IGF CultureWatch

A common argument against gay marriage is that marriage is for procreation and gay couples cannot procreate. Let's call it "the procreationist argument." Is it persuasive?

The procreationist argument starts with the indisputable proposition that procreation is indispensable to human survival. It then posits that marriage exists to encourage this indispensable act to occur within a lasting union. The procreationist may concede that marriage has other purposes - for example, providing the married person with a primary caretaker and channeling sexual activity into monogamous commitments. Still, the procreationist maintains, these other purposes serve mainly to help sustain the overarching marital purpose of encouraging procreation and stabilizing family life for the resulting children.

Individual gay persons can procreate, of course, through means such as artificial insemination and surrogacy arrangements. But gay couples, note the procreationists, cannot procreate as a couple. The distinction is important, they say, because parents tend to give better care to biological children than to adopted children. Further, no event helps the durability of a relationship like the birth of the couple's biological child.

According to the procreationist argument, it is the unique procreative capacity of male-female couples that justifies the unique status of marriage itself. It is the one essential attribute of marriage, supplying its historic male-female definition.

But so what? What are the practical consequences of cutting the marriage-procreation connection, as procreationists claim gay marriage would do? I can think of two possible fears. One is that procreation itself would slow down, perhaps below the "replacement rate," the level at which humans must reproduce in order to stay ahead of deaths. This slowdown would imperil the species. The other fear is that, as the connection between marriage and procreation is loosened, procreation may increasingly occur outside of marriage. Both at once could happen, and both would be bad.

What do we make of this argument? If gay marriage would doom human life on earth and/or mean significantly more illegitimate children, it should be resisted no matter how much gay couples need it.

But neither of these consequences seems likely. It's not clear why straight people would stop procreating if gays could marry. The factors driving people to reproduce - the needs for love and to love another, the purported instinct to propagate one's genes, religious obligations - would still exist if Adam and Steve could marry.

It's also not clear why gay marriage would drive more straight couples to reproduce outside marriage. The benefits of marital procreation would still be available to them, after all. The problems of non-marital procreation would still be there to discourage it.

But fortunately we do not have to guess at the probability of these cataclysmic consequences because we already have much experience with severing the link between marriage and procreation.

No couple has ever been required to procreate in order to marry. No couple has ever even been required to be able to procreate in order to marry. Sterile couples and old couples can marry. Couples physically able to procreate but who do not want to procreate can get married.

Many married opposite-sex couples already fit into one of these nonprocreative categories. They are a larger segment of the population by far than gay married couples ever would be. Yet despite their inherent or explicit rejection of the procreative marital duty, humans continue to procreate and marriage continues to be the normative situs for procreation.

The procreationists have two responses to the nonprocreative-couples argument. First, they say laws are made for the general rule, not the exceptions. Most opposite-sex couples can reproduce, but no gay couple can. Second, they argue that the failure to require married couples to procreate is only a concession to the impracticality and intrusiveness of imposing an actual procreation requirement. It is not an abandonment of the procreation principle itself. It would be unthinkable, on privacy grounds alone, to subject couples to fertility tests as a requirement for marriage. We need no such intrusive test to know same-sex couples can't reproduce, the procreationists observe.

The first response is an evasion. Laws often state general rules but provide exceptions where appropriate and just. Gay marriage, like nonprocreative straight marriage, is an appropriate and just exception to the procreationists' rule that marriage exists for procreation.

The second response is equally unavailing. If we were serious about the procreationist project, we could require prospective married couples to sign an affidavit stating they are able to procreate and intend to procreate. If in, say, 10 years they had not procreated we could presume they are either unable or unwilling to do so and could dissolve the marriage as unworthy of the unique institution.

That would be neither impractical nor require an invasive fertility test. That no one has proposed it, or anything like it, suggests we do not take the narrow procreationist vision of marriage very seriously. Marriage is not essentially about procreation because procreation is not essential to any marriage.

Further, this second response suggests that the general rule of procreation must bend to the overriding needs and interests of couples unable or unwilling to live by it. If that exception exists for nonprocreative straight couples, why not for nonprocreative gay couples? If there is an answer to this question, it cannot be found in the procreationist argument.

So the procreationist rule, refined in light of actual lived experience, is this: Nobody is required to procreate in order to marry, except gay couples. It's a rule made to reach a predetermined conclusion, not for good reasons.

George W. Bush's decision to support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is a betrayal of our history as a nation and of our principles as a republic. It is an attack on gay families and on our very status as citizens in this country. I will not be voting to re-elect the president.

It is one thing to oppose gay marriage. Every major candidate for president opposes it, as do most politicians in both parties. Recognizing the union of same-sex couples is a significant change to the institution. We are right to approach such changes slowly and cautiously.

But supporting a constitutional amendment on the subject is another matter entirely. The Federal Marriage Amendment, introduced in both the House and the Senate, would prevent even state legislatures from recognizing gay marriages. It is an attempt to cut off debate before the people have a chance to think seriously about the issue.

An amendment would relegate gay Americans to permanent second-class status, something we have never amended the Constitution to do to any group of people. Next to the Constitution's majestic words mandating that government may not "deny to any person...the equal protection of the laws" would be a cheap taunt, "except for queers."

Though the president has no formal role in the constitutional amendment process, the prestige of his office makes his voice critical. If an amendment banning gay marriage actually passes, Bush will have done more harm to gay people than any president in our history.

