IGF CultureWatch

First published on May 7, 2004, in the Chicago Free Press.

In the middle of April, Vice President Dick Cheney addressed the National Rifle Association to endorse preservation of the Second Amendment, which asserts - in case you've forgotten - "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."

Even before Cheney had spoken a word, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation rushed to issue a press release pointing to what it said was an inconsistency in the Bush administration's position: "As the administration appears to support the Second Amendment, on the one hand, it is attempting to deface the Constitution by promoting an anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment on the other hand, forever enshrining second-class citizen status for LGBT people."

Fair enough. Wanting to preserve a constitutional right does not seem quite consistent with wanting to add an amendment to inhibit a right. But GLAAD did not stop there. It went on to quote spokespeople for various gay groups attacking the NRA, firearms, and firearm ownership. For instance:

• Gay Men of African Descent: "The NRA and its members represent the devaluation of human life on a number of levels. The organization perpetuates a culture of violence that in no small way affects vulnerable communities (i.e., communities of color and the LGBT community)."
• Mano A Mano: "It sends a very clear message to those that would suffer under the policies that the NRA advocates that this administration does not care about us or the issues that daily (affect) our lives."
• The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs: "Firearms are America's true 'weapons of mass destruction.'...Firearms are increasingly used in anti-LGBT hate crimes and have long been the scourge of urban and other communities."

GLAAD itself does not argue that guns and gun-ownership are bad. But by quoting exclusively and extensively the anti-gun positions of other groups, GLAAD clearly indicates which side it is on. And thereby it also demonstrates that it is not really worried about inconsistencies.

Each of the groups GLAAD quotes seem to believe personal gun ownership should be banned or regulated into meaninglessness - negating the Second Amendment - but the Constitution should not ban gays from marrying. In other words, they are saying that it is right to be inconsistent but the administration has the wrong inconsistency.

So GLAAD is not being honest here. If it were really concerned about inconsistency, the way to remove the inconsistency is to say, "Yes, we fully support people's right to own guns and we support the right of gays to marry. We don't want to take away rights from anybody and neither should the administration." Did GLAAD breathe a word of that? Not a peep.

But there are quite a number of gays and lesbians who hold exactly that view. Among them, the libertarian Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty, most Log Cabin Republican clubs, and, most conspicuously, the members of the more than 40 Pink Pistols clubs - gays and lesbians who meet regularly to train in firearm use and practice target shooting. Did GLAAD quote any of them? Don't be silly.

Since its inception GLAAD has demanded "fair, accurate and inclusive" coverage of gays from the mainstream media. But GLAAD seems to feel itself under no obligation to be "fair, accurate and inclusive." It is perfectly willing to promote a highly distorted impression of the range of opinion in the gay community, perfectly willing to include and exclude according to its preference. How convenient.

When I asked GLAAD about their one-sided approach their reply was, more or less, that they included the groups they wanted to include and they can do whatever they want, thank you very much, good-bye.

But it is a great shame that GLAAD rejected an excellent opportunity to show the large number of Americans who support personal gun ownership that gays are not their enemy, that we share their concern for personal rights, and that just as our regard for consistency leads us to support their rights the same regard for consistency could lead them to support ours as well as their own.

And, of course, GLAAD could also have made the excellent point that some gays not only support gun ownership out of a regard for philosophical consistency but own guns themselves out of a concern for personal safety or because, like other gun owners, they find target shooting enjoyable recreation.

But no. GLAAD knows how to create and reinforce divisions, not break them down. It knows how to make enemies. It does not know how to reach out and make new friends, though we certainly need some at this point.

It is striking that GLAAD, here as so often, portrays gays only as victims, unable or unwilling to take measures to prevent physical assaults, instead of men and women capable of taking responsibility for their own safety and doing something proactive to protect themselves. So GLAAD certainly knows how to promote outdated stereotypes about gays.

And, of course, send welcome news to gay bashers.

First published on May 4, 2004, in the Rutland Herald.

The challenge for supporters of same-sex marriage is much greater than obtaining access to civil marriage for gay Americans. Supporters must help all Americans distinguish between marriage and a marriage ceremony. And the way to do this is to ensure that the civil certification of marriage looks radically different than the ceremonial celebration of marriage.

