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Thread ID: 12576 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2004-02-29
2004-02-29 18:16 | User Profile
Op-Ed Contributor: Joining the Debate but Missing the Point
February 29, 2004 By NATHANIEL FRANK
By declaring his support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, President Bush has taken sides in an energetic national debate. Unfortunately, thus far the debate has often obscured more than it has illuminated.
Supporters and opponents of gay marriage are talking past each other. Social conservatives argue from the premise that marriage is important to society - the president called it "the most fundamental institution of civilization" - and must be protected. Letting gays wed will undermine marriage, they say, but they are seldom able to explain how.
Proponents of same-sex marriage, meanwhile, make a rights-based argument, insisting that gays deserve the freedom to marry - but they don't address the possible impact of gay marriage on society. As a result, they are open to the valid retort that if marriage is an individual right (instead of a social good), why not polygamous, incestuous or child marriages?
For a productive dialogue, we should be asking the question this way: is giving gays the right to marry good for society? And to answer that, we must ask what larger social purpose marriage serves.
The main reason marriage is considered good for society is that committed relationships help settle individuals into stable homes and families. Marriage does this by establishing collective rules of conduct that strengthen obligations to a spouse and often to children.
This is why the word itself is so important. The power of "marriage" lies in its symbolic authority to reinforce monogamy and stability when temptation calls. The hope is that, having taken vows before family and friends, people will think twice before breaking them. It is this shared meaning of marriage that is central to the success of so many individual unions.
Yet it is precisely this shared definition that causes many Americans to worry that legalizing gay marriages would undermine straight ones. By sharing the institution with couples whose union they don't trust or respect, they fear, the sanctity of their own bonds could be compromised.
The argument is not so much that individual straight couples are threatened by gay marriage, but that the collective rules that define marriage are being undermined. Instead of feeling part of a greater social project that demands respect, people will feel that breaking their vows offends only their spouse, not the whole community. Knowing that their friends and neighbors no longer hold marriage sacred can make it easier for people to wander.
Thus it is inadequate to argue that marriage is a basic civil right because it cannot be extended to all unions - to the brother who wants to marry his sister, to the man who wants two wives, to the 10-year-old who wants to marry her teacher. Marriage could indeed lose some of its current meaning and power if society legalized unions between relatives, groups or children.
What about gays? While marriage may not be a universal civil right, it is a social institution that gays deserve to join. The best argument for gay marriage is that it serves the same social function as all other marriages.
It is silly to argue that broadening the definition of marriage will have no impact on the institution; it will. But no generalization about the nature and durability of same-sex unions can justify banning them. After all, society does not deny marriage rights to divorced, infertile or impotent people - so long as they are straight. We offer that right because society generally tries to encourage as many people as possible to live stable and productive lives. Marriage - gay or straight - helps society achieve that goal.
After identifying the social function that marriage serves, it is easy to allay the fears of those worried about a slippery slope to an "anything goes" definition of marriage. Marriages between brother and sister? Incestuous marriages strike at the core of the bonds of trust and the functions of care that a family requires. Polygamy? One husband and numerous wives invites increased jealousy, deception and subjugation, and mocks the importance of forsaking all others," essential components of the stabilizing function of marriage.
The traditionalists may well be right that a monogamous relationship between two unrelated, consenting adults makes a strong foundation for a stable family, and thus for a vigorous social order. They're just wrong that those two people have to be of different genders.
Nathaniel Frank teaches history at New School University.
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/opinion[/url]/29FRAN.html?ex=1079072915&ei=1&en=0e8843d0c27eff73
2004-02-29 20:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The traditionalists may well be right that a monogamous relationship between two unrelated, consenting adults makes a strong foundation for a stable family, and thus for a vigorous social order. They're just wrong that those two people have to be of different genders.[/QUOTE]
This is nauseating beyond belief. To be sure, if the purpose was to furnish an illustration of the title at work, it has succeeded admirably.
To talk of marriage when considering homosexuality [I]is[/I] to miss the point. It is by no means conclusive that marriage (one man one woman) is the best vehicle for ensuring propagation of our species and social harmony. For example, a complex technologically advanced society, driven by hyper-consumerism may in time decide that it would be better served if its rootless, hedonistic, and drug dependent citizens (with their long life-spans) found another default means of satisfying the common biological imperative -- pleasure for the people, new parts for the state organism. The extent of social rearrangement in the name of efficiency will, as always, be dependent on state power, relative weakness of individuals, and extent of moral decay. Nor is experimentation the sole right of technological societies. The article itself names other arrangements, found in less ââ¬Åprogressiveââ¬Â venues that are equally viable, defined simply as propagation. Of course, marriage happens to be, for better or for worse, the arrangement we are most comfortable with and which has sustained us for millenniums. Sodomites seek the right to marry and present their arguments in marital terms--what it is or isnââ¬â¢t. But the real issue isnââ¬â¢t marriage per say, it is homosexuality.
