Rod Dreher

Recreating the Catholic ghetto

Signs of impending gay marriage victory

By Rod Dreher • January 29, 2012, 9:43 AM

Evidence from The New York Times that backers of gay marriage, of which the Times has been a leading advocate, sense that victory has been assured:

1. Dan Savage tells us in a recent NYT Magazine cover story that hey, married gay couples may not be faithful to their marriage vows, and not only is that okay, but redefining the marriage ideal to accomodate creative infidelity might be just what straight couples need to spice up their lives.

2. In today’s paper, Frank Bruni and Cynthia Nixon say that hey, despite what you’ve heard, some gays really aren’t born that way, but rather choose to be that way — and the only people who care about such things are bigots.

87 Responses to Signs of impending gay marriage victory

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Geoff G. says:

January 29, 2012 at 10:13 pm

JonF

I suspect that the “particular subset” you mention is probably young(ish) and good-looking.

Actually, it’s pretty varied and not as dependent on looks as you might think. It really has more to do with the individual than anything else, but there are plenty of men who are very active into their 50s. And there are plenty of young guys who want nothing more than to settle down in a monogamous relationship.

Looks aren’t much of a predictor either. You’re right that gay culture can be very shallow when it comes to what’s attractive (men tend to be generally). But I’ve known some who were very attractive and self confident and settled into long term monogamous relationships and others who were handsome as all getout, but insecure about their looks and would end up doing things like porn and escorting as much for the sense of validation they got as anything else.

The worst offenders and the people I really had in mind were those who are hooked on meth. It’s generally used because it both throws the libido into overdrive and completely tosses inhibitions out the window. I’d say a large number of the most promiscuous guys out there these days are under the influence.
Leo Ladenson says:

January 29, 2012 at 10:58 pm

@Geoff G.

Now, you say you feel sick that these men are doing a job that most of the rest of the country can’t be bothered to do.

Yes, I was graduated from an Ivy League college and was on active duty in the Army in Europe before you were out of high school. And one thing that I learned there was that the Army is not a “job.” What other job is there where can you be sentenced to prison if you quit without your boss’s consent? What other job subjects you to a different and more rigorous legal code? What other job tells you what to wear, where to sleep, and whom to shower with?

Instead military service is a way of life and a special status. It was, in my experience, a way of honor. And sodomy is simply not a way of honor.
Leo Ladenson says:

January 29, 2012 at 11:09 pm

@Peter H

Leo Ladenson, do you think there should be legal strictures against homosexuality? If so, what do you have in mind?

And what exactly do you mean by “real marriage”?

Well, I’m quite liberal on the first question: I would temper the rigor of the common law–which numbered sodomy a felony subject to capital punishment–by retaining the criminal status of homosexual conduct but discouraging active enforcement. That way we won’t empower heavy-handed law enforcement, but we maintain the policy of privileging natural marriage, so we won’t have any abominations like Lawrence v. Texas and its progeny.

By real marriage, I mean simply what has been the common understanding of marriage, the basic universal definition, namely, natural marriage, the life-long union of man and woman, consummated by natural coition, for the principal purpose of the procreation and rearing of children. That’s been the definition in the Anglo-American common law for centuries, based on the natural tradition from time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.
TTT says:

January 29, 2012 at 11:13 pm

any sub-culture that does not take the time and effort to raise up the next generation will dis-inherit themselves from the future

That’s not even wrong.

Sexual orientation is innate, so some people will continue to be born primarily gay as long as humankind persists. So will all inborn conditions regardless of their reproductive outcome – we still have plenty of babies born with genetic defects that will kill them before they could have children of their own. It’s an everpresent option during fetal development.

Beyond that, there is nothing preventing gay and bi people from reproducing. Lots of gay people have had hetero encounters (including Dan Savage); often they start their sex lives this way, out of confusion, denial, a desire to “pass,” the need to reassure their families, etc.
J says:

January 29, 2012 at 11:44 pm

Of course, all of the blather ignores the fact that the campaign for SSM has never been about real marriage but rather about destroying the privileged social place of marriage and the concomitant legal strictures against homosexuality.

