Tag Archives: marriage equality

On Rod Dreher and the Futility of Arguing

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I read something like this about same-sex marriage and my mind just boggles:

Civilization was made possible by controlling and channeling sexual desire, and harnessing it to a framework that makes for stable communities. My side believes that the liberation of sexual desire that this culture has embraced, and the obliteration of the traditional family as the ideal, will in time have devastating consequences for us all. There is no institution more important to conserve than the family. As has been widely acknowledged by our side, heterosexuals have done a terrible job of living out our convictions. Even we Christians have internalized the Sexual Revolution to an appalling degree. Nevertheless, normalizing SSM really is the Rubicon on all this, because from our point of view, it fundamentally changes the definition of marriage and the family, and with it, definitively topples the cultural authority of Christianity, which was the basis for Western civilization after the fall of Rome. That’s not nothing. This matters. 

How does one even begin to argue with someone, like Rod Dreher, who thinks this way? I guess you can’t. Logic doesn’t work, because a person’s beliefs are a product of one’s own psychology, one’s own biochemistry, one’s own history, and those are deep-rooted and powerful things. It’s like thinking all you need to do is repair a patch in the ceiling, and realizing you actually need to tear the whole house down to fix the problem.

Anyway, to counter Dreher: he really thinks that letting five percent of the population get married is what will “topple the cultural authority of Christianity”? Does he not realize that centuries of epochal change in our understanding of the universe and ourselves have already toppled it? Galileo, Newton, evolution, the germ theory of disease, Freud, brain science, the whole scientific revolution — no, apparently gay marriage is the Rubicon, the final straw.

Seriously?

I don’t understand how someone who is intelligent can think this way. It’s not like Dreher is some rube who can’t string sentences together. He can obviously write and he’s obviously smart. But his world view is so thoroughly different from my own that I wouldn’t even know how to begin to convince him.

I used to think logical argument could be enough to change people’s minds. Eventually I learned that it doesn’t always work.

It’s discouraging. But I guess we just have to work around people like him.

The Next Marriage Debate

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We seem to have moved into a new phase of the marriage equality movement. Gay couples will probably be able to marry nationwide by the end of this decade, perhaps even before Obama leaves office. The people arguing for public discrimination — that is, discrimination by the government — have repeatedly lost in court; there have been no anti-equality court decisions since the Supreme Court overturned DOMA section 3 in U.S. v. Windsor last summer.

Having lost the debate over public discrimination, opponents of equality have moved on — or retreated — to arguing for the right to private discrimination, couched as “religious liberty”: the right of bakers, photographers, florists, and so on, to refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings. First the opponents feared that churches would be forced to marry gay couples, but most of them soon realized this was ridiculous, since the First Amendment prevents the government from forcing churches to perform particular religious services. So they moved on from defending religious institutions to defending businesses owned by religious individuals.

That’s a murkier issue. Whether private businesses have the right to discriminate is something on which I haven’t completely made up my mind. My gut and my heart firmly oppose such discrimination; I don’t see why a private business has any more right to discriminate against gay couples than it has the right to discriminate against a particular race. If you choose to enter the public marketplace, you must play by public rules. Adults should know that they can’t always do what they want. It’s the price for being a member of society.

But part of me can see the other side. Photography and baking and flower arranging are not just business practices; they are also forms of artistic, personal expression, expressions of one’s selfhood. And if someone really, truly opposes gay weddings, should we make that person take part in such a wedding?

It would be a simple question if the only issue were liberty. The photographer’s liberty is at stake here; the gay couple’s is not. A photographer’s refusal to take pictures doesn’t affect the gay couple’s freedom to get married. It does affect the photographer’s freedom to choose clients. If liberty is the only issue, the photographer should be able to say no.

But liberty is not the only issue. Equality is important, too. Liberty and equality are both cherished American principles, but they often conflict. When it comes to race, we realize this. Few people except Rand Paul these days would publicly defend the freedom of businesses to deny service to blacks. We believe that people should be treated equally in marketplace.

Why do some of us, even some of us who are gay, struggle more with the right to deny service to gay couples? Is it internalized homophobia? Are we too used to walking on eggshells? Are we trying too hard to be magnanimous, generous, taking too much care not to offend others, even those who spent decades opposing our human rights?

