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Marriage 2.0
“YouTube and Google are proud to celebrate marriage equality” proclaimed the mighty Google search page yesterday. At the rate things are going, June 26 will wind up being a national holiday in the future.
Yesterday’s decision didn’t just extend the legal rights and privileges of marriage to same-sex partners; civil unions began that process a while ago. Yesterday redefined state-sanctioned marriage itself. It’s more than marriage “equality.” This is marriage expansion.
“Marriage equality” was an advertising slogan, a finesse to fit marriage within the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. Marriage is a fundamental liberty. Everyone gets equal liberties. Just as Loving v. Virginia made interracial marriage legal in all states, Obergefell does it for same-sex couples.
In hindsight, state laws against interracial marriage are viewed as a clear form of barbarism from a bygone era. Richard Loving, a white gentleman, and Mildred Jeter, a black lady, were married in Virginia in 1958, and subsequently charged, found guilty, and sentenced to a year in jail. On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court decided 9-0 that the Loving marriage was no crime. “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State” wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Will the 5-4 Obergefell decision seem as sensible as the 9-0 decision in Loving when it has stood the same test of time – almost 50 years?
Obergefell is, of course, different from Loving. The 14th Amendment was about establishing equal rights and protections, especially between the races, in the context of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Loving ended part of a pattern of racial discrimination dating back to the age of slavery. It’s precisely the sort of thing the Due Process Clause should prevent. Obergefell breaks a pattern of many more years: the definition of the institution of marriage itself. That’s some heavy legal lifting. I’ll leave it to Ricochet’s crack legal team to explain whether the Court just gave itself a hernia.
The pieces of marriage expansion that interest me most are (a) the broad enthusiasm for marriage among gays, a “conservative” lifestyle turn; (b) the unseemly hook-up between the SSM movement and the political Left; and (c) the ongoing decline of religious doctrine’s influence over secular law. These are in part media-created phenomena, and ongoing media narratives.
If there is opposition to SSM in the gay community, you don’t hear much about it in the media. Single partner domesticity wasn’t always the lifestyle of choice among openly gay men. AIDS changed that. Virtues like commitment, fidelity, and love became a way of life for millions of gay men over the last 35 years. Health, happiness, and monogamous (or “monogamish”) relationships are major upgrades over the earlier scene and its consequences. Conservatives should consider welcoming this change, or in the least standing aside rather than athwart.
Conservatives should also be celebrating the end of the same-sex marriage movement. They won, and now they no longer need the brutish tacticians of the political Left as allies. Republicans nationwide shouldn’t hesitate to do what the California GOP has already done: sanction and recognize Log Cabin Republicans as fully enfranchised members of our political coalition. We should do this quickly, publicly, and enthusiastically. Gays and lesbians are often adept capitalists and creative leaders. Welcome home to the political party that will protect your hard-earned dual incomes, and that desperately needs your creativity!
Note that Catholics on the Supreme Court voted 4-2 against the Court’s finding in Obergefell. The secular power of the Catholic Church has been in decline for centuries, and that continues. I respect Justices Alito, Thomas, Scalia and, okay, Roberts enough to presume that their call in this case was made strictly on the basis of law and not their religious beliefs. That is as it should be. It is even clearer that Justices Kennedy and Sotomayor, who voted the other way, did not have their interpretation of the Constitution determined by religious dictates.
As for Archbishop Kurtz, his opinion that “it is profoundly immoral and unjust for the government to declare that two people of the same sex can constitute a marriage” is a bold graffiti on the “wall of separation” between Church and State, a wall that now stands taller and stronger. When the Pope arrives in a few months to address Congress, it will be interesting to hear whether he stirs this pot along with his focus on climate change and wealth redistribution.
My hope is that, however much hue and cry those on the losing side of yesterday’s ruling make, the victors will, in the words of radio host Doug McIntyre “be gracious in victory. Don’t sue churches who won’t perform marriages, don’t go after bakeries. Tolerance goes both ways.”
Published in General
I hope it is neither killer green Kryptonite — killing off our best candidates — nor crazy red Kryptonite, a mass hysteria that turns the campaign trail into one Kesey acid test after another.
Social issues do indeed pack emotional energy, but like nuclear fuel you don’t want to warm yourself by drawing energy from too close to the core.
Can we say “crock” here? Be nice.
Marriage is so for providing joys. (In fact, if I don’t stop responding to all these posts on a Saturday night, I’m going to be shirking my marital joy responsibilities.) There are also privileges unrelated to child tax deductions, e.g. everything from tax averaging to social standing.
