American citizens should not have the sectarian beliefs of gay-marriage advocates imposed on them unwillingly. If proponents of gay marriage seek certain privileges of marriage, such as legal support for mutual aid and childbearing, there may well be no liberal reason to deny it to them. But if they also seek positive public celebration of homosexuality as such, then that desire must be disappointed. The requirement that homosexual attachments be publicly recognized as no different from, and equally necessary to society as, heterosexual attachments is a fundamentally illiberal demand. Gays cannot be guaranteed all of the experiences open to heterosexuals any more than tall people can be guaranteed all of the experiences open to short people. Least of all can gays be guaranteed all of the experiences that stem from the facts of human sexual reproduction and its accompanying penumbra of pleasures and cares. To insist otherwise is not only psychologically and culturally implausible; it imposes a sectarian moral view on fellow citizens who disagree and who may hold moral beliefs that are diametrically opposed to it.This really gets to the heart of the gay marriage debate. Radical gay rights secularists are trying to ram down their views on everyone else. William Murchison, for example, decisively argued yesterday against "The Gay Marriage Fantasy." That is, there's really no such thing, logically, as same-sex marriage.
And what about infertile heterosexual couples. Well, in response to National Review's editorial, "The Future of Marriage," check out Andrew Sullivan's latest hissy-fit:
And note that point: "much more extensively." Or, fundamentally radically.National Review's new editorial comes out firmly against even civil unions for gay couples, and continues to insist that society's exclusive support for straight couples is designed
to foster connections between heterosexual sex and the rearing of children within stable households.
This is an honest and revealing point, and, in a strange way, it confirms my own analysis of the theocon position. It reaffirms, for example, that infertile couples who want to marry in order to adopt children have no place within existing marriage laws, as NR sees them. Such infertile and adoptive "marriages" rest on a decoupling of actual sex and the rearing of children. The same, of course, applies much more extensively to any straight married couple that uses contraception: they too are undermining what National Review believes to be the core reason for civil marriage.
No matter how you spin it, and especially no matter how hard gay radicals attempt to repudiate traditionals as "theocons," the shift to gay marriage is a radical departure from the situation of infertile heterosexuals couples who are married. People like this, when they adopt children, and when they live their lives in the context of society's historically accepted normative institutions, are not revolutionary. To say that gay marriages are indentically co-equal to marriages between infertile heterosexual couples raises the question once again of how we are to define society's social regimes. Look, as Shell notes:
A society could abolish "funerals" as heretofore understood and simply call them "parties," or allow individuals to define them as they wish. Were the "liberationist" exaltation of individual choice pushed to its logical conclusion, would not a public definition of "funeral" as a rite in honor of the dead appear just as invidious as a public definition of "marriage" as an enduring sexual partnership between a man and woman?No scheme of demonization concocted by Andrew Sullivan can change the fundamental fact that marriage AS AN INSTITUTION is established for the regeneration of society. Infertile heterosexual couple who marry are not trying to overturn that norm. Same-sex couple who demand marriage are.
13 comments:
Once again, there is an argument here that shouldn't be part of the argument.
Marriage has broad implications. The most basic part of marriage is the right to legally partner with another person and do one or more of several things. You can live together, have children together, not have children, start a business together, buy a house, etc. There are no limits to what you can do within a marriage. Having children or not is merely a component of marriage, a good one too. However, it is not incumbent upon a married couple to have children, or even be part of the equation.
People get married who are NOT infertile, but simply CHOOSE to not have children. That is a choice, and it can come as part of marriage, or not.
More weak arguments here. Still no reason why two people cannot get married.
One thing that comes through more and more, from the comments, and the awful sources that Donald is quoting: An implied, and sometimes overt, hatred and loathing of homosexuals.
All your apologies, Donald, cannot hide your utter contempt for this segment of society. I do find it rather sad that you choose to take on this issue, rather than focus on things that actually matter, and actually DO affect our lives. These crocodile tears about how your rights are impinged, threatened, taken away, etc, make no sense at all.
"the fundamental fact that marriage AS AN INSTITUTION is established for the regeneration of society. Infertile heterosexual couples who marry are not trying to overturn that norm. Same-sex couple who demand marriage are."
Donald, the ignorance of your last statement leaves me a bit breathless...
This simply is no longer true, or required. And a lot of heterosexual couples are no longer getting married. (One reason, I think, is that they saw the damage their parents did to the "institution" of marriage. They simply want no part of that. And that is their choice. I know the right hates the word choice.)
Did you know one of the primary reasons that homosexual behavior required being stoned to death in the bible? Because the fear that somehow all men or women would turn gay, and humanity would die out.
And lo, it was established, by our benevolent "God" that those who turn out gay, should die.
Before you can engage your brain on this subject, you have to accept the idea that the idea of marriage can change, adapt and grow over time.
If not, then you may continue to pick up your metaphorical stones and hurl them.
