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 Friday, July 08, 2005
RAISING BOYS WITHOUT MEN
[A book I learned about from its highly favorable Library Journal review. --Eve] Raising Boys Without Men : How Maverick Moms Are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men by Peggy F. Drexler, Linden Gross Raising thriving, emotionally healthy sons does not require a man around the house! That's the conclusion of a groundbreaking research study that will open eyes, stir debate, and reassure nearly 10 million single mothers. As the number of single-mom and two-mom households has grown, so have concerns about the possible damage to boys caused by the lack of a male role model in the house. Peggy F. Drexler, Ph.D., listened to all the dire warnings; but her training as a research psychologist told her she had to see the evidence. So she embarked on a long-term study comparing boys raised in female-headed families with those whose fathers were present throughout their childhood. What Dr. Drexler discovered is as heartening as it is startling: * Female-headed households may be even better parents for boys than households with men * Sons from these families are growing up emotionally stronger, more empathetic, and more well-rounded than boys from "traditional" mother-father families * While more in touch with their feelings, these boys remain boyish and masculine in all the ways defined by our culture Raising Boys Without Men offers an inclusive vision of what family can mean and a blueprint for raising happier, healthier sons. link
CANADIAN MP IN TROUBLE WITH CHURCH OVER SAME-SEX MARRIAGE SUPPORT: From the Windsor Star
The bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of London, Ont., has issued a letter to his priests that disciplines Windsor-Tecumseh NDP MP Joe Comartin for his support of same-sex marriage legislation. According to the website LifeSiteNews.com, the letter describes Bishop Ronald Fabbro's decision to suspend Comartin's liturgical privileges and public church activities as a result of his comments in Parliament regarding Bill C-38. "It was unclear whether or not Comartin would be permitted to receive the communion," the website said. Rev. Gerry Campeau, pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church where Comartin is a member, said the bishop's letter is to be mentioned from the pulpit at masses this weekend and copies will be handed to all attendees. ... Comartin's involvement with his church has included teaching a marriage preparation course with his wife -- an activity that will now be prohibited to him. In Ottawa on June 28, when the same-sex marriage bill was voted upon, Comartin expressed his support for the legislation while affirming his faith. "I am Roman Catholic," he said. "My Catholic community in the city of Windsor is a major support for me and has been for all my life." ... Comartin said he has commiserated a number of times with Charlie Angus, NDP MP for Timmins-James Bay, who is also a devout Catholic and has been denied communion by his parish priest for his support of the same-sex marriage bill. more
UGANDA CRIMINALIZES SSM: From 365Gay.com
Uganda's parliament has passed tough new laws against gays in the African nation. The new law makes it a criminal offense for same-sex couples to marry. ... Specific jail terms for offenders were not included in the legislation but are to be laid out in revisions to the Ugandan penal code at a later date, Eceru told the paper. Gay sex is already illegal in Uganda. Hundreds of gays and lesbians have fled the country. Many have sought refuge in the United Kingdom but have often been denied refugee status and returned home. Uganda's Anglican Church is one of the leaders of the conservative movement in that faith that has been threatening a schism over the election of a gay bishop in the United States. more
OUTSOURCING OUR CHILDREN: F. Carolyn Graglia reviews Mary Eberstadt
...Our society, in particular the media and academia, wholeheartedly endorsed this feminist ideology, and homemakers were consistently disparaged and their social and economic security were fatally undermined by the enactment in all 50 states of no-fault divorce laws that warned mothers it was unsafe to devote themselves to raising children. The result was an unprecedented influx of mothers into the workplace so that, by 1985, the majority of mothers with children under six were working outside the home. ... This social experiment is, of course, the mother-child separation required by the feminist notion that a woman's personal fulfillment requires her energetic participation in the workplace. Eberstadt calls defenders of this conceit "separationists": those who believe that women's freedom to work in the paid marketplace justifies separation from their children, and who refuse to consider whether the children and adolescents left behind by the adult exodus have suffered. She challenges a society, which only seems concerned with making it easier and cheaper for women to "combine work and family," to consider how small children actually experience being in daycare all day. She makes the very sensible point that the daycare debate is never about what it feels like for the infant and children in day care, but always about what the outcomes are in terms of personality development and cognitive ability. "The daycare proof," separationists believe, "is in the achievement pudding." Separationists, however, are often not around children, who, in their lives, have been made "someone else's problem." We have long known that being in