But we have to recall that battle over gay marriage isn’t about whether same-sex couples should marry any more than World War II was over who controlled Iwo Jima.

Our battle is a smaller part of a greater war: the war over the extent to which certain religious institutions will influence or control social and civil life.

I don’t see this as an either-or proposition. There are plenty of straight people, including many Californians, who don’t care much or at all about religion but who are uncomfortable with gay marriage. It was this group of voters that the later pro-Prop 8 TV ads targeted.

Anti-gay people tend to be intense in their feelings when push comes to shove. As often as we and our issues are presented as secondary in importance by pretty much every element of our political culture, for the main participants in the struggle over gay-related issues this mostly isn’t true.

On this subject, there’s some interesting stuff in unChristian, a fundamentalist book that looks at how non-fundamentalists, especially younger ones, see fundamentalists. In the chapter about fundamentalist homophobia, Kinnaman and Lyons talk about fundies who think, and bluntly assert, that homosexuality is the worst sin, and the most important “issue” today.

Obviously, merely being a man and a woman in a marriage guarantees nothing.

They are going to come back with
a1. gays can be “drunks, psychopaths, mass murderers, in prison, rapist, child molesters, thieves, and congressmen” too.

b1. putative right of a child to a mother and father

c1. we would lose the ability at law to teach that mothers and fathers are important

Thus, it’s likely we need more arguments.

first pass:

a2. “other things” are not equal, so mother-father is not sufficient to an ordinal or fractional ranking, i.e. a fully compelling interest, even in the ideal.

b2. if this right were enforced uniformly, rather than targeting gays, it suggests a world in which divorce/marriage laws are radically altered (divorce forbidden & marriage compelled in the presence of children – n.b. @theo and arguments in self-interest).

c2. in the ‘real world’, the desire for ‘children of your own’ is not under threat, in the least – quite to the contrary, so the prudential urgency is slim, in terms of relationship-forms (it’s more an issue – a compelling interest – for nongay, “Fatherless America”).

Even so, gay marriage would not commit the law to teach anything beyond private, married parents. Thus, lesbians living on a commune in Oneida choosing to raise only sons with group (not individual) parenting, don’t get “lawful sanction” because they aren’t married. And, marrying two gay people doesn’t give a moral right for a giant, group marriage anymore than marrying two nongay people does.

Questions, comments, dirty remarks – all welcomed…!

Well now you know. Hate does not share power. It will eventually overrule every shred of morality and dignity, any sense of personal honor within a person. It is rust to the soul. Prejudices of various kinds can test a reputation, but over the years I have watched this one in particular, this mindless hatred toward homosexuals, drag a lot of otherwise decent people right into the gutter and you get the impression that many of them, seeing what it is doing to them, don’t really care. At some point the war against the hated other becomes all that matters.

George knows he still has the regard of his fellows in the anti-gay industrial complex and that will be enough. He doesn’t have to care what anyone else thinks, and probably is incapable of caring now anyway. Hate rots people from within. You can safely doubt he cares one whit you saw through his deceptions there, or that he regards your calling him out on it as anything other then evidence that you are not the trustworthy one…trustworthiness being simply where you stand in the culture war, and how much of your personal dignity and honor you are willing to sacrifice to it, and not a warning that he’s falling into an abyss. He doesn’t care.

But now let’s return to the article itself: what about stating bluntly that allowing same-sex couples to adopt doesn’t mean stealing children from happily married opposite-sex couples? Those children who live with their happily married biological parents just aren’t on offer for adoption.

I keep reading this just for the pure pleasure of it. Blunt, obvious, and beautiful.

It’s not that the (aggressively atheistic) communist regime that we had in Bulgaria when I was growing up approved of divorces – far from it, but at least it didn’t try to make them absolutely impossible.

I feel I was indeed too dramatic, but that insistence on “biological parents” always makes me cringe because it’s very personal for me. I don’t really expect such people to try to stop a widow from remarrying, but I do wonder if that’s one scenario that logically follows from the “biological parents or nothing” argument – and then what on earth should be done with children whose biological parents are both dead?

But now let’s return to the article itself: what about statin bluntly that allowing same-sex couples to adopt doesn’t mean stealing children from happily married opposite-sex couples? Those children who live with their happily married biological parents just aren’t on offer for adoption.

