Barack Obama’s invitation to evangelical powerhouse Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation has angered abortion and gay rights advocates. They are overreacting. The invitation merely confirms Obama’s admirable willingness to reach out across a relatively broad ideological spectrum .
Too bad Rick Warren isn’t so open-minded. After his over-hyped and intrusive interviews of Obama and John McCain this last August, the best-selling author of A Purpose-Driven Life disclosed to his congregation at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Ca., the one kind of person he couldn’t vote for. “I could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, ‘I don’t need God,’” Warren preached, according to the Los Angeles Times. “They’re saying, ‘I’m totally self-sufficient by [myself].’ And nobody is self-sufficient to be president by themselves. It’s too big a job.”
It’s hard to decide which is more laughable: Warren’s conception of the presidency or of atheists. Unfortunately, both conceptions are widespread among Americans.
Warren would apparently feel more secure if a president said: “After consulting God, I have decided to bomb Iran,” than if he said, “After consulting my advisors, all available intelligence, and our allies, I have decided to bomb Iran.” A Warren defender would likely say that the two statements boil down to the same thing. But if consulting God merely ratifies what a president learns from his human sources, then the consultation is a meaningless superfluity.
No, a properly religious President, in Warren’s view, is presumably prepared to change his merely human-derived knowledge based on what God whispers in his ear. If he is not prepared to revise his conclusions, then his decision-making is no different from that of an atheist.
So why would Warren be so confident that God has spoken to the president and that the president has properly interpreted the message?
If the president of Iran said: “After consulting God, I have decided to bomb the United States,” Warren (and most other Americans) would presumably be utterly certain that the Iranian president had not been taken into God’s confidence. But why? Perhaps Warren is naively ethnocentric. God, in this view, would either never answer a Muslim’s prayers, or would do so only in ways that protect America. But we know that God does not always protect America from attack.
Why is Warren any more confident that when a U.S. president says: “After heartfelt prayer, I have decided that Detroit needs a federal bail-out,” he has actually been given such divine advice? And if a citizen cannot know whether God in fact did convey the proper course of action in any given case, how is the public better off with a president who calls on such an erratic White House advisor?
Moreover, the task of persuading the prayer-inspired president that he is wrong about the wisdom of federal intervention in the auto industry, say, seems unduly daunting to me. If a president made the decision purely on worldly grounds, those grounds can in theory be countered with other evidence. Obviously, not everyone is open to contrary evidence. The ideal of rational decision-making is only imperfectly realized in practice. But I at least know the type of arguments I would make. I don’t know how you counter revelation, however. God is a political conversation-stopper, a trump card that constricts political discourse rather than widen it out.
But let’s give Warren the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he merely means: A president should possess humility, an awareness of his own fallibility and the limits of his own and others’ knowledge. I could not agree more. And the unreligious can be more obstinate and close-minded than many a devout believer. But on balance the sense that God can help you out with your presidential responsibilities seems to me to be less conducive to humility than an awareness that human knowledge—provisional, fallible, constantly subject to revision— is all you’ve got to go on.
Pace Warren, only a megalomaniac in the White House would say: “I’m totally self-sufficient by [myself].” A non-believer president would seek out the same wide range of assistance as a believer president. And if his human advisors give him lousy advice, he can throw them out and get a better set. If they have lied or betrayed their office, they can be subpoenaed. Neither option is available, unfortunately, with God.
Ah now there’s a good post from Secular Right. More of this kind of commentary, please!
Spot on piece! That’s one of the problems with Obama’s “inclusive” argument for inviting Warren. I think it’s entirely reasonable to give a seat at the table to representatives of the religious right during his administration. Not a driver’s seat mind you but a say. But definitely not at his historic inauguration. Inclusiveness should be a two way street. I gotta believe there is someone more appropriate, less offensive to an important constituency, and willing to compromise.
How do you accommodate people who are unwilling to accommodate you?
Heather Mac Donald says:
Perhaps Warren is naively ethnocentric. God, in this view, would either never answer a Muslim’s prayers
Please don’t conflate religion with ethnicity. It is a great irritation of mine when Muslims play the race card in attempt to deflect criticism of their religious beliefs, so we don’t need non-Muslims legitimizing this sleight of hand. Other than that minor complaint, I completely agree with your post.