day-care centers increases illnesses among children, but Eberstadt analyzes this problem from the child's, not the adult's, perspective. What must it be like for a sick child, dosed with Tylenol to disguise an illness before being dropped off at the center? "Anyone actually charged with the care of little children," she observes, "knows that a sick baby or toddler is a uniquely pitiful thing, in part because such a child is too young to understand why." Through the eyes of children, Eberstadt details the numerous areas in which their lives have worsened during the period when increasing numbers of mothers left the home, and she establishes the connections between parental absence and children's present afflictions. ... The goal of Eberstadt's book is to convince some women who have a choice to raise their children at home and some parents to stay together for the sake of their children. If the number of women at home increases and the number of absent fathers decreases, their own children will have fewer problems and society will improve: elementary school classes, which suffer from the large number of children whose stay in day care has made them belligerent and aggressive, will become more manageable for teachers and less stressful for students. If more mothers are around the neighborhood in the daytime and more fathers are there to play ball at night, it may improve the lives of even the children in the neighborhood with absent parents. more
YOUNG SCHOLARS DEBATE GAY RIGHTS: From the Gay City News
On the surface, it might not be clear how the gay marriage debate involves ten high-school seniors and a gay Ivy League admissions officer. The common thread is in this summer's new reality TV show "The Scholar," which airs Monday night at 8 p.m. on ABC and is produced by Bunim Murray Productions. The premise of the show is that ten high school seniors compete for a full scholarship to the college of their choice. ABC describes the teenage competitors as among America's best and brightest students, but adds they "might not otherwise have an opportunity to attend one of America's top universities." ... In the July 11 episode, Abbott gets a unique look at the candidates as they debate the issue of gay marriage. Abbott said he was personally heartened by the marriage debate because of the effort it took the five students assigned to the "con" team to make a compelling argument against gay marriage. "It was gratifying for me as a gay man to see the individuals who had to take the position against gay marriage struggle with it as mightily as they did," Abbott said. All of the members of the con team acknowledged having a difficult time piecing together a compelling case against same-sex marriage. One candidate in particular, Jeremy from Westminster, California, visibly struggled with the debate, constantly commenting on how "hard it was" to oppose the idea. The pro team ultimately won the debate. more
GAY MARRIAGE AS A FAMILY DIVERSITY ARGUMENT: Maggie Gallagher replies to Lisa Duggan and Richard Kim
Andrew Sullivan makes these arguments unwittingly. Here are two Nation writers who understand that gay marriage is best understood as part of a broad family diversity argument: In order to counter conservative Republican strategy, one that promises to wreak havoc in elections to come, gay activists and progressives will have to come together to reframe the marriage debate. For gay activists, and indeed for all progressive activists, it would be far more productive to stress support for household diversity--both cultural and economic support, recognition and resources for a changing population as it actually lives--than to focus solely on gay marriage. By treating marriage as one form of household recognition among others, progressives can generate a broad vision of social justice that resonates on many fronts. If we connect this democratization of household recognition with advocacy of material support for caretaking, as well as for good jobs and adequate benefits (like universal healthcare), then what we all have in common will come into sharper relief. more
"FAMILY DIVERSITY," BUSINESS, AND THE STATE: Marty McKeever replies to Lisa Duggan and Richard Kim
Just thinly disguised Marxism. What planet are these two on, to say "The net effect ... has been to push economic and social responsibility away from employers and government and onto private households." From where I sit, economic and social responsibility is increasingly the burden of business (domestic partner and insurance benefits) and government (Social Security as a retirement fund), and less on families. And, "The stress on households is intensifying, as people try to do more with less." From where I sit, Westerners are far wealthier than they have ever been in the history of the world. What's this "doing more with less" business all about? Next, "Care for children and the elderly, for the ill and disabled, has been shifted toward unpaid women at home or to low-paid, privately employed female domestic workers." Hasn't that been the status quo for thousands of years? Isn't it only during the last 50 years that care for children, the elderly, the ill and disabled has become MORE of a burden upon government and business, and less upon families? What evidence is there of a "shift towards unpaid women"? Is it just me, or do these two have it entirely backwards, attempting to move society EVEN FURTHER in the direction of family disintegration and overbearing government? And isn't that the same tired road we've been on for the past 50 years or more?
