| Wednesday, January 21, 2004 |
14:41 - We all in this together
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So there's this essay-thing I've been working on for a couple of weeks now. I've been posting it, in various forms, tailored for each instance, in the comments on various right-leaning blogs that bring up the topic of gay marriage. It's something that I believe needs to be said, and it's in response both to the hard-right-wingers who fume about homosexuality on religious grounds (and who cobble together long tracts on how homosexuality leads invariably to disease, poverty, murder, suicide, and so on-- claims that I can only giggle ruefully at), and to the gays who take on the role of shrieking, moralizing professional victims. Both sides are equally to blame for the stalemate in the rapidly emerging battlefield over Same-Sex Marriage, a battlefield that Mike Silverman ably likened to Gettysburg in this post's comments at Dean Esmay's blog.
Were I in command of the Vast Homosexual Conspiracy, I would order an immediate halt to give our troops, and the American public, time to regroup and assimilate what has already happened. I would stop pushing right now because the ground has gotten weak, and it would be best to wait for it to be shored up.
The problem is, I can't do this. I have to deal with the real terrain as it is.
One of the greatest battles of the civil war, Gettysburg, was basically an accident, and was kicked off by a small Confederate batallion that was foraging the countryside looking for shoes! Neither side wanted a major fight at that particular time or place. However, the confederates ran into a small Union detachment, the pieces were set in motion, things escalated, and all you had to fight on the given terrain with what you had, as there was no other option.
I don't want this fight now, it is a bad tactical situation for my side. But, the enemy is counter-attacking, and if we try to withdraw or pause the fight, we will get wiped, because now THEY have smelled blood.
Exactly. Though I have to address the "they" comment: "they" refers mostly, now, to the far-right fringe. I've seen a ton of centrist-conservatives coming over very magnanimously to the SSM camp in recent years; in fact, I'm hard pressed to find anyone to the left of Emperor Misha I who doesn't support civil unions at the very least, and who doesn't proclaim loud support for gays and gay rights whenever poked.
But what I've noticed is that the tone of this expression of solidarity is rarely without the hint of a wistful sigh. See, there are what amounts to two irreconcilable sides to this argument: one believes that the group identity is all-important and we must have equality now now now; the other holds that the greater majority ought to be given the first draft pick of opinion. To both sides, the truth of their own position is self-evident, as is the folly and backwardness of the opposition's. But where there's capitulation and compromise, for the most part I see it being on the part of the Middle-America conservatives, who accept the situation as being something they'll "just have to get used to", with a shrug and a sigh. It's the path of least resistance; it's a grudging peace offering to the strident Left, and I can't help but think that it will result in poorly papered-over resentment. Plus it means the far Right is merely being made more shrill, and it's they who are the "they" now holding their end of the rope, seemingly all but abandoned in what was once a very rational argument. I think we can do better than that.
The post on Dean's World linked above contained a dismissive comment about how a pair of married lesbians next door would supposedly "threaten" the marriage of a suburban couple, and how silly an idea that was. That seemed the right cue.
So here goes:
I wonder how many gays there are out there who-- like me-- do not particularly believe that gay marriage is of huge importance?
I think most people who dismiss right-wingers' objections to SSM (on the grounds that it "threatens marriage") are deliberately misinterpreting the objection. It's not that people think their own marriages will be threatened; it's that they think they will be cheapened. And frankly, I can see their point.
Marriage is supposed to be an affirmation of a natural family pairing, with the nuclear family as the basic building unit of the community. Now, the argument is over whether we've socially evolved to a point where the nuclear-family unit is no longer crucial to a healthy community fabric, and whether the definition of "family" is ready to be extended to include gay unions, civil unions, and the dreaded "etc".
Reasonable people can disagree about whether we've reached that point, or whether that point is one that we should aspire to reach.
I believe gay marriage will someday be a reality-- but if it doesn't happen in my lifetime, I won't complain. This is because I believe SSM is something that will be made de facto law by individual Americans, not imposed by fiat from the top down. I don't want to antagonize Middle America by forcing people to accept something they're not ready for. Yes, I'm gay, but I'm not about to put my individual interest above that of a much larger majority of Americans. My allegiance lies with the country, not with my social splinter group. I'm an American first, and a gay man second. And I recognize the importance of marriage. Anything that lets people treat marriage with more respect, and cuts down on divorce rates and "marriages of convenience" and Joe-Millionaire-style hijinks, I'm in favor of. (Oddly enough, a common argument is that long-term, loving gay relationships are denied legitimacy by blustery old men on the Right who have been divorced multiple times from a succession of trophy wives; it's a clever one, but turn it around: how will expanding the definition of "marriage" to include gay couples not make that guy treat marriage even less seriously?)
If conservatives say that the idea of gay marriage threatens the concept of marriage, try to get inside their heads. Understand why they feel that such an alteration of the definition of that ancient establishment is threatening. It's not because they think having married lesbians next door will make their own spouses start wandering. It's because they think they've been cheated, in much the same way as amnesty for an illegal immigrant would make a legal immigrant feel cheated. Marriage is a sacred pact, involving sacrifice as well as ease. To have "holy matrimony" placed on the same reverential level as a "civil union" or a marriage for the sake of other things than the raising of a nuclear family is something that's going to set off warning bells.
