Gay Marriage Wins in NY & Achieves Nothing

I confess a deep Platonic bias when it comes to interpreting important words. For example, fire can mean the hotness of a habanero pepper, or a surge by a sports team, or dismissing an employ with prejudice. What it really means is the heat, light, smoke, and flames of real combustion. All the other meanings are derivative.

Marriage means the exchange of a promise of sexual access and fidelity on the part of a female for a promise of investment in offspring by the male. Men do not know who their children are. Women do. Yes, I know that tests are now available. That is a recent and as yet rare procedure. An assurance of paternity encourages a male to stick around and support his children. It engenders a sense of responsibility that in turn encourages him to take care of himself. His wife and kids depend on him. The promotion of marriage by religious movements was probably the most successful social reform movement in the history of social reform movements. It encourages the father to do what biology all but compels mom to do: put his family before himself. Maybe that is the Platonic idea expressed by marriage.

Obviously, heterosexual couples marry who do not or cannot have children. Likewise, the institution can logically include homosexual couples. I am in favor of legalizing same sex marriage. To be sure, this extends the institution beyond its essential meaning, but not necessarily beyond its essential purpose. Some partisans of gay marriage believe that it will encourage homosexual men to commit to one another and reduce sexual promiscuity among the male homosexual population. If indeed it has this effect and a man marrying another man thinks that it's no longer just about me it's about us, then one could argue that this is a real marriage.

Unfortunately, there are good reasons to doubt that that the movement for gay marriage will have this result or is intended to have this result. Gay marriage has been pushed as part of gay liberation; but marriage is not liberating, it is confining. It is not at all clear that gay activists are the least bit interested in this. Jason Anthony, writing in the Boston Review, identifies the real motive behind the movement for gay marriage.

Gay marriage may cause the greatest quake in the history of Judeo-Christian religion since the Protestant Reformation. A straightforward reading of Leviticus and Romans shows that a government siding with same-sex partnerships is a gauntlet thrown down to the Judeo-Christian tradition. A line in the sand has been crossed.

That, more than anything, is what the political movement is about. There is nothing unusual or even inappropriate about that. Political passions may serve good purposes but they are almost always focused against enemies.

Anthony is worried, however, that the success of the gay marriage movement might put some psychological pressure on gays to actually change their behavior.

What about the many other blessed varieties of human love to which, during our forty years in the wilderness, we gays and lesbians gave birth? Is having a boyfriend suddenly not good enough? Is sharing an apartment, a dog, and utilities suddenly second-class?

He provides a very useful set of links to expressions of a similar anxiety. Hilton Als writes in the New Yorker:

I suppose if gay men and women are to have anything approaching the kind of love we've known—a love that can't be marginalized, despite the status quo's best intentions, a love that enlightens and hurts and informs and brutalizes and educates and comforts because it's different—we'll have to do away with words and ceremonies that have never belonged to us.

Mark Greif lays it on the table:

The goal of gay marriage, in the pro-marriage position, has to include indifference to marriage as an institution. Marriage must remain abstract—it hardly matters if anyone does it once the original blush is off and the initial rush abates.

Here is marriage: The division of humanity into closed couples, when modernity has given us a chance at something much better—affiliation by manifold currents of love, interest, and likeness which overflow the monogamous male-female dyad.

I think that means that the whole point of the gay agenda is not to legalize gay marriage but to destroy marriage altogether.

Katherine M. Franke, professor of law and the director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School, has this:

Of course, lots of same-sex couples will want to marry as soon as they are allowed to, and we will congratulate them when they do even if we ourselves choose not to. But we shouldn't be forced to marry to keep the benefits we now have, to earn and keep the respect of our friends and family, and to be seen as good citizens.

Let's review. The chief purpose of the gay marriage movement is to give a black eye to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Gay men and women aren't really interested in marriage. They need their own institutions. The pro-gay-marriage position isn't pro-marriage; it has to be indifferent to marriage. Last, but not least, gay couples who do not choose to marry should get the same respect and legal rights as those who do marry. At that point I have to ask: whatever could be the point of legalizing gay marriage?

