Many of my friends have been disappointed with the response to the NY marriage vote at some conservative outlets, and I can hardly blame them. It’s difficult to imagine a similar response if one of the other legs of the conservative “stool” suffered such a setback. That said, National Review’s sensible editorial on marriage should go a long way in correcting that disappointment. In it the editors offer a notably clear defense of marriage:
As normative features of marriage, permanence, exclusivity, and sexual complementarity are a package deal. The first two norms make sense—are intelligible as norms—only because of the link between marriage and procreation. The only question, increasingly, is whether the loss of these once-defining attributes of marriage is bad.
The marriage revisionists (here’s looking at you, Greg Sargent) never tire of claiming that marriage supporters have no argument to stand on. But time and again marriage supporters have clearly explained why it only makes sense to attach the norms of marriage—permanence and exclusivity—to relationships that are procreative in nature. Banish procreation from your conception of marriage and there is no intelligible reason to not extend “marriage” to polyamorous groups or whoever else seeks state sanction for their love life. This is a pretty simple idea, but those who want to hear more should read Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson and Robert P. George’s article ”What Is Marriage?,” which provides ample elaboration.
June 30th, 2011 | 7:58 am
But marriage in the United States is not permanent. In fact, since Malta recently legalized divorce, the only country in the world that does not permit divorce is the Philippines. If permanence is an essential part of marriage, the Philippines is the only country that has “real” marriage. If sexual complementarity is an essential element of marriage, permitting same-sex marriage affects only a small percentage of marriages, but permitting divorce affects all marriages.
Also, I am bewildered by the exclusion of polygamy from the definition of marriage. It is patently obvious that polygamous marriage is marriage. One of the often stated fears of permitting same-sex marriage is that it creates a slippery slope to polygamy, as if polygamous marriage were not marriage. I don’t buy the slippery slope argument, and I think there are good reasons not to permit polygamy in the United States. But I find it odd that people in the Judeo-Christian tradition can argue that polygamous marriage is not marriage. Has no one read the Old Testament?
June 30th, 2011 | 8:40 am
“But I find it odd that people in the Judeo-Christian tradition can argue that polygamous marriage is not marriage. Has no one read the Old Testament?”
Have you ever read the New Testament? This guy called Jesus stated that marriage joined one man and one woman. That should basically resolve the issue for anyone who cares about what that Jesus guy said.
June 30th, 2011 | 9:03 am
“it only makes sense to attach the norms of marriage—permanence and exclusivity—to relationships that are procreative in nature.”
And then, of course, supporters of gay marriage argue that traditional marriage does recognize relationships that are clearly non-procreative (elderly couples, cases of known infertility, etc). But then, opponents of gay marriage reply that those non-procreative relationships are special cases in a general class of relationships that are usually procreative, and it isn’t practical to treat the special cases specially. That may be true, but an argument from practicality is much weaker, because standards of practicality can change.
It seems to me that if proponents of traditional marriage want a really robust argument that exclusivity and permanence are necessarily derived from procreation, they need to exclude non-procreative heterosexual relationships.
Alternatively, it could, I think, be reasonably argued that permanence and exclusivity are important for raising children, rather than procreation (conceiving and bearing offspring). Of course, raising children usually follows from procreation, so it appears that the requirement for permanence and exclusivity is derived from procreation. Suppoprters of gay marriage, though, would presumably argue that many homosexual couples are now, even as we argue, raising children who would benefit from permanence and exclusivity in the parental relationship. Their position isn’t all that different from widowed or divorced heterosexuals who remarry and help to raise children from a previous marriage — in those relationships, too, exclusivity and permanence are important. The only difference between a gay couple and remarried heterosexuals is sexual complementarity, and National Review seems to consider that the weakest argument. At that point, I think a new rebuttal is required, because National Review’s argument just won’t cut it.
June 30th, 2011 | 9:33 am
NickP:
the number “two” that defines a “couple” reflects that there are two genders. Once sexual complementarity is dismissed, what’s special about 2? Hence, what’s special about a gay couple raising children that requires state recognition, as opposed to say, three gay people raising children?
June 30th, 2011 | 10:34 am
Have you ever read the New Testament? This guy called Jesus stated that marriage joined one man and one woman. That should basically resolve the issue for anyone who cares about what that Jesus guy said.
Brian English,
Are you saying Jesus changed the definition of marriage? There is an argument to be made that he limited marriage to one man and one (and only one) woman, but does that mean polygamous marriage in the Old Testament was not marriage at all? The Bible says of King Solomon, “He had seven hundred wives of princely rank and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned his heart” [1 Kings 11:3]. Is the Bible wrong when it says Solomon had 700 wives? One might make an argument that polygamous marriage was not approved of, but that does not mean it was not marriage.
There’s an interesting passage in the old, online Catholic Encyclopedia about divorce and polygamy:
It is a perfectly tenable position for a Catholic (and I would think for most Christians), that polygamous marriage is truly marriage, and it was once permitted by God, but it is no longer permitted. I am not arguing that it should be permitted. I am arguing that it is not inherently immoral, or God could not have permitted it, and that if God permitted polygamous marriage, it is mistaken to define marriage in such a way as to exclude polygamous marriage.
Girgis et al. do point out that polygamous marriage (or more specifically, polygynous marriage) is between one man and one woman in that a man married to many women is married to each of them individually, and the wives are in no sense joined with each other in marriage. However, the phrase used in the editorial under discussion is “permanence, exclusivity, and sexual complementarity,” and I take “exclusivity” to mean “one man and one, and only one, woman.” That excludes polygamous marriage from the definition of marriage, which I contend is not legitimate.