Tim:
"American citizens should not have the sectarian beliefs of gay-marriage advocates imposed on them unwillingly."
The term "sectarian" is a misnomer and seeks to demonize homosexuals. You normally would see this in relation to "sectarian" bombings in Northern Ireland.
Keep going Donald, you keep digging a pit and you are finding no way out so you change or adapt with new language.
@Tim,
Note this passage from the Preamble to the Constitution: secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity
There is absolutely no interest in an implied, and sometimes overt, hatred and loathing of homosexuals
There is every interest in protecting a symbol that is related to bringing for Posterity. There is no voyeuristic interest what homosexuals are getting up to in private. I insist on ignorance of the sexuality of anyone not my wife, in fact.
Differentiating between the people and the ideas, it's one thing to accept, love and enjoy people, while at the same time not subscribing to their tastes in art, food, and, yes, sex.
2+2!=3, and no amount of fulmination on your part will ever alter the meaning of the symbol "marriage".
If firmly, gently holding to an opinion somehow marks me a bigot, then I stand so marked.
And Donald: do not back down, sir. You're doing important work.
You and Shell aren't really worried about the illiberal imposition of sectarian beliefs on Americans. You just want to make sure that it is your sectarian beliefs the State illiberally imposes.
I find the analogy to funerals pretty silly. For one thing, while the state does codify a definition of "death," and regulates the disposal of corpses, it does not impose funerals as a "rite of honor of the dead" in the way it imposes marriage ceremonies as a rite of participation in a social institution that privileges certain groups. More importantly, the state does not confer legal and social responsibilites, privileges, and protections on the dead upon performance of the funeral that the living could also enjoy. If it did, limiting funerals to the dead would indeed be illiberal--and make State preference for the dead at funerals analagous to State preference for heterosexuals in marriage--but that's not the case.
To be sure, marriage as an institution is about the "regeneration of society," but not the kind of regeneration where fertility matters. It is rather the regeneration of traditional social roles and previously held norms about the organization of society in the face of challenges from new ways of thinking. You prefer these traditional roles, and that's fine. But if the prevailing normative understandings discriminate against out groups, and you want the State to support these norms by codifying them, you can't also claim to support a liberal (that is, free) society.
Since extending the liberty to marry would have no effect on the reproduction of heterosexuals, nor on their families, nor on their way of life, it looks to me like your real fear is of expanded acceptance of homosexuality generally. This normative change would offend your sensibilities, you want the State to stop it, and I don't blame you. But your claim is no more morally powerful than those offended by the current state of affairs, and you have no right to State protection of your feelings.
In the end, your arguments in this and your "Secular Case" post are really not much more than "it's always been that way," and I'm frankly a bit surprised that a professor of political science can't come up with something more sophisticated.
RSS: Thanks again for re-iterating so eloquently that which I've fumbled about with. And adding to the discussion. There has simply been no addition to the discussion from the other side, other than a) it is wrong, and b) it is non-traditional.
The one thing I've repeated over and over is things like marriage continually take on new meanings, as it is a vast umbrella that covers a union between two people and is defined by culture, government and or religion. What is interesting to note is that most marriage ceremonies STRESS the fact that it is a union between two people, and that they must look out for each other. Often times, the procreation angle is not even mentioned in a marriage ceremony! Maybe even most of the time.
Tim:
There isn't really much question that normative structures and shared understandings about things like marriage (and murder, and race, and property ownership, and a variety of other social concepts and institutions) change as we interact with each other, and discuss the meanings of events and our relations with each other. The literature on this is wide and deep, and I can't believe that Professor Douglas has not read Finnemore and Sikkink's or Wend't's work on this. Of course, he may disagree, and I would like to hear his critique of this idea.
In the end, I think this is the problem the Professor and other opponents to social change have: they prefer the status quo, and resist new norms. That's fine, but they can't claim moral superiority to the norms they prefer, at least not objectively. They're left with "but it's just better," and for a social scientist that just doesn't get you there.
All I have to add to the discussion is this: Don, I haven't heard the word "radical" used this often since I used to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a kid. I know teh gays scare you but please ask someone at your school if you can borrow their thesaurus, guy.
RSS: You're right.
Less than 100 years ago, in this country, the word "vote" referred only to men.
I have no doubt...none whatsoever, that Donald and his acolytes would have been adamant that women simply had no place in the voting booth.
That was the tradition, Donald. And I'm sure there was biblical justification for it as well.
And I'm sure that those of us on the left would have argued in favor of the suffrage movement, but would have been accused of nihilism. That a woman's place was in the home and that her husband would vote in her best interests.
But one thing I've noticed on this blog, is a very, very short memory.
Amendment:
And those on the right/conservative end of the spectrum would have said that a woman's place was in the home and that her husband would vote in her best interests.
Nothing to add, Professor?
Sorry I didn't get to it sooner... I was under the weather.
Gay Marriage vs Infertile Heterosexual Marriage
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