SR Case Against Gay Marriage (cont.)

The comment thread here has me wondering how many conservatives we actually have reading Secular Right.

•  The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868. The idea of gay marriage emerged from the lunatic fringe around 10 years ago, I think. So for 130 years it occurred to practically nobody that the 14th implied gay marriage — surely not, I’ll wager, to anyone whose opinion carried jurisprudential weight. Now suddenly it’s clear as daylight to all but a minority of mentally-diseased reactionaries.

That’s a point of view, but I’ll be damned if it’s a conservative point of view.

•  I can’t see the parallel with inter-racial marriage, which has been proscribed by law only spottily through history. (It obviously didn’t seem outrageous to Shakespeare and his audience.) Same-sex marriage has never, so far as I know, been proscribed by law anywhere, because it never occurred to lawmakers that it was a thing anyone would want to do! The human prejudice against same-sex marriage is far, far deeper-rooted than that against inter-racial marriage, a picayune thing by comparison, as witness the fact that legislatures had to draw up statutes about it. There are no laws against eating rocks.

(And I must say, I don’t actually see why communities shouldn’t prohibit inter-racial marriage if they want to. I’d prefer not to live in such a community — given my domestic circumstances, in fact, I wouldn’t be able to! — but this doesn’t strike me as an unreasonable or immoral restriction for a state or country to impose on its citizens. But perhaps that’s just me. I simply don’t “get” the hysterical race panic that’s consumed so much rational thought in the modern West.)

•  Hospital visiting. Still not getting it. If your hospital’s rules won’t allow gay lovers to visit, agitate to get the rules changed. What does this have to do with gay marriage? Sledgehammer, nut.

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174 Responses to SR Case Against Gay Marriage (cont.)

  1. Rob Sherwood says:

    Didn’t see this linked in previous discussion. From Justin Raimondo, the gay Buchananite (which makes me, a Jewish Buchananite, feel a little less odd.

    http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/gay_marriage_sucks/

  2. Susan says:

    How many hospitals DO prohibit gay people from visiting their lovers? It must be a very small number. Twenty years ago next month a good friend of mine died of AIDS. While he was dying, the hospital set up a cot in his room so his lover could spend the night with him. That was two decades ago.

  3. Polichinello says:

    The comment thread here has me wondering how many conservatives we actually have reading Secular Right

    Reminds me of a video the British Conservative Secular Humanists put out. They were British, secular and probably humanist, whatever that it means, but I’d be damned if I could discern any conservatism.

    Still, I’m reading. I’m not interested in the conversation so much because we’ve been down this road before. The main benefit to a society of marriage is children, i.e. the future of a society. Since only men and women can produce children, it’s in societies interest to give THAT particular union special status. Yes, I realize there are infertile male/female couples who marry, but we can’t make laws that cover every exception. Nor should we be overjoyed by gays having children through surrogates, as that necessitates one of the birth parents abandoning their child, either completely or in part.

    This doesn’t obviate other solutions. Homosexuality should be recognized as an evolutionary abnormality (I don’t know a better word, and will accept one less perjorative) that can and ought to be accommodated through civil unions.

  4. Don Kenner says:

    Bradlaugh, as my five-year-old would say, “You rock!” The idea that we have to change a pillar of Western Civilization because the St. Hubbins Hospital doesn’t have reasonable visitation rules is ludicrous.

    And if you’ve seen “Spinal Tap” you know who St. Hubbins was.

  5. Rich says:

    I’m mildly in favor of gay major, insofar that I don’t particularly care whether it happens or not, and don’t see how my life would be affected in ANY way if it did. It just seems rather frivolous to me that most anti-gay-marriage conservatives seem basically willing to allow gays to have everything about marriage except the word. Arguing the very fine point differences between gay marriage and civil unions is not much different than arguing the fine point differences between an act of terrorism and a man-cause disaster.

  6. cc says:

    “The main benefit to a society of marriage is children, i.e. the future of a society. Since only men and women can produce children, it’s in societies interest to give THAT particular union special status. Yes, I realize there are infertile male/female couples who marry, but we can’t make laws that cover every exception.”

    Why not?

    If a male/female couple is infertile, the chances are excellent that only one of them is infertile. Shouldn’t we pass laws to disallow such a union, and thus free the fertile members from the restrictive bonds of these abnormal unions so they can go procreate? The more tolerant we are of state-sanctioned infertile marriages, the more we appear to be endorsing childless marriages. I say we should step back from this slippery slope. The future of our society depends on it.

  7. Ted T. says:

    @Susan
    You and Mr. Derbyshire really don’t get the hospital thing, do you?

    What generally happens is that the dying person’s homophobic parents bar their partners from the room. Since under most hospital rules, the parents have legal standing but the partner doesn’t, the hospital has no choice but to comply with the parents wishes. This situation unfortunately occurs all too often. (The patient my be completely estranged from the parents and want nothing to do with them, but at this point isn’t capable of expressing his or her wishes.)

