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Propped Up: How Not to Support Gay Marriage
By Stefan Beck / November 20, 2008
A good measure of how badly someone wants something is how he goes about trying to get it. Fringe political candidates, blocking traffic in their flag-capes and foam Statue of Liberty crowns, don’t really want to be president—they just want an hour in the limelight before returning to their jobs at Circuit City and Jack in the Box. I would hope that gay marriage is taken more seriously than that by its proponents, but so far I’ve seen quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.
As I’ve written previously, I support gay marriage. It would be dishonest to claim that I have much of an emotional investment in it, though; I didn’t wail or gnash my teeth when Prop 8 was defeated on the California ballot. I was disappointed, because the vote meant that a majority of my fellow Californians had not been persuaded by what I think are eminently reasonable arguments. What I did not think, despite the best efforts of the gay marriage lobby, is: I am surrounded by rabid hatemongers.
Americans are a notoriously impatient people. Consider the argument that gay marriage will take us down the slippery slope to polygamy. By implication, polygamy is so strange, so alien, that even the most fearful conservatives acknowledge it’s a long way off. Does this make any sense? There is far more historical, not to mention biblical, precedent for polygamy. Gay marriage is the truly alien concept; it does the movement no good to pretend otherwise. It stands to reason that millennia of taboo and discomfort do not vanish overnight because you waved a “NO ON H8” banner in the Castro. And yet, as any right-thinking person knows, the culprit must be hate!
I’m not convinced, partly because in the absence of any emotional response to the issue I took some time to come around to the pro-marriage side of things. I saw marriage as one of two things: the sanctification of a relationship before God, in which case the state has nothing whatsoever to do with it, or a completely secular practice designed to encourage social cohesion by providing for the welfare of children, as well as of one or both partners. In that case, then why not vote for more social cohesion?
I was surprised when I learned, belatedly, that in California homosexuals can already enjoy, under the name “civil union,” the same financial and social benefits that accrue to other married couples. It really is all about a word! And as a person who cares about language—I object, for instance, to the substitution of “right” for “privilege” in discourse about health care—I can understand the complaint. Why should it be implied by a word that heterosexual marriage is more meaningful than homosexual union?
It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be implied that any union effected by the state means anything other than tax breaks, inheritance rights, hospital visitation privileges, heath care, and so forth. If it’s sanctification you want, find a church, or get a flute and some incense and play dress-up on your own time—whether you’re gay or straight.
The trouble is that voters who oppose gay marriage on such dispassionate grounds will still be branded bigots. And they won’t like it. And they’ll cast protest votes against gay marriage, because they don’t like to be called monsters on the grounds that they make decisions based on logic rather than emotion, or faith rather than logic, or—take your pick, they don’t like to be called monsters at all.
The prevailing attitude among gay marriage supporters seems to be that if it doesn’t actively bother you, you’re obligated to go along with it, whether or not you think it’s philosophically defensible. Justice used to be blind; now it’s meant to be “chill.” If you have lingering doubts, legal, practical, religious, or otherwise, about something that’s been verboten since the dawn of man, you are an asshole or an idiot, end of story. Here’s a little tip for the gay marriage lobby: Calling people assholes and idiots never persauded them of anything. As an old question has it, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to win?”
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Oh yes, MOAR condescension, Julie – it’s a huge turn on for everyone.
 You may or may not have realized after reading Stefan’s article that far from concern trolling, he’s a gay marriage supporter, albeit one with no horse in the race. I found myself agreeing with him for the most part, that my own support of gay marriage (in theory and practice) would be easier to defend to myself and other people if not for the sheer childishness of the backlash against the Prop 8 results in California. The biggests hint here is "if you continue to alienate lukewarm supporters of gay marriage by calling anyone not 100% on board a Nazi bigot, you’re not going to win many new supporters".Â
 You know, those people also known as "potential political allies"?
“As I’ve written previously, I support gay marriage. It would be dishonest to claim that I have much of an emotional investment in it, though; I didn’t wail or gnash my teeth when Prop 8 was defeated on the California ballot.”
That’s quite obvious, as you have yet to read said proposition or election night results. Your profile says you live in Palo Alto, CA. Having supposedly voted on Prop 8 and embarked on writing an essay on it, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect you to know that Prop 8 *banned* gay marriage, and it was not defeated.
“Gay marriage is the truly alien concept; it does the movement no good to pretend otherwise.”
Gay marriage may be “new,” but it’s no more of a change than many other reforms of marriage in the last 300 years. I’d consider the redefinition from marriage being about property and power to being about love to be quite a bigger change.
“It really is all about a word!”
Only within the California government. Everywhere else in life, you have to circle one box: married or single. With domestic partnerships (what actually exist in CA, unlike the “civil unions” you discuss in your essay), you remain an “other” (not married but not single) to so many people and institutions. Also, all of the rights at the federal level revolve around “marriage,” though federal recognition of same-sex marriage remains an outstanding battle. Federal rights would extend to same-sex married couples with only a decision that federal marriage rights must be granted as the states decide marriage. Federal recognition of civil unions and domestic partnerships would require a more fundamental change to federal law.
“Why should it be implied by a word that heterosexual marriage is more meaningful than homosexual union?”
Let’s say, instead of extending marriage rights to mixed-race couples as we did during the Civil Rights Movement, we had created an institution called “interracial union.” It’s pretty obvious, in retrospect, how absurd and discriminatory this would have been. When you create a new term, you invite discrimination and inequality.
“The prevailing attitude among gay marriage supporters seems to be that if it doesn’t actively bother you, you’re obligated to go along with it, whether or not you think it’s philosophically defensible.”
That’s a straw man. A more accurate characterization is that if something doesn’t actively bother you *and* you lack a civic, non-religious reason to prohibit it, it should be allowed. That’s not “chill”; it’s a basic interpretation of people having the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
“If you have lingering doubts, legal, practical, religious, or otherwise, about something that’s been verboten since the dawn of man [...]”
You said earlier in your essay that same-sex marriage is an “alien” institution. Assuming you’re using “verboten” as it’s actually defined, it means “forbidden.” How could an institution that is so strange and new that it’s “alien” have a history of being forbidden since the “dawn of man”?
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails so express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/letter.htmlÂ
Concern trolling makes it to the big time. I’m impressed.
 First off, civil unions are not the exact same thing as marriage – and even if they were, California doesn’t even have civil unions. We have domestic partnerships, which is another category completely. Yes, domestic partnerships offer many of the benefits of marriage, but they don’t offer all of them. And even the benefits they do offer often don’t work out in real life. For example, the right to visit your husband in intensive care will usually be automatic and unquestioned. Saying you want to visit your domestic partner leads to confusion and delay (especially since many straight people don’t even know that domestic partnerships exist, or what rights they grant).
 Also, if someone you’re discriminating against calls you an asshole, well gee, I sure feel bad for you, and I hope you get a nice big cookie so you can feel better. But as a straight ally, my sympathies still lie with the one who has had their rights taken away.
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