An excellent and enlightening discussion has broken out over gay marriage between Rod Dreher at Beliefnet and Damon Linker at TNR. (In order, the posts are here, here, here, here, and here) Andrew Sullivan weighs in at length, and does a lot of the heavy lifting to add a gay perspective to the discussion. There are only three additional points I want to add.
First, and most obviously (and therefore most in need of being pointed out) this is a debate between two heterosexual men about gay equality. That, by itself, is important. Women have historically been more comfortable discussing homosexuality than straight men, but that seems to be changing for the better. Some of the debate focuses on Linker's characterization of Dreher as having a "fixation" on homosexuality. This is unfortunate because it is a distraction about a personal and subjective matter. I am happy to set aside that issue and accept that Dreher simply wants to engage the debate, and good for him. However, it is certainly worth noting, as Dreher does on his two primary posts, that (whatever his own feelings) his comments section heats up whenever he mentions "anything related to homosexuality." Why does Dreher need to warn his commenters (in bold): "Please watch how you discuss and debate this topic in the comboxes." That's not Dreher's "fixation,' but it's certainly not unusual, and if it doesn't make Linker's point, it makes some point worth thinking about.
Second, Dreher makes a not uncommon argument that gay supporters are being unfair to opponents:
"By casting the ordinary defense of normative Christian doctrine about homosexual relations as though it were a sort of mental illness, the pro-SSM side engages the issue not in a fair-minded discussion and debate about legitimate issues related to gay marriage and the normalization of homosexuality in our society, but as an ideological war to be won by any means necessary. Any critique of the pro-SSM side is to be treated as a sign of pathology."
This language should ring a bell for those of us who are gay, something heterosexuals might miss. In fact, for many decades, homosexuality was not just a rhetorical "sort of mental illness" or a mere "sign of pathology," it was mental illness and pathology itself. Lesbians and gay men were put in actual mental institutions, were subjected to forced "cures" for their disease. When those who argue against gay equality are subject to that kind of action, Dreher's complaint will ring a little less ironically - and a little less hollow.
Finally, Dreher makes the point that:
"This stuff matters. It matters a lot. If you are a gay person, you know how much it matters to you. Why should anybody be surprised that it matters to traditional Christians, and for reasons that go far beyond any supposed anti-gay animus?"
There is, of course, a difference between how this matters to gay people and how it matters to traditional Christians. It matters to gay people because the secular law treats us differently - provides us both fewer rights and in many cases, none at all for our relationships - than heterosexuals take for granted. It matters to traditional Christians, not because they are denied anything, but because civil equality is a different rule than their sacred texts seem to support. There is, of course, dispute even among Christians about that, which is why Dreher has to qualify "Christian." But even if this view of scripture were universal, or (as in the Catholic hierarchy), authoritatively defined by a single leader, Americans live in a pluralistic nation of motley religious and irreligious views. Traditional Christians have every right to make whatever case they believe, but have to know that arguments from religious authority will only go so far in a debate about the civil law.
It is the collapse of the secular arguments against gay equality, one by one, that has left religious arguments standing alone. The fact that "traditional" Christians have to identify themselves now reveals they are appealing, not to "religion," but to a particular approach to religion that is, itself, part of America's religious pluralism. After all, Dreher first weighed in on this issue in response to a post at Andrew Sullivan's site about how a gay man's reference to his husband at their Catholic parish was accepted as unremarkable.
15 Comments for “Straight Debate”
posted by Regan DuCasse on
I remember having this conversation with several people who said they were Christian and others who had only this singular objection to gay marriage citing how much it wasn’t accepted the world over.
To the first point I reminded the group that many religions don’t accept autopsy, or blood and organ donation or sharing of bodily tissues.
In particular in our culture, Jehovah’s Witnesses. However a JW would be hard pressed and VERY wrong to ban such medical or scientific interventions for the rest of society. They also would be wrong to do so exclusively against, say…the asexual.
