.”
@Austin Bramwell,
> By “marriage traditionalist” I mean those who
> wish to see upheld the marriage norms I listed
> in my post
Yeah, I get that, but that’s the wrong label to hang on the crowd in question. Gives them a legitimacy to which they don’t rightly have a claim, iff’n ya ask me.
I’ll repeat myself, why not?
When we talk about marriage, we talk about two different things in the same breath.
There’s Marriage in the Eyes of God.
There’s Marriage in the Eyes of The State.
We all know what Marriage in the Eyes of The State is. It’s accountant stuff, lawyer stuff, and manila folder stuff.
When it comes to the Mind of God, I posit that The State doesn’t have the competence to accurately translate for our behalf.
Maybe homosexuals *CAN’T* “really” be married (and by “really”, I mean “In The Eyes Of God”). This doesn’t really help us when it comes to issues of inheritance or hospital visitation or home ownership or what have you.
There are things that are Caesar’s and things that are God’s. Manila folder stuff is Caesar’s.
And, for the life of me, I don’t understand why Christians haven’t become crushingly depressed defending denial of hospital visitation rights yet. Maybe it’s because they understand the Mind of God and I don’t. Sure.
@Jaybird,
I think part of it is because they don’t see those as endemic problems. Yes, an anecdote of someone rejecting visitation rights to a gay partner could be regarded as objectionable to many people, but this is “an example of bad administration”, not a need for overturning law (yes, there’s a little cognitive dissonance going on here).
The problem, to my way of thinking, is that people don’t differentiate between acknowledging and affirming, or positive rights and negative rights. They believe that acknowledging someone else’s positive right is the same as affirming that positive right.
If I acknowledge you have a right to some action that I believe is morally objectionable, that’s the same as morally affirming that its a good thing.
It’s not, but most True Believers don’t get that.
If The State allows gay marriage, then we’re saying that Gays are Moral Citizens, because the instrumentation of the State is here to affirm morality, not ethical co-existence.
The whole “establishment” thing usually flies right over the top of their collective heads… or they recognize it and try to dance around it by an appeal to tradition.
You are quite correct that marriage has become much more individualized, to the point that there is little difference these days between the norms under-girding straight marriages and those under-girding long-term same-sex relationships. But that does not mean that the case against SSM evaporates. On the contrary, the very malleability of marriage norms strengthens it. SSM marriage advocates are in one way the real conservatives in the marriage debate. That is, they approve and indeed champion a status quo that sees marriage as no more than a mechanism for signaling of one’s love for another adult.
This seems quite false. If marriage was just a ‘signal’ for love then why not advocate something other than SSM? Even in these days of ‘easy divorce’ marriage is a serious legal committment. Whether or not you’re gay, entering a marriage without paying too close attention to what you are doing can cost you quite a bit. You can have your ‘spouse’ wipe you out financially, even make you pay alimony to you for the rest of your life.
If all you want to do is ‘signal love’ then getting matching T-shirts or a special pin would be a lot less expensive and leave you open to a lot fewer potential legal headaches. It seems to me the promiscious argument against SSM is fundamentally flawed in that even with liberal divorce laws, marriage is not an institution that’s very friendly to non-serious lifetime committments. SSM advocates are arguing for gay relationships to be more serious, more committed and more lifelong rather than less.
I suspect the more honest reason for some of the opposition to SSM is that some SSM will turn out like this. If being gay can be thought of as simply a string of sexual encounters, they can be divided from the actual person. Like someone who gets a bit too drunk once or twice a year, it can be explained away as a ‘deviation’ from a life that otherwise be wholesome and good. But a life long gay couple represents not just a series of encounters but a fundamental committment that is more than just sex. I think some conservatives would like it if SSM were legalized, a few bed hopping gays tried it and got burned by con-artist partners who take their money and force them to pay ‘support’ and then it dies out entirely as a viable social institution. I think the fear is, though, that the exact opposite will happen. Some will get married and some will have marriages that are every bit as long and supportive as same sex marriages.
@Boonton, I’m not sure what you say is inconsistent with the proposition that the prevelant thoery of marriage today is that it is a public signal of long-term commitment. As you note, marriage is only a “serious legal commitment” for those who don’t pay attention to what they’re doing. Anyone who doesn’t want it to be a serious legal commitment can contract out of major support of financial obligations and still get married. Conversely, you don’t need to get married to take on seriously legal commitments to support a lover financially, provide for her at death, etc. The only thing the status “marriage” adds to a long-term romantic relationship is official public recognition.
