The New Republic

I am not a religious person. Historically, marriage was a religious rite. It was coopted by the state for its own purposes. Leave marriage to whatever religious/spiritual group wants involvement. Provide state sanctioned, contractually based civil union for any consenting adults who want that. Some will want both. Some neither. Problem solved.

- Barry Paulson

June 1, 2009 at 5:12pm

I'm generally liberal on gay issues. I think homosexuality is innate and that the world would be far more boring without them. Many of my friends are gay...blah blah blah. That said, Chait's argument doesn't hold. Fact is, I and every gay male in California have identical marriage rights: none of us can marry a man. So the equal rights argument fails. Thus gay marriage proponents are demanding a redefinition of marriage, and thus the onus is on them to make the case. Given that in California civil unions provide the legal benefits of marriage, what is that case? How are they harmed except for having their feelings hurt that society does not accept them as normal?

- Jim Bass

June 1, 2009 at 8:20pm

I don’t think this article completely explains religious opposition to same-sex marriage. True, this opposition is not based on theory or coherent argument. But it’s more than just discomfort and love of tradition. What else is going on here? The answer is that successful religions are successful because they make themselves useful, or even indispensable, to their adherents. One mechanism that a religious system has for becoming indispensable is to provide definitions for social institutions that meet human needs. It is sufficient for the religion to be transmitted that these definitions meet the needs of the vast majority of society. Marriage is an example. Most people are heterosexual, and religions have made themselves indispensable by providing norms to govern heterosexual behavior (prohibitions on adultery and abandoning one’s children, for example). To understand religious opposition to same-sex marriage, one must understand that a challenge to a religion’s definition of marriage—however arbitrary or indefensible—is a challenge to the religion itself. For example, there is no good argument behind the Mormon Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage; what really matters to the Church is the challenge to its authority.