    And yes, go ahead and tell someone whose lover has hours or days to live, that they should “agitate to get the rules changed”. That will do them a lot of good. Maybe when their next partner is on their deathbed. I mean really — wake up, please!

  8. Rich says:

    “The more tolerant we are of state-sanctioned infertile marriages, the more we appear to be endorsing childless marriages. I say we should step back from this slippery slope. The future of our society depends on it.”

    And then, when a man has a vasectomy, his marriage should immediately be annulled by the state, and his wife should be passed down to his younger male siblings so that the fertility of her marriage can continue with little genetic disruption as possible.

  9. Alex says:

    Yes, I realize there are infertile male/female couples who marry, but we can’t make laws that cover every exception.

    But we *do* make laws that cover these exceptions. There are a wealth of adoption laws that serve no other purpose than to weave legal fictions that directly deny biology – and at the other end of that legal procedure an adoptive parent is legally indistinguishable from a biological parent – even the birth certificate gets modified to list the adoptive parent as the parent from birth. Saying that extending marriage to same-sex couples violates biological reality ignores the fact that we have already have laws that violate biological reality at a far more fundamental level.

  10. Polichinello says:

    Why not?

    First, because hard cases make for bad law.

    The more tolerant we are of state-sanctioned infertile marriages, the more we appear to be endorsing childless marriages.

    “Tolerance” is rather the point. To tolerate something means to bear with what is by definition a bad situation. Creating “gay marriage” goes beyond tolerance to outright endorsement.

    And then, when a man has a vasectomy…

    That people will abuse an institution, doesn’t invalidate it or its founding reason.

  11. Dave says:

    I can’t see the parallel with inter-racial marriage, which has been proscribed by law only spottily through history. (It obviously didn’t seem outrageous to Shakespeare and his audience.) Same-sex marriage has never, so far as I know, been proscribed by law anywhere, because it never occurred to lawmakers that it was a thing anyone would want to do!

    The fact that gay marriage is now on the table for discussion is a sign of progress.

    Aren’t you just deferring to tradition, again, in a slightly different way? The inferior status of women in many Muslim countries has been consistent for generations. Would you tell the few Saudi women who are clamoring for their rights that their complaints are silly becuase nobody has thought to bring them up before?

    The human prejudice against same-sex marriage is far, far deeper-rooted than that against inter-racial marriage, a picayune thing by comparison, as witness the fact that legislatures had to draw up statutes about it.

    Maybe. I’m not convinced. But assuming this is true, should we strive to institute laws which codify all of our prejudices?

    And I must say, I don’t actually see why communities shouldn’t prohibit inter-racial marriage if they want to. I’d prefer not to live in such a community — given my domestic circumstances, in fact, I wouldn’t be able to! — but this doesn’t strike me as an unreasonable or immoral restriction for a state or country to impose on its citizens.

    I fail to see how that is not unreasonable. If a majority voters are not comfortable with a white girl marrying a Muslim male – they should be able to enforce that prejudice at the ballot box?

    Hospital visiting. Still not getting it. If your hospital’s rules won’t allow gay lovers to visit, agitate to get the rules changed. What does this have to do with gay marriage? Sledgehammer, nut.

    Hospital visitation is a symptom. Going back and forth on it detracts from the underlying issue.

  12. Polichinello says:

    There are a wealth of adoption laws that serve no other purpose than to weave legal fictions that directly deny biology

    First, adoption isn’t tied to marriage. You don’t have to be married to adopt. Second, adoption is a means of addressing a bad situation for the child already created. It is not (or should not be) a means of encouraging the creation of future generations.

  13. FortWorthGuy says:

    Well, if the idea of gay marriage only “emerged from the lunatic fringe around 10 years ago” it sure has come a long way in such a short period of time. Which is my point in arguing that time is on our side (speaking as a card carrying gay conservative and daily SR reader, as well as NRO!). 15 years ago this idea was not even on the radar screen. I know I am quoting from the wrong side of the political spectrum, but someone once said “…there is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come”…or words to that effect.

    Look at Vermont…not exactly the heart of middle America, but the legislature, the representatives of the people, made this the law. This was not the decision of 9 gray visages in black robes, it was the legislature passing the law and then overriding the governor’s veto (i.e. a super majority, and this might be an assumption on my part, was required in this case, not just 51%) that allowed this. It is a gray day here in Fort Worth, but indeed the sun has continued to rise in the east, and the earth still rotates on its axis. Most of people that actually will get married as a result of the Vermont law and laws being considered in other jurisdictions will not be on the “lunatic fringe”, they will be hard working, tax paying, law biding members of the community. And in come cases, they will have children. I submit that it is a “lunatic fringe” that only wants to have gay marriage to serve as a trophy to put on their mantle.

  14. Canatheist says:

    14th amendment? I don’t get that either. It would take some tortured logic to get gay marriage out of that.