In his February 24 announcement, Bush said we need a constitutional amendment to prevent activist judges and lawless public officials from imposing gay marriages on the whole country. That's nonsense. No federal court has imposed gay marriage on the country and none is likely to do so for the foreseeable future. We have never amended the Constitution to deal with hypothetical future court decisions.

Notably, though, Bush also suggested an amendment is needed to prevent a state from defining marriage as it sees fit. To reach this conclusion, he must repudiate two centuries of American history and the principles of the GOP respecting the power of the states.

Why abandon our history and tradition? Because, in Bush's words, marriage "promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society." He never bothered to explain how gay marriage threatens either of these things.

Marriage is "the most enduring human institution," he said. That's fine. Propose an amendment banning no-fault divorce and we can talk. But that would offend many of his traditional-values buddies who've had multiple divorces, none of them caused by gays.

Every time he says or does something anti-gay, Bush reminds us to treat people with "dignity and respect." Since he cannot even bring himself to use the word "gay" in public, that's an empty banality. Please don't patronize me by saying you respect my dignity while you're claiming I threaten Western civilization by loving another person.

I've repeatedly defended President Bush in this space. I've pointed out that, despite predictions to the contrary, he has hired many openly gay people to work in his administration. He has also left in place Clinton-era executive orders forbidding anti-gay discrimination in federal employment. These were precedent-setting moves for a Republican.

I'm also closer to Bush than to the Democrats on many non-gay issues. On defense and foreign policy, he has rightly taken the fight to the enemy more aggressively than a Democrat would. On economic policy, though he's been a profligate spender and an inconsistent defender of free trade, he's better than a Democrat would be on both counts.

Does my opposition to Bush make me a single-issue voter? Perhaps. But there are some issues of transcendent importance. They go to the core of our equal citizenship in this society. They outweigh many other considerations. When a president attacks your life and your family on national television and says we ought to write that attack for all time into the country's fundamental law, he has crossed a line that makes it impossible to support him with integrity.

George W. Bush is not the president of any country I recognize or want to be any part of. He is the president of some other country, one that believes the commitment of two people to one another is a threat to everyone else.

The country I love is better than that. It is a country that will defeat this vicious federal amendment and make its way, by fits and starts, over time and through debate, to a better understanding of gay life. It will climb out of the ignorance that produces the fear that fuels the call for an amendment.

Perhaps Bush doesn't actually believe an amendment is necessary and is only supporting one to satisfy religious conservatives. If so, that's even worse since he can't even claim sincerity as a defense. It's a new low in anti-gay political opportunism.

I've been a Republican since I could spell the word. At 13, I stuffed envelopes and made phone calls for Ronald Reagan. At 17, I formed a Republican group in my high school. In law school, I co-founded a conservative debating society. I've been a GOP precinct chairman and been a delegate to two state Republican conventions. I've attended three national conventions.

I remain a Republican and still believe something properly called conservatism can be squared with equality for gay Americans. But you can count me out this November.

Two starkly different but possible futures are emerging. One of them would foreclose gay marriage for the lifetime of any person old enough to read this, erecting barrier after barrier to the recognition of gay couples. The other would mean a long, but ultimately successful, movement for full marriage rights. This is the fight of our lives and our elected officials must know that.

In the worst-case scenario, gay marriages in Massachusetts and elsewhere will fuel a backlash that results in double and triple obstacles for us. Already, 38 states have enacted laws banning gay marriages and refusing to recognize such marriages from other states. Facing the specter of gay marriages, under this scenario many states will be stampeded into amending their own state constitutions.

Far worse, Congress would vote to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriages, and perhaps even civil unions and domestic partnerships to boot That will be followed by ratification efforts in state after state. The debate over ratification will be vicious, marked by hateful stereotypes of gays as promiscuous child-molesters bent on destroying everything good in American life. In this super-charged atmosphere, hate crimes go up. Other civil rights measures stall. Worst of all, the amendment is ratified. Since only 13 states may block any repeal of this amendment - and we know where they are - the possibility of gay marriage is ended for our lifetimes.

But that is only one possible future. Here's another.

In the best-case scenario, gay marriages in Massachusetts and elsewhere demonstrate that same-sex marriage is no threat to anyone. Straight married couples get on with their lives, unaffected. Children still have mothers and fathers. There is no plague of locusts upon the land. Massachusetts accordingly rejects a state constitutional amendment, either because the legislature can't muster the votes for a ban or because the people of Massachusetts vote it down. Either way, the people will have spoken. Gay marriages in that state will have a democratic legitimacy no court can confer. For the first time, gay marriage will have survived its most crucial test, the one in the court of democratic politics.

The experience of Massachusetts will embolden other states to start trying gay marriages, or at least civil unions followed quickly by marriage. State legislators will realize they don't commit political suicide by voting for it. The momentum gathers. Still no locusts.

At the federal level, under the best-case scenario, Democrats find their backbone on this issue after all the support we've given them over the years and vote to reject a constitutional amendment. A few principled Republicans, loathe to write what Andrew Sullivan has called "graffiti" on the Constitution, and truly committed to federalism, join the Democrats. State experimentation with gay marriage, free of congressional meddling and federal court fiat, is allowed to proceed.