All I know is, it’s a harder question than the simple one of whether we should be free to marry. But that doesn’t mean the question isn’t answerable.

It’s okay for a healthy democracy to discuss these things. In a way, it makes me happy, because it’s just another sign that we’ve already won.

The End of DOMA, and Being Haunted

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When I was 11 or 12 years old I realized I had a terrible secret. I was attracted to other boys. I would develop these intense crushes: a handsome black-haired classmate in middle school, a kid at sleepaway camp the summer I was 12. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling; all I knew was that I felt it, and nobody else did. There was something wrong with me. I tried not to worry about it too much; I just hoped that it was temporary, and that at some point before I became an adult it would go away and I could be normal and get married. But I continued on through middle school and into high school, and it didn’t go away. I started to worry. I decided I must be cursed. My life already seemed bad enough: I was a nerdy, grade-skipping outcast, and yet not academically perfect enough to please my parents. And I hated my Jewish afro hair. On top of all that, why did there have to be this? Why did this alien presence choose to infect me and make me fall in love with boys?

It was the mid-/late 1980s. All I knew about gay people was that they got AIDS and went to hospitals where they wasted away and died. I remember once I heard my mom refer to someone derisively as a “frustrated homosexual.” And one day I came across a copy of a book called Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). It was published in 1969, and it said horrible things about gay people. I didn’t want to turn out like the people in that book. I became even more terrified.

At 19 I told my parents I liked guys. They got mad and said it was not acceptable. So a couple of days later I went back in the closet, to them and to myself. Then I had five agonizing years of mental gymnastics as I tried to figure out what I was, until finally, at age 24, I decided, fuck this — it’s never going away, this is who I am, and I just want to be happy. So I stopped agonizing, accepted that I was gay, started dating and having sex, and the next year, at age 25, I told my parents that I was sure this time, that I really was gay. They were very upset for a few weeks. It was painful for me. But they eventually came around.

Since yesterday morning, when the Supreme Court struck down section 3 of DOMA, I’ve been thinking a lot about my past — mourning it, in fact. I’ve been wondering if I would have been a happier, less scared kid if I’d grown up in a country where gay people could get married, where I could have read an opinion by a justice of the United States Supreme Court recognizing the dignity not just of gay couples’ relationships but of gay couples’ marriages, where my country’s government treated those marriages with the same respect they treated my parents’ marriage and my aunt and uncle’s marriage and my grandparents’ marriage and the marriages of every other adult I knew. I wonder if my parents would have been more accepting of me if they’d raised me in that world. I wonder if they would have thrown away that old book. I wonder if I would have come out sooner, started dating sooner, had sex sooner, gotten more relationship experience sooner.

I’m so envious of gay kids today, and gay teenagers, and gay college students, and gay people in their 20s, for living in a different world from the one I grew up in, just as I’m sure many older gay men are envious of me for growing up post-Stonewall and coming of age in an era when the world knew already about HIV and how to protect ourselves from it. Just as every generation is envious of people who are younger than them.

I was already 22 and out of college when the Supreme Court first spoke up for gay rights in Romer v. Evans. I was already 29 when the Court first said in Lawrence v. Texas that I have dignity as a gay man. I was 37 when the state where I lived said I could get married. Now I’m 39, and I’m getting married to Matt in a few months, and my national government will treat us the same way they treat every other married couple.

In a way it feels very scary and “adult.” We’ve been able to get married for the last two years, but it always seemed like it would be somehow pretend, like playing at marriage: “skim-milk marriage,” as Justice Ginsburg wonderfully put it. But now we’ll be filing taxes jointly, and be eligible for spousal Social Security benefits, and have all the federal as well as state responsibilities of marriage, just like my parents, and my brother and his wife, and Matt’s parents, and all the straight married couples we know. Just like everyone else.

The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday was not the end. Thirty-seven states still tell gay couples they can’t get married. But we are closer to justice than we were yesterday. I see it as one of those pictures where your perception shifts between positive and negative space. Before yesterday, there were 12 islands of marriage equality in a vast sea. But now there are 37 islands of marriage discrimination. Now that the U.S. government recognizes same-sex marriages, the discriminatory states are the outliers, no matter how many there are. That shift in perception is crucial.

I’m happy I’m still young enough to live in this world. I’m happy I’m going to get married.

And I’m happy for all those gay kids who get to grow up in a different world from the one I grew up in.