    Why shouldn’t a government that wanted to curtail someone’s right to marry whom they choose? Because the only reason there would be to restrict such a thing must be based on religion. There is no scientific reason for such a law. Just as there’s no scientific reason to deny gays the right to marry.

    It’s not just hospital rights. It’s survivor’s rights, medical benefits, intestate wills, and a whole raft of other issues. To further your metaphor, why would you use 100 hammers to crack 100 nuts when you can use one big hammer to crack all the nuts at the same time?

  15. Jon says:

    re: hospital visiting. The issue isn’t just allowing hospital visitation. The issue is that spouses get special rights that others who are merely allowed to visit do not get. If a straight person gets sick their husband or wife shows at the hospital, identifies him or her self, and is now the person the doctors will seek consent from in the event that the sick spouse is incapacitated. Now, gay couples can get that sort of right by executing a power of attorney, but in an emergency situation, a person might not be carrying it around. Or, the parents of the sick partner might wish to challenge the power of attorney, in a way that they typically could not with respect to the husband (the Schiavo family notwithstanding). Since a power of attorney is a legal document, there might be delays while hospital counsel scrutinizes it. On the other hand, in practice, “I’m the wife/husband” means instant deference from hospital staff. Of course, civil unions could remedy this issue almost as well if not as well as gay marriage (I say almost as well because in practice, the institution of civil unions might initially be on uncertain footing in terms of exactly how the legal obligations work, and might at least be initially unfamiliar to doctors).

  16. Martin Morgan says:

    I’m pretty conservative thanks. I never bothered to analyze gay marriage pro or con until recently. Having now done so, I have no problem with it.

    The key is “recently.” The time for conservatives to speak up was 30 -40 years ago when no fault divorce laws, actresses getting married eight times, etc. were coming through. Now that society at large has allowed the institution to be so degraded, it’s seems a little churlish to draw the line at Patrick and Roger.

    If anything, gay marriage might restore a little respect.Prior to the gay agitation, when’s the last time you heard marriage praised by the urban elite?

  17. Michel S. says:

    And I must say, I don’t actually see why communities shouldn’t prohibit inter-racial marriage if they want to. I’d prefer not to live in such a community

    In an ideal situation where everyone is free to move from one community to another, sure. What about those *born* into such a community with little viable means to leave?

    Same issue with abortion: letting conservative states tightly regulate access to abortion is fine, provided there are workable means for people to get access to it in a different state. We have seen examples (a victim of rape in Ireland being unlawfully attempted by authorities to travel to Britain for an abortion) that, in practice, there are a lot of legal and financial constraints causing deviation from this ideal.

  18. j mct says:

    I would think that the ‘conservative’ case for gay marriage that doesn’t invoke any ‘religious’ beliefs (which the case for gay marriage does, by the way), is that no public good whatsoever comes out of gays marrying.

    Marriage is about, civilly, cementing in a certain domestic arrangement into the law because children turn out better, and I’m sure Ms. Macdonald can supply all the relevant data on the subject, under one particular domestic arrangement than any other. Homosexual couples don’t have children, so society, i.e. people other than the couple itself, has no interest in their domestic arrangements anymore than it has an interest in who their cell phone provider is. So as far as why gays should be able to marry, i.e. enter into a special contract that has special rules and it’s own special court for handling disputes, there isn’t one.

    Per the question, ‘well, why shouldn’t gays be allowed to marry’. I think that as far as messing up marriage, hetero’s have done a pretty good job of it, in that with no fault divorce, they’ve changed the reason why one gets married. Prior to no fault divorce, enshrined in the law, was a view that one got married for other people’s benefit, not one’s own, one didn’t get anything out of it, one was shouldering responsibility, like the virtuous ought to do. I’ve been married for 15 years, what was all the stuff I was supposed to get? I’ve yet to figure out what all the benefits supposedly are from the slip of paper that’s somewhere in the bowels of the New York County Courthouse? Let’s just say compared to the duties, so to speak, the benefits from the slip of paper, are almost unnoticeable.

    The idea that marriage isn’t for the people getting married themselves, but for other people, is, to use a metaphor, on a gurney in the emergency room. Hetero’s did stick it there too. Gay marriage would finish it off for good. That’s why gay marriage is bad.

  19. Kelly says:

    The comment thread here has me wondering how many conservatives we actually have reading Secular Right.

    Maybe what you have is conservatives who believe in individual freedoms.

    Once again, Dave has already posted the rest of my comment.

  20. Alex says:

    There are a wealth of adoption laws that serve no other purpose than to weave legal fictions that directly deny biology

    First, adoption isn’t tied to marriage. You don’t have to be married to adopt.

    I didn’t say it was (although which couples are allowed to jointly adopt or second-parent adopt is often determined by marriage in many jurisdictions) – I was objecting to your assertion that we don’t legislate for exceptions. We most certainly do.

    Second, adoption is a means of addressing a bad situation for the child already created.