June 30th, 2011 | 11:26 am
“Also, I am bewildered by the exclusion of polygamy from the definition of marriage. It is patently obvious that polygamous marriage is marriage.”
Stranger things have happened, but I actually agree with you, David! (At least, in part.) I don’t agree that Scripture somehow condones or validates polygamy (except for movements for protection, like Levirite marriage, etc.), whereas Scripture is clear that the ideal marriage is one man and one woman.
That said, with NYS’s actions on marriage, I don’t understand any remaining arguments against polygamy, especially if they were to emerge from the pro gay marriage advocates. There are polygamists in our state (often immigrants in or around NYC), and I would think that if one of the arguments for gay marriage was legal rights offered to gay partners, then that would apply even more so to multiple wives who aren’t recognized as such by the state.
If legislatures are opening the door to other types of marriage, like gay marriage, what’s stopping them from opening the door just a little more for other forms? I certainly don’t want them to do this, but if people stick to this “Marriage is just for two people” argument, it seems to make little sense to me.
June 30th, 2011 | 11:44 am
David From has an interesting editorial about the purported corrosive effects of same-sex marriage here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/27/frum.gay.marriage/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
June 30th, 2011 | 12:01 pm
Maybe the marriage is the child.
When a child is created, it will forever be the union of two people. That’s the marriage. Without that, it’s just a private erotic contract. Only heterosexual unions have the potential to bring forth marriages, and that’s regardless of the private erotic contract of the child’s parents.
I’m still puzzling through this, but this discussion made me think. Nicks comments on complimentariness makes me wonder if we spend too much time looking at what is a process to achieve a result than an aim in itself.
Say a gay couple has a child through IVF. One lesbian uses a friends sperm. No matter what the erotic contract, that child is the marriage of her and her friend. Or say a hetero couple adopts; the child is still the marriage of someone else.
Maybe the mechanical and sacramental acts of marriage are the result and not the end. The erotic contract becomes a marriage only through children, and it’s through children the sacrament works. You plant seed to grow a field: a childless het couple just likes the feeling of plowing in the ground and playing in the dirt.
Adoption would be seen as medicine, not marriage.
June 30th, 2011 | 12:12 pm
Steve,
Then I take it you disagree with the Catholic Encyclopedia when it says, “In this way, without suffering any stain on His holiness, God could permit and sanction polygamy and divorce in the Old Law.”
I take it you also disagree with the statement, “But at least they [polygamy, divorce] are against the secondary precepts of the natural law: contrary, that is, to what is required for the well-ordering of human life.”
I would agree that the “well-ordering of human life” argues against polygamy. Law enforcement in Utah doesn’t even try to prosecute polygamy itself, because they have their hands full dealing with the effects of polygamy. Check out the web site of the Utah Attorney General:
Read about the Lost Boys of Utah. In a society with roughly equal numbers of men and women, when some men have multiple wives, that leaves many other men who cannot marry. What happens to them?
I would say these are inevitable consequences of polygamy, not abuses that well-intentioned polygamists could avoid. So I see plenty of reasons for not permitting polygamy in American society.
It amazes me that so many Christians apparently feel Christian morality is a house of cards, and if one card is removed, the whole thing collapses.
June 30th, 2011 | 12:18 pm
But David, everything we hear is that someone’s concerns about the consequences to society are irrelevant to the point that “people should be allowed to marry whom they want, and anything short of that is discrimination.”
As long as the pro-SSM party hangs its hat on “not allowing any two consenting adults who want to marry to do so is a violation of civil rights,” then there’s no “social consequence” argument against polygamy that holds water. Social consequences are never considered a valid reason to abridge an individual’s civil rights, after all.
June 30th, 2011 | 1:59 pm
“Social consequences are never considered a valid reason to abridge an individual’s civil rights, after all”
I don’t think that is fair to say. In another thread I have asked for evidence that gay marriage harms heterosexual marriages using the state of Massachusetts as the example (it legalized SSM more than 7 years ago, the longest span in US history).
If we were to compare MA families from 2000 to 2010, what damage would we be able to discern (if any)?
June 30th, 2011 | 2:27 pm
“Are you saying Jesus changed the definition of marriage?”
He certainly established what marriage would be in the Christian world, which produced Western Civilization.
The important aspect of the definition of marriage that you keep refusing to face is that at no point in history earlier than the last couple of decades, in any culture other than some Western countries in the last couple of decades, has marriage included two men or two women living together the way a husband and wife would.
June 30th, 2011 | 2:38 pm
But does it matter?
There were social consequences to eliminating slavery. The fact that someone can or cannot demonstrate social consequences shouldn’t matter *if it is a civil right.*
June 30th, 2011 | 3:15 pm
Brian,
“The important aspect of the definition of marriage that you keep refusing to face is that at no point in history earlier than the last couple of decades, in any culture other than some Western countries in the last couple of decades, has marriage included two men or two women living together the way a husband and wife would”
Most peoples in North America before colonization had two-spirits, people we would describe as homosexual that entered formal relationships or marriages. Ancient Rome had some same-sex marriages as did China during the Zhou dynasty and in the Fujian province.
June 30th, 2011 | 3:53 pm
But time and again marriage supporters have clearly explained why it only makes sense to attach the norms of marriage—permanence and exclusivity—to relationships that are procreative in nature.
