OT: editorial in village voice on gay marriage

[jim stone]

This interesting editorial pertains to our earlier thread on that issue;
couldn't include it there because it would make no
sense, given the title of the thread. .

[Features]
Why Gay Marriage Isn't Radical Enough
Stop the Wedding!
by Judith Levine
July 23 - 29, 2003

Excerpts

Because American marriage is inextricable from Christianity, it admits participants as Noah let animals onto the ark. But it doesn't have to be that way. In 1972 the National Coalition of Gay Organizations demanded the "repeal of all legislative provisions that restrict the sex or number of persons entering into a marriage unit; and the extension of legal benefits to all persons who cohabit regardless of sex or numbers." Would polygamy invite abuse of child brides, as feminists in Muslim countries and prosecutors in Mormon Utah charge? No. Group marriage could comprise any combination of genders. Guarantees of women's and children's rights and economic well-being would be more productive than outlawing multiple marriage.


Marriage is probably here for the duration. But new forms could clarify church-state separation, leaving the sacrament to the clergy but divesting them of civil authority. "The role of progressive activists is to insist that more real choices be available," says Eskridge. That's why New Jersey's activists are aiming to include same-sex couples under marriage law and also create an alternative domestic partnership.

Vermont's civil union, though it confers every state right of marriage, may be unequal because it is separate. But in other ways it's excitingly progressive. It is stripped of marriage's religious and sentimental history. It even lets in nonsexual pairs. As a concession to opponents claiming that queers would get "special rights" denied to "maiden aunts" and others barred from marriage by incest prohibitions, the drafters included a less extensive class of mutual rights and responsibilities for cohabiting kin, called "reciprocal benefits." Perhaps unwittingly, the clause mitigates much of marriage's sexual-regulatory function.

Nobody writes songs about registered partnerships. But a legal rhapsody of moral affirmation, lifted from an institution whose other job is to hand out opprobrium to deviants, is more like a hymn, and the state that writes it treads close to theocracy. The government must distribute its material and legal benefits equally. As for love, let the partners write their own vows.

[jim stone]

If I may express the concern this way--if
we extend marriage so far, the consequence may not
be that more people will be able to marry but that
nobody will.

[tkelly]

Hmmm . . . I'm afraid I don't follow your logic . . . if we make the option of marriage, family, and all that goes with it available to more people, then people who would today choose to get married will choose not to? I must be misunderstanding your comment.

Tery

[Chuck_Clark]

Jim

You know I respect your opinions here, but I'm not sure I see the point of resurrecting this tiff, OT-titled or otherwise. As the previous thread showed, no one's opinion will be changed by anything said here and there's areal potential for it to turn ugly.

[jim stone]

Ithink what I meant is that gay marriage, as presented
in this pro-gay marriage editorial, is the beginning
of changes in the institution of marriage which
will alter it so drastically that only the name
will be left--and not
even that for long.

That's what the editorial writer
wants.

[jim stone]

Hi Chuck, I don't mean to resurrect the discussion.
It's an interesting editorial. Sometimes seeing
the actual concrete thinking that's out there can be
illuminating. Also I remain hopeful that people can get a deeper
grasp of the issues, which I'm trying to understand
myself. Best, Jim

P.S. I had to read the editorial five times before
I understood it. Why doesn't everybody read
it five times, then turn to something else.

[C4]

married....Can you imagine what the courts would look like if polygamy was legal...Jane divorces Joe and Jill and Julie and Sara and Sue..Jane wants the house and child support for her 3 kids....Joe also has his other 12 kids to support...Geez this could get really ugly...Of course it could go the opposite direction with Jane and her multitude of hubbies ( who would want more than one)..Of course then if Jane divorces her many hubbies and has one kid from each, think of all the child support she could get..Of course then you could have the gay multi marriage with 10 men in one household, I am not sure how child support could come into that one. It could be a legal nightmare. Hmmmm maybe my sons should grow up to be lawyers...

[chas]

Mike Kinsley had a column about 4 weeks ago in which he sort of made your argument, Jim. Something to the effect, "If marriage becomes too broadly defined, we might's well do away with it, it will have outlived its usefulness." I know he was to some extent tongue-in-cheek, but he was also to some extent serious.

[tkelly]

I wouldn't worry about it Jim -- there are too many social, financial, and legal benefits to marriage for people to give it up. If you take *those* away, you might see people choosing not to marry. Otherwise, I don't see the harm in allowing people to form committed relationships, strong families, and to support their life partners -- all of which current laws work against.

I missed whatever other thread this was on, probably bc I avoid the political threads here in favor of the ones on music. Since I doubt that this forum is where the argument for gay marriage needs to be made, I think I'll go back to reading the non-OT threads!

