marriage

Around the Web

Calvin Freiburger birth control, blogosphere, Capper, communism, drug legalization, fun, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Indiana Jones, marriage, movies, religion, reporter, sex ed, video

Donald Douglas is not convinced that legalizing “medical” marijuana in California is the way to go.

“We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism.” Indeed.

Crappy Capper is keepin’ it classy.


Three, two, one: aww…


I’m sure that Planned Parenthood and the public schools’ idea of “comprehensive” sex-ed. includes warnings about this danger…not.


On the FdL Reporter’s Opinion Page, a clarion call for a real pastor. (Complete with hate-mongering lies from idiots like Scooman, as usual).


Lastly, the other side of the story behind one of the most famous scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Harrison Ford always shoots first.

What Conservatism Tells Us About Gay Marriage, Part 3 (UPDATED)

Calvin Freiburger Buckley, conservatism, Constitution, constitutional amendments, Founding Fathers, gay marriage, homosexuality, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, judicial activism, law, marriage, strategy

Having established that defending marriage is an imperative for all who call themselves conservative, the only question left is how. It goes without saying that conservatives should pursue initiatives to define marriage as a monogamous man-woman union in their state constitutions, just as they should support the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which protects states from being forced to recognize marriages from other states.

Conservatives should also vigorously oppose judicial activism, by working to educate the American people on the original intent and plain meaning of the Constitution, fighting for candidates who will nominate and vote to confirm originalist judges, and applying intense pressure to politicians who even think about voting for judicial activists. Conservative presidents should use the bully pulpit of the presidency to condemn decisions that abuse or circumvent the Constitution.

But is there more that can be done to thwart judicial activism? In Men in Black, Dr. Mark Levin argues that there is. He notes that Article III of the Constitution gives Congress the power to place some limits on the jurisdiction of courts, and that Article II gives Congress the power to impeach “all civil officers of the United States.” While useful, Levin doubts that these tools will be sufficient to effect a lasting solution to the problem. Instead, he suggests amending the Constitution to limit judges to fixed terms of office:

[S]itting judges and justices could be renominated and subject to a new confirmation process. This way, outstanding jurists could remain on the bench for a lifetime, pending congressional approval. And clearly defined terms of office would limit the influence of any single Congress in controlling the ideological bent of the Court. These changes would add accountability to the federal bench.

Levin also suggests a second amendment:

The most meaningful step Congress could take would be a constitutional amendment limiting the Supreme Court’s judicial review power by establishing a legislative veto over Court decisions – perhaps a two-thirds vote of both houses. The rationale is the same one the framers used when creating the congressional override of a presidential veto as a check on the president’s power. The framers worried that a president might amass too much authority. Today, the problem is an oligarchical Court, not a presidential monarchy, supplanting the constitutional authority of the other branches.

Indeed, perhaps the only major error the authors of the Constitution made was, in their desire to set the judiciary apart from the more overtly political branches of government, not placing any major checks on the judiciary comparable to the checks on the other two branches. While there’s certainly room to debate the details of these amendments, it seems clear that conservatives should support constitutional reforms to more fully realize their vision of a limited, constitutional republic safeguarded by an evenly-balanced separation of powers.

Lastly, there’s the matter of amending the Constitution to directly address marriage. Such an amendment could take one of two forms: either specifically protecting the right of states to set marriage policy regardless of what courts or other states do (essentially making DOMA ironclad), or simply defining marriage as a monogamous man-woman union in all fifty states. Because the first simply protects states’ rights and curtails judicial activism, there shouldn’t be much controversy on the Right about whether or not it’s worth supporting.

The second, however, is more contentious, because it defines marriage for the states, allegedly undermining our commitment to federalism. While this concern is well-intentioned and springs from genuine conservative principles, it shouldn’t prevent conservatives from supporting this amendment. For one thing, the principle of federalism isn’t unlimited – Article I, Section 10 places quite a few restrictions on states:

No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.

No state shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection laws: and the net produce of all duties and imposts, laid by any state on imports or exports, shall be for the use of the treasury of the United States; and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of the Congress.

No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.

Article IV, Section 3 forbids states from forming new states within their own borders, or combining with other states into new states, Section 4 says that every state must have “a republican form of government,” and Article VI forbids “any office or public trust under the United States” from requiring a religious test for eligibility. And of the twenty-seven amendments to the Constitution thus far, many place further restrictions on what states can and cannot do. As long as we do so lawfully (i.e., by amending the Constitution), there’s nothing preventing us from settling certain issues federally if they’re determined to be important enough.