And yes, this is also about dignity. Try to understand it, from afar.
The left’s not real big on call outs like “thou shalt not steal” (IRS, raisin crops, civil forfeiture) or “thou shalt not bear false witness” (sHrillary) either.
Per Scalia, “pure applesauce” is now the preferred term.
Here’s what I found …Third–party reproduction or donor-assisted reproduction is any human reproduction in which DNA or gestation is provided by a third party or donor other than the two parents who will raise the resulting child.
I’m not sure this is directly on-point with regard to the Obergefell ruling.
Human reproduction will be greatly influenced by developments in genetics. This will affect straight couples as well as same sex couples, but only those who wish to reproduce, use surrogates, or adopt babies who originate this way.
I think it’s an 800 pounder alright (not the baby, hopefully, the issue) but it’s in another room.
Jim, it’s raining where we are. Kinda gray and ominous for late June in southern California. The SoCons have pointed out that the rainbow banner once stood for God’s generous offer not to flood the earth with Biblical severity.
I’m not saying there’s a connection but…if Marina Del Rey, Venice Beach, and Santa Monica are under 18 feet of water in the morning, Merina and Jojo are going to have a pretty big laugh at our expense.
Risks of the amateur pundit game, I suppose…
I think you’re not understanding the nature of the game here.
You’re thinking, if I’m reading you right, of the situation as if this were a European or other monolithic state, in which such a hope might be valid.
In America, though, we defend personal rights with a system of private attorneys general. This means that if we are to have a cessation of bakeries being sued, we would need a consensus of every single LGBT activist. It needs hardly be said that not every activist on their side has warm feelings for conservative Christians, even after the passage of marriage.
I don’t know how strongly you want our side to prostrate and humble itself. Specifics might help. Should primary candidates praise the decision, a decision that most legally minded SSM advocates are a little embarrassed by (Kennedy)? Should they attend a gay wedding? How far do you think conservatives would have to go to win the support not just of 22% of gay America, but 99%? How realistic is a pursuit of the sort of unity that could produce that result?
After talking with my husband about our experiences with our grandnieces and nephews, and being told by him about comments made by his brother and nephew about my interaction with them, I told Mr.C my new theory.
Gay couples will NEVER experience the joy of relating family history and experiences to their BLOOD offspring.
Yes, science is great—but will children of a same sex partnership (never a UNION) get to experience the joy of connecting with their ancestors, as Ancestry.com advertises?
What ‘leafs’ will honestly connect them, by blood, with someone on the Mayflower, or a settler in Nebraska?
Will children of such pairings be looking for the reason why their ‘co-parents’ made the choice to be as they are?
Will they be able to take pride in finding out one ‘co-parent’ had a gay ‘co-parent’ themselves, while the other didn’t?
What future would children of such a partnership feel they have, if they decide to opt for traditional male-female marriage, but their ‘co-parents’ disapprove of their choice, much like they were possibly faced with by their parents?
Does any of this make any sense to anyone, or am I just wasting my time, and yours?
Who is this “society”?
People have interests and cares. And people’s interests and cares, with regards to marriage, have almost universally and…dare I say traditionally…been about property. I.e. heredity, assignment of liability, assignment of association etc. In short, exclusivity.
To borrow a page from radical Feminists, who at least probably do get right the claim that “marriage” implied the transfer of ownership of a woman to a man. What follows in their theory is hogwash, but this part is pretty much true. The purpose of marriage was to declare “this person is now off limits”. Among other things, it also declared that two families were now in “association” (i.e. kinship) due to this exclusivity.
This is what “traditional” marriage still means in most of the world.
They had nothing to do with “raising children”. If this was about kids, then marriage should only be required at the point of childbirth. Children were the expected and potential outcome, but not the required ones.
Certainly, the “raising” part wasn’t implied. Just the bearing.
If we want to go really “traditional”, marriage was simply a declaration in front of the rest of the village or clan that these 2 people are now exclusive. And this was only really necessary because of property and liability concerns.
It required no government license, provided no tax benefit, or health insurance coverage. So what’s “traditional” about marriage today?
It’s not 22% or whatever % of gays you want to win. It’s the 60-70% of Americans who think that this sort of opposition, or at least argumentation, is unappealing to them.
