IGF CultureWatch

Over the past decade most of us have argued for gay marriage without bothering to weigh the competing merits of the concept of "civil unions." For the most part, our arguments have focused on why, as the subtitle of Jonathan Rauch's definitive book Gay Marriage put it, it is "Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America." And we should keep making those arguments.

But it is crystal clear that in all but a handful of coastal states gay marriage is not going to happen in the near future. The idea is too new for many people to be comfortable with. Gay advocates have too few resources to mount an effective campaign to counter religious right scare tactics. Legislators with an eye cocked toward the next election are not interested. Most conservatives are adamantly hostile and view it as a major issue. And most liberals, even if they favor gay marriage, are only quietly supportive and, unlike conservatives, do not view it as a major issue.

Only an obtuse person fails to learn from experience. So it is time to adjust our strategy and focus our efforts on trying to obtain the decidedly less scary civil unions. Less scary? Apparently so. With no public outcry the Connecticut legislature approved gay civil unions substantially equal to marriage. And President Bush, even while playing to the religious right, said during the 2004 campaign that if states wanted to establish civil unions that was fine.

There are at least three interesting arguments against civil unions, however:

1. By providing gays with the substance of marriage but not the name, states would be declaring gays and lesbians second-class citizens, as if their relationships are not worthy of the name "marriage." In short, civil unions relegate gays to "the back of the bus."

But that expression itself shows where the comparison with African-Americans breaks down. Currently gays have nothing. Are civil unions better than nothing? Emphatically, yes. During state segregation black southerners were at least able to get on the bus and ride to their destination. But not gays. Currently the bus doesn't even stop for gay couples-it just drives right on by. Our task is to get on the bus. Then we can argue about seating arrangements.

2. Civil unions do not provide the 1,100-plus federal benefits and entitlements that go with marriage, from social security survivor benefits, automatic inheritance, right of a married partner to immigrate to the U.S., and so forth. But those deprivations are not unique to civil unions. Legally married gay couples in Massachusetts cannot obtain those benefits, either. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act limited federal benefits to opposite sex couples.

Still, the argument goes, at least being married would give gay couples legal standing to sue in federal court to have the Defense of Marriage Act declared unconstitutional. So it would. And that right exists for married couples in Massachusetts right now. But would you really want that case to work its way up the federal court system and be decided by the Supreme Court, given its current membership? And if, contrary to all reasonable expectations, the Supreme Court did strike it down, consider the massive impetus that would give to the Marriage Protection Amendment being promoted by religious right groups.

3. Civil unions in other states, unlike those in Connecticut and Vermont, would probably include a smaller number of benefits and entitlements than marriage, making them far from equal. But however hard this is to swallow, here again the point is to get a process started. Even if lessor variations on civil unions offer minimal benefits (e.g., hospital visitation), it is almost inevitable that as legislators and the public become comfortable with gay couples in formalized relationships, they will feel more comfortable adding additional benefits over time.

That model has worked well in California where gay couples have obtained more and more benefits with each legislative session. It has also worked in several European countries that have gradually added benefits, in some cases resulting in marriage itself. Most U.S. surveys show majority support for providing some benefits for gay couples. So let us work on obtaining those and then go on to others as the public comfort grows. If you cannot get all the justice you want, take what justice you can get and then work for more.

Once you are in a civil union, you can refer to yourself as "married" if you like. A friend in Vermont who is in a civil union says he and his partner refer to themselves as married. So does everyone else. A friend in Norway reports the same thing: "Oh, you two are married." It seems clear that once people are comfortable with thinking and speaking of same-sex couples as "married," their willingness to accept gay marriage itself is sure to follow.

Question: What's worse than a dozen or so states contemplating gay marriage bans during an election year?

Answer: A dozen or so states contemplating gay adoption bans during an election year.

Welcome to 2006. At least sixteen states are considering laws or ballot initiatives restricting the ability of gay individuals or couples to adopt. I'm not sure that this is politically worse than what happened in 2004, when a similar number of states banned same-sex marriage. Adoption bans might help to get out the right-wing vote, but they might also make right-wingers look petty and politically dishonest to moderates. We've learned some things since 2004, and the issues are different enough to keep things interesting.

But politics aside, the movement to ban gay adoption strikes me as morally and rhetorically worse than the movement to ban gay marriage. One of the most terrible charges you can levy against someone is the accusation that they pose a threat to children. Indeed, the more extreme opponents of gay adoption have referred to it as a form of child abuse. Those are fighting words.

The central argument against gay adoption is the worst kind of argument: it proceeds from what is not true to what does not follow.

What is not true is the claim that same-sex parenting is suboptimal for children. A growing body of research reports no notable differences in well-being between children reared by homosexual parents and those reared by heterosexual parents. In the words of the American Academy of Pediatrics, "a considerable body of professional literature provides evidence that children with parents who are homosexual can have the same advantages and the same expectations for health, adjustment, and development as can children whose parents are heterosexual." The AAP "supports legislative and legal efforts to provide the possibility of adoption of the child by the second parent or coparent in these families."

