CONSTITUTIONAL RESTRAINT: Mark Barton replies to Matt Taylor

Matt Taylor: "But as I already said, someone who doesn't want gays to have prestige (Family Research Council et al.) is most likely against civil union too."

Mark B.: And as I believe I allowed, I'm sure they would vote against it--as a first choice. At the same time, it appears that in Massachusetts, a near-majority of legislators of that mindset have voted for it--as a second choice. The fact that they'd have preferred something even more punitive doesn't subtract from their contribution to the "intent" of the legislature being strongly deprecatory--it adds to it. So the remaining issues are, did any significant number of the moderates have a genuinely neutral intent, and how neutral (or positive) would it have to have been cancel the large initial negative? I suggest the answers are, respectively, hardly any and quite a lot.

Taylor: "A more likely reason to prefer 'civil union' is simply that a committed same-sex relationship and a straight marriage aren't the same thing."

Mark B.: But the court found, I think correctly, that civil marriage didn't reflect any of the things that the state claimed were distinctive and important about traditional marriage. If nobody took the differences seriously enough to implement in the substance before there was a challenge, why should we suddenly start taking them seriously now that there's a last-ditch effort to at least keep the name?

Taylor: "For many people (especially straights) the term 'gay marriage' creates cognitive dissonance, since they are so used to taking for granted that 'marriage' means a male-female union."

Mark B.: I'm sure it does. I'm equally sure that some people in the South got some really severe cognitive dissonance following Loving v. Virginia. Why should I even care? To the extent I care, why should I be magnanimous? And to the extent I'm magnanimous for myself, why should the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court presume to be magnanimous on my behalf?
posted by Eve at 11:32 AM | link

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