I couldn’t agree more, however, that it’s ridiculous that people are even arguing over such a thing.
Austin,
I’m not quite following what you’re saying. By getting married you are incurring a host of potential legal problems. For example, you are responsible for all your spouse’s debts provided they were necessary for his/her well being. If you marry your one night stand from Las Vegas and don’t bother doing anything about it for a year or two you may be surprised to discover hospital bills coming to your name. Likewise if you work but take a non-working lover and then decide to marry him or her you may end up paying alimony.
Likewise if you marry your one night stand and one day she finds herself homeless you may discover a court ordering you to provide for her needs even without a divorce. Marriage is not just a ‘public recognition’ of a long term relationship. It’s a contract that carries with it a lot of responsibilities you should be aware of.
Yes you can somewhat protect yourself with things like prenuptial commitments, but that just proves the point. Marriage is a serious commitment if you have to jump through hoops to make it a less serious one.
If you think that marriage licenses are just a quaint way for local governments to make a $30 fee for you to tell the world you’re going steady, watch out! Your spouse’s divorce lawyer will be more than happy to give you some expensive lessons in divorce law.
This makes this position kind of perplexing for me. So those opposed to SSM want to make marriage more solid, more real, more lifelong. That’s fine, then why not allow gays to marry as well. They will have to have the same marriage law that straights do. The only argument I see out there is the one about kids, marriage is to support people having kids.
But this doesn’t seem to go very far.
1. People who clearly can’t or shouldn’t have kids are allowed to marry and few would want the state to ban such marriages outright.
2. As a culture, we seem to smile on certain marriages that are highly unlikely to produce kids (say two 70 year olds who find themselves late in life) and frown upon ones that are highly likely to produce kids (say a 69 year old widower who marries a 21 yr old cocktail waitress).
3. No one has provided a convincing mechanism by which childless marriages of gays in any way inhibit straight marriages from having kids.
4. At the end of the day, the primary goal of marriage is mutual support. Two are better than one (but three or more adds a lot of complications). If marriages were about kids mostly we wouldn’t really care about it being lifelong. After the kids are grown up why do we care of their parents stay married? Raising kids are a big part of life but still only a part that lasts two or three decades at most (if all goes well). We like marriage because it helps make sure people are taken care of. Older couples lean on each other. Yes often one is left behind and the extended family may have to step in to help but two divorced older people may mean you have two parents who could help each other not. The gist is that even childless marriages help support children in that they help ensure individuals do not become a burden on couples with children. Grandma is able to help the couple with children out because her partner helps support her as opposed to the couple with children having to also take care of grandma.
So now what is the argument against SSM again?
@Boonton, Gays have new age hippie vibrations in them. If they’re allowed in past the protective membrane of marriage their loose vibes will rapidly infect America’s innocent straight couples prompting an explosion of tie died shirts and lawlessness. Divorce will rocket up to almost 50% *cough* I mean divorce will rocket up to almost 100%, cats will live with dogs, scorpions will rain from the sky and cows will give birth to three headed life insurance salesmen.
Maggie has, through years of careful study, formulated the process as: Gays get state sanction of their partnerships-> ??Marriage turns gay?? -> Straight Couples break up (turn gay?) -> Disaster and children starving on the street.
I hope that clarifies things for you.
@North, I was more thinking that worse things would happen.
Gays would become… square.
@Jaybird, Wearing Dockers and such?
@Cascadian, Worse. Some of them even start owning homes and dull, unfashionable home furnishings.
@Simon K, Oh it’s happening: Our bland, microfiber sectional sofa gets delivered today to our new house. Jason suggested we paint a giant Hello Kitty in the living room, just to resist exactly the vibe-loss Simon predicts, but I nixed that. “What would the neighbors say?!?”
@Boegiboe, Agreed Boegiboe, my Husband and I are living a completely conventional life right now. We even bought a condo.
And that is what the social right fears more than anything. If gays just become normal, if they disperse into the population and live openly next door like regular people instead of in segregated ghettos then the social right will have failed. It’s no wonder they get so frantic over the issue. Same sex marriage threatens them with the one thing they fear above all else; proof of their impotence.
@Cascadian, I was more thinking of the equivalent of Tyler Perry.