QUAKERS HOLD RALLY FOR GAY MARRIAGE: From the New River Valley Current
A national religious group that considered canceling plans to hold its annual conference at Virginia Tech because of a state law that bans gay marriage and may invalidate wills and powers of attorney between same-sex couples held a "marriage equality" rally on Henderson Lawn on Tuesday. About 300 attendees of the Friends General Conference, also known as Quakers, gathered near downtown Blacksburg in support of marriage rights for same-sex couples. ... Glasby, along with her longtime lesbian partner, Kathleen Karhnak, spoke to the group about their marriage in a Quaker congregation in Pennsylvania several years ago. The couple also showed off their 5-month-old son, Timothy Karhnak-Glasby to the crowd, which cheered. While Pennsylvania allows both women parental rights to the child and recognizes their wills and powers of attorney as valid, "there are still so many areas where we have no equality," Karhnak told the gathering. "I hope this message goes out into the world with love." more Thursday, July 07, 2005
BEYOND GAY MARRIAGE: Lisa Duggan and Richard Kim
... The net effect of the neoliberal economic policies imposed in recent decades has been to push economic and social responsibility away from employers and government and onto private households. The stress on households is intensifying, as people try to do more with less. Care for children and the elderly, for the ill and disabled, has been shifted toward unpaid women at home or to low-paid, privately employed female domestic workers. In this context, household stability becomes a life-and-death issue. On whom do we depend when we can't take care of ourselves? If Social Security shrinks or disappears and your company sheds your pension fund, what happens to you when you can no longer work? In more and more cases, the sole remaining resource is the cooperative, mutually supporting household or kinship network. But if marriage is the symbolic and legal anchor for households and kinship networks, and marriage is increasingly unstable, how reliable will that source of support be? In the context of these questions, the big flap over marriage in this election begins to make a different kind of sense. If voters are not particularly homophobic, but they are overwhelmingly insecure, then the call to "preserve" marriage might have produced a referendum vote on the desire for household security, with the damage to gay equality caught up in its wake. Indeed, the campaigns against same-sex marriage spewed rhetoric about the importance of "preserving" marriage, often steering away from overtly anti-gay fearmongering. For example, the Alliance for Marriage's Matt Daniels, who spearheaded the push for the Federal Marriage Amendment, has insisted that the marriage agenda is "not organized around homosexuality. Its mission is to see that more kids are raised in a home with a married mother and father." Daniels contends that "no one in the alliance believes that saving the legal status of marriage as between man and woman will alone be sufficient to stem the tide of family disintegration," but he believes that "if we lose that legal status, we lose the policy tool we need to pursue our broader agenda." What constitutes that "broader agenda" was made clear by another marriage movement leader, Bryce Christensen of Southern Utah University, when he said, "If those initiatives are part of a broader effort to reaffirm lifetime fidelity in marriage, they're worthwhile. If they're isolated--if we don't address cohabitation and casual divorce and deliberate childlessness--then I think they're futile and will be brushed aside." Capitalizing on their clean sweep of November's marriage amendments, pro-marriage forces have taken Daniels and Christensen to heart. Pointing to high divorce rates in red states, social conservatives have revitalized efforts to repeal no-fault divorce and enact covenant marriage laws in Georgia, Arkansas and other Southern states. While firmly rooted in fundamentalist Christianity, pro-marriage leaders also court more secular voters. For example, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee--who recently remarried his wife in a covenant marriage ceremony before a stadium packed with thousands--touts the financial gains to the state that result from pro-marriage policies. "If you start adding up the various costs--the costs of child-support enforcement, additional costs in human services, how many kids will go onto food stamps--it all adds up," he said. ... ...For gay activists, and indeed for all progressive activists, it would be far more productive to stress support for household diversity--both cultural and economic support, recognition and resources for a changing population as it actually lives--than to focus solely on gay marriage. By treating marriage as one form of household recognition among others, progressives can generate a broad vision of social justice that resonates on many fronts. If we connect this democratization of household recognition with advocacy of material support for caretaking, as well as for good jobs and adequate benefits (like universal healthcare), then what we all have in common will come into sharper relief. more
