Marriage & Relationships

Standing Firm

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Thomas Peters (“American Papist”) thinks that the Catholics who support same-sex marriage are just a bunch of phonies, and this makes the Public Religion Research Poll bogus.  I’ll leave the question of who counts as a Catholic to the Catholics, but can’t help pointing out that insulting fellow believers for insufficient dogmatism seldom works out well.  Plus, just as a demographic matter, if (as Peters suggests) the only real Catholics are the ones in the pews every week, the number of American Catholics is wildly inflated by pollsters, social scientists, and the church, itself.

But Peters doesn’t stop at provoking his fellow Catholics.  He goes on to argue that only (only!) 43% of these faux-Catholics support same-sex marriage, and that the higher figure of 74% includes those who support civil unions.  Peters says it’s important to draw a distinction:

In other words, the only way LGBT-funded pollsters can get Catholics (again, lumped in with inactive and less active Catholics) to “support” same-sex marriage is to create a false choice between full same-sex marriage on the one hand, and “no legal protection/recognition” on the other.

As soon as you introduce the reality that there are other ways of accommodating homosexual relationships into civil law without redefining marriage, support for same-sex marriage among Catholics drops off again. And yet we still see the headlines, “Catholics support same-sex marriage.”

How could I disagree with him about this false choice?  I’m all about the compromise.

The problem for Peters, though, is that one of the few people on earth who is undoubtedly a real Catholic thinks that false choice is the only one.  In 2003, Pope John Paul II approved of a document titled, “CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITION TO UNIONS BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS.” Bottom line? “The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”  This explicitly includes civil unions which you’d think, by their very definition, might fall outside the jurisdiction of Catholic religious doctrine.  But it’s right there in black and brown and sepia.  These “considerations” were issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and bear the name of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who in recent years has moved up in the organization.

I get a bit hot under the collar when people like Peters invoke civil recognition of same-sex unions, and imply they would support that compromise when, in fact, they won’t (Since Peters claims he’s a Real Catholic, I assume he would follow the teachings of the Vatican on this matter).  That has always been the shell game NOM plays, ceaselessly claiming they want same-sex couples to be happy, just not married, and then remaining blithe about the lack of any legal recognition for same-sex couples; they go blank in the eyes at any mention of support for civil unions.

In this, at least, Indiana’s legislature is being honest.  They are getting ready to go on the record as prohibiting any same-sex couple in their state from having any legal recognition, marital or otherwise.   While state statute already defines marriage as between one man and one woman, this constitutional amendment would make it clear to any uppity judges out there that Indianans won’t tolerate wobbliness.

It’s rarer than it used to be to see such open hostility to same-sex couples.  Even politicians who think their constituents want them to be anti-gay are more careful these days, and couch their rhetoric in fashionable tolerance-manque.  But Indiana and the Vatican remind us what steel-toed intolerance — the kind that ran rampant in this country for most of the last century — looks like.

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Are NPR and Maggie Gallagher Missing the Boat?

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Andrew Sullivan is excerpting a fascinating debate he titles, “Embracing the Bias,” about the dilemma NPR faces over its surprising to no one tilt toward the left.  One of the key bones of contention is whether NPR should just say outright, yes, we are sort of leftish, but unlike Fox News, we’ll own up to our bias and honestly try to be fair rather than just asserting it.

As much as I’d like to endorse that kind of full disclosure, it presupposes, as the lawyers say, a fact not in evidence.  Lesbians and gay men should be more attuned than most to the fact that in a whole lot of cases, people don’t recognize their own bias.  On the contrary, they can understand what others view as bias as some sort of natural order.

When Maggie Gallagher takes umbrage at being called a bigot or worse, she is sincerely expressing her view that the world she grew up in and understands is entirely neutral and correct.  Her incredulity comes from the notion that such a uniform history of acknowledging heterosexual marriage holds no bias against homosexual couples.

And, speaking historically, she is not wrong. I don’t think the long, confounding and ongoing development of marriage came out of a bias against same-sex couples, it just came out of an ignorance of their existence.  It took all of that history, culminating late in the 20th Century, for lesbians and gay men to fully assert their public presence, much less their need for the same legal recognition of their relationships that heterosexuals take for granted.