If I were an author like Warren, I would be over-freaking-joyed at this publicity. This prayer is going to go all over the ‘net and get analyzed, sliced, diced, commentaried…. He ought to start it off like this: “Oh, Lord, turn toward us thy loving gaze….” Hey… was that “loving gays”? Did he say God wants us to love gays?
I guess that’s why I’m not a preacher, mischief is the purpose I’m driven to. As it is, I’m having a blast watching everyone melt-down over this prayer.
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I would be over-freaking-joyed at this publicity
Well, according to Ezra Klein Warren has the bestselling book EVER (what about the Bible?). So he probably doesn’t need it….
I completely disagree with this. I applaud the idea that we need to focus on dialogue and compromise with those who we disagree with, but religion too often makes that infuriatingly impossible.
If Rick Warren had simply stated that he believes that marriage should continue to be defined as between a man and a woman, I would be satisfied that, in the end, it will come down to the strength of argument. But he didn’t. He compared gay marriage to incest and pedophilia, and he was a prominent supporter of proposition 8.
Obama wouldn’t invite a white supremacist to deliver the inaugural invocation, and I don’t see a whole lot of difference, to be honest. To be sure, a white supremacist may well be a lovely chap in everything else that he does, but that doesn’t mean that he would deserve to given such an honor, particularly when there are better candidates for the role.
If someone can compare millions of normal, law abiding Americans to, not only criminals, but criminals that conjure up all sorts of horrific images, and still be invited to the Presidential Inauguration, something is seriously wrong with the United States.
But we already knew that, and that is why I am annoyed by this.
and he was a prominent supporter of proposition 8.
Well, that’s the “normal” position, if by normal you mean majority.
Obama wouldn’t invite a white supremacist to deliver the inaugural invocation, and I don’t see a whole lot of difference, to be honest.
White supremacists are outside the realm of social acceptability for 90% of Americans. Those who frankly condemn homosexuality and use offensive analogies (at least to many people, including myself) are not outside of the realm of social acceptability for 90% of Americans. Last I checked the majority of Americans still thought homosexuality was “wrong.”
Now, in socially liberal circles it is verbotten to say the things about homosexuality that Rick Warren has said. Barack Obama is a social liberal, as are many, on the order of 1/3 to 1/2, of those who voted for him. But most of the nation is not socially liberal. It seems like Obama is making the calculation that social liberals have nowhere else to go and will in the end tolerate and forgive his play to the cultural middle.
And yes, the fact is that the “cultural middle” is pretty freaking alien to the sensibilities of most liberals and a disproportionate number of younger people. But, Barack Hussein Obama is a politician. His brief to the majority. At least if he wants to get reelected.
I oppose someone like Warren being given any role in this. As an atheist, I have great sympathy for those who suffered the bigotry of Proposition 8, because I know as sure as I’m sitting here that Warren and the rest of the cross-wearing black shirts in the religious right would just as soon put my civil rights to a vote. (Not that the lack of such a vote hasn’t stopped them from walking all over those rights, anyway.)
In my mind, the comparison to white supremacists is good, but flawed. I think the more apt analogy would be had Truman or Eisenhower invited an avowed white supremacist to his inaugural, immediately after the white supremacist spearheaded a charge to strip civil rights from blacks.
In those days, you could probably say that most (at the very least, many) of Americans would have supported the racist position or, at least, not ouside the realm of social acceptability of most Americans. But even then, the thoughtful, smart politician, and the man of character, stood up and said, “no, what you are advocating has no place near me because it is rank bigotry and goes against everything America should stand for.”
Because even popular bigotry is still bigotry.
Obama is basically already running for a 2nd term, and is courting the evangelical vote. (Where else is the Move.on crowd going to go?) He’s appealing to centrists and, possibly, the RR. Remember Jonah Goldberg’s formulation: The RR will cease being Right before they cease being religious…perhaps BO is banking on this. (And he’s clearly “selling out” the people that helped him defeat Hillary, the far-left Kossacks. Defeating Hillary was MUCH more difficult than defeating McCain.)
The Warren thing is disappointing to me, as an unbeliever, mainly for the reasons Heather lays out. Well done again, HMacD.