I’m not sure when “tradition” become a good legal argument. When exactly has marriage in America been what “conservatives” claim is the “tradition”? (and when has marriage actually ever been the “tradition” conservatives claim it is? Some historical examples, with direct and clear linkages to today, would help)
In 2004, Bush ran the most socially conservative campaign in recent history, focused heavily on gay issues. He won 23% of the gay vote (he won 25% in 2000). In 2012, Romney rarely mentioned the issue and avoided gaffes on it. He won 22% of the gay vote; it’s likely that Romney won Florida among straight voters. There’s just not a lot of elasticity in the demographic.
If there were less of an organized movement, there would be more elasticity in the gay vote, but for people for whom that’s a big issue, there’s simply no way of stopping the Bryan Fischers and pals from creating enough stupid comments to be persuasive. We shouldn’t have our candidates or nominees coming out with crazy statements, but they won’t; maybe Carson or Trump, but none of the serious folks.
No matter how gentle the campaign is, there’s enough material for them to grease their base with. All of the major candidates have SoCon histories that can’t be wished away.
I think that a focus on a constitutional amendment is regrettable (since it’s impractical), but I don’t think there’s a way to transform any of the current candidates into someone who would be competitive with Clinton as a gay friendly icon. If that’s what you want, she’s going to be your candidate.
Not if you want to stop people from suing.
In the specifically English system of law, you don’t have strong statements about Stare Decisis until about 800AD, but Roman law before that worked respected antiquity, too. It’s partly why you’ll find references to early laws as such through the Theodosian code. Some people suggest that it’s only really proper to refer to the concept as the central plank from Henry II (1154-1189) onward.
For a sense of marriage’s place in the conservative tradition, I would recommend reading The Communist Manifesto of 1848, which spends extensive amounts of space opposing the “bourgeois clap-trap” on the subject. Or you can look at Burke’s objections to revolutionary French social engineering. It’s hard to really trace conservatism as a concept back beyond the late 18th century, but support for traditional marriage structures seems to go back to the early stages of conservatism.
I don’t understand the question. I can offer societies in which exclusively heterosexual marriage was praised and respected as a cornerstone of society, but since those examples include all of human history, it seems like selecting individual cases would be eccentric.
My prediction is it’s a passing fad. For the activists it’s about destroying traditional marriage,and “Mission Accomplished”. For the majority of male homosexuals it will be inconvenient to their lifestyle and be rarely exercised as an option, or used in such a way that the “married” will still engage in a promiscuous lifestyle. Maybe some lesbians, who tend to form more stable relationships anyway will actually use it.
The fad may pass, but the damage is done. Everyone will “know” that legal marriage is about the government granting you joy, dignity, and exemption from inheritance tax.
“A Canadian study of homosexual men in “committed relationships” lasting longer than one year found that only 25 percent of those interviewed reported being monogamous.[vii] In The Male Couple, authors David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison (themselves a gay couple, one an M.D. psychiatrist, the other a Ph.D. psychologist) reported that, in a study of 156 males in homosexual relationships lasting from one to thirty-seven years, only seven couples had a totally exclusive sexual relationship, and these men had been together less than five years. Stated another way, only nine percent (9%) of the male couples were actually monogamous, but none of the couples with a relationship lasting more than five years were sexually exclusive.[viii] McWhirter and Mattison consider monogamy to be a homophobic stage that gay couples pass through and out of; in other words, McWhirter and Mattison consider promiscuity to be definitional to male homosexuality.”
It is not “repugnant” per se, so long as you treat the people who you deem to be sinners with respect, and leave it to God to sort them out in the end. But if you combine (a) your belief that a particular group is a group of sinners, with (b) support for a law that singles out that group for adverse treatment, then you invite the suspicion that you are trying to impose your view of sin on those who disagree. You invite the suspicion that you are trying to use the civil law to ladle out punishment under circumstances where the right to impose any such punishment belongs to God alone.
I say “suspicion” because it is not proof. There may be those who jump to that conclusion and do not want to hear further discussion. That is an unfortunate intolerance – and the left is certainly not known for its tolerance of opposing views. But if you choose to wade into that swamp with one strike against you from the get go, you should not be surprised if you get wet and sticky. Swamps are like that.
Jim,
Thanks for the excellent OP, and saying things that needed to be said. I would like to add just a couple of thoughts.
First, no – the left will not be gracious in victory. When has anyone ever been gracious in victory in modern American politics? The last example I can think of was Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, and we know how that turned out.