But just because there was no intent to discriminate against same-sex couples in, say, the 16th Century doesn’t mean that the effect of that unawareness isn’t discriminatory today.  Gallagher has set herself up as the ambassador of that obliviousness.  If history isn’t biased, how could she and her followers be?  What is wrong with people?

What Gallagher can’t see (or won’t acknowledge) is what a gathering majority can no longer blind itself to.  Lesbians and gay men do exist, do fall in love, do form relationships, do raise children.  The law’s neglect of them is now clear to anyone who wants to see it.

But those who keep their blinkers on do, in fact, begin to look biased, look like they really don’t want to see something that is right in front of their eyes.  Perhaps that isn’t really bigotry or hate, but it looks so willful, so harsh, so mean.

Maybe it is always hard for us to recognize our own biases, too easy to mistake them for justice when, in fact, their injustice is only still coming into view.  It would be so nice if Gallagher and NPR and everyone could stand back from their deeply held beliefs and examine them fully.  But history proves that’s hard.

On a lot of subjects, now, we don’t know what bias is.  How can we expect people to admit something we don’t have agreement on the boundaries of?  If NPR doesn’t see their bias as bias, they can do no more about it than Gallagher can, and will be missing many of the same cultural shifts that are happening right under their nose.

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Just A Fact

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One of the reasons antigay opinion has been eroding in this country is that the (primarily) religious opponents of equality have become so melodramatic and quixotic in their rhetoric, driven by what looks like a maniacal sense of persecution that reasonable observers can’t possibly take seriously.  The distance between observable reality and the comic overcharacterization of that reality is leaving decent people who might not otherwise have made up their mind giving us the benefit of the doubt.  Lesbians and gay men may not all be models of rectitude and moderation, but at least we have some respectable arguments to make that seem to reflect a recognizable real world.

A good example of the self-dramatized hyperbole comes from Tony Perkins.  He has been peddling this line recently, about the danger of the Prop. 8 ruling:  “If this case stands, we’ll have gone, in one generation, from 1962, when the Bible was banned in public schools to religious beliefs being banned in America.”  I heard him make this case at TheCall in Sacramento last weekend, and he is now selling it on religious broadcasts as well.

His grievance is with Judge Walker’s 77th Finding of Fact, which Perkins correctly quotes:  “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.”  Perkins doesn’t add that the finding is accompanied (as any proper trial court finding of fact would have to be) by citations to the record at trial – 18 of them – supporting the conclusion.  Perkins does complain that Judge Walker ignored all the facts presented by his side, but his real argument is with the lawyers and witnesses who defended Prop. 8, who didn’t exactly offer up a buffet of evidence for the judge to pick from.

Fact #77 doesn’t stand alone (there are 79 other findings of fact, every one also supported by numerous citations to the evidence at trial), nor would its absence make any difference in the conclusions of law the judge reaches.  Perkins cherry-picks that one fact only because it is the one that can be massaged to fit into his persecution.

Even if you believed that civil marriage equality would somehow affect religious believers (because some of them might see the conflict more clearly between what their religion professes and what the civil law accepts), or would even undermine some religions (to the extent that opposing homosexuality is part of the infrastructure of their morality), it is hard to see how this would lead to “religious beliefs being banned in America.”  The same first amendment that prohibits the teaching of particular religions in public schools (without “banning” Bibles, by the way — yet more of the melodrama) also protects religious believers in the exercise of their religion, however much those beliefs differ with civic policy.  Just because Perkins would not be able to prohibit same-sex marriage laws does not mean he is not allowed to believe, preach, or even ban within his congregation same-sex marriage or divorce or abortion or eating meat on Fridays.

It is, I’m sure, a disappointment for these religious believers to hear that their beliefs about the sinfulness of homosexuality are viewed differently by others.  But how insular would your worldview have to be to be surprised by that?  Certainly, they believe they are loving us by trying to steer us to an inner heterosexuality (or celibacy) that will better serve our long-term spiritual needs.  But is it such a shock to learn that non-believers could find that presumptuous and condescending, and even a little bit injurious?

Harm alone doesn’t amount to a constitutional violation, and people who think they’re helping me are as free to hurt me in this way as I suppose I hurt them by saying that I think they hold wrong and harmful positions.  The only reason they’re losing support is because they have so successfully blinded themselves to the idea that differences of opinion – even, and maybe especially religious opinion – is OK.  That’s just a fact.