It would appear that many voices in the pro-gay-marriage movement are as hostile to gay marriage as any fundamentalist. I find myself in the queer position of being more in favor of gay marriage than many of the queers.

I am in favor of gay marriage precisely because I do not think that having a boyfriend, sharing an apartment and a dog and utilities is good enough. If marriage means anything, it means that. It means that it's not about me it's about us, and us is for the long haul. If the movement for gay marriage had taken marriage seriously, if it had recognized that not about goodies to be won but obligations to be shouldered, if it had been about responsibility rather than retribution, then we might be at a turning moment.

As it is, the legalization of gay marriage in the United States is likely to achieve absolutely nothing.

Comments

[Stan Gibilisco]

"I think that means that the whole point of the gay agenda is not to legalize gay marriage but to destroy marriage altogether."

Ken, I think you're missing the point altogether.

In regards to gay marriage, I'm agnostic. We can call a gay relationship anything we want, and assign any name to it that we want, just as we can do with a heterosexual relationship. The practice, not the theory, matters in the purely legal sense. It's not how we define our acts. It's how we conduct ourselves. Not what we say, but what we do.

It's not my place to judge the morality of the issue. That's God's business. I'll leave the conundrum up to God, and wish all the luck upon the heavenly host, for in this circumstance, they'll need all the luck they can get.

So what is the point of the so-called gay agenda? I can't claim to know from an insider's standpoint, because I'm as straight as an East River highway. However, I spent five years in South Beach Miami where most of the male population is gay. I met a lot of gay people. I got a good idea of where they're coming from, what their fears are. One of their fears is that the heterosexual population is bent on destroying them, even if that obsession remains below the surface of consciousness. It's a bit like racism. No, it's a lot like racism.

Some of the gays that I met actually feared that the mainstream (that is, straight) population had a hidden agenda whose end goal would be to place all HIV-positive people in quarantine "camps." That was in the early 1990s, when an HIV-positive diagnosis constitued a death sentence. Some gays specifically referred to "the camps." Paranoid? Maybe, maybe not. I met a straight person in Minnesota (just before moving to South Beach) who advocated exactly that sort of quarantine, saying, "We just don't know whether HIV is contagious like the flu, or not. The scientists say it isn't, but we just don't know."

I refused to allow that fear to infect me, thinking that such a poisoned mind could be more deadly than any actual risk of HIV. I even got tested once because I developed an atypical case of pneumonia. Fear factor: Low. Result: Negative. Surprise coefficient: Zero.

So, getting back to the point for one final blow of the hammer on this figurative nail: I do not believe that gays have any sort of marriage-destruction agenda. However, I do suspect that they, like some Blacks, like some Jews, and increasingly like some Muslims, fear that the mainstream population might harbor a gay-destruction agenda. Is that true? I don't think so. Is it possible? We'd better believe it.

[Bill Fleming]

So Ken, are you saying that if the real definition of marriage is the social means (both cause and effect — verb and noun) by which people become true family with one another, you're all for it?

Because that's what I think it is.

That's what I think it has always been, your flawed definitions notwithstanding.

[Bill]

Flatly stupid.

[Ken Blanchard]

stan: good comment, but you could use some of bill's rapier like wit. check out has last inspired barb.

Your argument and mine are not, as you seem to think, mutually exclusive. If gays are paranoid about the larger society they may well want to weaken both marriage and its traditional religious foundations. They may see the later as sources of the animosity against them, as German protestantism was a source of antisemitism. One thing we do seem to agree on, marriage itself is a substitute for other issues.

I have backed up my view with a sample of opinions. We will soon learn whether they are representative. Will gay men marry in significant numbers? Evidence from other places where same marriage is legal suggests not.

[Ken Blanchard]

Bill: yes. My flatly stupid argument actually defends a view of marriage that we seem to share. I am defending your honor which is more than you ever did.

Of course, "true family" needs some explication, doesn't it? I think that involves commitment, as I said above. I understand why you reject my definitions as flawed. It is not because of any flaws, as you have pointed out none. Its because they are definitions. You want your terms to mean anything you please whenever you please.

[Bill Fleming]

Ken, the "Flatly stupid" remark didn't come from me, just so you know. That's a different "Bill."