As a practical matter, most of the states want to protect traditional marriage and the amendment process asks for the approval of a supermajority of states anyway, so enacting a Federal Marriage Amendment would still respect the will of the people and give the states a voice in the decision. The burden placed on states would hardly be an onerous one – in forbidding states from granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples, it would still allow states to determine what requirements and benefits civil marriage entails within their borders. And given how important the Founders thought marriage was to the character of the entire nation, it’s certainly reasonable to deem the fundamentals of marriage important enough to enshrine in the Constitution.

Besides, as important as theory is, in reality these decisions are not made in a vacuum. We’re grappling with these questions in a world where judges are usurping the law to destroy marriage and make policy decisions for us. William F. Buckley certainly understood:

We are reaping a whirlwind, and direct intervention in the holy tabernacle of the United States Constitution is eminently justified. Either that, or we will simply be surrendering the evolution of the law into the hands of the judiciary. An interesting argument could be made to the effect that rule by justices might be an improvement on rule by congressmen and state legislators. Of course we are not attempting to make any such reassignment of power when we balk at a constitutional amendment, though in fact we are.

There is nothing in sight, given the decision of the Massachusetts court, and the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court last June overturning the Texas sodomy law, to curb the evolution of “marriage” to signify simply an affectionate relationship between two or more people, with cross commitments of one kind or another. The rules for entering into such a union — man-man, woman-woman, widowed sisters, father and son — might differ here and there, so long as those differences were not held to violate the equal-protection clause of the Constitution, or other of its provisions. In the absence of an amendment, the fight is simply abandoned, and Darwinian mutations are, if not exactly encouraged, nevertheless indulged.

To argue that a constitutional amendment is radical, while acquiescence in the anarchy of the Massachusetts court is less than that, staggers the mind. It has become easier to amend the Sermon on the Mount than the Constitution, and it is strange and awful that passivity is urged in a republic of free people.

When the alternative is marriage’s destruction and submission to the rule of judicial oligarchy, the choice is clear: conservatives shouldn’t hesitate to support either amendment.

UPDATE: Here are two great essays on the subject of federalism and gay marriage – one from Stanley Kurtz in National Review, and another from Edwin Meese & Matthew Spalding in the Wall Street Journal.

What Have Other Courts Said About State Marriage Protection? UPDATED

Calvin Freiburger Constitution, courts, gay marriage, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, judicial activism, marriage, social issues, states

For what it’s worth, many courts would have upheld Proposition 8:

New York Court of Appeals? Upheld in New York:  

The majority decision, written by Judge Robert S. Smith, who was appointed by Gov. George Pataki, found that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples could be based on rational social goals, primarily the protection and welfare of children. “Plaintiffs have not persuaded us that this long-accepted restriction is a wholly irrational one, based solely on ignorance and prejudice against homosexuals,” Judge Smith wrote in his 22-page opinion. For example, he wrote, it could be argued that children benefit from being raised by two natural parents, a mother and a father, rather than by gay or lesbian couples.

US 8th Circuit Appeals Court? Upheld in Nebraska:  

Loken noted “historical fact – the institution of marriage has always been in our federal system, the predominant concern of state government. … This necessarily includes the power to classify those persons who may validly marry.” Citing the recent decision of the New York Court of Appeals, the circuit court found two justifications for Nebraska’s marriage law. First, it noted that the state had a legitimate interest in inducing opposite-sex couples, who could unintentionally bear children, into stable relationships. Second, the state could base its law on the traditional notion that children do best when raised by two parents of the opposite sex. The court found that both these interests were rationally related to Nebraska’s constitutional amendment. The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that this case was controlled by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Romer v. Evans. Romer involved a state constitutional amendment that invalidated certain local ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The Romer Court held that the amendment was not rationally related to a legitimate state interest, but was clearly the result of “animus.” 

Maryland Court of Appeals? Upheld in Maryland:

In an opinion signed by four judges, Judge Glenn T. Harrell Jr., citing a Supreme Court holding on judicial restraint, wrote that, absent evidence of discrimination, “judicial intervention is generally unwarranted no matter how unwisely we may think a political branch has acted. In declaring that the State’s legitimate interests in fostering procreation and encouraging the traditional family structures in which children are born are related reasonably to the means employed by [the law banning same-sex marriage], our opinion should by no means be read to imply that the General Assembly may not grant and recognize for homosexual persons civil unions or the reasons,” wrote Harrell, who is retired from the court but participated in the decision because he was a member when the case was argued.