@Jaybird, Yeah Jaybird. Between the two options, gays turning square or marriage falling down in a heap of rubble I think the SSM opponents would prefer the latter. Then at least they could shout “I told you so”!
@North, that’s the difference between the Socons and the Fiscons.
Socons see a gay, happily married couple and think “LEVITICUS”.
Fiscons see a gay, happily married couple and think “DINKS”.
@Jaybird, Yeah well I am a bit of a fiscon myself so of course we get along well.
@Boonton, Boonton — the point is that the legal status “marriage” has nothing necessarily to do whatever default contractual rules govern various different kinds of couples. I think you are arguing that there should be a standard default contractual rules available to same sex couples — just as there are standard default rules available in every state to opposite sex couples. You believe that a better set of default rules would facilitate the long-term commitments of SS couples. I don’t disagree at all. But what does this have to with marriage? The goal of providing an efficient set of default rules can be achieved without reference to the concept of “marriage.” That is to say, the debate over what standard contractual terms should be available to different kinds of relationships is distinct from the debate over what kinds of couples are entitled to have a government bureacracy issue a paper to them deeming them to be “married.” The latter is nothing more than a signal of public approval. The marriage debate is ultimately a question of free speech: Which groups are entitled to use the soft coercive powers of government to impose their preferred views of sexual morality on others?
I elaborated on these points at greater length last year for Frum Forum — see here: http://www.frumforum.com/gay-marriage-a-way-out-part-5
@Austin Bramwell, “Which groups are entitled to use the soft coercive powers of government to impose their preferred views of sexual morality on others?”
Perhaps this is because I lack empathy (or so Maribou tells me) but I have no, absolutely no, understanding how people in Canada getting married gaily is an imposition of their preferred views of sexual morality on me.
Nor do I see how Iowa allowing people to get married gaily is an imposition of their sexual morality on me.
Indeed, if Denver allowed people to get married gaily, I don’t know how in the flying heck that would be an imposition of sexual morality on me.
(LET’S BRING IT HOME!!!)
If the folks across the street got married gaily, I don’t see how that would be an imposition of sexual morality on me.
As such, I don’t see how it’s an imposition on you.
Please explain it to me.
@Jaybird, SS couples are already 100% free in every state to hold themselves out as married. Indeed, this right is already protected by the First Amendment. The fight is not over the right to get married but over which relationships government bureaucracies will official designate as “marriages.” This is an exercise in soft coercion in the same way that the government making Columbus Day a holiday is an exercise in soft coersion. That the goverment recognizes SSMs does not mean you have to like SSM any more than that there’s a Columbus Day means that you have to like Christopher Columbus. However, what’s upsetting to both opponents of SSM and those who dislike Christopher Columbus is that the government is officially disapproving of their views.
@Austin Bramwell, you say “SS couples are already 100% free in every state to hold themselves out as married” and I, absolutely, agree!
They can say lots of stuff! That’s the wonderful thing about the First Amendment. You can say whatever the heck you want.
The problem comes when we deal with stuff like saying “no, you can’t visit that person, his parents say that you’re Satan incarnate and since they are his closest living relatives, they get to keep you from visiting.”
The problem is that straight people don’t have to say “heck with you, I’m his wife!” because the hospital type kinda person would never have said “they are his closest living relatives” because, as it says in Genesis 24 “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
When we deal with homosexuals, however, their closest living relatives are, in fact, their parents.
Why?
Because the First Amendment allows hospital administrators to say “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, his parents are his closest living relatives.”
This is something that would not be covered by the First Amendment in the case of a Dude/Chick marriage.
The problem here is *NOT* the First Amendment, mind.
It’s the thin-skinned bigots who want to point out that they have a right to not be offended by such things as homosexuals visiting each other in the hospital and want to use the power of the state to prevent the free association of others.
I, personally, think that such folks need to purchase themselves some aloe vera plants and learn to apply it.
It won’t make their skin thicker, mind… but it will help reduce the appearance of scars.
@Jaybird, Hospital visitation rights are another issue that can be dealt with entirely separately from marriage. You may be saying in addition that even if SS couples have a legal right to hospital visitation, that won’t stop them from being given a hard time by hospital personnel or relatives. Hence we need government recognized SSM in order to re-educate and reform people with recalcitrant views. That’s fine, but also rather disturbingly illiberal.
@Austin Bramwell, “disturbingly illiberal” was the name of my band in high school.
