The anti-gay right knows how to play the victim card, complaining of bigotry against them at every turn. And the left knows how to make them feel that way.
It is possible to oppose same-sex marriage without holding homosexuals in disdain, but that’s a very fine line. David Blankenhorn manages to stick the landing. His opposition to the North Carolina amendment to ban any relationship rights for same-sex couples is the model of how to oppose marriage equality, yet show some respect for the problem that same-sex couples have under the law.
I, of course, disagree with his opposition to equal marriage rights. But Blankenhorn has shown what bigotry isn’t.
19 Comments for “What Bigotry Isn’t”
posted by Houndentenor on
“It is possible to oppose same-sex marriage without holding homosexuals in disdain, but that’s a very fine line.”
No, it’s really not. And that’s the problem for social conservatives. People can see through their bigotry.
posted by Anton Gully on
Yes, it really is.
I’m straight. I’m so straight I have no idea how to decorate a home, and I am unable to communicate with a woman on a meaningful basis, or any basis for the last 15 years or so. So, hopefully you can appreciate I have some experience here.
First off, I don’t think anyone should discriminate against gays. I love the gays. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been carried home from a pub, too drunk to look after myself at the time, and been welcomed into a gay man’s bed. They are SO sharing.
But gay men should not be allowed to marry.
It would be a sin.
Why eff up a decent, organized culture with all that petty madness?
Nobody in their right mind should be allowed to marry, and arguably nobody in their right mind does. You get married when your head is full of pixie mice and the most important thing on your mind is not vomiting on your clothes instead of saying “I do”. Love is madness. The madness fades, but the love fades quicker. Or vice versa, if that ticks your boxes. To re-cap: love fades, madness fades, partners linger.
Kids are great, and until we replace them with something better, probably Jack Russell mutants with opposable thumbs, they are our future. But anybody can have kids. Gay, straight, or in-between – if there is an in-between I’d like to hear about it, for research purposes.
If a couple is a stable organization with which to raise a kid, why isn’t a triple, or a quadruple considered more stable? A couple with one feckless idiot is a horrible place to raise a child. A quintuple with one idiot is just a stable quadruple waiting to happen. Stupid politicians keep pushing the stable family propaganda while breezing past scandals and infamy in their own column inches.
Gays, if you want to ape the ground-swinging, mouth-breathing straights who choose to get married, then good luck to you – but you ARE idiots. Examine the statistics. Divorce is on the rise and marriage on the decline. The last time anything like this happened was the 70s when heels were rising to the sky and boob tubes diving towards the belly button.
This is the world you will inherit. On the plus side, Jack Russells with opposable thumbs.
posted by markanthonydog on
Well put. Striking how few Anti-SSM advocates ever write or speak like this.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The heart of Blankenhorn’s intellectual/legal/moral problem is found in his own words [clarifying bracketed language mine]:
We are convinced that these two ideas – marriage as society’s most pro-child institution that seeks to bond [straight, opposite-gender only] mothers and fathers to their [biological and adopted] children, and humane recognition for same-sex couples – stand best when they stand together. If you wonder why the push for gay marriage is so rapidly gaining ground across our nation, especially among young people, we don’t think you need to look much further than this tragic social dynamic, in which support for [straight, opposite-gender only] mother-father marriage appears to many to have merged with either overt antagonism or cold indifference regarding the actual lives and needs of gay and lesbian couples and their [biological and adopted] children.
The problem withBlankenhorn’s position is that it claims to be focused on protecting and meeting the needs of children, but if and only if the children are being raised by straight, opposite-gender only parents. His position is not tied to the supposed unique benefits of biological parenting, because it encourages marriages between straight, opposite-gender parents of adopted children as well as biological children. His position is not tied to family of origin, because it encourages marriages between straight, opposite-gender parents who have remarried and are raising children in so-called “blended” families — children and step-children alike. He presents no evidence that being raised by straight, opposite-gender parents is superior to being raised by same-gender parents. No credible evidence exists, and the best evidence contradicts that idea.
Blankenhorn testified in the Prop 8 trial. Among other things, he testified that:
posted by Houndentenor on
If they are not based on evidence or reason, then what else could they be based on besides bigotry? We saw this in the Prop 8 case. They simply have no argument against gay rights. It’s why the ads against gay rights always rely on fear and emotions.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Sorry about the format hash in the immediately preceding post. Here’s another try at it:
The heart of Blankenhorn’s intellectual/legal/moral problem is found in his own words [bracketed language mine]:
The problem with Blankenhorn’s position is that it claims to be focused on protecting and meeting the needs of children, but it does so if and only if the children are being raised by straight, opposite-gender only parents.
His position is not tied to the supposed unique benefits of biological parenting, because it encourages marriages between straight, opposite-gender parents of adopted children as well as biological children. His position is not tied to family of origin, because it encourages marriages between straight, opposite-gender parents who have remarried and are raising children in so-called “blended” families — children and step-children alike. He presents no evidence that being raised by straight, opposite-gender parents is superior to being raised by same-gender parents. No credible evidence exists, and the best evidence contradicts that idea.
