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The Gay Marriage Fight that Should Unify the Right
As we endure the oral arguments over California’s Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act in the Supreme Court this week, things are likely to get a little chippy here on Ricochet. This site often acts as a mirror of the conservative movement itself, and we’ve seen, essentially from the day we opened our virtual doors, that there are few issues that engender as much protracted debate here as gay marriage.
Now, I’ll confess up front that I favor gay marriage as a policy matter (the legal arguments before the Court are a different issue altogether). If you want to litigate that point in the comments, fine, but we’ve been down that road a million times before and I think the arguments are pretty well-rehearsed. You either think the definition of marriage is fixed as a metaphysical matter or that it’s capable of evolution. For what it’s worth, I’ve found the arguments on this site for the position contrary to mine better than what I’ve found virtually anywhere else.
There seems to be a growing recognition amongst both supporters and detractors, however, that this increasingly looks like a fait accompli. Even if the Supreme Court doesn’t advance the ball down the field, the sea change in public opinion seems to presage a day in the not-too-distant future when gay marriage will be something approaching the norm. Which is why all of us on the right would do well to heed Erick Erickson’s message over at RedState:
Once the world decides that real marriage is something other than natural or Godly, those who would point it out must be silenced and, if not, punished. The state must be used to do this. Consequently, the libertarian pipe dream of getting government out of marriage can never ever be possible.
Within a year or two we will see Christian schools attacked for refusing to admit students whose parents are gay. We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings. We will see private businesses shut down because they refuse to treat as legitimate that which perverts God’s own established plan. In some places this is already happening.
Christians should, starting yesterday, work on a new front. While we should not stop the fight to preserve marriage, and we may be willing to compromise on civil unions, we must start fighting now for protections for religious objectors to gay marriage.
Churches, businesses, and individuals who refuse to accept gay marriage as a legitimate institution must be protected as best we can. Those protections will eventually crumble as the secular world increasingly fights the world of God, but we should institute those protections now and pray they last as long as possible.
Now, I obviously don’t share Erickson’s core convictions about marriage and there are several parts of his commentary that I find overwrought (including his title, “Gay Marriage and Religious Freedom Are Not Compatible” — if that’s the case, one wonders what the point of his exhortation in those last two paragraphs above is). I also think both the time frame and some of the examples are probably excessively pessimistic. But I think he’s right about the underlying dynamic.
Just a few years ago, this may have seemed hyperbolic. But that was before HHS was requiring employers to underwrite contraception, the EEOC was seeking to classify a failure to hire ex-cons as a “disparate impact” violation, and a Christian wedding photographer in New Mexico was being accused of discrimination for refusing to shoot a gay wedding. The left never seems to be happy until they’ve forced people who disagree with them to sacrifice their rights to free association on the altar of tolerance (“tolerance” defined by the left as the capacity to shut up on command).
I want a “leave me alone” society — one where Christian schools can turn people away for rejecting their doctrine, just as gay rights groups can reject those who don’t share their beliefs. I don’t want us all to get along — not because I’m misanthropic (well, not just because I’m misanthropic), but because I know that “consensus” is usually a fancy word for muting minority viewpoints. I want us all to be free to be annoyed with each other from our separate corners. Is that too much to ask?
On the core point, Erickson is right. The coming fight is preserving what’s left of the rights of free association and conscience. That fight, in my judgment, has much more to do with the preservation of basic American liberties than the one playing out in the Supreme Court this week.
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Merina, I see your point, but I don’t think the legalization of gay marriage has much bearing on it. If society has overwhelmingly decided that a certain opinion is beyond the pale, it will ensure that people holding that opinion are disadvantaged, law or no law.
For instance, it is legal to make racist utterances – but as Derbyshire demonstrated, anyone who publicly shows any sign of being a racist is quickly out of a job. This is not to compare traditional values voters with racists, but rather to point out that if society has decided that being anti-gay marriage is bigotry, then laws won’t help much either way.