I more take the viewpoint that shielding couples from the excesses of the state is something that the government ought not be indulging in at all… and go from there to saying “well, maybe if we give SSM to the homos, we’ll finally destroy the institution!!!!” and cackle like, I imagine, Stalin did when he heard of the starvation deaths of millions of Kulaks.
@Austin Bramwell, Why bother reforming the recalcitrant when laughing and mocking are so much fun? I know, having the power to make them second class citizens would be so much better.
@Austin Bramwell,
Is it “soft coercion” when a gay couple is forcibly split up by immigration?
No, it’s not soft coercion. It’s real, actual coercion. The same is true when gays are presented long, complicated, and costly legal paperwork to fill out, only in some cases to barely approach the same treatment that straight couples can get from the state. And with or without paperwork, the state will constantly interfere in their lives in ways I strongly doubt you’ve given much thought.
The list hardly ends with hospital visits and immigration. The equal disposition of property, child custody, the ability to sue for wrongful death — in some or all states, each of these can only be had by marriage, and not by any other means. That’s coercion.
By contrast, knowing that the government uses the word “marriage” falls squarely into the “hurt feelings” category, right next to Muslims who are upset over silly cartoons. I can’t say I have any sympathy.
@Jason Kuznicki,
By contrast, knowing that the government uses the word “marriage” falls squarely into the “hurt feelings” category, right next to Muslims who are upset over silly cartoons. I can’t say I have any sympathy.
I probably have less sympathy than that. “Soft coercion” is nothing more than a dolled-up excuse to appease to the Borkean sensibilities of democratic majorities who believe they have the power to rule over others simply because they are a majority. The “second best” option for libertarians isn’t one at all since our concept of liberty does not rest on the alleged rights of democratic majorities not to be offended. The only other person I have heard mention this concept is Kay Hymowitz, a conservative attempting to persaude us of her point of view by bringing the argument on libertarian grounds.
Following the soft coercion logic, when the Supreme Court struck down the same-sex sodomy law in Lawrence v Texas, libertarians should not have been pleased to see the Court strike down an arbitrarily law targeted towards gays because arbitrary laws targeted towards gays keeps the rights of people who believe they have the power to pass arbitrarily laws geared towards those they don’t like from being violated.
It was such a powerful legal argument that the State of Texas never bothered to make it.
@Austin Bramwell, I agree with your linked piece, that government should get out of the marriage business. However, I fail to see how gay marriage forces a set of moral beliefs. Or, back to your linked piece, how freeing marriage from government is going to save the socons civil rights headaches.
@Austin Bramwell, I read all your submissions at Frumforum Austin but, respectfully, it didn’t seem very plausible, innovative or new. It read to me as merely the standard libertarian cop-out (which is philosophically consistent and politically impossible) tarted up with a bunch of the tired old tropes and half truths that Ghallagher and the social cons peddle.
@North, You’re right that it was (mostly) not original and that the proposal is probably not politically feasible. However, I am continually suprised by the conceptual confusions over SSM — particularly the belief of many libertarians that not only is SSM compatible with liberianism but is positively mandated by it. Correctly understood, SSM is in fact incompatible with liberty and equality.
@Austin Bramwell, Wouldn’t a more accurate statement be that government involvement in marriage in general (straight or gay) is incompatible with liberty and equality as libertarians see it?
Certainly if government is going to be involved in marriage (which it is and likely always will be) then it’s perfectly libertarian to assert that government should recognize both straight and gay marriages.
@North, There is actually a “second-best” libertarian argument against SSM, if we must have government-recognized marriage at all: If we’re going to have government recognized marriage, then it should have the minimum coercive impact. Since the majority still oppose SSM, there is a greater degree of soft coercion if SSM is recognized, as more people will feel compelled to change their minds so as not to transgress officially approved norms than if SSM is not recognized.
@Austin Bramwell, So, minorities of any stripe can be discriminated against if they cause the majority discomfort?
@Cascadian, Government recognition of any type of marriage (to the exclusion of other possible types) is inherently discriminatory. I am saying that as long as the government is going to discriminate by approving some definition of marriage or other, it should adopt the definition that will cause the least interference with liberty. Hence, the government should *reject* the movement for government recognized SSM, which will cause more soft coercion than if the man-woman definition is left as is.
@Austin Bramwell, and, in the meantime, let’s keep the status quo.
FOREVER.
