Drew Henson's Girlfriend

I think that the "non-working partner" shorthand is getting more misleading with each passing year--my partner worked 60+ hours a week as a freelance web developer last year, a lot more than I did at my job, but I was the only one whose situation offered benefits. My female coworker's fiance works at a frame-making shop, has worked full-time for several years, and he will be visiting the dentist for the first time in several years after they get married.

Anyway, no objections to what people have said and no gay angle here. It's a bigger economic issue in our economy.

TJIC and Dave beat me to the punch, but I'll echo it anyway. This is a brilliant piece, intelligently and thoughtfully presented. Bravo!

Excellent post Jane. Thoughtful and provocative.

I might point out the reason why historically multiple wives (polygyny) was far more common than multiple husbands (polyandry). It has to do with the nature of the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen.

If one were to supplement all males with large doses of estrogen, and all females with large doses of testosterone, one would find more instances of polyandry and fewer instances of polygyny. You know, polygyny is quite common in the US, it is simply not sanctioned by the state. Using the method suggested above, one could essentially wipe out polygyny in one fell swoop.

I don't really have much of an interest in this debate. Im full on hetero, and I think marriage is a failed institution. Im not saying every marriage is "bad", but about 60% of them end in divorce, and that certainly wasn't any religions intent. It seems to me everything in our society is getting much less stable, be it the number of jobs we work or the number of places we live over the course of our lives. Imo in this enviroment of change, its completely natural that the things a person sought in a spouse at twenty are very different then what they want at thirty. Whats better, that two unhappy people seperate, or stay together linked only by growing hatred? Religion would have us believe the latter, and that seems to be where the antigay marriage people draw their arguments(calling it tradition) and put their faith. Imo the only real social changes legalized gay marriage would have is an increase in people covered by health benefits, an upsurge in the marriage "industry" (cakes, tuxes, dresses, etc), and most of all, more divorces.

I don't agree with the overstated arguments of the pro gay marriage people either. I think that gay people today cannot begin to understand the prejudice a minority faced during segregation. People do not choose to be straight or gay imo, but they do choose how in your face they want to be with their sexuality. Thats a choice minorities never had.

TJT, your post is itself worthy of book-length treatment; it touches upon nearly all issues of pubic debate.

A great post! Very thoughtful and well reasoned. Of course, I may have found it thoughtful and well reasoned because I agree with your major point: it is unwise to make major changes to a social institution without first understanding why the institution was created in the first place.

Some have chosen to quibble with the details of Jane's examples. She never said that change in the divorce laws was the ONLY thing that lead to increased divorce rates. Nor did she say granting welfare benefits to un-wed mothers was the ONLY thing that lead to increased out-of-wedlock births. All she said is that these changes appeared to change the way society viewed divorce and having a child out-of-wedlock. Intended or not, the message was that society viewed these behaviors as acceptable. The stigma that attached to being un-wed and with child was largely removed -- or at least it became far easier to remove oneself from among the segments of society that disapproved. Within a generation, we've gone from treating being pregnant without marriage as cause for scorn to being a cause for celebration.

Some others have chosen to believe the controversy can be solved by simply granting civil unions to gay couples. To them, evidently, this is just a minor change. This ignores the potentially powerful affect that granting society's official approval to these unions might have. As Jane pointed out, just because YOU would not alter your behavior does not mean no one else would.

Here in the USA we have fifty little testbeds where we can see what happens. It turns out that the LOWEST divorce rates (1994, latest stats I could find) are in:

Massachusetts
Connecticut
New Jersey
Rhode Island
New York
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
North Dakota
Maryland
Minnesota

And the HIGHEST divorce rates:

Florida
New Mexico
Idaho
Alabama
Indiana
Wyoming
Tennessee
Oklahoma
Arkansas
Nevada

Draw your own conclusions.

RebeccaH - how do you know that the increase in drug use by lower-class males is not a consequence of the reduced incentive for lower-class women to marry the father(s) of their children?

Jane - John Derbyshire wrote an interesting article about one possible consequence of gay marriage. Derbyshire quotes Steve Sailer:

On the other hand, there's a process of gay ghettoization that goes on when straight men recognize that some institution is disproportionately attractive to male homosexuals. Broadway, for example, has gone from a popular national institution to a largely gay ghetto in recent decades. It's hard to get a serious discussion going of this since nobody wants to be accused of being homophobic, but I see it everywhere. I don't think marriages will be popular enough among gays to start this process, but I worry that weddings will be. It wouldn't take much to get the average young man to turn even more against participating in an arduous process that seems alien and hostile to him already. If some of the most enthusiastic participants become gays, then his aversion will grow even more.

>By this reasoning, the big change is the social acceptance of gays and gay relationships.

I'm not sure this has happened. There might a bemused veneer of "not that there's anything wrong with it"-type acceptance going on, but immediately below that surface in 95% of the population is repugnance and a feeling that it is wrong. Have you never felt the relief people feel when they realize it is OK to say they are against gay marriage in your company? The media loves to make it seem that everyone is now tolerant and accepting, but they've only achieved that by creating a mccarthyite culture of intimidation.

I'm a little confused. What conclusions am I supposed to draw? Do North Dakota and Massachussets share some attitude toward marriage that differentiates them from the rest of the US? What about Idaho and Florida?

I think I'd support the "changing attitudes toward homosexuality" argument if some state were to pass a ballot initiative supporting gay marriage or civil unions.

If you'll take a quick look at marriage rates, you'll see that the states with higher divorce rates also have more marriages in the first place. It seems likely that the marginal extra marriages are more frail, but still better than no marriage. Not exactly a sterling argument for the "blue states are better" side.

Same goes for individual churches choosing to solemnize marriages.

The obvious conclusion would be that the marginal cases Jane mentions are more likely to be found in the latter than the former, and thus Jane suggests that the former consider the effects of the changes they advocate on the latter.

As for Instapundit being "conservative": whatever. Prof. Reynolds offers an alternative liberal vision that scares the pants off of a conservative "liberal" establishment who have so fallen in love with their own traditions that they can't recognize what innovation even looks like anymore, so they try, and fail miserably, to paint him as a conservative. As if.