FAMILY MATTERS: BROADENING DEFINITIONS: Todd Plank
As Pride celebrations take place around the country this summer, I'm reminded of the family reunions that I enjoyed growing up, and on into my early thirties. Sadly, since I came out to my nuclear family, I've been ostracized from those large traditional family gatherings. The Pride Picnic has, to a certain degree, replaced those annual family get-togethers of days gone by. Having been distanced from my family of origin, I've been given the opportunity to recreate my family "in my image," according to my own definitions. My partner Paul likes to remind me that "there is the family we are born with and then there is the family we choose." It is exciting to witness the bold choices that lgbt single, partnered, and now in some instances (hurray!) married couples are making to expand their families through foster parenting, adoption, artificial insemination, surrogacy, as well as less formal, but nonetheless intentional ways of permanently altering and enlarging their family structure. Often, lgbt folks are willing to invite children from other countries and cultures to become a part of their family unit. It's not unusual to see two moms or dads with a child who does not bear any physical resemblance to them, creating a kaleidescope of colors, facial characteristics and ethnic variations that challenge people's assumptions about what defines a family. Swinging to the other end of the aging spectrum, we find that older lgbts are also being creative in forming relationships to offset the deficits resulting from the loss of a partner, spouse, or other family members or friends that, perhaps for most of their adult lives, constituted their family. Studies have shown that large numbers of lgbt seniors will live alone in their later years, many of them not having children or other close relatives (still our society's traditional support systems for seniors) to look after them as they age. As demonstrated in some boroughs in N.Y.C., and closer to home by the Rainbow Seniors of Western New York (RSWNY), older lgbt people are developing their own networks of support to meet each other's physical, emotional and social needs. We could refer to these unconventional, reciprocal ties as informal families. more Elizabeth Marquardt and readers comment here.
THE "MATERNAL IMAGE" OF FAMILY LIFE?: From the Boston Globe
[This article is a real mixed bag; the one thing that stood out for me was this paragraph. Sort of reminded me of Camassia's post on the "feminization of love." --Eve] Still, the reality of being a good father often poses more of a challenge for these young men than they expect, often in ways that Bly himself might have explained. "One of the central problems is that the image that men have of immersing themselves in families is a very maternal one," says Mark O'Connell, a Boston-based psychologist and the author of the recent book "The Good Father: On Men, Masculinity, and Life in the Family" (Scribner). "They are trying to follow something that isn't altogether authentic and reflective of the different strengths that men bring to the table." more Wednesday, July 06, 2005
A MARRIAGE OF TWO NAMES: From the Chicago Tribune
[Mostly an oddment, but hey, slow news day. I do think, in general, that kids and parents should share a surname. --Eve] Like brides and grooms everywhere, Amanda and Bryan Kolburn combined their belongings when they wed in 2002. They consolidated their furnishings under one roof. They put their money in a shared account. They combined their collections of books and CDs. But the Columbia, Mo., couple went a step further. When they tied the knot, they also combined their surnames. And they didn't just hitch them together with a hyphen. They fused letters from their given names -- Kowal and Burns -- to form their marital surname, Kolburn. ... Laurie Scheuble, a Penn State University sociologist who studies surname trends, said that in her recent survey of 600 married women selected from the staff directory of a university system, only one had a melded name. In the population as a whole, she would expect to find even fewer "melders" because university employees and other well-educated women generally are more likely to opt for unconventional names. But melding perhaps will catch on as prominent people such as Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, usher the practice from obscurity. Before marrying Corina Raigosa, the mayor-elect's surname was Villar. The pair simply dropped one R and combined the remaining letters of their last names to form their marital moniker. ... Resistance from family