    Exactly, it’s a relatively rare exception, just like same-sex marriage would be. And yet, we don’t hear how using the word “parent” or “daughter” for adoptive relationships is somehow a “huge change” that devalues the entire institution of biological parenthood. If parenthood can survive adoption, why can’t marriage survive same-sex couples?

    It is not (or should not be) a means of encouraging the creation of future generations.

    Actually, in the sense that any child adopted is a child not aborted, adoption most certainly is a way of encouraging the creation of future generations. Unless you believe in encouraging abortion, I don’t see how you could see it as otherwise.

    And marriage, as you say, creates a strong foundation in which to raise children. There are currently hundreds of thousands of children being raised in same-sex-couple-headed households. Those children exist. You probably think this is a “bad situation”, but we’ve already acknowledged that we create exceptions in the law like adoption to help kids in bad situations. Unless you plan to prohibit same-sex couples from raising children, why would you prohibit them from providing their children with the benefit of married parents?

  21. Danilo says:

    I wanted to post my objections here, but I’m concerned about the slippery slope. If I write to an Englishman maybe soon I’ll be writing to rocks and viruses.

  22. Polichinello says:

    Exactly, it’s a relatively rare exception, just like same-sex marriage would be.

    Well, we created adoption to deal with one exception, I don’t see why we can’t create civil unions to deal with another.

    Actually, in the sense that any child adopted is a child not aborted, adoption most certainly is a way of encouraging the creation of future generations.

    In the case of abortion, the child has already been created. Adoption is the least worst way to deal with the situation.

    There are currently hundreds of thousands of children being raised in same-sex-couple-headed households. Those children exist. You probably think this is a “bad situation”, but we’ve already acknowledged that we create exceptions in the law like adoption to help kids in bad situations.

    I wouldn’t use the world “bad”, but it’s not ideal, and that’s the point of marriage: it’s an ideal for creating children.

    Unless you plan to prohibit same-sex couples from raising children, why would you prohibit them from providing their children with the benefit of married parents?

    No, I would not prohibit them from raising or adopting children. However, ceteris paribus, heterosexual married couples are the best situation for the child. In that environment he or she is raised by both genders. If we go along with “gay marriage”, you really don’t have a legal means of expressing that. There are certainly plenty of activists groups out there that will strive to outlaw it.

    As an aside, Alex, thank you for your responses. They’re intelligent, earnest and civil.

  23. bloodstar says:

    I suppose Libertarians aren’t Conservative enough.

    and sure, I’ll try to get the rules changed if I couldn’t visit my lover in the hospital.

    But if that means he/she died and I wasn’t able to visit because people were too busy disapproving of whatever lifestyle I had with that person, that’s beyond the pale.

    I’ll live and let live and this appeal to tradition to control what other people can and cannot do is disheartening.

  24. wombat says:

    Of course, what we are talking about here is a positive right and not really an individual liberty. Having said that, the only real argument being advanced here is based on tradition. And tradition for tradition’s sake is a poor standard by which to measure our laws. I fail to see the harm that will befall the institution of marriage should same sex couples be granted equal access to it. On the contrary, it could have enormous benefits for these people not only in the legal benefits conferred, but the further social acceptance that would follow. In this sense, it most certainly has parallels in the changing attitudes about race. The laws passed during the Civil Rights movement most certainly affected the attitudes of many Americans to the extent that those that still harbor severe racial animus are isolated social outcasts now who dwell in increasingly smaller packs. We value loyalty and it is that trait that most defines the importance of marriage in the present day. Children are a piece of the puzzle but not the fundamental piece. When same sex couples are allowed to affirm that loyalty through codifying it through a universally recognized means, they will more easily be able to overcome the stereotypes and prejudices that may be inherent in our nature, but are not necessarily attractive or desirable.

    As far as homosexuality being an “evolutionary abnormality”, I would just have to say that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the evolutionary process and that human beings are not the only species that exhibits the trait. In fact there could very well be some evolutionary advantage to a small percentage of inherently homosexual individuals.

  25. bloodstar says:

    Bradlaugh while you’re at it, You might want to read on the history of Same Sex Unions:

    Rome:
    “There were also marriage between men, at least among the Romans, as this practice was outlawed in 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans. This law specifically outlaws marriages between men and reads as follows:

    When a man marries and is about to offer himself to men in womanly fashion [quum vir nubit in feminam viris porrecturam], what does he wish, when sex has lost all its significance; when the crime is one which it is not profitable to know; when Venus is changed to another form; when love is sought and not found? We order the statutes to arise, the laws to be armed with an avenging sword, that those infamous persons who are now, or who hereafter may be, guilty may be subjected to exquisite punishment. (Theodosian Code 9.8.3)

    In spite of this, gay unions are believed to have continued in some areas until the 12th century.”

    So, effectively Same Sex Marriage was outlaw by Christian Leaders for religious reasons.

    In the Balkans, same-sex partnerships survived until modern days, in the form of the Albanian rite of vellameria, “brother bond.”