Mendel, you may well be right that the fight is winnable — for now. But the HHS mandate, if nothing else, proves that there is a strong influence on the Left (strong enough to include the President, evidently) which has no regard for freedom of conscience when it clashes with their deepest beliefs.
That means it’s now on the table. We might be safe for a year or for a decade, but this side wins elections and puts judges on the bench. If anyone doubts that gay marriage will raise such issues, look at the way it is playing out in the UK.
Requiring people to do something that they believe to be actually wrong is almost the worst form of oppression imaginable. Surely freedom of conscience should be a greater concern than whether the government sanctions certain relationships with the term “marriage.” But my sense is that many libertarians — focusing on what they see as a move to equality above all — are overlooking the actual probable consequences and the way this issue is likely to be used as a club against those whose conscience will not let us go along with society.
It is a lot easier, Mendel, to decide that a position is beyond the pale when it has been forced upon us in the law. If marriage is not redefined, then we can still make our case. Once it is, they will smash us as fast as they can. Surely you must see the relevance of something being legal. That is what the left is trying to do. It’s been a nanosecond in the annuls of time since anyone even thought about this idea. No one really knows what the consequences will be, especially for children, and yet believers are afraid to speak. Remember what happened to Chick-fil-a in Illinois? People are still willing to defend them now, but the left would have smashed them to smithereens if they could have. Again, you are far too trusting in the amiability of the left.
Only last year, the Supreme Court ruledunanimouslythat religious freedom allows churches to exclude anyone they please from their institutions.
The sticking point in the HHS mandate has been over religious charities, non-profits, and businesses: hospitals, adoption agencies, soup kitchens, and so on. Since these are not exclusively devoted to prayer and worship, “freedom of religion” does not apply to them so they better get on board with contraception, abortion, gay marriage, and all the other progressive dogmas. ·30 minutes ago
These are part of what are often referred to as the “corporal works of mercy”. Through these activities, among others, we live out our faith. The criticism of those of us who practice a faith used to be, ” they only practice it on Sunday.” Now it seems the secular leftists demand we only practice our faith in our houses of worship.
This is indeed a very disturbing fact. But I would argue that the citizens of Massachusetts would have found another reason to restrict the charity work of the church with or without the gay issue – it’s hard to keep that much animosity under wraps in a democracy.
I think what we need here is some federalism. Let other states carve out exemptions from equal service for religious charities, and demonstrate the superiority of that system.
I think what we need here is some federalism. Let other states carve out exemptions from equal service for religious charities, and demonstrate the superiority of that system. ·8 minutes ago
I don’t think that having some states grant exemptions to restrictions on conscience is exactly consistent with the historic American view of freedom of religion.
This is indeed a very disturbing fact. But I would argue that the citizens of Massachusetts would have found another reason to restrict the charity work of the church with or without the gay issue – it’s hard to keep that much animosity under wraps in a democracy.
I think what we need here is some federalism. Let other states carve out exemptions from equal service for religious charities, and demonstrate the superiority of that system. ·10 minutes ago
The Left won’t tolerate it. The religious must be subdued. You’re projecting your own decency onto an implacable enemy.
Totalitarians know they must destroy the churches in order to achieve their ultimate goals. First they soft-focus the truth. Then they capture the youth. Then the churches which proclaim the truth and might have some influence over the young. Homeschooling will be next, you watch.
Again, I don’t think we should be sanguine about the freedom of religious conscience, but this is a battle which is eminently winnable. ·54 minutes ago
Mendel, those were 5-4 decisions split down the partisan line. If the Court’s left wing gains a fifth vote, I guarantee you they will overrule both. They indicated as much (at least with respect to Citizens United) last term in the Court’s per curiam reversal of a Montana Supreme Court campaign finance decision.