Those folks would say that you’re dancing around the term ‘patriarchal’.

SSM is as inevitable as Prohibition, the unstoppable advance of Soviet communism, and the passage of the ERA.

It’s coming to Washington State, New Jersey, Maine, and Maryland in the near future anyway. It would probably win narrowly in a popular referendum in California this year and likely easily in 2014, when it will probably be put on the ballot. It isn’t legalized but has majority popular support in Ireland, Denmark, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
Charles Cosimano says:

January 29, 2012 at 11:46 pm

Ok, first, get this straight, no pun intended. The era of legal strictures against homosexuality is over, dead, done and gone and buried. There is no way that Lawrence V Texas is ever going to be overturned.

Second, marriage is what the law says it is. If the law says that Gays can marry each other, then that is what defines marriage, not the other way around.
KJP says:

January 29, 2012 at 11:50 pm

“Aside from the acceptance of extra-marital sex, Dan Savage has a pretty conservative view of marriage”

i just love the “aside from” here. do you people even listen to yourselves?
Leo Ladenson says:

January 30, 2012 at 12:01 am

@Charles Cosimano

Ok, first, get this straight, no pun intended. The era of legal strictures against homosexuality is over, dead, done and gone and buried. There is no way that Lawrence V Texas is ever going to be overturned.

Second, marriage is what the law says it is. If the law says that Gays can marry each other, then that is what defines marriage, not the other way around.

(1) Very short-sighted. Along the lines of Lincoln Steffens’s “I have seen the future and it works.” There were just 17 years between Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas. Only a fool says he knows what another 17 years will bring.

(2) No, sorry, marriage is not simply a positivist concoction. Even the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence recognizes that marriage is a unique and privileged relationship that precedes the state and every statute: “Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race.” Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 US 535, 541 (1942).
Chris says:

January 30, 2012 at 12:52 am

Rod

The culture war over homosexuality has been lost by conservatives. The issue is dead. Time to bury the corpse and move on. Same sex marriage is actually a conservative value that gives to homosexuals the restraining, pro-social, and civilizing influence of matrimony. Nothing more Burkean than that. The arguments against same sex civil marriage have no rational and logical justification. Why continue to flog this dead horse??
Dimitry Aleksandrovich says:

January 30, 2012 at 12:53 am

I know all of this brew ha ha over homosexual marriage was because the homosexual activists wanted to be able to force public schools to teach young children that their lifestyle is somehow natural and normal when it surely is not and never has been.
Peter H says:

January 30, 2012 at 12:56 am

Leo, we’ve abandoned the traditional understanding of marriage that you outline in your 11:09 comment.

You are arguing that same-sex couples can’t meet a standard that we no longer hold for straight couples.

We’ve already redefined marriage. The lifelong part is now optional, and we’ve fully embraced that redefinition. Witness the conservative party in this country, which has already nominated a man who divorced his wife to marry the woman with whom he was conducting an affair. And now that same party is flirting with a guy who did that twice.

If they cared about marriage, they would behave differently. I suppose one might say that “it’s all a game to them. They’ll destroy the very institutions that keep our country and our families safe in order to legitimize their own unnatural desires.”
Charles Cosimano says:

January 30, 2012 at 2:23 am

This ain’t 1942. No way would the court rule that way now. And anyone who thinks that Lawrence will be reversed is living in a dream world. The court immediately recognized that Bowers was a bad decision, made at the height of the AIDS panic and it was just waiting for a case to come before it to reverse what was almost universally believed to be a wrong decision by the folks who matter.

Marriage is a legal concoction, a branch of contract law. And that is all that it is.
JonF says:

January 30, 2012 at 6:10 am

Re: Only a fool says he knows what another 17 years will bring

In the next 17 years:
We will not repeal the 13th Amendment and restore race-based slavery.
We will not make the Protestant Christianity illegal.
We will not be issuing titles of nobility.

Some things one can be pretty sure of.