1. Permanence does NOT make sense in marriage for procreative purposes. Two decades after the birth of your oldest kid, you’re done with procreation even if you include raising the child as part of procreation.
2. Exclusivity may make sense in terms of marriage procreativity, but then it also makes sense in terms of what marriage really is, a bond of two people. That isn’t altered by SSM.
June 30th, 2011 | 4:26 pm
@David Nickol:
“Then I take it you disagree with the Catholic Encyclopedia when it says, “In this way, without suffering any stain on His holiness, God could permit and sanction polygamy and divorce in the Old Law.””
If that’s what it says, then I guess so. Then again, I’m not Catholic. Plus, not to play too many semantic games, but the quote does say “could” and not “does.” A trifling point? Maybe.
“I would say these are inevitable consequences of polygamy, not abuses that well-intentioned polygamists could avoid. So I see plenty of reasons for not permitting polygamy in American society.”
Again, I agree in part. What you wrote above is one of the reasons why I think polygamy is terrible. But I think you might be missing my point. If we can redefine how the state sees marriage to allow a certain group in, how can we keep others, like polygamists, out? You can argue that polygamy has a negative effect on society, but we’re talking about state recognition, equality under the law, etc.
Can’t some gay marriages be horribly abusive? Sure. Can’t some polygamist relationships not be abusive? I’m sure. But do we allow one to be legalized, and the keep the other illegal, just because we see a likelihood of abuse down the road?
I know all about the Lost Boys. But is that every polygamous family? Do we know for certain? Are we to keep the Somali immigrant from having two or three wives because we see a likelihood that his polygamous relationships are some sort of breeding ground for abuse and neglect? How are you or I to know? If we’ve redefined marriage and allowed legal recognition for a certain group, why would we keep legal recognition (and legal protection) away from these multiple wives?
June 30th, 2011 | 4:39 pm
Contra Mr. Nickol, divorce laws do not by themselves undermine the permanence of marriage. Rather they demonstrate the presumption of permanence that is attached to marriage. A presumption that has been so encoded into the legal structure of our society that it must be undone legally. If marriage were not permanent, there would be no need for divorce; the individuals could simply go their separate ways, just as business partners or golfing buddies occasionally do.
Now, that doesn’t mean that a society in which divorce is rampant has a healthy view of marriage. But it does mean that this silly canard of an argument can be dismissed for what it is.
June 30th, 2011 | 4:49 pm
“Ancient Rome had some same-sex marriages as did China during the Zhou dynasty and in the Fujian province.”
I can’t make a definitive statement on China, but ancient Rome most certainly did not have same-sex marriage.
June 30th, 2011 | 5:08 pm
If marriage were not permanent, there would be no need for divorce . . . .
TimC,
We’re in Alice in Wonderland territory here. If marriage were permanent, divorce would not be possible.
Marriage is a legally sanctioned contract between two persons. Before no-fault divorce, it could be very difficult to get out of that contract, particularly if one of the two parties did not want out. Now, with no-fault divorce, two people can get out of the contract by mutual agreement. I think almost everyone would like to think of marriage as more than just a contract, but legal marriage is a contract, and when the law says a contract may be abrogated by the mutual consent of the two contracting parties, it is by no means a permanent contract.
Three states so far (Louisiana, Arkansas, and Arizona) have created a special class of marriage called covenant marriage which puts limits on reasons for divorce. It is kind of the secular equivalent of getting married in the Catholic Church. But aside from covenant marriages in those three states, legal marriage is most assuredly not permanent.
As with any contract with no fixed expiration date, it takes a legal proceeding to undo it, so a married couple is more tightly bound than golfing partners. Business partners, if they are partners by contract, cannot just walk away. They need the equivalent of a divorce.
June 30th, 2011 | 5:53 pm
Brian,
“I can’t make a definitive statement on China, but ancient Rome most certainly did not have same-sex marriage”
Both Martial and Juvenal describe public same-sex weddings that included dowries and other legalities that governed weddings for opposite sex couples.
June 30th, 2011 | 6:08 pm
Social conservatives have done a lousy job demonstrating how their concerns relate to the larger public interests.
June 30th, 2011 | 6:14 pm
Another consideration on the Lost Boys thing — outside of rare, isolated, cultic societies like the FLDS, polygamy is never widespread enough to create large numbers of unmarriageable men. It’s EXPENSIVE. It’s also not greatly desired by women or their families unless the husband is exceedingly wealthy, as the woman is likely to be neglected in one way or another if resources are not abundant. There will always be a number of men who are either disinclined or not considered desirable by any woman (or her family in the case of patriarchial arrangements), and it generally balances out pretty well compared to the relatively minuscule number of men who can support more than one wife and set of children.
So this actually isn’t a good general criticism of the societal effect of polygamy, even if it mattered, which, to those holding marriage to any consenting adult to be a natural, human, or civil right, it shouldn’t.
June 30th, 2011 | 7:08 pm
In Rome, there was pedophilic and epheboliphic sexually abusive relationships between masters and their adolescent (sometimes preadolescent) slaves. The sexual exploitation of slaves also took place in Greece, especially in such slave-owning societies as Athens; however, it was institutionalized pederastic relationships between free-born male adults and adolescents that represented the societal norm.