"Is this post going to convince anyone?"
Well, you convinced me. I admittedly hadn't given the issue that much thought -- little more that "Geez, why not allow gay marriage -- what harm can it do?"
Your reasoning and historical examples show that if nothing else such a far-ranging matter deserves much more study and consideration before any changes are made.
Thanks,
Paul

Scrolling through the comments, I looked for discussion of the results of gay marriage being introduced in Scandinavian countries, which no one seems to have mentioned. Jane discussed the theory behind not tampering with ancient institutions; Scandinavia provides the evidence that many of the naysayers are right to worry. Marriage rates are falling significantly, even when children are involved, and relationships are not lasting as long. Fewer children living with biological, married parents means higher rates of abuse and social pathologies.

As far as I can see for the argument that marriage should be privatised, I would agree that the state should stay out of most private relationships, unless there is a compelling interest; and encouraging people to form the best possible home for children is such a compelling interest. Society needs children, and children need a mother and father.

Thank you for a fine essay.

What a disingenuous, intellectually dishonest essay. First of all, "having no opinion" on gay marriage means you are against it --- much like someone in the 50's saying they have "no opinion" on desegregation. If you can't be bothered to have an opinion, it means you are for the status quo. But we know you have an opinion, you are against it. Just come out and say it; fact is, you are ashamed so you push this "well personally I don't care, but here are a hundred reasons why we shouln'n let 'dem faggots murry."

Sorry you don't like the arguments in favor of gay marriage, but you can't tell those of us in favor how to argue.

A very good, thoughtful post. However, I do have a few comments that haven't been dealt with yet.

Firstly, in the Good Old Days, marriage wasn't necessarily for life---check out old graveyards, and you'll find many a "John Patriarch" with three, four, or five "beloved wife of" stones around his stone. On the distaff side, cases like the Wife of Bath in Chaucer were far from unknown---many men's jobs were dangerous as all-get-out. Part of the problem nowadays is that we may have been expecting all people to live up to an ideal that few, in the old days, did or could live up to. Serial monogamy isn't new. It's just that in the old days, it was caused by death, not divorce.

Secondly, the "high price" of divorce in the Old Days had its own unintended consequences---like murder. In George Orwell's classic essay "On the Decline of the English Murder," he describes the parameters of the murders we still remember, and all of them (save only Jack the Ripper, who was in a class by himself) occurred in the domestic home, usually between husband and wife---and many of them could have been averted had divorce been less difficult and utterly disgraceful. Dr. Crippen is a classic example of this.

I agree with you about the unintended consequences of the welfare state. Myself, I'd be willing to pay for welfare, _on condition that recipients got permanently sterilized._ I am sick and tired of paying for generation after generation of permanent moochers---and if someone's desperate enough to agree to this, they're almost certainly in great need.

Another disincentive to marriage, among many of the men I know, is the fact that while divorce has become almost too easy, the laws around it are still geared for the earlier times when women mostly couldn't get decent jobs and could expect to be stuck with the kids. Too many family court judges see any woman as a victim and any man as an Evil Swine Who's Deserving Of A Good Solid Reaming. Even if she unilaterally initiated the divorce because her _feelings_ told her to (not b/c he's an alcoholic or a wife-beater or anything like that, mind you) she gets to ream him good, and usually alienate any children from him into the bargain.

Thank you Jane,

That was a masterful essay. I have been long aware of the Law of Unintended Consequences, and you provide some excellent examples of that.

Much food for thought.

Thanks for the insight, Joe. I, at least, am appropriately impressed.

Personally, I think that the painting of those who do not support 100% gay marriage rights RFN as bigots or religious nuts is doing a good job of making sure that the day when gay marriage is accepted (and it *WILL* be accepted) further and further into the future...

If you can't be bothered to have an opinion, it means you are for the status quo.

Another possibility is that you are for the status quo for the time being In the case of gay marriage, there are actually good reasons for such an opinion. Fifteen years ago, no more than a handful of people had even thought of gay marriage, let alone advocated it. Michael Kinsley relates how he assigned a think-piece in The New Republic on gay marriage to Andrew Sullivan back in '89, with neither of them thinking it anything more than a dorm-room hypothetical. Suddenly, you can't be a Democrat in good standing without backing it. Too quick by half. At this stage, favoring the status quo on gay marriage until more data have come in and societal feelings about gays in general have stabilized may be the most sensible course of all. It may take a generation or two, but it's not as though the burdens the gay marriage ban are either particularly acute or becoming notably worse. As much as the Left may desparatelly need another civil rights movement, it's pretty hard to cast the status quo as Jim Crow II.

(Before people get their flamethrowers out, it should be noted I favor gay marriage legislation, although I wonder if civil union legislation might be more sensible at the current time. I oppose gay marriage imposed judicially, however. The issue simply isn't urgent enough for the damage that sort of thing inevitably brings. If you still wish to roast me for ideological impurity, go ahead. You won't be the first.)

Simply brilliant Jane, a tour-de-force! I'll be sharing this with all of my libertarian friends who also "have no opinion" on the matter ;)

Suddenly, you can't be a Democrat in good standing without backing it.

Yet, somehow, you can be the Democratic nominee for President without backing it. Not to mention a senatorial or gubernatorial nominee in approximately 47 states.

Im pretty indifferent here. I think marriage for anyone is a very sketchy proposition. I absolutely hate going to church for any reason. If gays are dumb enough to want to get married, they should be able to. I havent read anything convincing that gay marriage would harm society as we know it. Its not like the number of gays already cohabitating are going to increase, there just going to get a piece of paper that makes it far more likely that their relationship will end in court and hurt them financially. I guess I sound antimarriage rather then just indifferent, but if your going to have kids its one of those things you really should do if for no reason other then to give the lil' sob in training a fair chance.

Joe - "Sorry you don't like the arguments in favor of gay marriage, but you can't tell those of us in favor how to argue."