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Nowheresville, Texas

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They really don’t like the gays down in the Lone Star State.

  1. Governor Rick Perry takes good old boy pride in his state’s reputation for gay-hatin’.  His taped comment to some supporters creatively suggests that homophobia actually attracts and possibly creates the kind of jobs the state needs and wants:  “We’re creating more jobs than any other state in the nation.  Would you rather live in a state like this or a state where guys can marry guys?”  I recommend listening to the audio, where you can best hear his parochial incredulity.  I, of course, would rather live in a state where guys can marry guys, but more important, I’d rather live in a state where my governor wouldn’t feel comfortable saying things like this.
  2. The Republican Governor is living down to his party’s standards, though.  The Texas GOP platform is so chest-thumpingly heterosexual, it urges its members to make it a felony to so much as perform a gay marriage in that state, thus ensuring heterosexuals are fully accountable for any defections in orthodoxy.  Remember, this is a felony that even straight people would go to jail for.  It’s not just enough to want to punish gay people in the Texas GOP; you can’t have any of the regular folks wandering off the ranch either.
  3. The Texas courts, as a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of state politics, are also careful to remain in line.  This week, the Texas Court of Appeals for the Fifth District overturned a lower court’s decision to grant a divorce to a same-sex couple who had been lawfully married in Massachusetts. Texas buttressed its constitution back in 2005 to make damn sure no same-sex couples slipped through any cracks in the law and got their relationships recognized in the state.  The trial judge had gotten squishy and started feeling things, like sympathy for a couple whose relationship went sour, and ended up ruling that the whole scheme violated the U.S. Constitution.  The appeals court judges reined him in, and gave the U.S. Constitution a little bit of a Texas working over.  All is back in order now, with the gay couple’s relationship still in the proper legal limbo of Kafkaesque nonexistence.  That’ll teach ‘em.

Texas, of course, also had a starring role in the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Lawrence vs. It.  That little smackdown did not hinder the appellate court’s opinion one little bit, and it certainly is an open question whether Lawrence applies to marriage or just sodomy.  But it appears Texas is once again ready to storm the barricades of the loose morals crowd, and stand up for a tough love so rigid it’ll cut your head off for infractions.

I’m sure there are some wonderful people in Texas, even some intrepid gay people and a cohort of nervy heterosexuals who are willing to stand up to these cowboy-booted thugs.  But I’m just as happy to steer clear of the whole church.

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Cheney and Obama: Nowheresville

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There is a long and growing list of people – and specifically Republicans — who are said to be to the left of President Obama on gay marriage.  Our high-profile GOP supporters include Laura Bush, Elizabeth Hasselbeck and, most recently, freshly-out Ken Mehlman.

But the grandest of the Party’s Old Grandees is, of course, Dick Cheney, whose support for same-sex marriage is the most valuable scalp gay marriage supporters have been able to secure.  He’s even been characterized as “more progressive” on this issue than Obama.

Let’s get a grip.  I won’t argue that Obama’s well-documented flips and flops, ducks, weaves, hedges, caveats, little white lies, obfuscations and desperate dives underneath the desk in the Oval Office are any profile in courage.  Despite the fact that I think he will still be one of our finest presidents and may yet show some spine on real equality, what we’ve gotten from him so far is a savvy exhibition of three card monte.  While we know he can demonstrate leadership on issues he finds compelling, on gay equality he is more sheep than shepherd.

But Cheney hasn’t exactly been our Martin Luther King.  The pinnacle of his oratory has been this: “I think freedom means freedom for everyone.”  To my knowledge, he has never yet publicly used the phrase “same-sex marriage,” or even “civil unions.”  Here’s as close to explicit as he has ever gotten:

I do believe that historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. … But I don’t have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that.

Now I won’t look this gift horse in the mouth, but it’s not exactly support for equality – it’s a plea for state’s rights.  And that would appear to include the right for states to give same-sex couples nothing.

Perhaps I’m wrong about that, but from Dick Cheney’s extremely rare public utterances, I can’t find any reason to believe he would have as little problem – i.e. “no problem” — with same-sex couples having no rights as he would with them having full equality.

But he can clarify that.  Specifically, he could put his money where is mouth is, and join Mehlman, Ted Olson, and so many other leading national Republicans at the AFER fundraiser (even Mary will be there).  Or he could actually say something clearly:  “I support same-sex marriage” would be nice, but I’d even take something like, “Both of my daughters deserve the same respect and rights under the law, and my party ought to make a commitment to that fundamental principle.”