It never ceases to amaze me how the religious claim the mantle of “humility”, but then claim that God speaks to them directly and gives them extra-assistance in the course of their lives. How arrogant and self-absorbed to you have to be to really, truly believe that the creator of the universe is concerned about your affairs, and will influence worldly outcomes to your benefit? (as the Iranian President v. American president “revelation battle” makes clear.)
The astonishing naiveté and lack of humility displayed by fervent believers, while simultaneously deriding and disparaging those who, in their caution and sobriety, weigh evidence and try to keep their own emotions in check, is truly astounding.
The thing that gets me is, it’s a totally *gratuitous* insult. There are plenty of liberal Christians he could have invited; instead he invites someone who essentially says you can’t be liberal and a good Christian. Seems like a bad move for someone whose electoral base is composed largely of liberals.
After eight years of GW Bottom the Comick Rustick, it will be sweet to have a more machiavellian president. Obama just crowned Warren as the leader of the evangelicals, the point man. Warren is far more liberal than Dobson or Hagee, say, and better known and more influential than Osteen. Obama rightly percieves he can work with Warren on global HIV/AIDS and climate change. Obama just shaped the future of the religious right without making a single concession. It is bricolage, like his appointment of Hillary. Use what you got.
The religious right’s homophobia and bigotry will be addressed in the usual fashion– just like Roe v Wade, Brown v Board, and Loving v Virginia.
Not only is there evidence of a strong negative correlation between religious belief and intelligence, but the religious right seem to be awfully slow learners……….lack of g perhaps?
When did Warren claim God spoke to him directly? Examples, please.
The “it could have been worse” response to Warren seems fairly ordinary around blogville. Demopublican pragmatists (including Team Obama) will accept Warren, regardless if he’s another creationist nutcase, since he’s at least not a Hagee quoting from the Book of Revelation (the right’s favored political text).
It might be recalled that Obama made appeals to evangelicals–even the dixie GOP sort–throughout his entire campaign. At one point BO was stumping on “40 days of Faith and Family,” y’all (and his cronies at the Bethel-AME sent out 1000s of email spam messages promoting it).
It seems to me that it isn’t advice that intelligent people get from their God, so much as spiritual support. They feel very much uplifted and sustained by their deity, more able to function, and more likely to think clearly.
Most Christians I know would be outraged to hear a president (as Bush did) say that God told them to do something, especially anything war-like. They like to believe, though, that the Christian presidents are getting the same positive feelings and influences that their religion gives them.
When most of your ‘thinking’ is really just determining what you feel and running with it, a belief system that soothes your fears and quiets your anxieties DOES help you ‘think’, in that it makes it easier to not be nervous and upset, especially in a crisis.
It cripples the ability to actually think, though. Rather a high price to pay, at least for the people who could pay it. Those who couldn’t have nothing to lose, so to speak.
Bravo! A real class act.
Louis Andrews
“He’s [Obama] a politician, And he says what he has to say as a
politician. He does what politicians do.” – Jeremiah Wright on PBS sometime before the 08 election.
If the Obama fans had heeded Pastor Wright’s caveat emptor then, today they would not be so shocked and hurt by the Warren choice.
Remember, there are two prayers, an invocation and a benediction. He has chosen a liberal Methodist, civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery, for the benediction, which to me is a psychological and symbolical gesture that says, “Rick Warren is what you had before I was President, Rev. Lowery is what you can expect now that I AM President.”
I hate to say it like this, but really, Most People who are Religious think there is something inherently wrong with anyone who professes to be Atheist or Agnostic. To them, it’s inconceivable that someone would *not* believe in something. That’s why even though Pagans, Muslims, Hindus may be viewed as strange or a little kooky, since they believe in something, they’re not inherently dangerous. Atheist and Agnostics, by not believing are a threat and dangerous for a number of reasons:
1) They must be immoral as they have no religion to define morality for them. This thought process comes from the idea that humanity is inherently evil unless there is some omniscient external force to control your behavior through threats or rewards. Since Atheists and Agnostics do not believe in a Soul, they step outside that system of control.
2) Atheists and Agnostics are viewed as a bunch of sociopaths who have no moral compass to guide them. this is an extension of point 1. Which says that since someone doesn’t believe, they must be insane.
