A Secular Case Against Gay Marriage?

New York Governor Dave Paterson made some curious remarks on the gay marriage issue yesterday. The gist of them, so far as I can understand it, was that (a) opponents of gay marriage are motivated by their religion, and (b) the present opposition is vitiated by failure to speak out against the hell on earth (“beaten and often brutalized”) that homosexual college students endured before … well, before some unspecified event that enlightened everyone and made it all stop. Gov. Paterson’s accession, perhaps.

It’s all pretty incoherent, but that’s our Gov. for you. It did get me thinking, though, in the secular-right context, of the non-religious conservative case against gay marriage. There certainly is one, composed of some the following elements, mixed in proportions according to personal taste.

(1) Anti-Minoritarianism. The majority has rights, too.

(2) The social recognition of committed heterosexual bonding has been a constant for thousands of years. No-one of a conservative inclination wants to mess lightly with that. Counter-arguments like “so was slavery” are unconvincing, as the occasional slights suffered by homosexual couples are microscopic by comparison with the injustice of human beings buying and selling other human beings. Gay marriage proponents make much of the cruelty and injustices of the past. I must say, though, being old enough to remember some of that past, I am unimpressed.  I was in college in the early 1960s. There were homosexual students, and nobody minded them. They seemed perfectly happy. Certainly they were not “beaten and brutalized”; and if they had been, I assume the ordinary laws of assault and battery would have come into play. I can recall even further back, known homosexual couples keeping house together in my provincial English home town in the 1950s. People made jokes about it, but nobody bothered them — though sodomy was illegal in England at the time! I don’t think private consensual acts should be illegal; but that aside, I don’t see much wrong with the mid-20th-century dispensation, based as it was on the great and splendid Anglo-Saxon principle of minding your own business.

(3) There really is a slippery slope here. Once marriage has been redefined to include homosexual pairings, what grounds will there be to oppose futher redefinition — to encompass people who want to marry their ponies, their sisters, or their soccer team? Are all private contractual relations for cohabitation to be rendered equal, or are some to be privileged over others, as has been customary in all times and places? If the latter, what is wrong with heterosexual pairing as the privileged status, sanctified as it is by custom and popular feeling?

(4) If you have a cognitively-challenged underclass, as every large nation has, you need some anchoring institutions for them to aspire to; and those institutions should have some continuity and stability. Heterosexual marriage is a key such institution. In a society in which nobody had an IQ below 120, homosexual marriage might be plausible. In the actual societies we have, other considerations kick in.

(5) Human nature exists, and has fixed characteristics. We are not infinitely malleable. Human society and human institutions need to “fit” human nature, or at least not go too brazenly against the grain of it. Homophobia seems to be a rooted condition in us. It has been present always and everywhere, if only minimally (and unfairly — there has always been a double standard here) in disdain for “the man who plays the part of a woman.” There has never, anywhere, at any level of civilization, been a society that approved egalitarian (i.e. same age, same status) homosexual bonding. This tells us something about human nature — something it might be wisest (and would certainly be conservative-est) to leave alone.

(6) There is a thinness in the arguments for gay marriage that leaves one thinking the proponents are not so much for something as against something. How many times have you heard that gay marriage is necessary so that gay people will not be hindered in visiting a hospitalized partner? But if hospitals have such rules — a thing I find hard to believe in this PC-whipped age — the rules can be changed, by legislation if necessary. What need to overturn a millennial institution for such trivial ends?

No thoughtful, humane person wishes any harm to homosexuals; and if harm is done, it can and should be punished under long-standing laws. Let people live and love as they want. Human nature is what it is, though, and no-one of a conservative outlook can take lightly an attempt to carry out a radical overhaul of a key human institution, in a direction pointed directly at widespread (though I think normally mild) human emotions of disdain and disgust.

This entry was posted in culture, law, politics. Bookmark the permalink.

162 Responses to A Secular Case Against Gay Marriage?

  1. Mark_Ottawa says:

    I don’t get it. We’ve had gay marriage in Canada for 4 years. One fundamentalist Mormon religious cult is attempting to use it to defend their practise of polygamy but that case is expected to fail.

    Polygamy is a voluntary social arrangement (and one that in the Mormons’ case leads to the abuse of women) but sexual orientation is innate and unchangeable, according to mainstream science.

    Polygamy also presents a secondary problem in that our legal, tax and benefit system is predicated on monogamy. Recognizing polygamy would mean that government agencies and business would have to provide additional benefits for multiple spouses and dozens of children, which would cause tax and benefit premium increases for everyone else, including those who don’t practise polygamy.

    You also have the problem of vastly complicated legal survivorship, property rights and other custody arrangements. Does wife #1 get an equal share to property if the husband dies as wife #2? What if they were married at different times? Which wife has the legal authority to pull the plug if husband is in vegetative state? What if they disagree?

    Gay marriage already fits into the current structure. Not much has changed except the gender of the spouses.

  2. Canatheist says:

    I’m afraid you’ve failed to make a secular case against gay marriage.

    1) Currently, some states have more people in favor of gay marriage than opposed. Once the entire country has a majority of people in favor, will your argument change to “the minority has rights too?”

    2) So many things wrong with this argument. First off, when you were in college, inter-racial marriage was still illegal in some states. That didn’t make it right, even if a majority of the people supported it. Second, your anecdotal evidence that ‘nobody minded them’ is completely meaningless in the fact of documented incidents of hate attacks, a la Matthew Sheppard, not to mention documented cases of gay people being being forced out of the room of a dying loved one. (link here: http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_042309_news_ohsu_gay_couple.10244ed9a.html) Lastly, you can’t reconcile “minding your own business” with not allowing someone else the same rights you have. That’s the definition of “I’m better than you.” Which, unfortunately, is another anglo-saxon personality trait.

    3) You argument about homosexual marriage will lead to people marrying their dog or their sister or their soccer team is disingenuous at best. First off, we have historic and/or scientific evidence that marrying your sister, or your dog, or more than one person is a bad idea. Why would two men or women who love each other be any different than a man and a woman?

    4) Do you have even a shred of data to support anything in this paragraph, or are you just making stuff up? “Other considerations” smacks of “I don’t know what I’m talking about, so I’m just going to make something up.”

    5) There are many things that are in our natures that we struggle against. How many times a day do you get the urge to beat the crap out of someone who insults you, cuts you off in traffic, or acts like an idiot? Also, if conservatives ran the world, we’d still be paying people to take our daughters off our hands and using our wives as so much chattel. After all, these were cherished institutions for thousands of years, as hetero marriage is today. Luckily, it is also in the nature of human beings to change, and try to become better tomorrow than we are today. Supporting gay marriage is just another step in a long chain of social advances.

