Why do we want to marry?

Comments

1. Alan on Jan 7, 2007 1:32:22 PM:

   OK Chris. I have taken my chill pill with breakfast and am ready to respond. This posting was truly unworthy of you.

   "If we really do agree with conservatives that marriage is a fundamental human institution..."

   Error 1. Conservatives do not believe marriage is a fundamental institution - unless it is between one man and one woman. Period. See multiple state Constituiional amendments. What fundamentalists want is not to protect marriage but to prevent homosexuality from achieving equal moral status in society as hetereosexuality. Also the concept of marriage for homosexuals forces straight folk to confront the idea that not only do we have sex (which does not require marriage) but we actually FALL IN LOVE, which is actually more difficult for them to understand. The higher instincts trumping the baser ones.

   "Back to Social Security — it's not a 401(k) plan managed by the government."

   Error 2. That is exactly what it is. The monies involved come from the working person and their employer. Social Security is nothing more than a federally enforced bank account to which it adds no money and reaps the benefit of interest while sometimes using it to offset other budget shortfalls. See concept of a Social Security lockbox.

   "every step we take that diminishes the special legal status for civil marriage, the less attractive an option it becomes for couples. The totality of those lessened advantages could very well decrease the number of couples who marry — and if you believe in the positive societal effects of marriage, then you should worry, too."

   Error 3. Apparently independently of the issue of gay marriage, this is already happening in the hetero world as census figures show that, for the first time, more households are led by unmarried persons than by married ones. Add to that a whopping divorce rate of 50% and more (depending on the frequency of marriage) and it's apparent that current policy is no longer able to convince people to either marry or stay married. How could gay marriage make that situation any different?
   Also - remind me again of those societal benefits please beyond the cliched additional 1100 tax and legal rights parroted by gay marriage activists.

   "the notion of marriage and family as the bedrock of our society."

   Please explain this notion to me. Are you saying society would not exist without marriage and family? That babies would stop being born and the world would turn into a P.D. James=ian dystopia? That couples wouldn't continue to couple and the need for love and security would vanish? That property rights couldn't be protected and primogeniture would be resurrected? That alternative families would stop their self-creation? Sorry Chris - I just don't get it. Marriage is a societal construct in which, originally, a woman was traded as chattel in return for a dowry. Love and romance as a factor came along much later historically.

   Don't get me wrong I am 100% in favor of gay marriage and wish my personal life allowed me to even consider it as an option. I also agree with you that if someone doesn't want to wed, more power to them. Like you, I do.

   But as far as I'm concerned the concept that civil marriage somehow needs to be protected from homosexuals is absurd. Earlier today I was reading Alison Bechdel's graphic novel "Fun Home" about her closeted gay father. Maybe that's what scares those in power the most. With more and more evidence that homosexuality is at least partially genetically-based those genes are obviously coming from generations upon generations of closeted, married homosexuals. If gay marriage gives homosexuality the impratur of moral equivalence to heterosexuality maybe all those closet doors might have opened, millions of sham, miserable marriages with their deleterious effects on the children would not have been created devaluing the institution and helping increase the divorce rates.

   Or do we find you on the side of the Virginia fundies who, having successfully passed the most virulent anti-gay legislation, have set their sights on severely restricting the ability of married couples to divorce? Talk about providing disincentives for marriage.

1. Citizen Crain on Jan 7, 2007 4:13:49 PM:

   Error 1: The issue isn't legal recognition of the fact we fall in love. Polls show 2/3 of Americans back civil unions or marriage. But about 2/3 oppose marriage. It's marriage as an institution, among the arguments conservatives make, that appeals to many in the middle.

   Error 2: Agree to disagree. It's an entitlement program with a pay/benefit relationship. But even if you want to view it as a contract, current generations certainly haven't paid into it with an understanding that there'd be any beneficiary other than themselves and their surviving spouse.

   Error 3: I really hate to hear gay people make this argument, which I shorthand as: heteros are already screwing up marriage (divorce rates, Britney etc), so we can't make it any worse. How's that? Of course we can! Does that mean we're not entitled? No. But when we are so blasé about the institution, it discredits our efforts.

   Error 4: If you really don't agree that marriage and family are bedrock institutions, then you have no business advocating changes to it without owning that up front. Then, to most people, you've taken yourself out of the conversation.

1. Alan on Jan 7, 2007 7:31:44 PM:

   Error 1: "Polls show 2/3 of Americans back civil unions or marriage. But about 2/3 oppose marriage." - Make your mind up. Either they back marriage or don't. You can't have it both ways unless the two marriages have different meanings. And don't try to hang this one on the "love" hook or the institution. What it is about at the bottom line is they support civil rights but not marriage because gay marriage presupposes a moral equivalence between homosexuality and heterosexuality that the middle are still extremely ambivalent about.

   Error 2: "But even if you want to view it as a contract, current generations certainly haven't paid into it with an understanding that there'd be any beneficiary other than themselves and their surviving spouse."