I recall a former ministerial colleague's pithy words about the role a pastor plays in the life of a church member. The minister is there when a person is hatched, matched and dispatched. People turn to religion, he was telling me, in order to mark births, marriages and deaths. The state, as it happens, is also present at each of those moments. But what the state does is quite different from what the church does.

Consider what happens when a person is hatched. There was a time when churches provided the sole record of a child's birth. In places where those records are incomplete or lost, we are left to conjecture when people from past centuries were born. If people didn't go to church at all, their births could go unrecorded. The state took over this bookkeeping function from the church in order to keep track of people (likely for tax purposes) and has never looked back.

But the church has not ceased to celebrate births just because the state issues birth certificates. Rather, there is the infant dedication or baptism (or, in the case of Jewish male infants, the bris), where the newborn is brought into the faith community. There is no competition between church and state, because we accept the bookkeeping function of the state as independent from the ceremonial life of the faithful.

The same distinction happens when a person is dispatched. The coroner expedites the paperwork for a death certificate, and the funeral director secures a burial license. Once again, these are bookkeeping tasks that the state has assumed from the church, whose bookkeeping was spotty. But the state's role does not supersede the work of the fait+hful. There is no state requirement that a family sit shiva for the departed; death certificates do not require funeral or memorial services in order to make them valid. The faith community marks death with its own distinct set of rituals. And most of us would revolt if the state dictated what our rituals should look like.

Here is where marriage runs afoul of both church and state. In Vermont, the law requires that a marriage be solemnized in order to validate a marriage. While there is no specification of what constitutes an acceptable solemnization, the language is clear: The state requires a marriage ceremony in order for a marriage to have legal force.

There are many good reasons to have a marriage ceremony. It allows the couple to share their joy and love with us. It allows us to show our support for the couple. It even provides an opportunity, if we take our responsibility seriously, to express our concerns and tell the couple we think they're making a terrible mistake ("speak now or forever hold your peace"). It turns a marriage into a communal event.

This would all be well and good if the law held the community accountable for a marriage. But the law does not. When a marriage ends, the community usually does not gather before the magistrate (unless it's a celebrity divorce). This is because marriage gives two individuals rights and responsibilities and obligations.

This would also be well and good if the marriage ceremony had no religious connotations. But with all the talk about the sanctity of marriage and its status as a sacred institution, it is obvious that a great number of Americans fail to distinguish between the marriage ceremony and marriage.

Thus, there ought to be a sharper line between the two. If the state wishes to retain the requirement of solemnization, the state, not the church, should do the solemnizing. Couples who want to marry should be required to retain the services of a public official, who will certify the marriage. If there is concern that marriages may be contracted in haste, the state can institute a waiting period or require proof of pre-marital counseling. But the larger point is: Legally speaking, the couple should be married by the state, separate from whatever marriage ceremony the couple may also choose to have, either before or after the legal certification of marriage by public officials.

As we debate same-sex marriage in America, the issue should not be whether gay men and lesbians will redefine marriage as we know it. The issue should be whether we are willing to redefine the certification of marriage. The separation of the marriage certificate from the marriage ceremony parallels the separation of the birth certificate from infant baptism and the separation of the death certificate from the funeral service. This is the direction we should take when two individuals are matched, and the proponents of same-sex marriage need to lead the way.

Will gay marriage lead to polygamy? "If we take the step of allowing gay marriages," we are told, "we will slide down a slippery slope to polygamy." For the most part, gay-marriage advocates have been flustered trying to respond to this argument. Often, we respond with something dismissive like, "Don't be ridiculous!" Slippery-slope arguments must be scrutinized with care because the public often believes them and because they divert attention from the core issue: whether gay marriage itself would be a good or bad thing. While the polygamy argument has some superficial appeal, it ultimately doesn't work.

Slippery-slope arguments take the following form: "Proposal X contains within it a principle. That principle not only supports Proposal X but would also support Proposal Y. An honest person supporting Proposal X must therefore also support Proposal Y. While Proposal X may or may not be bad in itself, Proposal Y would surely be very bad. So to avoid adopting Proposal Y, we must not adopt Proposal X."

Substitute "gay marriage" for Proposal X and "polygamous marriage" for Proposal Y and you have a slippery-slope argument against gay marriage.

There are three possible stock responses to every slippery-slope argument. First, one might argue that the supposedly horrible destination(s) down at the bottom of the slope are not so bad, so we need not fear the slide. Second, one could argue that the slope may slide both ways, so that if we do not take the step proposed we may be in danger of sliding down the other side of the policy hill, which would be bad. Third, one could argue that we will not slide down the slippery slope if we take the step proposed because there is a principled stopping point preventing us from reaching the bottom.