It doesn’t matter how rational someone may argue, To someone who believes, it’s incomprehensible to them that someone could rationally *not* believe. and if someone is that ‘wrong’ when thinking about God, then what else will they be wrong on?
And really, yes, to a number of religious people, they’d rather you pray on an issue than ask other people for advice, because they really do believe that God will talk to you and give you guidance.
How is his statement not ethnocentric? He is the mirror image of Muslim extremeists.
How is his statement not ethnocentric? He is the mirror image of Muslim extremeists
Religion != ethnicity.
Re Religion != ethnicity
That just depends on how you define ethnicity. If you consider it the hue of you’re skin or the slant of your eyes, you’re right. If you consider it the culture one identifies with, then religion can be a part of ethnicity.
Of course, thinking someone’s culture is beyond critisism I would think is the very definition of ethnocentric.
And for the grammer nazis: 1st you’re -> your. That’s what I get for typing while on a teleconference…
For those of us who really want to see the Muslim world become a safe place for open apostasy and heresy, deconversion, free thought, and disbelief, it’s really important to separate the ethnicity/culture/etc. from the religion.
It never ceases to amaze me how the religious claim the mantle of “humility”, but then claim that God speaks to them directly and gives them extra-assistance in the course of their lives.
Ordinary citizens have the right to believe that. When an elected official does, it’s time to reach for the First Amendment. Any person who values the principles of Madison, Jefferson, and Co should have cried foul when Bush mentioned reading the Book of Revelation for inspiration: the “work of a madman,” according to Jefferson.
For that matter, it’s debatable whether the low-church protestants (baptists, presbyterians, methodists, mormons, etc.) are even Christians in a traditional sense. The teachings of Calvin should not be assumed to be compatible with the teachings of the New Testament (as far as they may be discerned). Most of the Founding Fathers opposed the baptist-presbyterian horde as well.
Rick Warren’s just another Falwell-like dimwit, though with a faux-hipster goatee.
“a faux-hipster goatee.”
On a fat preacher, it’s a face mullet.
I’m with Damien and Grant on this one. Whether it’s socially acceptable or not, it’s apparent that the biggest motivator of the Prop 8 crowd is simple bigotry. When virtually all of your arguments look like find-and-replaced arguments against interracial marriage, you’ve got a problem, and I have a hard time believing that Obama doesn’t realize this. So while it may be politically savvy, it’s really not cool.
While I don’t know where the writers at Secular Right stand on this, it seems to me that gay marriage is something that secular conservatives ought to be working for. Social issues branding is a big part of what makes ‘Republican’ a dirty word among many types of young people, and gay marriage is a particular sticking point here. Most are at least a bit uncomfortable about abortion (and abortion is usually kept quiet anyway), but stuff like Prop 8 is easily perceived as Republicans attacking their friends, which makes politics about personal loyalty in a way that doesn’t help the right at all. Like creationism, it’s an issue where the ‘conservative’ side is almost entirely religiously motivated, and I think that broader conservative goals could be more easily achieved if it’s demonstrated that vocal portions of the right are strong supporters of the ‘liberal’ position.
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I disagree. I would hope that the Secular Right would consider the simplest solution to this issue. Get the government completely out of our bedrooms. Marriage is a religious institution, and there should be no government license, sanction, privileges, benefits, or penalties conferred upon anyone based on their marital status in their particular religion.
If two (or more) cohabitants think they need a legal contract to protect themselves from each other, they can simply hire an attorney draw one up to their specifications. If they think they need their god’s sanction, or would just think it cool to have a piece of paper identifying their living arrangements as a “marriage,” they can simply hire a preacher. There are plenty who are nonjudgmental. Look hard enough, and you can undoubtedly find a shaman of one sect or another, who would sanctify a marriage with your favorite ewe.
Problem solved… and we can get back to focusing our attention on matters that are within the purview of our government’s legitimate secular role in our diverse society. The sooner we marginalize the noisy PC moralists’ battle, between the Politically Correct and the Piously Correct, and pay attention to what is actually important, the better off we all will be. ◄Dave►
Dave – Would the “private contract” between two consenting adults of the same sex confer similar rights as a hetero marriage? and, would said contract stand to challenges in a courtroom?
p.s. the gay community has some very powerful individuals and institutions fighting on their behalf, and this is one fight the secular right should sit out.