California Supreme Court? Upheld before Walker:

California’s historic 2008 ruling, written by Chief Justice Ronald George, repeatedly invoked the words “respect and dignity” and framed the marriage question as one that deeply affected not just couples but also their children. California has more than 100,000 households headed by gay couples, about a quarter with children, according to 2000 census data.

(For what it’s worth, the LA Times notes that “Gay rights lawyers had no solid legal precedent on their side, and some of the court’s earlier holdings on constitutional revisions mildly undercut their arguments.”)

Washington Supreme Court? Upheld in Washington:

Johnson wrote that the Legislature had “a compelling governmental interest in preserving the institution of marriage, as well as the healthy families and children it promotes. This conclusion may not be changed by mere passage of time or currents of public favor and surely not changed by courts.”

UPDATE: The Institute for Marriage and Public Policy has a new report on this very subject [PDF link].

Flashback: A Hill to Die On

Calvin Freiburger American Spectator, conservatism, culture, gay marriage, homosexuality, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, liberalism, marriage, progressivism

Don’t take my word for it that conservative opponents of standing for marriage – yes, even David Horowitz – are terribly, dangerously wrong. Last April, Robert Stacy McCain penned a must-read American Spectator column on why surrender is not an option:

Grant the radicals everything they demand today, and tomorrow they will return with new demands that they insist are urgently necessary to satisfy the requirements of social justice.

When they refer to themselves as “progressives,” radicals express their own basic truth: Their method of operation is always to move steadily forward, seeking a progressive series of victories, each new gain exploited to lay the groundwork for the next advance, as the opposition progressively yields terrain. Such is the remorseless aggression of radicalism that conservatives forever find themselves contemplating the latest “progressive” demand and asking, “Is this a hill worth dying on?”

My own instinct is always to answer, “Hell, yes.” Nothing succeeds like success and nothing fails like failure. Ergo, to defeat the radicals in their latest crusade (whatever the crusade may be) is to demoralize and weaken their side, and to embolden and encourage our side. Even to fight and lose is better than conceding without a fight because, after all, give ’em an inch and they’ll take a mile.

This explains much about why I disagree with some conservatives who say we should not expend much effort defending traditional marriage against the gay-rights insurgency.

Some conservatives are wholly persuaded by the arguments of same-sex marriage advocates. Others, however, are merely unprincipled cowards and defeatists. Concerned about maintaining their intellectual prestige, some elitists on the Right do not wish to associate themselves with Bible-thumping evangelicals. Or, disparaging the likelihood of successful opposition, they advocate pre-emptive surrender rather than waging a fight that will put conservatism on the losing side of the issue.

Yet if the defense of traditional marriage — an ancient and honorable institution — is not a “hill worth dying on,” what is? In every ballot-box fight to date, voters have supported the one-man, one-woman definition of marriage. As indicated by exit polls in California last fall, this is one issue where the conservative position is widely endorsed by black and Latino voters. Should such a potentially promising political development be abandoned?

Stacy goes on to expose the seeds of gay marriage in the radical feminism of the 1970s, which sought to confuse gender equality with gender sameness, and point out that the conservatives of the era, busy with the fight against Communism, largely dismissed it as a mere social-issues distraction, thereby allowing themselves to be distracted from the Left’s designs…a mistake, I fear, much of the Right is repeating with Islam.

Defending Marriage: What Comes Next?

Calvin Freiburger conservatism, Constitution, constitutional amenments, gay marriage, GOP, homosexuality, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, judicial activism, marriage, moderates, Republican Party, RINOs, social issues

With another judge attacking marriage in California, the next question is where we go from here. Higher courts will review the decision, of course, but whatever they decide, you can be sure the legal challenges to state marriage definitions will keep coming. It’s difficult to see how true marriage and the will of the people can be secure without a constitutional amendment of some sort, whether it’s an outright national definition of marriage or a man-woman union or simply language revoking the judiciary’s right to address the matter.

How plausible is either scenario? More so than you might think. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 41 states currently preserve marriage legislatively, and 30 have put it directly in their constitutions. So public support is already a good chunk of the way to the 38-state threshold that would be necessary to ratify an amendment to the Constitution, and an increased perception that the courts won’t let the people make their own decisions (which may be fueled not only by this, but also by the feds suing Arizona and potential copycats, as well as legal battles over individual healthcare mandates) could be enough to push them the rest of the way.

