Why (Understanding) Marriage Matters... still

Yesterday, I suggested here that I couldn't stomach dealing with the entire National Organization for Marriage (NOM) talking points handout all at once. Here it is the next day and I am stil not really up to it, but a promise is a promise. After telling you how wonderful marriage is on the obverse of the sheet, they worry that you might be asked a question that you heretofore have not thought about... and of course, you need to be told the answer. Let's see how good the answers are, shall we? 

Spin a globe and pick virtually any place on earth at any previous time in human history; you will find that they do marriage one way — between men and women.

Indeed, we will find many different marriage practices when we spin the globe: polyandry, polygamy, group marriage, and monogamy. All of these have been practised at different times and in different places. I note that they make the right qualifications in their test: they say 'virtually any place on earth' because it is not everywhere where 'they do marriage one way — between men and women.' Fair enough; almost everywhere marriage involves men marrying women and vice versa. Please note this for later on.

There may be other differences, but marriage has always required a husband and a wife.

Well, hold on there cowboys. How did we go from 'virtually' everywhere to 'always'? And why are we relying upon an appeal to tradition? Shouldn't we, then, be reviewing that tradition, like other long venerated traditions, such as slavery and reserving voting rights for people with penises?

Why? Marriage teaches that men and women need each other and that children need mothers and fathers.

Well, marriage that involves at least one man and one woman and the situation in which those two people form the unit that raises that particular child does this, yes. What about the children born in societies that do not raise children in these sorts of units? They certainly do not learn this. They learn of another way of raising children. At any rate, given the arguments on the reverse of the sheet we are reading, it seems that what is required is parents, not the biological father and the biological mother, as this seems to read.

A loving and compassionate society comes to the aid of motherless and fatherless children, but no compassionate society intentionally deprives children of their own mom or dad.

Well, I am not sure just what this means. The very foundation of what we think a loving and compassionate society consists in that it enforces laws that protect children from harm from even their own parents. Given the powerful argument of social science we saw yesterday, I think they are forced to mean something like 'a loving and compassion society does not intentionally deprive children of people who care about and are willing to care for them without due process of law in order to protect the well-being of the children.' I know that this is a rather complicated thought for a sheet designed for people unable to justify their own thoughts (and it really isn't complicated enough). But now notice, there's no pressure with respect to genders represented in the marriage.

But this is what every same-sex home does — and for no other reason but to satisfy adult desire.

Well, every loving, caring, committed, long-term same-sex marriage provides exactly what this sheet says children require. The 'adult desire' that same-sex marriage satisfies is the very same adult desire that underpins different-gender marriage.

The battle for marriage takes place at the water cooler, the kitchen table, and in the church pews. Here are answers to five questions that will help you defend the family.

It irritates me that NOM would presume that people are so unable to think for themselves that they must tell people what to think. Instead of attempting to persuade, NOM merely provides easily refuted and intellectually weak 'talking points.' 

“How will my same-sex marriage hurt your marriage?” Same-sex marriage advocates want to force everyone to dramatically and permanently alter our definition of marriage and family. The great, historic, cross-cultural understanding of marriage as the union of husband and wife will be called bigotry in the public square. The law will teach your children and grandchildren that there is nothing special about mothers and fathers raising children together, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot.

I suppose it depends upon what one means by "force everyone to dramatically and permanently alter our definition of marriage and family." Indeed, the quest for the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in the US is an political movement to have the law cease discriminating against homosexuals with respect to the law. However, there are all kinds of families and no one is suggesting that anyone be forced to enter into any conception of family. How anyone wishes to organise their lives is up to them. The question is not whether everyone alters the definition, but whether the law defines marriage in such a way that it does not discriminate against homosexuals. The law teaches nothing about whether someone is a bigot. There is no 'great, historic, cross-cultural understanding of marriage.' It seems time for Americans to seriously re-evaluate the concept of marriage—as many cultures have done from time to time. In the same way that marriage is now rarely merely a commercial transaction between the families of the participants, it is time to recognise that it is sometimes a union between two men or two women.

“Is same-sex marriage like interracial marriage?” Laws against interracial marriage were about keeping two races apart, so that one race could oppress the other, and that is wrong.

Yes, that would certainly be wrong. However, that wasn't the reason for anti-miscegenation laws. Those laws were passed to prevent the 'contamination' of the lawmaking race by some other race. The purpose wasn't to oppress but to separate. It turns out that separate is not equal and amounts to oppression, but those who passed these anti-miscegenation laws thought they were simply keeping their race pure... not unlike NOM campaigning to keep marriage 'pure' by denying same-sex marriage. As opposed to the claim that 'one man, one woman' is the "great, historic, cross-cultural understanding of marriage," which is false, anti-miscegenation law are historic and cross-cultural. It turns out that same-sex marriage is a lot like interracial marriage then.

