Earlier this year, my wife and I traveled to Bates College, in Maine, where I gave a speech on technology and higher education. That evening, we went out to dinner in downtown Lewiston. Our hosts were two members of the classics department, a couple who had lived together for many years in a nearby small town. It was one of the best dinners I’ve had in a long time, partly because of the food and wine, but mostly because of the smart, charming, and wide-ranging conversation. Two married couples, enjoying time together — except, not quite, because both of our hosts happened to be women, and same-sex marriage wasn’t legal in Maine … yet.
A few months later, duly elected state legislators in Maine passed a law extending marriage rights to all. Maine Governor John Baldacci signed the bill into law less than an hour later. “I have come to believe,” he said, “that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law.” Not long after, opponents of same-sex marriage put forth a ballot initiative designed to take the marriage rights of couples like our hosts away. Voters in Maine will decide this coming Tuesday. Polls suggest that, one way or another, the margin will be slim.
In recent weeks, money and volunteers have flooded in from out-of-state (or as Mainers would put it, “away”) to support both sides of the debate. As Andrew Sullivan notes, there is a stark difference in the tone and content of the competing television advertisements. The marriage-equality ads speak of equality, fairness, and respect, with a dose of New England individualism thrown in. Those in favor of taking away marriage rights are in harsh black-and-white with ominous music in the background. They makes no claims of justice. Instead, they focus exclusively on the alleged threat to children, warning that “Gay marriage will be taught in Maine schools.”
Colleges are often fairly criticized for excessive political correctness, and I, too, have rolled my eyes at the abuse of language, obsession with identity, and narrowness of perspective that infects our so-called liberal campuses. But it’s worth remembering that close attention to diversity and the rights of the traditionally dispossessed has its advantages, like creating a place where gays and lesbians are not just tolerated but welcomed. Higher education has been well ahead of society in this respect, much to its credit.
And there’s something particularly odious and sad about the way opponents of marriage equality are using public schools, our great institutions of socialization and common purpose, as the venue for their barely concealed appeals to hatred and fear. One might point out that schools are pretty much obligated to teach the laws of the land, and that doing so doesn’t imply an endorsement — divorce is legal, after all, yet schools aren’t teaching students to leave their spouses. But we all know that’s not what this is really about.
The journey to equality may take a small detour in two days; it may not. But of this I’m sure: The opponents of marriage equality are correct, in a sense. In my lifetime (and not the tail end of it), gay marriage will indeed be taught in Maine schools as at other schools nationwide, as another example of how the arc of history bends toward justice, how ignorance and fear have always prolonged that progress in ways that seem inexplicable in retrospect, and how eventually the good people of Maine and elsewhere came to extend the nation’s historic promise of equality and community to those who have waited for too long. By their voice and their example, students and educators in our colleges have helped make this future more certain by the day.
18 Responses to Marriage Equality and What We Learn
rightwingprofessor - November 2, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I had a similar dinner recently, with a man and TWO women. Do you think the three of them should be allowed to marry in the name of “marriage equality?” If not, please explain why.
goxewu - November 2, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Here’s the solution:The State gets the hell out of the “marriage” business altogether. People are allowed to draw up whatever kind of cohabiting contracts they want, subject to the usual prohibitions against criminal conduct,* and the authorities approve/enforce them just as with other contracts. If some people want a religious component to this, they can have a ceremony and get a certificate from a church, synagogue, mosque, coven, whatever, but it will have no legal standing.I’ve never quite understood why an “ordained” clergyman (now there’s an occupation with hardly any standards!) can legally declare two people married, with all the tremendous legal ramifications therein. Why can’t a plumber do it? Or a nurse?*Yes, in backwards places, this would require that laws against sodomy be repealed.
jffoster - November 2, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Actually, goxewu, in many denominations and religions, “ordained” does come only with having met fairly careful standards. Your “solution” in pgf. 1 is not going to happen. Title to property, inheritance, care of children, …. The nuclear family in the United States is a Sovereign Group — the only sovereign kinbased group our society has. That means it has original and ultimate jurisdiction over some facets of social life. So the State has an interest in its composition. Do you really think this country is going to accept polygyny or polyandry?
suomynona - November 2, 2009 at 6:10 pm
I’m with goxewu on this one. It’s not the role of the state to ‘accept’ (or deny) our cohabitation or partnership circumstances. jffoster’s argument in #3 is circuitous: the solution of removing the state from marriage is not going to happen because the state is too structurally invested in playing a significant role in marriage. Well, if you remove the state from that role, then marriage no longer has relevance to issues like title to property, inheritance, care of children, etc. These things can be drawn up by lawyers (as they already do in so many (perhaps a majority?) cases in which the nuclear family ceases to exist as such) on an individual basis and considered case by case (again, like they often already are when parties divorce or separate). Not that it’s not repulsive to equate homosexual relationships with polygamous ones, but this country doesn’t have to accept polygamy in order to remove its government hands from something as intimate as marriage.