Ironically, the biggest wild card I see is the likelihood of the Republican establishment running away from the issue out of perceived political expediency. We can always count on the GOP to pull defeat from the jaws of victory…

The State & Marriage

Calvin Freiburger 2008, blogosphere, California, culture, gay marriage, homosexuality, marriage, Obama
Boots & Sabers regular commenter Mr. Pelican Pants has a great explication of the case for traditional marriage on this post about Obama and Proposition 8 in California:
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1. No one has the “right” to marry anyone – straight, gay, whatever. Marriage is not a right afforded to anyone.
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2. The institution of marriage is a social tenet and institution to serve one, fundamental purpose: the perpetuation of the human race.
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3. Marriage, as a legal contract, is sanctioned by the states. Thus, the states should have the ability to decide who may and may not be allowed to be legally recognized as a married couple. Anyone is certainly free to “marry” anyone they want. Just don’t expect the state to officially recognize that marriage.
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4. Back to point #2 on pro-creation, while gay couples may certainly adopt a child, or use artificial insemination to create a child, the fact remains that, at a minimum, three people are needed to achieve this act of pro-creation. As a society, we believe that no more than two people should be needed.
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5. Marriage is not about hospital visits, health care benefits, or income tax breaks. Those are not rights, but rather legal side effects that have been created over time to maintain the traditional two-parent, man and woman, marriage. Thus, any gay couple claiming to be denied those rights is on very weak ground, as those are not rights, and as stated previous, marriage is not a right either.
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Finally, the problem with Obama’s argument is that a. he wants it both ways; and b. he is not properly describing the problem. The reason for the constitutional amendment, as it was here in Wisconsin, was not to “deny people from being with someone they care about”, but rather reaffirming the statutory guidelines for marriage, so a judge can not arbitrarily and unilaterally make a decision of what he/she believes was the intent of the Legislature when the Legislature crafted the statutory marriage language.
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The people of the state have their interests vested and represented in the appropriate state Legislature. Whether you agree or disagree with gay marriage, the majority of state residents, over a very lengthy period of time, believe that a marriage between one man and one woman is the most appropriate functioning unit to promote the family. Representatives in the Legislature have responded by crafting language that meets that long held belief.
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But where gray areas may exist in statute, is where many pro-gay marriage individuals make their challenges. Which then leaves a justice of the court in the position of trying to decide what the Legislature meant when those words were crafted.
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The constitutional amendment is appropriate, as there is generally no dispute or controversy as to what the Legislature intended. In addition, because it requires adoption by the people of the state in a referendum vote, the intent of the people is reaffirmed.
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The very process of constitutional ratification upholds the sanctity of a democratic society, one which may not be tinkered with by a single, activist justice who believe he/she is in a better position to decide the will of the people.

Question

Calvin Freiburger atheism, bigotry, marriage, Muslims, polls, religion, society
Every now and then, atheists claim they’re being discriminated against because polling data suggests many Americans wouldn’t want their children to marry an atheist. I don’t see any reason atheists should be offended by this. Why should a desire to marry, or to see your kids marry, somebody with similar values be taken to mean you think somebody with different values is inferior? The issue isn’t superiority, but compatibility: what will make a couple bond best, what will give children the clearest foundation and messages, and so forth. I don’t feel even remotely slighted by the fact that a Muslim would probably not want his daughter to marry me (whether or not Dad’s into honor killings, of course, is a different matter…). This claim is really grasping at straws.