No, I don't suppose she can tell you how to argue, be she might able to tell you how to persuade. There is a difference.

Hint: Those of us who do not favor gay marriage THINK we have legitimate concerns. We do NOT think of ourselves as bigots. If all you do is call your opponents bigots, we'll think you are talking to someone else and will tune you out. If you want to persuade us, address our concerns.

I certainly did not intend to trigger a pointless "Is Instapundit a conservative?" discussion. I don't care how he labels himself, and have heard that he supports marriage equality.

My point is that many of his readers are conservative and they are currently Jane's audience. I do not think that all of his readers share his views on gay marriage, and the comments here seem to bear that out.

David Walser, for the record, of the 100 posts on this thread, only four use the word "bigot" and three of them are people like yourself objecting to being labeled as such.

As a personal advocate of marriage equality and a society-wrecker in my own right, I am perfectly happy not to use such language and to condemn those who do so indiscriminately. I don't think you need to focus so much of the current discussion on fighting that battle.

Yet, somehow, you can be the Democratic nominee for President without backing it.

Sorry, should have written 'liberal' in place of 'Democrat'. Sloppy, and I should certainly no better.

In the case of Kerry, though, I thought the conventional wisdom was that he did back gay marriage, but just couldn't say so for electoral reasons. That's certainly what all the Kerry supporters I spoke to assumed. Politicians, even the good ones, lie.

Dave, I see what you're saying. I agree that people were counting on Kerry not to take proactive steps against gay marriage, but in his case, he went far enough to establish his bona fide credentials against gay marriage.

To be specific, he publicly called on the Massachusetts legislature to vote to amend our own state constitution to ban gay marriage when they were meeting at a Constitutional Convention last year.

That's a rather strong and specific step. It was dangerous to the gay marriage movement because the votes in the legislature were so close, and indeed, an amendment banning gay marriage but mandating civil unions passed by only 5 votes.

With that step, it showed that Kerry was willing to do nearly anything to prevent the gay marriage movement from endangering his candidacy. Too bad he didn't get any credit for it from people voting with opposition to gay marriage in mind.

There's a greater issue here, which the Republicans have exploited very successfully: the identification of the gay marriage movement with Democrats. ALL the progress that has been made in Massachusetts and Vermont has been driven by individual citizens and interest groups pursuing their interests in the courts. The Democrats as a party want us to go away, both because of the political damage they've suffered and because many of them (like most Americans) don't actually agree with this aim. There's a reason almost no progress has emerged from state legislatures until recently, and only then very limited progress. Courts lead.

Brittain33 - You are correct. For the most part, this discussion has been very civil. My comments, quoting Joe, "Sorry you don't like the arguments in favor of gay marriage, but you can't tell those of us in favor how to argue." were directed at Joe, not you.

Joe did not use the word bigot. Instead, he implied that his opponents reasoning could be summed up as: " 'well personally I don't care, but here are a hundred reasons why we shouln'n let 'dem faggots murry.' " I don't think it was too far a stretch to infer from this that Joe holds that only bigotry explains opposition to gay marriage. (It also seems he believes his opponents on this issue speak with a (bad) Southern accent, have difficulty in using proper English, cannot spell, and may only bathe once a week, but I may be reading too much into his comments.) In short, while not using the word, Joe did a pretty good job of calling his opponents bigots. All I did was point out that this approach is unlikely to persuade his opponents to his point of view.

Brittain33 - "There's a reason almost no progress has emerged from state legislatures until recently, and only then very limited progress. Courts lead."

On this point, and many others, the courts should not lead. Under our system of government, the people, through their elected representatives, are to set public policy. Even if you are right on the policy question, using the courts to ram rod "x" down the throats of an un-willing population is a recipe for disaster. (I used "x" as a stand in for any controversial issue, not just gay marriage.) I believe that abortion would not be the issue it is today if the Supreme Court had not decided the issue for us. It is somehow far more palatable to have the legislature reach a compromise that you might disagree with than it is to have the courts end all debate. This is true even if the courts get the policy question right. If they don't get the policy question right, it may take a generation or two before the policy can be altered.

This was a great post and generally good comments. Perhaps this is just where I live (the south), but I do not think that we have an overall 50 - 60% rate of failed marriages. Of all of my college acquaintances, in the 20 years I've known them, only three have gotten divorced. Two were very soon after the marriage (after a too-short engagement), only one was after having children. Same thing in my neighborhood, I'm very active in the neighborhood and I only know 3 divorced people my age (37) and only one of those divorces involved children. I have three sons and of all their schoolmates only 2 have had divorced parents!

However, I know many more people who are divorced who would be classified as baby boomers. I have aunts and uncles, as well as neighbors that came of age in the 60s/70s that have been not just married and divorced once, but divorced multiple times.

I think that those people that continue to marry and divorce repetitively must drive up the rates that you see reported in the press. And I just don't see that happening in our generation - more than likely because many people my age had to deal with the disasters that came out of the divorces of the 70s.

Pat

using the courts to ram rod "x" down the throats of an un-willing population is a recipe for disaster.

So what recourse is there for injustice against a minority group? I'm not using emotional rhetoric, I'm being serious. If you were raising an African-American child in Topeka in 1953, with no prospect of ever being the majority in your state, what would you have done to get your daughter the educational experience she deserved? What had happened over the preceding 60 years to indicate that the legislatures would do anything on their own? What was the terrible drawback to Brown v. Board of Education?

The second change produced another huge surge in the divorce rate, and a nice decline in the incomes of divorced women;

It did no such thing. Divorced women are better-off financially than divorced men, because of child support, alimony, and community property laws that were modified when no-fault divorce came along in the 70s.

Check Richard Peterson and Susan Faludi, the people who exposed the Lenore Weitzman fiction you're regurgitating.

Well, if you were in Topeka, Kansas, you would have a pretty fair chance of getting a better education by proposing antidiscrimination legislation through the normal political process. From what I've read on the subject, Kansas was selected as the test case because they actually were separate and equal, so that the courts couldn't dodge the issue by finding a practical lack of equality.