    6) I can’t even agree with your premise on this one. Allowing gay marriage will in no way change your or my marriage in any way. Can you tell me one real, empirically demonstrable way that your marriage will be harmed by allowing gays to marry? Also, gays are denied visitation rights all the time. See my link above for the proof. That happened LAST WEEK.

    There is no secular reason to deny gay marriage. “We shouldn’t change marriage because it’s an institution and we fear change” isn’t a reason, it’s just people giving into their own misguided fears.

  3. Ron Guhname says:

    “Young people are overwhelmingly for it.”

    According to the General Social Survey, 39.7% of people ages 18-29 agree or strongly agree that gays should be able to get married. A wee bit shy of overwhelming.

  4. Doug says:

    #4: If you have a cognitively-challenged underclass, as every large nation has, you need some anchoring institutions for them to aspire to…

    Assuming that homosexuality is innate — and most psychiatric organizations would agree that it is — then same-sex couples can not “aspire to” a definition of marriage that only includes heterosexual couples. No amount of aspiration, hoping, behavior modification, suppression of emotion, or anything else will make this possible.

    Why can’t we encourage commitment and stability by letting this “cognitively-challenged underclass,” as you put it, aspire to monogamy and the contract of marriage?

  5. John Wilkinson says:

    There is a thinness in the arguments for gay marriage that leaves one thinking the proponents are not so much for something as against something. How many times have you heard that gay marriage is necessary so that gay people will not be hindered in visiting a hospitalized partner? But if hospitals have such rules — a thing I find hard to believe in this PC-whipped age — the rules can be changed, by legislation if necessary. What need to overturn a millennial institution for such trivial ends?

    Trivial ends? Even the one touchpoint you provide is inaccurate — even enlightened hospitals do have such rules, or the more enlightened rules can be overturned by an uninformed or malign employee.

    Just such legislation was passed in Oregon but nonetheless led to a result covered by the news there within the past few days: The domestic partner of a seriously ill man was forcibly ejected from his hospital room, requiring the intervention of lawyers to enforce his right to be present.

    Trying to enforce spousal rights in emergencies is made difficult by having to refer to statute — thus ensuring the need for legal intervention — whereas the simple words “I’m his husband” have the unmistakable weight of shared cultural understanding — legal kinship.

  6. Amy says:

    It’s, as the Church Lady said, very convenient, to say that gay marriage is a change of too big a magnitude. Why so? Because you’ve first defined it of a large magnitude and then claimed it’s too big a magnitude to accept.

    The major logical problem here is that you have used no rational method of determining whether a change is large or small. There’s no metric or criteria you present that wold determine whether a change is large and small. So what you consider big I consider small. So you’ve used a wholly subjective assessment, presented it as somehow objective (a change of a large magnitude) and magically, it comforts with the conclusion you wanted to achieve.

    I think that’s a big problem (size pun intended).

  7. Lex says:

    This post is very insightful, fair, and welcome. I’d like to focus on this in particular:

    It has been present always and everywhere, if only minimally (and unfairly — there has always been a double standard here) in disdain for “the man who plays the part of a woman.” There has never, anywhere, at any level of civilization, been a society that approved egalitarian (i.e. same age, same status) homosexual bonding.

    I think this recognizes a reality that is ignored the public debate. A long term homosexual relationship consigns one man to what is generally regarded — even privately by liberals — as a somewhat humiliated role.

    It’s striking that homosexuals are extremely reluctant to acknowledge in public the reality of “tops” and “bottoms”, which they discuss frankly among themselves in a matter-of-fact way.

    And one can of course sympathize: if Cal the Catamite wants — perhaps needs — to play the traditional role of the “wife” to Sal the Sodomite, it’s probably best that society accomodate that decision — but at the same time, society is probably doing Cal a disservice if it offers explicit ratification to this somewhat demeaning arrangement.

  8. Bob says:

    @Ron Guhname
    Ron, you are looking at a national study for a state contract. Here in Washington state the largest group against marriage equality commissioned a single question poll worded to try and get the highest negative as possible “In your opinion, should homosexuals be allowed to legally marry?” Even with that question 52% of the people less than 55 years old answered ‘yes’ 59% of those less than 36 years old. (and yes they are trying to spin that as a ‘win’).

    Do you have a link to the GSS results by the way?

  9. gabos says:

    “a society where nobody had an IQ below 120…”
    Heh. IQ is a standardized distribution with a mean of 100. A society where nobody has an IQ below 120 is impossible. Bradlaugh/Derbyshire’s IQ, on the other hand…

  10. Alan says:

    I would respectfully suggest that the “huge change to our social arrangments” was allowing homosexual people to live and participate openly in society, without fear of criminal prosecution or social ostracism, giving them the real freedom to enter into long term loving monogamous relationships that accord with societal norms.

    Governmental imprimatur of these relationships seems to me to be a minor matter, the last step of official recognition of what has occurred, and the legal application of the American principle of equality to the last irrationally disfavored minority.

    There does seem to be a dispute about what conservatism calls for in this instance. In America, we still have a Burkean conservative respect for tradition. This respect does not mean conservatives oppose all change, but rather that change must be slow, cautious, and considered, when weighed against traditional norms that we believe in and have worked.

    Burkean respect for tradition doesn’t provide a basis to oppose gay marriage, though, for two reasons. First, within the tradtion, it doesn’t apply because we are not replacing long held tradition A with progressive ne social construct B. We are affirming the value of tradition A, but expanding those who may partake in it from the large group of XY to include additional much smaller groups XX and YY. As noted above, the traditionalist argument appears weak in that demonstrable damage to traition A or society in general by increasing its applicability are based neither onlogic nor history nor sociology, and are inchoate and in the nature of a concern for gradual decay.

    More important, however, amongst American conservative hought, Lockean conservative ideals of equality and liberty trump Burkean respect for tradition, where there is a conflict. Our philosophy and Constitution brook no policy argument over individual rights.

  11. TP says:

    I have to concur. I’m not understanding point four, but is this it:

    1. america has people with low IQs who need stability in their institutions
    2. Hetetro marriage is one such institution
    3. Redefinition would cause chaos amongst these people

    Is that what this means? If so, even a member of this supposed group would find this line of argument beneath them.

  12. ms says:

    He left out the most important case against ssm, which is that the state has a powerful interest in privileging the kind of family that is best for children. Since we live in a world of men and women and children come in the same two flavors, it makes sense that they will do best with both represented in the home environment. State sanction for this arrangement assures that it will happen as often as possible and that is a good thing. For my money, this is far and away the most powerful argument for marriage as we have always known it.

  13. Drew says:

    “Human nature exists, and has fixed characteristics.”