- B. Backus

June 1, 2009 at 8:38pm

The New Republic Beauty pageant contestant Carrie Prejean, asked about gay marriage a few weeks ago, summed up her view this way: "In my country and in my family, I think that I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman." It's a pretty simple answer--what you'd expect, intellectually, from someone who had just successfully completed a bikini walk rather than a dissertation on the topic at hand. The writer begins the rebuttal with an ad hominem attack, instead of taking reasoned analysis. How Miss Prejean dresses has nothing to do with the veracity of what constitutes marriage. This is an “F” paper already. Around the same time, Rudy Giuliani framed his own thinking in similar terms: "Marriage, I believe, both traditionally and legally, has always been between a man and a woman and should remain between a man and woman." (In Giuliani's case, he means a man and one woman at a time, though some romantic overlap may be unavoidable.) Again, the writer offers an ad hominem fumble. If we were disqualify anyone who espouses a standard they do not personally meet as grounds for dismissing the standard, then all laws are malleable. Following this writer’s logic, we should toss out the traffic law of driving on a designated side of the road because a minority demand otherwise. In a pluralistic, democratic society, the will of the majority is the law, however arbitrary or irrational. This is still an “F” paper. Gay-marriage opponents have made that formulation their mantra. It's a really strange way for them to summarize their argument, because it's not an argument at all. If we're debating health care, one side will have a line about big government, and the other will have a line about the uninsured or spiraling costs. If we're debating torture, advocates will mention the need to make terrorists talk, and opponents will invoke American values. Soundbites, by their nature, can't express much logical nuance, but they do tend to give you a reason to agree with the position. It is a straw man fallacy to suggest that sound bites are not arguments when sound bites cannot be arguments, by their nature. What opponents of the writer’s position suggests their counter argument is mere sound bites? There are, very likely, longer form arguments against “homosexual marriage” (an oxymoron). The writer should hurl his intellect against the most robust opponents arguments. The anti-gay-marriage soundbite, by contrast, makes no attempt at persuasion. It's like saying you oppose the Bush tax cuts because "I believe the top tax rate should be 39.6 percent." You believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman? OK! But why? The ubiquity of this hollow formulation tells us something about the state of anti-gay-marriage thought. It's a body of opinion held largely by people who either don't know why they oppose gay marriage or don't feel comfortable explicating their case. Where is the proof of this hypothesis? How about something as simple as “Marriage has been defined in law, since antiquity – in Western Civilization, as a union between a male and a female” It has always been that way. Secondly, the fact that a majority of a population cannot explain a rule does not, of itself, invalidate a rule. For example, physicists know very little about the “why” of gravity; the weak force. But all physicists recognize its effects, and factor it into equations that require it. Thirdly, why should we demand that emotions be the basis by which to test the veracity of an argument, in “[opponents]… don’t feel comfortable?” Feelings have nothing to do with reasoned, rational debate and argument, therefore feelings are irrelevant. In a liberal society, consenting adults are presumed to be able to do as they like, and it is incumbent upon opponents of any such freedom to demonstrate some wider harm. Finally, the writer offers an opening debate point. Everything before this sentence should be struck from the paper. The National Organization for Marriage, on its website, instructs its activists to answer the who-gets-harmed query like so: "Who gets harmed? The people of this state who lose our right to define marriage as the union of husband and wife, that's who." Former GOP Senator Rick Santorum, arguing along similar lines, has said, "[I]f anybody can get married for any reason, then it loses its special place." If the meaning of something is defined by its components, and the components are materially changed, then ipso facto, it looses its former identity. And your point is? Both of these arguments rest upon simple tautologies. Expanding a right to a new group deprives the rest of us of our right to deny that right to others. If making a right less exclusive devalues it, then any extension of rights is an imposition upon those who were not previously excluded--i.e., women's suffrage makes voting less special for men. A tautology is a redundant repetition of a meaning in a sentence, in itself, not a faulty argument. It implies the lack of a good editor, perhaps, but does not diminish the veracity of an argued point. If changing the identity of something destroys it’s meaning in the eyes of a majority of voters, and that meaning is deemed important to the majority, then the contrary minority view is suppressed. It has nothing to do with logic or rationality; it is just a societal norm, held by the majority. Another objection holds that gay marriage would weaken the link between marriage and child-rearing, therefore encouraging out-of-wedlock births. If the standard of society is children are best born of monogamous male and female wedded (married) couples, then all births not within this standard are, by definition, outside the standard. It is what it is. Can we please argue the point about what marriage environments best raise children generally, excluding all statistical outliers, perhaps? For example, is it good for a little boy to be taught that it is okay and normal to put his penis into the rectum (the hole where the feces are) of another man as an expression of affection? If true, this would at least provide some weight on the scale against gay marriage. But it suffers from two massive flaws. First, it's hard to imagine how the tiny gay minority's behavior can materially influence the way the vast majority of heterosexuals view marriage. Then why is the gay community devoted so much time and treasure in proselytizing its agenda in public grade schools? Based on this reasoning, all gay-oriented sex education curriculum should be tossed out of public schools. Second, if you think about it, the causality gay-marriage opponents imagine is running the wrong way. Suppose we had a social epidemic of young adults who moved back into their parents' houses and watched television all day rather than finding a job. You might want to strengthen the link between adulthood and work. You'd be concerned about anything that weakened this link by letting adults not work--say, early retirement. But you wouldn't be concerned about the social signals sent by teenagers finding summer jobs. That would be weakening the link between adulthood and work, but not in the harmful way. This is a fallacy of composition. A traditionally defined marriage; a death-do-us-part covenant, is not a job; it is an identity. And by definition, anything that materially changes that identity, in the eyes of the majority, should be earned at the voting booth. (As to the social epidemic of young adults moving back with their parents, consider Italy’s extreme social problems. Italian men are not getting married until very late, compared to Muslim boys. Italy as we know it will disappear into the maws of Islam at current birth rates. It is only a matter of time before Western Civilization’s art treasures are destroyed by fanatical jihadists. And wouldn’t it be nice IF teenagers would get summer jobs –oops! In normal, traditional families, teenagers DO get summer jobs.) Likewise, marriage proponents might worry about anything that expands childbearing to the non-married, but they have no reason to fear expanding marriage to the non-childbearing. This is why approximately zero people in the history of the