The legal front in the civil rights movement was one front, not the entire struggle.

John Kerry was against gay marriage before he was for it before he was against it before he was... hey! did you know John Kerry served in Vietnam? ...what were we talking about again?

My concern with gay marriage is this:

Pistachio corn flour, adjective democrat theocracy random.

There. I just defined every word in that sentence to mean whatever the hell I felt like making it mean at the moment I wrote it.

If society decides to change the language to have words mean the opposite of what they actually mean, all communication becomes pointless.

And I'm not trying to be cutesy in that last post. I think there's a pretty reasonable argument that courts only settle matters that people are genuinely ambivalent about, or where the consensus has shifted away from the old law. _Brown vs. Board of Education_ might have worked by itself in some area where people were ambivalent about segregation and had no deep emotional investment. In the deep South, I don't think it would have had a chance without the broader Civil Rights struggle. Similar intentions did almost nothing during Reconstruction, for example.

So what recourse is there for injustice against a minority group?

Publicity, public rectitude, courage, and time. This is America. We can eventually be convinced to let darn near anybody into the mainstream if they are playing by the rules. We will eventually be convinced to right just about any injustice if it's happening to people who can't be written off as "deserving it" or "whining" or "somewhere else". We love a moral crusade. That's how the gay marriage movement got as far as it did as fast as it did, in terms of public opinion. It would have taken a while (thirty years was my best guess), and until then gay couples would have had to keep lawyering up with powers-of-attorney, tightly drawn wills, and all the rest of it. Annoying and even humiliating, but not exactly poverty, lynching and separate lunch counters. Going to the courts, however, was strategically disastrous. In one stroke, it transformed what should have been a fundamentally conservative movement (what could possibly be more conservative than marriage?), into a fundumentally radical movement (what could be less conservative than using the courts to end-run the legislatures and public opinion?). The great mass of America simply doesn't trust people who's first recourse is litigation, a distrust that is historically quite well founded. Quite literally, the first that most of America heard of gay marriage was some judge in New England declaring it legal. You couldn't have insulted and infuriated those folks better if you'd tried. Nor could you have made Karl Rove happier.

I'm amazed and inspired by such ruthless courage, rare intellect, and dispassionate objectivity.

If I could add anything, it's that every right carries unforseen obligations, which not all homosexuals seek. Whatever happened to leaving people the hell alone?

�Indeed, to this day, I find the reformist side much more persuasive than the conservative side, except for one thing, which is that the conservatives turned out to be right. In fact, they turned out to be even more right than they suspected; they were predicting upticks in illegitimacy that were much more modest than what actually occurred--they expected marriage rates to suffer, not collapse.�

Enough said. Liberals are too childishly optimistic. Conservatives categorically reject their Panglossian view of human nature. We are quite aware that the at least metaphorical reality of Original Sin is alive and well on planet Earth. William Golding�s haunting novel �Lord of the Flies� should be in everyone�s personal library.

Marriage is a particular thing the meaning of which we inherit as descendants of heterosexual ancestors who knew what it meant, respected, and practiced it. Their contemporaries who did not practice it lack descendants to inherit their attitudes.

Whatever the fraction of the population that is homosexual, it's pretty certain that the fraction of ancestors (we are descended from) who were gay is much closer to zero. Even homosexuals have predominantly heterosexual ansestors who respected and practiced traditional marriage.

Their desire for marriage is just as innate as it is for heterosexuals. The inclination to marry and the meaning of marriage come from the same place, and the heterosexual nature of it's meaning is simply a result of the fact that we are all descended almost exclusively from heterosexuals.

Changing the definition in a meaningful way is simply not possible. Creating a legal facade won't change the fact that people 1000 years from now will predominantly be descended from those of us who respect and practice traditional heterosexual marriage. That's where it's meaning comes from, not from judges or politicians or religion.

Pat El, the "50-60% failed marriages" statistic is misleading, because of the fraction who marry and divorce multiple times. It is common knowledge that second and third marraiges are much more likely to fail than first marriages -- what is less commonly understood is that only around 30-40% of first marriages will fail. Which is to say, 60-70% of first marriages do indeed last "until death do they part".

We will eventually be convinced to right just about any injustice if it's happening to people who can't be written off as "deserving it" or "whining" or "somewhere else".

I'm having a really, really hard time believing that in light of several hundred years of mistreatment of African-Americans.

I can understand how someone would like to believe that--it relieves the majority of having to answer for mistreatment of minorities, because hey, perhaps their grandchildren will fight the battles they're not motivated enought to fight--but I do not find it convincing.

Going to the courts, however, was strategically disastrous.

It is far too early to say that. Even with what happened last fall, I do not see how one can conclude it was a disaster. In the late 1990s, the city of Cambridge was unable to offer domestic partnership benefits to city employees because the state legislature refused to approve a home rule petition to allow it. Now Cambridge employees can get married and get rights equally, and the fruits of backlash would be civil unions, if anything. That's progress.

Note that conservatives now consider civil unions to be a conservative compromise, while five years ago, voting in favor of civil unions in Vermont EVEN THOUGH THE COURTS REQUIRED IT was an invitation to a brutal election challenge the following year.

Court cases have moved the ball way forward. Way, way forward. There's been a backlash, no question. Domestic partner benefits in some jurisdictions have been lost as a result, at least temporarily. But you can't argue that gay rights have been set back, because what we have gained is so much more than we would have had if we had done nothing, even if some has been lost. If we had gotten anything through legislative means in one state, we would have had the backlash all the same.

And in fact, some states are now moving forward on domestic partnership rights to match the example set by Massachusetts. I refer to New Jersey, Connecticut, and California.

What I see here is a "just so" story where every move to affirm human rights through the courts is criticized not on the merits but on the argument that any victory won there will be undone elsewhere. I'm sorry, backlash does happen, but not always and not always effectively. And very often, the progress you say will happen through other channels never happens.

Legislatures don't race to help the underdog. There's no question in my mind that in the long run the gay rights groups took the only route we had open to us, and achieved the only victory we could have achieved.