The debate over the amendment and over state legislative action, and the existence of actual gay marriages, force people to think for the first time about why we would deny a loving, committed couple a marriage license. Many Americans can't come up with a good reason. Religious conservative groups, like those running to courts right now to stop people from marrying in San Francisco, look like the Grinch Who Stole Matrimony. Gay marriage, perhaps in our lifetime, is a reality across much of the country.

Neither of these scenarios is foregone. The future is ours to make. The people of this country are basically decent and fair. They do not like to shut people out for no good reason. But they also do not like to be rushed into, or to be forced into, a change they rightly regard as having fundamental significance. When the people have time to listen to our pleas, to consider the consequences, and to make a deliberative choice, equality usually wins.

But above all, winning the right future will mean making it plain that stopping an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is the issue upon which every politician will henceforth be judged, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. There can be no "pass" given to any elected official on this issue, no matter how supportive he or she has been in the past. They must know we will always remember where they stood on this.

Gay Democrats must make it crystal clear to Democrats and to our civil-rights "allies" among progressive groups that we consider stopping this proposed constitutional amendment critically important. No votes, no money, no time, should be given to any Democrat who supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, no matter how many times they've sponsored an employment non-discrimination bill or a hate crimes law. This means you, too, John Kerry.

Gay Republicans also must stand up. We have been working to build some small voice in the GOP for just this moment. We must be crystal clear that no votes, no money, no time, will be given to any Republican who supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, no matter how many times they've cut taxes or made war on Islamo-fascism. This means you, too, George W. Bush.

Write and call your member of Congress and the White House. Talk up the issue among your friends, family members, and co-workers, even those whose support you can usually count on.

On this issue, unlike almost every other issue, no quarter can be given They are messing with our families now. This fight is for keeps. We must win it.

Gays have been blamed for just about every bad thing that's ever happened in human history, from the fall of the Roman Empire, to the rise of Nazi Germany, to earthquakes in California. How was homosexuality responsible for these events? Well, they happened and there were homosexuals around. There was a correlation.

Enter Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, who is making a career out of predicting catastrophe if gay marriage is recognized in the United States. In his latest article, published in the conservative Weekly Standard, he argues we have something to learn from the experience of Scandinavia. "Marriage is slowly dying in Scandinavia," Kurtz begins ominously. "A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more." Gay marriage will undermine the institution of marriage, Kurtz concludes, and Scandinavia proves it.

There's one major problem at the outset for Kurtz's argument. There is not one gay marriage in any country he cites. In 1989, Denmark adopted a registered partnership law that granted most of the benefits and obligations of marriage to same-sex couples, with the notable exception of adoption rights. Norway adopted a similar law in 1993, and Sweden expanded its cohabitation law along the same lines in 1994. (Not until 2001 did a European country - the Netherlands - recognize gay marriages that are legally identical to traditional heterosexual marriages.) Thus, Kurtz blames "gay marriage" for worsening a host of social ills that were already present before it existed anywhere in the world.

Second, even if these Scandinavian gay partnerships could be called "marriages," Kurtz shows only a correlation between them and marital decline. For example, after Kurtz notes that marital problems are highest in European countries where gay "marriage" has a foothold, and lowest where it does not, he writes: "This suggests that gay marriage is both a cause and effect of the increasing separation between marriage and parenthood." But this is a correlation; it does not show causation.

There are also correlations between marital decline and non-gay marriage phenomena, like rising women's equality (in employment and elsewhere); no-fault divorce; rising incomes and prosperity; a generous welfare state that serves a caretaker role; longer life and better health; contraception; abortion; less religiosity, and so on. Any of these is a more likely culprit than gay marriage.

Does Kurtz conclude we should return women to barefoot-and-pregnant legal status, ban divorce, tamp down on incomes, lower the quality of medical care, ban the use of contraceptives, and erase the distinction between church and state? All of these things would probably have a positive effect on marriage rates, divorce rates, and illegitimacy - but at very high and unacceptable cost to people like him. Yet Kurtz wants to ban gay marriages, which would have negligible or no effect on the pre-existing problems with marriage, at very high cost to the lives of gay people.

In an effort to demonstrate gays really don't want marriage, Kurtz notes that only 2,372 gay couples had registered after nine years of the Danish cohabitation law, only 674 after four years in Norway, and only 749 after four years in Sweden. Notice that these are tiny numbers in countries of 5.1 million, 4.2 million, and 8.5 million people, respectively, in the 1990s. They seriously undercut Kurtz's claim that registered partnerships are destroying marriage in those countries. To reach his conclusion, Kurtz must assume a huge effect (marital decline) from a tiny cause (gay "marriages").

Even if Kurtz could demonstrate that these Scandinavian gay partnerships have somehow contributed to the erosion of marriage as an institution, he only reaches a conclusion long ago pressed by gay conservatives. It is the opposition to gay marriage that has led to the proliferation of alternatives to marriage itself. These alternatives serve to knock marriage off its pedestal as the gold standard for relationships, something feminist and libertarian critics of marriage might applaud, but traditionalist defenders of marriage should abhor.

Traditionalists like Kurtz rightly worry about the rise in out-of-wedlock births in Europe and America. Notably, registered partnerships in Scandinavia restrict or forbid adoptions or artificial insemination by gay couples. That is, these partnerships encourage the separation of wedlock from parenthood.