goxewu - November 2, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Yes, “many denominations” have “careful[?] standards.” (I don’t know about whole religions.) But one can become an ordained minister fairly easily if one wants to, with little more labor than filling out a form and sending a check. And those ministers of the Church of the Holy Whatever can marry people as legally as the Archbishop of Rochester.But I’m with jffoster, though, on his prediction that this country will never–isolated pockets of Utah, Arizona and Texas aside–accept polygamy or polyandry. Nor will there be much demand for it. Polygamy as practiced by the FLDS and similar religious groups eventually devolves to scuzzy old men marriages forced on barely pubescent girls, and young men who might be competition for the old scuzzies forced out of the group and forced to live on the streets. Then the cops step in. Stinkcat’s (I won’t ask) question is rhetorical.It will, however, eventually if grudgingly accept homosexuality. And much of the country will eventually legalize gay marriage, which does not, incidentally, violate the idea of a “nuclear family.” (I’m not sure what a “Sovereign Group”–capital S, capital G–is, except those Indian tribes which want to open casinos.) Gays, in fact, seem to be the only ones these days really interested in marriage.
jffoster - November 2, 2009 at 8:56 pm
I told you what a Sovereign Group is. It’s a group that has original and primary (and ultimate in the normal course of things) jurisdiction over some sphere of social life. In the USA, the nuclear family, the state, (and cities or counties or parishes depending on whether counties/parishes are creatures of the state or not), and the federal government are examples of Sovereign Groups. The United Nations is NOT a Sovereign Group in or over the United States. Neither are the armed forces, schools, churches, or clubs. And your comments about what polygyny “eventually devolves to” do not apply generally among societies, although it may in the United States. BTW, there were polyandrous marriges among early Latter Day Saints. Actually, a homosexual marriage does greatly distort the general notion of a nuclear family because there can be children to such a “marriage” only, again, through a continued distortion. I.e. we are asked to go to great lengths to pretend that something that is abnormal isn’t.
goxewu - November 3, 2009 at 8:20 am
Yes. jffoster did nominally us what a “Sovereign Group” is. But the definition is so fuzzy (“original and primary [and ultimate in the normal course of things] jurisdiction over some sphere of social life”–wuzzat?) and faux-official (the captial “S” and “G”), I had to ask.My comments about polygamy were indeed meant to apply to the United States, which seemed to be the same place to which Mr. Carey’s OP applied. I’m happy to hear that there were polyandrous marriages among the early LDS members, although what that probably small and fleeting number has to do with, as they say, the price of tea in China, is beyond me.Which brings me to the curious mix of relativism (the supposed relevance of my comments about polygamy not applying “generally among societies”) and a hard line about normality in #6. Lots of things aren’t “normal,” such as winning a Nobel Prize, or having a suburban American family with seven children, or attending a Shakespeare play. With gay marriage, I’m not “pretend[ing] that something that is abnormal isn’t.” I’m accepting something in that constellation of abnormalities–such as, oh, two people in their fifties who never had children entering into a marriage with no possibility of biological children–which are not only acceptable but desirable in a civilized society. Two people professing their love for, and commitment to, one another, is a good thing. If they happen to be of the same sex, it’s really no skin off the noses of heterosexual couples who want to do the same thing. (I had no idea that marriage is a zero-sum matter, that every time a gay couple gets married, a straight couple is prevented from doing so.) Those who harumph from some pretended Olympian disinterest concerning the supposed untoward consequences to society of gays being allowed to marry are the ones pretending… that their personal phobias and/or religious constraints somehow constitute great legal wisdom.
suomynona - November 3, 2009 at 8:50 am
jffoster,If you’re going to use the value and integirty of heterosexual marriage and the (traditionally conceived) nuclear family argument, you’ll have to address the pink elephant in the room: depending on who’s doing the math, 40-50 percent of marriages in the US end in divorce. There are plenty of reasons why a ‘traditional,’ heterosexual marriage can fail, and fail whatever children were involved as well; yet we don’t have the government screen out people with proven risk factors for divorce in order to protect the nuclear family. People in some high-stress, high-demand jobs have staggeringly high divorce rates, while other groups have high rates of domestic violence. We don’t tell these people whom and when and if they’re allowed to marry.In other words, even if one concedes that a stable, nuclear family creates the greatest public good of all cohabitation/partnership arrangements, there’s nothing to suggest that homosexuality (versus heterosexuality) is a greater risk factor than a number of other things that the government wouldn’t even dream of regulating or selecting for. Since heterosexuality doesn’t prove to be a success factor for marriage, it makes no sense to argue that regulating based on sexual orientation will in any way improve marriage as we practice it.