In the meantime, the people who were so offended by court cases on gay marriage are being rewarded by having their Social Security taken away from them. Perhaps it won't just have to be the gay voters who have to reconsider their priorities in the voting booth in the future.

I'm curious--do people feel that Terri Schiavo's parents invited a backlash by taking their son-in-law to court, or no? Should they have pursued their efforts only in the legislature?

Brittain33, the dispute between Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers was not fundamentally a human-rights argument. It was a domestic dispute between two not terribly savory parties.

The scum blew their credibility by taking their case to talk radion and cable tv, and by putting Randall Terry out front as a spokesmodel.

You have to be pretty blind not to know what that meant.

Fantastic work once again. Not only are you one of the best writers on or off the web but the comments are much better than average as well. (This one excepted.) Quality seems to have attracted quality.

A couple of points. The three example arguments you question have a different form than the pro same sex marriage argument you're trying to refute. In those three cases, laws were changed that directly affected people, yet the argument was made that those same people would not change their behavior. For instance, in the divorce case, the laws affected the ability of straight people to divorce, which would clearly change their behavior (leading to a higher divorce rate).

The pro-SSM argument has to do with laws affecting one group (gays and lesbians) changing the behavior of another unaffected (directly) by the laws (straight people).

So in knocking down your three examples, you don't actually successfully question the pro-SSM argument, which has a completely different form.

As for your argument that we should keep marriage because it's no accident humans have married members of the opposite sex for time immemorial, that's a specious argument. People have murdered one another for ages too, and I can make the argument that it weeds out the weak. Clearly my argument is pretty stupid. Yours is, too.

You then go on to laud the specific benefits of marriage. The problem is, you're arguing against single parenthood, not same-sex marriage (and not very ably—correlation does not imply causation, after all, and you're ignoring crucial factors like the effects of the drug war, white flight, and a host of other factors on inner-city black communities). I think marriage is a good institution, too. That's why I think it should be extended to gay people, who deserve equal treatment under the law.

Your essay is completely unconvincing. You fail to explain why the unknown consequences are more important than equal rights. It's very easy for to remain neutral when you're not the one who's being screwed by the status quo.

The burden should be on people who seek to change the institution of marriage in this country. But that falls not only on people in favor of same sex marriage, but must inevitably extend to those in favor of banning it.

We know the affect of the constitutional ban in Ohio for example, where a couple of judges have interpretted the broad ban as also invalidating domestic violence laws. In Michigan there is a fight going on to remove domestic partner benefits offered by public Universities over the Constitutional ban passed there.

Its true, the institution of marriage has been between a man and a woman, but its equally valid and true that marriage is not the only recognized social institution in this country.

Laws in a majority of states allow single parents, unmarried couples, and even gay couples to adopt children. In fact, last I checked before the recent rise in homosexual hysteria only Florida had a blanket and specific ban on homosexual adoptions.

Many conservatives who seek to ban gay marriage look at it in terms of children, and what the best environment for them would be. According to the 2000 census there were 601,209 gay couples in the United States and Puerto Rico. 30% of these, or 180,363 had children. 56% of those couples with children, or 101,003, had 2 or more children living in the home. That would be according to even a rough minimum guess 300,000 children, and quite probably a good deal more than that.

It is convenient to ignore that 300,000 children when arguing about gay marriage because that brings an element of emotion into the issue. But how might a constitutional ammendment that includes a ban on the legal incidents of marriage affect these children? Wouldn't that be an important question to ask?

What if a ban on same sex marriage was passed constitutionally and gay couples were no longer able to adopt, and no longer could a gay parent have any rights in regards to his or her partner's child? Won't happen? That's what supporters of Michigan's successful ban of gay marriage told straight people who feared that it might affect straight unmarried couples who were receiving public benefits. Its what people in Ohio were told about their ammendment.

Am I saying gay marriage should be passed? Not necessarily. But I think people should think a bit more about the affect of banning it on other people. Afterall, we DO know what's happened so far when they've done it.

Chris T: I don't have the stats on me right now, but if I recall correctly, having two parents correlates more closely with having two parents than it does with income, home placement, or level of economic opportunity. Somebody or other (maybe Soros?) once tried a project where he guaranteed a hundred dirt-poor inner-city NYC kids that he'd pay for their education and needs basically for life as long as they stayed off drugs and out of jail. The breakdown of the kids in his project was almost exactly the same as the breakdown of any hundred randomly-selected kids.

Also, your murder analogy is inapposite--a closer one would be "I don't understand why governments universally allow people to defend their homes from burglars with lethal force. This obviously just encourages violence and makes burglars more likely to hurt people if the homeowners stumble on them during the burglary. Let's ban it!" We know, generally, why people murder people; and we know governments have since time immemorial banned the practice. We don't have a clear conception of why marriage is always male-female, and we do know that governments have since time immemorial enshrined the practice. This doesn't mean we can't extend marriage to homosexuals; it just means we should be slightly careful.

Jadagul: Again, you (like Jane) are talking about single parenthood, not same-sex marriage. If you want kids to have two parents, and gay people are already adopting kids, you should support same-sex marriage so that kids of gay parents can have two parents. I have yet to see a study that shows having two gay parents is worse than having two straight ones if you correct for other variables.

As for your second point, I, like everyone else who has paid attention to the insights of feminist thought of the last several decades, have a pretty good idea why governments have always enshrined heterosexism. It's in large part for the same reason governments have enshrined sexism. This idea that we should affirm a tradition simply because it's always been there and half of us can't figure out why is simply moronic. Real people are suffering from officially sanctioned heterosexism—this is not an abstract discussion where it's ok to sit back and wonder wistfully what the effects of providing equal treatment under the law might be.

Willing causation into effect where it does not exist.

I'm surprised this sophistry has been so well received; please head your own advice: "I'm asking for is for people to think more deeply than a quick consultation of their imaginations"

Chris T: this isn't intended to be sarcastic, but could you point me to this explanation of our enshrinement of heterosexism? In essentially every culture ever discovered? I'll take your word that one exists, but I'd like to see it, or at least hear a brief explanation.