Marriage is about bringing male and female together, so that children have mothers and fathers, and so that women aren’t stuck with the enormous, unfair burdens of parenting alone--- and that is good.

It sure is. So is bringing loving persons, regardless of gender, together, so that children have loving parents.

“Is polygamy next?” Jonathan Yarbrough, part of the first couple to get a same-sex marriage in Provincetown, Mass, said, “I think it’s possible to love more than one person and have more than one partner. . . . In our case, it is. We have an open marriage.” Once you rip a ship off its mooring who knows where it will drift next?

Well, come now. NOM says things like "Spin a globe and pick virtually any place on earth at any previous time in human history; you will find that they do marriage one way — between men and women"—clearly including those cultures which have plural marriages of all sorts, then raises the spectre of polygamy. Pick one, boys and girls.

“What will happen to our church organizations?” After same-sex marriage is created, will the statement, “Children need a mother and a father” be deemed hate speech? In Massachusetts, the Boston Globe said so: “Governor Romney is denigrating gay families, practicing divisive, mean-spirited politics . . . by insisting that every child ‘has a right to a mother and a father.’” Right now, for example, the Catholic Church is being challenged in Canada because a local parish refused to rent out their church reception hall when they learned the reception was for a lesbian couple. Legal scholars warn that the tax exempt status and accreditation of church organizations could be at risk.

Sigh. How many times do we have to face this little chestnut? The legal response to whether plain ol' false claims like "Children need a mother and a father" will be the same kind of response to any group that promulgates falsehoods: they'll be ignored. On the other hand, tax-free institutions who are tax free on the grounds of religious faith cannot provide public facilities and discriminate on religious grounds. It's pretty simple: churches get tax exemptions for their recreation halls when they promise to be open to the public. If they discriminate, they are not open to the public, so they lose their tax free status. Looking at it that way (the right way), we can see that it is the church who is forcing the public to (financially) support their 'way of life'. If they want to exclude a group of people, they can do so on their own nickel. The Canadian case is just like the similar New Jersey case: it has nothing to do with same-sex marriage and everything to do with good old fashioned discrimination. As for 'denigrating gay families, practising divisive mean-spirited politics', sure. Promulgating a falsehood (when you know the truth or can reasonably be expected to know the truth)  to further one's own religious/political agenda is inherently dishonest and mean-spirited.

“What will public school teach?” Consider a recent National Public Radio story from Boston. An eighth-grade teacher there teaches about gay sex “thoroughly and explicitly.” When asked if parents complained about their children learning such explicit material, this teacher said, “Give me a break. It’s legal now.” Heather and her two Mommies will become standard kindergarten fare. Our children need to hear a positive message about marriage.

And when they hear about lesbian and gay couples in committed long-term relationships such as marriage, they do, according to NOM's own criteria above and from yesterday's article. The 8th grade teacher deals with 14 year old children: there's little about sex, gay or straight, that they haven't heard about. Given the realities of any kind of sexual encounter, it is far better to have children of this age educated about the facts instead of relying on superstition and what is said in the school locker room. As for 'Heather has two Mommies,' I have no idea how we went from talking about 14 year olds to talking about 5 year olds. Nevertheless, given the fact of the heteronormativity of Western Culture and the fact of this pressure to keep  same-sex relationships invisible, the lack of exposure to same-sex relationships at a young age  would clearly lead to increased intolerance and rejection by these children (let's face it: the household that simply swallowed the NOM 'talking points' sheet uncritically would not be telling their children about same-sex couples in a positive way; if at all). In this way, sexual orientation is a great deal like ethnicity; if we teach young children about it, they are far, far less likely to hate. It is in NOM's best interests to scare parents into believing that their kindergarten children will be taught about the specific techniques of fisting and anal and oral sex. It simply isn't true. 'Heather has two mommies' does normalise lesbian marriage, but it does so in a way that 5 year olds can understand it. There are all kinds of books for children of that age that depict heterosexual marriage without introducing concepts like 'missionary position' and 'penile-vaginal sexual intercourse.'  I still boggle at the fact that those that oppose homosexuality in general and same-sex marriage in particular focus so heavily on the sexual aspect of same-sex marriage and so little on the marriage aspect. There is nothing magical about having one penis and one vagina in a relationship to make that relationship loving and healthy. What is required is loving hearts and minds. NOM would do well to learn that fact of social science.