    The jump from this to the idea that social structures reflect a deep and wise understanding of that nature is, of course, flawed. We do have many natural natures, but we use society to channel and adjust many of those drives. And in this case, the proposed channeling seems far more in line with actually acknowledging and TAMING a basic aspect of humanity (i.e. gay relationships) than it does in breaking any traditions.

    That is, now that gay people are open and recognized (and you cant put that genie back in the bottle even if you’d like to), the current lack of gay marriage creates an obvious and fracturing counter-culture and thus harms conservative tradition far more than if we simply had universal marriage.

  14. Colin says:

    Ron Guhname :

    Ron Guhname

    Just did this data analysis at my blog:
    Few homosexuals want to get married: The GSS asked: “If the right person came along, would you like to be married?” The sample size is small (N = 288) so I combined gay men and lesbians, and assuming most bisexuals are closer to homosexuals, I included them too. Results? Thirty-two percent answered yes. That means that 1.04% of Americans would like to personally take advantage of gay marriage.
    http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2009/04/few-homosexuals-want-to-get-married-gss.html
    Most homosexuals just want to make a point.

    The U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report for 2004 indicates that ~2% of the U.S. population is Buddhist. Because it would effect so few people, your logic seems to say that it would be justifiable to deny them equal protection to practice their religion if a good portion of the rest of the population didn’t mind (there’s been no polling on it, but I suspect most people don’t care one way or another). This would, by your logic, give us the right to ignore the 1st Amendment in the case of the Buddhists, as we ignore the 14th in the case of the homosexuals, only because it wouldn’t really bother that many people.

    As I’m sure you’re not arguing that, there’s something to be said for your reevaluating the consequences of the ideas you’re espousing. Regardless of the size of the population it effects, it is wrong to single out one segment of the population for the denial of rights we do not also deny others. (Don’t go to the “they’ll marry horses then” route, that’s been dealt with above and it’s just silly.)

  15. Drew says:

    @Bradlaugh

    It might be a change, but there’s another way to look at the change: as bringing a fractured social element back in line with standard social tradition, rather than maintaining it apart as a “make it up as we go along” social element. In that sense, it’s a more complete return to a conservative social norm, not a denial of it.

  16. Steve O says:

    As a politically conservative gay man, I must say if these are the best arguments the Right can muster against gay marriage, I’m not impressed.

    A poster makes an excellent point against the familiar slippery slope argument: centuries of heterosexual marriage have not led to men being able to marry multiple women, or their sisters, or their mares or female pets.

    So much of what is loosely called “homophobia” comes down to the “ick factor”. I suspect a lot of straight people meet a gay couple and find themselves speculating in spite of themselves about what they do in bed — then they’re repelled by the pictures they create in their own imaginations.

    This is pretty unfair, since how often do you meet a married straight couple and imagine them naked having sex? Virtually never, I would guess. The “ick factor” should apply equally to extremely old or ugly couples … imagining them en flagrante is no picnic either, but no sensible person would consider that reason to object to their marrying.

    The “marriage is for children” argument falls before the fact that society celebrates marriages between couples who can’t or won’t have children every day — as long as they’re straight.

    A conservative argument for gay marriage worth considering is that it confers the same benefits on gays that it does on straights: cutting down on promiscuity and encouraging responsible, stable relationships which can only be good for society overall. And since many gay couples have children, stabilizing their parents’ relationship is good for kids too.

  17. Gus says:

    Mr. Derbyshire seems to believe the whole country behaves like New York institutions, PC and that nonsense. I understand that most of American media, new and old, are of the north east coast, but there really is a whole lot of country beyond those social confines and colloquialisms.

  18. kipp says:

    Ron Guhname,

    Doing statistics is hard, so why go to all that trouble when all you really want to do is argue against gay marriage no matter what the results?

    You previous comment says “Few homosexuals want to get married”. I’ll just ignore the painfully tiny sample size (288) and ask how an interest rate of 33% for marriage, that is to say 1/3 of respondents, equate to “few”?

    Since homosexuals account for anywhere between 1% & 4% of the gen pop, it is simply misleading to suggest that “only 1.04%” of people would like to get gay married. That works out to an interest in marriage as as high as 100%. (What? now you’re starting to question armchair stat results)

    Why not just argue your points from personal distaste and avoid wasting time doing statistics you won’t honestly present anyway?

  19. LA Dave says:

    The best way to establish the secular case for giving preference to heterosexual unions is to do the following:

    Establish 3 categories of civil unions –

    1. Heterosexuals who intend to raise children (Marriage)
    2. Homosexuals who intend to raise children (Homarriage)
    3. All others (Personal Partnership)

    I believe that government should discriminate in favor of heterosexuality in one important sphere: child rearing. For this reason, I think that married heterosexual couples should be given priority for adoptions over similarly qualified homosexual couples.

    Adoption agencies currently discriminate on the basis of race by favoring African American couples for adoptions of African American babies, all other factors held constant. I believe that sexual orientation is another factor meriting discrimination. For child-rearing, the liberal assumptions of racism are suspended even by liberals. Therefore, they cannot tar traditionalists as bigots with giving preference to heterosexuality.

    In cases where a gay uncle and his spouse wants to adopt his nephew, I’m in favor of giving him priority over non-blood relatives. So I’m not homophobic. However, I believe that homosexuality is not entirely genetic. To the extent that role models could encourage homosexual experimentation or bi-sexuality, I want to minimize those influences.

    Also, society has a right to insist on building laws around an ideal husband and wife household where role models of different sexes are present. It may not always be achieved, but that doesn’t make it any less of a worthwhile goal. You might disagree with me and call me homophobic for insisting upon that ideal. I’ll accept that criticism. Let me just say that I prefer a society that has a 4% homosexuality rate to one that has 0% and also to one that has 20%.

    OK, so I’ve stated a rational and narrow reason for discrimination. However, once you confer the word “marriage” on homosexual unions, the nature of our legal system will not permit this discrimination. All marriages will have to be treated equally.

    Also, I think other forms of discrimination should be permitted. Insurance contracts and a myriad of other contracts in the market should be permitted to distinguish between heterosexual and homosexual unions because there may be real behavioral differences that merit different pricing distinctions.

    I recommend creating Homarriages for homosexuals that want to raise families. These unions will have all the same legal attributes as traditional marriages. However, society reserves the right to discriminate between marriages and homarriages. Perhaps, a homarriage of two lesbians should be given preference for adoption or foster care of a lesbian teenager?

    Andrew Sullivan brings up a good rhetorical point about heterosexual unions between men and women past their child bearing years, or for those who have no intention of having or adopting children. For them, I think there should be a third kind of contract and legal framework distinguished from marriage and homarriage. I call it a Personal Partnership. For example, there would be no spousal support in cases of divorce. However, property could be held in joint name with rights of survivorship passing to one spouse in case of death of another. All visitation rights, tax benefits, and government benefits given currently conferred upon married couples would be in force for Personal Partnerships. And Homosexuals could also get Personal Partnerships without distinction from Heterosexuals.