jffoster - November 3, 2009 at 9:55 am
I didnt say anything about “improving marriage”. And No 8, you say ” People in some high-stress, high-demand jobs have staggeringly high divorce rates, while other groups have high rates of domestic violence. We don’t tell these people whom and when and if they’re allowed to marry.” But we tell them whom they’re not allowed to marry. Goxewu, Sovereign Group isnt “faux” at all. The ‘sovereignty’ here is a legal notion. Here’s a for instance: The nuclear family has original and excepting in extreme breakdown cases, the ultimate decision and authority over whether the family, including the children, have and/or practice a religion. And over where, though not whether, children go to school. Now in a case where the parents were practicing a religion requiring child sacrifice, a Sovereign Group higher on the hierachy (since we have a complex society) would intervene. But normally there is no appeal from the nuclear family’s decision of whether to practice a religion or not. Maybe that will help.
suomynona - November 3, 2009 at 12:23 pm
“But we tell them whom they’re not allowed to marry.” No.We don’t tell any group of any demographic whom they’re not allowed to marry, except for children (who can’t legally consent to much of anything until they’re of age to be independents) and homosexuals. Those are the only groups we regulate in that way. The government absolutely don’t tell high-stress employees like ER doctors whom they’re not allowed to marry; nor former child rapists; nor cheating politicians…unless any of those are trying to marry either a child or someone of the same sex. To sum up: if you’re an adult homosexual you have fewer marriage rights than a rapist and the same marriage rights as a child, i.e., none.
jffoster - November 3, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Suomynon (10), we do. Many states have laws forbidding first cousins to marry and so far as I am aware, all have laws forbidding brother~sister marriage. And so far as 1st or 2nd cousins be concerned, the genetic argument won’t wash. In fact, the modal preferential marriage among all human societies known has been a FaSiChi marrying a MoBroChi. On the other hand, FaBroChi and MoSiChi are commonly forbidden from marrying. So yes, like all societies, ours does identify groups of persons who are forbidden from marrying each other.
goxewu - November 3, 2009 at 2:11 pm
In this society, fortunately, which religion to practice or whether to practice one, is not a decision the State makes. The State also does not decide which cookies my weekly reading group should serve, or whether we should serve them at all. And there’s no appeal from the group’s decision to serve fig newtons instead of pecan sandies. Does that make my reading group a Sovereign Group (capital “S,” capital “G”)? This list of decisions that groups the size of the nuclear family can make with no State intervention (e.g., whether to watch the Michigan vs. Ohio State game or Alabama-Auburn or no game at all; whether to go to the gym every weekday, or just weekends, or not at all, etc.) is endless. Ergo, I suppose, a nine-digit roster of Sovereign Groups.Re #11: Used to be that jffoster’s kind of reasoning was used to justify legal prohibitions against interracial marriage. “So yes, like all societies, ours does identify groups of persons who are forbidden from marrying each other” doesn’t constitute a blanket reason for denying marriage rights to whomever we choose. There should be a social-damage reason that withstands the fading away of bigotry (as with interracial marriage). And so far, I’ve not yet seen a reasonable reason for prohibiting gay marriage. All that the anti’s offer is basically “God wants it this way” and “It’s been this way for centuries” and “Eewww, yuk!” Which were, of course, the same reasons given for miscegenation laws.
suomynona - November 3, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Does jffoster mean to suggest that incestual relationships and polygamous relationships are to be equated legally with homosexual relationships?The problem with this ‘slippery slope’ argument, the same argument made by Rep. Louis Gohmert when he equated homosexuality with polygamy and beastiality on the House floor not so long ago, is that it’s just as slippery on the other face of the mountain. You might say once we allow gays to marry, it opens up the doors for people to marry their cousins, their dogs, their sixteen-year-old daughters. But it also opens up the doors to consider all kinds of people’s other assumed ‘perverions’ that disqualify one from the right to marry. Can sex workers marry? Can people who are HIV positie marry? What about two people each with a genetic predisposition to Tay-Sachs? What about people of different races who, as a Louisiana minister recently argued, ought not to marry because of the difficulties their mixed-race child would face? The thing is, the government’s participation in marriage is effectively an endorsement of one kind of marriage that nonetheless has an incredible rate of failure. People already do things in their private lives and lead lifestyles that many others would not condone. People already do hold matrimonial events and ceremonies to honor their outside-of-the-mainstream relationships, whether those relationships are healthy, cohabitating, same-sex partnerships or crazies who actually believe that Fido is their soul mate. Removing the government from marriage altogether is not an endorsement of any one kind of partnership, healthy or not; but the government’s involvement is indeed an endorsement of a singular kind of relationships, and a discriminatory endorsement at that. The government has no right to tell a family–a great many of which, today, can be parters of the same or different sexes, with or without children–what religion it must practice ‘for the good of the nation,’ nor what school it should send its childdren to, nor what gender its members must be, and in what proportions, in order to qualify as a family.