As for the first point I made--well, first, I'm embarassed by the glaring typo in the first line that I'm only now noticing. Read it "Future success and well-being correlates more closely with..." And this wasn't intended to respond to the main thrust of your post, because I don't happen to have a really good response (on the other hand, I have no clue whether the gender of the parents matters, and if it does, we should be darn carful). This point was meant to address the throwaway in your last paragraph, that Jane is "guing against single parenthood...and not very ably�correlation does not imply causation." I was pointing out that there is good evidence at least for the claim that weakening marriage is an extremely bad thing, that we should be very careful of.

See, the thing is, civil unions for gay people will weaken marriage (it already has in France), and increased cohabitation outside marriage will also weaken it, further encouraging that behavior in heterosexuals. If you want to save marriage, include gays.

Heterosexism is enshrined in practically every society on the planet through traditional gender norms. The two go hand in hand, and the argument is made quite well in Gender Trouble by Judith Butler, now a classic in the field of gender and women's studies. If you want to also staunchly defend sexism, be my guest. But I personally cannot separate a commitment to feminism from a commitment to gay rights. The two go hand in hand.

This post is nothing more than another indication that more than a few idiots have started web sites. Big deal.

So, "Jane," what would be your proposed "rational basis" for the state not recognizing relationships of same sex couples (so-called "gay marriage", although the state never inquires into the sexual orientations when issuing a marriage license) on the same basis that it recognizes relationships of opposite sex couples? "Rational basis." You know. 14th amendment stuff.

A note on causation vs. correlation: It strikes me that even though other sweeping social changes besides direct action concerning the issues at hand no doubt contributed to the rise in divorce, increases in the welfare rolls, and a much-greater-than-anticipated percentage of income's going to the gov't, it's always going to be like that. Social "experiments" can't be controlled adequately; they always take place in a context of society, going about its everyday business, evolving on its own, independent from the issue of concern.

I'd posit that we could not have predicted all the consequences of welfare's being extended to single moms, or the income tax, or the easing of divorce laws, even if they HAD taken place in a vacuum. In their societal context (mathematicians please correct me at will), it seems to me that the possible consequences take on some characteristics of chaos. It's an argument for going sloooowwwly, in the absence of a pressing human/civil rights need to accept the possible negatives because someone's being materially harmed.

It's my probably imperfect understanding that the material benefits of marriage, such as they are (except for the happiness quotient and living longer, which we can't legislate anyway), are generally available to gay couples, though they take more effort. Getting on a partner's health insurance may be an exception in some (many?) cases. The point's been made here that there's a big difference between being gay today and being black in the '30s; is the material harm currently suffered by gay individuals or gay couples sufficient to overwhelm society's generally-necessary inertia, as it certainly was for African-Americans in the midcentury? Being a standard-issue member of a heterosexual marriage in a nearly 100% (publicly) heterosexual neighborhood, I can't know from my own experience.

Heterosexism is enshrined in practically every society on the planet through traditional gender norms.

The two sexes were created by nature not society. We inherit heterosexism from our ancestors the same way we inherit breathing air and drinking water from our ancestors.

We're air breathers and water drinkers because that's how we evolved as mamals.

We're heterosexist because that's how we evolved as humans.

Fair or not, everybody's ancestors were almost exclusively heterosexual who predominantly practiced traditional marriage. It is from them we inherit the inclination to marry and the innate sense of the meaning of marriage.

Biology is not destiny but this case it is a very strong influence. Ascribing SSM opposition to society or bigotry is wrongheaded and counter productive. There's nothing in the biological argument that precludes institutional support for gay couples but trying to change the definition of innate biocultural mating practice is taking a tiger by the tail.

I awed. Wow. I haven't read the comments yet but what a great piece. thank you...

The anti-gay-marriage side has introduced some concerns about how gay marriage could harm strait marriage (Jaybird - decrease in fecundity; Happy Batson-Jones - Further devalue the role of fatherhood; Anthony/Derbyshire - if marriage becomes "gay" strait men will avoid it out of homophobia.)

The pro gay marriage side attributed other motives to them (Britain33 - dislike of members of historically alienated classes, Joe - we shouln'n let 'dem faggots murry; Chris T - The half of the population that doesn't know enough about feminist thought to understand that it's just 'heterosexism' are morons) [I salute Chris T, who is in fact starting to address the issue of "who put the gate there and why" and is willing to consider his opponenets merely ignorant, rather than evil.]

Well, my concern is none of those listed above. My concern is that something bizarre that *nobody* here has anticipated will pop up out of nowhere and bite us in the ass.

Obviously this can't be an argument for not doing things, because applied consistently it results in stasis. But it *is* an argument for going slowly whenever possible, incrementally whenever possible, in limited areas at first whenever possible, and reversibly whenever possible.

Legislative acts are more easily reversible than court decisions. Doing things one state at a time carries less risk than doing the whole country at once. Civil unions are halfway to marriage, and therefore are a less risky experiment. This isn't an emergency situation, lets be slow and careful.

Oh, this is silly. Stanley Kurtz, the right wing nut case from National Review, opined that gay people should not be afforded equal marriage rights because straight bois don't want to see out gay men as lead actors in movies. That's dumb.

And so is Galt's post.

BTW, it would be interesting to know what operation is sponsoring this web site. Does anyone know?

Britain33 - dislike of members of historically alienated classes,

To be precise, I was talking about a lack of empathy and understanding, not necessarily dislike. People are willing to go with the default and let things continue as they have because they don't know any gay people well and don't care about the direct effects on us of their unwillingness to weigh the factors involved.

Didn't have time to read all the comments, but I did search the comments for the word "spiritual," which appeared only once, and not in context with the spiritual meaning of marriage.

