GAMBLING WITH HISTORY: R.K. Becker replies to Mark Barton

I'm wondering just what an argument against SSM has to be in order for Mark Barton to classify it as "non-homophobic". Now, to me, a homophobic argument would be one which relies on negative stereotypes about homosexual individuals or couples. Maybe Mark's definition of "homophobic" is broader. Perhaps he feels that any argument that redefining marriage as an androgynous institution could negatively affect the next generation is "homophobic." If that's the case, it is an expansive definition of the term which crosses into pure political correctness. To say that an argument based on effects, or even possible effects, be dismissed as offensive crosses the line from sensitivity into a deliberate attempt to stifle debate through the threat of negative branding. 

Mark B.:  "I couldn't care less how big a transformation it seems to Maggie or people of like mind, nor am I under the slightest obligation to care. All I care about is whether there are any valid arguments that on balance people will be worse off as a result of the transformation."

In other words, it doesn't matter how radical a proposed change is. Unless its opponents can demonstrate exactly what its negative results will be, it should be enacted.

Would Mark apply the same standard to the economy? To the environment? To letting an amateur try to repair his computer? Or does he feel that human culture is not as complex an organism, and that it is simply resilient to any change no matter how radical or untried? Does it need to be said that the more radical and untried the change, the less any of us can know with certainty about its effects down the road? That has been my main argument from the start. Also, that the absence of SSM from the historical record is not a fact without implications for us now.

Mark and other SSM proponents will usually assert that the argument from history is meaningless, if they deal with it at all. They'd rather argue about its effects in the abstract, without reference to history. If pressed about the reason why there is no record of any culture defining marriage as an androgynous institution, the answers basically take two forms:

1. The idea of marriage as a union between any two persons regardless of gender has simply never been tried, anywhere, anytime. No culture has been enlightened enough to think of it. Some special change has occurred in recent years making the very thought of it possible for the first time in human history. Since it's never been tried, there's no reason to believe that it's harmful, and in the absence of proof otherwise it should be assumed not to be harmful. The burden of proof is on the opponents of SSM to demonstrate why it is harmful.

2. SSM may have been tried before somewhere, or at least conceptualized, and not worked out. But while it may have been unworkable in the past there has been a change in human society in recent years which makes it workable now.

The above explanations are not impossible. However, they beg questions. What has prevented all cultures in the past from even conceptualizing the idea? And what change has made it possible to conceive of it now? Something technological? Or has some technological change made it workable now where it was not before? What is this change?

The third possibility is that the absence of SSM is not due to a lack of conceptualization but to a lack of success in past cultures that have conceptualized it and/or implemented it, however briefly. And that the reasons for its lack of success may still be valid today. If so, then its absence reflects not cultural ignorance, but cultural experience.

Any of the above explanationss could be true, but I believe the third one is more probable than the first or second. I cannot see how the idea of same-sex marriage requires any technological advancement for its conceptualization. The fact that so many primitive cultures tolerated homosexuality far more than Western culture did until thirty-five years ago seems to argue against this explanation.

Similarly, I've heard no explanation of what recent technological change would make SSM work now where it was unworkable before. I find it more likely that given the variety in human societies throughout thousands of years, there have been some which have conceptualized the idea, and even some which have implemented it, which would leave failure (either of the society's experiment with SSM or of the society itself) as the most likely reason for our not finding it as a permanent arrangement in any culture that we know of.

Of course, I could be wrong. But my point is that Mark and other SSM supporters are engaging in a gamble that its historical absence is due to ignorance rather than experience. And that this is a gamble they cannot have confidence in, however much confidence they think they have about the future. Santayana's maxim applies as much to the past we don't know as to the past we do.
posted by Eve at 7:29 PM | Link |

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