Tery

[chas]

(duplicate deleted)

[Nanohedron]

It's the very outcry against a push for changes to the institution of marriage that suggests to me that as a fundamental thread in our cultural fabric, marriage in its original and basic form is very unlikely to be undermined, however the laws shape up in future. I wouldn't worry about it.

Cohabitation benefits -whatever the household- are very much a case of doing the right thing, I think; but in terms of bean-counting, the state has too much of a stake in legal heterosexual marriage to abandon it, on one level. On another, a sweeping makeover to the concept of marriage would really require a profound shift in thinking from the ground up. I really don't forsee that. Marriage in its original concept is a cultural tradition, and as close to us as our own skin whoever we love (keeping in mind that traditional marriage ain't necessarily about love), and is understandably why many same-sex partnerships long to be so "legitimized".

I think too many of us fear for nothing.

[antstastegood]

there are two different angles I generally consider.

politically: I do not know why marriage needs legal oversight in the first place. Any persons that wish to live together will do so. The only reason I can see for making it official is for the financial spouse/domestic-partner/whatever benefits, which I think should be a decision left to employers and insurance companies, and something that the government never should have got into in the first place

theologically: As an orthodox-episcopalian, I think that the Bible is quite clear on the subject and that is good enough to convince me that the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony = 1 man + 1 woman. I am closely keeping an eye on the General Convention. Any Episcopalians on this board?



--please remember that I mean to offend no one and I respect open expression of differing opinions.

[Lorenzo]

Couldn't help but add this:

There's a new Reality TV show on tonight (cable). A Gay guy gets to choose his date from among 10 (or so) guys...half are straght and the other half gay. If the gay guy chooses another gay guy for his date, they win $25,000. But if the gay guy chooses a straight guy, the straight guy wins the $25,000 prize.

Maybe they'll rest the case that in order to know if someone is gay, you have to take their word for it, otherwise no one would ever know. Sounds like the kind of show that would be sponsored by the Gay Republicans group.

[jim stone]

The best way to destroy marriage as an institutuion is
to take the legal and economic benefits associated with
it and attach
them to another relation that's much more expansive
(includes family pairs like maiden aunts)
and also more easy to dissolve. That (less restrictive
and less demanding) relation
then widely replaces marriage socially, economically,
and legally. It plays the role marriage played.

As I understand what happened in Vermont,
civil unions are a version of that relation.
The moral would seem to be, if gays are to
marry, they should really marry, not enter
into some ersatz marraige-like relation society cooks up;
otherwise ersatz
marriage may eat marriage. If we want to preserve
marriage, that is.

All or nothing, I say.

The other question for me is this: if we let gays marry (as
I favor on its face, wanting what I
see as a compassionate social policy),
will we be able to hold the line there?
Because if we can't, marriage may be
extended so broadly as to be dissolved
as an institution.

I think we could hold the line
legislatively--but I wonder about the courts.

What alarmed me about the sodomy decision
wasn't that the Court struck down this stupid
law, but that it did so on the ground that the
state has no legitimate legal interest
in what are essentially matters of sexual morality
(this would include incestuous relations between
infertile adults, etc). If the 'right of privacy'
prevails as extensively as the court thinks,
then there is the possibility of constitutuional
challenges to marriage statutes on the ground
that various parties are being denied the equal
protection of the law by being excuded from
such unions on the basis of public morality.
And these might well prevail, either in the Supreme
Court or State Supreme Courts.

Once gays marry,
despite all the traditional dissaproval on moral grounds,
the courts might have good reason to judge laws
against polygamy or between brothers with a vasectomy
and sisters (or sons and aged mothers)
or between larger groups as
unconstitutionally unequal treatment. For the prohibition here
flows largely from traditional dissaproval on
moral grounds--and that's no impediment to
gay marriage. Nor should such dissaproval have any constitutuional
importance, the court has ruled.

Or we may develop ersatz relations for these
other unions, which will then eat marriage.

So I think homosexual marriage should be all or nothing.
But there remains the question of what will happen next. Best

[Bloomfield]

How serious are we about the separation of church and state? Everybody agrees to some extent that government shouldn't be in the hands of the Church (or of a church), and that the state shouldn't be involved in religious organizations. Everybody even agrees that the state shouldn't enforce religious rituals, for example require citizens to go to church on Sundays, get baptized, circumsised, or burned after death. On the other hand there are several laws that coincide with religious tenets, like the prohition of incest, blue laws (no liquor sales on Sundays), and so forth.

The interesting question: Is marriage (1 man + 1 woman) like baptism, some church ritual without justification outside the religious/church context? Or is it something that can be justified in its present form on purely socio-economic grounds, without recourse to religious arguments?