Full-fledged gay marriages would not encourage that separation; they would encourage the opposite. In two respects, gay marriage would result in _fewer_ children being raised by single or cohabiting parents. First, there are about 150,000 gay couples in the U.S. right now raising children. Yet these couples cannot marry. Current law guarantees these children will be raised in unmarried households. Second, most gay parents get their children from prior heterosexual marriages or relationships that many of them entered because of the pressures created by anti-gay social stigma. To the extent gay marriage increases social acceptance, and provides models of married gay couples, we should expect these people to be channeled earlier into gay relationships and away from doomed heterosexual relationships that produce children.

Most telling, perhaps, is Kurtz's apparent resistance to changing no-fault divorce laws. Of all the legal changes to marriage over the past 40 years, no-fault divorce has had the greatest impact on the institution. Next to it, gay marriage as a legal reform is trivial. This shows, I think, that Kurtz isn't really serious about defending marriage. Like the many doomsayers before him, his goal is to keep gays down.

It's a remarkable thing for a sitting vice president to disagree publicly with the president he serves. It's all the more remarkable when that happens in a presidential election year - and on an issue of fundamental importance.

Dick Cheney recently announced that, in contrast to George Bush, he does not support a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. At a campaign event in Davenport, Iowa, on August 24, an audience member asked Cheney this question: "I need to know, Sir, from your heart - I don't want to know what your advisers think or even your top adviser - what do you think about homosexual marriages?"

Here's Cheney's response, with my comments following parts of his reply.

"Well, the question has come up in the past with respect to the question of gay marriage. Lynne and I have a gay daughter so it's an issue that our family is very familiar with."

Never before had Cheney publicly acknowledged that one of his daughters, Mary, is gay. Her sexual orientation had briefly come to the fore during the 2000 presidential election. But back then the Cheneys took a "no comment" approach, with Cheney's wife, Lynne, telling a reporter that her daughter had never declared "such a thing."

With this recent comment, Cheney is saying three important things:

1. First, he acknowledges that "gay" people exist. While that may seem obvious to most of us, many religious conservatives deny there is a homosexual orientation. For them, homosexuals are just heterosexuals doing wicked things.
2. Second, Cheney's frank talk is an assertion that having a gay person in one's family is nothing to be ashamed of.
3. Third, it's obvious Mary Cheney's homosexuality has influenced her very conservative family's views on gay-rights issues. Even the issue of gay marriage has been seriously discussed in the Cheney family.

Earlier this year, when President Bush endorsed the Federal Marriage Amendment, critics faulted Mary Cheney for quietly acquiescing in such anti-gay policy. It's clear now that she has not been quiet; she has been sticking up for gay rights in her own way. Moreover, she's having an effect on her father.

"We have two daughters and we have enormous pride in both of them, they're both fine young women and they do a superb job, frankly, of supporting us, and we were blessed with both our daughters."

Here Cheney is telling religious conservatives that there's nothing wrong with being gay. One can be gay and be a "fine young woman" at the same time. One can be gay and do a "superb job" of supporting one's family. One can have a gay daughter and count that fact as a "blessing." Again, none of this is revolutionary to most of us. But to many religious conservatives who form the base of the GOP, it is anathema.

"With respect to the question of [unintelligible word] relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everybody. People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to."

Cheney's conservative credentials were burnished decades ago. He was one of the most conservative members of Congress during his ten years representing Wyoming in the House of Representatives. His voting record was uniformly anti-gay. For someone like him to declare, amid a national debate over gay marriage, that gay couples must be allowed to share in American liberties is a watershed.

"The question that comes up with respect to the issue of marriage is, what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government, if you will, to the particular relationship? Historically, that's been a relationship that's been handled by the states. States have made the basic fundamental decision what constitutes a marriage.... [T]hat's appropriately a matter for the states to decide and that's how it ought to best be handled."

It's clear Cheney is not prepared to say publicly whether he actually favors gay marriage. I'd bet that, in his heart of hearts, he supports it or at least doesn't strongly oppose it. He hasn't mouthed the Bush-Kerry-Edwards mantra that "marriage is between a man and a woman."

Cheney emphatically reaffirms the pro-federalism position on the issue. Some states may adopt gay marriage; others may reject it; and still others may opt for something in between, like domestic partnerships or civil unions. In Cheney's view, the whole issue is one for individual states to resolve. This federalism concern has been the basis for conservative opposition to the FMA. It was the winning argument when the Senate rejected the amendment in July.

"The president has, as a result of the decisions made in Massachusetts this year by judges, felt that he wanted to support a constitutional amendment to define at the federal level what constitutes marriage.... At this point my own preference is as I've stated, but the president makes basic policy for this administration...."

Cheney accomplishes two things here. First, he remains a loyal foot soldier for the administration by acknowledging that the president sets policy. Second, he subtly undermines the basis for the president's policy judgment. The president may fear that judicial activism is about to unleash gay matrimony on the country, justifying a federal amendment, but Cheney does not. He has listened carefully to the arguments for a constitutional amendment and soundly rejected them.

So:

1. Gay is good.
2. Freedom is for everybody.
3. Don't mess with the Constitution.

Forget Bush and Kerry. Cheney for president, anyone?

With the country still simmering after the Massachusetts court decision that could extend marriage to gay couples, it's time to separate the chaff from the wheat in the arguments for gay marriage.

There are several good arguments for gay marriage. Among these are the stability and commitment it would encourage in gay relationships and in gay life generally. That would benefit everybody, gay and straight.