Saving Marriage

Calvin Freiburger Blankenhorn, culture, gay marriage, marriage, society, Weekly Standard
An important piece by David Blankenhorn from the latest Weekly Standard:
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Defining Marriage Down Is No Way to Save It
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Does permitting same-sex marriage weaken marriage as a social institution? Or does extending to gay and lesbian couples the right to marry have little or no effect on marriage overall? Scholars and commentators have expended much effort trying in vain to wring proof of causation from the data–all the while ignoring the meaning of some simple correlations that the numbers do indubitably show.
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Much of the disagreement among scholars centers on how to interpret trends in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Stanley Kurtz has argued, in this magazine and elsewhere, that the adoption of gay marriage or same-sex civil unions in those countries has significantly weakened customary marriage, already eroded by easy divorce and stigma-free cohabitation.
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William Eskridge, a Yale Law School professor, and Darren R. Spedale, an attorney, beg to differ. In Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse?, a book-length reply to Kurtz, they insist that Kurtz does not prove that gay marriage is causing anything in those nations; that Nordic marriage overall appears to be healthier than Kurtz allows; and that even if marriage is declining in that part of the world, “the question remains whether that phenomenon is a lamentable development.”
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Eskridge and Spedale want it both ways. For them, there is no proof that marriage has weakened, but if there were it wouldn’t be a problem. For people who care about marriage, this perspective inspires no confidence. Eskridge and Spedale do score one important point, however. Neither Kurtz nor anyone else can scientifically prove that allowing gay marriage causes the institution of marriage to get weaker. Correlation does not imply causation. The relation between two correlated phenomena may be causal, or it may be random, or it may reflect some deeper cause producing both. Even if you could show that every last person in North Carolina eats barbecue, you would not have established that eating barbecue is a result of taking up residence in North Carolina.
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When it comes to the health of marriage as an institution and the legal status of same-sex unions, there is much to be gained from giving up the search for causation and studying some recurring patterns in the data, as I did for my book The Future of Marriage. It turns out that certain clusters of beliefs about and attitudes toward marriage consistently correlate with certain institutional arrangements. The correlations crop up in a large number of countries and recur in data drawn from different surveys of opinion.
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Take the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), a collaborative effort of universities in over 40 countries. It interviewed about 50,000 adults in 35 countries in 2002. What is useful for our purposes is that respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with six statements that directly relate to marriage as an institution:
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1. Married people are generally happier than unmarried people.
2. People who want children ought to get married.
3. One parent can bring up a child as well as two parents together.
4. It is all right for a couple to live together without intending to get married.
5. Divorce is usually the best solution when a couple can’t seem to work out their marriage problems.
6. The main purpose of marriage these days is to have children.
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Let’s stipulate that for statements one, two, and six, an “agree” answer indicates support for traditional marriage as an authoritative institution. Similarly, for statements three, four, and five, let’s stipulate that agreement indicates a lack of support, or less support, for traditional marriage. –
Then divide the countries surveyed into four categories: those that permit same-sex marriage; those that permit same-sex civil unions (but not same-sex marriage); those in which some regions permit same-sex marriage; and those that do not legally recognize same-sex unions.
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The correlations are strong. Support for marriage is by far the weakest in countries with same-sex marriage. The countries with marriage-like civil unions show significantly more support for marriage. The two countries with only regional recognition of gay marriage (Australia and the United States) do better still on these support-for-marriage measurements, and those without either gay marriage or marriage-like civil unions do best of all.
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In some instances, the differences are quite large. For example, people in nations with gay marriage are less than half as likely as people in nations without gay unions to say that married people are happier. Perhaps most important, they are significantly less likely to say that people who want children ought to get married (38 percent vs. 60 percent). They are also significantly more likely to say that cohabiting without intending to marry is all right (83 percent vs. 50 percent), and are somewhat more likely to say that divorce is usually the best solution to marital problems. Respondents in the countries with gay marriage are significantly more likely than those in Australia and the United States to say that divorce is usually the best solution.
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A similar exercise using data from a different survey yields similar results. The World Values Survey, based in Stockholm, Sweden, periodically interviews nationally representative samples of the publics of some 80 countries on six continents–over 100,000 people in all–on a range of issues. It contains three statements directly related to marriage as an institution:
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1. A child needs a home with both a father and a mother to grow up happily.
2. It is all right for a woman to want a child but not a stable relationship with a man.
3. Marriage is an outdated institution.
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Again grouping the countries according to the legal status of same-sex unions, the data from the 1999-2001 wave of interviews yield a clear pattern. Support for marriage as an institution is weakest in those countries with same-sex marriage. Countries with same-sex civil unions show more support, and countries with regional recognition show still more. By significant margins, support for marriage is highest in countries that extend no legal recognition to same-sex unions.
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So what of it? Granted that these correlations may or may not reflect causation, what exactly can be said about the fact that certain values and attitudes and legal arrangements tend to cluster?
