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 Monday, October 31, 2005
Andrew Sullivan's Dance/Maggie Gallagher
Andrew Sullivan is doing his little war whoop dance, after his debate with David Blankenhorn. Andrew's continuining inability to comprehend or describe arguments with which he disagrees remains compellingly on display, in these latest posts. Most peculiar, and self-serving, is his claim that this focus on family structure and generativity is something David Blankenhorn is making up for the SSM debate. He quotes from a document I drafted "The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles." released in 2000, of course well before SSM became the dominant marriage issue, which pointed to the many dimensions of marriage (parenting union, legal union, emotional union, religious union, etc.). The document is saturated with statements like this one: "Marriage is not a conservative or liberal idea, not a plaything of passing political ideologies. Marriage is a universal human institution, the way in which every known society conspires to obtain for each child the love, attention, and resources of a mother and a father." Andrew sees contradictions everywhere, because he has firmly formulated the relation between marriage and procreation as a syllogism: either a. one must argue that these two things are identical (marriage is procreation and procreation is marriage, so anyone who doesn't procreate can't be married) or b. procreation is irrelevant to marriage as a legal institution and anyone who says otherwise is arguing in bad faith. I'm all for reducing the sacrifice marriage requires, by pointing out its benefits to adults, too. But many of us really have worked on the marriage issue for decades now, because we really are passionately committed to living in a culture which is committed to the idea that children need moms and dads. For Andrew to accuse David, the author of "Fatherless America", with inconsistency is well, absurd but consistent with his recent track record in perceiving arguments with which he disagrees on this issue. |
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Andrew sees contradictions everywhere, because he has firmly formulated the relation between marriage and procreation as a syllogism: either a. one must argue that these two things are identical (marriage is procreation and procreation is marriage, so anyone who doesn't procreate can't be married) or b. procreation is irrelevant to marriage as a legal institution and anyone who says otherwise is arguing in bad faith.
Maggie, given that this firm formulation is exactly what you spent a lot of time explaining on Volokh as your view of marriage, it ill becomes you to complain that Andrew has identified it as the bedrock of the anti-marriage movement.
Indeed, it might even be considered a tad hypocritical, after you spent so much wordage explaining that this was what you meant, to backtrack and complain that even though you said it it wasn't what you meant, just because you don't like Andrew Sullivan publicly pointing out the flaws in your own logic.
I don't think Maggie ever said marriage is procreation, she used a phrase along the lines of "something to do with" procreation. But that "something to do with" could easily be named: it is the right. Marriage IS procreation rights. There is no marriage that does not have a right to procreate, and every couple that has a right to procreate is married. Yes, I am asserting that people that procreate without marriage are doing it without having the right to do it. Not being punished, and even having some legal protection, is not the same as there being a right to procreate. Any couple that doesn't have a right to procreate together isn't married, and every couple who does have a right to procreate together is married.
But many of us really have worked on the marriage issue for decades now, because we really are passionately committed to living in a culture which is committed to the idea that children need moms and dads.
Then why waste your time opposing same-sex marriage?
If your position is that same-sex couples ought not to be permitted to adopt or foster children (that it's better for children to be left in institutions, in other words); or that lesbians ought to be denied access to AID; or that divorce ought to be made immensely difficult and expensive so that most people who can't stand living with their spouse any more will run away rather than get a divorce; or whatever you envisage, positive or negative, if that's really your primary goal...
....why on earth waste time and energy and raise up enemies by opposing the right of same-sex couples to have their marriages recognized by the state?
(I used to wonder why John Howard wasted so much of his time opposing same-sex marriage when he claimed that there were other issues more important to him: but then John made clear on several occasions that he's extremely homophobic.)
So now it is "homophobic" to be for marriage. Doublethinkers do their best to outthink themselves.
I suppose that remark would make me doublethinkerphobic, too. So be it.
They do not have marriages. Opposing the imposition of SSM is defence of the objective truth. Supporing that imposition is to defend a falsehood. Why do SSMers campaign for overturning the truth?
Because the campaign is not for marriage, not even for SSM, but for a new classification based on homosexed behavior.
That actual campaign might have some merit, but since the SSMers pretend they search for something else, that classification is highly suspect on its face.
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