The very issue that the pro-gay marriage people are missing is that this is not a rational debate, nor is it meant to be. Marriage is a sacrament. While you may be convinced that it "evolved" to serve practical needs, and that the institution only needs to be addressed in terms of practical needs, our religious traditions say that marriage is, in fact, a spiritual institution. I doubt that this spiritual mission of marriage is an accident. Nor do I think that the spiritual practice of considering marriage to be between a man and a woman happened by accident.

That this reality is ignored in this discussion speaks volumes. What happens to this spiritual institution if we think of it only as a pragamatic institution? Changing an irrational institution, that developed to serve irrational "spiritual" needs, may produce far reaching consequences that are unimagineable. In other words, it might be wise to consider why the ancients saw homosexuality as something to be heavily regulated and proscribed. Maybe they actually had a reason.

Brilliant post. All laissez faire libertarians should read it. It is amazing how people can celebrate how great chaos theory is, but not recognize its utility.

Anyhow, I have a simple solution for ANY couple who wishes to commit to each other and spend the rest of their lives together: Just do it. Why do you need to get married?

Now, if you want to play by certain rules, then society has some benefits for you. These rules are packaged together into something called marriage. If you don�t like the rules, then marriage isn�t for you. And before you get all bent out of shape, please keep in mind that marriage isn�t here to benefit individuals (maybe that�s why libertarians have so much trouble with it), it�s to benefit society as a whole.

And if you are gay, I don�t know what you�re complaining about. Any gay man can marry any gay women he chooses and vice versa. What�s the problem?

By the way, Ralph, you are no better than the people you attack if you characterize all your opponents as people who think opposition to gay marriage is evil and irrational.

You may have missed it earlier in the thread, but I am married myself. It should go without saying that my parents were not over the moon when I first told them. How do you think that went?

First, put into your mind that I am a human being like you who values his family relationships and understands the fine nuances of communication and not burning bridges. Second, ask yourself how you think I approached my parents on this subject. Do you really think that I called them evil bigots and refused to talk to them?

Onto a larger scale--why do people presume that gay people don't know how to function in a society where we are a minority, where we have to presume that most people we meet are either uncomfortable or unfamiliar with gay people, where you don't make any progress if you insult them at first glance? Do people really think I made it to age 28, knowing I was gay for more than half my life, without picking up that lesson? It's like white people lecturing blacks on how they shouldn't always play the victim card and cry racism, as if black people don't know full well how to get by in a predominantly white society and don't let perceived slights and injustices slide by on a constant basis.

I tend to think that people don't actually believe that all gay "activists" on the Internet shoot first and ask questions later, that it's easier to demonize your opponent than to put yourself in their shoes and imagine how you would argue in their place. I don't need to be patronized by straight opponents of marriage how to conduct myself when I discuss marriage--I have had far more conversations than you on the subject, with people whose opinions are far more important to me and to the political process. I have canvassed for openly gay candidates for the legislature and discussed the issue with voters who opposed gay marriage. I have hopped in and out of the closet at will with regard to my wedding ring based on a snap judgment of how someone will react and whether it's worth it to bring up the subject. Discussion boards are necessarily going to be more heated, but that's precisely because they're of so little import in the long run. Almost everyone commenting here has already made up their mind, and many others drift in and out of the conversation without picking up anything.

As an analogy, I seriously doubt that Jane is as snarky with her friends and coworkers as she is here, or she wouldn't have a friend in the world who wasn't a hardcore Republican. But it works as a web persona. Similarly, I'm quite different in person.

So, for those of you who oppose gay marriage, I'm sure you've had people attribute motives to you that you didn't like. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. I'll tell you one thing, though, only you are responsible for standing up for the "correct" motivations and communicating your feelings. You're not advancing any conversation by complaining about mean (or as Jane might say, meeeeeeeeeeeeeeean) gay people calling you bigots and how they're the real reason you won't listen to them. Stand up for yourself, defend your beliefs, and if you can do it without resorting to bigotry, insults, or tears, you'll prove the case you've set out to make about your good intentions.

Stephen, am I to take it that you oppose civil marriage in general, and interfaith marriages that are sanctioned by the state?

By the way, I meant "when I first told them of my plans," because they'd all met my partner before and we informed them several months before the event. My mother was upset when I first broached the subject. She ended up toasting her new son-in-law at the rehearsal dinner, which all our families attended.

Ralph, I'm not anti-gay marriage.

I just think that there will be a decrease in fecundity.

I think that the tendency to get married in order to have children will decrease somewhat... Which is not to say that people will stop getting pregnant. But I think that there will be fewer pregnancies that were planned by both parties.

No way to measure this, of course. I'm just thinking out loud.

And, again, I'm not anti-gay marriage. If homosexuals want to get married, I see no compelling reason to prevent them from doing so.

We seem to be taking for granted in this conversation that government social programs are good. But I would argue that medicare, welfare, and social security have done more to destroy marriage than any other laws.

When they were enacted, these social programs changed the moral and economic calculus that created marriage and encouraged child rearing. So it shouldn't be surprising that marriage falling apart. It also shouldn't be surprising that marriage is falling apart faster among the populations (regardless of race) that use government support most.

If you want to strengthen marriag then we should end welfare, medicare, and social security. If we do that, you could remove all laws and social stigmas towards unwed motherhood, gay marriage, and divorce without destroying the institution of marriage at all.

-Pete

I know this is lost amongst the magnitude of comments, but I had to declare that this was one of the most moving pieces I have read.

I use "moving" because it is non-rational, and the vastness of the institution of marriage, as demonstrated, is unknowable on the rational level.

I have had some experiences with children involved in gay marriages. The children in these "marriages" have virtually no say about this. Mostly, they hate it and can't wait to get out. One girl took to running with a gang until she was old enough to live with her (straight) father. Her mother had tried to turn her into a lesbian and earned her everlasting hatred.

Civil unions are a canard- two brothers living together could get one for tax reasons. The only way gay marriage will work is if it's enacted democratically. Judicial fiat will not cut it. For exampe

Desegregation: Desegregation was accomplished via judicial fiat- and I am ASHAMED it was not done via legislatures. However, it is worth noting that many schools are not desegregated, and are not equal.