There are also some bad arguments against gay marriage. An example is the selective logic of the procreation argument, which holds that nobody is required to procreate in order to marry, except gay couples, who can't procreate, and so must unfortunately be excluded.

We should acknowledge, however, that we ourselves have been guilty of making some bad arguments for gay marriage. Here are three:

Bad Argument #1: It's All About the Benefits.

The most common argument for gay marriage emphasizes the harm that's done to gay couples by excluding them from the protections and benefits of marriage. Among these are tax benefits, settled property division and presumed child visitation and/or custody upon death or divorce, testimonial privileges in court, hospital visitation, and health benefits extended by private employers or governments to the spouses of workers. Someone has tallied over 1,000 marital benefits and privileges. Give us all these goodies, too, the argument goes.

Benefits are indeed part of the story about why it's wrong to exclude gay couples from marriage, but they are not the most important part of it. Some of the benefits of marriage can be replicated - at some cost and inconvenience to the couple - through wills, trusts, and contracts.

Emphasizing the riches of marriage misses the richness of marriage. Very few people marry in order to experience the magic of filing a joint income tax return. They marry because, in our tradition and history, marriage is the way couples in a community signal the depth of their commitment to one another. Their family and peers reciprocate by supporting and celebrating that commitment, which in turn reinforces it. Everyone understands the stakes.

If the benefits were all that mattered, civil unions would be an adequate substitute. Yet, "We're unionized," simply does not have the powerful social significance of, "We're married." So let's argue for the benefits, but let's not stop there.

Bad Argument #2: We Have a 'Right' to Marry.

Another common argument for gay marriage is more legalistic, and less functional, than the first. It tends to emphasize the discrimination in the marriage exclusion, holding that gays have just as much "right" to marry as heterosexuals.

The problem is that, while a reasonable legal argument can indeed be made for gay marriage, it is unlikely to persuade anyone who isn't already convinced that gay marriage is a good idea or at least not a bad idea. Legal conclusions follow, they do not create, arguments on the merits of an issue.

Another problem with the rights argument is that it tends to channel our efforts toward courts, where the issue will not ultimately be won, and away from legislatures and from the hearts of our fellow citizens, where it must be won. The comparatively easy work of writing briefs for judges and their clerks will not substitute for the hard work of persuading the people we're right.

Bad Argument #3: Gay Marriage Will Revolutionize Society, and That's Good.

This perspective was recently expressed by sociologist Kersti Yllo, a professor at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. "We need to acknowledge [conservatives'] argument that gay and lesbian marriages have the potential to change civilization as we know it," says Yllo. "And that will be a good thing."

There are at least three versions of this argument. One holds that heterosexuals have screwed up marriage and gays will do a better job. But gay couples, I predict, will suffer divorce rates just as high as their straight counterparts. There will be instances of gay spousal abuse and infidelity, just as there are for straight couples. Gay marriage is not the cause of the problems with marriage, but neither is it a solution.

A second version of the revolution argument maintains that gay marriages will be less "stifling" and perhaps more "open-textured," offering a healthy alternative marital model to straight couples. What is primarily meant by these euphemisms, I think, is that gay male couples will play around more.

I doubt the rate of publicly "open" gay marriages will be very high, for reasons I've offered elsewhere. Further, whatever that rate, I doubt it will have any effect on straight couples because gay couples will comprise a tiny percentage of all marriages and because women will continue to demand monogamy in opposite-sex marriages.

Moreover, if gay marriage did have this "liberating" effect on straight marriage, that would be a good argument against gay marriage. Sexually open relationships are on average less stable and lasting than monogamous ones. Introducing even more instability into opposite-sex marriages would be terrible for the relationships themselves and for the children they often produce.

The third version of the revolution argument holds that gay marriage will undermine traditional gender roles under which wives do housework and husbands make money. Like the better-living-through-adultery fallacy just discussed, this argument assumes a huge effect from a small cause. Besides, gay couples are often not radically different from straight couples in their division of labor. Finally, traditional marital roles have already declined to a great extent.

While Arguments Nos. 1 and 2 are just bad when offered by themselves, Argument No. 3 in all its versions is just plain bad.

Did the Massachusetts high court really order the state to recognize gay marriages? That's certainly the way the decision in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health was reported in the media. It quickly became conventional wisdom.

Before a week had passed, however, revisionism began. According to the revisionist view, the Massachusetts court gave the legislature the choice whether to extend full marriage to gay couples or to give them the legal benefits of marriage under some other name. The revisionist view is being advanced by the Massachusetts governor and the state's attorney general, who oppose gay marriage. It is also being advanced by some who support gay marriage but who fear a devastating political backlash.

Are the revisionists right? Will civil unions suffice, as they did in neighboring Vermont three years ago when that state's highest court also addressed marriage discrimination?

The revisionist view has some support in the opinion. Andrew Koppelman, one of the leading gay-rights legal scholars in the country, argues the court "did not decree that same sex couples were entitled to marry."

He bases this conclusion on three aspects of the decision. First, discussing the actual remedy given to the gay couples, the court said only that they were entitled to "the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage." These things may be provided without attaching the word "marriage" to them.

Second, the court did not order the state to issue actual marriage licenses to gay couples.

Third, the court gave the legislature 180 days to remedy the problem. This makes no sense, Koppelman maintains, unless the legislature had some option other than simply to give gay couples marriage - a remedy the court itself easily could have imposed.

