![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Political rant
Jul. 30th, 2003 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cnoocyApparently the right has their, um, undergarments in a twist over the idea of gay marriage. It's just so dumb. Though I suppose if I can make an electronic copy of a song and that counts as stealing from the person who still has the original, then for, say, Ian McKellen and his partner to get married somehow reduces the power of my cross-gender marriage. Feh, I say. If you want to defend marriage, enact the following law:
A couple who wishes to become married must allow two weeks to elapse between getting their marriage license and their wedding. At no point during this period may either of them appear on a television show that deals in any way with their marriage. That deals with attention-seeking celebrity marriages and marriage reality shows. It means it's harder to elope, too, but I don't know that that's a bad idea. I suppose I'm actually fairly conservative about the purpose of marriage, but liberal about relationships.
Perhaps I've offended somebody.that would be interesting.
A couple who wishes to become married must allow two weeks to elapse between getting their marriage license and their wedding. At no point during this period may either of them appear on a television show that deals in any way with their marriage. That deals with attention-seeking celebrity marriages and marriage reality shows. It means it's harder to elope, too, but I don't know that that's a bad idea. I suppose I'm actually fairly conservative about the purpose of marriage, but liberal about relationships.
Perhaps I've offended somebody.that would be interesting.
(Split into multiple comments due to length)
Date: 2003-07-31 12:59 am (UTC)... but for the time being, let's say that the word means something like "the union of a man and a woman in the eyes of the law and society for the purpose of forming a family." In that case, you're correct that "gay marriage" does not fall under this definition, and is indeed something of an oxymoron...but are you right in saying that it "is not the same thing as" marriage?
To which my comment is:
I think that from a sociological and psychological viewpoint, you will find that heterosexual and homosexual life-sharing commitments will turn out to be very different in their day-to-day operation. I will cheerfully stipulate that this is an opinion based in ignorance as I have yet to participate in a life-sharing commitment. I base this conclusion on the assumption that men and women, while equal, are unique and differ fundamentally in the way they think, feel, and experience things. (I am aware that research bears this out at least partially.) A committed relationship where there is fundamental similarity between the two partners in this way will of course be different than a relationship where there is mutual differentiation.
Aside from that, I think you'll find that there is some legislative value in the distinction, even for those who are the strongest advocates of these unions. For one thing, it makes it far more difficult for legislation to be challenged in court based on the long-standing definition of marriage, and far more easy to apply sensible precedents. Similarly, it would render much less complicated the procedure of adapting things like divorce statues to reflect the existence of this second kind of civil union.
Hmm.
Date: 2003-07-31 05:52 am (UTC)As an utterly random example: I am incapable of putting away silverware. To both of the significant partners in my life fell/falls this particular task. For "putting away the silverware" you may substitute any number of other quirks, beliefs, opinions and feelings. One may, perhaps, generalize out that heterosexual couples and homosexual couples may typically find different balance points, but the same is true of any other sociological grouping. Couples from Spain are likely to be different than couples from Poland. Does this mean that their marriages should be classified differently?
As for finding legislative value in the distinction, I both agree and disagree. Yes, if we make "Gay Marriage" into a Civil Union (with all of the standard marriage trappings), you can neatly duck around any "defense of marriage acts" that may be written. However, it also puts gay couples in a different category than straight couples, and part of the entire point of this push is to get over that silly distinction. A committed relationship between consenting adults should be the same no matter who the adults in question are.
Re: Hmm.
Date: 2003-07-31 05:58 am (UTC)Re: Hmm.
Date: 2003-07-31 09:31 am (UTC)Well-put. To emphasize: Gabby claimed that heterosexual and homosexual life-sharing commitments will turn out to be very different in their day-to-day operation. Even if this is true, and even if it's true that hetero- and homosexual life-sharing commitments differ in ways that heretosexual commitments do not differ among themselves (and I'll say explicitly that I very much doubt that that is true), I cannot see how hetero- and homosexual commitments will differ in any way relevant to the issue of "lifetime commitment for the purpose of forming a family."
As far as the question of ducking the difficult issues: to my mind, part of the purpose of the gay-marriage movement is to face the difficult issues head-on and overcome them.
Re: Hmm.
Date: 2003-07-31 10:19 am (UTC)Re: Hmm.
Date: 2003-07-31 10:35 am (UTC)I should note here that, should it not be possible for the gay-marriage movement in the short term to "overcome them" - which I am reading here as "overcoming the resistance to gay-marriage, and the various real-world implications of it" - this could be a huge mistake from a tactical point of view. This battle has very much been one of influencing public perception. If the public perception suddenly of their demands changes from reasonable (e.g. equal status) to unreasonable (e.g. unmerited special treatment), for instance, people who are content to have a "live and let live" attitude will suddenly start to rethink their approval. (Some of this is discussed in the article I wound up confirming my memory of the poll on last night.)
Of particular interest in this regard: despite the targeting of "Fundamentalist Christians" as the big bad boogeyman preventing the full societal accommodation and validation of homosexuality, my (admittedly limited) experience is that (broadly) people who endorse "traditional values" and/or ar doctrinaire right-wingers are strongly against it, people answering roughly to the description of "liberal academic" and/or are doctrinaire left-wingers are strongly for it; most other broad categorizations of people may have leanings to one direction or the other, but fail to register as a unified bloc.
It is one thing, tactics-wise to depict religion as bigoted, judgmental, intellectually inferior or what have you - this has been happening with various degrees of desrvedness since at least as far back as Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" - but it is another thing tactically speaking, to depict Joe and Jane Sixpack this way when they have reservations they feel are legitimate.
I can see why it would be ideologicaly superior for the gay marriage movement to take the "total victory" approach, but the fact that this approach allows for little if any public difference of opinion as legitimate may be too big of a hurdle for it to overcome.
Re: Hmm.
Date: 2003-07-31 03:07 pm (UTC)