Thoughts on Gay Marriage
Rod Dreher is right to point this out:
Unless I’m missing something, in the 31 states in which voters had a say on whether or not gay marriage was going to be the law of the land, they all rejected it. Every single state. Even California, the national bellwether state on liberalizing social trends. Even Maine, in the most liberal region of the country.
You can come up with all kinds of theories about why this is, blaming the voters for being bigots, accuse the churches of playing dirty, whatever. The plain fact is, every single time it’s been put to a popular vote (as opposed to allowing a tiny number of elites to vote on it), gay marriage has been a loser.
Do I think it always will be? No, I do not, in part because homosexuality is far more accepted by young Americans, and in part because heterosexual America has already conceded the philosophical grounds on which traditional marriage was based (which is why younger Americans are more comfortable with gay marriage). Nor do I believe that the voters are always right. But unless you’re prepared to call more than half the country bigots — and I have no doubt that many, perhaps most, gay marriage supporters are, and let that self-serving explanation suffice — maybe, just maybe, you ought to ask yourself if there’s something else going on here. And that maybe, just maybe, serious attention should be paid, instead of paying attention long enough to insult people who disagree with you as evil people who deserved to be excoriated and harrassed.
Dreher does not posit what that “something else” might be.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, however, is willing to take his premise at face value.
I probably wouldn’t use the word “bigot.” I don’t think, for instance, that half this country thinks hate crimes against gays is a good thing. But I have no problem believing that half the country–maybe more–is deeply prejudiced against gays. This generally fits into my view of all -isms. I think prejudice is part of who we are as humans, and thus as Americans. Following from that, I think prejudice is one of the many forces that influence how we vote. Hence the notion that half this country is deeply prejudiced against gays really doesn’t shock me. [...]
But more than that, the sense that prejudice is actually not a common and potent force among straight people today, and white people [in the civil rights era], that the group intent on discriminating is “essentially good” is the most remarkable parallel. Rod believes that most of the people voting against gay marriage aren’t prejudiced against gay people per se. That reminds me of National Review, in 1957 arguing that most of the people intent on preventing blacks from voting weren’t actually anti-black. [...]
Hence the notion that those voting against gay marriage, are not actually, in the main, motivated by bigotry, but a belief in tradition and family. But very few people would actually ever describe themselves as bigots. We think we know so much about ourselves. This is a country–like many countries–which is deeply riven by ethnic bias, gender discrimination. And yet we don’t seem to know any of the agents of that discrimination.
Read his whole post. Good stuff.
It seems to me to suggest that the struggle for gay equality is going to have to be taken to the people more directly.
Persuasion is hard work, and improvements are iterative even at their best. I certainly don’t blame gay Americans for seeking an end to official discrimination, and in many cases judicial remedies are appropriate.
But all that having been said, full acceptance of homosexuals isn’t going to be brought about by governmental fiat. The widespread public tolerance of homosexuality–even, in social conexts, among political conservatives–is not matched by the margins in these referenda about gay marriage specifically. This suggests that something other than anti-gay animus is afoot. My best guess is that some people feel that they are being leveraged, not respected, and that they are reacting to that. In Maine, there was an effort to make public the signatures on the initial petition to create the referendum. That’s the sort of militant action that inevitably produces a backlash.
The solution isn’t to stop seeking referenda on gay marriage. The solution is to emphasize them, and to work to win them through non-confrontational means. Water eroding a stone.
I think that pretty much everybody, regardless of their feelings on the issue, would have to agree at this point that gay marriage is politically inevitable. The question now is one of time frame and means. I don’t think it’ll be long, and I do think that legislation and referenda will make the change more normative and permanent.
Comment by Rojas — 11/4/2009 @ 12:55 pm
A few thoughts on Rod’s article:
I would bet that there was a time in our history that you could have racked up a 31-0 popular vote record on:
- Outlawing homosexuality
- Denying interracial couples the right to marry
- Legal subjugation of wives to their husbands
- And a long list of other issues that today we would find… bigotted. The fact that Rod Dreher and others are uncomfortable with the term does not make it grossly innacurate. My own dear departed grandparents, products of their generation and culture, sweet sweet people, were bigots. But if it makes everyone feel better, I will refer to them and others as “deeply prejudiced” or “significantly biased” from here on out.
Also: Washington R71 passed yesterday. No mention of that in Rod’s article. guess that didn’t support his narrative.
I’m sure I will have to read about this “radical redefinition of a bedrock social and cultural institution” for the rest of my life. As long as I do, I will continue to point out that it is absurd. Marriage has evolved significantly already, and for Rod et al to defend “traditional marriage” then they need to get onboard with polygamy, child brides, arranged marriages, prohibition of divorce, miscegenation, subjugation of wives to their husbands, legality of spousal rape, and authorization of wife beating. How is the elimination of all of these aspects and rights of a husbands, most of which occured in the last two centuries if not this century, any less radical a redefinition of marriage? Allowing 2% of the population to have the same privileges and responsibilities as everyone else is hardly radical, it is decent and human.
Comment by Jack — 11/4/2009 @ 2:33 pm