...But even to acknowledge the distinctiveness of “heterosexual life-long coupling that produces new human life” is to make a concession that many gay marriage supporters are unwilling to make. Sullivan couches this acknowledgment in religious language (“miraculous, sacred”) in order to make the case for a distinction between secular law and religious doctrine. But the reality he’s acknowledging — a lifelong intimacy shared between children and their biological parents — isn’t necessarily spiritual or religious. Rather, it’s carnal, biological, emotional. You can believe, with Catholics and others, that God enters into this reality as well, but there’s nothing inherently theological about the distinctive qualities that Sullivan is acknowledging.

And once you’ve acknowledged that lifelong heterosexual monogamy and its fruits are distinctive in some sense, I think that you only have to look around at the world as we know it to recognize that Sullivan’s question about whether that ideal can “rest on its own laurels” answers itself. Set aside the question of homosexuality, and just consider what’s happened to straight life in communities where marriage is no longer “elevated,” in one sense or another — where the incentives and prohibitions that reinforced the sex-marriage-reproduction-childrearing nexus have weakened to the point of nonexistence, and where there aren’t the potential rewards of the meritocratic ladder to make people intensely cautious and responsible about sex and relationships and childrearing. What happens, for the most part, is that the ideal that Sullivan claims to be in “awe of” gradually weakens, diminishes, and disappears. Absent institutional, cultural and legal support, heterosexual life seems to revert to a kind of serial monogamy, shading into de facto polygamy, in which there’s plenty of coupling and plenty of kids, but the ideal of “life-long coupling that produces new human life” gradually becomes the exception rather than the rule. ...

... We have made so many exceptions already, Sullivan argues, so many compromises and gestures of inclusion, that to refuse to make another one for homosexuals is either sectarian, bigoted, or both. Given the diversity of relationships and families that the institution of marriage now covers, he writes, “to exclude gays and gays alone is therefore not the upholding of an ideal … so much as making a lone exception to inclusion on the grounds of sexual orientation.”

As I’ve said, I respect the logic of this argument, and its power is one reason why the cause of same-sex marriage continues to gain ground, and seems likely to eventually triumph. But two rejoinders are in order. The first is that not every exclusion has been leveled, nor every distinction done away with. Yes, within the institution we call marriage there are now (as Sullivan puts it) “Amish families with dozens of kids [and] yuppie bi-coastal childless couples on career paths; there are open marriages and arranged marriages; there is Rick Santorum and Britney Spears.” But the institution still discriminates based on kinship. It still excludes families with more than two spouses, despite the existence within the United States of small communities where polygamy is the norm, and a far larger population of fathers who have relationships with multiple mothers and multiple children at the same time. And the existence of “open marriages” notwithstanding, the prohibition on adultery has actually re-strengthened since the brief fad for no-strings experimentation in the 1970s. For most Americans, the idea of a sexually non-exclusive marriage still remains a contradiction in terms.

Labels: Andrew Sullivan, culture, gay marriage, Marriage, monogamy, Ross Douthat

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Leave it to Andrew Sullivan to make Maggie Gallagher seem sensible.

The erstwhile conservative writer, one of the more provocative voices of the 1990s and now a peddler of conspiracy theories ranging from the influence of Jews over American foreign policy to the provenance of Trig Palin, recently faced off against the country’s most dogged opponent of gay marriage in a room full of right-of-center gays at the Cato Institute, the country’s premier libertarian think tank. They, along with Nick Herbert, a gay Conservative Party member of the British House of Commons, were gathered to debate the question, “Is there a place for gay people in conservatism and conservative politics?”

What could have been a provocative and much-needed discussion, however, quickly devolved into a shouting match, thanks to Sullivan’s needless aggression. For instance, he demanded the names of any gay people who oppose same-sex marriage, since Gallagher claimed to personally know such individuals. (I do too, and while I may disagree with them, the reason I, and Gallagher, don’t divulge their identity is because of the onslaught of viciousness they would receive from other gays, perfectly exemplified by Sullivan.) What any of this had to do with the topic at hand was lost amid the theatrics. And Gallagher, who is perhaps the most effective opponent of gay marriage because she doesn’t resort to biblical arguments condemning homosexuality, was left looking like the reasonable one.

Sullivan also refused to address one salient fact: According to a CNN poll, 27% of self-identified gay voters supported John McCain in the last presidential election, the highest such figure ever recorded for a GOP candidate. In actuality, the number is likely higher, given that there are presumably many gay people who do not divulge their sexuality to pollsters. Regardless of whether the conservative movement thinks there should be room within it for gays, there are plenty of them already there.

Labels: Andrew Sullivan, conservatism, culture, gay marriage, James Kirchick, Maggie Gallagher

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Featuring Nick Herbert, MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Conservative Party, United Kingdom; Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish Blog, The Atlantic; and Maggie Gallagher, President, National Organization for Marriage.

Labels: Andrew Sullivan, conservatism, culture, gay marriage, Maggie Gallagher, United Kingdom

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