Re: No, sorry, marriage is not simply a positivist concoction.

Marriage is a human institution (it would not exist without us)and as such it is under human control. Like goverrnment and other human things, we have the power to define it as we may, as we cannot do with, say, the first law of themodynamics. This is not to say that some definitions aren’t superior to others nor that some would be downright
pernicious and foolish. But the line that same sex marriage “can’t” exist is high octane BS– and a lazy dodge since it spares those who make it from the much harder task of trying to establish that same sex marriage should not exist.
JonF says:

January 30, 2012 at 6:13 am

Re: . And sodomy is simply not a way of honor

“Sodomy” is not, and never has been a synonym for homosexuality. Plenty of heterosexuals have indulged in it. Would you cashier them from the armed forces? Place them, under legal suspcion?
Amelia says:

January 30, 2012 at 9:43 am

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes . . .

If everyone has the “right to marry”, can anyone be denied the right to have (acquire, own) what was once considered to be the fruits of marriage?

Right now, while everyone’s attention is focused on the definition of marriage, the Next Big Thing is already happening — and it’s big business: the selection, purchase, and sale of genetic materials, the manufacturing and installation processes, the delivery of the finished product to the satisfied customers. There’s also a market for discarded embryonic products in medical research and treatments for human ailments and imperfections. Baby production is a growth industry.

Is there any happiness to which we have no right?
Anglican says:

January 30, 2012 at 10:13 am

Gays are boring.
Larry says:

January 30, 2012 at 10:53 am

The US Supreme Court has already ruled multiple times that marriage is not a privilege for a select few, but a fundamental civil right for all people.

See Meyer vs. Nebraska, 1923 (first decision to reference marriage as a fundamental right guarded by the 14th amendment); Skinner v. Oklahoma, 1942 (against compulsory sterilization); Loving v. Virginia, 1967 (interracial marriage); Turner v. Safley, 1987 (right for prison inmates to marry).

In fact, it looks like the decisions that protect marriage as a civil right tend to be the same decisions that protect the family unit itself from unwarranted interference by the state.
Noah G. says:

January 30, 2012 at 11:34 am

I for one have a *real* hard time taking the opinions of Mr. Savage seriously, especially when it comes to sex/relationships. I still can’t believe that he gets the attention that he does. I first came across his writings while thumbing through an O.C. Weekly at work one day a year or so ago. I literally thought the column (“Savage Love”) had been taken from some cheap (or free) random smut publication, the kind you might find on the bathroom floor of a strip club. The kind that only a very small minority of people on the sexual fringe reads. It made me literally physically sick and depressed. It was in the form of “advice” for a young couple’s son (nothing to do with homosexuality per se btw). I was confused as to why the O.C. Weekly would print it. I knew they were pretty liberal in general on a lot of things, but this was really out there. Anyway, maybe it was a just a one-time thing or something.

I was later pretty genuinely horrified to find out that he was the guy I’d been seeing on Bill Maher’s show for some time, that a huge section of the population took his opinions seriously, and/or that a huge section of the population not only did not find his writing un-readable, but considered him a delightful, entertaining, reasonable, etc. (albeit “alternative”) sex/relationship advice columnist.

I’ll listen to what he has to say about politics (very reluctantly) once in awhile on Maher’s show, but on marriage?? Not a chance. I’ll get my relationship advice elsewhere, thanks.
Mitchell Young says:

January 30, 2012 at 12:17 pm

““Sodomy” is not, and never has been a synonym for homosexuality. Plenty of heterosexuals have indulged in it. Would you cashier them from the armed forces? Place them, under legal suspcion?”

Actually, sodomy, n whatever form, was against the UCMJ. Obviously that regulation wasn’t enforced with much zeal, but it was there.
Mitchell Young says:

January 30, 2012 at 12:21 pm

“See Meyer vs. Nebraska, 1923 (first decision to reference marriage as a fundamental right guarded by the 14th amendment); Skinner v. Oklahoma, 1942 (against compulsory sterilization); Loving v. Virginia, 1967 (interracial marriage); Turner v. Safley, 1987 (right for prison inmates to marry).”