Blankenhorn testified in the Prop 8 trial. Among other things, he testified that:
Now, given all the benefits he sees in favor of extending marriage equality, what rationale is there for Blankenhorn to oppose marriage equality? That’s the case that he doesn’t make — how and why marriage equality would harm the “institution of marriage”.
Blankenhorn’s position, truth be told, is tied to nothing other than the idea that marriage should be reserved to straight, opposite-gender parents because marriage should be reserved to straight, opposite-gender parents.
Ted Olson’s comments on Blakenhorn’s Prop 8 testimony put it best: “They define marriage as a man and a woman. They call that the institution of marriage. So if you let a man marry a man and a woman marry a woman, it would de-institutionalize marriage. That is the same as saying you are deinstitutionalizing the right to vote when you let women have it. It’s a game. It’s a tautology. They’re saying, ‘this is the definition. You’re going to change the definition by allowing people access that don’t have it now, and that would change it so that people who currently have access won’t want it any more because it’s changed.’ This is all nonsense. They are not proving that. This is a syllogism that falls apart. The major premise, minor premise and conclusion are empty.”
I don’t think that Blankenhorn is a bigot, in the sense that his opposition to marriage equality is based on anti-gay animus. But whether or not he is a bigot, his positions are not supported by evidence or reason.
posted by Mark on
Tom’s comments are well-put. Blankenhorn (as he earlier showed in partnering with Jonathan Rauch in urging a federal civil unions law) isn’t a bigot, and he should be praised for coming out against the NC amendment. At the same time, his perspective on marriage doesn’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny–as David Boeis’ brutal cross-examination of him during the Prop 8 trial exposed.
posted by Jorge on
“It is possible to oppose same-sex marriage without holding homosexuals in disdain, but that’s a very fine line.”
–No, it’s really not. And that’s the problem for social conservatives. People can see through their bigotry.
It’s not possible or it’s not a very fine line?
I don’t think it’s a fine line, and I don’t put as fine a point on the marriage question. I expect any modern American politician or leader, including those on the right, to treat “aiding gay and lesbian couples and their families” as an issue requiring serious and thoughtful attention. (Although I probably consider the individual level much more important.) This is not a difficult demand to pass at all, but I would enforce it.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
“It is possible to oppose same-sex marriage without holding homosexuals in disdain, but that’s a very fine line.”
and
I have a different view. I think that animus (or, as David puts it, disdain) toward gays and lesbians is an essential element of bigotry. I think that it is possible to oppose marriage equality without bigotry.
While many of the so-called “leading lights” of the anti-marriage movement (e.g. Bryan Fischer, Matt Barber, Peter LaBarbera, Mike Heath, Tony Perkins, to name a few) seeth with animus toward gays and lesbians (e.g. Fischer’s recasting of marriage equality as “sodomy marriage”), others do not show signs of animus and yet oppose marriage equality.
Many who oppose marriage equality do so on the basis of religious conviction. Religious opposition to marriage equality — opposition based on a firm and unyielding conviction that God ordained marriage for “one man, one woman, for life”, and no other purpose — is often not tied to animus toward gays and lesbians. Religious conviction may lead in strange and illogical directions — e.g. evangelical insistence on the “sanctity of marriage” while at the same time steadfastly denying that marriage is a “sacrament”, and Roman Catholic abandonment of the line between “sacramental” (i.e. religious) marriage and civil marriage, denying the distinction on which the Church refuses to recognize remarriage after divorce as valid marriage. But a firm and unyielding conviction that God ordained marriage for “one man, one woman, for life” doesn’t necessarily equate with animus.
So it is with those who oppose marriage equality because of an “idee fixe” — focus on a single, dominant idea or principle so powerful that all else — facts, logic, reason – fall before it. I’d put Blankenhorn in this category. Blankenhorn is obsessed, it seems to me (based on a reading of his book “The Future of Marriage” a few years ago and his testimony in the Prop8 trial) with the critical importance of biological fatherhood. He’s built his entire career around that single idea. His obsession with the dominant principle has led in him bizarre directions (he once tried to argue that polygamy is a form of one-man, one-woman marriage, because the man is married to each of the many women who are his wives only once) and has led him into world of thought separated from reality — as when he conjured up the conceptual construct of “the institution of marriage”, a construct that is divorced from the reality of the millions upon millions of marriages that actually exist in the world. But, like many (perhaps most) whose opposition to marriage equality is based on an “idee fixe”, Blankenhorn doesn’t seem to display any particular animus toward gays and lesbians.
Neither unyielding religious conviction nor “idee fixe” are susceptable to facts, logic or reason. I think that we have to accept that, and accept that roughly a third of our population will never embrace marriage equality.
It is the rest — the people who are open to experience — who we should be trying to bring over to our side. I think that we’ve been doing that, and doing it well, based on the polling trends of the last couple of decades.