[QUOTE]Yet it is precisely this shared definition that causes many Americans to worry that legalizing gay marriages would undermine straight ones. By sharing the institution with couples whose union they don't trust or respect, they fear, the sanctity of their own bonds could be compromised.[/QUOTE]
American may say that but they think something else, though they may not find the right (PC) words. So long as marriage is central to the argument, the sodomite lobby advances. If not with Bush then with someone else--a decade of schooling having itz way with another lost generation, to take the place of the conservatively minded recently departed, will force the hand of whoever is at the helm. What heterosexuals [I]really[/I] think is: a) homosexuals are ââ¬Åbiological errors,ââ¬Â and b) I donââ¬â¢t want my child joining their ranks.
Heterosexuality v. homosexuality is, stripped to its basic variable, an option between viability versus non-viability. Granted the issue, given the white manââ¬â¢s present travails, ranks quite low on the scale of priorities, but it is a factor. America is said to procreate at a rate of 1.9 children per woman, Canada 1.6, and Europe lower still. I accept that some small/insignificant percentage of citizens is born with inverted sexual preferences, beyond remedy given present level of knowledge. But their numbers should not be made to grow by actively supporting the lifestyle, to say nothing of elevating it to a rank of equality with heterosexual unions. The modern phenomenon of bi-sexuality, particularly the female variant, epitomized by words ââ¬Åyou know, Iââ¬â¢m not a lesbian but I made out a few times with a girl or two, no big deal,ââ¬Â often heard on the college scene, is a disturbing growth sample . The modern homosexual movement is nothing if not one gigantic effort at recruitment.
The proper question, the only one that is on point, is to ask how many homosexuals/lesbians can society afford before it passes into the realm of non-viability. All other considerations are incidental as their resolution amounts to either aiding or resisting recruitment efforts.
2004-03-01 01:51 | User Profile
The real reason for government recognition of homosexual marrage is to legitimize the homosexual lifestyle and to use the further use the force of government to teach homosexuality to our children and to punish those who "discriminate" against homosexuals.
Homosexuals are already free to live as homosexuals and have homosexual unions. It is not freedom they seek, as they already have it.
Tyranny and misery is the only thing that will result from "homosexual marriage."
2004-03-01 02:17 | User Profile
If the author thinks he made the argument against polygamy or incest (or child sex, for that matter) in a paragraph he is mistaken. He is counting on centuries of moral and cultural capital that has almost been exhausted. The barriers against homosexuality were deconstructed in exactly the same way.
Consider his argument that marriage encourages fidelity. What's wrong with a married couple sleeping around if they want to? And in fact homosexuals (Andrew Sullivan for one) have made it clear that homosexual marriage will change marriage by eliminating fidelity as an expected part of it.
I doubt many homosexuals want marriage for its own sake. What they seem to want is for society and the government to proclaim their behavior is good.
2004-03-01 03:36 | User Profile
I doubt many homosexuals want marriage for its own sake. What they seem to want is for society and the government to proclaim their behavior is good.
Government's gonna be the big Daddy figure to replace the real one that never validated their lifestyle choice.
Letting gays wed will undermine marriage, they say, but they are seldom able to explain how.
The reason for this is that it's a visceral reaction in that to compare what homosexuals do with their genitals and into what orifice they put them to what married heterosexuals do is to provoke nausea in most folks and to rationally explain it is almost more than can be managed while engaging in civilized discourse.
2004-03-01 04:14 | User Profile
Frank is being less than frank. If elite opinion were consistent, it would be promoting polygamy along with homosexual marriage. Of course, when has the elite ever been consistent? There is no danger of polygamy being legalised because, as Sojourner wrote on another thread:
[url]http://forums.originaldissent.com/showthread.php?t=12318&page=1&pp=20&highlight=gary+bauer[/url]
[QUOTE]Polygamy won't be legalized, for several reasons. First, the Bible doesn't condemn polygamy. Second, most polygamists are white, and they tend to have lots of children. They also tend to have some very old fashioned religious views, especially concerning patriarchy and female submission. That's the last thing the people you worship want. The issue with gay marriage has never been personal autonomy; it's always been Equality, and destroying CHRISTIAN values.[/QUOTE]