and friends also can stand in the way of melded marital bliss. Although the Kolburns believe their combined last name honors the importance of each other's ancestries and symbolically links them, Bryan's family initially was miffed that the Burns' name wouldn't carry on--intact--to the next generation. ... Despite potential pitfalls, Bonpasse of the Lucy Stone League believes melding will eventually catch on because of its practicality: "It avoids the classic hyphenation problem, the apprehension that people have that if they hyphenate their names, and then their children hyphenate their names, then there'll eventually be chaos," he said. He also predicts that melding will gain popularity as gay marriages gain legal footing across the United States. "With heterosexual marriage, there's more pressure to go the traditional route, but there aren't any conventions governing gay marriage," he said. "I think as the principles of choice and equality spread across the land, with gays showing us the way, we'll see more melding and other creative solutions start to emerge." more
MORE ON STEPHANIE COONTZ: Elizabeth Marquardt
NYT op-ed today: Gays and lesbians simply looked at the revolution heterosexuals had wrought and noticed that with its new norms, marriage could work for them, too. She's right, to a point. But none of the other changes have required redefining marriage with gender neutral terms that make us unable to speak of children's real needs for their own mother and father. Same-sex marriage requires editing the importance of mothers and fathers out of family law and out of our cultural dialog. Thus a change understood to be small, simply incorporating a few gays and lesbians at the margins into the marriage system, will be massive, requiring an entirely new way of talking about children's needs that flies in the face of what social science evidence and sensitive observations of children's lives commonly tell us. link Tuesday, July 05, 2005
KITH, KIN, AND KIDS: Kay S. Hymowitz reviews Stephanie Coontz
On the domestic front of the culture wars, Stephanie Coontz has been among the most stalwart of marriage "progressives." A historian whose name can be found in the Rolodex of countless reporters, she is the founder of the Council on Contemporary Families, which describes itself as a "humane and sensitive" alternative to family-values traditionalism. For years Coontz has argued: (1) that the traditional nuclear family is often an oppressive arrangement, especially for women; (2) that the decline of such families, along with the increasing acceptance of divorce, out-of-wedlock child-rearing, cohabitation, and gay unions, has been a liberating force and deserves public support; and (3) that traditionalists who fight these trends are suffering from an illusion, since the family model they prize was a short-lived artifact of the 1950's. Her point of view is neatly summarized by the titles of her best-known books: The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (1992) and The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America’s Changing Families (1997). But now Coontz seems to have had second thoughts about the way we really were. In her new book, Marriage, a History, she acknowledges that marriage has not always been in such flux. Indeed, she observes, it has "changed more in the past 30 years than . . . in the previous 3,000"--a dramatic concession, considering her record. "This is not," she notes with admirable candor, "the book I thought I was going to write." ... There may be other ways, Coontz writes, "to impose an incest taboo, organize child-rearing, pool resources, care for elders, coordinate household production, or pass on property to the next generation." But marriage is "the only way to get in-laws"-- that is, "to create new ties of kinship." Securing shelter, raising crops, making clothes, and defending against natural and human enemies were demanding tasks for which in-laws and children provided necessary additional labor. ... To be sure, social conservatives fretted that the new regime of love, with its celebration of individual passion and choice, contained the seeds of its own destruction. And in fact there were early signs that Cupid would be an undependable guard of the matrimonial bed. By the 18th century, Coontz shows, divorce laws had eased in Europe, Canada, and most especially the United States, which by 1900 was the world capital of divorce. Despite efforts to control the passions unleashed by the regime of love--including an "unprecedented emphasis on female purity and chastity" in Victorian Europe and America--the genie of self-fulfillment was out of the bottle. ... Unfortunately, Coontz is unable to grasp the full truth of this reality. Like most other self-styled progressives, she does not see the social momentousness of the male-female bond. She underplays the ancient theme of marital love, evident in, among other places, the