    The radical left of the marriage debate insists that there should not be any discrimination whatsoever on the basis of sexual orientation. The logical extension of that position is that society cannot lawfully make the distinctions I outlined above regarding child rearing. That represents an attack on the ideal of the husband and wife headed household as the best model for raising children. In our guts, that AND NOT RELIGIOUS BELIEFS is what motivated 95% of the people who voted for Proposition 8. Liberals make a big mistake by assuming that reserving the word “marriage” for heterosexual unions is at its core an expression of bigotry without any social merit.

    If the Yes on 8 crowd starts running commercials showing gay biker dudes in black leather walking out of an adoption agency with a baby boy while a dejected, wholesome heterosexual couple watches them go by, they will unleash this hetertofore hidden social assumption.

  20. kurt9 says:

    Derb’s arguments against same sex marriage are good. However, the religious right is more obsessed with preventing the cultural mainstreaming of gays than they are about protecting marriage itself. The “crunchy con” guy made this very clear that he is more concerned with the acceptance of civil liberties for gays than he is with the fight over same sex marriage.

    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 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 care about the issue and, more specifically, support them in opposing same sex marriage. They need to present a believable mechanism 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, I am still waiting for them to do this.

  21. Sarah says:

    @Bradlaugh
    “Allowing men to marry men, and women women (the actual proportions, last time I looked, are one to two or three, many more lesbians wanting this than gay men) is a huge change in our social arrangements.”

    Wait, what? What sort of huge change could there possibly be? Homosexuals are a very small minority and it’s not like they’re venturing out of that group looking for partners. Gay people marry *other* gay people.

    Are you implying that allowing legal gay marriages will suddenly make a whole bunch of other people gay and want to get married to someone of the same sex? Or are you implying that straight people won’t get married anymore? Honestly, this argument makes no sense.

    How can allowing a group of people to marry each other have *any* impact on anyone else? If heterosexual marriage as an institution is so important, why not make a case against divorce? Or outlaw quickie Vegas weddings? It seems to me that those two things have more to do with the disintegration of the institution of heterosexual marriage than gay people wanting the same protection under the law as straight people.

  22. kipp says:

    Mr. Derbyshire (Mr. Bradlaugh? – your hometown?),

    As someone who has trotted out anecdotes about “sex games” that go on in British boy’s schools (this was in an unrelated post years ago at NRO about Orwell’s childhood if I remember correctly), how does that square with your claim that homophobia is inherent in human nature? It seems to me an openness to same-sex(ual) gratification is rather widespread unless reprimanded away. Care to clarify your position?

  23. Jamie says:

    “Homophobia seems to be a rooted condition in us. It has been present always and everywhere, if only minimally (and unfairly — there has always been a double standard here) in disdain for “the man who plays the part of a woman.” There has never, anywhere, at any level of civilization, been a society that approved egalitarian (i.e. same age, same status) homosexual bonding. This tells us something about human nature — something it might be wisest (and would certainly be conservative-est) to leave alone.”

    One could make a similar claim to defend racism, could one not?

    I mean come on. This kind of essentialist argument makes since if your a Bible thumper, but it has no relationship to the world where I live, where there are lots of different pockets of different kinds of cultures. We are going to toy around with what will retrospectively seem like “human nature” until we are extinct. I can’t say that I know of a culture where “egalitarian” homosexual relationships were “normal,” but I know of lots of little cultural pockets where this is the case. I lived in two. One in the deep South and one in the Midwest.

    I mean come ON. That’s the most asinine argument I’ve ever heard: “this prejudice is widespread throughout history so we should roll with it.”

    The fact is that we’ve evolved into a culture where gay people ARE married, but they don’t have the legal rights that married people should have. Even in states where they can get married, their marriages aren’t recognized by the federal government. This is an awfully big deal if your spouse is here on a work visa.

    The lack of legal recognition for gay relationships simply means that we are not allowing gay people the privileges that they deserve, and it means that we are not encouraging them to participate in the social stability that traditional marriage offers.

    Marriage offers rights and privileges, but it also bestows responsibilities. This is an issue where any conservative who is not a religious fundamentalist should find easy to take a side on. And handily enough, it a position that is shared by the majority of liberals also. It’s a win-win. There should be no argument here, except where it comes to those religious fundamentalists, who I have little hope for.

    You’re in an untenable position here.

  24. MaskedBandit says:

    @Donna B.
    Same-sex common-law marriages are not recognized in Texas. The voters in Texas approved a state constitutional amendment that bans the state recognition of same-sex marriage, or anything that might provide similar benefits, so no civil unions or domestic partnerships either. While poorly worded, the Texas amendment doesn’t seem as drastic as the Virginia amendment (which can be interpreted as to prevent any private contracts between two people of the same-sex which may confer any benefits of marriage).

    Contrary to popular beliefs, gays can already get married. Find a pastor or preacher, have a ceremony with your partner, and *boom* you’re gay married. There just isn’t any federal recognition, and most states don’t recognize the marriage.

    Your church can marry as many couples as they’d like, but it means nothing without the civil marriage application. Similarly, you can get married without your church recognizing the marriage. Catholic divorcees regularly remarry without getting a Catholic annulment, and the Catholic church doesn’t recognize the marriage. Even in this day, I’m sure there are some denominations that refuse to recognize the marriages of mixed-race couples.

    Besides, where must you go to end your marriage? You go to the courthouse to file for divorce.

    I think the religious argument that “gay marriage will infringe on their rights” is steeped in the belief that people may start thinking that the religious folks protesting the weddings and marriages of gays and lesbians are bigoted. I think they’re right on that, but just because a religious belief is deeply held doesn’t mean it can’t be reviled by other people.

  25. Pingback: Reality and Lack of Reason « Old Caterpillar

  26. torrentprime says:

    @Ron Guhname
    You’re confusing civil marriage with relgious marriage. Again, someone makes this mistake. They are two separate things.

  27. m.d. says:

    The slippery slope argument and the you’re changing thousands of years of tradition argument are both valid but unpersuasive to me. The other arguments are pretty lame for the reasons cited by others.

    At least you’ve tried to avoid the “defense of marriage” baloney. To the extent gay marriage could somehow be any threat the the old fashioned kind, it couldn’t possibly be as significant a threat as no fault divorce, kids out of wedlock, living together and other things that the marriage defenders are doing nothing about.

    The best arument in favor of gay marriage is the no skin off my nose argument, which you didn’t address and probably can’t. Cause two guys getting married and living happily ever after doesn’t do nothin to me, or you for that matter. And even though I’m still only on my first marriage I can honestly say I’m quite fond of the instution in general and support it without reservation and cannot imagine how 2 guys getting married would effect the health of this institution either (as it now exists).