The point is, we have accepted certain people and practices because the perception or actual risks were outweighed by the benefits to society.
But what if there had been no bravery or acceptance and even in the earliest stages of many things, there are unknowns.
We have precedence in Western countries like Spain and Canada to inform us on how marriage equality affects an entire nation.
We have undeniable proof on the benefits of equal protection and justice on previously suspect minorities.
Homosexuality isn’t a cultural invention. Religion is.
Homosexuality is universal to every culture known to man, ancient or modern.
So what this really is about is channeling the positive aspects of marriage onto another group of people otherwise excluded from it.
Thieves, the incarcerated, the condemed and the adulterous all can marry once and again based on the unifying and socially maturing aspects marriage itself has.
There are no disqualifying attributes or human conditions that ban one adult from marrying another except for primary kinship status.
If one believed in the qualities and vows of marriage, then there really isn’t a reason to ban gay people.
And in this Dreher feels marriage so weak, that inclusion of gay couples would break it altogether?
How utterly sad for gay couples. But definitively remarkable for how forked his logic is.
posted by BobN on
Dreher chooses to delete posts he doesn’t like. Certainly his prerogative. He has deleted posts comparing him to segregationists (his characterization of the missing post). He does this because the comparison is insulting and doesn’t contribute to the “civility” of the discussion. There is a poster who asserts that gay people — people with whom he is engaged in “civil” discussion on the thread — are, quite literally, possessed by demons. Literal demonization of one’s opponents is, apparently, not insulting.
I suppose it’s good that Dreher is having the “debate”.
posted by John Howard on
It is the collapse of the secular arguments against gay equality, one by one, that has left religious arguments standing alone.
David, I know my argument isn’t the tallest and most visible argument out there, but it sure is secular, and it sure is standing, so maybe now it finally will get some attention: We shouldn’t allow same-sex marriage because we shouldn’t allow same-sex conception, and all marriages should continue to protect the couple’s right to attempt to conceive offspring together. Conceiving a child should simply be a right that people only have with someone of the other sex. In order to preserve the right to reproduce with our own unmodified genes, we have to prohibit attempting to create people any other way. Equating the right to use unmodified genes with the “right” to use modified genes negates the right to use unmodified genes, by declaring that being forced or coerced into using modified genes is not unequal, because using modified genes is equal. Even if we put that logic aside (or, even if that logic isn’t as logical as it seems to me) – we simply shouldn’t allow same-sex conception because it is way too unsafe and expensive and unwise.
posted by Rob on
Hey John Howard, instead of repeating non sequiturs, how about you answer back to my reply?
posted by David Link on
John Howard:
I realize you are quite committed to this theory, but I don’t see it as anything even heterosexuals would take seriously. Single people can procreate, and even if laws prohibited assistance in that (and that’s not anything I see any stomach for whatever in the political realm), women, in particular, and specifically lesbians, will always have the turkey-baster route.
Moreover, same-sex couples and their children have fully moved into the mainstream community in many places. Here in suburban Sacramento it’s the rare school that doesn’t see and deal with children who have same-sex couples. They are at the soccer games and the PTA and fundraisers and even on the school boards — not to mention, of course, city councils, county boards of supervisors, the legislature and the Governor’s office.
With their children.
So while I understand your argument, I mostly don’t address it because I think the issue of (you should pardon the pun) issue is pretty well decided in the culture itself. Sex, procreation and children are with us for both same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples, married and not (though preferably married).
posted by John Howard on
I don’t think you do understand my argument, because it has nothing to do with turkey basters and couples raising children. I’m talking about conceiving children together, using the couple’s own genes, to produce a biologically related child. My argument is that all marriages should have that right, but same-sex couples should not. You either have to say that same-sex couples should have the right – right now, April 2009 – to attempt same-sex conception or that marriages shouldn’t have a right to conceive children. Or, you could agree with me that making equal conception rights the goal is counter-productive and harmful, and endorse the Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise in order to get equal protections to real couples that need it right now.
posted by esurience on
John Howard,
People don’t take your argument seriously because it’s obvious sophistry.
