|
 |
 |
 Friday, July 14, 2006
Hate and Marriage in the NYT/Maggie Gallagher
Almost as if in response to Prof. Ford's essay, the NYT today publishes an op ed "Too Good for Marriage by a Yale law professor, Kenji Yoshino. Prof. Yoshinot notes that the NY court accepted as a rational argument that opposite sex couples give children a mom and a dad. "The more traditional argument stated that the Legislature could reasonably suppose that children would fare better under the care of a mother and father. Like most arguments against gay marriage, this “role model” argument assumes straight couples are better guides to life than gay couples. And like other blatantly anti-gay arguments, it falls apart under examination. In a decision last month in a case concerning gay foster parents, the Arkansas Supreme Court found no evidence that children raised by gay couples were disadvantaged compared with children raised by straight couples. . ." (Yet more evidence, BTW that moving to gay marriage requires getting rid of the idea that there's anything to this notion that children need a mom and dad. People wonder why I think it will have this effect? I pay attention to what gay marriage advocate say.) But Prof. Yoshino concentrates on what he considers a startling new "heterophobic" argument: opposite sex couples need marriage more, because their sexual unions produce children. Yoshino writes: "'Heterosexual intercourse,' the plurality opinion stated, 'has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not.' Gays become parents, the opinion said, in a variety of ways, including adoption and artificial insemination, 'but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse.' Consequently, 'the Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples.' Prof. Yoshino opines: "When an Indiana court introduced this seemingly heterophobic logic last year in upholding a state ban on same-sex marriage, I thought it was a cockeyed aberration. But after both New York City and New York State presented similar logic in oral arguments, and the court followed suit, I began to understand the argument's appeal: it sounds nicer to gays." He then dismisses the argument as "preposterous" because he says there are enough marriage licenses to go around. Here is the characteristic note of the gay marriage advocates (with a few exceptions) too which I think Prof. Ford was responding: "We should not need a century to unmask the 'reckless procreation' argument as a new guise for an old prejudice. The 'reckless procreation' argument sounds nicer — and may even be nicer — than the plainly derogatory 'role model' argument. But equality would be nicer still." It is quite transparently not satisfying enough for Prof. Yoshino to point out that he disagrees with this 'reckless procreaton'i argument, that in his judgment changing the one core rule of marriage across time and history and cultures will have no effect on marriage at all. Instead Yoshino must deny that he is making a judgment at all. He cannot merely disagree, or believe he has better arguments, he must dismiss the concerns raised as patently irrational a "preposterous" cover for antigay bigotry. I don't know why I'm pointing this out either: it is a great advantage (practically speaking, whatever the cost to intellectual discourse) to face a set of opponents who cannot grapple with your argument because, for whatever reasons, in spite of obviously keen intelligence, they simply cannot comprehend that a serious argument has been made. |
||||||||||
 |
|
home | marriagedebate.com | resources | about imapp | contact |
|
I've noticed the trend from proponents of homogamous unions recognized as marriage to also argue that homogamous unions provide a role model of less divorce to heterogamous marriages. They conveniently overlook, and hope nobody notices when statistics are published that homogamous marriages in Europe have the same rate of divorce. Unfortunately, what is not being high-lighted is the number of heterogamous divorces due to people that think they can only be homogamously oriented, effectively trebling the number of divorces due to supposed homogamous orientation.
I think that, in this respect, the NY Court ruling had some unfortunate language. I think a better way to phrase the issue of heterosexual coupling is simply to state that it is a challenging proposition for men and women to get together, stay together, and raise kids together. Yet it is absolutely necessary.
This is not a question of irresponsibility-- unlike gay couples, straight couples have the ability to create the next generation, and we need them to both do it the right way and not do it the wrong way.
Maggie wrote: "I don't know why I'm pointing this out either: it is a great advantage (practically speaking, whatever the cost to intellectual discourse) to face a set of opponents who cannot grapple with your argument because, for whatever reasons, in spite of obviously keen intelligence, they simply cannot comprehend that a serious argument has been made."
If I may, I would like to take a stab at explaining why obviously intelligent people sometimes consistently cling to irrational views on certain topics.
There are two levels of understanding--what we can understand through the process of logic and reason and what we believe ourselves and the world to be. Logic is a means of manipulating symbols and their relationships, but the symbols and their relationships are axioms fundamental to the logical system. You don't have a logical system without axioms.