    The true motivation of those against gay marriage, and at least you’re pretty honest about it (if not straightforward), is the desire to stop homosexuality from becoming socially acceptable. But this is a losing and pointless battle, buddy.

  28. larryniven says:

    Ron, it’s nice that you have lots and lots of percent signs to throw around, but can you offer any kind of moral or legal argument? Just citing statistics is not sufficient.

  29. marisol chow says:

    “Homophobia seems to be a rooted condition in us.”

    Who is this “us”? Speak for yourself, pal. The people I don’t know aren’t homophobic. They are kind and have big hearts. You should try it sometime.

  30. Ron Guhname says:

    kurt9: It is possible that gay marriage might delay and decrease the percent of men getting married, and it’s connected to modern fatherhood. I’ll try to find data on this, but I’m the kind of dad who’s always pushing strollers, playing with the kids outside, feeding them, changing diapers, etc. I often feel the glare of macho guys and sense that they’re are thinking, “Damn homo.” Modern fatherhood, I suspect, is a problem itself in that it is making marriage look less attractive to very masculine men. Now, if these same guys see me walking my stroller with my married gay buddy, chatting away about how Johnny is saying a new word, I can imagine these macho types saying, that does it–I’m not joining the fag club.

  31. kipp says:

    Ron,

    ‘I’m the kind of dad who’s always pushing strollers, playing with the kids outside, feeding them, changing diapers, etc. I often feel the glare of macho guys and sense that they’re are thinking, “Damn homo.”’

    I’m amazed you so casually admit such a chronic mental habit without reflecting on how much it says about you rather than what you think it says about all those “very masculine men” of whose gaze you seem so acutely aware.

  32. Rob says:

    Re (3): It’s time to put the “slippery slope” to rest once and for all.

    Cultural conservative asks, “If we can redefine marriage in this particular way, why can we not redefine marriage to allow polygamy?”

    Some of the rhetoric SSM supporters use invites slippery slope arguments. We often say things like, “Everyone should have the right to marry the person they love.” If we accept that argument for same-sex marriage, it is indeed hard to see why we shouldn’t accept polygamy for the same reasons.

    The real argument for gay marriage, however, is different. The real argument for gay marriage is an equal opportunity argument. Everyone who is capable of having a loving relationship should have the opportunity to have a relationship that is both loving and fully legally recognized.

    As a gay man, it isn’t possible for me to have the feelings toward a woman that a man should feel for his wife. If I were to marry a woman, that marriage would not be loving; it would be a sham. I can, however, have a loving relationship with another man. If I’m denied the opportunity to marry a man, I’m denied the opportunity to have a relationship that is both loving and fully legally recognized.

    Contrast the situation of a polyamorist. Some people chose to get into polyamorous relationships. Some people may be wired in such a way that they find polyamorous relationships more rewarding than monogamy. But nobody is so deeply wired for polygamy that, for them, a monogamous relationship would necessarily be a sham. (If there were such people, we’d be hearing from them, and we’re not.) By prohibiting polygamy, we deny some people legal recognition for the relationships they’ve chosen, but we don’t deny anyone the opportunity to pursue a loving relationship that is fully legally recognized.

    Same-sex marriage can be distinguished from incestuous marriage in the same way. As for various non-consensual relationships, a relationship doesn’t qualify as loving if one or both parties can’t give meaningful consent.

  33. Jamie says:

    Ron, you are doing an admirable job of explaining how some notions of masculinity are a big ole problem in this culture. You are doing a very poor job of explaining how contemporary fatherhood is a problem or how gay people are a problem.

    It seems that these “very masculine men” might be buying into a notion of gender identity that is antithetical to the kind of social responsibility that conservatism is supposed to endorse. (I you think this notion masculinity is somehow born into these dudes then I suggest you get out more. There is no relationship between one’s testosterone levels and one’s attitudes toward social responsibilities. And that’s what you are talking about. Taking care of you kids doesn’t make you less of a man. It makes you less of a meathead.)

    If anyone is not willing to become the kind of father that (from what I gather) you are trying to be (Kudos by the way), they don’t BELONG in a marriage. I think you’re right- some of us have constructed a notion of masculinity that equates being a responsible participant in a family as being a “fag” or being “whipped” or being some other misogynist term.

    It SOUNDS like the fags are campaigning for the power to participate in traditional social institutions. It SOUNDS like they are mounting a campaign that is AGAINST some of the more irresponsible notions of gender floating around out there. (Like being a man means you have to act like you are in a Judd Apatow movie so people won’t think you are a “fag.”) Seems like the fags are on your team here. You should know an ally when you find one.

    Torrentprime’s point is one I was gonna make but decided not to. Gay people have been having religious marriages for decades now. Not commonlaw arrangements, but religious services. They can GET married now, but they can’t get legal recognition.

    And anyway, I thought conservatives were against using the law for social engineering. We should make a legal decision based on whether the grown up fratboys at the park will think you’re a fag for being a decent father? We should discriminate against 2% of the population because you worry about the effects it would have to play fair? The question of whether gay people should get married has only to do with whether or not its discrimination not to allow them to get married. I don’t see how its reasonable to conclude that it isn’t. The fact that doing so would help to detach the conservative movement from the culture wars and allow it to make better social critiques and the fact that doing so would promote social stability is gravy.

  34. Jamie says:

    The worst thing that has happened to the political discourse in the U.S. is those pesky culture wars. They have made liberals more irresponsible, and they have allowed bigots and idiots (I’m not talking about anyone here) to have an undo amount of influence over the conservative movement. They have made politics more stupid and less productive.

    Conservatives should be a the forefront of resolving these silly debates where they can. If you really want a political landscape where fiscal restraint and social responsibility are on the agenda, you have to kick the Carl Roves out.

    This is a issue where (I believe) everyone involved who is arguing in good faith (this forumula ironically excludes the fundies) should be able to come to a concensus. I have yet to find a convincing argument for not including gay people in marriage. The cultural tides are shifting in a big way. I really believe we’ll have it in my lifetime.

    And you know what. It won’t feel revolutionary. It’ll feel like a relief to be able to be more productive.

  35. Carlo says:

    @Ron Guhname

    I’ll resist the urge to snark about how your comment says so much more about your insecurities than the validity of your political arguments (oops, I guess I couldn’t resist after all). Instead, I’ll point out that I and probably everybody else has met men of all types, including some very masculine men indeed, who are happily married with kids and have faced no social stigmatization for being so. (Do you think all male athletes, models, weightlifters, and movie stars are single?) I’ll also point out that many gay men are quite “macho”, and some of them are even married with kids, too! Now if these macho men in your neighborhood have some bizarrely homophobic problem with fatherhood, that’s their problem, not yours. They don’t have to get married if they don’t want to, and gays and lesbians certainly shouldn’t suffer discrimination because of what they think.