I don’t know about that. Surely a lot of people are what we could call “line crosser/drawer”‘s – they flip their position when a fairly obvious line has been crossed. This is more easily understood on the abortion issue, where one obvious “line” is conception. Many believe you can do nearly anything to stop conception, but once it happens, you should do nothing but let it run its course. Folks who don’t stop at the conception line, can have their position eventually backed into the corner of “so there comes a time when one second during the fetal development, the abortion is still OK, but the next second later it is not?” Many are uncomfortable defending the “Well, yes” necessary response.
The corollary, though not a perfect one, for the Prop 8 issue would then be between one man and one woman (though already not brother-sister, parent-child, I assume.) To them a “line” is definitely crossed if you expand beyond that to same-sex, more than two, inter-species, etc.
All that to say, “simple bigotry” does not really cover the opposition.
Dave, the problem with the “private contract” solution is that a contract is only binding on the signatories to the contract. Marriage rights, however, also bind third parties who were no part of that contract, so that, for example, heath-care providers have to recognize the rights of a person in a marriage in a way they do not have to recognize people who are parties to a contract. Similarly, the government dispenses resources (such as social security benefits to widows/widowers) based solely on a state of marriage, and in a way that cannot be altered by private contract.
Ivan,
Wouldn’t you say that someone whose “line” on acceptable marriage is race is exercising “simple bigotry”??
I’m not following you, Ivan. Isn’t the very notion that a gay relationship is somewhere on a spectrum between an acceptable heterosexual union and a polygamous union with baby animals itself a form of anti-gay bigotry? I know that the analogy is much abused, but it seems like you could use a similar construction to explain how some people didn’t want to give blacks the right to vote – where freeing the slaves is fine, but suffrage is going just a bit too far. It’s the distinction between some kind of particularly violent “kill ’em all” bigotry and one that merely settles for some level of oppression, but it’s still bigotry.
The other problem with getting government out of marriage altogether is that it’s much less politically feasible than gay marriage. If gay marriage is some kind of secular takeover, what is the state abolishing the institution of legal marriage? Further, while I’d ordinarily support that kind of thing as ideal policy, I don’t think it ought to be suggested as an alternative to gay marriage. The message is less “the state has no business in marriage, and we’re all equal” and more “if we’d have to let gays get married, then we’ll just get rid of marriage altogether”.
Rereading your post, I see what you meant. Ignore the bits of my post about the analogy to slavery and black suffrage, and read in what Grant just said about the line being interracial marriage.
Well, if ones particular “line” is that marriage is for folks who can, without outside assistance, produce a viable ( thus no close genetic relations) human being, then polygamy would stand closer to the next-in-line position, than would same-sex.
If one allows same-sex so as not to be a “bigot”, then is one not still a bigot for not allowing polygamy? In other words, what’s so special about same-sex? That it at least keeps the number at two?
Again, I’m just saying that dismissing all opposition as “simple bigotry”, is itself “simple”.
You’re not getting it. Yes, an inventive human mind can come up with all sorts of arbitrary “lines”. Skin color. Hair color. Height difference. Age difference. Religious difference. But some “lines” make a whole lot of sense ( e.g. the “moment of conception” line for abortion), and are quite logically defensible, while some make very, very little sense ( e.g. skin color or Race for marriage ) and are near indefensible. The marriage line that is defined as “only two, and able to produce viable children” is way more defensible than, say, “only two, and must be of the same Race”. If you don’t see the huge difference, I don’t know what else to say to you.
And if we can’t draw a line somewhere, then I guess only “no such thing as marriage” and “all consenting combinations are permissible” would be the only two positions left.
Re: Obama. I am simply amazed that so many people apparently believed the hype. The man threw his own grandmother under the bus and just as casually threw out his pastor, when it became expedient. Why would anyone expect any honesty from a sleazy Chicago pol?
Re marriage. I am always amazed at how fundamentally intelligent, educated people misconstue its purppose. It does not exist to ratify romantic relationships. Arranged marriages are still the norm in a good part of the world. It does not exist to confer health care benefits on the partner. It predates the state, clan, and tribe. It is a name we give to that union that can and usually does produce children naturally and which, by its nature, is the bedrock of community.