human race have ever expressed concern about allowing old or otherwise infertile heterosexuals to marry, even though they account for a far larger percentage of marriages than gays ever could. Again, this is a fallacy of composition. Traditional marriage is a lifetime commitment that does not depend upon the presence of absence of children, notwithstanding this is the ancient societal norm where children are born into. A typical, traditional family that raises two children to adulthood may have children in the home only 20 years of a 50 year marriage. Western Civilization’s definition has been influenced by ancient Judaism’s principle that it is not good for a man (singular male) to live alone, and secondly, that this solitude’s remedy is a wife, not a near relative generally, and that men putting their penises in the rectum’s of other human beings is abominably forbidden behavior. This ancient remedy from solitude seems the primary benefit, not fertility. Besides, if we are to argue that the purpose of marriage is to procreate children, then gay marriage, by biological evidence, is disqualified; a traditional marriage does not sanction copulation with someone, or some object, outside the marriage (including artificial insemination). The most striking thing about anti-gay-marriage arguments is that they dwell exclusively on how heterosexuals would be affected. Heather Mac Donald of the conservative Manhattan Institute writes, "I fear that it will be harder than usual to persuade black men of the obligation to marry the mother of their children if the inevitable media saturation coverage associates marriage with homosexuals." Given the general anti-homosexual sentiments of blacks, this could be true. But also given about 80% of all black children are born out-of-wedlock, without fathers in the home, Ms. MacDonald seems to avoid the elephant in the room. Black women cannot find or will not marry black men. I suppose you could imagine, somewhere, a black man telling his friends he's going to propose to his pregnant girlfriend, only to be taunted, "Marriage? That's so gay," and think better of it. I don't find this very likely. Neither does Mac Donald, actually. "[I]f someone can persuade me that the chances are zero, then I would be much more sanguine," she writes. "But anything more than zero, I am reluctant to risk." This is the One Percent Doctrine of social policy. If you place zero weight upon the preferences of gays, then all you have to do is suggest a possible harm, however remote, associated with gay marriage. The same sensibility was on stark display in a recent National Review editorial. Dismissing the argument that marriage might foster more stable gay relationships, the magazine's editors replied curtly, "[T]hese do not strike us as important governmental goals." There's a word for social policy that disregards the welfare of one class of citizens: discrimination. Discrimination law is not based on volitional behavior and sexual appetites; it is based on skin color and sex (physical maleness or femaleness); not which orifice one prefers to stick one’s penis. This is like supposing we disenfranchise everyone who hates spinach or turnip greens. There is a lot of research, much of it manufactured, to justify why some males prefer sex with other males’ rectums than the female reproductive system. It’s bizarre, if you think it through. But we choose our morality to justify our behavior, not the other way around. If we did not, we could not deal with the overwhelming cognitive dissonance. Some hard-core conservatives are willing to discriminate [incorrect use of the word, see above] openly like this, but most people aren't, which is why public opinion is warming to gay marriage. Most opposition arises from simple discomfort. [Pure speculation and avoidance of rational argument]. When I first started hearing about gay marriage. I didn't oppose it, but it seemed sort of strange and radical--and only after several years did I realize I supported it. The line "I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman" is an expression of that sensibility--a reflection of unease rather than principle. Better said, “I believe it is an expression of sensibility.” The writer should look in the mirror. He has, like so may liberals, changed his feelings, but not by cogent reason, as this “F” paper aptly illustrates. As people face up to the fact that opposing gay marriage means disregarding the happiness of the people most directly (or even solely) affected by it, most of us come around. Good ideas don't always defeat bad ideas, but they usually, over time, defeat non-ideas. Sensible people disregard the happiness of others all the time, when the basis of that happiness comes from abnormal behavior, as defined and enforced by the majority. Where we really are, is rather simple. We have an ancient societal tradition that was handed down from a Jewish theocracy, through a Christian majority that attached sacred meaning to the lifetime union of an adult male and female. Now comes a generation that, for the most part, rejects the ancient meanings of the texts and wants to sanctify their same-sex life-partner commitment with the word that connotes a holy bond – marriage. The traditionalists simply do not want this sacred definition changed. The gay community wants to anoint their co-habitation with that sacred title, and thereby satisfy some spiritual yearning in traditional terms. I think it’s impossible without destroying the ancient meanings of terms – but that’s opinion. Besides, any two adults can arrange their personal affairs via contracts that accomplish everything traditional marriage law accomplishes without calling it a marriage – the religiously sanctified aspect. As our nation drifts farther and farther from its Judeo-Christian roots and original meanings, gay’s may attach whatever spiritual meaning they want to their union; but they cannot change the ancient texts that defined marriage from its beginning. But by then, who the hell cares anyway? One final point: I think sexual attraction is a function of biochemistry; and a result of a combination of neurological phenomenon in the brain. We’ve learned that viewing pornography changes male arousal thresholds and often leads to abusive sexual behavior toward females; it’s a learned and acquired appetite. We also recognize that some men are mentally very female in the way they think, often times resulting in astonishingly brilliant creativity, which explains so some extent, why many ballet dancers are gay. It is a profoundly unfair tragedy for persons mentally hardwired like their opposite sex to be, with the proper use of the term, discriminated against. At the same time, is well within society’s jurisdiction to define and enforce who will have sexual relations with whom, and what constitutes legal, sanctioned behavior. What I find most irrational is how the Gay community has built their discrimination claims around a behavior – the right to put their penis in the rectum of another male; surely we can fine something more noble to fight over. (And spare me this “homophobe” nonsense. I have no fear of homosexuals – so the term “homophobe” is a ridiculous construction. Given that non-monogamous unprotected sexual relations between homosexual males has murdered hundreds of thousands of talented gay men, who would otherwise be contributing wonderful things to society, the only rational use of the term “homophobe” should be to describe sexually careful, smart gay males.) So, Mr. Chait: I give you an “F” for your paper. The use of ad homenim, composition, and straw man fallacies wastes your talent. As an Objectivist (think Ayn Rand here), the entire notion of spirituality in a monogamous relationship is mystical, irrational nonsense. The original Jewish marriage covenant was a contract, with some “bashert” narratives in the midrashic commentaries – ideas that Christianity derived sacredness from. The gay community should focus on good contracts and breech of contract provisions. JR (I don’t give my real name because I don’t want public search engines abusers compiling profiles on me.) Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.