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Here’s an analogy. Find some teenagers who smoke, and you can confidently predict that they are more likely to drink than their nonsmoking peers. Why? Because teen smoking and drinking tend to hang together. What’s more, teens who engage in either of these activities are also more likely than nonsmokers or nondrinkers to engage in other risky behaviors, such as skipping school, getting insufficient sleep, and forming friendships with peers who get into trouble.
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Because these behaviors correlate and tend to reinforce one another, it is virtually impossible for the researcher to pull out any one from the cluster and determine that it alone is causing or is likely to cause some personal or (even harder to measure) social result. All that can be said for sure is that these things go together. To the degree possible, parents hope that their children can avoid all of them, the entire syndrome–drinking, smoking, skipping school, missing sleep, and making friends with other children who get into trouble–in part because each of them increases exposure to the others.
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It’s the same with marriage. Certain trends in values and attitudes tend to cluster with each other and with certain trends in behavior. A rise in unwed childbearing goes hand in hand with a weakening of the belief that people who want to have children should get married. High divorce rates are encountered where the belief in marital permanence is low. More one-parent homes are found where the belief that children need both a father and a mother is weaker. A rise in nonmarital cohabitation is linked at least partly to the belief that marriage as an institution is outmoded. The legal endorsement of gay marriage occurs where the belief prevails that marriage itself should be redefined as a private personal relationship. And all of these marriage-weakening attitudes and behaviors are linked. Around the world, the surveys show, these things go together.
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Eskridge and Spedale are right. We cannot demonstrate statistically what exactly causes what, or what is likely to have what consequences in the future. But we do see in country after country that these phenomena form a pattern that recurs. They are mutually reinforcing. Socially, an advance for any of them is likely to be an advance for all of them. An individual who tends to accept any one or two of them probably accepts the others as well. And as a political and strategic matter, anyone who is fighting for any one of them should–almost certainly already does–support all of them, since a victory for any of them clearly coincides with the advance of the others. Which is why, for example, people who have devoted much of their professional lives to attacking marriage as an institution almost always favor gay marriage. These things do go together.
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Inevitably, the pattern discernible in the statistics is borne out in the statements of the activists. Many of those who most vigorously champion same-sex marriage say that they do so precisely in the hope of dethroning once and for all the traditional “conjugal institution.”
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That phrase comes from Judith Stacey, professor of sociology at New York University and a major expert witness testifying in courts and elsewhere for gay marriage. She views the fight for same-sex marriage as the “vanguard site” for rebuilding family forms. The author of journal articles like “Good Riddance to ‘The Family,'” she argues forthrightly that “if we begin to value the meaning and quality of intimate bonds over their customary forms, there are few limits to the kinds of marriage and kinship patterns people might wish to devise.”
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Similarly, David L. Chambers, a law professor at the University of Michigan widely published on family issues, favors gay marriage for itself but also because it would likely “make society receptive to the further evolution of the law.” What kind of evolution? He writes, “If the deeply entrenched paradigm we are challenging is the romantically linked man-woman couple, we should respect the similar claims made against the hegemony of the two-person unit and against the romantic foundations of marriage.”
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Examples could be multiplied–the recently deceased Ellen Willis, professor of journalism at NYU and head of its Center for Cultural Reporting and Criticism, expressed the hope that gay marriage would “introduce an implicit revolt against the institution into its very heart, further promoting the democratization and secularization of personal and sexual life”–but they can only illustrate the point already established by the large-scale international comparisons: Empirically speaking, gay marriage goes along with the erosion, not the shoring up, of the institution of marriage.
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These facts have two implications. First, to the degree that it makes any sense to oppose gay marriage, it makes sense only if one also opposes with equal clarity and intensity the other main trends pushing our society toward postinstitutional marriage. After all, the big idea is not to stop gay marriage. The big idea is to stop the erosion of society’s most pro-child institution. Gay marriage is only one facet of the larger threat to the institution.
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Similarly, it’s time to recognize that the beliefs about marriage that correlate with the push for gay marriage do not exist in splendid isolation, unrelated to marriage’s overall institutional prospects. Nor do those values have anything to do with strengthening the institution, notwithstanding the much-publicized but undocumented claims to the contrary from those making the “conservative case” for gay marriage.
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Instead, the deep logic of same-sex marriage is clearly consistent with what scholars call deinstitutionalization–the overturning or weakening of all of the customary forms of marriage, and the dramatic shrinking of marriage’s public meaning and institutional authority. Does deinstitutionalization necessarily require gay marriage? Apparently not. For decades heterosexuals have been doing a fine job on that front all by themselves. But gay marriage clearly presupposes and reinforces deinstitutionalization.
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By itself, the “conservative case” for gay marriage might be attractive. It would be gratifying to extend the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples–if gay marriage and marriage renewal somehow fit together. But they do not. As individuals and as a society, we can strive to maintain and strengthen marriage as a primary social institution and society’s best welfare plan for children (some would say for men and women too). Or we can strive to implement same-sex marriage. But unless we are prepared to tear down with one hand what we are building up with the other, we cannot do both.