Abortion: Right now probably more americans oppose abortion than support it, especially in its more barbaric forms (partial birth). What good is a marriage if its not recognized by the people around you? Might as well be a civil Union.

Great post.

For the record I am pro gay marriage, but only if I can get enough of my neighbors on board.

Wow. That essay was almost as cool as Den Beste coming out of retirement.

Lamont

Brittain33 sez:

>>Going to the courts, however, was strategically disastrous.

"In the late 1990s, the city of Cambridge was unable to offer domestic partnership benefits to city employees because the state legislature refused to approve a home rule petition to allow it. Now Cambridge employees can get married and get rights equally...."

Meanwhile quite a few states have amended their constitutions to preclude gay marriage. So now, if ten years from now there's a slim majority in favor of gay marriage it won't get enacted. You'll have to wait until there's strong enough sentiment in favor of it to amend the state constitution again.

Now I don't think people amended their state constitutions to prevent themselves from changing their minds about gay marriage. They do it to prevent courts from imposing it on an unwilling populace. And now you've got a much bigger barrier to change than you had before. I'd call that "backlash."

Stephen, you get an F in church history. Marriage was "spiritualized" by the Council of Trent, the first church council to require the presence of a priest to solemnize marriage. In the Judaism of the Old Testament, marriage is even further from a sacrament—it's an exchange of property.

We're not talking about religious marriage here—no one I know in the pro-SSM movement wants to force the Catholic Church to marry the queer people they're so terrified of. Churches and individual clergy members will be free to make their own policy on solemnizing same-sex marriages.

What we're talking about is letting people get civil marriages so inheritance and adoption are easier, so they can visit their partners if one of them is hospitalized, so that foreign halves of same-sex couples can come to the United States like foreign spouses of straight Americans can now, etc. And contrary to what a previous commenter said, no, all of those rights are not available to gay people now, and many of them are not available through civil unions.

"The scum blew their credibility by taking their case to talk radion and cable tv, and by putting Randall Terry out front as a spokesmodel."

Nice bit of lefty tolerance there ... the "scum" just lost their daughter. I'd expect my parents to make common cause with Ol' Scratch himself if my life were in the hands of my ex.

On topic, though, terrific post.

Excellent essay.

The state has traditionally been organized around a consensus religion, or a state religion. After all, it was the Holy Roman Empire.

Once again, the spiritual side of this discussion has been dismissed as "irrational" and beyond the pale of discussion. Why did the state feel it was essential for society to embrace a consensus about religion and spiritual life? Just out of a whim? There was no practical reason for doing so?

OK, so you are all hyper-rationalists, and you think that rational considerations are all that need to be considered. Again, this is an intentional form of blindness. Once again, what if you are wrong? What if the traditional human inclination to organize the state and the community around a consensus spiritual life has a reason for being?

And, no marriage did not begin with the Council of Trent, and the proscription against homosexuality is not new. It appears in the Old Testament, in the story of Sodom and Gommorah.

I'm glad it's so easy for you to dismiss religious and spiritual tradition as irrelevant. This is precisely the blindness that I think Megan is noting. The commentors to this board are convinced that rationality, and government policy can be isolated from the spiritual and religious. Maybe you are wrong. Why are you so insistent that this not even be considered?

The blindness evidenced by the commentors to this board is your insistence that your rationalist viewpoint is all that should be considered. You cannot separate the religious and spiritual functions of marriage from the state legislation surrounding marriage. If you do, you are messing with a very complex mechnism. This is called hubris, and it is very well represented among these comments.

Jamie wrote: "It's my probably imperfect understanding that the material benefits of marriage, such as they are (except for the happiness quotient and living longer, which we can't legislate anyway), are generally available to gay couples, though they take more effort." Are you kidding?! There are thousands of laws with the word "marriage" in them. Those laws, therefore, only apply to married couples. For example, a gay person's partner can - and will - be forced to testify against him in court, something that would never happen to a married heterosexual. This is not something that can be corrected with "a little effort" on the part of the gay person and his partner. It does not take but 2 minutes research to find a list of similar laws that cannot be taken care of with a few papers and a little effort on the part of gay and lesbian couples.

Ralph, of course there's a backlash. What I've said is that a backlash would have been inevitable. If Massachusetts had legalized gay marriage through legislative actions, you still would have had conservatives in other states rushing to keep themselves from having to recognize marriages effected in that state, and there would also have been plenty of politicians willing to use the referendum process to harness that popular sentiment to their advantage.

But here's a contradiction I'd like to hear your response to. You say there should be legislative and popular support for gay marriage before it comes to pass--that's the way it should have been done. Well, taking that for granted, that's all you need to pass a new amendment in those states repealing those DOMA amendments. They passed with a legislative vote and 50%+1, after all. Why is it a difficult barrier to overcome the amendments--and yet gay people should be expected to meet those same requirements before any change is made in the first place? Is that supposed to convince me the legislative route is more efficient?

I'd much rather fight the battle in Ohio and Michigan again in ten years after having had gay marriage as an institution in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey than as a fictional bogeyman of the conservative imagination. The court decision triggered a backlash (as did the useless San Francisco moves), but the ball was still moved very far forward. I stand by my assessment.

In the meantime, there's a bit of backlash to the backlash in those states. People now have to defend restrictions on spousal abuse laws because they no longer apply to a woman who gets the shit beaten out of her by her live-in boyfriend. Same-sex couples will fight on the friendlier terrain of health benefits instead of marriage, because the AG of Michigan has worked to strip away health care from couples. The debate will carry on in earnest. Thank God.

Jane,

Great post. I'm not surprised that your fellow libetarians would attack the reasoning you make. But your criticism is spot-on. I think that a precautionary principle is apt, and should be encouraged, to avoid basic disruptions of society that you cite to (like divorce). You're not the first defender of freedom to invoke the necessity of careful understanding of things before destroying society's basic social institutions (see Edmund Burke), and so you enjoy good company. It is to the little Robespierres, who want to mess with long-standing tradition, that should answer for their claims.