- JR

June 1, 2009 at 11:53pm

What is the modern governmentally sanctioned social purpose of marriage? I understand the emotional response of those with traditional religious convictions, and the desire for certified normality, not to mention health and tax benefits, of gay people. But what is the intrinsic value of marriage such that it remains sacramental both religiously and civically? Wouldn't we have to establish again the fundamental importance of marriage itself before differentiating between what it might mean to the two groups. Perhaps it's more than two groups, as most will still acknowledge some attitudinal differences between men, women and combinations therof.

- wayne magnoni

June 2, 2009 at 4:36am

I agree with Barry. And I can't believe that an article hyped as a "demolition" of the anti-gay-marriage argument didn't mention the word FAITH. Can you make a logical, rational argument that Jesus died, was buried, and ascended into heaven? Of course not! Faith is that which people believe despite the absence of proof. This piece does a fine job of exposing arguments founded in logic, but essentially dismisses faith as a "non-idea." That's both disingenuous and oversimplifying. Now I'm not saying that faith warrants opposition to gay marriage; as a Christian, I'm conflicted over the issue. And I admit that logic provides no support for my visceral squeamishness when confronted with male homosexual behavior. But I do see discrimination against gay people very differently than, say, racial discrimination. While I do, of course, believe that people are born with gay tendencies, and thus it's not pure "choice" to be gay, it's much more of a choice than whether to be black. Many people of faith would believe that tendencies toward homosexuality, like tendencies toward gambling addiction or alcoholism, should be suppressed. And anyone who has spent any time in faith communities has seen very effeminate men--the type who nobody would be surprised to see "come out of the closet"--live rigidly heterosexual lives, sometimes even having children. Again, I'm not saying this worldview must be accepted by people of faith; I'm a bit skeptical of it myself. But to ignore it and declare victory, as this article does, is to avoid the thorniest aspect of the issue.