    In late medieval France, the practice of entering a legal contract of “enbrotherment” (affrèrement) provided a vehicle for civil unions between unrelated male adults who pledged to live together sharing ‘un pain, un vin, et une bourse’ – one bread, one wine, and one purse. This legal category may represent one of the earliest forms of sanctioned same-sex unions.

    Yep, it’s only been in the last few years alright. I’ll agree that they weren’t common events, but there is quite a bit of historical precedent. And all the evidence points to Christianity being the driving force behind the eradication of Same Sex Unions. So a secular argument should take that into account if you’re going to argue against SSM

  26. Alex says:

    Hospital visiting. Still not getting it. If your hospital’s rules won’t allow gay lovers to visit, agitate to get the rules changed. What does this have to do with gay marriage? Sledgehammer, nut.

    Well, that’s just one among many benefits that marriage extends (or responsibilities that marriage imposes – more about that below). There are two major reasons why extending these benefits piecemeal to gay couples actually ends up damaging society as a whole:

    1. Same-sex couples will obviously agitate for benefits, but won’t go out of their way to ask for the responsibilities or drawbacks of marriage. That is, they’ll ask for hospital visitation or immigration sponsorship or partnership health benefits, but not for things like including spousal income in welfare qualifications or liability for a partner’s debts or the inability to claim “primary residence” tax benefits for a second home listed under the second partner’s name. Granting marriage (or a marriage-equivalent civil union) conveniently packages up all those responsibilities with the benefits and makes sure that same-sex unions don’t end up *more* privileged than opposite-sex ones.

    2. Many of these piecemeal benefits will be able to be taken advantage of by opposite-sex couples as well as same-sex ones, meaning that marriage will become less and less attractive to opposite-sex couples as they can get more and more of the benefits of marriage without having to get married. (This has been exactly what has happened in places like Canada and France, where the government offered full-featured common-law marriages or civil partnerships that ended up being way more popular among straight people than gay ones.) Unless you’re willing to take the hardcore Religious Right view that no benefits of any kind should ever be extended to same-sex couples, then most foolproof way to minimize the impact on opposite-sex couples is to allow same-sex marriage and do not give any extra benefits to unmarried couples, period. That leaves the options open to opposite-sex couples completely unchanged. Extending more and more benefits to unmarried couples does exactly the reverse – it makes staying unmarried more attractive to opposite-sex couples, thus lowering the rates of opposite-sex marriage. And lowering the rates of opposite-sex marriage is exactly what we’re being told is damaging to society, isn’t it?

  27. Gherald L says:

    I don’t actually see why communities shouldn’t prohibit inter-racial marriage if they want to. I’d prefer not to live in such a community — given my domestic circumstances, in fact, I wouldn’t be able to! — but this doesn’t strike me as an unreasonable or immoral restriction for a state or country to impose on its citizens.

    It strikes me as both unreasonable, immoral, and incompatible with the individualism Charles Bradlaugh was heir to. I fear Mr. Derbyshire may need a new pseudonym; he’s disgracing this one.

  28. Snippet says:

    There are layers and layers of minutae that can be piled on this discussion, but I’d just like to say that it is refreshing to see someone acknowledge the simple fact that the accumulated experience of any given society, let alone the entire human race, should be AT LEAST PART OF the discussion. Not the whole thing, by any means, but not irrelevant either.

    I am concerned by the sort of abstraction that some people just couldn’t care less about (I realize), but which I think is important – the preservation of the meaningfulness of the concept of marriage (or any other important concept, like say, “truth.”)

    “Marriage” has never meant “A lifetime committment between two of the same sex.” Just like “motorcycle” doesn’t mean four-wheeled, powered vehicle.

    A group of people want to be included in an institution that – by definition – cannot accept them.

    So…we just redefine the word, the institution?

    Nothing really is stopping us (or will), from doing that. We defined the darn word, we can just as easily redefine it.

    I just don’t know what the long-term consequences of redefining it down to nothing.

    Since I don’t know what the long-term consequences are, I’m not an anti “gay” marriage activist.

    It’s just nice to see a little sand thrown in the gears of assumptions that are as simplistic in their was as those of any bible-thumper.

  29. kurt9 says:

    Derb’s arguments against same sex marriage are good.

    Being straight, same sex marriage is an issue that I actually do not care one way or another about. If the gays want marriage, my general attitude is to let them have it. What the social conservatives need to do is to convince me, as a straight person, why I should even care about the issue at all and, more specifically, support them in opposing same sex marriage. They need to present a believable mechanism demonstrating how allowing the 2% of the population that is gay to get married is going to cause the other 98% of the population to change their marriage patterns. They need to show a detailed causative mechanism here. So far, they have failed to do this.

  30. Snippet says:

    >> They (conservatives) need to present a believable mechanism demonstrating how allowing the 2% of the population that is gay to get married is going to cause the other 98% of the population to change their marriage patterns.

    I have no doubt there are teeny weeny percentages of the population that would be only too happy to have any of a large variety of arrangments be legally considered “marriage.”