  36. Mercutio42 says:

    @Ron Guhname
    It could be that I’m not using the same search you are, but when I go to the GSS web app hosted at http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss08 and search MARHOMO (i.e. evaluating agreement with the statement “Homosexuals Should Have Right To Marry”), then filter for ages 18-29 and the year 2008, I get 25.1% “Strongly Agree”, 28.3% “Agree” for a combined total of 53.4%. 12% neither agree or disagree, leaving 34.5% in “Disagree” and “Strongly Disagree”.

    Now, we can debate whether a 53.4% to 34.5% disparity is overwhelming, but it’s certainly stronger than the 39.7% figure you cited. Can you walk me through how you got that?

  37. If human nature is fixated against male-male bonding, as you say, then you really have nothing to worry about from same-sex marriage. Heterosexual couples will simply regard it as the Special Olympics compared to their real Olympics of heterosexual marriage. We do not require special government intervention to denigrate homosexuals by replacing our relationships in an inferior or non-existent legal status.

    Heterosexuals can feel superior to homosexuals without the aid of the government.

  38. Rob says:

    On the other points:

    (1) In at most twenty years, gay marriage will have majority support throughout the U.S. In some states, such as Vermont and New Jersey, gay marriage already has majority support. What do you think about these majorities?

    (2) Maybe your gay people you knew growing up weren’t bashed or harassed, but they experienced terrible pain. Gay people in that era weren’t able to talk about their relationships in public. Imagine having to pretend in public that your wife was not really your wife, but just your “friend” or your “roommate.” Imagine having to your coworkers and your family that you’re single, when that’s not true.

    Nowadays, gay relationships can get at least informal social recognition. But the lack of legal recognition also causes horrible pain. International couples who can’t marry are separated by immigration law. There are people who can’t help their partners get medical care because one cannot get health insurance coverage for a “boyfriend” or a “girlfriend.” There are horror stories about gay people getting kicked out of their homes because their partners died, their parnters had title to their homes, and either there were no wills or the wills were contested by greedy and homophobic relatives.

    (4) What, exactly, are these “cognitively challenged” people in danger of getting confused about? What is it that the smart people can figure out that the foolish masses can’t?

    (5) True, homophobia seems to be a very common human characteristic. Sexism and ethnic prejudice are also very common common human characteristics. So too are dishonesty, cowardice, cruelty, greed, and selfishness. Why shouldn’t we try to combat these bad features of ourselves, to the extent we can?

    (6) In the United States, there are over a thousand concrete rights associated with marriage. It’s not just about hospital visitation (though that is hardly a trivial matter–imagine being turned away from seeing your wife when she was really sick). It’s also about equal tax treatment, immigration rights, health insurance, Social Security, inheritance… The list goes on.

    The reason we want gay marriage, and not merely civil unions, is simply that we believe our relationships are fully as valuable as yours. To treat our relationships as somehow “less than” is to treat us as less than equal citizens.

  39. Ron Guhname says:

    Mercutio42: The difference is that I didn’t isolate the year 2008 as you did. I thought the question was new, but I see now that the question was asked four different times (1988, 2004, 2006, 2008) and in the first year few young people were for it. You’re approach is correct since the question is a contemporary one, but it doesn’t change the basic fact: 53.4% indicates a split, not a consensus.

  40. RobbieF says:

    The ONLY social conservative issue that has any merit is abortion. Realistically, abortion is probably never going to be outright banned, but there’s plenty of room to debate and WIN the second and third trimester arguments on the state level (especially third trimester). All this crap about gay marriage is ridiculous. Let the gays get married. It’s not like anything is going to change–the ones who want to get married are living together already. Let’s pick the fights we can WIN and are IMPORTANT, not losing battles that don’t matter and turn away young voters.

  41. Caledonian says:

    We’re not overhauling a basic human institution. Leaving aside the point that our marriage customs are neither traditional nor inherent to humanity’s nature, in no way does permitting homosexual marriage change the rights and obligations of heterosexual marriages. The institution isn’t being changed, it’s being extended. And that is a very different matter.

  42. Mercutio42 says:

    Ron: As I said, we can debate over whether a 19 point split in strongly/agree and strongly/disagree support is overwhelming. I would, however, posit that a clear majority of support, as opposed to the 39.7% support figure you cited does represent a change in the basic facts of the case.

    In any case, to characterize the current numbers as a “split” seems disingenuous. We’re not talking about a 53-47 divide here. 12% of respondents neither agree nor disagree with the statement that “Homosexuals Should Be Allowed To Marry,” which tells me they’re not exactly going to be filling the streets or their representatives’ inboxes in protest should same-sex marriage come to their area (just as they’re not now clamoring for a change). This remains, at its core, a case where a clear majority of young people support equal marriage rights for all (non-related adult) couples, while a definite minority (only about 1% more than a third) of young people actively oppose it.

    Finally, I’d encourage you to look at the trends – the 1988-2004 shift in support is hugely dramatic. Numbers didn’t fluctuate much between 2004 and 2006 (in part because a certain amount of statistical noise is to be expected when we’re discussing sample sizes of 200-400), but there’s a clear upward trend in support from 2004 to 2008. And that’s before we’ve seen Iowa’s Supreme Court start the trend in the Midwest and Vermont’s elected government set new precedents in the Northeast. Give society another couple years to realize that no significant social or moral decay is going to set in around those parts, and I expect that upward trend in support will only continue.

  43. kipp says:

    Lex,

    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.

    “I think this recognizes a reality that is ignored the public debate. A long term homosexual relationship consigns one man to what is generally regarded — even privately by liberals — as a somewhat humiliated role.”

    — Leaving aside the patently asinine idea that someone has to “play the woman” in a gay relationship for a moment: It takes a really twisted view of sexual intercourse to assume that the receptive partner is necessarily humiliated by the act. Do straight men regularly humiliate their wives? I thought women actually enjoyed sexual intimacy too – are all women are masochists?

    “It’s striking that homosexuals are extremely reluctant to acknowledge in public the reality of “tops” and “bottoms”, which they discuss frankly among themselves in a matter-of-fact way.”

    Again, what do you actually know about gay sexual proclivities and what gays “discuss among themselves”? I am gay and I am quite capable of topping and bottoming. Many of the gay men I’ve met are the same way. There are certainly preferences for one or the other – but your insight is actually just a caricature. Reducing subtle human diversity into inhuman stereotype is the standard modus of the bigot (whether self-aware or not).