To see how this works in another context, put a Texas rancher and a militant vegan in a room together and see where a conversation about diet and morality goes. On one website maintained by such a rancher, he posed a question which to him was obviously rhetorical, "If cows aren't supposed to be eaten, then why are they made of meat?"
For the rancher, "meat" is axiomatically "food." For the vegan, it's sacrilege. It's a fundamental presumption that goes to the heart of one's identity and what one believes the world to be.
Because it is so fundamental, when it is challenged, the reaction is often irrational and hostile. And that is why, if one changes such an entrenched value over to its mirror opposite, such a transformation is regarded as something akin to a religious experience--like scales falling off of one's own eyes.
Just because one is intelligent does not mean that he or she does not have a dimension himself--a fundamental conception of the self and the world--where logic is not king. I think all people have such a dimension and that reason and logic are subservient to it.
Thanks for blogging this and for pointing out that you pay attention to what gay marriage advocates say. Please add this comment to the list of things we say.
"Changing the one core rule of marriage across time and history and cultures" will most likely improve marriage.
Regarding your quote, you may want to refer to the work of the 1974 United Nations "International Year of the Family" organizing committee. According to the "Getting on Message" essay by Bill Sinkford:
"the organizing committee began by acknowledging not just that no one definition of 'family' works across cultures but also that, in point of fact, 'the family does not exist'."
Andrew,
That's all well and good, but as Justice Kaye pointed out dissent, that is simply a reason for the state recognizing heterosexual marriage. What then is the rational reason for excluding gay couples? If gay couples can benefit from marriage, what about marriage being essential for heterosexuals means that gay couples can be rationally excluded. You can make the argument that, say, welfare should be limited to those people for whom it is a necessity, but that is simply because there is a limited number of resources. Is that true for marriage licenses?
Maggie,
About children neeeded moms and dads. What is so wrong about the notion that children don't need moms and dads (ie, two genders represented in their parents)? Doesn't gay marriage say that children need two parents, not just one and that those parents should be ideally be committed to each other, exclusively, forever? Unless you are deliberately trying to associate the fatherless children of lesbians with the fatherless children of abandoned single mothers, which I think is highly dishonest. If not, could you please address why you think the idea that children need moms and dads is important and why modern social science is wrong to disagree with you.
Who among us would choose to not know both our father and our mother? Gay marriage imposes on innocent children a decision that they will not know both their mother and father, not, obviously, because it is in their interest, but to satisfy the desires of adults.
Maggie,
You seem to miss what is so irrational about this reasoning, and why it is essentially insulting to straight people.
When a gay couple adopts or goes through the process of insemination or surrogacy, the intentionality is undeniable. That couple really wants that child. It astonishes me that the very thing that a child most needs and deserves, to be wanted, is denigrated by people like Dan as "the desires of adults."
How in the world does withholding the benefit of a legal relationship between a child and both of her parents, and between her parents, help a dysfunctional straight couple avoid procreating by accident? I think this "reasoning" was invented to spur the legislature to action, just because it's so embarrassing.
That's a clever dodge David, laying out the assumption that a heterogamous couple is always going to be dysfunctional and never going to procreate intentionally. It might even have worked if it weren't pretzel logic. The derision of heterogamous couples is rather palpable. Maybe you should be embarrassed about that.
Perhaps you should read the Ohio opinion, smmtheory. I'm not the one who laid out that assumption, the court was. Frankly, I found it stunningly illogical.
Please do a little more research before attacking someone next time.
smmtheory: That's a clever dodge David, laying out the assumption that a heterogamous couple is always going to be dysfunctional and never going to procreate intentionally.
That's the assumption that the New York Court of Appeals made, smmtheory - you need to take that up with them. I agree it's "pretzel logic", but it's their theory - that marriage is only for mixed-sex couples who are dysfunctional and never procreate intentionally. Why should David feel embarrassed? It's not his theory: it's the theory of 4 anti-marriage judges. They should feel embarrassed at so traducing mixed-sex couples, I agree.
As anyone pro-marriage would agree: marriage is about the lifelong committment of two people to each other. Marriage has never been legally tied to fertility or to the intention to have children in the US, and I'm glad you agree that it's embarrassing for the anti-marriage crowd to try to claim that it does.
I don't buy the idea that a couple that did not have sex specifically to have a child will necessarily not love the child when it comes along.
You are applying another trick altogether jesurgislac. It's called projection, where you project your own motives and actions upon others. The shame of it all is, this wrangling shouldn't be in the courts at all since judges are not necessarily adept at understanding social needs, but that is where you would prefer the wrangling to be.
Post a Comment
<< Home