    In fact, the weirder the arrangment, the SMALLER the percentage of those who want it, and hence, according to the line of reasoning above, the WEAKER the argument against allowing it.

  31. Paul says:

    Would somebody please explain the injury to society that would be caused by allowing same sex marriage? Do you really think that straight people will be tempted to to switch sides? I don’t.

    The fact that “it has always been that way” is, without more, an extremely weak conservative argument. The world had slavery for thousands of years too.

    I completely agree that a re-definition of marriage is not required by the equal protection clause (for the reasons stated in the post and because there is currently no denial of equality with respect to the legal availability of “marriage”), but apart from a desire to see their religious beliefs imposed on others, I fail to see what else Republicans have to gain by being identified as the anti-gay party.

    Demographically, its a losing proposition. Conservatives should fight for things that matter, especially where there is a political cost to pay.

  32. Caledonian says:

    That people will abuse an institution, doesn’t invalidate it or its founding reason.

    The founding reason for marriage was to regulate the inheritance of political power and property among the wealthy ruling classes. Throughout the history of Western Civilization, marriage was something that only the rich and the upper-middle class (in societies with an upper-middle class) engaged in, the latter trying to imitate and thus identify with the former.

    The vast majority of people were proles who shacked up.

    If marriage is about the production of children, why is having an affair grounds for divorce? Why isn’t contraception prohibited?

    I don’t mind people who are genuinely traditionophiles, but people who come up with stupid and absurd arguments to rationalize their own hideboundness are offensive and obnoxious. Conservative doesn’t have to mean stupid; it’s in our own interests to discourage those who think it does.

  33. Pingback: Notes From Bradlaugh « Around The Sphere

  34. Ploni Almoni says:

    My impression is that most Secular Right supporters are libertarians, not conservatives. I’d classify libertarianism as Right, so I don’t see that as false advertising.

    Agreed that homosexual marriage and interracial marriage are not comparable. Beside the points raised in the article, there’s also the fact that interracial marriage, when prohibited, was illegal marriage. Homosexual “marriage” has never been marriage, legal or otherwise. Even where interracial marriage is outlawed, a white man’s pointing to a black woman and saying, “This is my wife,” would be very different than his pointing to another man, or to a sheep, and saying the same words.

    The most compelling argument, secular or otherwise, that I’ve seen against gay marriage wasn’t listed here. I think it was made by Kay Hymowitz or Mary Eberstadt or one of those other neocon women (I get them all mixed up). If gay marriage is legalized, there will be enormous pressure to expunge “hetero-normative bigotry” from all textbooks, TV shows, private thoughts, etc. Suddenly, exactly 50 percent of all couples in school textbooks will be same-sex, and so on. I think that’s the best argument against legalizing gay marriage, that is, against legalizing gay marriage in America in 2009.

    Finally, homosexual marriage is interesting in relation to my favorite anti-Secular-Right rant: that you guys are always assuming you can preserve your moral code – not just a moral code, but your specific bourgeois, Christian-based morality – without traditional Christianity. Now, homosexual marriage is one of the few cases where I think you’re correct that there are compelling secular conservative arguments for your side. These are about the strongest secular conservative arguments you’ll come across anywhere, and look: very few people seem to be persuaded by them, or even interested in them. Folks who oppose homosexual marriage seem to do so on religious grounds. (Some oppose it just on the basis of general disgust at homosexuality, but that’s not what I mean by arguments, and besides that may also be partly grounded in religion.)

    So even in cases like this where you guys actually win on philosophy, you (we) lose big time when it comes to rhetoric. It’s the Religious Right that’s fighting your fight for you. What you’re doing, in the rest of your blog, is trying your best to pull the rug out from under the few effective allies we still have left in this fight.

  35. Caledonian says:

    My impression is that most Secular Right supporters are libertarians, not conservatives.

    In this point in history, in this society, libertarianism IS a conservative political position.

    It’s also a liberal one, in the conservative meaning of the word.

    We need to stop using conceptual terms as proper nouns for political groups.

  36. Dale says:

    I am not a conservative so I am somewhere between puzzled and bemused at the arguments by Bradlaugh and in the comments over the conservative/not-conservative borderline: real conservative thinks this, a real conservative thinks that, blah blah blah.

    I also hate to be a troll, but I don’t hate it enough to decline pointing to
    Caledonian
    ‘s comment, which I think is spot-on:

    I don’t mind people who are genuinely traditionophiles, but people who come up with stupid and absurd arguments to rationalize their own hideboundness are offensive and obnoxious. Conservative doesn’t have to mean stupid; it’s in our own interests to discourage those who think it does.

    Again, I freely admit to being something of a troll in this setting, but these strike me as words of wisdom. If conservatism is going to gleefully embrace hidebound casuistries as much in its secular form as it has already done in its more common god-addled form, then, well, among other things, I’m not sure why it needs to bother with a secular form. As a person not without at least a few conservative-ish leanings, I was hoping to see Secular Right carve out a consistently non-stupid path for conservatism. This secular case against gay marriage, such as it is, fails, and it fails conservatism.