The sexual exploitation of slaves also took place in Greece, especially in such slave-owning societies as Athens; however, it was institutionalized pederastic relationships between free-born male adults and adolescents that represented the societal norm. This was clearly not the case in Rome where the law prohibited sexual relations between free-born males. It was socially and legally acceptable for Roman men to have sex with both female and male prostitutes as well as slaves, as long as the Roman man was the active partner. Laws such as the Lex Scantinia, Lex Iulia, and Lex Iulia de vi publica regulated against same-sex activities among free-born males. The Lex Scantinia, as well as especially legislations for the Roman military, put capital punishments upon same-sex activities. A man who liked to be penetrated was considered to be weak and feminine.
The question for liberals who fanatically insist on the ridiculous claim that homosexuality is innate and only affects a minority of the population, apparently because it is determined by some inexistent gene that does not materialize very often, how do they explain ancient Greece?
Do they claim that there was a much more significant number of pederasts in Greece who were really heterosexual, but they insanely went against their gene-determined heterosexuality and just had to have sex with male adolescents? Whatever for?
Or do liberals believe that Greeks have suffered a major genetic mutation? Has the inexistent gene that determines homosexuality been disappearing since ancient times in the Greek population and that is why we have less pederasts today? Or do they think Greeks are as much pederasts today as in the past?
June 30th, 2011 | 7:10 pm
Furthermore, in ancient Greece there was no homosexuality as we understand the word.
Greeks did not conceive of or understand sexuality like we do, so their psychologies and attitudes produced different psycho-sexual dynamics, which consequently resulted in completely different behaviors.
In ancient Greece, there is no homo or hetero, there is active or passive. And the center of this classification is the adult male, which is neither homosexual, nor bisexual, nor heterosexual by our conceptions, but active.
Although this Greek male will have sex with both adult women and boys, to call this bisexuality is also wrong, because it is a bisexuality structured on dominance, sometimes called by scholars as a bisexuality of penetration. In Greece, sex was not a product of what we call sexuality, but of social relations, that is, relations of power.
June 30th, 2011 | 7:14 pm
“Both Martial and Juvenal describe public same-sex weddings that included dowries and other legalities that governed weddings for opposite sex couples.”
There may have been ceremonies, but the state certainly did not recognize, or approve of, those unions. I don’t remember this specific incident from Juvenal, but I assume he was referring to this ceremony in a derogatory fashion.
Both the Romans and Greeks regarded the submissive male in a homosexual sex as despicable creatures. The concept of approving of a gay couple would have struck them as absurd.
June 30th, 2011 | 10:41 pm
Brian,
“There may have been ceremonies, but the state certainly did not recognize, or approve of, those unions. I don’t remember this specific incident from Juvenal, but I assume he was referring to this ceremony in a derogatory fashion”
My understanding is that the Roman state wasn’t in the marriage business. You’re right that Juvenal was satirizing the ceremonies, but the ceremonies still existed.
“Both the Romans and Greeks regarded the submissive male in a homosexual sex as despicable creatures. The concept of approving of a gay couple would have struck them as absurd”
The question is which Romans and Greeks would have regarded them as “despicable creatures.” All of them? Most? The moralists? You’re right that the documents that survive are uniformly disapproving, but the existence of the ceremonies suggests that there was some significant minority that did approve of unions between men (and perhaps even women) from the same social class.
Your initial point was that no other culture in history has approved of homosexual unions between equals. My simple point is that such cultures have existed. They are few and rare, but we can’t claim they’ve never existed.
July 1st, 2011 | 12:21 am
@Alessandra
“inexistent gene that determines homosexuality”
Let’s make this rather easy question slightly harder. How do we explain the high rate of homosexual acts in prison? Do homosexuals just go to prison more often than heterosexuals? Of course not. Rather heterosexual men commit homosexual acts in prison. There is homosexual orientation, and a homosexual behavior. If you were to engage in a sexual act with another woman, would that change your sexual attraction to men? Of course not, but the act would still be a homosexual act.
July 1st, 2011 | 1:08 am
Nickp writes:
“The only difference between a gay couple and remarried heterosexuals is sexual complementarity..”
And that’s a huge difference. It’s as different as a man us from a woman. It’s as different as sexual intercourse us from sodomy. To not see a significant difference baffling to me. Too much emphasis has been placed on procreation and not enough has been said about the importance of sexual difference.
July 1st, 2011 | 4:53 am
Jeremy
July 1st, 2011 | 12:21 am
@Alessandra
“inexistent gene that determines homosexuality”
Let’s make this rather easy question slightly harder. How do we explain the high rate of homosexual acts in prison? Do homosexuals just go to prison more often than heterosexuals? Of course not. Rather heterosexual men commit homosexual acts in prison. There is homosexual orientation, and a homosexual behavior. If you were to engage in a sexual act with another woman, would that change your sexual attraction to men? Of course not, but the act would still be a homosexual act.
========
Why do you say that experience does not change any element of a person’s desire?
I certainly disagree. Desire is certainly in part a product of experience and culture. How do you know what goes through the depths of the mind of each and every man that is in prison and how they feel about every single of their sexual experiences?
And why do you mention men in prisons as an answer to the explanation to Greek culture? Were the majority of ancient Greek pederasts in prison or free and quite powerful? Not only were they not in prison, they were surrounded by all the women they could possibly want to have.
How do you explain what would make a free, powerful, heterosexual Greek man to take on a boy lover first of all? And this happened not only to one Greek man, but a significant number of them. Why?
July 1st, 2011 | 5:00 am
From the Washington Examiner:
An American military official who works closely with Afghan security forces called the discomfort among U.S. and British troops “the elephant in the closet that no one’s talking about, but needs to.”