jffoster - November 4, 2009 at 12:51 am
Sumoynona, (15) Marriage is a legal arrangement. With legal consequences. How exactly do you remove government from that? Unless you do not wish to distinguish between marriage and shacking up. In which latter case if that catches on we shall have just cause to fear for the future of the Republic. And in answer to your first question in 15, if a marriage is legal and customary in a society, it is not incestuous. MoBroChi = FaSiChi is not an incestuous relationship nor marriage in societies where it is common or even preferred. But in no human society is homosexual marriage considered normal, although a very few do sort of allow it, usually when one or both parties is a shaman.
jffoster - November 4, 2009 at 12:56 am
12 — the groups you mention are voluntary associations and are not Sovereign Groups. The nuclear family is not a voluntary association, at least not for the children. And it is not quit voluntarily willy nilly even by the adult members except by a legal decree of a Sovereign Group higher on the hierarchy. Churchs and coffe clatches, book clubs, &c can be withdrawn from at will on short notice without any legal writ of divorce or annullment.
suomynona - November 4, 2009 at 8:04 am
jffoster,You brought up incestuous relationships, which I errantly left out of my list of forbidden marriages, which include those between children under age, people in the same family marrying each other, and gays. I took that objection of yours into consideration–that we do choose which groups we forbid to marry–but I went on to suggest that this is a slippery slope on multiple faces, and there is no viable (that I have seen from you or anyone else) argument for why we should ban gays from marrying instead of, say, ex convicts or people with a domestic violence record. You haven’t addressed this point at all. Simply reiterating the status quo and arguing that because this is what we do, this is what we should continue to do, is not an argument. I’m arguing for a change from what we do now, on the grounds that what we do now (preventing gays from marrying) is unjust and discriminatory. I’m arguing further that this is so because the government explicitly favors one notion of ‘good’ or ‘permissible’ marriage, as it once did before mix-race marriages were legalized, when in fact the government need not be involved in marriage at all.”Marriage is a legal arrangement.”In the Sovereign Group in which I was raised, marriage is a sacrament, and has nothing to do with the the law or the government. In this way the government’s involvement in marriage is not a boon, but a threat to the sovereignty of my nuclear family. The government attaches certain legal consequences to marriage that have nothing to do with how my family understands marriage. The only reason this works out OK for my family is because my parents have a heterosexual marriage. We can have a family and deal with the legal ramifications because those ramifications are actually a material benefit, however much they profane the marriage sacrament. But other families have no chance to form in the first place because the government likewise undermines their sovereignty by imposing rules that define marriage according to narrow, archaic terms. And beyond that, as I’ve said twice already (and you have ignored), the government-favored ‘traditional’ marriage has been a particularly unsuccessful venture.
jffoster - November 4, 2009 at 8:39 am
It’s still a legal arrangement, No. 16. In a complex society, the nuclear family is not the ultimate Sovereign Group. And “sacrament” is a notion peculiar to particular religions. You end your last comments set with the following:”And beyond that, as I’ve said twice already (and you have ignored), the government-favored ‘traditional’ marriage has been a particularly unsuccessful venture.”I choose to ignore it because it is not relevant. Marriages in matrilineal societies are well known to be unstable, but those societies don’t stop having marriages. (The instability of marriages in matrilineal societis is related in part to the fact that in those societies, men have more authority over their sister’s children than over their own in their own household.)But it’s 4 November and as Maine (a Sovereign Group) goes, so goes the Nation. I’ll let the voters of the Sovereign State of Maine have my last word on this, and move on to other things. Thank you two for a civil and challenging discussion.
goxewu - November 4, 2009 at 1:44 pm
jffoster is indeed a civilized and challenging discussant, so thanks to him for that.But “let[ting] the voters of the Sovereign State of Maine have [his] last word on” gay marriage is facile and glib. (There will be other referenda down the road, and the tide is slowly turning against denying marriage rights to homosexual couples, as it turned against denying marriage rights to mix-race couples only a few decades ago.) I admit, though, that the 22nd President of the United States, James G. Blaine, probably wouldn’t have agreed with me on this.And one last note — jffoster never really addressed: “I’ve not yet seen a reasonable reason for prohibiting gay marriage. All that the anti’s offer is basically ‘God wants it this way’ and ‘It’s been this way for centuries’ and ‘Eewww, yuk!’ Which were, of course, the same reasons given for miscegenation laws.” Not to mention the underlying but unsaid complaint that gay marriage somehow deprives heterosexual people of the chance to marry. And as for children, as Dan Savage, the wonderful gay sex advice columnist (who with his husband–they were married in Vancouver–has an adopted child), says, “One thing about gays: We don’t get drunk one night and adopt.”