And just look at the 4th Circuit’s recent decision upholding Maryland’s “shall issue” restrictions on concealed carry, a result flagrantly at odds with Heller. Such a decision from that court–formerly the nation’s most conservative–would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, but Obama has made many appointments in the last 5 years. Look for more of the same in the next 3. Heaven help us if Hillary or another progressive takes the White House in 2016.
Through these activities, among others, we live out our faith. The criticism of those of us who practice a faith used to be, ” they only practice it on Sunday.” Now it seems the secular leftists demand we only practice our faith in our houses of worship. ·38 minutes ago
Precisely. According to the left, the 1st Amendment only protects your right to pray as you wish on Sunday. Try to live your faith on Monday and they’ll haul you into court.
And this is where I disagree with libertarians, who seem to assume that the shift in public opinion is the cause and the legalization of SSM is the effect.
The secular left understands just how powerful laws are at shaping public opinion on moral issues. The campaign to legalize SSM is one of the causes of the recent shift in public opinion.
Nothing will happen to anti-gay churches that didn’t happen to anti-miscegenation churches after Loving v. Virginia.
Were there many such churches at the time? And how many of them are still around and still openly hold anti-miscegenation views?
On NRO Katherine Lopez quoted Salvatore Cordileone:
If you want to know what this new public legal and social norm stigmatizing traditional believers will mean for real people, ask David and Tanya Parker, who objected to their kindergarten son being taught about same sex marriage after the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized it in that state and wanted to pull him out of class for that lesson. He was arrested and handcuffed for trying to protect his son’s education, and they were told they had no right to do so.
Ask the good people of Ocean Grove Methodist camp in New Jersey that had part of its tax-exempt status rescinded because they don’t allow same-sex civil union ceremonies on their grounds. Ask Tammy Schulz of Illinois, who adopted four children (including a sibling group) through Evangelical Child Family Services — which was shut down because it refuses to place children with same-sex couples. (The same thing has happened in Illinois, Boston and Washington, D.C., to Catholic Charities adoption services). … Ask the doctor in San Diego County who did not want to personally create a fatherless child through artificial insemination, and was punished by the courts…
If a man makes male chauvinist remarks at work his employer must either fire him or discipline him in some way, to avoid the risk of a lawsuit for “creating a hostile work environment”. If one of my co-workers says “This other guy is my husband” and I disagree (however politely) with an obvious piece of nonsense, then I can be, and probablymust be fired too. Nor could I get another job, as the same “harassment” laws will be in effect for every other company in the nation.
Look at the way Gay Rights groups are promoting this issue by intimidating their opposition. Look what happened to Chic-Fil-A and Orson Scott Card. The way they campaign is the way they will govern.
Orwell said “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted all else follows.” A few years from now if you express the opinion that gay “marriage” is risible you could be facing a session with the Tolerance Police. In the form of your HR representative, of course. Just for the record two plus two does equal four, and nonsense equals nonsense.
Catholic Social Services runs an adoption agency in MA. The Fall River diocese operates in MA and RI (they’re the folks who helped bring our son home). It is the Archdiocese of Boston’s Catholic Charities branch that abandoned its adoption ministry.
To Mendel’s point, ironically it is churches that fell in love with the Social Gospel — and the welfare state it spawned — that restricted their own charity work. Now these institutions, which relied on free will offerings and tithes, now depend on the State for a large proportion of their funding. Just look at the federal and state funding for Catholic Charities or any mainline church group’s allied charity.
Is it any wonder that these “mere NGOs” — in Pope Francis’s damning words — pressure their own churches to abandon inconvenient ministries or doctrines?
This is indeed a very disturbing fact. But I would argue that the citizens of Massachusetts would have found another reason to restrict the charity work of the church.
I agree, I think you’re right here. And I believe the HHS mandate included an exemption for churches all along.
The position of the Obama administration, and of progressives in general, is that freedom of religion means freedom of worship, that in your church/mosque/synagogue you can include or exclude whomever you wish from your prayers, rites, and ceremonies.