Did any of those decisions deal with marriage of homosexuals? Was that issue even addressed in majority opinions or dissents. In arguments?
Zaph says:

January 30, 2012 at 12:37 pm

Since we have started to re-define marriage so enthusiastically, why stop at the same-sex unions? Following the logic that seems to dominate around here, other types of sexual attractions also need to be included. For example, why an 18-year old consenting adult should not be able to marry his 70-year-old grandmother? Why shouldn’t two consenting adults be allowed to enter a contractual agreement that after one of them dies, the other marries her corpse? Wouldn’t that violate those people’s human and civil rights?
Franklin Evans says:

January 30, 2012 at 2:02 pm

Zaph, putting straw men on slippery slopes will get you nothing but annoyed donkeys and horses trying to get at the straw embedded in the mud.
JustMe says:

January 30, 2012 at 2:59 pm

Since we have started to re-define marriage so enthusiastically, why stop at the same-sex unions?

I am wary of making a slippery slope argument with gay marriage. Once we make a slippery slope argument with gay marriage, when will we stop? What other public policy issues will we argue against by warning about the inevitably slippery slope? It’s too much to think about.
Zaph says:

January 30, 2012 at 3:25 pm

Franklin,
Could you please answer my question without resorting to unclear allegories? Would the rights of the people in my hypothetical examples be violated? If not, why?

JustMe,
The other two public policy issues argued this way that immediately come to mind are freedom of choice (e.g., controversy surrounding partial birth abortions) and gun control.
JustMe says:

January 30, 2012 at 4:06 pm

Zaph: whoooosh!
Siarlys Jenkins says:

January 30, 2012 at 4:15 pm

JonF: Unless you have been reading Isaac Asimov’s short story about the creatures in flying saucers from a planet where all life reproduced by budding, it is hard to consider your passing remark anything but a very distant tangent. The most primitive form of reproduction is, of course, single-celled fission. There are simple multi-celled creatures like hydras, that reproduce by budding. Once you get to hermaphrodites, there are two sexes, they are just both present on one body. It is still the male organ together with the female organ that produces offspring. Next step, specialized sexes, with each individual having one organ, not the other. And which of these applies to human beings? Or were we discussing the right of sponges and hydras to marry?

Larry: it is sloppy wishful thinking about marriage being “a fundamental civil right for all people” that has made the whole subject of gay marriage so absurd. Every man does have a fundamental right to marry any woman who will have him, and vice versa. That fulfills the criteria, “a fundamental civil right for all people.” Not one person is left out of its purview. Nobody is told “people of your class may not marry.” Nobody is told “you don’t own enough property to qualify for marriage.” No law says “you may not marry because you are a homosexual.” On the other hand, no law recognizes what a person attracted to their own sex may desire, AS being a marriage. That doesn’t deprive anyone of marriage, you just happen to want something different.

“But” say the whiners, “I am denied the right to marry because who or what I want to marry is excluded from the current definition of marriage.” That is rather like saying, I am denied the right to be a Catholic because I do not accept the canon of the Catholic Church. I have a right to reject the canon of the Catholic Church — but having done so, I don’t have the right to call myself a Catholic. What you want is not a marriage. It just isn’t. So stop whining.
Zaph says:

January 30, 2012 at 4:50 pm

JustMe,
Zaph: whoooosh!
I am deeply impressed by the depth of your argument. So, I was instantly strawmanned and dismissed, yet my very simple and straightforward question received no answer. Rather typical of political debates nowadays.

I agree with Siarlys Jenkins, no law prevents homosexuals from marrying the opposite sex. Furthermore, there are laws allowing same-sex domestic partnerships, and specifically prohibiting harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Leo Ladenson says:

January 30, 2012 at 5:40 pm

@Larry

The US Supreme Court has already ruled multiple times that marriage is not a privilege for a select few, but a fundamental civil right for all people.

If you actually read the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, its recognition of marriage as a fundamental right is premised almost entirely on the procreative aspect of marriage. SSM lacks that element and so is not marriage.