[Bill Fleming]

Now, Ken, that other "Bill's" remark notwithstanding, I have posted the accepted scholarly definitions of the word "marriage" elswhere on your blog and find it tedious to go look them up and post them for you again.

You can look them up as easily as I can, and when you do, you will find that they are more in line with my description of the institution than with yours.

I do salute your for your willingness to reconsider the validity of your longstanding personal marriage meme though.

That in itself is progress, and by extension a sign of real intelligence.

Good work, professor.

[Bill Fleming]

The effect KB and I seem to agree on is perhaps better described as "monogamy" and/or "pair-bonding" which is probably a little bit smart of us, since it seems that in doing so, we are simply acknowledging a survival strategy that our species appears to have adopted eons ago — long before we invented law, and religion, and marriage ...and screwed it all up (pun intended.)

[Bill Fleming]

We also seem to agree that marriage is a social bond that creates kinship. Where we differ is in the emphasis placed on the transmission and protection of the male's genetic material. KB seems to maintain that it is primary, and I that it is secondary and perhaps even of no real consequence.

[Bill Fleming]

Some info on Pair Bonding:
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v7/n10/full/nn1327.html

[Rob]

Ken the 14th century called, they want their views on gender and marriage back.

[Rob]

To balance Ken's bigoted, homophobic comments, what the gay community wants is equal protection under the law, not the destruction of anyone else's beliefs.

[Bill Fleming]

A beautiful girl in the village was pregnant. Her angry parents demanded to know who was the father. At first resistant to confess, the anxious and embarrassed girl finally pointed to Hakuin, the Zen master whom everyone previously revered for living such a pure life. When the outraged parents confronted Hakuin with their daughter's accusation, he simply replied "Is that so?"

When the child was born, the parents brought it to the Hakuin, who now was viewed as a pariah by the whole village. They demanded that he take care of the child since it was his responsibility. "Is that so?" Hakuin said calmly as he accepted the child.

For many months he took very good care of the child until the daughter could no longer withstand the lie she had told. She confessed that the real father was a young man in the village whom she had tried to protect. The parents immediately went to Hakuin to see if he would return the baby. With profuse apologies they explained what had happened. "Is that so?" Hakuin said as he handed them the child.

______________________________________

It would seem to me that for a man so adamant that abortion should not be an option, we would do well to adopt the old Zenmaster's philosophy KB, and not be so hung up about who the father of the child is. We are all the child's father.

[larry kurtz]

Ken is absolutely right. Nothing will ever change in the chemical toilet. Coming to a theatre near you: http://www.aclumontana.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=156&Itemid=62

[Ken Blanchard]

Rob: if calling me names makes you feel better, I have no problem with it. If you ever decide you are interested in thinking and engaging in dialog, your comments would be welcome here.

[Ken Blanchard]

Bill: no, we aren't, but we can all take responsibility for each other. Thank you for that Hakuin story. I have heard it before, but it is beautiful.

I think we are dangerously close to agreement here (Rob's objections notwithstanding). Marriage is a ubiquitous institution. The important thing is not to define it but to understand how it works. Only then will we know whether or how it will work for the gay community. I see no reason not to extend marriage to cover homosexual couples. But if that is going to achieve anything beyond a temporary and empty political victory, marriage has to be understood as a mutual obligation and not as a set of goodies to be distributed. I am skeptical, but perhaps now we will find out.

[Bill Fleming]

Yes, we agree then, Ken. Pardon me for not sharing your skepticism, only because I think all marital relationships are equally challenged in the way you mention, regardless of gender mix. Plus, I'm an eternal optimist. Happy 4th of July, my friend.

[Ken Blanchard]

A belated happy fourth to you, Bill.

[Mitchell Malone]

Ken,

You and I have differed in opinions before. On one point we do agree- "As it is, the legalization of gay marriage in the United States is likely to achieve absolutely nothing." I would go on to say, it is contrary productive to our society. As a religious libetarian, I moved to a small town in rural South Dakota to raise my children in an environment isolated from perverse human relationships. Now I have heterosexual neighbors who is purposely socially engineering our small community by buying and renting houses to their homosexual aquaintances. So now I must move or accept their "in your face" forced tolerance. So who's rights are violated now!