On marriage and "marriage"

By David Benkof
GaysDefendMarriage.com
DavidBenkof@aol.com

One of my favorite same-sex marriage advocates (and an occasional commenter at GaysDefendMarriage.com) is Fannie, of the fine blog Fannie's Room. A little over a week ago, she complained on her blog about the excessive use of quotation marks by marriage defenders (her term, not mine - thanks Fannie). Fannie describes the practice as

"excessive unnecessary quotations marks to cast suspicion on the legitimacy of same-sex relationships. Like stubborn segregationists blocking access to white schools, they fail to concede a loss when they have, in fact, lost. Scare quotes, or more accurately 'sneer quotes,' are non-direct quotations used to indicate scorn, sarcasm, and/or disagreement with another person's usage of a word."

As someone who uses such quotes around gay marriage some but not all of the time, I thought it might be useful for me to delineate three reasons why I do so, and give same-sex marriage advocates a chance to respond. We may not change each other's minds, but at least we'll understand each other better.

1. Liberals do it too. I have frequently seen quotation marks around terms conservatives use that liberals don't like. For example, many pro-choice people will say someone is anti-choice, but sometimes they'll call that person "pro-life." In other words, he calls himself pro-life, but in actuality his policies are anything but. He favors the death penalty, and he cares about the fetuses of poor women only until they're born, but then he cuts every program that might help the child have a successful life. Another example is referring to right-wing religious people as "Christian." They'll say the president of the California Values Alliance is a "Christian" who forgets the call of Jesus to help people in need. I wonder if Fannie and others like her object to the examples I gave above when used by liberals?

2. I have to do it. I know and understand and respect that Fannie thinks that Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin are married. I also know that the state of California considers them married. But in my opinion, they are not now and never can be married, for marriage is a union of a man and a woman. In fact, that's precisely what we're arguing about. Why should I give in when the debate has only begun? An analogy: Most opponents of the reparative therapy movement, including myself, refer to people who credit their therapy for a transition from gay to straight as "ex-gay." That's because I don't believe, and most LGBT people don't believe, that therapy can make a gay person straight. If I stopped using the quotation marks, I'd be surrendering on the debate before it even began. For the same reason, I refer to Messianic "Judaism" because no serious Jew of any movement considers it to be Judaism.

3. I think it's more respectful. Yeah, respectful. If I stopped referring to same-sex "marriage," which I'm open to doing if people on the other side tell me it's important to them, I'm not going to start using the term marriage to refer to things I do not believe are marriages. Instead, I'm going to look for creative ways to refer to same-sex marriages, husbands and wives. So: "Del and Phil had a same-sex legal ceremony of commitment at City Hall" and "Ellen DeGeneres and the woman in her life had a California lesbian union in front of several hundred friends." (Not Ellen and her wife got married.) I find it more respectful to use the word my opponents want to be used, but to put it in quotes to indicate I do not agree with it, but that's the term they prefer. Do you think a Muslim would rather I said that Islam is a "religion of peace" - or that Islam is a hate-filled faith of genocidal murderers? I think the former.

If anyone has a suggestion for how I can be more respectful of the other side of this debate without violating my conscience, I'm interested in hearing it.

Labels: Marriage

posted by David Benkof at 11:31 PM | link

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