In the gay marriage debate, the first stock response would involve arguing that polygamy is unobjectionable. That's an unattractive reply for reasons I'll explain below in connection with response three. The second stock response would involve claiming that if we repress gay marriage, there is nothing to stop us from prohibiting other marriages, like those involving people of different races or infertile people. This second response is the kind of argument lawyers love to make, but is not likely to impress many people as a reason to support same-sex marriage.

It's the third response - that there is a principled stopping point preventing the slide toward polygamy - that best refutes the slippery-slope argument. The argument for gay marriage is indeed an argument for a liberalization of marriage rules. But it is not a call to open marriage to anyone and everyone, any more than the fight against anti-miscegenation laws was a call to open marriage to anyone and everyone.

So, formulating the principled stopping-point, we should ask why the recognition of a new form of monogamous marriage would lead to the revival of polygamous marriage, which has been rejected in most societies that once practiced it? What is "the principle" supporting gay marriage that will lead us to accept multi-partner marriage?

One possible principle uniting the two is that gay marriage, like polygamous marriage, extends marriage beyond partners who may procreate as partners. But that doesn't work because procreation is already not a requirement of marriage. Sterile opposite-sex couples have already taken that step down the slope for us.

A second possible principle uniting gay marriage and polygamous marriage is that both exalt adult love and needs as the basis for marriage. Yet this step down the slope has also already been taken by straight couples. Marriage for the past century or so in the West has become companionate, based on love and commitment. Among straight (and gay) couples, children are a common but not necessary element of the arrangement. So even if gay marriage were justified solely by the love same-sex partners have for one another, recognizing such relationships would be more analogous to taking a step to one side on a slope already partially descended, not an additional step down the slope.

Still, how do we avoid polygamy? Here is where many advocates of gay marriage run into trouble. If we claim that gay couples must be allowed to marry simply because they love each other, there is indeed no principled reason to reject multi-partner marriages. Multiple partners in a relationship are capable of loving each other.

But satisfying individual needs is not "the principle" supporting gay marriage. Instead, gay-marriage advocates should argue that any proposal for the expansion of marriage must be good both (1) for the individuals involved and (2) for the society in which they live. Gay marriage meets both of these criteria. The case for polygamous marriage is distinguishable (and weaker) on both counts, especially the second.

On the first issue - the effect of recognition on the individuals involved - the deprivation to gays of the gay marriage ban is greater than the deprivation to polygamists of the polygamy ban. A polygamist may still marry someone if we ban polygamy; he simply may not marry many someones. The deprivation to the polygamist is large, especially if polygamy involves the exercise of his religious faith, but not total. The gay person, however, has no realistic choice of a mate available under a gay-marriage ban. The deprivation is total.

Further, there is no "polygamous orientation" causing a person to need the close companionship of multiple partners (though some people may prefer it). There is, however, a homosexual orientation, causing a person to need the close companionship of a same-sex partner. The ban on polygamous marriage is the denial of a preference, perhaps a strong one; the ban on gay marriage is the denial of personhood itself.

On the second issue - the effect of recognition on society - the differences between gay marriage and polygamous marriage are more pronounced. There is ample evidence that people who live in stable, committed couples are healthier, happier, and wealthier than those who are single. Gay marriage is a good idea because it will benefit not only the gay couple but their families, friends, neighbors, and taxpayers whose burdens to care for the gay partners singly would be greater.

While multi-partner marriages might benefit the partners involved, the much greater potential for jealousy and rivalry among the partners make for a volatile arrangement, reducing the expected benefits to them and to everyone else. In a multi-partner marriage, it may be unclear who has primary caretaking responsibility if a partner becomes sick or injured; there is no such uncertainty in a two-person marriage. While we have some evidence that children do well when raised by same-sex couples, we have no evidence they do well when raised in communal living arrangements. Since multi-partner marriages will almost always take the form of one man having many wives, they present special risks of exploitation and subordination of women, which is inconsistent with our society's commitment to sex equality.

Perhaps none of these considerations is a decisive argument against polygamous marriages. But at the very least they suggest that gay marriage and polygamous marriage present very different issues. Each should be evaluated on its own merits, not treated as if one is a necessary extension of the other.