Part of the hope of exploring a new dialectic is to get away from the old yes/no fight over “gay”.

What’s in mind is to transform moralizers like Maggie G and self-described marriage nuts, like David Blankenhorn, into a new generation of “conservatives” not at war over gay, but in ways that are familiar.

The new Maggies and the new Davids will be telling gays, “marriage is good for you, dahlings”, “go, have some kids, do something important – for you, for England, nothing is stopping you”. That is, the same thing they are telling nongays, right now.

Saying these things to gays just echoes familiar tensions in society already.

Clearly, there are those on *both* sides who hate – hate, Hate! – those “tensions”, but throw a dog a bone, already. This is how one restores balances to the force, a healthy tension, and stops the rancor over “gay” as a yes/no issue, an unhealthy tension.

Agreed?

I’m sure some will think, “Oh Darina, don’t be dramatic. No one is trying to stop remarriage.”

They would be wrong.

At the moment there is no campaign specifically addressed at blocking someone like your mother from marrying someone like your stepfather. Directly, anyway.

But we have to recall that battle over gay marriage isn’t about whether same-sex couples should marry any more than World War II was over who controlled Iwo Jima.

Our battle is a smaller part of a greater war: the war over the extent to which certain religious institutions will influence or control social and civil life.

And you had better believe that if they found a time or place in which they thought they could ban “the type of marriages that Jesus banned” (ie second marriage for divorced people) they would do so. Remember the whole covenant marriage movement? That was a step – publicly declared – in the direction of banning divorce.

And while they may not try to ban a widow from remarrying, I can imagine all sorts of “Bible based” laws which would define (dictate) the rights and obligations in ways that were hardly in your family’s best interest.

Mags seems to suggest that the social concept of marriage is the solution to a problem. Specifically, it is the solution to out of wedlock births, historically and currently. She seems to glide between “fatherless” and “cohabitating couples” with analytical abandon, in a cutsie utilitarian position she calls “sex makes babies” (article with the same name).

In a reader-startling moment of
élan, she uses this tacitly to rule out all gay couples. Basically, gays aren’t part of the problem, so they aren’t part of the solution. Or, if they were in the solution, somehow she wouldn’t be able to, (a), discourage fragmented families and, (b), encourage women not to get knocked up without a marriage vow (whether they are cohabitating or not).

Yes, you read that right. *boggle*

Then there is this, which, taken with George, gives the gays the razzle-dazzle, the one-two, from consequentialist and nonconsequentialist alike:

In the U.S., people have always been able to marry without a religious ceremony. But the legal structure of marriage is deeply influenced by our specific religious traditions about marriage. Which of these conceptions are we allowed to keep and which must be discarded as unduly religious? Monogamy? Mutual fidelity? Primacy of husband and wife over other relationships? None of these are human universals. They are the products of a specific marriage tradition deeply rooted in religious ideas.

Aaaand, scene.

The assertions by racists, isn’t any different than those of George or any other anti gay person. The racists were ‘protecting’ children from being mongrels, therefore, won’t be subjected to prejudice, pariah status or physical and mental defect.

Also of course, denying all the while that they were the very captains of the social stigma a mixed child would confront.
Despite all that, our nation has had many mixed children of distinction.

Try as they might to say it’s the protection of children that’s the impetus for systemic bigotry, it’s an age old tactic to divert from the main issue.
Only the target minority has changed.
And those who employ this tactic like to deny there is anything well worn to it, or that it applies as well to blacks and other people of color as it does to gays and lesbians.

I really, REALLY hate being treated like I’m stupid. Which is essentially happens in discussions on gay lives. I get treated as if I’m an idiot. Even if I mention that I’m a black woman, old enough to remember what Jim Crow or it’s legacy was like and what the Civil Rights Movement meant to my family.
I mean YOUNGER WHITE PEOPLE (who couldn’t POSSIBLY know) will deny what I know to my face.

Part of the denying what gay people know of themselves and their lives, type arrogance.
Supremacist values, are what they are. They don’t change. And they aren’t GOOD.
And have never been good for individuals, a society or nation.
We can’t bring THAT home enough.