Hebrew Bible and the Odyssey. For much of early human history, Coontz argues, marriage had little to do with romantic love--something scholars have known for a long time--and she goes so far as to suggest that marriage was never primarily about the procreating couple. This vaults right over the obvious: the utter physical dependence of the human infant, perhaps the central problem faced by every society that has looked forward to a future. If the major purpose of marriage were the creation of kinship groups, as Coontz posits, the institution would have expired in the West by the 17th century, when states and markets took over many of the tasks long provided by clans and extended families. Instead, people continued to marry. Though a decreasing number of them set up shop with their in-laws, the vast majority produced children. The common thread in the history of marriage is thus not the creation of kinship but the care of the young. more
MIND YOUR OWN MARRIAGE: Marni Soupcoff
...If I am so certain the government is unnecessary to meaningful marriage, that the institution can best be handled by parties non-political, then why am I choosing to have my own union via a bureaucratic blessing? Because I can. While I am not especially religious or traditional, I take the idea of marriage seriously. When it came time to embark upon it, I, therefore, wanted to give my union as much of an "official" sense as possible. I also wanted to distinguish my volitional choice to make a commitment from the government's arbitrary "common law" designation, which was imposed upon me without my say-so, when I shared living quarters with my fiance for over year. In other words, I may not think much of the government, but while they're offering a legal stamp of approval for my choice of marriage, I'm inclined to take it. This tells me two things. First, the status quo in the United States, and most of the rest of the world where marriage is legally restricted to a man and a woman, is no good because it amounts to a legal form of discrimination against homosexuals, who should at least have the same option of getting the government's blessing that heterosexuals have, even if that blessing shouldn't be necessary. Some of my most government-loathing friends and I have proven that when the chips are down, we grab the government's okay when it is available to us. Second, this tells me that an environment like Canada's, in which the government recognizes marriage between heterosexual couples or between homosexual couples, is also unacceptable because it still invokes a moral discriminatory judgment against individuals who are not posing a danger to others -- a polygamist woman is still not free to marry two husbands, and The Simpsons' Willie is still not free to marry his beloved tractor. The only equitable solution is for government to refrain from handing out permission slips to marry. This would create multiple benefits. The obvious one is that it would end a pattern of government applying its rules unevenly to people based on their personal predilections. We would take a step closer to having a society in which everyone is truly equal before the law. But even aside from that plus, government absenting itself from marriage would force us, as a society and as individuals, to be clearer about our beliefs and values. more
"CHANGE ITSELF HAS CHANGED": Mark Steyn
[Fascinating. Anybody want to comment? --Eve] THE REGRESSION OF PROGRESS: Derb, Stanley: Forget that New Scientist guy and the Philip Longman book. How about this? "In the first half of this century, the pattern of our days altered drastically: we began to move about by cars, and airplanes, and to converse by telephone; the invention of the elevator spurred the invention of the skyscraper; electric lighting and refrigerators made the old lamp-lighter and the iceman redundant; self-raising flour and washing machines helped eliminate domestic servants; the outhouse moved indoors. A young man propelled by an HG Wells time machine from 1897 to 1947 would be flummoxed at every turn. By contrast, a young man catapulted from 1947 to 1997 would on the surface feel instantly at home. In the second half of the century, hardly anything has changed: our bathrooms, our washers, our kitchens, our high-rises, our cars and planes have barely altered." That's from an essay in the 1997 New Criterion collection The Future Of The European Past by, er, me. It's not just that the rate of progress has slowed, but that even the jeremiads about the slowing of progress have been stagnant for eight years. First lesson of punditry: It's never any use being right too soon. I go on to say in that piece that in the western world "change itself has changed". It's now "not technological so much as psychological"--which is why technology can't save Europe from demography. link
FIRST GAY COUPLES APPLY FOR MARRIAGE UNDER NEW SPANISH LAW: From the NY Times