@Austin Bramwell, I don’t think the loss of liberty by those wishing to create families is any where near that of those that get their panties in a twist that Adam and Steve are having a go at it. Your basic argument that socons are being in someway coerced by the actions of others is bogus. I would love to be able to apply the same reasoning to religious folks residing in secular cities.
@Cascadian, The bare inability to obtain a certain sheet of paper from the government in way impinges on one’s freedom to form a family. Further, the “liberty” to obtain a marriage certificate is not an equal liberty that can be enjoyed on equal terms with others.
@Jaybird. The “second best” libertarian argument against SSM does not say that the status quo should be preserved forever. On the contrary, if the majority approved of SSM, then the “second best” argument would say that, if the government must endorse some relationships as “marriages,” then the government should recognize SSM.
@Austin Bramwell, Sorry, I couldn’t make sense of that. Care to unpack or rephrase?
@Austin Bramwell, Austin, that’s an odd second best argument. Now I’m no libertarian but my understanding of the preferences of libertarian theory is that in order of preference libertarians wish to:
1: Keep government out of issue A.
2: If government cannot be kept out of issue A then the benefit/cost of governments involvement in issue A should be as small as possible and spread uniformly over the maximal number of people possible (thus all citizens are marginally the same as if the government was not involved at all).
The idea of restricting the benefit to as small a group of people as possible flies in the face of my (admittedly limited) understanding of libertarian thought.
@Austin Bramwell, the “second best” argument, in practice, says that we ought to keep the status quo because “you people” can’t “really” get married and, besides, you have a right to live in a society where they aren’t “really” married.
In the absence of evidence of two gay guys getting married infringing on your rights (do you have even a *SINGLE* concrete example?), I’m looking at evidence that you saying “You people can’t get married, not really” is infringing on theirs and I’m coming up with concrete examples.
As such, I’ve come to the conclusion that their rights are being infringed while your rights are not… and you’re actively fighting to maintain some sort of status quo rather than just saying “let’s stop infringing their rights.”
Those people getting married does not pick your pocket.
It does not break your leg.
Meanwhile, them getting married allows them inheritance rights recognized by the government, god knows how many little dinky civil rights, and, of course, hospital visitation.
For the record, I fully support your right to say that they aren’t “really” married.
Austin
Boonton — the point is that the legal status “marriage” has nothing necessarily to do whatever default contractual rules govern various different kinds of couples. I think you are arguing that there should be a standard default contractual rules available to same sex couples — just as there are standard default rules available in every state to opposite sex couples.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Clearly marriage is a set of ‘default contractural rules’ that govern couples just as ‘corporation law’ is a particular set of rules that govern a joint business. Like corporation the rules provide some flexibility for people to ‘customize’ their situation but only to a degree. And no I don’t think you can simply detach all the contractual rules of marriage to create ‘building blocks’ that people can use to craft an infinite array of customized ‘relationship contracts’.
You believe that a better set of default rules would facilitate the long-term commitments of SS couples. I don’t disagree at all. But what does this have to with marriage?
Not quite, I believe the current set of default marriage rules do facilitate long term commitments by all couples that enter it. Could they be made stronger? Possibly but I’m not really concerned with that. I’m concerned that the argument made here is flawed. That is opposing SSM is justified either on the grounds that you want to make marriage more about long term commitment or because you think SSM advocates view marriage only as ‘legal recognition’ of long term SS commitments.
This is wrong on both counts. There’s no reason you couldn’t support various ‘rule changes’ like making divorce more difficult and simply have them apply equally to same sex and different sex marriages. Likewise advocates of SSM are not simply seeking a pretty paper issued by their local government in exchange for a $30 filing fee. They want access to the rights and responsibilities of marriage just like everyone else has.
Imagine that there was a law on the books prohibiting blacks from starting corporations. Imagine the arguments deployed against SSM as they would be used to support such a hypothetical law. Could blacks create simulations of corporations by carefully crafting contracts with the help of clever lawyers? Yes but that would leave them with a heavy cost disadvantage compared to their counter parts who can quickly incorporate in a day by spending a few hundred dollars on an quickie incorporation kit. Might only a small portion of blacks opt to create corporations? Sure but so what? Even if a few want it why shouldn’t it be available to them on an equal basis? The ‘purpose’ of a corporation is to generate profit and suppose blacks don’t want to run corporations that make profits? Again so what? Non-profitable corporations would end up costing only those who get involved in them and have no impact on the majority of profitable ones.
