ALTERNATIVES TO MARRIAGE? Maggie replies

My first response to this joint question from Andrew, Dale and Jonathan is a certain bemusement: Is the gay and lesbian community really waiting Maggie's Eight Point Plan to bring sexual monogamy outside of marriage to the gay community? Really, I had no idea.

Let me first answer the question briefly, then tell you why I resist making this the question, then outline what I think the three meta-questions Andrew, Dale and Jon are asking for they are really quite different and lead the conversation in different directions.

No I do not support civil unions. Many people I think will end up supporting civil unions but opposing gay marriage as Margaret Summerville does in the post below, but that is not my position. More on that later. Yes, I do think there are ways that legal changes could help gay and lesbian people with concrete, practical difficulties that could garner broad general support across ideological lines. More on this later.

What I really hate about this question is that implies that the marriage issue is a gay-straight divide and that either as an act of moral compulsion or as a matter of political horsetrading, if straight people "get" marriage, then gays and lesbians must "get" something else. I am in this debate for only one reason: to win the marriage argument. I do so rather unashamedly because I really believe this is in the interest of every single person in the United States who cares about the future of our country and our common culture (including culture of tolerance for diversity): gay or straight, black or white, married or single, parent or childless: We all benefit from stronger marriage culture, regardless of how we personally choose to live. Therefore what I really want to do is to convince you Dale, Jon and even yes, you Andrew, that you should be against unisex marriage for exactly the same reasons I am. Because you realize that messing with the core assumptions of this critical and besieged institution at a time when 30 million kids sleep in fatherless homes is just plain wrong.

I am reluctant to get distracted into questions of political compromise, because the most important thing to me is winning on what I call the marriage idea. If we win the marriage debate, how gays and lesbians then work out whatever adjustments they need to solve practical problems is something I am pretty convinced can be left to the democratic process with the people who are most interested and involved working out their agreements and disagreements with their fellow citizens. I am not omniscient, I don't know everything. The question then becomes what are the critical, core problems gay and lesbians people face causing unjust suffering? And why should they have to be in a couple relationship in order to get these problems solved? I don't have an 8 point plan on this, just some ideas.

This is too long a post already. Let me do the three meta-questions of Andrew, Dale and Jon (sounds like a folk group doesn't it?) in a separate post.





posted by maggie at 1:38 PM VOTE

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