..."This means we are no longer second-class citizens," Mr. Vizcaino said in an interview Monday. "We have always had the same obligations as other citizens. We deserve the same rights, too." The lines inside the Madrid Civil Registry, where capital residents apply for marriage licenses, swelled with gay and lesbian couples for the first time on Monday, four days after Parliament passed a law giving same-sex couples across Spain the right to marry and to adopt children. The vote makes Spain the first nation to remove all legal distinctions between same-sex and heterosexual unions, say advocates for marriage rights for gay couples. Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands have also legalized gay marriage, but only Canada's laws, which do not yet apply to all of the country, contain language as liberal as Spain's. Near the close of business on Monday, Boti G. Rodrigo, an official at the registry, said that only four gay couples had formally applied for marriage licenses but that many more had come seeking information about the process. "We expect that the number of same-sex couples will be disproportionately high for weeks, if not months to come," she said. ... Many of the gay couples interviewed on Monday said they had grown up in Catholic households but were no longer practicing Catholics, in part because of the church's opposition to gay marriage. But Mr. Ibarcena, 32, the partner of Mr. Vizcaino and also a security guard, said he still attended church regularly. "I stand up and challenge them when they say things that are anti-gay," he said. "I haven't given up on them yet." more
THE NEW MARRIAGE MERGERS: Maggie Gallagher replies to Andrew Sullivan
Today, Andrew Sullivan endorses the argument of Stephanie Coontz on marriage. Stephanie, as those of us in the older marriage debate know, is one of the staunchest opponents of the idea of marriage as a social institution. She has argued for 15 years (since before Barbara Dafoe Whitehead's "Dan Quayle Was Right" article) that, since marriage is only another word for adult intimacy, it makes little sense to try to reduce divorce, or increase the proportion of children living with their own married mom and dad. Family diversity is here to stay so we should embrace it. The trends towards the deconstruction of marriage are inevitable, she says. People who want to do things like strengthen marriage as a social institutuion are just blindly nostalgic for an earlier era, which never existed anyway. Hmm. Looks like the new conservative case for gay marriage and the old radical case against marriage are merging, fast. Andrew Sullivan's post: WHO CHANGED MARRIAGE?: The heterosexuals, of course! Stephanie Coontz will find few dissenters on the social right. The revolution in civil marriage--in which it became about love, not property, in which women and men were equal, in which children were not necessary--all occurred before the gay revolution. Since marriage has already been redefined to make the exclusion of gays logically absurd, the campaign against letting gays into the human family necessarily raises the suspicion of mere animus. It's not bigotry to say that these are the rules that govern civil marriage and too bad if you can't live up to them (i.e. procreation, or traditional gender roles). But it is suspicious when you abolish all those rules for straights and then use the old rules to bar gays. I don't see how gay marriage opponents manage to get round the logic of this--except by resorting to purely religious arguments (which would invalidate most heterosexual marriages today as well), or simply reiterating the definitional case that marriage is for straights, dammit. This glaring hole on the argument must have something to do with the fact that an idea that was novel in the 1980s is now the law in several civilized countries and one state in America. Reason eventually finds a way. (link)
EFFECT OF GAY MARRIAGE ON CHILDREN OF GAYS: Maggie Gallagher replies to Jonathan Rauch
Jon writes: The 2000 census counted about 160,000 same-sex-couple households with one or more children. Those children, of course, would be directly affected if their parents got married, and there seems to be little dispute that the effects would be positive. Marriage would, to begin with, give their families the additional legal security that marriage provides. The children would have, as Evan Wolfson notes in his book Why Marriage Matters, "automatic and undisputed access to the resources, benefits, and entitlements of both parents." Just a sidenote: The majority of those kids appear to be children of previous heterosexual marriages. If their same-sex couple-heads married, it would be a stepfamily, not an intact married familiy. There is no particular evidence of benefit to children from living in stepfamilies. I don't think the effects of gay marriage on children with a gay parent are at all clear, although I agree it's quite possible they'd be better off.