If your concern was truly to prevent certain forms of genetic engineering, then you’d just propose that and phrase it in neutral scientific language and be done with it. But you’ve tacked on this anti-gay element to it, which obviously weakens your position in the eyes of people who support equal treatment under the law for gays and lesbians.
Why would you weaken your position and place yourself in opposition to a certain constituency which is growing in power (that being people who favor marriage for gays and lesbians)? The only possible reason is that prohibiting marriage for gays and lesbians is your end goal, and this “egg and sperm” nonsense is just a means to an end for you.
The conflation of marriage and procreation rights doesn’t serve your stated purpose. We get it. It’s obvious. And you should move on to something else now.
posted by John Howard on
There are three or four end goals: the primary one is preserving everyone’s equal conception rights and stopping a eugenic Brave New World of genetically engineered people that Bobby and Rob have admitted is their primary goal (not SSM or gay rights, but GE rights – thanks you two for being honest). That one could count as two goals, since preserving everyone’s conception rights means more than just stopping genetic engineering, it also means protecting people from being coerced into using donor gametes or from being sterilized, so merely stopping GE isn’t enough to accomplish that goal, we also need to affirm everyone’s right to marry and procreate with their natural gametes. The second goal is ending the same-sex marriage debate and the culture wars so that people can get to work on real problems that are threatening the world right now. The third goal is getting equal protections to the thousands of same-sex couples that need and deserve equal protections, including federal recognition and recognition in all 50 states.
Same-sex marriage is in absolute conflict with all of those goals. Civil Unions can get all of the rights you want without affecting marriage or conception rights.
There certainly is sophistry going on here, but it is clearly being perpetrated by people who claim to want hospital visitation rights but turn out to want the right to attempt same-sex conception. The whole claim of “equal rights” for same-sex couples must be dropped, it means requiring genetic engineering and giving up natural conception rights. But by dropping that claim, we can make great strides toward equal protections.
Which will it be? Continue to demand equal rights and GE and bring down everyone’s conception rights to the same level as a same-sex couple’s, or accept an Egg and Sperm law that preserves marriage and natural conception and allows for CU’s and equal protections in all other areas right now?
posted by Mack on
Hello –
Mr. Howard, I can understand your concerns about genetic engineering, and they are valid, even if I am not in full agreement with you. Nevertheless, your conflation of this concern with that of same-sex marriage is peculiar. A desire to improve our children works out today in all sorts of ways from ‘baby einstien’ products to ballet lessons. To imagine that opposite-sex couples will seek only the traditional random sperm+egg method of conception, without the possibility of enhancing those genes to produce improved children flies in the face of any reasonable expectation.
Indeed, some limited approaches to this in the form of screening for genetic conditions already exists. A company in California recently retracted its offer to screen sperm and embryos for desired traits (as opposed to removing ones that might dismay or alarm a parent such as down’s syndrome).
If, as you indicate, you are truly concerned with preventing rampant genetic engineering of future human generations, you should concentrate on that. This is not a concern of same-sex couples alone, even if one grants your (debatable) premise that same-sex couples would choose such a reproductive method when opposite-sex couples would not.
I am likewise baffled by your statement that we need to ‘settle the culture war’ and get on with ‘real problems’. If this is not a ‘real problem’, why do YOU just not move on, and debate whatever you consider to be a ‘real problem.’ If, on the other hand, the debate over same-sex marriage is such a real problem, why would you raise this point? Obviously, you think it’s a real problem, just as I do, even (especially?) as we disagree on the most desirable outcome.
If same-sex couples bring no greater chance of genetically engineered children than opposite-sex couples, the obvious way of granting those rights and protections you yourself admit are needed to same-sex couples is to extend marriage to them – essentially co-opting the gay population into the existing cultural paradigm. Problem solved.