- Allen

June 2, 2009 at 6:18am

Mr. Paulson: That issue is already resolved. My wife and I did not get married in a church or by any member of a church, but simply by someone that legally could marry us. Leave religious union ceremonies, sometimes called religious marriage services, to the churches, where their beliefs inform the content of the service or ceremony. As long as the officiator is sanctioned by his state to legally perform marriages, then the marriage is then legal.

- Mister Peabody

June 2, 2009 at 9:26am

Mr. Jim Bass said it very well above. JR may have been brilliant, as well. Too bad the format apparently doesn't allow for paragraphing. Contrary to the assertion by Richard Just in the email he sent me, Jonathon Chait is NOT the best Op-ed columnist in America. Not even close.

- Norman Bates

June 2, 2009 at 9:17pm

I got an publicity email from TNR saying that Jonathan Chait's Miss Guided was one of the best pieces against the no-gay marriage position we will ever see. I enjoyed it, and it was witty and thoughtful, but didn't come close to living up to the hype. In fact, even though he exposes some no-gay marriage arguments as tautology, he verges on this himself. Why are their arguments, not arguments? Because he says they aren't. As this debate continues in our culture it is vital that opposing sides understand each other better. Caricature and knee-jerk reactions to those with whom you disagree isn't helpful. Even those who we may see as being agents of great harm and discrimination need to be understood. Their best arguments need to be countered, not their worst. Space does not permit me to wonder why Chait went after, say, the beauty pageant what's-her-name, rather than, say, the substantive pieces in journals such as First Things or from writers at National Review. He noted that she hasn't written a dissertation on the topic. Well, duh. There are those who have, though, and there is no mention of them. Does he mean to imply that all who hold to the traditional view are dolts, that the standard "mantra" (as he calls it) is a "hollow formulation"? He must not get out much. Of course is it fair to study how common folks form their views, what their impulses and convictions are, but if you want the best arguments you must go to where they are made. Of course the beauty pageant response wasn't an argument; the questioner asked for her view, not for a case. Giuliani's soundbite may not be adequate, but it isn't a non-case: he appeals to tradition, legal and otherwise. For the details check out Alister McIntyre or Princeton's Jeffrey Stout or Duke's Stanley Hauerwas or Philip Rieff or Charles Taylor. The intellectual heavyweights who reject the classic liberal presumption of the autonomous individual who gets to make it up as she goes along is substantial, and while I have no idea who Guliani reads, I suspect he meant something like this between the lines. I am confident that the typical fearful recruit of the Christian right may not know these scholars, but their inclination to think about social reforms in terms of what is right, not what is going to hurt me and mine, is a more fruitful path to explore if one wants to be able to understand and debate them. My main concern, I suppose, is what I take to be a mis-reading of conservative folks, at least those informed by religious convictions. It isn't, as Chait presumes, that most think they (heterosexuals) will be hurt, but that everyone will be hurt. They aren't looking out for themselves, or even their right to define an institution. They presume a given-ness to reality. The Aristotle and Plato had their notions of this, Catholic call it "natural law." Fundamentalist Protestants might say it is "in God's Word" and the point is that it is not our prerogative to do anything other than steward the way things are supposed to be. Most cultures have notions that truth is what is real, that social policies must be embedded in reality. Good American pragmatists, descendents of James and Dewey, may not care much about truth, only what works, but most people in most places care about the notion, want to yield their lives to what is really there When they say it "should be" or "is" (between a man and a woman) they aren't saying that they get to define it; they are saying they are obliged to honor the way it really is. They say it just is that way. They've not quite gotten the memo on the social construction of reality, and they may be pre-modern but they aren't exactly modernists and they sure aren't postmodernists. They just think we don't get to choose whether gravity is to be obeyed or not and if some silly Washington or Hollywood insider wants to deny it, we'd all better look out. Ideas have consequences, and the idea that something that just is can be reconfigured doesn't make sense to them. Some couch their resistance to newfangled change in terms of potential consequences, and, to be honest, these are not (in my view) as outlandish a claim as Chait implies. Are children best served by households headed by a male and female? It may not be political correct to say so, and we may wish otherwise, but some social science research seems to point in that direction. Is it nutty or selfish to say so? I think not. And, certainly, the big-mouthed former Senator Santorum had a legal point when he suggested that opening the door to new definitions of what constitutes a marriage will, in fact, allow for other forms of wedded bliss to become legal. Big Love anyone? Why is it stupid of Santorum to imply this? Chait doesn't say. The article just asserts it with the otherwise clever graphic. (My friends on the left have a history of bashing the Pennsylvania conservative unfairly; for instance, he was roundly mocked for his often-reported comment about how overturning an anti-sodomy law based on a legal argument of privacy could have huge negative consequences, since nearly anything previously rendered illegal could be reconsidered if seen as private. Again, saying that such a concern about radical libertarianism is dumb--which is easy to do when the pundit being dismissed is as hated as was Santorum, does not make it so. So, while I appreciate Mr.Chait's efforts to deconstruct shoddy arguments and expose the failings of the anti-gay marriage movement, this article didn't do justice to the complexity of the arguments, or the serious scholarship of the right, sometimes from folks who themselves have struggled long and hard with the ambiguities and conundrums of this unprecedented cultural conversation. (Chait's suggestion that this is somehow akin to granting voting rights to women is itself a rather shoddy parallelism. In that case, voting was not defined as a reality done exclusively by men and there was little sense of it being a given of nature; it was expanding who gets to participate, and more participation didn't radically re-define what the institution was. Like it or not, marriage has historically been defined as a partnership between a woman and a man. Perhaps such a definition needs to be jettisoned. Some think that this is like trying to deny the reality of gravity, though. To reply to their best arguments, and not just assert that they have none, is the need of the hour.