FAMILY'S VALUE: WHY GAY MARRIAGE BENEFITS STRAIGHT KIDS: Jonathan Rauch
[OK, I meant to highlight this quite some time ago, but it got lost in the flurry, so I'm glad IGF is reprinting it. Elizabeth Marquardt replied to part of it here. --Eve] ...Advocates who say that gay marriage is just a matter of civil rights are wrong. It certainly is a civil rights issue, just as it is a moral issue; but it is not only a civil rights or moral issue. It is also a family policy issue--the most important family policy issue now facing the country. Gay marriage is not a civil right worth having if it will wreck straight marriage or leave millions of children bereft. But it won't. In fact, gay marriage's denial, not its recognition, poses the greater risk to American kids. The 2000 census counted about 160,000 same-sex-couple households with one or more children. Those children, of course, would be directly affected if their parents got married, and there seems to be little dispute that the effects would be positive. Marriage would, to begin with, give their families the additional legal security that marriage provides. The children would have, as Evan Wolfson notes in his book Why Marriage Matters, "automatic and undisputed access to the resources, benefits, and entitlements of both parents." Marriage law is rich with provisions ensuring that if one spouse meets with death or disability, the other can carry on--for the good of the kids. Moreover, marriage itself makes couples better off. Marriages are more durable than co-habitations. Many gay couples who have wed in San Francisco and Massachusetts have attested that the act and fact of marriage has deepened and strengthened their bond--sometimes to no one's surprise more than their own. lots more--read the whole thing
REASONS: Eve replies to Paul Varnell
It seems to me that a) someone could have multiple, overlapping reasons for holding one public-policy view over another, and could cite or emphasize those most likely to win public approval, without being disingenuous (as long as he really believed the reasons he cited)--e.g. those whose opposition to the death penalty is primarily motivated by religion might nonetheless highlight the possibility of executing the innocent; and b) many threads of "the Judeo-Christian tradition" hold that God's law isn't arbitrary, and usually conduces to human happiness, thus it would be odd if senators believed that God randomly mandated marriage between a man and a woman even though it had deleterious social effects. Anyway, this isn't a defense of any particular senator or staffer or whatever, because goodness knows I don't know how those people think. It's just a defense of the fact that people who have religious reasons for any policy (not just opposing ssm) might also have, and publicly emphasize, "secular" reasons. Nonetheless, an interesting piece.
CHANGING RHETORIC ON GAY MARRIAGE: Paul Varnell
Although little noted at the time, one of the most interesting aspects of last year's Senate debate on the so-called Federal Marriage Amendment was the relative absence of overt criticism of gays and lesbians and their relationships. Instead, amendment supporters focused primarily on how the amendment would solidify the association of parenthood with marriage and would benefit children by assuring them an optimal family of two opposite sex parents. ... In a fascinating article ("The Federal Marriage Amendment and the Strange Evolution of the Conservative Case against Gay Marriage" (PDF) in the April issue of the journal PS: Political Science and Politics), former GOP intern Frederick Liu and Princeton University Professor Stephen Macedo suggest that one reason surely is that just a year earlier the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas had struck down all state anti-sodomy laws, removing any judicial legitimacy for conservative efforts to legislate anti-gay animus. Perhaps more importantly, there was virtually no public outcry following the decision. One need only contrast that reaction with the uproar that followed the court's Brown v. Board of Education anti-segregation decision, or the Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision, still controversial after more than three decades. A third reason would have to be that public opinion polls have shown a gradual decline in the number of Americans who view homosexuality as "always wrong" from nearly two-thirds (73 percent) some 30 years ago to barely half (53 percent) today. ... In interviews with a number of aides to Republicans senators, co-author Frederick Liu found that there was a deliberate and concerted effort by Senate Republicans to avoid explicitly moralistic and religious arguments associated with the Religious Right. One GOP legislative aide described her senator as "a religious man" whose opposition to gay marriage came first but who then "put words to it" afterwards that completely avoided any religious arguments. ... In a way it is good news if nationally prominent politicians feel that they cannot with impunity directly attack gays and lesbians or even gay and lesbian relationships. But there is a downside as well. If legislators--and voters--reach their positions about gay issues on the basis of a religious commitment but offer only what we might call "social policy" arguments for their positions, then any counter-arguments we make to refute or disprove those arguments will have no effect on their position. more
UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST PRO-SSM RESOLUTION ADVANCES: From the Associated Press
A committee of about 50 United Church of Christ representatives gave nearly unanimous approval Sunday to a resolution that moved the church one step closer to becoming the largest Christian denomination to endorse same-sex marriage. After debate that began early Sunday morning and ended late in the afternoon, the resolution supported by the UCC's president, John H. Thomas, drew overwhelming support and was recommended to be approved when voted on Monday by the General Synod. The committee also voted against adopting a resolution declaring marriage to be between one man and one woman. On the voice vote, only two or three said "no" to the same-sex marriage resolution. There were only a few dissenting votes as the committee did not declare marriage to be designed for one man and one woman, according to "the clear teachings of Jesus and the rest of Scripture" and UCC doctrine. If the General Synod approves the same-sex resolution without making major changes, committee members acknowledged Sunday that individual church members and even entire congregations may pull out of the church. more |
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