Why SSM Matters/Maggie Gallagher

One reason the social consequences of SSM may look different (or clearer) to me than to some other people, is that I've already watched the impact of SSM on the larger marraige debate.

Certain ideas, once common, which we in the marriage movement beat into submission over the last ten years, have suddenly resurged.

I first began to be concerned about SSM when I saw the Baker v. Vermont ruling, in which the court ruled that the legislature must create either gay marriage or civil union. What disturbed me most was the court's ruling that marriage in the state of Vermont had nothing to do with procreation. Some people find this logic enormously persuasive. As a marriage specialist, I found it ignorant and idiotic. Try this on for a syllogism: "If it is true that in law in the state of Vermont, marriage has nothing to do with procreation, then the law is an ass and must be changed." But as the end result was just civil unions, I kept my focus: its opposite-sex couples who are creating fatherless children, keep your eyes on the prize.

Then I began to notice renewed challenges to the claim that, all things being equal, children need fathers as well as mothers. We had had this debate (cognitive elites have lots of really dumb ideas from time to time) and we had won. Even the Stephanie Koontz' of the world felt obliged to concede the general point.

Thanks to SSM, this is now in play. Fathers may matter, or maybe they don't. Maybe two parents are better than one, but maybe fathers aren't that significant.

So its rather hard to persuade me that SSM is not going to challenge the importance of mothers and fathers raising their children together, because it already has.

Meanwhile, strange new classifciations are emerging, as a direct result of the SSM debate. Vigorous attempts are being made to create something called "civil marriage" that is separate and distinct from something called "religious marriage."

Until SSM, there was just marriage (even though people who were not religious could and did get married).

But "civil marriage" on its own is naked, weak, and insignificant. The law is not creating this thing called marriage, its serving a pre-existing social institution.

Separating civil marriage and religious marriage into two separate things is in itself destructive to a marriage culture.

But people do this, because they want to pretend (maybe even to themselves) for certain purposes that they are seeking only a set of legal benefits. When the very courts ordering SSM make it clear that the reason civil uinons won't do is civil unions won't convey the same social status.

One way SSM will damage marriage: by creating an institution at law that is unrecognizable to the bulk of religious communities, whose efforts are essential to sustaining marriage as a social institution.
posted by maggie at 9:01 PM VOTE 6 comments

The Equal Protection Lockbox/Maggie Gallagher

A friend of mine, reading the comments at Volokh.com said, "It all comes down to Hume! He couldn't see any mechanism either!"

For many people the question of gay marriage unfolds as a logic puzzle. They do not begin by thinking of the institution of marriage, how it came to be, what purposes it serves, what it needs, what would support and what might undermine it, and what happens if it is undermined.

They begin (and often end too) with the equal protection lock box: If some people don't procreate then either a. marriage has nothing to do with procreation or b. anyone else who doesn't procreate must also be allowed to marry.

We're all in kindergarten, and getting Mom to play fair is the main thing.

The fundamental mistake that is being made is a. thinking of marriage as primarily a legal institution, and b. thinking of procreation as an entry requirement, rather than as the social telos, the end being served.
posted by maggie at 5:53 PM VOTE 10 comments

Equality vs. Liberty/Maggie Gallagher

When I recently (thanks to Dan Cere) read the book "How Institutions Think" by Mary Douglas, I was like one of those cartoon characters, with like a great big lightbulb exploding over my head. One of the readers at Volokh.com raised the intelligent question: "What is a social institution?" The word is used differently in different disciplines. But Mary Douglas pointed our for me what a social institution actually is. It is not a thing. It is not a set of punishments or incentives (although it may requires these to be sustained). What it is, structurally or in essense, is cognitive in nature. Institutions consist of habits or patterns of thought. They influence human behavior by structuring human thought.

Institutions make certain things memorable, for example, and certain things almost impossible to remember. (One example of an institution she gives is the discipline of psychology, which is structured in such a way that its practictioners have a very hard time remembering that human beings are social creatures, and cannot be adequately conceptualized by intrapsychic processes. Psychologists, being perfectly smart people, frequently do discover this truth. But as soon as they discover it they tend to forget it, because the whole structure of the discipline conspires to channel their thought in a different direction.)

This is the way the process of cultural change seems to work too, by demanding a great deal of forgetting on the part of those influenced by it.

So take for example the argument that is now repeatedly made: gays have children. Therefore wouldn't there children be better off if their parents were married? Therefore aren't we required as a matter of justice to redefine marriage to include gay people?

Well, I recall very clearly what was said about this, as it was happening. The first step is in this cultural dance is a call for individual liberty for tiny numbers on the grounds this liberty will have no effect in the large sweep of things, something like this: "Well, with so many single moms having fatherless children, why focus on the tiny number of gay people having children?" That made sense to me.

