I saw Andrew Sullivan on Greater Boston last night, making an appearance to promote his new (revised) book, Same-Sex Marriage: Pro & Con. I’m not sure he covered any territory not in his written articles, and in fact may have been polished by his role in editing the reader of arguments in the gay marriage debates. Still, it was impressive how collected he was in speaking on television and rebutting the anti-marriage arguments, particularly in contrast to previous guests that Greater Boston has had on. Furthermore, many who are sharp in writing are not especially effective on television.
Along similar lines, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick has a great article attacking the slippery slope arguments against gay marriage. Worth a full read, but I particularly like this formulation of the issue at hand:
Asking proponents of gay marriage to prove that these marriages won’t be bad for kids or families is asking that they prove a negative. The law cannot know the long-term future social effects of legalizing gay marriage… We can only determine whether it is fundamentally unfair to bar one whole class of citizens from a privilege constitutionally afforded the rest of us.
To this, I’d add another anti-gay-marriage argument in need of dismantling: the supposedly nonhomophobic argument that since children are the raison d’etre of marriage, non-reproductive relationships that gays have shouldn’t be dignified with marriage. From Shelby Steele:
Across time and cultures, marriage has been a heterosexual institution grounded in the procreative function and the responsibilities of parenthood–this more than in either love or adult fulfillment. Marriage is simply the arrangement by which humans perpetuate the species, whether or not they find fulfillment in it.
One of course can point out that gays and lesbians are raising children, both biological and adopted. But I don’t think we should cede the premise of attack so easily. I will not take this argument seriously from anyone not willing to deny marriage licenses to heterosexuals known to be non-reproductive or past their childrearing years. In other words, the childrearing-institution crowd doesn’t start from a goal and match policy to it, they retro-fit the goal to match a discrimination that lines up pretty neatly with sexual orientation. Before now, no one - not even conservatives lamenting lax divorce law - seemed to be bothered about marriages “merely” for adult emotional satisfaction and stability (say, second marriages between two elderly divorced or widowed parties). Funny how “reasoned”, supposedly non-bigoted conservatives start getting worked up about adult fulfillment when it’s possible that gay men and women might be the ones getting fulfilled.
Behind this all swirls a hypostasis of the “institution” of marriage. An Institution is a sociological concept to understand social ties and power relations, and it can be measured only by its effects. The supposedly neutral anti-marriage argument seeks to distill what the essence of the family and marriage is, to treat the institution as a thing rather than an explanatory concept. Then it uses that reified concept to disallow any facts on the ground. Again, conveniently, those facts ignored are examples of gay families and relationships. I don’t buy the post-structuralist line that metaphysics is the enemy, but this is one of those times when metaphysical thinking does fall squarely on the side of the oppressors.
Once again, I’ll note that the sidebar on the right has a dossier of various links to smart articles putting forth the case for gay marriage. If you know of others I’m missing, let me know.
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