To these three arguments a fourth might be added: while a court is properly concerned about discrimination in substantive rights, it has no business telling legislatures what they must call those rights. As long as the legislature has given gay couples all the privileges of marriage, this argument holds, it may call that package "marriage" or "civil unions" or "fried green tomatoes."

There's an additional concern. To read the decision as requiring marriage may scare the state into amending its constitution. What's far worse, it may scare the country into adopting a federal constitutional amendment that would not only ban gay marriages but also civil unions and other forms of recognition. Koppelman, who supports gay marriage, urges activists to wait "a decade or two" before pressing for it.

I think the revisionists read both the opinion and the political climate the wrong way.

As for the opinion, it's true the court noted the exclusion of gay couples from marital "protections, benefits, and obligations." But it did so to emphasize one reason why marriage is so important. The Massachusetts court also recognized that "tangible as well as intangible benefits flow from marriage." The tangible benefits (filing joint tax returns and the like) can be captured by a marriage equivalent, but the intangible benefits (historically grounded social recognition) cannot fully be. So what it's called matters.

Notably, in fashioning its remedy, the court neither mentioned the Vermont example nor explicitly gave the state legislature an alternative to marriage, as the Vermont court did. Instead, the court followed the model of a Canadian court last summer by stripping the opposite-sex requirement from the definition of marriage itself. "We construe marriage to mean the voluntary union of two persons as spouses," the Massachusetts court declared.

While it's true the court did not order the state to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, that's not what they asked for. They asked only for the court to declare unconstitutional marriage discrimination against same-sex couples, which the court did by changing the definition of marriage to conform to state constitutional requirements.

What, then, is the Massachusetts legislature supposed to do in the next six months? Marriage discrimination against same-sex couples is rife in state law. The legislature, not a court, is best suited to deciding how to rewrite those discriminatory provisions. That's what the legislature should do with its time if it wants to comply with the decision, not struggle to find ways to give gay couples a separate but equal status.

As for the politics, fears of a catastrophic backlash are probably exaggerated. Polls in Massachusetts show residents favor the decision by a 12-point margin and oppose a state constitutional amendment by a 17-point margin. As I wrote in this space last month, polls on this issue probably tend to exaggerate support for us. But we're already in a better position than we were in the immediate aftermath of the Vermont opinion, when a majority of that state's citizens opposed a more moderate result. Since a state constitutional amendment in Massachusetts requires eventual voter approval and since such a referendum could not be held until November 2006, there's time between now and then to calm fears.

As for a federal constitutional amendment, the prospects are even dimmer. It's hard to amend the Constitution, especially when one of the major parties opposes it, as the Democrats do. Even conservatives are divided on the issue, some because they've moderated on homosexuality and some because they believe states ought to make their own decisions about marriage.

If the Massachusetts decision sticks and we get our first experiment in real gay marriage, 2003 will be remembered as the year we turned a corner toward full equality.

Will everyone in California and around the country please take a deep breath? It appears gay groups and leaders, especially in California, badly misjudged the recent election recalling Democratic Governor Gray Davis and stridently overstated their case against his replacement, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. The recall was not about gay issues, it was about economics. And Schwarzenegger is in no sense "anti-gay," he's the kind of Republican who could help change the GOP for the better.

There were sensible reasons why a good citizen might have opposed the recall and might have been dubious about Schwarzenegger. The recall process undermines representative democracy, the basic design of our political system. There were also good reasons to be nervous about Schwarzenegger, a novice who offered generalizations as a platform.

But the fear that Schwarzenegger would bring a right-wing Black Death to gays, a fear expressed by some gay politicos during the campaign, was not sensible.

There were, first, the attempts by gay groups to use guilt-by-association arguments to dismiss the election as a "right-wing recall" because it was initially funded by a politician with anti-gay views. It was not that. In the end, the recall was supported by a strong majority of the state's voters in a high-turnout election. Solid blocs of Latinos, union members, the poor, and women supported it.

Even 42 percent of gay voters backed it in a state where they are probably even more liberal than elsewhere in the country. No wonder. The recall had nothing to do with voter resentment over social issues like domestic partnerships or gay rights generally. Not every election is about us.

There were, second, the hysterical denunciations of Schwarzenegger as some kind of crypto-fascist out to repeal all gay-rights laws and then perhaps to exterminate us. Openly gay San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano predicted that gay-friendly state laws "would be jeopardized." Geoff Kors, the leader of Equality California, the state-wide gay lobbying group, cautioned that a win for Schwarzenegger would "empower" the "right wing" to recall "not just the governor, but the gains we have made for LGBT civil rights during his administration." In a front-page story on the eve of the election, one gay newspaper published completely unsubstantiated, last-minute "rumors" by anonymous sources that Schwarzenegger "supported apartheid."

Hyperventilating harder than anyone else, however, was openly gay state assemblyman Mark Leno, who knows better. "Our community needs to come out and vote as if our lives depended on it," he warned, "because they do." Get that? Schwarzenegger is out to kill you.

All of this was at stark variance with the facts. Schwarzenegger is a moderate, even liberal, Republican on social issues like abortion and gay rights. A statement on his official campaign website affirmed this: "I am for equal rights for all," said the supposed Hitler wannabe. "I do believe that gay couples are entitled to full protection under the law and should not be discriminated against based on their relationship."