Besides the Supreme Court has already ruled that there is no federal right to SSM. See Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972).
Leo Ladenson says:

January 30, 2012 at 5:47 pm

@Siarlys Jenkins

Very well put.

But:

Every man does have a fundamental right to marry any woman who will have him, and vice versa.

I take your point, but even that good statement can be qualified in at least these ways:

–the parties must be of age;
–the parties must not be related within prohibited degrees; and
–neither party may already be married.

Further evidence that the “everyone has a right to marry whomever he wants” is a fantasy.
Franklin Evans says:

January 30, 2012 at 6:23 pm

Zaph,

I apologize for indulging in a drive-by posting. I’ll try to answer your question.

First, to avoid making this personal, search using your favorite method using the key phrases in your post. I’ve personally seen other versions of your question, concerning marrying an animal or an inanimate object. In that search you will see rebuttals/answers to your question along this general line:

Humans are the only ones who obtain these rights and protections. Further, your examples are straw men because they fail any objective reasonability test. Incest is not a reasonable example of a right, no more so than being able to marry one’s pet. Further, while you sidestepped the consent aspect in your first example, there is no law in the nation that defines rights for a corpse. There are criminal statutes for the abuse of a corpse, but they are on the books for the protection of the living. A corpse cannot give consent. A pre-death contract would not stand up in any court, in my not-a-lawyer opinion.

That is what makes your question a straw man argument.

In previous instances of this tangent, the other point I’ve made is that “what if” questions — leaving aside their implied or intended use as scare tactics — have no bearing on a specific law. Should other laws be passed concerning them, they would be tested (if passed at all) separately.

That is why the slippery slope of “what if” is a fallacy.
Geoff G. says:

January 30, 2012 at 7:54 pm

Leo Ladensen

Forgive me for not having that fancy pants Ivy League education. Some of us actually had to work for our Phi Beta Kappa keys and earn them the hard way.

People who’ll judge you, even fire you, for who you are rather than how you perform or the content of your character have no honor.
Peter H says:

January 30, 2012 at 9:04 pm

Up thread, I alluded to gay rights activists who were/are opposed to same-sex marriage. And today, the Stranger gave space to one such guy:

The flaw at the heart of “marriage equality” is that, in purporting to institutionalize (normalize) gay sex/partnerships, it produces but another universe of legally codified restrictions that excludes millions of other peoples. It legally codifies prejudice against people who are single and justifies it through the veneer of “gay rights.” The two terms that make up “marriage equality” are incongruent: Marriage as a governmental and socially-accepted contract can never embody or nurture the equality all individuals because it is hopelessly invested in exponentially producing more and more categories.

Link.
Zaph says:

January 30, 2012 at 9:10 pm

Franklin,

Thank you for a detailed answer. I still do not believe that I am making a straw man argument. As for answers/rebuttals to my questions available on the Web, they are largely limited to the circular reasoning “it is wrong because it is not correct” and brush-asides “this is totally different” without any further elaborations.

Humans are the only ones who obtain these rights and protections.
This is not true. Animals have rights as well, which are protected by law. Cruelty to a non-human animal can easily get a human animal fined, or put to jail.

Incest is not a reasonable example of a right, no more so than being able to marry one’s pet.
What exactly make it unreasonable? Opponents of homosexual marriage similarly say that it is unreasonable. What exactly is reasonable anyway? From financial point of view, it is more reasonable to work and invest than stay home and spend money on raising children. Yet, there are still a few unreasonable people left doing it (although their numbers are shrinking).

There are criminal statutes for the abuse of a corpse.
Abuse implies lack of consent. There are also laws against rape, but they do not preclude people from having an intercourse by mutual agreement.

A pre-death contract would not stand up in any court, in my not-a-lawyer opinion.
A living will is a prime example of a pre-death contract that stands perfectly well in any court. It also often includes instructions to survivors what to do with the corpse (e.g., cremate it and spread the ashes over a particular area).

