WHAT DO THEY WANT TO TALK ABOUT AT YALE?: From Eve

Hi all. A few weeks ago, I saw Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry speak at the Yale Political Union in favor of same-sex marriage. He gave a good basic speech, pointing out that same-sex couples are already raising kids, and that marriage law in the US has already changed significantly in the past 100 years.

In response to a student's question, he defined marriage as a relationship between two people who commit to care for one another "in sickness and in health," etc., reinforced by legal obligations and protections. (This is what Jonathan Rauch said as well, and it's a version of Gabriel Rosenberg's description of marriage as essentially a vow to care for another person.) I note that this is a weirdly non-sexual and non-erotic understanding of marriage, but what can you do.

What interested me most was the fact that the student speakers and questioners seemed to want to talk a lot about the role of religion in politics. The Catholic Church was everybody's model for the religion/politics nexus, too: Is it appropriate, given the Constitution's prohibition on establishment of religion, for a senator to vote based on a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? If that isn't OK, how can a faithful Catholic serve in the Senate? etc.

My take-home lesson from that discussion is simply that secular arguments against SSM are not being heard. I don't think we need to drag Cardinal Ratzinger into this, no matter how much fun it is to say his name.
posted by Eve at 10:00 AM VOTE

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