My Two Cents: The Evolution Of Gay Marriage
Otto at The Otto Show on Feb 21 2008 at 4:35 pm | Filed under: Activism, Feature Article
A recent opinion piece in the St Paul Pioneer Press making a case for gay marriage deserves some reaction. Here it is.
1. The article describes opposition to gay marriage as a “slippery slope” toward state-sponsored discrimination. As a life-long resident of Minnesota, I for one cannot recall a time when gay marriage was ever a legally recognized union. Doesn’t “slippery slope” indicate a slide into something or away from something? How does maintaining a time-old definition of marriage represent any kind of slippery slope? The only thing that resembles a slippery slope is the sort of renaissance that homosexuality has been going through in recent years. Society is not moving toward discrimination or oppression of homosexuals but rather, moving toward openness, tolerance and acceptance of it, wrapped in protectionism. It’s in our news, it’s in our politics, it’s in our culture…the problem isn’t that society is moving in a direction against homosexuals but rather that homosexuals are challenging society to make changes. A slippery-slope doesn’t exist as far as how the authors describe it.
2. As evidence of this, the article plunges right into slapping Minnesotans with a guilt trip over not including same-sex relationships as qualifications for marriage. In doing so, it reads as if the fundamentals of the debate have already been settled and now we just need to capitulate on the procedural details.
3. The article attempts to play on sympathies to sell it’s message, again as if the core issues about marriage have already been resolved and society has simply accepted the idea that there is no difference between men and women.
Here is an example that I find interesting. While summarizing the history of ‘Tim and Eric’, the article nonchalantly states, “They drew up powers of attorney, health care directives and other financial and legal documents in case the unthinkable happened. When their daughter Tess was born in 2003, they updated their paperwork to ensure that she was protected, too.”
This is interesting in two ways. One, it mentions the little girl as “their daughter” and says nothing more about it. The authors (one being the aforementioned ‘Tim’) simply expect the readers to gloss over this without question. Oh, their daughter. Nothing about that would lead someone to stop and read it again.
Two, this inadvertently stabs at the heart of the marriage issue and why society deems it important to designate marriage as a union between a man and a woman. That carefully-crafted inclusion (and exclusion) highlights the importance of identifying the differences between genders.
Since the article doesn’t spell it out, we could assume that Tim and Eric defied all biological possibilities and actually conceived a child together. More realistically, one of the two men (we don’t know which because identifying that would strip away the intentionally perceived normalcy of the situation) is the biological father. Another possibility is that neither is and the girl is adopted to the couple, though being she was born to them, that’s probably not the case.
Male and female relationships are honored by marriage because they have societal significance. They represent the building blocks of humanity and the growth of society. Government isn’t in the marriage business so the wedded couple can have less legal entanglements. It does not issue marriage licenses because society has some obsession with making people happy by endorsing their love. Society supports civil marriage because a mother and a father producing children is the intended standard for ensuring population growth and stability in the next generation.
Recognizing this and honoring it is not about discriminating against anyone. There are guidelines and requirements to getting a marriage license as there are for getting any kind of license. You can’t take a same-gender partner and demand that you get a license that’s intended strictly for opposite-gender partners. Just like you can’t get a duck hunting license and then demand that you be able to shoot deer with it. You can’t get a Class D drivers license and then demand to be allowed to drive an 18-wheeler with it because you can’t pass the Class B test. The deer hunter is not being discriminated against. The semi-driver is not being discriminated against. The same-sex couple is not being discriminated against.
People opposed to gay marriage aren’t out there trying to find ways to hurt homosexuals. I didn’t take joy in reading about Tim’s loss or the struggles they went through. But those tribulations are hardly justifications for changing a purposeful institution into one of no purpose. Tim’s partner apparently missed his initials on one of their legal forms and that caused problems for Tim in his role as ‘husband’. That may be a good argument against the complexities of the legal system but it is not an argument for gay marriage. Suppose Eric had missed signing the marriage license? Who in society can we blame then?
If one really wants to make a convincing case for gay marriage, then that should begin at the beginning where the debate still exists, not jump ahead either based on the idea that everyone has written off gender differences or based on a desire to guilt people into coming on board, by writing a tear-jerking story ladened with “it’s your fault that this happened” rhetoric.
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