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 Wednesday, November 02, 2005
More Dale Carpenter/Maggie Gallagher
Here's Dale's take today on the "definitional" questions we are also talking. I guess my only quarrel with him (I do think marriage requires a substantive defense, and that most of our current marrige tradition arose out of such apologetics with pagan views) is that people who make this argument are pointing to the fact that SSM is not a change in the "entry requirement" to marriage, it is a change in the "substantive conception" of marriage. The second point I think is worth considering is why tradition is typically less articulate than innovation (Hint: its not because innovation is always more intelligent). There's a lag in the capacity of tradition to become articulate. Maggie Dale on Volokh.com: "Given this challenge to the definition of marriage, the definition alone cannot be offered in its own defense. It must be accompanied by reasons that show why the male-female definition is the right or best one. Unless the definition is defended with reasons that go beyond simply asserting the definition itself, the defense suffers a fatal circularity. It asserts the conclusion (the proper definition of marriage) as the argument. It’s the equivalent of saying, “I’m right because I say so.” That may work in the parent-child relationship, but it cannot suffice in public-policy debate. Let’s apply this lesson to the species-confusion analogies so popular among gay-marriage opponents. Consider the dog-cat analogy introduced above. Gay-marriage opponents argue that gay marriage is like calling a “cat” a “dog,” and that simply can’t be, no matter how hard we try. But this misses the point of the case for gay marriage, which is to argue that gay couples (for multiple reasons) sufficiently meet the purposes of marriage (properly understood) such that they should be permitted to marry. To use the analogy, gay-marriage advocates argue that gay marriage is indeed a dog that we have unfairly been calling a “cat,” refusing to recognize it as a species of dog. On this view, gay-marriage advocates are not trying to get the world to accept cats as dogs, but to accept dogs as dogs. It’s those who refuse to call this dog a dog who are in error. A similar response applies to the various government-benefits analogies offered against gay marriage. Consider the analogy to veterans benefits, where gay-marriage opponents claim that gay couples are like non-veterans trying to get veterans benefits. Gay-marriage advocates are arguing that (for multiple reasons) gay couples are “veterans,” and that denying them veterans benefits is therefore wrong. Maybe gay-marriage advocates are wrong on the substance: perhaps gay couples can’t meet the purposes of marriage (properly understood). But that conclusion has to be debated, with reasons offered for why gay couples can or can’t meet the properly understood purposes for marriage. The conclusion cannot simply be asserted once the existing definition is challenged. In debates, one often hears the complaint from gay-marriage opponents that gays are “trying to change the definition of marriage.” Exactly so, but this is hardly a decisive objection, just as it would not be a decisive objection to any proposed change in existing practices or laws. None of this is to argue that there should be no definition of marriage. There should be a definition of marriage. But given the powerful affirmative case for gay marriage, it must be debated. Perhaps the man-woman definition is the best one, but to reach that conclusion we need substantive arguments supporting the definition, not simply the definition itself. Given how logically weak the bare definitional argument is, why does it persist? The answer, I think, is that behind it is a powerful, unstated intuition that important social institutions ought to have stable attributes (meanings) over time. This is a deeply conservative instinct and I share it to a very large degree. I will address this Burkean argument, which I ultimately think is the best argument against gay marriage, later in the week." |
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Perhaps the man-woman definition is the best one
Is that a definition of marriage? Britney Spears and I are a man and a woman, but we aren't married. My mom and I are a man and a woman, but we aren't married. To be married, you also have to have the right to procreate together. Richard and Mildred Loving would not have been considered married if they had been forced to undergo sterilization, or forced to abort any pregnancies, or forced to use a black man's sperm or a white woman's egg in order to procreate. What they sought in marriage was the right to have children together, and if that had been withheld, it wouldn't have been a marriage, even though they are a man and a woman.
Maggie, are you in favor of allowing same-sex couples to procreate together or not? If we allow two people to procreate together (and currently we allow same-sex couples to procreate together, but they are just waiting for the technology to be further developed) then we have to let them marry, or it violates a universally recognized principle that people who create children together should be married to each other first.
Please dont seperate marriage from procreation by considering these seperate issues. Procreation rights and marriage rights are the same thing, and we will be discussing procreation rights for same-sex couples soon, it is unavoidable. Shouldn't we discuss them while we discuss marriage?
"[B]ehind [the weak definitional arguments] is a powerful, unstated intuition that important social institutions ought to have stable attributes (meanings) over time. This is a deeply conservative instinct and I share it to a very large degree."
Oh, come on, Maggie, remember what you said in the 2000 Statement of Principles?
"The history of American progress is the history of confronting entrenched social problems once considered inevitable. Slavery, racism, poverty, pollution, drunk driving, domestic violence, sexism, tobacco use- in each case, Americans proved that when a social practice, big or small, is wrong or destructive, the correct response is not fatalistic acceptance, but action."
"I do think marriage requires a substantive defense, and that most of our current marrige tradition arose out of such apologetics with pagan views"
It's mischievous to take Maggie at face value here but, indeed, anyone who's read the New Testament carefully should be very grateful to the pagans for slapping some sense into the early Christians. In fact there isn't a single word of ungrudging praise for marriage in the entire text, and both Paul and the Jesus of "Matthew" speak of it as a poor second choice to celibacy. It's portrayed as having no virtues worth remarking on beyond making sex minimally legal. Of course when the second coming didn't eventuate within a generation as originally anticipated, the Christians were presumably forced to adopt a more forward looking and less actively hostile view, but it wasn't until the 1100's that the Western church abandoned its monastic focus and standardized on its modern theology of marriage as something to be positively celebrated - in both sense of the word. In fact until the twelfth century, priests didn't typically officiate at marriages. The aristocracy might come past the church on the day after a secular marriage to have the union blessed, and the peasantry would simply start cohabiting.
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