We have surrounded it by all sorts of laws and protections not because we are sentimental about marriage but because society (which is us) knows that the family is the best and most stable environment in which to raise children.
How anyone can doubt this in light of the eveidence that we have after two + decades of marriage failure amazes me. We know– it isn’t speculation any more– that divorce harms children. The children of divorce fail on every single measure of child well-being that we have devised. Marriage needs to be strengthened not weakened or defined out of existence which is where we are headed now.
Trilok & Grant, reread my post. I said there should be no government privileges, benefits, or penalties conferred upon anyone based on their cohabitation arrangements. I eschew the use of the term “rights” for privileges or benefits, for then people confuse and conflate them with the natural rights a freeman is born with. I think of a right as the freedom to do something. Too many Americans now erroneously think of a right more as an entitlement to receive something. This Orwellian perversion of our language should be discouraged, for much mischief ensues from it.
Trilok, the court should be blind to the stature of the litigants in contract law. There would be no requirement for a prenuptial contract; but if the cohabitants entered into one, it would be no different in court than any other business agreement.
Grant, third parties could not be so coerced by government, for that would constitute bestowing a privilege or benefit on the cohabitants. As for the SSI Ponzi scheme, it needs to be slain anyway… but again, all discrimination of benefits or penalties based on one’s cohabitation choices would need cease.
It has been empirically demonstrated time and again that marriage is a really effective antidote for love. The very notion of needing or wanting a government license to sleep with one’s lover strikes me as ridiculous. Requiring one to obtain a license to keep a dog is bad enough. Thank goodness nosy neighbors don’t get to dictate which type of dog I am permitted to license, based on their own preferences rather than mine. ◄Dave►
Really? Are you sure you have thought this through thoroughly? I can think of two societal things, instantly off the top of my head, that legal marriage helps.
1. It gives the woman some extra indication that the man that might impregnate her will stick around to help raise the children, and provide for mother and child during their vulnerable times.
2. As a rival male, I see your legal commitment to this woman as a mutual “hands off, lets not waste resources fighting each other” offer. I’ll respect yours, you respect mine. Win-win.
If she were merely your current “lover”, what is my ( point #2 above ), or her (#1 ) social clue as to how to behave?
I’m sure there are a whole host of things like that.
“White supremacists are outside the realm of social acceptability for 90% of Americans. Those who frankly condemn homosexuality and use offensive analogies (at least to many people, including myself) are not outside of the realm of social acceptability for 90% of Americans. Last I checked the majority of Americans still thought homosexuality was “wrong.”
Yea? So what? Do I really need to mention the logical fallacy that you’re drooling over? If we were to employ your line of “reasoning,” then separate-but-equal, communies-in-Hollywood and frontal lobotomies-for-autistics would still be valid social constructs.
Cause the masses said so.
In fact, I hear there’s a rumor afoot that Christian homophobes are running short of numbers with each passing day, not to mention, of moral currency on this issue.
Surely you won’t object to being ostracized to the leper colonies once the demographics shift? We’ll give you a nice place reserved for vanquished minorities-somehwere near a razed indian reservation and a toxic waste dump.
Say hello to the always-principled 10-percenters.
Oops. Vanquished “majorities.”
How’s that working out in real life? Some would consider this a sexist statement, implying that a woman hasn’t got the good sense to pick a reliable and honorable mate, or establish a prenuptial contract that covers such matters as child rearing if she is in doubt. In any case, the government license/contract doesn’t seem to be accomplishing it either. Worse, with the government involved, the terms and penalties for a breech of the marriage contract can be changed at the whim of politicians, after it is made; and the parties remain bound under the new rules, whether they like it or not. No way would I ever again be so foolish as to sign such a contract, and neither should anyone else who thinks it through. The current benefits of legal marriage do not outweigh the potential liabilities.