At that point, I would be willing to put him beside Obama and find Obama wanting.  But for the present, the two are about even in substanceless avoidance; Cheney avoids the issue by saying too little, while Obama avoids the issue by saying too much.

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Wrong Direction

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The liberal New Republic provides a timeline showing Obama’s support for gay marriage back in 1996 when running for Illinois state senate (his statement at the time: “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages”) and then his subsequent move up the political career ladder and away from marriage equality, instead favoring civil unions for gays and holding that marriage is reserved for heterosexuals. Said presidential candidate Obama:

What I believe is that if we have strong civil unions out there that provide legal rights to same-sex couples that they can visit each other in the hospital if they get sick, that they can transfer property to each other. If they’ve got benefits, they can make sure those benefits apply to their partners. I think that is the direction we need to go.

As if hospital visitation and easier property transfer is what marriage is essentially about! Elsewhere in the New Republic, the magazine’s executive editor Richard Just calls Obama out on this non-profile in courage. Some of the NR’s commenters defend the president, saying marriage is a state, not federal, issue (sounding like Republicans!), and ignoring that it’s a federal law (the Defense of Marriage Act) that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage even after states have extended legal equality to gay people.

Yep, Republicans are worse. But all politicians elevate the will to power over principle, and treat the stances they take as a means to an end (their own advancement). The liberal ones are just fancier in their footwork. The lesson is to push back and make it cost them not to deliver—and that means playing hardball.

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Marriage and Constraint

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Here's another conservative (or, in this case, neoconservative) case for gay marriage, from neocon Joshua Muravchik:
A substantial fraction of people feel carnal affinity exclusively or primarily with individuals of the same sex. Insofar as their sexuality is to be channeled it cannot be toward the goal of procreation. If society has a general interest in the constraint of the sexual instinct, then it has an interest in encouraging long-term monogamous relations regardless of whether one ostensible purpose is to bear offspring. ... The claim that we defend marriage by disallowing it to homosexuals is a non sequitur. Could it not equally be argued that we reaffirm the importance of marriage by making it available even to couples who have not traditionally had this opportunity?
And a libertarian argument (no talk here of "constraint of the sexual instinct") from Sheldon Richman:
Marriage has never been exclusively about procreation. If that were so, couples that were infertile, elderly, and uninterested in having children wouldn't have been allowed to get married. Many other values have been at the core of marriage: economic security, love and emotional fulfillment, and more.
Richman also takes on the objection that courts shouldn't overrule public referendums or legislatures, explaining:
It seem clear that if government exists, then there is nothing wrong with courts thwarting the public or the legislature when either oversteps the limits we hope are set for government and violates liberty.
Neo-cons and libertarians don't agree on much, so it's interesting to see these two finding their own way to argue in favor of same-sex marriage. In other words, marriage equality-it's not just for progressives.

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The New Roe v. Wade?

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In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Berkeley law professor John Yoo takes issue with Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling that California's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Yoo says that he favors gay marriage as a matter of policy, but that:

Federalism will produce the political durability that supporters of gay marriage want. If states steadily approve, a political consensus will form that will be difficult to undo.

Consider, by contrast, abortion. Roe v. Wade (1973) only intensified political conflict at a time when the nation was already moving in a pro-choice direction. That decision...poisoned our politics, introduced rounds of legislative defiance and judicial intervention, and undermined the neutral principles of constitutional law.

I don't disagree that relying on courts, rather than the political process, to advance our rights carries the risk of a backlash, and certainly Jon Rauch strikes a similar note in his recent column on the California ruling.

But I suspect abortion and marriage equality really don't resonate on the same level among most conservatives, apart for the hard-core religious right. Consider Glenn Beck's interview with Bill O'Reilly (discussed in my last post), in which Beck refused to label gay marriage as a threat and quoted Thomas Jefferson that "if it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, what difference is it to me." But when O'Reilly asked him about abortion, Beck responded, "Abortion is killing, you're killing."

For most people who oppose marriage equality, their unease over giving a stamp of approval to gay relationships (and by that they mean gay sex) just isn't in the same league with stopping the abortion mills that result in the murder of unborn babies, sometimes just before birth and at taxpayer expense.

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