Your concerns about the genetic heritage of the human species is better approached directly as such a concern. You cannot ensure that heritage by nattering about lollipops, the continuing extinction of the fountain pen, the threatening replacement of top-opening washing machines for side-opening ones any more than you can by opposing same-sex marriage.
Let us suppose, for just a moment and the sake of argument, that you have won. Completely. Although same-sex couples cannot wed, they can be the recipients of Civil Unions, which bestow, by law, all the rights and privileges of marriage. How does this prevent in any way the horror of same-sex conception, whatever you mean by that phrase? You’ve just granted that a same-sex couple has all the rights a married couple would, so … that must mean that same-sex couple has all the rights a married couple would, including the right to conception. Game over.
I’m sorry, Mr. Howard, but there is simply nothing to your argument.
Nothing.
Mack
posted by John Howard on
Mack, there are three parts to my Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise. The first part is the Egg and Sperm law that would prohibit creating children any way other than combining the sperm of a man and the egg of a woman. This is similar the language of Missouri’s Stem Cell Initiative and anti-cloning Amendment 2 of 2006, and also similar to the language recommended by the President’s Council on Bioethics. The “man and woman” language is necessary to establish legally what is already true biologically – that the only way we can procreate with unmodified gametes is by combining our gamete with someone’s of the other sex, so if we prohibit genetic engineering, we are enforcing male-female conception. OK? The first part of the Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise is to prohibit use of modified gametes, by everyone, in order to prevent the Brave New World of eugenics and designer babies and stop the huge costly and intrusive government entitlement program that would follow if we allowed the use of modified gametes. That’s what would prohibit “the horrors of same-sex conception.”
The second part of the Compromise, the trade in return for giving up same-sex conception rights, is Federal recognition for state Civil Unions that are defined as “marriage minus conception rights.” This is so that same-sex couples can be easily given all the rights of marriage without giving them the right to conceive children together.
The third part is hopefully not necessary, but certainly can’t hurt and would help to clarify the logic of the compromise; affirm that every marriage has the right to attempt to conceive children together with the couple’s own genes. This would prevent a marriage from being coerced or forced into using improved genes instead of their own.
The idea behind tying the Egg and Sperm law to the marriage debate is to get the Egg and Sperm law passed, as it has been ignored by Congress for 5 years now and I don’t see any hope of it passing before people come to accept same-sex conception and genetic modification with a shrug as if there was no way to stop it, and that would be a terrible terrible thing that would mean we’d never be able to care for existing people like we should because we’d be diverting so much energy and money into creating perfect babies for rich people, creating a gene-rich/gene-poor divide that would tear the world apart and keep the Jihad against imperialist eugenic selfish America going strong for decades. So, the hope is to get rank-and-file gay couples to agree to the Compromise in order to achieve equal protections right away, since they generally aren’t interested in same-sex conception.
posted by John Howard on
Also Mack, I think that a man not being able to conceive with another man is NOT a real problem we need to be diverting funds and resources to, whereas the fact that we are diverting funds and resources to it, and there is no law against it, and labs are about to start creating GE’d designer babies, is a real problem.
posted by Rob on
I understand John Howard’s squeamishness about engineering the perfect child, and at least partly share it – though I’m not sure that means it shouldn’t be allowed, just that it needs to be thought through.
But I’m really not sure what it has to do with the issue of same-sex marriage. Similarly, even though I live in “freedom-denying” Europe, I don’t know of anyone who’s been denied “conception rights” – although I have heard of chemical castration being used as part of a sentence in the US in sexual offences.
Marriage doesn’t equate to the right to conceive, or even the right to have children – both of those have happened within and without marriage for as long as formal marriage in any shape has existed.
And the statement that “every marriage has the right to attempt to conceive children together with the couple’s own genes” leaves the question, what of those heterosexual people who are unable to conceive, through infertility or age? Many of those seek the consolation / joy of marriage – is it to be denied them?
