MARRIAGE PROMOTION: Eve replies to Jonathan Rauch

(Second in a somewhat random, disorganized series of comments on Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America.)

In chapter five, Rauch tells people who are concerned with civil rights, but who believe homosexual activity is wrong, that same-sex marriage does not constitute governmental promotion of homosexuality: "I am only reminding you that the question is not whether same-sex marriages should be approved of but whether they should be legal. The government may disapprove of many things, but it should ban them only if they harm other people, harm society, or violate somebody's rights; not simply as a gesture of contempt." (A long section immediately prior was dedicated to arguing that when government and society give special honor and legal status to plain old husband-wife marriage, that is necessarily a sign of contempt for homosexual relationships. I disagree with that--not everything is either singled out for honor or singled out for disdain, cf. friendship, sibling relationships, godparenthood, &c--but that's not what I want to talk about right now.)

On a somewhat similar note, Alisa Solomon, in a Nation piece expressing her caveats about the gay-marriage movement, says, "The marriage demonstrators make no demands, for example, that school curriculums include queer material or that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teachers be protected from job discrimination."

I think the claim that same-sex marriage does not constitute government promotion of homosexual activity and homosexual relationships is conceptually wrong: Marriage is an honor. People get honored for doing good stuff, stuff they ought to do. The honor people get for marrying and the strong cultural affirmation of marriage are two major ways societies subtly push people into taking on the responsibilities of marriage. (I would bet a lot of money that more people get married to obtain this social honor than to get Social Security benefits.)

But even if we grant for the sake of argument that SSM does not necessarily, inherently entail governmental praise for homosexual relationships, both Rauch's and Solomon's claims are still unlikely to prove true in the contemporary political climate.

Public schools teach courses on "relationships" and on marriage. Schools in states with SSM will have to reshape their curricula to either a) say all relationship types are equal or b) SSM is equal to marriage. (Most parents believe neither of these things.) There's simply no chance that we will "compromise" such that SSM is permitted but is treated by the public-school system as a lesser kind of marriage. It's doubtful, for the same reasons, that public school curricula will be able to teach that children need mothers and fathers (rather than gender-neutral "parents").

The Healthy Marriage Initiative encompasses all kinds of marriage-strengthening and marriage-promoting programs that have been instituted at the state and local levels. These programs, too, will not be able to promote a "two-tier" understanding of marriage, in which SSM is permitted but not given the special honor and promotion conferred on marriage.

Efforts to institute and strengthen marital preferences in adoption laws (rules that say married couples should move to the head of the line for adoptions) will also not be able to distinguish between married couples who can provide adopted children with a mother and a father, and same-sex couples who cannot.

So SSM will promote homosexual relationships and give them the honor we have until now reserved for marriage between a man and a woman. Will the majority of the country, which disagrees with this view of homosexuality, accept that? Or will it become (even more) suspicious of all marriage-promotion programs, unwilling to support or participate in programs that push a worldview it believes is immoral and false?
posted by Eve at 9:23 PM | link

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