The study makes a number of observations about the extreme segregation of women in Pashtun culture.
It discusses the prohibitive cost of marriage within Pashtun tribes and the long-standing traditions in which boys are appreciated for their physical beauty and apprenticed to older men to learn a trade at an early age.
“Homosexuality is strictly prohibited in Islam, but cultural interpretations of Islamic teaching prevalent in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan tacitly condone it in comparison to heterosexual relationships,” the study states.
For a male to have sex with a boy is considered a “foible,” the report said. By contrast, having sex with an “ineligible woman” would set up “issues of revenge and honor killings.”
Years of living under that cultural construct have greatly altered sexual attitudes, the study said. “One of the country’s favorite sayings is ‘women are for children, boys are for pleasure,” the report noted.
The study said the prevailing sexual attitudes in some parts of Afghanistan are creating a cycle damaging to boys and young men.
“There is frequently the risk that Pashtun boys will face a set of experiences that mold their beliefs regarding sexuality as adults in ways that are ultimately damaging, both to themselves and to Afghan society,” the report concludes. “It appears that this set of experiences becomes cyclical, affecting generations, and that this cycle that has existed long enough to affect the underpinnings of Afghan culture itself.”
========
One more example in the history of humankind showing that culture deeply shapes and alters sexual desire, orientation, and a host of other kinds of sexual attitudes and behaviors.
July 1st, 2011 | 9:35 am
Mr. Nickol,
I will concede that *no-fault* divorce reframes marriage as little more than a legally-sanctioned contract. This is one reason why many Christians oppose no-fault divorce laws.
But divorce law per se does not necessarily destroy the permanence of marriage. As Jesus said, “Moses permitted divorce because your hearts were hard.” Divorce is a concession to human weakness. As the “exception that proves the rule,” divorce law demonstrates that marriage aims toward permanence. When, by human weakness, a marriage falls short of that goal, it requires a religious and legal framework to undo it.
July 1st, 2011 | 9:56 am
“My understanding is that the Roman state wasn’t in the marriage business.”
Oh, it most certainly was. That was where its new citizens and, most importantly, its soldiers would come from. I know at least Augustus, and I am sure other emperors, actively encouraged marriages and children.
“You’re right that Juvenal was satirizing the ceremonies, but the ceremonies still existed.”
And Juvenal was reporting on them as a sign of cultural decadence among a decadent elite. That sounds familiar.
“The question is which Romans and Greeks would have regarded them as “despicable creatures.” All of them? Most? The moralists?”
According to a leading historian, Adrian Goldsworthy, there was a “widespread and deep Roman and Italian repugnance for homosexuality,” and he also points out that “homosexual activity in a [military] camp was punishable by death.” Page 141 of In the Name of Rome.
“Your initial point was that no other culture in history has approved of homosexual unions between equals. My simple point is that such cultures have existed. They are few and rare, but we can’t claim they’ve never existed.”
You are conflating cultures where homosexuality existed, with cultures in which homosexual marriage was approved of by the society to the same degree it approved of heterosexual marriage. There were, and are, many in the first category, there are none in the second before the past two decades.
July 1st, 2011 | 12:26 pm
David
I think by ‘permanent’ we mean that marriage is presumed permanent. contrast this say closing on a home. In that deal, you (and your lawyer) come together
with the seller (and his lawyer). The deal is presumed to be a single transaction that has a beginning and end.
Now compare this with a business partnership. When the partnership is formed, it is an entity that continues to exist. It may engage in many transactions
or very few or none…but it exists continually. In this sense its permanent…even though it does have an ‘end’. If nothing else a partnership ends when
one or more partner dies. Of course many partnerships will end before that but the default is continual existence unless and until some active force
intervenes to end the partnership. In a transaction, the default is that the conclusion of the transaction is the conclusion of the relationship.
In this case, I think the variation in divorce law over time and place doesn’t really matter much to the discussion.
Alessandra
The question for liberals who fanatically insist on the ridiculous claim that homosexuality is innate and only affects a minority of the population,
apparently because it is determined by some inexistent gene that does not materialize very often, how do they explain ancient Greece?
What is to be explained? It’s often been observed that institutions where you have large numbers of people coming of age in a same sex environment is
associated with large numbers of same-sex sex acts. (for example, see Christopher Hitchens’ autobiography of growing up in English boarding schools….take
note all who think that the solution to all our education issus is abolishing co-ed schools!). Even in those examples, though, sexual orientation does
manifest itself when individuals have actual options for sexual activity. Despite the large amount of same-sex activity in traditional boarding schools, for
example, *most* people grow up to be adults who opt for heterosexual contact.
Small but also very important point We know very little about any ancient culture’s real sex life…even the sexual habits of only a few generations
ago. We know that ancient Greeks kept children and adults as slaves and they abused both. We know little beyond that. We don’t know what the ‘typical’ sex
life was for a male or female in ancient Greece. Maybe the Greeks had no word for homosexual as we use it but we don’t know if there were Greek men or Greek
women who had same sex sex exclusive of unforced/required heterosexual sex. If there were we have no way to measure percentages. We only know what they
talked about from a few ancient sources that we are very, very lucky to have but at the same time this only makes us realize how much we are missing from the
record!
This leads me to a counter question from you…if homosexuality is not innate, if its somehow manufactured then why is homosexuality appear rare across all
of history? Yes maybe many men in ancient Greece had same sex experiences but most men in ancient Greece opted to have wives when they became able to do so.