The goal of providing an efficient set of default rules can be achieved without reference to the concept of “marriage.” That is to say, the debate over what standard contractual terms should be available to different kinds of relationships is distinct from the debate over what kinds of couples are entitled to have a government bureacracy issue a paper to them deeming them to be “married.”
OK so we have a particular set of ‘default rules’ and we just make up a name for them like “Civil Couple Contract” or “Civil Unions” (assuming the state isn’t doing a civil union as an alternative to marriage). But this is just silly. When people get married they will ask for the form to do it and all that’s going to happen is everyone is going to start calling the “CCC” the marriage.
It’s already well established in our society that marriage exists as both a civil institution and a religious one. It’s also well established by centuries of law going back to Henry the VIII that what the Church recognizes as a valid marriage is not always overlapping with what the state calls a marriage. Some churches will not recognize SSM. So what? For decades now people have gotten divorced and remarried only to be told by the Catholic Church that it doesn’t recognize their new marriage and considers them still married to their original spouses.
The latter is nothing more than a signal of public approval. The marriage debate is ultimately a question of free speech: Which groups are entitled to use the soft coercive powers of government to impose their preferred views of sexual morality on others?
Nonesense. Does the state ‘approve’ of Anna Nicole Smith’s marriage? Or Brittany Spear’s 20 hour Las Vegas one? When people start a corporation is the state using its ‘soft powers’ to endorse their products or business plan? This sounds to me like a clever twisting of words to spin equal rights before the law as some type of victimization of a majority’s ‘right’ to deny equal protection and access to the law.
Turn your phrasing around. Does the majority have a right to deny particular contractual arrangements to couples it disapproves of morally? If so then why does this right only apply to marriages? Why does it not apply to civil unions or ‘civil couples contract’ or ‘default couple contract package’ or whatever name you would have the state replace the word marriage with?
“I agree with your linked piece, that government should get out of the marriage business”
I find this a red herring. Gov’t has created a set of ‘default contracts’ for some interactions (marriage, corporation, business partnership etc.) but not for others (“communist commune” has no easy default contract, if you want to start one you’ll have to make do with manually created contracts or trying to adapt ‘defaults’ that already exist like corporations or non-profit corporations).
You are free to argue that gov’t should ditch a particular type of default (as opposed to modifying the terms of the default). For example, you can say that corporations shouldn’t exist as a gov’t created body of law. Let people have individual businesses or partnerships but no corporations, anyone wanting one will have to do their best to create one from the ‘raw materials’ of individual contracts, liability waivers and so on. What would this have to do with a hypothetical world where blacks were not allowed to start their own corporations. Yes you could say “gov’t should get out of the business of chartering corporations” but unless you actually implement that policy, corporations should be available to all on an equal basis.
@Boonton, The problem is with the term marriage. The religious type feel a need to own the term. I’m happy to let them. Having civil unions that are open to anyone that wants to have advantages to take care of each other (parents with disabled children, spinsters, anyone) should have these contracts available to them. Churches, religious institutions, or covens can then decide who to dole out the term marriage quite free of the state. In your language it would be separating the contract from the religious institution making it broadly more accessable.
@Boonton,
I really appreciate your careful breakdown of Austin’s arguments. It’s very effective, and I couldn’t do better.
I’d like to enhance the arguments you present, if I can, with some other points of view. First, I find that when marriage opponents (whoever’s marriages they might be opposing) talk about “soft coercion” of the state, they neglect that the status quo often amounts to “harder coercion.” The Federal government’s current stance through DOMA (though I praise Obama for once again calling for the repeal of DOMA in his Pride month) creates a special discouragement for same-sex couples to get married even in states that recognize it. Jason and I now find ourselves in just such a state, and it could be a pain to deal with taxes because our filing status will be different for Federal and state taxes when we file next year. Anyone looking into this is advance would definitely have to put this in the “Con” column for getting married. Straight couples don’t have that. This is just one example, but my point is that the current legal framework actively discourages gay people from getting married even where it’s legal.