And, I suspect, that animus toward gays and lesbians — culturally bred, culturally supported — can be overcome. Our world is repleat with examples of men and women full of disdain for gays and lesbians who have come over to the side of equality based on experience with gay and lesbian family members, friends, co-workers and neighbors. That’s the lesson behind the evidence that suggests that a person who knows and likes a gay or lesbian is significantly more likely to support equality than one who does not, and is probably the driving factor behind the generation differences in equality acceptance.
To my way of looking at things, animus is less an obstacle than a closed mind.
posted by Doug on
Deep religious conviction is not a free pass for bigotry. Church dogma is not infallible.
posted by Houndentenor on
Churches can’t even get their own congregations or clergy to live by the rules they want for everyone else.
posted by Jorge on
and Roman Catholic abandonment of the line between “sacramental” (i.e. religious) marriage and civil marriage, denying the distinction on which the Church refuses to recognize remarriage after divorce as valid marriage.
Huh? Could you elaborate on that? My understanding is that Catholic churches will only refuse to recognize remarriages after divorce if the first marriage was Catholic. Yet the Church goes in a new direction–alleging social harms and harms to the natural order–when it opposes legal recognition of gay marriages.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
My understanding is that Catholic churches will only refuse to recognize remarriages after divorce if the first marriage was Catholic.
I imagine that canon law may grant exceptions to the general rule, but the Catechism of the Catholic Church holds that a marriage between two baptized Christians is sacramental, whether or not Catholic:
I should note that the Church recognizes all Orthodox and most Protestant (LDS and Unitarian baptisms are not recognized, for example, because the baptisms are not Trinitarian) baptisms as valid for all Church purposes.
Yet the Church goes in a new direction–alleging social harms and harms to the natural order–when it opposes legal recognition of gay marriages.
Yes, it makes those claims, but it also takes a similar position with respect to divorce and remarriage. Again quoting the Catechism:
The theological claims with respect to the two are remarkably similar.
The difference — the “new direction”, if you will — is non-theological.
The Church draws a reasonably clear demarcation between sacramental marriage and civil marriage in the case of remarriage after divorce (the Church is not fighting civil laws permitting divorce after marriage, for example). Because of the demarcation, the Church is free to recognize some marriages as valid, but not others.
The Church, however, does not draw a similar demarcation when it comes to same-sex marriage, treating civil marriage equality as if civil same-sex marriages were sacramental marriages.
posted by Jorge on
(the Church is not fighting civil laws permitting divorce after marriage, for example).
I find that extremely difficult to believe.
Indeed, even a cursory bit of research on the internet reveals it vehemently opposed lifting Chile’s ban on divorce in 2004. The Church comes to tolerate some reforms that have already reached the point of no return, but I cannot imagine any reform that even remotely legitimizes divorce or makes it easier that the Church would not have opposed.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
You are probably right about that, Jorge. I’m don’t follow the Church’s political activities outside the United States, and with respect to divorce, remarriage/adultery, the United States has clearly, as you say, “reached the point of no return”.
In fact, we’ve gotten to the point where the anti-marriage forces, supposedly in support of Christian values, have enshrined an non-Christian definition of marriage (“one man, one woman” without “for life”) into constitutions all over the country.
posted by TomJeffersonIII on
‘I support civil unions, but not gay marriage’ MAY be a working short-term compromise to provide short-term/more immediate help to gay couples in more conservative States.
The problem is (1) many of the State ballot measures that ban gay marriage also ban civil unions. People pushing for the amendments often lie about this particular point and, frankly, I have not seen too many of these conservatives ‘Yes, to civil unions, no to gay marriage’ really make a fuss about it.
A Federal Civil Unions bill? Well, that is not a horrible idea, it provide some immediate relief for same-sex couples, but is it a serious cause or just being floated around so that people who oppose marriage equality, can sleep better at night?
posted by Jay on
It is difficult to give Blankenhorn and Marquardt much credit for their opposition to the North Carolina amendment. They are not opposed to it because it causes harm to gay people; they are opposed to it because it harms the “marriage movement,” by which they mean to movement to deprive gay people of equal marriage rights. In addition, it seems a smart career move, and for Blankenhorn that is always the paramount consideration, especially not that he realizes he may have chosen the wrong career move in joining the crusade against gay marriage. See the blog by Claude Summers at glbtq.com. He isn’t impressed with the editorial either.
posted by Barry Deutsch on
David, your blog post makes it sound as if the editorial was written by David Blankenhorn alone. It was actually co-written by Blankenhorn and Elizabeth Marquardt; not crediting her for her work is a mistake.
I’m an occasional guest-blogger on Elizabeth and David’s blog, and I think that this editorial represents a real improvement in their views. (Although they might claim that their views haven’t changed, the fact is, they haven’t written any editorials like this in the past.) I actually have hope that in time one or both of them will become pro-equal marriage.
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