So now, before you know it, this same tiny fraction, far from being incapable of cultural influence, are now capable of demanding (and getting courts to agree) to change fundamental structural norms of marriage to accomodate them, on the grounds that the needs of this tiny number of people are more important that the norms that arise from and serve the vast majority.

Do you really think this process stops once you've conceded the main point?

Once gays are married, they will naturally and logically demand that the institution be adapted to meet their needs, because the principle has already been established that the equality claims of this tiny minority are more important than sustaining the norm. This is how tiny numbers of people can drive social institutions. Its not the numbers, it is the norm that matters.

Gay lawyers, for example, are already asking, for example, that the principle of natural parenthood be abolished in law, because it does not serve their interests. (Canada has already done this);others worry about thing like: the principle of fidelity as intrinsic to marriage, given that mamy gay men have redefined fidelity too so it no longer means sexual exclusivity. And they may be right to do so: for this tiny fraction of the population, sexual fidelity may interfere with the stability of commitment; or the principle of monogamy (It is just silly to pretend, as David Blankenhorn has pointed out, that "the rule of opposites" which is univesal can be broken but that "the rule of two" which is not universal even in our domestic experience, is unshakeable).

(I think, in the end, no-one will care enough about this new unisex institution called marriage, which no longer has a clear social purpose, to pay the actual or potential costs to the taxpayers of polygamy; so the pressures of fairness will drive towards the elimination of marriage as a legal status. Esp. as many Christian conservatives join with libertarians and the anitmarriage left to separate marriage and state).

Why then, having just witnessed this form of cultural power, would anyone believe that adding a small number of gays to the ranks of the legally married will have no cultural effects? Given that we've just watched while the extremely tiny number of gay couples raising children is now being used in court and society as a powerful argument that we must reshape marriage to accomodate their needs?

Do people have no memories?

There is a logic to how an equality argument, once framed, unfolds in public.
posted by maggie at 8:07 AM VOTE 12 comments

The Marriage Debate at Volokh.com/Maggie Gallagher

We're up to 452 comments on my last post. Thanks everyone. I'm going to try to do here, what I meant to do at Volokh.com i.e. spend some time figuring out why the wall of incomprehension exists and what it consists of. BTW, I'm perfectly aware that for many of my readers last week, the wall was up and particularly excrutiating. i.e. they were bringing up what they saw as key and fatal flaws, which were met with blank silence on my part.

Of course from my point of view, it was rather like being in a room with 1000 kids tugging at your elbow, interrupting your train of thought, sometimes with innocent but ignorant questions, often with complete irrelevancies, but in any case each one convinced that his question required my attention right then.

One of the reasons I did not break much new ground (just a little) at volokh.com is that I did respond to comments, esp. requests for evidence or proof. At first, this felt like I was slowing down the whole class for the slow kids, but then I realized that of course just because I've been reading, wrting, and debating about marriage for 20 years doesn't mean the many intelligent and thoughtful readers of Volokh.com have. I had a chance to do in a new venue what's been my main mission: spread good informaiton about the importance of marriage as a social institution.

In brief posts from time to time over the next few weeks (I'm travelling a lot next week), I'm going to just continue the conversation.

Some of you will get your questions answered. But for a week or so, mainly I'm going to talk about what interests me. If you listen carefully, though, I'm pretty sure at the end you'll understand better why we disagree, if we do. Only a very few people are really interested in knowing such things.

The rest of you feel free to think that the reason I'm not responding to you is that I am stupid, irrational and write badly. (I'm not particularly insecure on any of those points).

To those who think I'm just a bad person, thank-you. As a Catholic, I know it is good for my soul to contemplate the possibility you are right, and the reality of my sins, even if you may be a little off-topic on exactly why I'm a bad person. Vox Populi, Vox Deo.
posted by maggie at 7:44 AM VOTE 3 comments

The Marriage Debate at Volokh.com/Maggie Gallagher

Jesurgislac asks: "Maggie, I'd be very interested to know how you feel that week of anti-SSM blogging went." Thanks for asking.

The answer Jesurgislac, is mixed. I think I failed to do what I really wanted to do, which is spend some time trying to figure out what is it that makes it so hard (for certain people) not to agree but even to comprehend that an argument has been made.

When you begin with so little agreement on the basic facts. (e.g. has anyone ever imagined marraige was about procreation or is that just something we made up to exclude gay people?; or: is there any evidence children need mothers and fathers, or is it just single parent homes that are a problem?) it is hard to make much intellectual progress. But I'm satisfied with the attempt. So few real venues for intellectual exchange exist that I just have to believe there is some good purpose in doing this.