    Given the choice, I’d rather just stick with Andrew Sullivan and endure his more-than-occasional digressions into amorphous god-drunk delusions.

  37. Joe says:

    Honestly, folks…there is NO reasonable secular case against gay marriage. Nice try.

    …and one more thing, stop questioning our conservatism because we believe in individual freedoms. People who are against gay marriage are the ones who want to dictate how other people should live their lives.

  38. Tom Piatak says:

    Ploni Almoni was one of the best regular commenters at Takimag, and I’m glad to see he continues in fine form here.

    It is astonishing to me that a conservative of any definition would be in favor of radically changing the bedrock institution of society by grafting onto it a concept that has no historical precedent in our culture.

  39. Anthony says:

    Tom said: “It is astonishing to me that a conservative of any definition would be in favor of radically changing the bedrock institution of society by grafting onto it a concept that has no historical precedent in our culture.”

    Define radical. Is it more radical than no-fault divorce, or the legalization of highly effective birth-control?

    It is also reasonable to hold that, given the world as it is, the pro-marriage position may also be pro-same-sex marriage. In particular, legalization reduces elites’ hostility towards the institution, while not necessarily changing the nature of it in practical terms for the large majority (98-9% of people who get married will be opposite-sex, and it is reasonable to hold that the large majority of these will still do so for the same reasons that they were getting married before the change in legislation).

  40. Snippet says:

    “Honestly, folks…there is NO reasonable secular case against gay marriage. Nice try.”

    Is there a reasonable secular, non-question-begging argument for heterosexual marriage?

  41. Snippet says:

    Actually, there is…

    To maximize the possibility that children are raised by the people who are most vested in their survival – the bio parents.

  42. kipp says:

    Mr. Derbyshire,

    I seriously doubt you would respect an opinion is shallowly thought-out and a-historical as the following were we talking about mathematical theory: “Same-sex marriage has never, so far as I know, been proscribed by law anywhere, because it never occurred to lawmakers that it was a thing anyone would want to do!”

    Societies have, quite commonly, proscribed homosexual behavior. If you already had laws that made it illegal for men and women to have sex, would you even need to try and stop them from getting married?

    Past societies, and plenty of modern ones, were places where an open homosexual risked his life simply by admitting to homosexuality. It’s difficult to agitate for legal arrangements when the first part of that process, asserting that you are gay, puts you and your proposed spouse at mortal risk.

  43. kipp says:

    Snippet,

    “To maximize the possibility that children are raised by the people who are most vested in their survival – the bio parents.”

    This begs the question of how gay marriage reduces the likelihood that children will be raised by bio parents. Orphans won’t be raised by bio-parents (by definition) and single people can and do acquire surrogates. How is letting gay people marry going going to create a new reduction in the likelihood that otherwise bio-parented children will be nonbio-parented?

    And this completely ignores the problem that people seem to get just as attached to non-bio children as they do to their natural offspring. But I’ll bet you don’t have any adopted or step-children do you?

  44. Carlo says:

    “Actually, there is…

    To maximize the possibility that children are raised by the people who are most vested in their survival – the bio parents.”

    And same sex marriage won’t decrease that possibility even a little bit.

  45. DMI says:

    I commented over at Razib’s place a while ago that I hadn’t yet heard a convincing secular argument against gay marriage, and nothing I’ve seen here changes my mind.

    One of the most hilarious and degrading arguments has to do with the “slippery slope”. For one thing, as I think is pretty obvious, a gay man or woman is a LONG WAY from someone’s pony. Secondly, assuming that both parties are willing, I honestly see nothing wrong with incest, perse. Potentially you could make a utilitarian argument that their children would suffer tremendously due to inbreeding—but suppose that they opted to have no children? Is there really a problem?

    And seriously, appealing to tradition is as big a load of crap as any I’ve ever heard. Tradition is NEVER a reason—unless your logical system includes “change is bad” as a primitive axiom. Unfortunately, that logical system would be susceptible to the claim that “slavery should have continued, because to stop it would be change, and hence change is bad”.

    I honestly wish I could hear a good secular argument against gay marriage. I’ve certainly heard them against abortion… Unfortunately, as it stands, a secular case against gay marriage seems to be in roughly the same place as the secular case against stem cell research.

  46. Caledonian says:

    It is astonishing to me that a conservative of any definition would be in favor of radically changing the bedrock institution of society by grafting onto it a concept that has no historical precedent in our culture.

    Everything has to start somewhere. And when the best values of the past that we seek to preserve mandate that some of society’s institutions change… well then.

    But honestly, gay marriage is not an especially radical change; far more radical was the adoption of tolerance of homosexuality that swept away the startling intolerance which preceded it. Gay marriage follows reasonably from the premise that gayness deserves no particular censure. Are you opposed to that?