Sounds like support for anti-discrimination laws and for domestic partnerships to me, views Schwarzenegger repeated in live television interviews. It's no surprise that fully one-third of gays voted for Schwarzenegger. And even that number, relying on an exit survey of self-identified gays, is probably an undercount of the gay vote for Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger opposes gay marriage, true, but so do the leading Democratic contenders for president and so does Davis himself. It's also true that, again on the eve of the election, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Schwarzenegger "would not have signed" the comprehensive domestic-partners legislation recently enacted in California. But the story gave no source or rationale for this purported policy view, and I have seen no confirmation of it from Schwarzenegger's camp.

What counts now is whether Schwarzenegger would support a repeal of the new domestic-partners law, something being pushed by one of California's genuine far-right-wingers, State Sen. Pete Knight.

As of now, there is no reason to believe Schwarzenegger will back a repeal. He has publicly supported domestic partnerships. Further, he does not owe the far right anything; their candidate was social-conservative State Sen. Tom McClintock, who finished with just 13 percent of the vote compared to Schwarzenegger's 49 percent.

Many gay leaders and organizations in California and around the country seem to lack any understanding of the GOP, particularly the active struggle between those in the party who see no reason to hound gays and those who think they are commanded by God to do so. They have no appreciation of the significance of electing a gay-friendly Republican governor in the nation's most populous state. Schwarzenegger's election demonstrates how much the national party can gain by embracing a big-tent strategy.

Blind to this, gay organizations know only one rule: all Democrats good, all Republicans really bad.

This cartoonish world-view reminds me of what historian Richard Hofstadter had to say about the excesses of the far right in his 1964 book, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Extreme conservatives, he argued, took sound positions - like anti-Communism - and warped them into conspiratorial lunacy. The extremists lacked any sense of proportion.

When it comes to the GOP, gay activists often exhibit their own paranoid style. Reasonable concern about the party is morphed into take-no-prisoners rage. Where there is nuance, they see stealth. Where there is clear support, they see outright opposition. Where there are potential friends, they see bigots. Their paranoia is discrediting them, burning bridges, and hurting us.

It's time to start marshaling our arguments against the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). The FMA, which has now been introduced in the House of Representatives, would define marriage in the United States as the union of one man and one woman. It would henceforth ban gay marriages (and other forms of legal recognition of gay couples) throughout the country - at least until the amendment could be repealed, something that has happened only once in more than two centuries of constitutional history. Passage of the FMA would set back the cause of gay marriage for perhaps 25-50 years, possibly for the lifetime of most people reading this column.

The theory of the FMA seems to be that the states must be saved from themselves, from their own legislatures, from their own courts, and from their own people, lest they formally recognize gay relationships. Whatever one thinks of same-sex marriage as a matter of policy, no person who cares about our Constitution should support this amendment. It is unnecessary, contrary to the structure of our federal system, anti-democratic in a peculiar way, and a form of overkill.

The central argument against the FMA is that allowing gay marriage would be a good thing, for gays and society. But here are four arguments against the FMA that even an opponent of gay marriage should be able to accept:

First, a constitutional amendment is unnecessary. It is a solution in search of a problem. No state in the union has yet recognized same-sex marriages. Even if and when a state court approved same-sex marriage in its own jurisdiction, that can and should be a matter for a state to resolve internally, through its own governmental processes, as in fact the states have been doing.

Supporters of the FMA argue that the Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause might be used to impose gay marriage on the country. That clause requires each state to give "full faith and credit" to the "public acts, records and judicial proceedings" of other states. But this clause has never been interpreted to mean that every state must recognize every marriage performed in every other state. Each state may refuse to recognize a marriage performed in another state if that marriage would violate the state's public policy. Thirty-seven states have already declared it is their public policy not to recognize same-sex marriages.

It is also unlikely the Supreme Court or the federal appellate courts, for the foreseeable future, would declare a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Lawrence v. Texas, the recent sodomy decision, does not change this. Lawrence involved the most private of acts (sexual conduct) in the most private of places (the home); by contrast, marriage is a public institution freighted with public meaning and significance. If I gave my first year constitutional law students an exam question asking them to distinguish Lawrence from a decision favoring same-sex marriage, I am very confident they could do so.

Moreover, if the Court were suddenly to order nationwide same-sex marriage it would be taking on the entire country, something it almost never does. We should not tamper with the Constitution to deal with hypothetical questions as if it were part of some national law school classroom.

Second, a constitutional amendment would be a radical intrusion on federalism. States have traditionally controlled their own family law. The nation's commitment to this federalism is enshrined in our Constitution's very structure.

But federalism is not valuable simply as a tradition. It has a practical benefit. It allows the states to experiment with public policies, to determine whether they work. That is happening right now. States are trying a variety of approaches to test whether encouraging stable same-sex unions is, on balance, a good or bad thing.

Repudiating our history, the FMA would prohibit state courts or even state legislatures from authorizing same-sex marriages. It might even prevent state courts from enforcing domestic partnership or civil union laws.

Third, the FMA would be peculiarly anti-democratic. Simple majority rule is the strong presumption of democracies. But, as conservative legal scholar Bruce Fein recently wrote,

"that presumption and its purposes would be defeated by the constitutional rigidity and finality of a no-same-sex-marriage amendment."