For me, the real intellectual advance (which is what I get out of this sort of thing) was the exchange with Orin, where I do think I figured out, at least to my satisfaction, a few of the differences (the marriage-as-benefits framing, the equality-versus-liberty thing)that are contributing to the dramatic differences in the "plausibility" to different people of the idea that redefining marraige at law could have some impact on reality.

Some people hear the argument I made, and they say: this is very powerful. Others hear it and say: yes I can understand the argument but it strikes me as weak and unlikely. Still others I think sincerely don't recognize that an argument has been made.

Assuming we are all decent people of reasonable intelligence, what explains this dramatic difference in perceptions?

That's what I want to figure out.
posted by maggie at 3:04 PM VOTE 13 comments

The Marriage Debate at Volokh.com/Maggie Gallagher

One of our readers points out MarriageDebate.com readers might be interested in going to:

http://volokh.com/?bloggers=maggie

"That will take readers to a page containing all Volokh posts by Maggie - useful for those who want to follow this particular debate." Thanks Ampersand!
posted by maggie at 10:08 AM VOTE 6 comments

"Marriage and Child Wellbeing" (Vol. 15, No. 2), FALL 2005,
Gay Marriage, Same-Sex Parenting,and America's Children
William Meezan and Jonathan Rauch
http://www.futureofchildren.org/information2826/information_show.htm?doc_id=290831

Same-sex marriage, barely on the political radar a decade ago, is a reality in America. How will it affect the well-being of children? Some observers worry that legalizing same-sex marriage would send the message that same-sex parenting and opposite-sex parenting are interchangeable, when in fact they may lead to different outcomes for children.

To evaluate that concern, William Meezan and Jonathan Rauch review the growing body of research on how same-sex parenting affects children. After considering the methodological problems inherent in studying small, hard-to-locate populations-—problems that have bedeviled this literature—the authors find that the children who have been studied are doing about as well as children normally do. What the research does not yet show is whether the children studied are typical of the general population of children raised by gay and lesbian couples.

A second important question is how same-sex marriage might affect children who are already being raised by same-sex couples. Meezan and Rauch observe that marriage confers on children three types of benefits that seem likely to carry over to children in same-sex families. First, marriage may increase children's material well-being through such benefits as family leave from work and spousal health insurance eligibility. It may also help ensure financial continuity, should a spouse die or be disabled. Second, same-sex marriage may benefit children by increasing the durability and stability of their parents' relationship. Finally, marriage may bring increased social acceptance of and support for same-sex families, although those benefits might not materialize in communities that meet same-sex marriage with rejection or hostility.

The authors note that the best way to ascertain the costs and benefits of the effects of same-sex marriage on children is to compare it with the alternatives...
posted by maggie at 10:10 AM VOTE 5 comments

SHALL WE OVERCOME?: Charles Johnson

...It seems that after decades of supporting and building up our daughters, sisters and wives, we are finally willing to acknowledge a national "boy problem" in general, one with devastating consequences for black males in particular. That belated recognition, our "leaders" seem to be saying with yet another media-courting march, might be too little too late. We have already allowed the talent, resources and genius of two generations of young black men who might have enriched this republic to be squandered by gang violence, by poor academic preparation, by the lack of good parenting and by the celebration of an irresponsible "thug life" that is ethically infantile and, predictably, embraced by a notoriously values-challenged entertainment industry.

Two things could not be more clear in 2005: First, without strong, self-sacrificing, frugal and industrious fathers as role models, our boys go astray, never learn how to be parents (or men), and perpetuate the dismal situation of single-parent homes run by tired and overworked black women. The black family as a survival unit fails, which leads to the ever-fragile community collapsing along with it. Second, our black predecessors (particularly Booker T. Washington with his corny but unfailingly correct "gospel of the toothbrush") understood from the era of Reconstruction until the late 1960s how indispensable was the black family for sustaining a fight against racism that by its very nature can only be measured in centuries, and for ensuring that our progress toward liberation, personal and political, would not be lost in but a single generation as it now threatens to be. ...

If, instead of denial and avoidance, our graying leaders and opinion-makers--who have dismally failed to address the serious problem of black male culture for almost half a century because it is so much easier to apologize for black underperformance or arm-wrestle with Mexican president Vicente Fox over a slip during one of his speeches--tell the men in their audience that each and every one of them must become the intellectual and spiritual leader they have been looking for, then perhaps this latest racial spectacle in our nation's capital will not be staged in vain.

more
posted by Eve at 8:46 PM VOTE 1 comments

The Marriage Debate/Maggie Gallagher

Eugene Volokh has been kind enough to ask me and Dale Carpenter to guest blog on www.volokh.com about gay marriage. This week, I'm up. There's a pretty lively debate going on over there (52 comments on my last post).

Hope you'll join us. Maggie
posted by maggie at 2:00 PM VOTE 11 comments