Second, let’s just take a moment to remember who first injected this issue into national politics. When broad public opinion was against SSM, it was the SoCons who pushed for DOMA. State initiatives against SSM were put on the ballot by conservatives, in order to churn Republican voter turnout. And by putting this issue on the national agenda, conservatives got people thinking about it. That thinking caused a lot of people to change their minds. Ooops. If you start an argument, and you lose that argument, then I think it is a little bit ungracious to be petulant about it.
Third, the activists of the left have only two tactics, which they use on every issue, and usually lose. They demonize their opposition as racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. And they try to shut down debate. As I said, these tactics usually lose. Witness the epic fail of the left in trying to characterize opposition to Islamic terrorism as “Islamophobia.” So to those who claim that the left’s predictable use of those tactics here was some sort of brilliant mass brainwashing – you’re mistaken.
Actually what conservatives wanted was a constitutional amendment, and we probably could have had it easily. But our elites resisted and assured us ” how absurd, we will never have gay marriage”, and DOMA was tossed in remove the drive for the amendment. Every time a State voted on the issue traditional marriage won. It wasn’t till the courts got deeply involved that the charade of gay marriage began to get established.
You’re missing my point. Conservatives may not have “started” this argument, exactly, but they certainly elevated it. They got people to thinking about the issue. They turned it from a silly outlier position into a serious issue that people had to vote on and that politicians had to talk about. Conservatives pushed for this argument, and then they lost the argument.
The Supreme Court may have saved conservatives from being thrashed at the ballot box on this issue. Because that is surely what would have happened. Unfortunately, I think conservatives are going to insist on being thrashed anyway, by keeping this issue alive and demanding that their candidates denounce SSM and denounce the Supreme Court. Like the apocryphal Japanese soldier who continued to fight on some desert island, long after the Japanese surrender had been signed.
Nonsense. You think if conservatives had ignored it would have just gone away? The entire mechanism of manipulation of the culture was turned loose here. The schools, the media, the entertainment industry, relentlessly propagandizing and marched it through the courts.
Yeah, yeah, it was all propaganda and brainwashing by the overlords of the leftist conspiracy. Do not consider for a moment the possibility that your side lost the argument because ordinary Americans thought about the issue and simply decided that you were wrong. It has to be mind control by the vast left-wing conspiracy.
The fact is that the vast left-wing conspiracy followed public opinion on this issue like a puppy dog. The Grand Klugles of the left-wing, Obama and Hillary Clinton, did not change their position on SSM until after public opinion turned in favor of SSM. The Supreme Court never would have decided the issue this way in 2005. Not a chance. You simply lost the argument. The American people decided against you. Not because of brainwashing, but on the merits.
But I suppose it is important to keep alive the myth that it was all just a magic trick pulled off by the leftist wizards. Just like the left believes that George W. Bush was a magic trick pulled off by the evil genius of Karl Rove. So long as you believe that, you can believe that at any moment the scales will fall from their eyes and the Truth will emerge.
Are these the same “American people” who twice elected Barak Obama president?
Yep. And twice elected Bush and Clinton. And three times (sort of) elected Reagan. Your point? (And you put “American People” in scare quotes? Really?)
In surveys conducted in 2002 and 2011, pollsters at Gallup found that members of the American public massively overestimated how many people are gay or lesbian. In 2002, a quarter of those surveyed guessed upwards of a quarter of Americans were gay or lesbian (or “homosexual,” the third option given). By 2011, that misperception had only grown, with more than a third of those surveyed now guessing that more than 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian. Women and young adults were most likely to provide high estimates,approximating that 30 percent of the population is gay. Overall, “U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian,” Gallup found. Only 4 percent of all those surveyed in 2011 and about 8 percent of those surveyed in 2002 correctly guessed that fewer than 5 percent of Americans identify as gay or lesbian.”
Now where do you suppose they got that idea?
Americans have no idea how few gay people there are.
The Atlantic Magazine
Hmmm, maybe from SoCons massively exaggerating the threat to civilization that would unleash Armageddon if gays got married?
Ha ha ha. You really are funny.
I was sort of joking, but actually, the numbers in the Gallop poll support me: Among supporters of SSM, the estimate averaged 25.1% Among SSM opponents, the estimate averaged 24.1% Liberals, moderates and conservatives all averaged between 23.4% and 26.3% It turns out that misinformation is not party-specific or ideology-specific.
As far as I can tell, it IS repugnant per se, and people have been dragged into court because of it.
If so many of the people Christians call sinners are secular or atheist then why do they care if they consider them to be sinners or not?