While all constitutional amendments constrain democratic politics, the FMA would mark the first time in the nation's history the Constitution was amended to limit democratic decisions designed to make the states more inclusive and more affirming of individual rights. The FMA reflects a deeply anti-democratic impulse, a fundamental distrust of normal political processes.

Fourth, the FMA is constitutional overkill. It is like hauling out a sledgehammer to kill a gnat. Even if I have been wrong about the imminent likelihood of a court-imposed gay marriage revolution, the FMA is not a carefully tailored response to that problem. A much narrower amendment, dealing only with preserving state's control on the issue, could be proposed. Even such a narrower amendment, however, would be unnecessary.

In sum, the FMA is not a response to any problem we currently have. Never before in the history of the country have we amended the Constitution in response to a threatened or actual state court decision. Never before have we adopted a constitutional amendment to limit the states' ability to control their own family law. Never before have we amended the Constitution to restrict the ability of the democratic process to expand individual rights. This is no time to start.

We are often told, especially by gay-left organizations and leaders, that we cannot go it alone. To achieve our political aims, we must form coalitions. What they do not tell us is that they seem willing to play down the most important objective of the movement - marriage - to avoid offending our coalition partners.

This latest bit of folly has come out of the recent 40th anniversary commemoration of the original 1963 black civil rights March on Washington. At that march, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, the standard-bearer for the gay left, contributed money and personnel to the march. NGLTF's executive director, Matt Foreman, spoke to the rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

What did Foreman do with his unique opportunity to speak to our coalition allies? "On behalf of an incredibly diverse gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community, " he opened, "I thank you for inviting us ... to walk with you on the road to jobs, peace and freedom." Foreman acknowledged "there are differences" between gay-rights and black civil-rights activists, but he did not say what they were. Instead, he passed over this unpleasantry by asserting that "what we agree on far outweighs our differences. "

As examples of agreement, Foreman cited support for "full equality" for "everyone, " opposition to "hate violence, " and support for "forceful and affirmative action" to end "racial oppression. " The first is so vague it says nothing. The second is an apparent reference to hate-crimes legislation, which will accomplish nothing of substance for gays. And the third is not a gay issue at all. So the areas of agreement among the civil rights groups offer gays little beyond warm words.

Foreman held up the example of the political right, who "know how to set aside their differences." They have mastered the art of using wedge issues, he said, to "fracture us. " He ended with a plea to "walk proudly together to defeat our common enemies. "

There was not one word in Foreman's platitudinous speech about gay marriage. Yet, after the elimination of sodomy laws, marriage is now the gay issue. He didn't need to harangue the crowd about it, but he needed at least to mention it.

It is obvious why Foreman left it out. Polls show that while Americans overall oppose same-sex marriage by perhaps 15-20 percentage points, black Americans oppose it by a margin of 65-28 percent.

Even among black leaders there is opposition and equivocation on gay marriage.

Even among black leaders there is opposition and equivocation on gay marriage. Martin Luther King III said recently that he wasn't sure how he felt about the issue because he works with gay leaders and "some of them have not formed an opinion on the issue of marriage." Oh yeah? Which ones?

Apparently, gay leaders on the left have given "our allies" a pass on this critical question. Is this the "wedge issue" that Foreman refuses to discuss with the progressive coalition because it might "fracture us"?

Even at a special mini-rally honoring Bayard Rustin, the now-deceased gay man who organized the 1963 march, gay equality seemed an afterthought. Rustin's role in the 1963 march was downplayed because of the homophobia of both black civil rights leaders and their racist opponents.

Frank Kameny, an early gay-rights pioneer who attended both the 1963 march and this year's commemoration, went to the mini-rally honoring Rustin. Kameny describes the people who marched to the event honoring Rustin as "a raggle-taggle gaggle of people advocating everything but gay issues - Cuba, [Howard] Dean, D.C. representation, Palestinians, Get Out of Iraq, and so on - but nothing gay."

NGLTF is right that we need political allies. Gays make up perhaps three to five percent of the population. But even if every last progressive in Congress voted our way, we'd still lose. For that reason, gay Republicans have been emphasizing the necessity of working for change within the Republican Party. A coalition of gays and fair-minded Republicans, if it ever materialized, could finally secure substantive equality.

But suppose a gay Republican stood before a Republican convention and gave the following speech:

"On behalf of an incredibly diverse gay community, I thank you for letting us walk with you on the road to low taxes, less regulation, and a strong defense. Sure, we disagree about some things. But we will set aside our differences with you because what we agree on far outweighs our differences. We all favor equality and oppose violence and think abortion is terrible. We will not let the left drive a wedge between you and us by discussing our differences or by trying to persuade you on them. It is critical right now that we think only of what we agree about and walk together proudly to defeat our common enemies. "

He would be hooted out of the gay movement for that speech, and rightly so. He would be called a traitor to the gay-rights cause. He would be excoriated for presuming to speak "on behalf of the gay community" in such an obsequious way. Yet with a few changes in wording (among other things, substitute "jobs, peace, and freedom" for "lower taxes, less regulation, and a strong defense"), that is the speech Foreman gave. Foreman's omissions and obfuscations are even less forgivable than that gay Republican's would be since Foreman was speaking to our putative friends.

Sometimes friendship means challenging your friends on the things that matter most. Instead, like Bayard Rustin four decades ago, what matters most is getting pushed into the closet.