    I do not mean that question as a rhetorical trap, potentially forcing you to choose between the respect of many in our society. If you believe homosexuality should be actively discouraged by society, say so. But you’ll have to come up with some much better reasons than the excuses that’ve been presented thus far to convince anyone that you’re not simply rationalizing a euphemistic disapproval of gays themselves.

  47. Lex says:

    Kipp,

    “You probably shouldn’t comment on things you don’t know anything about (whatever your fantasy life may include): Long-term committed gay relationships are one of those things.”

    Don’t jump to conclusions! For the record:

    (1) I’m not gay, but a very close male relative is, and has been in a committed relationship for years.

    (2) I see both sides of the gay marriage issue, but I think at best this is happening *way* too fast — if nothing else, it’s likely to further aggravate the divisions in the country at a time when we really cannot afford that.

    (3) I don’t see what is wrong with civil unions as a compromise — see how that works out for a couple of decades. Like most conservatives, I expect it will be much more popular among women, and men will mostly not avail themselves of it, and so at least 50% of the pressure for full-on homosexual marriage will dissipate, once gay activists and civil liberties fanatics stop seeing it as the “end-all-be-all issue of principle” of the week.

    (4) If it still is seen as a burning issue in 2030, I can see some sort of compromise, where civil unions receive all the formal legal benefits of marriage after a same-sex couple has been together 5 or 10 years.

  48. Lex says:

    (5) I am a life long conservative, who is unhappy with the meanness and homophobia that sometimes comes from the right when homosexual issues are discussed. And, credit where it’s due — liberals did some constructive things in that area, where conservatives should have been less dogmatic. But when homosexual activists say, “We’ll tear the country apart to show that we must be respected!” and when civil liberties fanatics say “We’ll tear the country apart for the sake of an abstract principle that affects a small number of people in a minor way!”… well, I’m not down with that, as the kids say.

  49. Michael M. says:

    I view myself as a conservative probably because I was raised by conservatives and more or less inherited their values. Those values, above all else, were enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, coupled with the aged aphorism known as the Golden Rule. Lacking anything resembling “faith” in the religious sense, I tend to filter almost everything I encounter through the prism of those values, and where politics is concerned, scrutinize every proposal, every government whim or mandate or fiat, through that prism. Given that my military-veteran father was an atheist and only ever didn’t vote for a Republican presidential candidate once (in ’92, when he voted for Perot), I’d say I inherited both my secularism and my conservatism. It has struck me that as the Republican party has become increasingly beholden to religious conservatives over the years, it has been a less welcoming for someone like me, which is why I’m no longer registered with any party. I don’t think that makes me less conservative, I think it makes me not a Republican. Given that I was adopted, I take a dim view of those who spew crap about birthrights and the privileged status of biological parenting, as several above do, while not understanding the first thing about the malleability of human nature. I take a dim and highly suspect view of those who think their own moral disgust is shared by everyone, or the majority, or some percentage of something, or however else they try to justify plain bigotry while trying (in vain) to avoid to sound like a bigot. In addition to being conservative, I’m a skeptic. When you try to proscribe liberty, you have to prove to me that you have very good reasons for doing so for me to buy that said proscription is justifiable. When, as various people do above, you continue to pretend that there’s no such thing as same-sex marriage, or that it is never “real” marriage, or that it has only emerged in the past decade, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite all the religious organizations that sanction it, despite all the countries (including some of our closest allies and trading partners) and states that recognize it, you all but convince me that you don’t even have a clue what you’re talking about.

    In addition to being conservative, and skeptical, I’m reactionary — that is, I react to ill-formed, inconsistent arguments and poorly reasoned bigoted claptrap passed off as anything, let alone secular conservatism. I react by being even more convinced that there’s not a single reason to proscribe liberty in this case.

  50. Jamie says:

    “Same-sex marriage has never, so far as I know, been proscribed by law anywhere, because it never occurred to lawmakers that it was a thing anyone would want to do!”

    This says a lot more about the history of marriage than anything else. Marriage used to be a way to have kids to pass on property, to forge political alliances, to consolidate power, etc, etc. Marriage was heterosexual because it was founded on the idea that women were property. That’s why ancient Greeks thought that homosexual relationships were the only relationships in which one could really experience complete love- because women were not capable of being equal partners.

    Marriage has been radically changed, in some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse. Gay people didn’t do it. If you wanna blame somebody, blame women. But I’m gonna side with them.

    The comment that people who disagree with you on this issue aren’t conservative strikes me as the kind of nonsense that has gotten conservatism in so much trouble. Is this a “litmus test” issue?

    Truthfully, I wouldn’t really call myself a conservative- not all of the time. I prefer to think of myself as a pragmatist with libertarian sympathies (but don’t expect the market to do everything). I’m arguing on what I consider to be conservative ground here. I’m totally with you guys when it comes to promoting social stability and personal freedom. That’s why I care so much about this issue, and that’s why I think that once you take religion out, there is just no argument against gay marriage.

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