The sticking point in the HHS mandate has been over religious charities, non-profits, and businesses: hospitals, adoption agencies, soup kitchens, and so on. Since these are not exclusively devoted to prayer and worship, “freedom of religion” does not apply to them so they better get on board with contraception, abortion, gay marriage, and all the other progressive dogmas.
It’s unusual for me to disagree with Mendel, but I think the HHA mandate was a game changer for these issues. Not only did it show that the government has no problem violating conscience on issues of (at best) tertiary importance to its function, it showed that that they can get away with it.
That said, the recent SCOTUS decision shows that we can win, and I’m cautiously optimistic that Elaine Huguenin will win on appeal.
Why has the country come to peace over the abolition of slavery and civil rights movement? Because those were just causes, however bitterly contested for a time.
Why is the country still wretchedly divided 4o years after Roe v Wade? Because abortion is a grave evil, objectively inimical to the natural law and the founding “doctrine” of our nation.
The legalization of SSM will cause deep and deepening disunity. ·5 hours ago
Unequivocally Agree with this.
Same-sex “marriage” is still not legal in NM, nor are there civil unions or domestic partnerships. If a photographer can’t opt out of photographing a “commitment ceremony,” good luck resisting that which has state backing.
More here.
Were there many such churches at the time? And how many of them are still around and still openly hold anti-miscegenation views? ·4 hours ago
Yes, and there still are. The Catholic Church was never officially against interracial marriage, however. Protestants were all over the map, some opposing it and some actively advocating for it.
Same-sex “marriage” is still not legal in NM, nor are there civil unions or domestic partnerships.
Can we drop the scare quotes? It undercuts your “argument.”
Why has the country come to peace over the abolition of slavery and civil rights movement? Because those were just causes, however bitterly contested for a time.
Why is the country still wretchedly divided 4o years after Roe v Wade? Because abortion is a grave evil, objectively inimical to the natural law and the founding “doctrine” of our nation.
The legalization of SSM will cause deep and deepening disunity. ·5 hours ago
Unequivocally Agree with this.
Concur. And of note is that the most damaging scattering happens on the right. Without a unified Right, the center will not hold.
Same-sex “marriage” is still not legal in NM, nor are there civil unions or domestic partnerships.
Can we drop the scare quotes? It undercuts your “argument.” ·40 minutes ago
I don’t take it so much as scare quotes as a way to demonstrate that the argument against SSM takes issue with the premises on which a term like “same sex marriage” depends. The argument is that such can’t be marriage, and I imagine that J. Giles bridles at having to use a term, since it’s so entrenched, that presupposes the argument at hand.
The secular left understands just how powerful laws are at shaping public opinion on moral issues. The campaign to legalize SSM is one of the causesof the recent shift in public opinion.
Both of these views (Mendel’s and Joseph’s) participate in the truth so far as they go, but they are deficient in themselves and point beyond themselves.
If opinion itself were so uniformly against the law and the law simply depended upon it, the law would be altered already. If law were so clear-voiced and so potent in shaping opinion that opinion was simply dependent upon it, opinion would not wander from the law.
The reality of the relationship between the two–and not just in a democracy, but especially there–is more subtle and dialectic. Each shapes and is shaped by the other. There is not an infinite regress, but if you understand_this_hint,you_grasp_part_of_the_political_problem
Considerations of this sort led the Greeks to place so much emphasis on paideia, the formal and informal education_that_sought_to_shape both_the_body_and_the_opinions_of_their_citizens.
I might object here that the idea of a republic (republic = res publicas = the public things) both necessitates and is sustained by a more robust society than merely a ‘live me alone’ society. But that in passing.
As to the practical truth of this approach at this moment, we completely agree. The art of association allows for the building of small islands of true excellence within a modern liberal democracy. As these spheres contract, the tides philistinism of every sort threaten to wash away both culture and liberty (political and intellectual). In this way, one of the best regimes devolves into one of the worst.