I hope that you and other readers understand that I am being extremely facetious. All the rationalizations in this and similar discussions are, in my opinion, completely inappropriate because they remove the sacral component from the marriage. The marriage is between the two loving souls and Divinity. Once political activists and legal experts move in, things go bad.
Franklin Evans says:

January 30, 2012 at 10:37 pm

Well, Zaph, you might consider the possibility that you’ve wasted a bit of my time. I don’t consider facetiously offered questions sincere attempts to discuss or debate. Besides, that you confess your facetious intent damages your credibility. I intend to let that pass, but there are some of us who assume good will on the part of others, and you didn’t quite make the grade there.

All the rationalizations in this and similar discussions are, in my opinion, completely inappropriate because they remove the sacral component from the marriage.

That’s an entirely different kettle of fish. I suggest you qualify your statements to specify which type of marriage you wish to address here. The sacred rite has nothing to do with the economic and social implications of a marriage contract. Two atheists and two devout believers both get exactly the same advantages, obtain the exact same obligations and enjoy the exact same conveniences and efficiencies from the marriage contract. The “rationalization” you are missing here, in somewhat more part than your not mentioning it yourself, is that same-sex couples are barred from those consequences of the marriage contract. That is the issue, and those who insist that the law is attempting to infringe on the sacred rite are fear-mongering at best. A church and/or cleric is totally unnecessary to entering into the contract.
Leo Ladenson says:

January 31, 2012 at 12:00 am

@Geoff G.

Forgive me for not having that fancy pants Ivy League education. Some of us actually had to work for our Phi Beta Kappa keys and earn them the hard way.

People who’ll judge you, even fire you, for who you are rather than how you perform or the content of your character have no honor.

The point of my mentioning the Ivy League was only to indicate that I gave up opportunities on Wall Street and elsewhere to enlist in the Army because I thought that was the honorable thing to do.

Somehow I don’t think you’re a Phi Beta Kappa if you actually believe that students at Ivy League schools are all rich and do no work.

In fact, your persistence in describing military service in terms of a job make me doubt that you ever served.
Franklin Evans says:

January 31, 2012 at 9:37 am

I can’t answer for Geoff, Leo, but I can offer a perspective that is beyond the scope of most Americans. My father was a professional soldier, in a nation where men had few other choices and at a time when military service was also about pride and participating in the fight against an enemy at the gate. He was a chetnik in Yugoslavia, and an officer in the Serbian army during the decline of the Ottomans and the communist revolution there.

His perception, not really considered much beyond a visceral level, was that pride and honor were two sides of the same coin. There was no pride and little honor in losing every battle and surviving on stolen gear and the occasional patriot with a quick hand-out at the back door.

Again, I can’t speak for Geoff. I do have a long acquaintance with him as a writer in forums such as this, as well as a very long and close acquaintance with the homosexual culture and communities. I may be biased, as much as a heterosexual can be I guess, but there is no honor in wanting to be in any profession that, if they knew something “unsavory” about me, they would can me in an instant. One must bring honor along with pride to such a situation, and hope that one’s job performance is enough for others to accept one as honorable.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

January 31, 2012 at 2:26 pm

Leo, it is always heartwarming to find myself in agreement with someone I usually am crossing swords with. Seriously — there are times when I thank God for Antonin Scalia and am horrified by the written opinions of John Paul Stevens. We all have some level of commonality as human beings, and we all have some purpose for being here.

But reading on down, I have to note that Geoff has written about his military service at too much length, in too much detail, in too many places, for me to doubt that he served, served honorably, and earned the rank he has referred to. He may have erred in assuming you had not served, but you err in doubting his own service.

While he and I have somewhat different views on marriage, as a legal status and an institution, I fully agree with Geoff that people who would judge him for any job, or as a neighbor, on any other basis than work performance, public conduct or content of his character are without honor.

The only occasion when anyone should worry about what brings hormones rushing into his bloodstream is if he is trying to pick up someone in a bar, or someone is trying to pick him up. Then, and only then, compatibility is an essential concern.