Category: Marriage Equality

Jonathan Martin makes a point:

Because Obama is not where the far left wants him to be (marriage) and McCain not where the far right wants him to be (a federal ban), this is not something either will probably make front and center.

I see his point but I still bristle at the notion of marriage rights being a "far left" position. No straight person would ever regard his or her marriage as something of which only the "far left" would approve. And many very conservative gay couples who have gotten married because they want to affirm family life, responsibility and commitment would be surprised to learn that these values are now part of the "far left." It’s equally true that a federal ban is not meaningfully "far right." There is absolutely nothing conservative about amending the federal constitution to deal with a matter of social policy that is best left to the states. I wish these tired and misleading labels could be put to one side.

I should add that Obama’s position strikes me as transparently flimsy. His only defense of his support for full marriage rights without the m-word is a function, in his description, of comfort and religion. But he is very comfortable around gay people, gay couples and our families. And his own church actually favors equal marriage rights for gay couples – and its inclusion of gay people was obviously a reason why TUCC was attractive to Obama. Marriage is the one issue where Obama is still politically afraid, intellectually vacuous, and a moral coward.

This is the civil rights movement of our time. Whatever happened to the fierce urgency of now?

Doug Kmiec writes:

It is often asked, as Marty’s helpful post does, how the acknowledgment of same-sex marriage harms marriage between a man and a woman.  The inability to give a simple, secular answer to this explains the California victory in favor of same-sex marriage more than the reasoning of the opinion.  That doesn’t mean there is not an answer.  There is a religious answer and it is anchored in the creation story recorded in the book of Genesis. 

The religious answer has a secular side, but it is less articulable.

Traditional marriage  has been accepted without argument for so long that the words custom and history substitute for analysis.  When more searching inquiry is made it is often related to the genuine belief that the institution of marriage and associated natural procreation should be (and has been for millennia) interrelated and very much worth preserving.  The story of the declining populations and cultures of Western Europe is debated, but troubling.   No one wishes the same for the United States, though it is hard to deny that marriages are occurring later and with less frequency (with a con-commitant rise in cohabitation and its various adverse instabilities and risks for children).  A smaller youthful population with a sizable graying demographic has many negative economic and social consequences manifest in everything from what does or does not get accomplished in schools to the coming bankruptcy of the Social Security system to much else that depends on the constant influx of new people, responsibly prepared to take up for the work of citizenship and community.

I love it when secular arguments are "less articulable" than appeals to Genesis. But there is an obvious secular, non-bigoted case against marriage equality. It’s the conservative, Hayekian resistance to any social change in a vital social institution with inherently unknowable future consequences.

But conservatives also realize that as societies change, institutions cannot remain frozen in time. Change is sometimes necessary and conservatives should see to it that such change is as careful not to disturb existing institutions any more than necessary. That’s why I’ve backed marriage equality for two decades (my first piece making this case was in 1989). By not creating a new institution, like civil unions or domestic partnerships, we disturb the social order less. By including gay couples in an existing institution, civil marriage, we integrate them. By following a federalist approach, we allow individual states to lead the way as laboratories of social reform.

I refuse to have this approach described by any other word than "conservative." It is, in my view, the only authentically conservative position in this debate.

In the US, conservatives target people like me who want to get married as enemies of the family. In Britain, there really is a problem: the benefits system actually incentivizes divorce.

This tip struck home:

Take care of that late night snack or morning cereal bowl.  Setting them in the sink is one thing, but go that extra mile and actually put them in the dishwasher. After all, no one enjoys scraping bacon dip off a bowl that’s been sitting too long or smelling the chili from the night before. A beer bottle on the counter the next morning is even worse.

Sorry, hon. But some things gay husbands don’t have to worry about:

Remember, she’s your wife, not one of your buddies. Don’t burp during dinner, or squeeze one out during the movie as she’s reaching for the popcorn.

Yeah, we don’t much care. And we have Citrus Magic for the nasty ones.

Megan talks laundry.

Or a country – one of many such stories:

After being kidnapped three times in his native Colombia, my partner was denied asylum after his case was pending 6 years in the United States. He left Christmas Day. Although he learned English, and got a GED just to become acculturated (holds a Master’s degree), we don’t want him here. Bad immigrant I guess. Can’t imagine what a good one might be, though. But unlike everyone else who has been highlighted in the “America won’t let us live here” series, I’m not so sad about leaving and joining him there. America is not who she claims to be. Regular readers of your blog will understand. I don’t hate my country. I love it. But for what it promises, not what it has become.

Sad when an American is embracing a Third World country because it offers greater liberty and opportunity. I can’t be the only one who feels this way.

He’s not. Here’s a site devoted to love exiles, denied the right to marry and thereby immigrate.

A response to my post. I think Reihan’s point is that social conservatism resists change and that therefore extending civil marriage rights to gay couples is inherently liberal. The reform corresponds with the evolution of civil marriage away from procreation and toward companionship – and social conservatives worry about such change. In that sense, I don’t disagree with Reihan’s point. The most coherent conservative objection to same-sex marriage is simply resistance to any tampering with a vital social institution. I respect that position; it’s certainly devoid of bigotry; and, as longtime readers know, I’m happy to let this evolution proceed state by state for Hayekian reasons.

But as societies change, conservatives have to adapt – at least if Burke is still regarded as a conservative. Given that our society now has a huge number of openly gay couples, many with children, and that the law has to respond to this social reality, the practical decision conservatives have to make is: what shall we do about this? My fear, expressed almost two decades ago now, was that the ad hoc responses – domestic partnership, civil unions and the like – were as practically unavoidable as they were subtly undermining of marriage. Give gays domestic partnerships and marriage-lite and straights will demand them as well. And so marriage becomes less special and less constructive an institution.

I can see that, back in 1989, when I first made the case, the jump to full marriage equality seemed a leap. But two decades later? When it has become the norm in many countries and in one state? When civil unions exist in many other states? Why does it remain socially liberal to resist the conservative logic of including everyone within the same family structure, with the same responsibilities? And, of course, when you actually listen to the current advocates of banning such marriages – and unions – you do not hear nuanced or Hayekian social arguments very often. You hear truisms – "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman" – or religious invocations of the "sanctity" of a civil institution.

I suppose marriage equality is socially liberal in as much as it tries to defend and integrate a previously despised minority. But it is socially conservative in its attempt to envelop that minority in the traditions and responsibilities of family life. In this, it is exactly the same as welfare reform: ending a disincentive to family life among a minority that needs more social stability. I have to say that having finally begun to live a married life, all my previous intuitions about its integrating impact have been borne out more profoundly than I ever imagined.

If you can make the leap to seeing gay people as the equal of straight people, then encouraging their marriages to one another is arguably one of the most socially conservative measures now subject to national debate. That’s why it remains so saddening that so many social conservatives still regard it as definitionally anathema. I don’t think it’s a leap to believe that homophobia or fundamentalism are the critical stumbling blocks. Or that they are the real reasons for the resistance. 

For my man of the year: