|
 |
 |
 Saturday, August 30, 2003
DIGRESSION: First Comes Love
"Tony had taken a while to warm up to the idea of children, but probably because as a gay man, he'd never considered the possibility. Once he did, it wasn't hard to talk him into it. He was made to be a father. Or at least a mother. He was incredibly good at taking care of both people and things. Thanks to his instinctive solicitousness and gallant domestic attentions, even our houseguests were so well cared for they never wanted to leave. . .Peewee never entered his room or slept in his crib. He died inside me, days before he was supposed to be born. . .
APPLES AND ORANGES: Maggie questions
One more question Barry: You describe sexual desire as an appetite. What do you think it is a desire for?
APPLES AND ORANGES: Maggie's mind blows
Whoah, Barry this is some pretty heavy stuff we are wandering into here. Are you sure you want to go there? OK, here goes. OK, so homosexuality is not an incapacity to have sex with women, but the combination of the presence of desire for men and the absence of desire for women. Further, homosexuality is on a continuum, and the continuum runs not only between individuals, but inside the same person---i.e. the same person can be gay at one point in your life, bisexual at another, and straight at another time? The only thing you insist on is choice is never involved, because Eros is a demanding god who offers us none? You write: "I am glad you acknowledge that we do not choose our sexual desires and they are fluid and don't represent a hard fact about us. It was a point I made in my previous post, that sex desires are indeed on a continuum and we might find ourselves at different points on the spectrum at different times of our lives--though never by choice, just an existential fact." There is this big step you are glossing over: Between desire and identity, it seems to me, there is a space to be travelled. If we don't choose our sexual desires, do we choose our identities or are those too dictated to us by desire?
APPLES AND ORANGES: Barry v. Maggie
Actually, Maggie, it was you who brought up the idea of incapacity (see your post below) as a possible defining characteristic of a gay man. Desire and not capacity/incapacity more accurately indicates sexual orientation. In fact, I pointed out in my previous post that basically gay and straight men often do behave in anomalous sexual ways. It is quite remarkable what we have a capacity for. A starving man lost in a wilderness might be quite surprised to find himself dining on creatures he would never have considered touching let alone eating. But when returned to civilization, he quickly reverts to prime rib and never again yearns for slimy grubworms and roasted rat. Sex, too, is an appetite that often demands satisfaction even under less than optimum conditions. The propensity for normally straight men in prison, isolated from women, to engage in homosexual behavior is a well established phenomenon. I recently read an article about the prevalence of homosexual behavior in, of all places, Afghanistan. Men there are in a prison of sorts. They, too, are isolated from women. Though they would like to marry they often do not have the financial resources to acquire a wife. Their libidos are satisfied by handsome young men who offer their "services" for a modicum of cash or an occasional present. When they finally do marry, the homosexual behavior is most often, but not always, abandoned. Though not by choice, it may become an acquired taste for some. (I suppose roast rat could become an acquired taste as well. We have no more choice in our gustatory desires than we do our sexual ones.) But back to the main menu: desire as the distinguishing characteristic of sexual identity. No, I would not say that a man who call himself gay and takes on "gay identities" (whatever those might be) and yet likes sex with women is deceiving himself. I would just say that he is not using the term gay appropriately. The same is to be said of a man who calls himself straight and has taken on "straight identities" and yet likes sex with men. The term straight is hardly fitting. And just how do we distinguish between a gay man who likes sex with women and a straight man who likes sex with men? They are mirror images. I don't have the problem that you seem to have in knowing who really is gay. If a man only likes sex with men, he is gay. If he likes sex only with women, he is straight. If both men and women are desirable sex partners, he is bisexual. Of course, these categories represent the status quo. Through chance circumstance--the Afghan finds a wife, the prisoner is released--a particular individual may find himself at a different point on the continuum and hence in a different category. Hint: reread the quite different experiences of the two men mentioned in my previous post. I am glad you acknowledge that we do not choose our sexual desires and they are fluid and don't represent a hard fact about us. It was a point I made in my previous post, that sex desires are indeed on a continuum and we might find ourselves at different points on the spectrum at different times of our lives--though never by choice, just an existential fact.
APPLES AND ORANGES: Eve Tushnet
What is sexual orientation? So much of it seems to be about the narratives we tell ourselves about what we experience. I know that sounds abstracted and postmodern and weird, but bear with me for a moment. Maggie's already pointed out the cultures and situations in which men have had sex with men without having anything remotely like what we would consider a gay identity ("Was Socrates gay?" has got to be one of the sillier questions one could ask). For women, relationships and emotions that look and feel pretty similar have been interpreted in different ways in the past century or so--a 15-year-old girl with an intense, passionate crush on her best friend is a lot more likely, today, to interpret those feelings as "lesbian," whereas in 1910 she would just be experiencing a schoolgirl crush. (A decent place to start with this subject is Lillian Faderman's Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. She's got a pretty obvious agenda, but the book nonetheless challenges our tendency to shoehorn the past into our own ill-fitting categories.) So, not totally sure where this line of thought goes, but the tangle of culture and personal experience and desire is a lot harder to tease apart than our language of "gay, straight, or bisexual" leads us to think. More on this later, I hope, since I'm working on a short story that deals with this very subject--the transmutation of desire into identity. Soundtrack: Morrissey and Siouxsie, "Interlude." Friday, August 29, 2003
ATTRACTION OR COMPATIBILITY? Richard Brookhiser
[Rick is a historian of the American founding, and a senior editor at National Review] Dear Maggie: It better be attraction because God knows men and women are not compatible. Rick
APPLES AND ORANGES: Maggie v. Barry
Barry, you merge two ideas of defining who is gay: 1) sexual desire and 2) sexual capacity. One of the downsides to defining anyone who has any measure of feeling towards the opposite sex as bisexual and not gay, is that then you really don't know who is gay. Many men who are calling themselves gay and taking on gay identiites are, in your view, basically deceiving themselves, as are many men who pretend to be straight when they are repressing some measure of attraction to other men. Many staight men, in the right environment, will have sex with other men. Moreoever, any survey of other cultures calls into question this hard division into gay, straight, or bisexual. In many cultures, all men have ritual gay sex and all men also marry women. You are also ignoring (just logically speaking) a third possibility: sexual desire may itself be more fluid than your boxes permit. Your friend who was happily married and loved his wife and experienced desire for her and then, after she died, fell in love with a man and acquired an exclusively homosexual identity is a prime example. This is not the same as saying people just wake up and choose to be gay. We don't choose our sexual desires. Nonetheless, desire is not hard fact about us, like the color of our eyes. It is a really complex and interesting phenomena. Does that make sense to you? Thursday, August 28, 2003
APPLES AND ORANGES, CATS AND DOGS, BIRDS AND BEES: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
[A rabbi makes the case for sexual attraction as one of the best reasons for marriage, full story here, excerpts, below] "Notwithstanding my own conservative credentials, I have long championed the fair and equal treatment of homosexuals. . . There can be no question that gay sex is prohibited by the Bible, but that need not lead to the demonization of homosexuals. It is a sin not unlike desecrating the Sabbath, and it shouldn't be singled it out for particular opprobrium. ___________________________________
APPLES AND ORANGES: Barry v. Maggie
Maggie, you ask if it bothers me that some essentially straight men have had one or more homosexual encounters and some essentially gay men have had heterosexual experiences as well? If heterosexual/homosexual libido is a continuum which has no really discernible demarcations until you reach the ends of the spectrum (viz., exclusive heterosexuality or homosexuality), then no, I am not bothered. Nor yet surprised. It would in fact be what one would expect. When these experiences prove unrewarding, perhaps even repulsive, psychologically or physically, then the behavior is abandoned and these men revert to their respective basic orientations. But if the experiences are found pleasurable, satisfying and sexually fulfilling, then a propensity to lifelong bisexual urges is the most likely result. One of the major impediments to sorting this all out is the insistence by most conservatives (especially religious conservatives) that sexual orientation is a matter of choice, that gay people are somehow just straight people who choose to be gay. But if this is turned around--straight people are really just gay people who choose to be straight--conservatives immediately sense the absurdity of it. But they seem helpless to finally connect the dots and just keep repeating the endless refrain that sexual orientation is a choice. I wonder if they full comprehend the logical implication of their position, that their own orientation is a choice which they can readily change with a simple act of the will. Is that what they really want us to believe about them? The fact is, we cannot choose to whom we will be sexually attracted. Libido is a given, a craving that is instinctual. Tell a strictly heterosexual man who finds the very idea of sexual contact with a man completely revolting, that in fact he could will himself to be a homosexual, he will think you bonkers. Gay men feel the same way when told they can choose to be straight. Some of us, fortunately, are able to make rational decisions as to whether to act upon the demands of the libido but the libido itself is not a matter of choice. The lust I may feel for my neighbor's wife has a life of its own. The full extent of my choice in the matter is not to follow through on my lustful desires for either moral or practical reasons. The continuum I spoke of is not a frozen highway and people may find themselves at various locations along the spectrum at different times in their lives. However, relocation along the continuum is never a matter of choice, it is merely where you find yourself. I know a man who was married for 25 years, happily so he says. He had homosexual desires (not a choice) but kept them from his wife and never acted upon them (a choice). When he was 49 his wife died. He soon met a man to whom he was sexually attracted (not a choice) and they have been together for 34 years (a choice). During this time he has never again experienced another sexual attraction for a woman (but not by choice). He has long since considered himself exclusively homosexual rather than bisexual since he finds heterosexual urges totally absent. I know another man who had numerous sexual encounters in his early 20's with both men and women. He settled down to a 10 year relationship with a man which ended when this partner became both alcoholic and promiscuous. Shortly thereafter he met a woman to whom he was highly attracted and they have been together for 6 years. But he still finds men sexually desirable. So is he gay? Well, yes. But he also finds his exclusively heterosexual and monogamous relationship totally fulfilling. So is he straight? Well, yes. Again, that is why I find gay/straight labels confusing (meaningless, in fact) when applied to such cases. Men who are sexually attracted both to women and to other men should be deemed bisexual even though the attraction may be stronger for one sex than for the other.
A QUESTION OF IMMORAL MARRIAGES: Paul Nathanson Responds
Chris, I appreciate your restraint and willingness to think about new ideas. I, too, am gay. Consequently, I know what it means to argue for a position that’s not obviously in my own self-interest. Of particular interest to me is your approval of some marriages between gay and straight people along with your disapproval of those based on the urge to "gain social acceptance." I see your point, but I'm not quite as put off by the latter as you are. For one thing, social status has always and everywhere been a factor in marriage. Apart from anything else, marriage is a rite of passage between the social status of childhood or adolescence and that of adulthood. Marriage often involves social mobility, too, from one class to another or from one clan to another. In fact, marriage can involve the transfer of property, the continuity of lineage, the perpetuation of religious traditions, and many other factors. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of these things, because they often serve communal needs. Finally, there have always been "marriages of convenience." These break the rules in one sense (being between people not expected to marry) but not in another sense (because they reaffirm the larger and necessary communal project of bringing men and women together). A problem arises only when deception is involved (as Barry Maguire points out). As long as both parties know what they're getting into and agree to follow the rules with mutual respect, I see no problem. Gay people have always been allowed to marry people of the opposite sex, and many have done so throughout history. And I see no reason to assume that their children are disadvantaged because of that. The children of two gay parents, on the other hand, would have an important disadvantage: lacking a parent of one sex or the other. In addition to any other motivation, of course, most people have always hoped for more from marriage—that is, for personal compatibility or even love. But I hesitate to use the word "love" in its current sense, which often amounts to nothing more substantial than either transient emotion or sexual gratification. For people in many societies, that word refers to a much deeper bond, one that can involve joint effort in a communal and cosmic project (such as the promotion of Torah among Jews) or even self-sacrifice (such as the Christian notion of agape). I agree with you also about divorce, especially when children are involved. It should be more difficult than it is now, though not so difficult that truly hazardous conditions could defeat even the most responsible parents. In fact, I think that marriage is now in very bad shape—and this lamentable state of affairs must be blamed on straight people, not gay people. One problem with legalizing gay marriage is that it would give state approval to this state of affairs.
APPLES AND ORANGES: Maggie's first response
OK, Barry you can do this if you want. You can define a man as gay if and only if he is incapable of sex with a woman. But does it bother you that you are defining homosexuality as an incapacity?
ARE MIXED MARRIAGES IMMORAL? Barry Maguire
Apples and oranges, Maggie! In this continuing debate the term gay is being used much too broadly resulting in lots of misconceptions and no little confusion. You quoted women who said they are married to gay men and nonetheless have great sex lives. If they were really married to gay men, they would not be having great sex lives. They would not be having sex at all. These women don't have gay husbands, they have bisexual husbands. The term gay (or homosexual) should only be used to indicate someone who is exclusively homosexual. (Oh, yes, there are such people!) Bisexuality in men covers a wide spectrum, some liking men but preferring women or vice versa. Awoman who knowingly marries a bisexual who would really rather that she were a man is placing herself in a most vulnerable and perhaps emotionally ruinous situation. More often than not, misery and heartache is the name of this game. And, yes, for a truly gay man to misrepresent himself to a woman to satisfy some personal agenda (escape religiously inspired guilt,please parents, fit into a specific social circle, etc.) is indeed immoral. I know a gay man who did just that. When at last it became evident that he could not continue the masquerade, the woman was devastated by the deception as she had invested considerable emotional commitment to what she believed was a mutually rewarding relationship.His was a totally unethical, thoughtless, selfish and ultimately cruel behavior. In a word, immoral. The irony is, he really loved the woman. He just had no desire whatever to have sex with her. Ever! He was GAY! Wednesday, August 27, 2003
SSM: Canadian Backlash?
A story in Maclean's here, excerpts below. "The backlash against the pending legislation appears to be growing, and was certainly a point of discussion at the Liberal caucus meeting held in North Bay, Ont., last week. Polls show a five percentage point drop in support for the changes over the last two months, with the country now evenly split on the question -- 49 per cent for, 49 per cent against. Majorities in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario now oppose redefining marriage."
WHAT IS MARRIAGE? H. John Rogers
A columnist argues that marriage is just a private contract, like any others. This is a prime example of a genre that appears to believe (in extremely denigrating language) that marital love itself is a 20th century invention. If you follow his logic closely the word marriage disintegrates into the word contract. Business partners who want to call their union a marriage are married. Excerpt below, column here. Thus, it is quite clear that under the law, a marriage is nothing more than a private contract, just like a rental agreement or a directive to a broker to buy pork futures, both of which the law will enforce according to either the terms of the agreement (e.g., a prenuptial contract such as one advocated but not utilized by former Justice Richard Neely) or the applicable statutes (e.g., custody, property division and child support.)
NEW FOX NEWS POLL: 58 percent support FMA
Excerpts below, full story here. Six in 10 Americans oppose allowing gays and lesbians to marry and a majority favors passing a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. A recent FOX News national poll, conducted by Opinion Dynamics Corporation, finds that 26 percent of Americans favor but 62 percent oppose same-sex marriage, and almost as many would ban it through a constitutional amendment. Over half (58 percent) favor passing an amendment that would define marriage as being between a man and a woman. In general, young people, Democrats, and those who have a friend or relative who is gay, are most likely to favor allowing same-sex marriage. And while women are somewhat more inclined than men to favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry a partner of the same sex, young people are more than three times as likely as older Americans to favor it.
DIGRESSION: First Comes Love
[One of a series of excerpts from Marion Winik's memoirs of marriage to a gay man, for first-time MarriageDebate.com visitors] Tony always said that I exaggerated about how we never had sex. The problem was that when we did make love, I liked it so much that I just made me think about how we didn't have it enough, and how I could never get it when I wanted. I always had to wait until he decided it was time. And there were very long periods when it wasn't time, and I eventually got used to that, especially during the nearly five years that I was either pregnant or nursing. . .
BARR ON FMA: Peter Wolfgang
"In the best conservative tradition" neither the FMA nor the federal DOMA would be necessary. But given the Lawrence decision, and the Carhart v. Stenberg decision that struck down Nebraska's partial-birth abortion law for that matter, it is increasingly unlikely that our liberal judiciary will allow any DOMA, state or federal, to stand for very long. The FMA puts what even Mr. Barr agrees is a necessary "baseline" for marriage beyond the reach of the courts and, short of legalizing gay marriage, gives the states just as much leeway (for civil unions, domestic partnerships, etc.) as the DOMA - which is why some on the Right view it as too loose. All things considered, it's the best option available to conservatives this late in the game, and hardly something arrived at hastily. I doubt Mr. Barr's friends at the ACLU intend to leave his DOMA unmolested if they see an opportunity to undo it.
WHAT IS MARRIAGE FOR? Dan Cere
A few thoughts triggered by the last Washington Blade piece. Beneath the debates over the redefinition of marriage lie two very divergent conceptions of social institutions. On one side, marriage is treated as a public registry system to dole out a number of perks and benefits. In this view, marriage is an open legal basket containing more than enough goodies for everyone. This "won't-make-much-of-a-difference" attitude is exemplified in the sarcastic tease pitched by proponents of redefinition: "Do you think that the gays will use up all the marriage licenses and won't leave any for the straights?" What does this marriage registry offer? In Canada most of the so-called marriage perks are already available to same-sex couples through federal and provincial legislation. However, recent court judgements have argued that one vital nugget is missing, namely the public trophy character of marriage. According to this view, a pivotal task of marriage is to confer a large public badge of worthiness or dignity to close personal relationships. Marriage is all about being discriminatory -- namely giving social approval to close relationships and declaring them "worthy" --or excluding them from approval and thereby stigmatizing them as "unworthy." If we define marriage as an institution that doles out public declarations of "relationship worthiness" then of course any restriction is an exclusion and an inherent declaration of unworthiness. Now presumably, Canadian law will, for the time being, continue to exclude multiple-partner relationships and sexual bonds between siblings from this newly enlarged marriage basket. In doing so it will, according to this new logic, publicly stigmatize such relationships as "unworthy." But if marriage is just about approving or disapproving the worthiness of relationships, it will be interesting to see how long our judges will be capable of sustaining their moral finger-wagging against these alternative relationship lifestyles. I suspect that their moral generosity will soon get the better of them. On another side of this debate, marriage is not about moral approval or disapproval of the worth of various types of close adult relationships. It is about a complex social institution grappling with the huge reality of male-female bonding and the child-creating dynamic of that unique sexual ecology. Marriage is not about relationship worthiness. It is about participation in a unique culture of social-sexual life that is foundational to bringing children into the world. Opposite-sex bonding is the core requirement for this project. Individuals who enter into marriage (whatever their sexual idiosyncrasies, orientations or desires) embark on a unique social journey. The wedding is a pledge or promise to struggle to live out that journey; it is no affirmation of one's moral worthiness or capacity to fulfill the core purposes of marriage. Opponents of the common human understanding of marriage always want to divert attention away from these primal features of human existence. But the evasions - like the shrill tiresome "Hey, what about those infertile heterosexuals?" - simply beg the big question. They argue that this public redefinition of marriage as a badge of "relationship worthiness" won't make much of a difference to the social development of marriage. This argument betrays a flawed view of the nature of social institutions. According to social anthropology institutions consist of socially established structures of meaning and attitudes. These webs of public meaning give us our social bearings and shape our social practice. Change the core meanings of marriage (its opposite-sexness, its permanence, its procreativity) in major ways and you change the institution in deep ways. To raise serious concerns about the ways in which this fundamental redefinition will encourage a further ideological depletion of marriage culture is not a "sky is falling" rant. Social scientists on all sides of this debate have been documenting the very real patterns of marriage destabilization in Western society over the last forty years. This is not an abstract semantic debate about definitions, it is a grave public controversy over the core social meanings of marriage. Tuesday, August 26, 2003
A QUESTION OF IMMORAL MARRIAGES: Chris Schmidt
[Chris is a software engineer at a Big 3 technology company] This email became very long. I apologize if the length is excessive. I seem to have written quite a bit, but these topics are very important to all people. I've been reading your blog for three weeks now, and have enjoyed the debate so far. I wanted to make a comment on one of the questions you posed about homosexuals marrying someone of the opposite gender and thecall of it being 'immoral' or 'deviant.' While I was in college, there was an article in the campus newspaper bysomeone who identified himself as gay, but had married his high school girlfriend. He commented that quite a few people told him he was self-loathing, or couldn't handle who he was. His editorial was his way of saying that he didn't understand why people in the gay community couldn't understand that sexual attraction isn't the only reason for falling in love. You could tell that he was fairly hurt by the negativity of some of his gay friends. I don't think anyone can call this person's love for his wife or their marriage immoral. He wanted to spend his life with this person, because he made a deep and special bond irregardless of sexual proclivity. Hopefully they are still together. I can see where people in the gay community are coming from though. I realized I was gay when I was in high school, but didn't come out until last year (25 years old). What I, and many others have issues with is nsomeone knowing that they are gay and marrying solely for social acceptance or to hide who they are in some way. I don't feel that I could make a solid relationship with someone where my fundamental reason behind getting into the relationship is to gain social acceptance. It isn't right for the woman, and it is definitely not right for any children that may come about from the relationship. This type of relationship is the one that I feel many people are calling immoral. It is founded on a lie, feeding off of one person's desire to be loved and another person's wish to hide something about themselves. I don't know how much good could come about from such an arrangement. I have a question. If it is conceivable that a gay person can fall in love with a woman and get married. That would be OK, even if they don't have children? They have gotten married because of love, not an instinctual drive to procreate. My confusion is why a same sex couple that love each other would then be denied marriage. These two couples are founded on love and have no children. The only difference is one is sanctioned by society while the other is condemned. When I first started reading the blog, I was completely for same sex couples to get married. After reading all of the responses, and following the links from your site, I have changed my thinking a bit. My first perception was that people don't believe that I can truly have a real relationship with another man, which I believe to be false. That hurt, because it feels like people are trivializing my relationship. That it is somehow less than a heterosexual relationship (I don't believe people will say that a sterile couple are less of a couple compared to fertile couples; I feel the same for same sex relationships). I agree that the traditional definition of marriage as we know it today is one man, one woman. I think we may be moving too fast to change its meaning over night. I now agree with the idea of civil unions. I feel that a gay couple's relationship should be recognized and have some legal meaning. I also think that it should be difficult (near impossible) to dissolve this union. By doing this the gay community can slowly start to mature and turn more monogamous. In a generation, when civil unions are hopefully prevalent, it should be much simpler to modify the idea of marriage to include same sex couples. By that point, society will be used to committed same sex couples. Everyone will have a better understanding of the implications and whether SSM is a good thing or not. I feel that more time is needed to understand how our world is changing, but I also think that if there is no reason for gay couples to settle down, we will never see a maturation of the gay community. Gay people are forever in a state of dating. The world does not impose the rigid structure on dating that we do for marriage. Until society comes to expect mature relationships from gay people, we probably won't ever get them. Civil Unions should help, but it will take more than a handful of years for gay people to change. Again, thank you for the blog. It is very refreshing to get different viewpoints from a wide range of people. I agree that this is a very important moment for the United States and the world. I hope that we can choose the right decision and improve and strengthen our society. Monday, August 25, 2003
WHO WANTS GAY MARRIAGE? Chris Crain
[On the other hand, this is an editorial in the Washington Blade for SSM, here, excerpts below. ] "[A]ny leader of any gay rights organization who is not prepared to throw the bulk of their efforts right now into the fight for marriage is squandering resources and doesn’t deserve the position. That’s right; if they're not ready to make their top priority the freedom to marry, then they ought to resign today.
WHO WANTS GAY MARRIAGE? James T. Sears
[This is from a column by historian and dissenting gay activist James T. Sears (Phd) that appeared in a recent issue of The Washington Blade. Full column here, excerpts below] IN OUR POST-STONEWALL struggle, we (particularly many gay leaders) have entered a Faustian bargain trading equal rights with heterosexuals in lieu of sexual liberation for all. We give money to the Human Rights Campaign and support Lambda Legal to advance reform devoid of desire. We march for equal rights, not the right to f**k.
ARIZONA SSM CASE ARGUED: Arizona Republic
The Arizona Republic August 19, 2003. Full story here, excerpts below. "We're families. We're fathers. We're mothers. We love each other and our children just as other couples do," said attorney Michael S. Ryan, arguing that same-sex couples are entitled to the same protections as heterosexual couples. But the state argued that marriage is based on community morals, has historically been limited to a man and a woman, is centered on their ability to procreate and designed to protect families. The issue is a matter for the state Legislature, not the courts, said Assistant Arizona Attorney General Kathleen Sweeney. The three-judge panel seated to hear the case asked several questions of each side and promised to return a decision as quickly as possible. Ryan believes that the case is bolstered by the June 26 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court striking down sodomy laws in Texas. In that case, Justice Antonin Scalia said the ruling put state laws banning same-sex marriages on "pretty shaky ground." During Tuesday's arguments, Ryan said gay couples are denied rights of marriage, including inheritance or the ability to make legal and medical decisions for a partner who is incapacitated. Vice Chief Judge John C. Gemmill asked if those issues could be addressed through contracts and other legal paperwork. "Why should we have to jump through legal hoops?" Ryan asked. "And what if we miss one, a critical one, that we didn't think of." Ryan said that laws about marriage have changed over time to allow interracial marriage. And that courts now also recognize the right for prisoners and indigents to marry, which used to be prohibited. Same-sex unions should be next, he said. Ryan said he received a call Tuesday afternoon from the court saying it would take jurisdiction and issue a decision. But he thinks they may wait to see what courts in Massachusetts decide in a similar case.
BARR ON FMA: Jonathan Rauch
Reading what conservatives had to say about Bob Barr's repudiation of the Federal Marriage Amendment, I was struck by James Q. Wilson's characteristically astute comment. If conservatives were smart, the amendment they'd propose would just say: "(1) Nothing in this Constitution requires any state or the federal government to recognize anything except a union of one man and one woman as a marriage; and (2) no state need recognize any marriage performed in another state." This would let states go their own ways. It would solve what conservatives say is the main problem, which is national imposition of same-sex marriage by an overweening Supreme Court. I think it would be quite easy to pass and would even garner some gay support (from me, for example). Instead, the current Federal Marriage Amendment is targeted not just at gay marriage and overweening judges but at state legislatures and their traditional power to set marriage and family policy. It will be divisive and conroversial and will spark a national culture war. It will focus the issue as "conservatives against gays and federalism" instead of "Americans unite against imperial judiciary."
IS MARRIAGE A STATE'S RIGHT? Duncan Anderson
As a condition of their admission to the Union, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Utah were required by Congress to pass statutes outlawing polygamy. Because of the polygamy issue, Utah's struggle for admission lasted 40 years before succeeding (after outlawing polygamy and prosecuting polygamists) in 1896. For more info go here. I don’t see why Vermont or (if it comes to that) Massachusetts should get off any easier as they attempt to redefine marriage. Not that I'm endorsing ejecting those states from the Union. Not yet, anyway.
BARR ON FMA: Lisa Schiffren
[Lisa is a New York-based writer and a former speechwriter for Vice President Dan Quayle] I do not understand what the defense of marriage act accomplishes if it means that the federal government defines marriage as limited to a union of one man and one woman, and yet the states are free to override that definition or expand it to include two people of the same sex. Also, I suppose I think that marriage is so fundamental a building block of what is certainly a national society and culture -- in ways that alcohol use or firearms ownership or property tax rates are not -- that there is an overriding need for the nation to have one standard, even if there are differences in mores between localities.
BARR ON FMA: Maggie responds
Hmm, I guess we all have rules Gabriel. I believe in the rule that, to make a marriage you need a husband and a wife, you believe that if its a state court that is engaged in judicial tyranny only state remedies are appropriate. I think a strictly federalist FMA would prevent ANY court from redefining marriage in this basic way, but leave the decision up to state legislatures. The problem with this is that state courts interpret laws passed by state legislatures. If courts can find a right to gay marriage in the constitution drafted by John Adams in Massachussetts, they can find it anywhere. But of course I also disagree with the thesis that marriage, at this basic level of definition, is a state matter. If marriage really is a social institution, and not just a private life style choice, it needs a certain shared public understanding of what it is, what it does, and why we have laws about it. Regulations about theft vary from state to state but the basic idea of property does not. Both Elizabeth Marquardt and Alan Hawkins, below, touch on these concerns
BARR ON FMA: Gabriel Rosenberg
Magggie, you claim Bob Barr is not really advocating states' rights, but the right of the courts to remake marriage as they see fit. You say the only solution to courts' overriding the will of the people is a constitutional amendment. But the FMA would not just bar courts from finding for SSM, but legislatures as well. The FMA would deny people even the option of convincing their legislature to approve SSM. Besides no court is currently even considering granting SSM on federal constitutional grounds, it has been and still is being decided solely on state law grounds. So if an amendment is needed to stop this, it should come at the state level (as it did, for example, in Hawaii). If someone were really concerned about courts misinterpreting the US Constitution, the proposed amendment would leave out references to how state constitutions or state laws should be interpreted. There is an amazing arrogance in the FMA telling states how state constitutions and state law should be interpreted. Sunday, August 24, 2003
BARR ON FMA: Alan Hawkins
I worry about the fragmentation of the meaning of marriage. Marriage derives a significant proportion of its social and cultural weight because it is almost universal in its definition and meaning, and is surprisingly similar in its practices despite vast sub-cultural differences. If marriage begins to mean different things in 50 different states and XX number of countries, don't we risk losing some of marriage's strength as an institution to shape in positive ways social behavior? Also, for some time now we have been moving in the direction of building a lot of different relationship "quasi-institutions" surrounding the central institution of marriage, but have left marriage relatively intact, even if it is a bit rundown and in need of repairs. Now with same-sex marriage, the reasonable possibility emerges that the central building will be remodeled in a way that fails to distinguish it from the surrounding buildings. Some will argue that's progress; other's will fret about what we may lose and not be able to replace adequately. It's the developers versus the historical preservationists, only in the social world.
BARR ON FMA: Duncan Maxwell Anderson
[Duncan writes on sex and culture for a variety of publications] I'm a Federalist to the end, and Barr has an excellent argument. But… It wouldn’t be the first time the Federal government has gotten involved in the question of what marriage is. As I recall, as a condition of admission to the Union, Utah was required to outlaw polygamy. That's quite a bit of Federal interference in a state matter, and it even concerns the definition of marriage. Yet this polygamy ban is not what led to a raft of Federal interference in other state matters. That came later, and for other reasons. I think the forces of real marriage need to protect state and local rights as their primary focus. To paraphrase Tip O'Neill, all morality is local morality. But I'm not sure you can make a civilization with people who are trying to remove the building blocks of human society. You need to have some starting point, or those states with definitions of marriage that are hostile to the public good become a means for messing with people's minds in other states (which seems to be the whole idea). |
||||||||||
 |
|
home | marriagedebate.com | resources | about imapp | contact |
|