If there was a way to ‘manufacture’ homosexuality, one would think there would be examples of actual cultures where either by accident or intention a huge
portion of the population was made gay. For example, consider an ancient society that was defeated by a stronger Empire. Certainly the victors could have
an advantage if they could take the population of children and ‘turn them gay’ thereby turning a temporary victory into a long run demographic one. Yet
while winning armies might have raped defeated children and men most humans seem to revert to heterosexuality unless absolutely forced not to.
It seems to me there’s good reason to think hetrosexuality is innate in the majority of any given human population. What makes it innate? I have no idea.
Could be a ‘straight gene’ but I think its much more complicated than that. We are learning that many traits that are inherited cannot be tied to a specific
gene. And good thing too….from an evolutionary point of view making sexual orientation depend on a single gene would be very dangeorus. A virus or
mutation could cause such a species to easily go extinct! IMO it seems quite plausible that sexual orientation is indeed innate and determined by many
complementary systems that are complex and with numerous ‘backups’. But one side effect of such a complicated system may indeed be innate homosexuality in a
small portion of the population.
It discusses the prohibitive cost of marriage within Pashtun tribes and the long-standing traditions in which boys are appreciated for their physical
beauty and apprenticed to older men to learn a trade at an early age.
This reminds me of an interesting article I read in The Atlantic a while back on gays in Saudi Arabia. What struck me was that among young people there was
quite a bit of gay activity. As you point out, interactions between the genders is strictly controlled making pre-marital heterosexual sex quite difficult
and dangerous….but even flirting, dating and non-intercourse interactions between the sexes is quite impossible. Like the boarding schools….the result
is there’s a lot of same sex activity among those coming of age. Interestingly, though, as people age, most seek out marriages and different sex sex as soon
as they viably can. In fact I recall one gay person interviewed who lamented how easy it was to come by gay sex in his youth but now he was getting harder since fewer and fewer people in his peer group were interested in gay sex.
But then this doesn’t seem to match your idea at all. If people grow up with a lot of gay sex then since you think being gay is not innate there should be lots of gay people. There doesn’t seem to be though….even with lots of exposure to gay activity…even taking part in it…when people can choose they seem as inclined towards heterosexuality (except for a small number) even if they had lots of exposure.
Brian
Both the Romans and Greeks regarded the submissive male in a homosexual sex as despicable creatures.
Or did they regard the submissive partner in any sex act as a ‘despicable creature’…..in other words was the ‘submissive male’ simply viewed ‘as the woman’
in the relationship?
July 1st, 2011 | 12:43 pm
“Or did they regard the submissive partner in any sex act as a ‘despicable creature’…..in other words was the ‘submissive male’ simply viewed ‘as the woman’
in the relationship?”
No. A man allowing himself to be penetrated was considered loathsome.
July 1st, 2011 | 1:55 pm
Sorry about the ragged line breaks in that previous post….I like using notepad but its lack of spellcheck and formatting often trips me up ;)
No. A man allowing himself to be penetrated was considered loathsome.
http://www.roman-empire.net/society/society.html seems to indicate that while women were not considered loathsome, they played a clearly defined and different role than men in Roman society. Likewise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_in_ancient_Rome seems to reinforce the idea that Romans viewed being penetrated somewhat degrading regardless of one’s gender (but that would obviously impact women negatively).
What’s interesting is that you haven’t refuted the assertion that Rome had something like SSM. Yes maybe the man who enjoyed penetration was mocked and held in low esteem by Roman society but on the flip side the man who like to penetrate men (and we would clearly call such a man gay today) wasn’t viewed with contempt.
I suspect that the truth was that Rome was an incredibly diverse society and if you could go back and conduct social research to it you’d probably find a diversity of opinions on the subject.
July 1st, 2011 | 2:12 pm
Despite the large amount of same-sex activity in traditional boarding schools, for example, *most* people grow up to be adults who opt for heterosexual contact.
=======
How large is that?
And how much larger are you claiming this same-sex activity is compared to the same-sex activity that goes on in society today in liberals non-boarding schools?
And is your claim based just on reading a couple of selected stories or have you ever read anything that tells a different account?
We know you are not very fond of reading much, isn’t that right?
July 1st, 2011 | 2:18 pm
This leads me to a counter question from you…if homosexuality is not innate, if its somehow manufactured then why is homosexuality appear rare across all of history?
=============
What’s your definition of the word “homosexuality?” And what do you mean by “manufactured?”
July 1st, 2011 | 3:04 pm
“What’s interesting is that you haven’t refuted the assertion that Rome had something like SSM.”
Rome had nothing like SSM. Michael’s “assertion” on that subject consisted of pointing to Juvenal’s disparaging description of a ceremony that was not endorsed by the state.
“I suspect that the truth was that Rome was an incredibly diverse society and if you could go back and conduct social research to it you’d probably find a diversity of opinions on the subject.”
I think I will stick with Adrian Goldsworthy’s conclusions on the issue, rather than your suspicions raised by a cursory review of some internet articles.
July 1st, 2011 | 3:13 pm
Alessandra
And how much larger are you claiming this same-sex activity is compared to the same-sex activity that goes on in society today in liberals non-boarding schools?
I didn’t realize boarding schools came in liberal and conservative flavor. But I guess for you everything in the world is divided between liberal and not-liberal.