But let's suppose the American Academy of Pediatrics is wrong. Suppose, purely for the sake of argument, that same-sex parenting is indeed suboptimal. Even so, it wouldn't follow that it should be banned.

It is probably optimal for parents to have a certain level of education, but it doesn't follow that those with less make bad parents. It is probably optimal for parents to be financially well off, but it doesn't follow that those who are less so make bad parents. And so on. So even if it were true (which it isn't) that same-sex parenting is suboptimal, it would not follow that gays and lesbians make bad parents or that they should be forbidden to adopt--especially when the alternative is for children to be raised by the state, which virtually everyone agrees is a poor option.

Opponents of same-sex parenting often describe it as "deliberately depriving children of a mother or a father." This is another serious charge, and it's worth careful attention.

If I kill a child's mother or father, then I thereby deprive him of his mother or father. If I give a child a home, then I don't thereby "deprive" him of anything--I give him something. By describing same-sex parenting as "depriving" children, opponents are making it sound as if same-sex couples are snatching children's birthparents away from them. The implication is not merely false; it is morally irresponsible.

Anything can be described in such a way as to make it sound bad. When parents choose to live in the city, we can describe them as "deliberately depriving their children of the joys of country life" (or vice-versa). When parents with only female children choose not to have any more children, we can describe them as "deliberately depriving their daughters of a brother." Indeed, we can accuse them of sending a message that "brothers don't matter," just as same-sex parenting opponents accuse lesbian parents of sending a message that fathers don't matter.

Such claims would be laughable if they were not so hurtful. They do not merely badly mis-describe the situation; they falsely accuse good people of doing awful things. And the people hurt by them are not merely gay and lesbian parents: they are, most of all, children--both those in loving same-sex families and those who would be deprived of them by these terrible bans. Here the term "deprive" is apt: when children await adoption, those who stand in their way for spurious reasons do indeed deprive them of something.

Opponents of gay adoption claim that this is a battle for our children's welfare. They're right about that.

I have just completed a week's worth of same-sex marriage debates with Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family. During the debates, Stanton made an excellent case in favor of traditional heterosexual marriage. I really mean that.

What he did not do-what he utterly failed to do-was to make a case AGAINST same-sex marriage. There's a difference, and it's crucial.

As I've said repeatedly, extending marriage to gays does not mean taking it away from straights. It's not as if there are a limited number of marriage licenses, such that once they're gone, they're gone.

So I have no problem joining Glenn is saying hooray for heterosexual marriage, an imperfect but extremely valuable institution. I love heterosexuals. My parents were heterosexual (still are). Some of my best friends are heterosexual. I support their marriages and wish them all the best.

All I ask is that they give me the same support. This is not a zero-sum game.

Consider an analogy: most school classrooms have both right-handed desks and left-handed desks. Now imagine a time before left-handed desks. A reformer then might have argued, "Hey, right-handed desks are great. But not everyone is right-handed. Left-handed desks would make life better for left-handed people; their classroom experience would be more productive, and in the long run, their increased productivity would benefit everyone, left-handed and right-handed alike." Sounds like a strong argument for left-handed desks.

Now, imagine an opponent responding, "But we've always had right-handed desks! Right-handed-desks have served society well. We obviously don't need left-handed desks; we've gotten along fine without them thus far. What's more, introducing them is an untested social experiment, one that could have serious repercussions for our children!"

Before you dismiss this comparison as silly, recall that left-handedness was once considered a sign of moral depravity, witchcraft, or worse. It's no accident that the word "sinister" matches the Latin word for "left." But that's not the point of the analogy.

Many of the arguments against same-sex marriage-including some of those offered by Glenn Stanton-commit the same fallacy as the response above. They rightly point to the many social benefits of heterosexual marriage, but they then wrongly infer that any other marriage arrangement must be bad. This is a non-sequitur.

Let me be clear on what I am not saying here. I am not saying that choosing a spouse is just like choosing a desk, or worse yet, that whether children are raised by mothers or fathers is somehow equivalent to whether they have right-handed desks, left-handed desks, or both. When I used the analogy during a debate last week, Stanton misread me to be saying just that. (In fairness to him, I should note that he was responding off-the-cuff.)

What I am saying is that we can recognize something to be good without inferring that any alternative must therefore be bad. Right-handed desks are good for most people, but they're not good for everyone. Similarly, heterosexual marriage is good for most people, but it's not good for everyone.

All analogies are imperfect. However, one of the differences between these two cases actually favors the case for same-sex marriage: any classroom can only have a limited number of desks, so left-handed desks mean less space for right-handed ones. By contrast, there are not a limited number of marriage licenses. Again, this is not a zero-sum game.

But what about the claim that allowing same-sex marriage would "redefine marriage for everyone"?

Nonsense. No one's wife is going to turn into a man just because we recognize marriage equality for gays. No one's husband is going to turn into a woman. Heterosexual marriages will go on being just as heterosexual.

What same-sex marriages would do is to acknowledge that society has an interest in supporting stable, committed unions for its non-heterosexual members. Those unions are good for gays and lesbians, but they're also good for society at large, since people in stable, committed unions are typically happier, more productive, and less likely to place demands on the public purse. It's a win-win situation.