Now, maybe that's paranoid. There's something to be said for the fact that gay guys who get married aren't doing it for some kind of "no sex out of wedlock" reason, because that's meaningless in their case-- instead, marriage is almost certainly going to be for the purpose of genuine long-term emotional commitment, or even for the raising of a family. This is Sullivan's argument (I believe), and I think there's a lot of truth to it.
But also remember that gays don't have to burden themselves with the albatrosses of family life; we're not expected to. We've effectively claimed a big exemption on life. I myself feel extremely guilty over this-- I know that I'd be nowhere near as independently wealthy as I am if I had to support a wife and kids. (Sam Austin said: "Homosexuality is God's way of insuring that the truly gifted aren't burdened with children.") And this guilt drives me to achieve more and give back more to society in my own pursuit of the American Dream. But that guilt probably isn't universal, and many gays-- the most visible ones, dancing on floats on Market Street-- can be quite rightly seen as "taking the easy road", and flaunting it with a "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyaaah nyaaah" and a shake of the ass.
And for such people to be awarded all the rights and privileges of marriage and retain the freedom and independence inherent in being gay seems like having one's cake and eating it too.
So no, I don't have much trouble seeing how conservatives can find gay marriage to be threatening or cheapening to the institution of marriage. And I'm willing to wait until gay family units have become a bit more mainstream before I stump for any legislation that rams it down anybody's throats.
I believe that State after State will begin to pass laws recognizing these kinds of unions, and once a few start the rest will rapidly follow. Sooner or later, the Constitution's clauses forcing States to honor all licenses and treaties of all other States will be brought into question, and at that point federal law will be revised to codify the new standard. That way each State will jump on board when it's ready to do so and not before; since this is something that affects a lot smaller a percentage of Americans than, say, female suffrage or the Revolutionary War did, this is an issue on which we ought to be able to trust the American public to make the right decision and arrive at a just compromise in due course.
But until that time, let's focus more on building bridges, and on communicating that we on both sides genuinely understand each other's concerns. Otherwise, the vast majority of American voters-- the center of the political spectrum-- will have to resign itself to the argument being made on terms that completely sidestep the conservatives' real position, denies the fact that most conservatives have no hatred or rancor toward gays (except the professional victims who browbeat them into shamed submission), and reduces their central touchy-feely point-- the feeling of how centrally defining to American life the traditional, even religiously defined, concept of "marriage" is-- to a jeerworthy joke. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger's vapid claim that giving driver's licenses to illegals represented a "security risk", rather than the moral capitulation to people who cheat the system that others identified it to be, far too many proponents of SSM-- Sullivan included-- take it as axiomatic that gay marriage is a foregone end and a logical extension of civil rights, and conclude therefore that the conservatives who don't want marriage redefined can be driven only by hate. If that's where the argument lies, then the stalemate will never be resolved amiably, because neither side will truly be understood by the other.
Let's acknowledge our shared interests on this issue. Let's remember who's the minority supplicant here and who's the majority. Let's cool down the accusations of "rubbing our noses in your heterosexuality", which do nothing but turn people off and offend them. Let's give America a reason to trust us-- because I believe they want to. We just need to prove that that trust is not misplaced.
...Okay, now that you're done with that, go back and read the comments on Dean's thread, particularly Mrs. du Toit's entries:
Reasonableness is called for. Baby steps. Broad, sweeping generalizations about those who are opposed to SSM just makes folks more stubborn. It's forced many folks (like myself), who are supportive of 90% of other homosexual rights issues, to stand with the folks at the other extreme. And to be perfectly frank, I don't like it over here, but that seems to be the only group to stand with. (And, I should add, while I'm over here, I'm getting an earful on a whole bunch of other issues. My "resist, resist, resist" warning systems are pretty good, but I'm sure there are cracks in my armor. Do you want a significant majority of reasonable folks left out with this side? I don't).
This is the vote that's just waiting to be courted by a reasonable and sane voice. It's time for that voice to speak up.
UPDATE: Mike Silverman has a point-by-point response, from a viewpoint that's a bit less compromising than mine. And that's fine-- his circumstances are such, for instance, that marriage would be more meaningful to him than it would be to me. I don't think there's really any argument to be had, just an acknowledgment of different positions on the spectrum.
However, I should clarify one thing. Yes, I know that it's a flawed argument that "gays have a free ride because they don't have spouses and kids". I realize that lots of straight people are single, and plenty of high-achievers in history have been so with large families. And I know there's a statistically non-trivial number of gay families with kids. I'm not saying there's any kind of direct correlation between "swingin'" and "success". But that's a misunderstanding of my point. I'm not describing reality here; I'm describing perception. Isn't Middle America's collective "gut feeling" something along the lines of: Well, gays have it pretty darn good, it seems to me! The way the movies show it, it's an endless life of partying and sex for twenty years or more while the rest of us slave away in the mortgage mines. Who hasn't thought something like that once in their life?
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Brian Tiemann