Katie and I could never agree on language in our debates on contraceptives: she wanted to use “contraception” and “natural family planning”; I wanted to use “artificial contraception” and “natural contraception”). We each maintained that by using the other’s language, we were conceding the point (for the record, I still think I’m right).
You’re both right, in that accepting the other’s definition there would concede the point. Catholic teaching clearly condemns contraception, so if Katie or I were to concede that NFP is a form of “natural contraception” we would have to condemn it as immoral.
But doesn’t that reinforce the point that disputing the meaning of the term “marriage” is central to the argument?
Can we drop the scare quotes? It undercuts your “argument.”
I don’t take it so much as scare quotes as a way to demonstrate that the argument against SSM takes issue with the premises on which a term like “same sex marriage” depends. The argument is that such can’t be marriage, and I imagine that J. Giles bridles at having to use a term, since it’s so entrenched, that presupposes the argument at hand.
That’s the definition of scare quotes.
…..
Whether J. Giles use fits the definition you linked is debatable. I don’t see skepticism or derision, I see dispute. But there’s not much value debating the point so I won’t. I’ll agree that this particular usage can be antagonistic.
I would like to go down the absurdity hole to point out that “scare quotes” is a terrible term to represent the definition at your link since there is no intent to scare involved. I may just start to use quotes whenever I use the term “scare quotes”.
Before last year, I think it was defensible to use scare quotes for SSM, given as how it had never been approved by popular referendum or constitutional amendment.
Given all this, I think it’s no longer appropriate and actually quite counterproductive for folks to keep using the scare quotes. SSM is a real thing, passed by fair methods.
The quotes are not meant to imply a lack of democratic or procedural validity.
The crux of the debate is a proper understanding of the relationship called marriage. If it is, by its very nature, a type of union between a man and a woman, a husband and wife, then the very idea of a “same sex marriage” is absurd, a self-contradiction.
If by nature it is a union of two people, and their sexes are as immaterial as their skin, hair, or eye color, then to exclude same-sex couples from marriage is clearly unjust discrimination.
To agree that a same-sex “marriage” is in fact a true marriage is to concede the entire argument.
The secular left understands just how powerful laws are at shaping public opinion on moral issues. The campaign to legalize SSM is one of thecausesof the recent shift in public opinion.
I only partly agree. Crow’s Nest describes it best – laws drive opinions, and those opinions in turn drive laws.
However, when it comes to many social issues, my opinion is that public opinion is the stronger force. For instance, the drive to legalize gay marriage did not even exist a decade ago, yet public opinion about homosexuality had already undergone a sea change up to that point.
I think the legalization of gay marriage is like a leak in a dam: if you don’t plug it up, yes, it will become a major source of flooding. But if the levee is about to burst, trying to stop one leak is a futile gesture. And the movement to mainstream homosexuality is certainly poised to burst the dam.
Katie and I could never agree on language in our debates on contraceptives: she wanted to use “contraception” and “natural family planning”; I wanted to use “artificial contraception” and “natural contraception”). We each maintained that by using the others language, we were conceding the point …..
Youre both right, in that accepting the others definition there would concede the point. Catholic teaching clearly condemns contraception, so if Katie or I were to concede that NFP is a form of “natural contraception” we would have to condemn it as immoral.
But doesnt that reinforce the point that disputing the meaning of the term “marriage” is central to the argument?
Absolutely it does. I just finished watching the clip of Ryan Anderson debating SSM on the Piers Morgan show with Piers and Suze Orman. the concept that this is a dispute over marriage rather than a dispute over equality for homosexuality just does not compute for some people; truly they just did not seem to be able to acknowledge the disagreement at that level. I don’t think it’s that difficult of a concept, but apparently it is because I encounter the same everywhere I make the argument.