Unless we are to outlaw non-marital conception – and what would be done to the offspring? – I think that a call to the exclusive association of marriage with child-rearing is surely to follow a false path.
posted by John Howard on
I understand John Howard’s squeamishness about engineering the perfect child, and at least partly share it – though I’m not sure that means it shouldn’t be allowed, just that it needs to be thought through.
I’m more than just sqeamish about engineering the perfect child, Rob, I’m also excited about the benefits of banning it that it presents us. To name just one, it’d allow for same-sex couples to achieve equal protections much much faster than demanding the right to engineer a child would, which is what you are all doing now that I have brought it to your attention. No one here has come as close as you to saying we should ban genetic engineering and same-sex conception yet, everyone has clutched that option very tightly, without thinking of what can be gained by giving up that option (or perhaps just not personally needing or wanting any of the things that can be gained, like federal recognition and CU’s in all 50 states). Why can’t anyone just say that engineering a child for a same-sex couple shouldn’t be allowed until it has been thought through? It doesn’t make sense that you want it allowed in advance, and then possibly prohibited later after we think about it, when it can’t even be done now.
And Rob, in Europe, siblings are denied conception rights. Uncles are denied conception rights with their nieces. Same-sex couples should also be denied conception rights. However, siblings have conceived, and uncles with their nieces have had children, but they haven’t ever been legally married. Being married means you are allowed to conceive together. Infertile married couples are allowed to conceive together, just like any married couple. Being allowed to conceive has nothing to do with being able to or not. Infertile siblings are not allowed to marry or conceive, nor are fertile siblings, even if they are raising children together. We don’t need to outlaw all non-marital conception in order to outlaw certain relationships like incest and same-sex couples from conceiving together, we just need to outlaw those relationships. If a relationship is not prohibited from conceiving together, that relationship should be allowed to marry, and vice versa.
posted by ALEX on
I LIKE THIS GAY PLACE – ALEX CHICLOTE
posted by kevin on
Mack, there are three parts to my Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise. The first part is the Egg and Sperm law that would prohibit creating children any way other than combining the sperm of a man and the egg of a woman. This is similar the language of Missouri’s Stem Cell Initiative and anti-cloning Amendment 2 of 2006, and also similar to the language recommended by the President’s Council on Bioethics. The “man and woman” language is necessary to establish legally what is already true biologically – that the only way we can procreate with unmodified gametes is by combining our gamete with someone’s of the other sex and orbecargo gays, so if we prohibit genetic engineering, we are enforcing male-female conception. OK? The first part of the Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise is to prohibit use of modified gametes, by everyone, in order to prevent the Brave New World of eugenics and designer babies and stop the huge costly and intrusive government entitlement program that would follow if we allowed the use of modified gametes. That’s what would prohibit “the horrors of same-sex conception.”
The second part of the Compromise, the trade in return for giving up same-sex conception rights, is Federal recognition for state Civil Unions that are defined as “marriage minus conception rights.” This is so that same-sex couples can be easily given all the rights of marriage without giving them the right to conceive children together.
The third part is hopefully not necessary, but certainly can’t hurt and would help to clarify the logic of the compromise; affirm that every marriage has the right to attempt to conceive children together with the couple’s own genes. This would prevent a marriage from being coerced or forced into using improved genes instead of their own.
The idea behind tying the Egg and Sperm law to the marriage debate is to get the Egg and Sperm law passed, as it has been ignored by Congress for 5 years now and I don’t see any hope of it passing before people come to accept same-sex conception and genetic modification with a shrug as if there was no way to stop it, and that would be a terrible terrible thing that would mean we’d never be able to care for existing people like we should because we’d be diverting so much energy and money into creating perfect babies for rich people, creating a gene-rich/gene-poor divide that would tear the world apart and keep the Jihad against imperialist eugenic selfish America going strong for decades. So, the hope is to get rank-and-file gay couples to agree to the Compromise in order to achieve equal protections right away, since they generally aren’t interested in same-sex conception.