- Byron Borger

June 2, 2009 at 9:38pm

Mr. Bass: Civil unions have no reciprocity across states, for one. I don't know enough about California's civil partnership law to know if it covers all the same legal bases as the marriage laws, but in many states it's not working out that way. And the argument that marriage laws are not unequal because straight men can't marry men either is the least humane of all the arguments. Straight men and women can marry the person they choose -- "the one" if you will -- but gay people cannot. That might be too fuzzy for a strict equal-protection claim, but the legal and governmental benefits marriage provides need to be equal, on the state and federal levels, if the only distinguishing factor is gender. Oh, and having two different names for the governmentally sanctioned institution de facto makes two different classes of people. Another no-no.

- BC

June 3, 2009 at 9:58am

After my father died, my mother, who was 55 at the time, married my stepfather. I told her in no uncertain terms that this was against God's holy writ "to be fruitful and multiply", and that she was being unfaithful to the whole purpose of marriage. She said that she just loved my stepfather and wanted to share his life - including all the privileges and responsibilities of marriage. He, for his part, wanted her to inherit his estate and to care for her for the rest of her days should she pre-decease him. I told them both that this was an abomonation, and that they were trying to redefine "marriage" to suit themselves. They had absolutely no intention of procreating (Mom couldn't do it anyway) and raising children and they were only interested in love, companionship, sex, legal allowances and benefits. They absolutely refused to listen to me and got married anyway. Isn't this sick? Of course I had to disown both of them, and haven't spoken to them since. Now my sister, who is gay, wants to marry her partner. Here we go again!

