Thoughts on Gay Marriage
Aug. 4th, 2010 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kelly_chambliss In the US, a federal judge (a Reagan appointee, no less) has just overturned as unconstitutional California's "Proposition 8," the law that banned gay marriage in the state. What with pending appeals, this move doesn't necessarily mean that gay marriage will be reinstituted in California any time soon, but it could be the start of the long process that would eventually bring the issue of same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court.
Now, I have problems with the entire legal institution of marriage, gay or straight or pan-gender. But those problems are neither here nor there at the moment. Despite my sense that the right to marry will be a double-edged sword for GLBTQ people in the US, I think that logically and morally, same-sex couples should have the same legal right to marry as opposite-sex couples.
But it's interesting to examine some of the arguments against gay marriage. Those who wanted to keep Proposition 8 in place offered several: religion, tradition, welfare of children, ultimate threat to heterosexual unions, etc. I don't want to open the can of religious worms, but on the issues of welfare of children and threat to heterosexual unions, I have things to say that won't take an entire monograph.
1. Welfare of Children -- Irrelevant. Even if it were demonstrably true (and it is not) that children raised by opposite-sex couples fared better than children raised by same-sex couples, it shouldn't matter to laws about marriage. While raising children is one thing that married couples often do, marriage in and of itself is not tied to having (or not having) children. We don't (yet) live in Margaret Atwood's Gilead; the right of opposite-sex couples to marry isn't tied to whether a couple plans to have children or to how those children might fare. Consider an analogy: it IS demonstrably true that in general, children of financially well-off parents (or parent) fare better on all sorts of measures than do children of poor parents. But no one is suggesting (nor should they) that poor people not be allowed to marry because of possible negative effects of poverty on children. So why should a similar argument hold sway on the issues of same-sex marriage?
2. Ultimate Threat to Heterosexual Unions -- At first, I found this argument baffling. How could same-sex unions threaten opposite-sex unions? It's not as if tons of people have been making straight marriages just because gay marriages haven't been allowed and will rush to be part of a same-sex couple as soon as it is possible. But I've been thinking it over and talking with my partner, and I think now that there's some basis to the argument that same-sex marriage will have a significant impact on opposite-sex marriage.
Economic Consequences -- These consequences still shouldn't be sufficient to overcome the logical and moral reasons in favor of same-sex marriage, but probably what will happen is that many of the economic benefits now associated with traditional marriage will disappear once marriage is available for same-sex couples as well. When faced with greater costs in extending many benefits to same-sex partners, many corporations and the government itself will probably respond by simply eliminating the benefits. Spousal health care, for instance -- already (and independent of gay marriage issues) there's a trend to limit health care to the person employed. The whole "family plan" deal, I'd argue, grew out of the 1950s and its support of a stay-at-home-mom culture. That culture no longer exists in the same way now. I know that at my college, there was serious talk of eliminating the "family plan" health care option and covering only the person actually employed by the school. It didn't end up happening, but I suspect that in the future, it might.
Some of these economic consequences will be good, some won't -- but heterosexual unions will be affected/changed one way or another.
Social Consequences -- The social and legal importance of marriage has already weakened/changed considerably in the last 50 years; had it not, I don't think the issue of gay marriage would even have come up. Consider these differences since, say, 1960: the group to whom in-wedlock birth is important has become smaller and smaller; the stigma of "living together" has disappeared for large segments of the population; reliable DNA testing means that marriage as a means of determining legal paternity is virtually obsolete. Marriage is still a way of controlling women and their sexuality, but this effect is lessening. Same-sex marriages will further modify the status of the institution as a whole. So again, for better or worse, heterosexual marriage will change.
So conservative predictions aren't always wrong, and this isn't always a bad thing. In the 1960s, for instance, many conservative and religious groups fought birth control because they worried that reliable means of avoiding pregnancy would encourage single women (and men, too) to have more sex.
And aren't you glad they were right?
Now, I have problems with the entire legal institution of marriage, gay or straight or pan-gender. But those problems are neither here nor there at the moment. Despite my sense that the right to marry will be a double-edged sword for GLBTQ people in the US, I think that logically and morally, same-sex couples should have the same legal right to marry as opposite-sex couples.
But it's interesting to examine some of the arguments against gay marriage. Those who wanted to keep Proposition 8 in place offered several: religion, tradition, welfare of children, ultimate threat to heterosexual unions, etc. I don't want to open the can of religious worms, but on the issues of welfare of children and threat to heterosexual unions, I have things to say that won't take an entire monograph.
1. Welfare of Children -- Irrelevant. Even if it were demonstrably true (and it is not) that children raised by opposite-sex couples fared better than children raised by same-sex couples, it shouldn't matter to laws about marriage. While raising children is one thing that married couples often do, marriage in and of itself is not tied to having (or not having) children. We don't (yet) live in Margaret Atwood's Gilead; the right of opposite-sex couples to marry isn't tied to whether a couple plans to have children or to how those children might fare. Consider an analogy: it IS demonstrably true that in general, children of financially well-off parents (or parent) fare better on all sorts of measures than do children of poor parents. But no one is suggesting (nor should they) that poor people not be allowed to marry because of possible negative effects of poverty on children. So why should a similar argument hold sway on the issues of same-sex marriage?
2. Ultimate Threat to Heterosexual Unions -- At first, I found this argument baffling. How could same-sex unions threaten opposite-sex unions? It's not as if tons of people have been making straight marriages just because gay marriages haven't been allowed and will rush to be part of a same-sex couple as soon as it is possible. But I've been thinking it over and talking with my partner, and I think now that there's some basis to the argument that same-sex marriage will have a significant impact on opposite-sex marriage.
Economic Consequences -- These consequences still shouldn't be sufficient to overcome the logical and moral reasons in favor of same-sex marriage, but probably what will happen is that many of the economic benefits now associated with traditional marriage will disappear once marriage is available for same-sex couples as well. When faced with greater costs in extending many benefits to same-sex partners, many corporations and the government itself will probably respond by simply eliminating the benefits. Spousal health care, for instance -- already (and independent of gay marriage issues) there's a trend to limit health care to the person employed. The whole "family plan" deal, I'd argue, grew out of the 1950s and its support of a stay-at-home-mom culture. That culture no longer exists in the same way now. I know that at my college, there was serious talk of eliminating the "family plan" health care option and covering only the person actually employed by the school. It didn't end up happening, but I suspect that in the future, it might.
Some of these economic consequences will be good, some won't -- but heterosexual unions will be affected/changed one way or another.
Social Consequences -- The social and legal importance of marriage has already weakened/changed considerably in the last 50 years; had it not, I don't think the issue of gay marriage would even have come up. Consider these differences since, say, 1960: the group to whom in-wedlock birth is important has become smaller and smaller; the stigma of "living together" has disappeared for large segments of the population; reliable DNA testing means that marriage as a means of determining legal paternity is virtually obsolete. Marriage is still a way of controlling women and their sexuality, but this effect is lessening. Same-sex marriages will further modify the status of the institution as a whole. So again, for better or worse, heterosexual marriage will change.
So conservative predictions aren't always wrong, and this isn't always a bad thing. In the 1960s, for instance, many conservative and religious groups fought birth control because they worried that reliable means of avoiding pregnancy would encourage single women (and men, too) to have more sex.
And aren't you glad they were right?