Anyway I suspect the answer is same sex activity is higher in same sex environments where opportunities for different sex interaction is either non-existent or limited. I suspect that when you have mixed sex schooling you get fewer cases where heterosexuals experiment with gay sex….but that’s doesn’t necessarily mean that different sex sex offsets same sex sex.
And is your claim based just on reading a couple of selected stories or have you ever read anything that tells a different account?
Selective stories. But that’s more than you’ve presented in your dozens of posts here. I will, though, happily contribute to a fund to buy you a one way ticket to Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia to conduct a study of this issue!
What’s your definition of the word “homosexuality?” And what do you mean by “manufactured?”
I would define homosexuality as a preference for same sex sexual interaction over different sex sexual interaction (‘sexual interaction’ is a catchall that would include not only actual sex and sexual activity (kissing, erotic hugging, flirting etc.) but also fantasies, attention, etc.). I suspect that the only way to properly observe it objectively (if you don’t trust just asking people) would be by observing sexual behavior in a subject only when he or she is in an environment that allows sexual activity with either gender to be a possible option.
I would define manufacture as meaning what it sounds like. victors throughout history have changed the culture of their defeated rivals. They’ve caused their languages to go extinct. They’ve minimized their religions. They’ve banned customs and rituals etc. If homosexuality can be triggered in just about any person rather than being innate in a very small portion, then it stands to reason we might very well have examples were mass homosexuality has been induced in populations either on purpose or by accident by stumbling upon the ‘receipe’.
July 1st, 2011 | 3:34 pm
Rome had nothing like SSM. Michael’s “assertion” on that subject consisted of pointing to Juvenal’s disparaging description of a ceremony that was not endorsed by the state.
I think you’re confusing the ‘state’ as it existed in Rome with the state as it exists in modern times. Our modern notion of th estate is a bit like a giant database where everyone has social security numbers, licenses, marriage records that clerks give us with ‘official stamps’ to use to get our drivers licenses and passports. I suspect the state in Rome was a bit less comprehensive than that. And as for what was ‘endorsed’ by the state, quite frankly we don’t know. It’s not like we have bound books detailing Roman laws buried in the sand. As shocking as it is, almost all our records from Rome were lost. The huge amount of history we have now is only fragments. I don’t think its safe to ever say because we lack a record of something from Rome we can assume it wasn’t done.
July 1st, 2011 | 4:04 pm
I think by ‘permanent’ we mean that marriage is presumed permanent. contrast this say closing on a home. . . .
In this case, I think the variation in divorce law over time and place doesn’t really matter much to the discussion.
Boonton,
I am going by the Girgis/George/Anderson paper What Is Marriage. The link is in the second-last line of Matthew Schmitz post above.
I can’t see how this definition of marriage is compatible with divorce. “Permanent commitment . . . like the union of organs into one healthy whole, total and lasting for the life of the parts (“till death do us part”) . . . temporal comprehensiveness . . . stay together for life . . . . ”
I don’t see how permanent in this context can mean anything less than indissoluble and lifelong. It doesn’t mean “presumed to be permanent until ended by divorce.” It means, in essence, there is no such thing as divorce. George is a Catholic, and although he claims that he and his co-authors have written this without recourse to religious arguments, I can read it in no other way than as a description of marriage as understood by Catholics, and that means indissoluble and lifelong.
July 1st, 2011 | 4:06 pm
“take note all who think that the solution to all our education issus is abolishing co-ed schools!)”
Since you use the word “all” here I have to assume you’ve met at least two, more likely three, people who think that. That’s two or three more than I’ve ever encountered, anywhere.
July 1st, 2011 | 4:35 pm
“The huge amount of history we have now is only fragments. I don’t think its safe to ever say because we lack a record of something from Rome we can assume it wasn’t done.”
I think you vastly underestimate the amount of evidence we have on certain periods of Roman history, including the one being discussed here.
Beyond that, when all the evidence you have points to one conclusion, it is pretty safe to conclude that is the correct view.
July 1st, 2011 | 5:16 pm
Brian,
By saying that Rome wasn’t in the marriage business, I was only observing that Rome didn’t license or register marriages. Marriage was almost entirely a private affair.
When Goldsworthy reports that the “repugnance” was deep and wide, I want to know whether it was deeper and wider than it is today or ten years ago. After all, I think a majority of Americans still disapprove of homosexuality. The point of the question is that repugnance can sit beside acceptance. Your point was that no society has accepted homosexual marriage between equals, but Rome appears to have flirted with the possibility. China and Native North America threw themselves more fully into it.
The notion that Juvenal was criticizing a decadent elite raises an interesting, complicating factor in our history. Homosexuality seems to emerge whenever cities grow large and anonymous enough to support a gay subculture, often with the indulgence of elites. But the modern West is not ruled by elites in quite the same way, and the prosperity and anonymity reach deeper down into the middle class. It is one thing to watch the Emperor Nero marry his wine steward and see the marriage as reflecting how out of touch the emperor is with the real needs of his subjects. But it is another thing altogether to watch two humdrum, frumpy middleclass women move in together and maybe raise a kid. When ordinary people emerge as gay, then homosexuality stops looking so bad.
—
Since the question of sources has come up, my two cents are these. I’m sure Goldsworthy is, well, worthy, but he is, after all, a military historian rather than a historian of law, society, or sex. I’ve found this article by a classical professor of law helpful (http://www.umich.edu/~classics/news/newsletter/winter2004/weddings.html).