- JKL

June 3, 2009 at 1:46pm

What is interesting is that since the same sex marriage issue has been gaining momentum there has been a shift in peoples attitude towards it and it is definitely going against their cause. We see very ugly behavior comeing out of the Gay camp after prop 8 was passed in California. people who gave money to support prop 8 were singled out and attacked. Perez Hiltons aweful language towrds Carrie Perjean is another example. The side which supported prp 8 has defended traditional marriage with poise and respect. That's because that's the kind of people we are. Not Homophobe's. We are not afraid of Homosexuals. This article also states that there is no connection between allowing same sex marriage and the the break down of heterosexual couples marrying. That is also untrue. In Sweden they have a huge upswing in couples having children and not getting married that totally coinsides with the fact that during this same time they allowed same sex marriage. The damage is clear. The breakdown of the family unit. Same sex couples cannot procreate. No family. No future. Sex is sacred. It is a totally moral issue. Gay sex is deviant behavior. Have your civil unions. Just don't ask us to call your union a marriage. To God it's just sin.

- Todd White

June 3, 2009 at 5:26pm

But god isn't the law of this land.

- BC

June 4, 2009 at 11:00am

For marriage avoid the arbitrary stigma that it received from the Massachusetts Supreme Court, it must be about something more tangible that love and commitment, and so it is. Marriage is how society defines the critical difference between friendship and kinship. This differentiation is important because society cares for the young, aged, sick and incompetant through its recognition of kinship. We can choose our friends and we can decide for ourselves what we owe them, if anything. Our families are different. We are stuck with them and traditionally we owe them a higher level of assistance whether we like it or not. This is why people are intuitively skeptical of gay-marriage. It blurs the critical differentiation between kinship and friendship. It does no harm to my marriage or anyone's in particular. What it may do is help to redefine marriage into irrelevance.

- Eric

July 18, 2009 at 1:39pm

Barry Paulson is right. "Civil union" is the proper province of the state. "Marriage" should be left to religion. Some will marry gays, some won't, not our problem. In France, there are two ceremonies, first a civil ceremony at the Town Hall and then, for those who want it, a church ceremony. The first is the one that creates the legal status for state purposes. That is as it should be, and it should be available to all.

- roidubouloi

June 23, 2010 at 4:10pm

Todd White, you and Barry Paulson are almost on the same page. Just understand that it is inappropriate for the state to recognize your marriage and more than your communion or your Bar Mitzvah. That is a properly religious matter. If you want your union recognized by the state, then you should also have to have a civil union (although, for convenience, there is no reason why someone performing a marriage cannot simultaneously solemnize a licensed civil union).

- roidubouloi

June 23, 2010 at 4:14pm

I think Mr. Borger is very wide of the mark in taking issue with Chait's suffrage analogy. It is historically near perfect. Historically, voting and participation in civic life was viewed as exclusively a male role, going straight back to Greece and Rome whence the vote comes to us. The institution of suffrage was no more or less changed by including women than would be the institution of marriage, or union, by including gays. Really, with all of the horrors in the world, how is it possible to be seriously worried about who loves whom and a list of imagined consequences for which there is no evidence at all? There has been gay sex since the beginning of time and we are all still here. Letting them exchange rings is hardly going to tear up the social fabric. Oh, and "privacy law" is not about what you do in private. It is about the presumed right of the individual to control of his or her person regarding intimate matters in which the individual is hugely concerned and society very much less so (except for the snoops). There is no legal notion that you can do what you want, commit a crime, just because the doors are shut and the shades are down.

- roidubouloi

June 23, 2010 at 4:23pm

Agree with Roid and also like how France does this. Prejean's position differs from Obama how? Chait, why didn't you write a piece titled "Barack Obama, Elton John and other anti-gay marriage intellectuals" Not as fun? Not as many high fives from your buddies? They share the same mindset as Prejean, no? After kids arrived, my wife and I went to an attorney to have a contract drawn up that explains how we want to end things, who can decide what, how the money gets distributed, etc. Same thing two men, romantically involved or not, could do today. Not sure what marriage gets you these days, except a tax break that shoudl probably be extended to anyone (or eliminated) living as a cohesive family unit, including spinster sisters, frat brothers, men living with 9 cats, etc The entire attempt to redefine marriage has really been a bit petty. It'd have been better to attempt to get the tax deduction.

- seattleeng

August 4, 2010 at 8:54pm