Have you ever heard of a rival male asking to see the marriage license? Don’t we already use ancillary social cues like a wedding ring, or a wave off by announcing that one is committed to a significant other, married or not? How does a marriage license in any way keep a woman from taking off her ring and pretending to be single when she is in the mood to be available? Frankly, it has been my experience that a “trapped” unhappily married woman is frequently more “available,” than a single woman in a committed relationship, which she is free to walk away from the moment it is no longer working for her. It does, and should, take more than a legal document to keep one’s lover happy, committed, and faithful. ◄Dave►
Ivan, it’s perhaps not inconsistent or prima facie bigoted to think that the state should only grant special recognition to couples that can produce children, but who really believes this? As a matter of historical fact, while infertility has often been held to be a reason for one partner to dissolve a marriage, demonstrated infertility has never been sufficient (to my knowledge) to annul a marriage if neither partner complained. We’re also perfectly happy giving marriage benefits to post-menopausal women, and I’m reasonably sure that people who have had sex changes get married pretty frequently. It also seems like it’d be a net money-saver to check up on married couples so as to refuse marriage benefits to any who haven’t procreated, say, five years in.
I can’t think of any well-known advocate for the ‘line’ that you suggest. Most seem perfectly happy to let easily identified classes of infertile couples marry or remain married only to (arbitrarily, by this standard) draw the line at same-sex couples.
Even if we’re granting that the state is interested in marriage only insofar as children are involved, the mere production of children doesn’t seem to me to be particularly relevant. Surely the better metric is whether or not a marriage can -provide- for children, whether born to one member of the union or simply adopted in. And it seems pretty obvious that a gay couple that adopts a child can provide a better home than several easily identifiable classes of straight couples. Further, I’d imagine that the average set of gay adoptive parents would provide a better home than the average set of single parents (including adoptive and natural), though what seems to really matter is whether or not the gay couple would provide a better home than the adopted child would otherwise see, which seems like a no brainer. So what about “provides a good home for children” as a reasonable standard? Though this is still problematic for straight and gay couples that don’t raise a child.
Also, no one’s saying that we shouldn’t draw a line -anywhere-. Just as with abortion, where an easy majority of people think that there ought to be a line sometime after conception but before birth, we can draw a line somewhere between unrelated pairs of people and animal polygamy. The point of drawing these lines is not to say that everything to one side is clearly acceptable and everything to the other is clearly not, but rather to acknowledge that the issue is tricky and that we have to balance the risk of allowing too much with the risk of banning too much. To go back to abortion, no one thinks that there’s some magical point during development when abortion goes from being the equivalent of plastic surgery to the equivalent of murder, but they’re sure that there’s some kind of transition taking place over some period of time.
AMG, Lily, isn’t the president-elect a child of divorce, and btw a harvard graduate and president of the harvard law review?
I think being born into a white evangelical protestant family with married parents is a far greater detriment to future performance, given the genetic negative correlation between religious belief and IQ and the socon antipathy to intellectuals and academe.
Which even poor limited Ross Douthat has pointed out means absolutely while Roe v Wade stands, and that aint gonna change anytime soon.
😉
I’m with Lily and Ivan Karamazov on this one. It is not at all obvious that secularists *must* support homosexual marriage. That there are those on the secular right who oppose it seems reasonable to me. (I.e., opposition to gay marriage is not based on “simple bigotry”, religiously motivated or not).
Ivan is correct, I think, that the bright-line of “one man, one woman” is a reasonable place to anchor one’s thinking in the gay-marriage debate (just as the bright-line of conception is a reasonable place to anchor one’s thinking in the abortion debates.) Now, people can disagree, and there are arguments to be made, debates to be drawn. There can be legal propositions either ratified or not, with voters either persuaded or not by the various arguments at hand. But to conclude that the passing of Prop 8 is ipso facto evidence of bigotry is just flat-out incorrect. People reasonably disagree on gay-marriage, it was put to a vote, and one side lost. That’s just the way things go sometimes in our form of government. Sometimes you lose.
The analogy of laws against gay-marriage laws to laws against miscegenation fail, in my view. (Based on biology, and a whole host of things I won’t bore you all with here) The overall analogy between civil rights and gay marriage is simply wrong-headed, in my view.
And Lily is right – marriage is not *just*, or even *mostly* about the two people who wed one another, it is, in a larger way, the framework under which children should be brought into the world. Supernatural commitments aren’t required to take this position…it can be reasoned to from empirical grounds (As the tragedy of the last few decades have attested.) Also, the conception of what marriage is predates the conception of “rights” themselves, so I’m not inclined to think that sophistic maneuvering regarding the latter should have any bearing on the former.