Second, Jason has argued that the government being “in the business of marriage” is actually the better stance from a libertarian perspective. I won’t do his arguments justice, but, as he’s occupied having a blast at Liberty Forum, I wanted to bring up the point. Basically, the main legal effects of government recognition of marriage prevent government intrusion into the family headed by an officially married couple. No taxing inheritance, no cross-incrimination, no marriages broken up by immigration law, and I think there a few hundred other ones that amount to a big “KEEP OUT” sign directed at the government. I like “KEEP OUT” signs directed at the government, so I’m eager to get me one–one that the government will respect, anyway. We already have one that’s at least printed on pretty paper.
The problem is with the term marriage. The religious type feel a need to own the term. I’m happy to let them.
Why? Exactly what gives ‘religious types’ ownership of a ‘term’? Because they are making a fuss? So what? How about the fact that not even all Christian religions or sects of Judism prohibit SSM? In no other area has ‘religious types’ been allowed to hijack an institution on the grounds that they feel like they ‘own’ the term. Even on religion’s own terms, this is nonesense. Theologically marriage came before either the Christian Church or even Judism. To claim that ‘religious types’ own the term is a bit like saying the national weather service owns rain storms.
Churches, religious institutions, or covens can then decide who to dole out the term marriage quite free of the state. In your language it would be separating the contract from the religious institution making it broadly more accessable.
That is what they can do now. Marriages regularly recognized in many Christian Churches are not recognized in Catholic Churches, for example.
@Boonton,primarily because I’m a mean son-of-a-b, hate socons and can think of notthing worse than giving them all the rope they want.
I read Tushnet’s profile but haven’t yet read her blog. Her argument doesn’t seem to be so much that marriage should be more life-long (although she clearly thinks it should). It’s that sex is highly dangerous & like radioactive materials there are only a few places where they *may* be handled safely and aside from those places they shouldn’t be handled at all. Hence she describes heterosexual marriage as uniquely dangerous and uniquely fruitful. It sounds like she views SSM as a dead end for gays since they won’t find happiness in an institution designed for heterosexual needs.
To which I say maybe but so what? The argument seems like a more intellectualized version of the ‘contaign’ argument. SSM couples will have lots of affairs, I suppose, and heterosexual married couples will follow suit and the end result will be all marriages will end up becoming less life long….I guess.
I don’t find this very convincing for multiple reasons:
1. SS couples are a small minority of the population and SSM couples would be even smaller. Even if they all behaved this way, I doubt they represent a large enough population base to carry a new trend in marriage behavior.
2. There is a huge perception barrier between gays and straights. Even without bias, it seems hard to imagine a huge number of straight men and women copying behavior that signals gay. Much more likely, IMO, that seeing other straight couples divorcing or cheating will lead straight couples to become more normalized to that behavior and likely to engage in it themselves. Yet if the ‘contaign’ argument is valid then marriage should be restricted against demographic groups that have higher rates of divorce, cheating or other similiar problems. Yet you’ll never see anyone even dare to suggest such an idea.
3. If gays don’t find happiness in marriage then, it seems to me, they simply won’t get married. Aside from a few experiments (and quite possibly a few successes who shouldn’t be cast aside in the name of mass sociology), why would they insist on entering something that doesn’t work for them? As I pointed out before, even with ‘easy divorce’ entering a marriage you don’t intend to take seriously is a good way to cost yourself a lot of time, money and heartach. I suspect the true fear is more that gay marriages will appear successful which will undermine the arguments against gay marriage.
Tushnet is honest in that she admits her religion is asking her to make real sacrifice. A lot of Christianity is in the theraputic “Jesus will make your thighs thinner’ mindset which tries to argue that there’s no pain, no real stuff you’re giving up. You can’t get divorced because you won’t ‘really be happy’. Having sex outside of marriage won’t ‘really’ be fun. All these rules are there for you to really be happier, have more fun, etc. The problem with this mindset, though, multiple. First it breeds selfishness (God made the universe for your amusement). Second it flies in the face of reality. There are unhappily married people who are happier divorced from their spouse. There are people having fun with sex outside of marriage.
The response to this is to try to prevent people from seeing such things. If divorce is illegal or divorcee’s are socially stigmatized then you probably won’t encounter people for whom divorce didn’t result in horror. Or the response is to just deny reality. The children of the divorced couple are really psychologically scarred even if you can’t see it! Those people who had a swinging time in the 70′s weren’t really happy!
Tushnet’s approach is much more mature IMO. Yes this stuff may make you happy but a higher calling says set it aside. That’s a powerful argument IMO and a very mature challenge BUT it’s also one that depends on the individual’s free will to take up (or decline).
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