    I must, however, thank you for being honest enough to voice the very suspicious infatuation with “who gives and who receives” that so many conservatives (usually male) against gay marriage are reluctant to admit. Most sexually and mentally healthy adults see that attaching moral status to the sexual choices of consenting partners is silly – but it’s always important to remember that not everyone is so lucky.

  44. Moses says:

    You make no sense.

    1. Which are not harmed or limited. You have the freedom to marry. Nobody is taking that away from you. And when rights compete, your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. So, while you have the right to whine, and nobody will take that from you, you don’t have the right to hit the lives of others with your bigotry. Even though you think you do.

    2. That’s a fallacy — Argumentum ad antiquitatem. We’ve always done it thus, therefore it is the way it must be. You would make as much sense arguing for the abolition of airplanes because “if God wanted us to fly, he’d have given us wings and we walked for thousands of years…”

    3. Another fallacy, which you kindly point out by using its name: The Slippery Slope. This argument states that should event X occur, so will other harmful events even though there is no casual connection or proof that X will cause Y. For example:

    “If we legalize marijuana, then more people would start to take crack and heroin, and we’d have to legalize those too. Before long we’d have a nation full of drug-addicts on welfare. Therefore we cannot legalize marijuana.”

    Ironically, this is the very argument used to criminalize marijuana and keep it criminalized. Yet, countries that have decriminalized marijuana have not seen the slippery slope under their feet. Rather, quite to the contrary.

    4. An appeal to bigotry? I don’t even know where this incredibly bigoted, moronic fallacy is coming from. If we all had IQs of 120 or higher, the author might get his foolish self laughed at even more than he is…

    5. People made this argument about the Divine Right of Kings. They’ve made this argument about slavery. And homophobia is not a rooted condition in the nature of man. I’ve never been homophobic. My children aren’t homophobes. My wife is not homophobic. The condition stems from conservative, controlling religions and societal indoctrination of those values into its members.

    6. Then the same thinness, but for your ignorance of it, applies to heterosexual relationships. But, for the record, it’s more than hospital rules. It’s about equality, real equality in society, not your “separate but equal” equality. After all, as we all know, “separate but equal” only means “separate.”

  45. Stephen says:

    1. “The majority has rights, too.”

    In a democracy like our own, the majority possesses something much greater than rights: The majority rules. That’s why the rights of minorities, like homosexuals, must be protected from the bigotry and discrimination of the majority, rather than the other way around.

    2. “the occasional slights suffered by homosexual couples are microscopic”

    It may only seem microscopic because it never happened to you. Nevertheless, throughout the history of the United States, suspected homosexuals have been beaten up, raped, or often murdered. Even today, FBI statistics for 2001 show that sexual orientation-based hate crimes constituted 13.9% of all reported bias incidents, making it the third highest ranked category. In addition, gaybashing incidents are largely underestimated because of the shame involved, because they are often classified by authorities as sexual assaults rather than hate crimes, and because many states do not have hate-crime statutes that include sexual orientation. In one survey, ninety four percent of out-of-the-closet gays and lesbians report having been assaulted or harassed in hate-related incidents, usually more than once.

    3. “There really is a slippery slope here.”

    There really isn’t. Comparing marriage between two men to bestiality might seem logical only because you feel the same kind of revulsion. But there is no logical connection.

    4.“If you have a cognitively-challenged underclass…you need some anchoring institution for them to…have some continuity and stability.”

    That’s what the Roman Catholic Church rationalized when they finally got around to sanctifying the institution of heterosexual marriage 1,200 years after the death of Christ. But there is no evidence this cut down on sexual promiscuity. It is also arguable that forcing homosexuals into heterosexual marriages causes far more social and emotional disruption than allowing them the freedom to make their own choice – even if they don’t have a high IQ.

    5. “Homophobia seems to be a rooted condition in us.”

    Homophobia is a condition rooted in fear and ignorance and rather than fatalistically giving in to it, it needs to be educated and overcome. Homosexuality is a sexual orientation, rooted in early developmental biology, and it has always been found in a certain percentage of the population, regardless of cultural discrimination.

    6. “the proponents are not so much for something as against something.”

    A civil marriage contract is not only between two people, it is also between them and society. For instance, our society does not approve of relationships between prostitutes and their customers, or between adults and children, which is why these sort of relationships are not sanctioned by the law. Homosexual marriage says that, unlike prostitution of pedophilia, a committed homosexual relationship is not something that people need to hide or be ashamed of as if it were a crime – it is something that the rest of society should begin to honor and respect. It doesn’t mean that homosexuals are looking for the personal approval of everyone who still opposes the ‘homosexual lifestyle.’ The important thing is whether society and the law will recognize their freedom and basic right to marry the person of their choice and pursue their own happiness.

  46. RK Wright says:

    @Ron Guhname
    53.4% indicates a split, not a consensus.

    53.4 percent represents a majority, not a split. Presidential elections are decided by numbers fewer than this, why is it that when you discover the majority approve, rather than your erroneous assumption as stated earlier, the majority doesn’t matter? I thought your #1 argument was that majorities had rights too. So, what is it? Does the majority have rights too, or do they only have rights when you agree with their opinion? Someone else asked what you would do if a majority favored legal rights, and lo and behold, it seems that from your own sources that the majority supports the marriages of same-sex couples. Or do you now believe that the minority should be protected from the whim of the majority?

    That is the problem the pro-Equality side has had for years. We get the con sides arguments, defeat them on the merits of those arguments and then they change the rules. We were once told to take our cases to the courts. We did so and when we won, it was blamed on activist judges. Then we were told to take it to our legislators (at least here in California) and when we did that and it passed TWICE we were vetoed and told to take it to the courts. Then when the court decided for us, we were told to take it to the people. Your side can’t stick to one set of arguments and moves the goalposts every time we cross it.

    And in regards to your statistic on how many same-sex couples would want to avail themselves of marriage, why didn’t you state the percentage of heterosexuals who would wish to avail themselves of marriage. I’m pretty sure the numbers on that would be just as low as the ones you cite on same sex marriage. Marriage itself is seen as less than desirable by a majority, or the divorce rate wouldn’t be over 50%.

  47. kurt9 says:

    It is possible that gay marriage might delay and decrease the percent of men getting married, and it’s connected to modern fatherhood. I’ll try to find data on this, but I’m the kind of dad who’s always pushing strollers, playing with the kids outside, feeding them, changing diapers, etc. I often feel the glare of macho guys and sense that they’re are thinking, “Damn homo.” Modern fatherhood, I suspect, is a problem itself in that it is making marriage look less attractive to very masculine men. Now, if these same guys see me walking my stroller with my married gay buddy, chatting away about how Johnny is saying a new word, I can imagine these macho types saying, that does it–I’m not joining the fag club.

