RESPONSES TO DAVID BROOKS

Some really interesting stuff here, replying to Brooks's pro-SSM New York Times piece:

Yale law professor Jack Balkin: "...Liberals have not been pushing gay rights as 'a really good employee benefits plan.' They have been pushing it as a civil rights issue, but that is because a central feature of equal citizenship is and should be the ability to solemnize one's most precious, intimate and long lasting commitment to another person through marriage. Slaves could be prohibited from marrying in the antebellum South. With freedom came basic rights of citizenship, which included the right to marry.

"...I reject his insinuation that if you love another person you must also want to marry them or else you don't really love them. Marriage is not for everyone. The notion that everyone must conform in lock step to the same set of social practices is the darker side of Brook's so-called conservative case for same-sex marriage, and it conflicts with the view of many conservatives (and liberals too, I might add) that individual choice about the most important matters in one's life should be respected." more

David Blankenhorn: "...But what exactly, apart from the idea that commitment is good, does Brooks say about marriage? Not a single word. For example, what about the idea that marriage, by bringing together into enduring sexual union the male and female of the species, makes it likely that a child will be raised by her mother and father? Not a word. In Brooks' ode to the power of marriage, children do not even exist." more

Peter Robinson: "...The view that men and women are profoundly different--distinct from one another in the very depths of their beings--is implicit in Genesis, finds support among the most profound minds the world has produced, including Augustine and Aquinas, and was so interwoven into the mores and habits of cultures around the world that until no more than a few decades ago it was everywhere taken for granted, a given aspect of reality. To dismiss this understanding of the sexes as mere 'biological determinism' betrays ignorance of one of the great themes of history. ...The legend of 'Beauty and the Beast' first appeared in print in the eighteenth-century, and it contains elements of 'Cupid and Psyche,' which was committed to writing in the second century. David is of course free to dismiss it. But first he needs to tell us why the legend of a man who was tamed and fulfilled by the love of woman has resonated for at least 19 centuries." more
posted by Eve at 11:27 AM | link

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