   And this means and justifies what. Obviously, when created, the Social Security system did not anticipate the possibility of same-sex spouses. If marriage equality happens, this will automatically happen. It was introduced into this conversation as a way of bypassing marriage in terms of creating the definition of spouse.

   Error 3: "But when we are so blasé about the institution, it discredits our efforts."

   Take a step back from your knee-jerk reactionism here. You are offering the premise that marriage is an institution that has certain benefits to society. It is clearly heterosexuals who have become blase and are devaluing the institution. If gays were blase they wouldn't care and wouldn't be spending so much effort and emotion to get the right to marry and not be satisfied with second class civil union status. Our efforts are supportive of marriage as an institution and are not discredited by our awareness that it is an institution in decline amongst the majority that are legally entitled to participate in it. Paraphrasing John Stamos' character in the TV fluff "Wedding Wars" about marriage equality, "We gays don't want to change marriage. We're gay, we renovate."

   Error 4: "If you really don't agree that marriage and family are bedrock institutions, then you have no business advocating changes to it without owning that up front. Then, to most people, you've taken yourself out of the conversation."

   As an intelligent individual, how can you be so dismissive. If you can so blythely dismiss another gay man - one who agrees with your goals - how do you ever expect to convince anyone, straight or gay, who disagrees with those goals.

   I am fully involved in this conversation. I have specifically asked for you to explain why you believe that marriage and family are bedrock institutions
   and presented conjecture of what might or might not happen to society without them - asking for your opinion on them. You neither offer explanation of your beliefs (and their genesis) nor do you offer any response to my questioning of your point of view.

   What you are saying is that if I don't agree with your premise I can't be part of the debate. And don't toss in the "to most people" qualifier to take yourself off the hook. This conversation is taking place in this forum between you, me and anyone else who reads your blog - not "most people."

   I don't pretend to have all the answers or be right all of the time. I am out of the mainstream in many of my opinions and points of view. That doesn't make me close-minded nor make me unwilling to be educated. So educate me. My inclination is to tear down unsubstatiated straw men. You've set the institution of marriage up as yours. Defend it.

1. Citizen Crain on Jan 7, 2007 8:33:30 PM:

   We're quickly reaching a point of diminishing returns here, but…

   Error 1: 1/3 for marriage, 1/3 for civil unions, 1/3 for no recognition means 2/3 back civil unions or marriage and 2/3 oppose marriage.

   Error 2: You either misunderstood me or you're a moving target. Since my original post, I've never questioned extending the surviving spouse benefit to gay married couples (or even those civil union'd or D.P.'d). Of course I support that. My issue is more radical reform that would let each individual designate someone without regard for their relationship.

   Error 3: Again, moving target. Your comment claimed (as do many gays and supportive straights) that heterosexuals are already messing up marriage so why not let gays marry. It's a weak argument that insults (a) those who do stay married (at a higher rate than most gay couples I know), and (b) those working to slow the divorce rate (which has remained rather steady in recent years). And, as I said, it's blasé about the possible effects on marriage of opening up the institution to male-male and female-female relationships (which are different than male-female relationships because of gender, not sexual orientation). Of all the arguments against gay marriage, it's the one we should take most seriously, and we don't.

   Error 4: It's by all means valid not to regard marriage too highly, which comes through in what you've said for both "Error 3" and "Error 4." But the fastest way to discredit ourselves in the fight for marriage equality is to devalue the institution at the same time we say we want to be a part of it. It would be like a pacifist pushing for repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." (Taking up your challenge to defend marriage and family as bedrock institutions is way beyond the scope of this post or the comments, and unnecessary to the point I'm making about the marriage debate.)

   On a personal note, I certainly didn't mean for you to take offense at my comments. Debating policy questions requires a thick skin, especially on the Internet. I try never to personalize things, and I never ever take the crap thrown at me personally. I would have lasted about three days in the gay press. ;)

1. Andoni on Jan 8, 2007 2:46:45 PM:

   For me it's pretty simple. If government offers marriage to certain people (i.e. heterosexual couples), then to be equal it must offer that same package to all unless it can prove some overriding government reason for breaking the equal protection clause.

   And as I said before, we have to be careful in supporting new ideas such as naming any other person as a Social Security beneficiary. Although I can agree with this one isolated proposal, know that the religious right wants to form special relationships between any two people (like two brothers, mother-daughter, etc,) so they can share benefits/responsiblities, just like the Social Security proposal. Although this grand proposal seems good and possibly necessary for many people, it is their plan to say that same sex marriage is not necessary if they can get this type of thinking to gain traction.

   They probably realize they are losing the same sex marriage war and that a proposal like this might be able to derail our train, or at least slow it down some.

1. Ellyn on Jun 18, 2011 7:19:37 PM:

   In my state, only one person can legally adopt a child. So you have gay marriages with kids where only one parent has any legal claim on them at all. This is a terrible situation and puts one partner in the situation of having no legal say over the children they are raising. Isn't this alone reason enough to have gay marriages? - Ellyn Deuink