    This is plausible. I will be interested in seeing what data you find in reference to this. You should make a posting out of this on your website as this is useful information. Although, as you say, this is more a commentary about modern fatherhood, in general, than about gays specifically.

  48. Mercutio42 says:

    @RK Wright
    To be accurate, I was challenging Ron on his statement of support for gay marriage amongst young people (ages 18-29). In the general population, the numbers are far more divided (though, again, they’ve been trending more and more towards support for marriage equality).

    At the same time, raising the top age up to the 18-40 range still yields majority support for marriage equality, and you have to go to the 18-60 range for there to be *equal* support and opposition (43% strongly/approve, 43% strongly/disapprove for the 18-60 range). Now that’s a split! The trends clearly indicate building support for marriage equality.

  49. Joe Perez says:

    Dave, Paul and others have addressed quite well the logical fallacies of Derbyshire’s argument, but fewer have tackled convincingly his argument regarding the unchanging nature of human nature. He wrote:

    Human nature exists, and has fixed characteristics. We are not infinitely malleable. Human society and human institutions need to ”fit” human nature, or at least not go too brazenly against the grain of it. Homophobia seems to be a rooted condition in us. It has been present always and everywhere, if only minimally (and unfairly — there has always been a double standard here) in disdain for “the man who plays the part of a woman.” There has never, anywhere, at any level of civilization, been a society that approved egalitarian (i.e. same age, same status) homosexual bonding. This tells us something about human nature — something it might be wisest (and would certainly be conservative-est) to leave alone.

    This is actually two distinct arguments:

    (5a) that homophobia is an essential constituent of human nature, and therefore homophobia should be encouraged and reinforced by social institutions, and

    (5b) that heterosexual normativity is an essential constituent of human nature, and therefore heterosexuality itself should be affirmed via heteronormative marriage.

    In my recent (2007) book, “Soulfully Gay”, published by Shambhala/Integral Books, I, Joe Perez, argue for what theologians would call a gay-inclusive theological anthropology. In fact, in the past year, the book has been incorporated in the curriculum of some divinity school courses including those from a Roman Catholic perspective (however, I am a former Roman Catholic).

    Basically I argue that human nature is not so much pliable as gradually evolutionary, consisting in both permanent universal structures and adaptive expressions. In other words, the essential attributes of human nature have undergone significant changes in how they are conceived in the past decades, and continue to evolve. In my philosophy, both “heterophilia” and “homophilia” are the “two prime directions of Love”, corresponding to Eros and Agape in the Christian tradition, and–more saliently for a secular audience, the principles of self-transcendence and self-immanence in systems theory). Human sexual variations are essentially equally valid expressions of an underlying universal human nature.

    On this argument, replying directly to Derbyshire, I would say:

    (5a) homophobia may be a universal feature of human nature, but then so is heterophobia, and both of these are “sins”, or immature expressions of Agape and Eros respectively, and therefore irrelevant to the debate over gay marriage. Sins, including phobias and hatreds of any kind, should not be reinforced by social policy.

    (5b) both heterosexuality and homosexuality are equally valid expressions of human nature, both based on longstanding religious and philosophical traditions (however, historically, the homophiilic traditions have been relegated mostly to esoteric aspects of those traditions and are only recently coming into greater recognition and acceptance). Therefore, the argument that human nature *demands* heterosexual normative social institutions is fallacious — it “begs the question” of human nature. A more convincing argument would need, at a minimum, to engage my “pro-gay” philosophical anthropology with a convincing case that natural law required an “anti-gay” view. My book has been published for two years, and no such response has been forthcoming from either a religious or a secular perspective, and so forgive me if I consider my own view tentatively to have a certain highly tentative presumption of victory.

    Note that neither my response in (5a) or (5b) requires acceptance of any particular religious conception of human nature. Although my book “Soulfully Gay” articulates a Christian (or, some would say, post-Christian) theological argument, the philosophical grounding is not tradition but rather the holonic tenets of the general theory of evolution as defined by systems theorists working at the interdisciplinary intersections of the human sciences.

  50. Michael M. says:

    @Ron Guhname
    Huh? If I’m not mistaken, there wasn’t a single gay marriage until 2004 in Massachusetts.

    Ron, then please provide evidence of why you think this is a big change. You failed to do so. I can tell you why I think it’s a small change: the situation is not dissimilar from interracial marriage. At the time the Supreme Court handed down Loving v. Virginia, some states recognized interracial marriages, some did not. Some religious institutions would perform interracial marriages, some would not. Interracial marriage involves two non-related consenting adults. All of these factors are exactly the same with regard to same-sex marriage. The single biggest difference between the arc of interracial marriage and same-sex marriage is the speed with which it is happening, but in the case of same-sex marriage we aren’t even close to talking about a Supreme Court fiat that would strike down all prohibitions against same-sex marriage. We’re talking about a growing list of states coming around to the notion that there’s no good reason not to recognize the marriages of two non-related consenting adults, as many did with interracial couples over several decades. The only way I can see calling state recognition of same-sex marriage a “big” change is if you also call state recognition of interracial marriage a big change, and I think history has pretty well demonstrated that it wasn’t a big deal at all for the majority of the population. It was only a big deal for those who wanted an interracial marriage, and for racists and conservative religious types who grounded their bigotry in their faith. The same is true for same-sex marriage, except substitute “homophobes” for “racists.”

    As for “there wasn’t a single gay marriage until 2004,” you’re confusing state recognition of marriage with the social institution of marriage, a mistake Bradlaugh also makes. You are, in a way, parroting Edith Beale, refusing to recognize marriages or divorces you or your religion doesn’t sanction, no matter what anyone else says. That’s your right, but it doesn’t mean those marriages don’t exist. No government has complete control of a social institution like marriage. There are still people in the U.S. in polygamous marriages — the state doesn’t recognize them as valid, but the parties involved and the religious sects that bless them see them as such. Polygamy is illegal in the U.S., but it is still very much a (very small) part of the social institution of marriage, as it has been throughout history. You can’t simply pretend those people don’t exist and claim “there are no polygamous marriages.”

    I’ve yet to see a single valid secular conservative argument why the government should be permitted to interfere in the private consensual relations of two adults in a way that denies some equal protection. I’ve yet to see a single conservative defense of a law like DOMA, which for the first time in U.S. history took marriage out of the hands of the states and made it a federal matter. Isn’t conservatism associated with federalism anymore, or is it only not so associated when homophobic conservatives like you and Bradlaugh don’t get what they want? What possible conservative defense can there be of the federal government telling states that recognize same-sex marriage that those marriages are no good on the federal level? Even interracial marriage was always recognized as valid by the feds if it was valid in the state where it was performed.

Comments are closed.