Best,
I know that we can scarcely exhaust the topic in a comment box, so I will add a couple more thoughts and then give it a rest. Gotchaye has raised several reasonable objections to which I want to speak. However, he drew an analogy that I don’t think works:
The point of drawing lines in the abortion debate is to obfuscate reality. There is no “transition taking place over some period of time”. Everything that the child needs to develop into an adult is there at conception. Only “development” takes place. Nothing is added later that makes the “not-human”, suddenly and magically human.
Similarly, society does not draw lines around marriage to acknowledge that some areas of human relationships are tricky. Rather, it does so to ensure stable communities. In turn, stable communities are made up of healthy families. I need to reiterate that marriage does not exist to ratify our romantic choices. Love is not necessary, even if we have forgotten that. All that is required is two people committed to each other and to bringing up the children they produce. This is why arranged marriages worked for centuries before we bought into “love will keep us together” (which it obviously doesn’t– not by itself). Sex does have a unitive function within marriage and I don’t want to minimize that. But sex and procreation are intimately tied, whether we like it or not. The inability of infertile couples or post-menopausal women to reproduce is irrelevant. There is nothing unnatural about their union.
We limit marriage in our modern western societies to one man/one woman for another important reason. It protects women better than any other arrangement. Anything that threatens the one man/one woman definition of marriage threatens women. If we bring polygamy back (and there is a movement to do so, which cannot be refuted, except on the same grounds we refute gay “marriage”), we invite disaster. We will have increasingly powerful(which means older)men snapping up younger and younger women who will have less and less autonomy. And what happens to men in such communities? We don’t have to guess. We have seen it under our own noses in Arizona and Utah where teenaged males are driven out of their polygamous communities because they are superfluous and, therefore, potential trouble makers.
Well, there is plenty more to be said but this is more than enough to indicate what drives my own position on the subject.
Since it looks like we’re wrapping things up, I’ll leave y’all with the last word on most of this. I’d just like to close by saying that I don’t think that one can establish that bigotry isn’t a big motivator of the pro Prop 8 side by showing that there are plausible arguments for the proposition.
Consider the general conservative case against far-reaching attempts to use government to remake society in some way. The pro central planning side is always ready with a bunch of arguments to the effect of “but this time it’s different”, and often these are very plausible. There’s a reason that a lot of smart people were sure that Communism was the way to go. And something we notice about the history of rights movements is that, every time, there are lots of people who are absolutely sure that, this time, the antis aren’t blinded by prejudice and that societal ruin waits just around the corner if the pro side pulls out a win.
Speaking as a liberal, one very valuable conservative insight is that we always underestimate our own fallibility, and so we absolutely need to try to figure out whether it’s likely that we only believe an argument to be plausible because, subconsciously, we’d really like it to be plausible. Seeing as how this is ‘Secular Right’, I feel safe in suggesting that you look to religious arguments for an example of this.
Now, I’m not saying that anyone who thinks gay marriage is wrong should automatically conclude that they only think this because of some unconscious prejudice, but I do think that this is something that those against gay marriage should really try to do some soul-searching on. I do believe that, fifty or sixty years from now, very few people are going to see much of a distinction between those that opposed gay marriage and those that opposed interracial marriage (and I think that this is a much easier argument to make than the argument that there’s nothing wrong with gay marriage), and I think that that’s something worth thinking about.
Finally, I’d like to apologize for how I came across when I used the term ‘simple bigotry’. I know that it’s commonly used to shut down debate. What I mean is what I’ve tried to express above – a lot of prejudice is nearly invisible, and many opinions which are motivated by prejudice are held by people who are acting entirely in good faith. Almost all of us are prejudiced in many ways (I certainly have no reason to think that I’m better than anyone else in this regard). The trick, it seems to me, is to try to identify which of your positions are most likely motivated by unconscious biases, and to try to correct for those biases. As the real Hume said, and as our Hume likes to point out, reason is a slave to the passions, and so we have to be vigilant. But, to defend my original point, it seems obvious to me that there does exist widespread anti-gay prejudice, and it seems equally obvious that the vast majority of people who voted for Prop 8 have not done the necessary introspection to be sure of their fair-mindedness. Posters here have been entirely civil and intelligent, though.