July 1st, 2011 | 5:31 pm
Alessandra: And how much larger are you claiming this same-sex activity is compared to the same-sex activity that goes on in society today in liberal non-boarding schools?
========
Boonton
July 1st, 2011 | 3:13 pm
I didn’t realize boarding schools came in liberal and conservative flavor.
========
You were unaware that there were a large number of boarding schools in times where the boarding school culture, externally and internally, was conservative?
You were unaware that every organization has its own culture and that goes for schools? You’ve never heard of a conservative school?
Alessandra: And is your claim based just on reading a couple of selected stories or have you ever read anything that tells a different account?
Boonton: Selective stories.
=======
Which story have you read about how much homosexual sex happens in liberal non-boarding schools today? Or in conservative non-boarding schools?
Boonton: But that’s more than you’ve presented in your dozens of posts here.
=======
That’s why I am asking you what you have read, because you are so superior in your knowledge.
July 1st, 2011 | 5:44 pm
Boonton: For example, consider an ancient society that was defeated by a stronger Empire.
Certainly the victors could have an advantage if they could take the population of children and ‘turn them gay’ thereby turning a temporary victory into a long run demographic one.
=========
What advantage would this be?
July 1st, 2011 | 9:04 pm
I can’t see how this definition of marriage is compatible with divorce. “Permanent commitment . . . like the union of organs into one healthy whole, total and lasting for the life of the parts (“till death do us part”) . . . temporal comprehensiveness . . . stay together for life . . . . ”
It’s not, but that’s why you need a definition for divorce ;)
But as we see, the procreation argument appears consistent and logical on the surface but falls apart upon scrutiny. An unconsummated marriage can be annulled on the grounds that it hasn’t been really ‘sealed’…but if marriage’s purpose is procreation a single act of sex hardly suffices…why not consider ‘unconsummated’ to mean ‘no procreation as of yet’. This would greatly faciliate those with the Henry VIII problem….they married but cannot have children! Why bind such marriages for life when its certainly more procreatively efficient to let such marriages be annulled and the fertile members are then free to find a non-sterile mate.
On the other hand, IMO a better definition of marriage would be the ‘ultimate intimate’…the closest two individuals can get while still remaining individuals. From that perspective, the consummation rule makes sense, so does the expectation of permanence.
Michael
The notion that Juvenal was criticizing a decadent elite raises an interesting, complicating factor in our history. Homosexuality seems to emerge whenever cities grow large and anonymous enough to support a gay subculture, often with the indulgence of elites….
I suspect size has something to do with it. If you have maybe 2% of the population being gay and maybe 2% being bisexual you need a critical mass of humanity in one spot before the gays find each other. In this respect homosexuality would be unlike other minority groups, say Jews or the Amish. These other groups produce their own children and hence even if they are less than 1% of the larger population they will be ‘visible’. But if its an innate trait, then you you’ll see gays so ‘dispersed’ over small populations that they won’t even appear to exist.
Imagine a gay person born in a society of a few hundred. He may never even find another gay person in his life. He may simply assume himself to be less interested in females relative to his peers. He may even engage in heterosexual behavior for the same reason heterosexuals will sometimes engage in gay behavior.
But now that society is bonded with many others in a thriving city of thousands. Now with a critical mass it very well may appear as if gays ‘came out of nowhere’ all at once.
You were unaware that every organization has its own culture and that goes for schools? You’ve never heard of a conservative school?
The schools Hitchens describes were almost all conservative. I think as we start crossing cultures and time your labels loose some meaning. They were certainly conservative in the sense that they expected their students to learn the Bible, classical languages and literature and to the degree that contemporary politics was an issue the faculty generally leaned against Labor.
What advantage would this be?
The complete elimination of a people over time. Societies have done this with defeated groups. For example, in the Mongolian part of China the Mongolian language and culture is disappearing rapidly and mostly below the radar (Tibet tends to garner more attention because of the Dali Lama). Dramatically ‘turning a generation gay’, would, therefore work to do the job so much better. That is if there was a way to do it, I suspect there isn’t.
July 2nd, 2011 | 3:27 am
What advantage would this be?
The complete elimination of a people over time. Societies have done this with defeated groups. For example, in the Mongolian part of China the Mongolian language and culture is disappearing rapidly and mostly below the radar (Tibet tends to garner more attention because of the Dali Lama).
=========
Are you saying that a society that is just composed of people with a homosexual problem is so deformed and dysfunctional that it spells the end of life itself?
July 2nd, 2011 | 5:09 pm
It is one thing to watch the Emperor Nero marry his wine steward and see the marriage as reflecting how out of touch the emperor is with the real needs of his subjects. But it is another thing altogether to watch two humdrum, frumpy middleclass women move in together and maybe raise a kid. When ordinary people emerge as gay, then homosexuality stops looking so bad.
On the contrary. The single biggest thing that turned me against “homosexual marriage” was watching the way lesbians played with the children they had appropriated.
I had been told – as everyone had – that gays are “just like” heteros, so I joined a so-called “welcoming congregation” – a church that actively caters to gay families – and I was genuinely eager to help the fight for “equality”.
Except for one thing: the families there were nothing like normal healthy families, because they lack all sense of appropriate boundaries – no, that isn’t quite right; it is more accurate to say that the entire movement to push gay marriage is based on an active rejection of boundaries.
The boundary between childhood vs. adulthood is completely confused: you have adults acting like children while children are pressed into adult roles – for a fictionalized example of the phenomenon I am referring to, rent the movie “Birdcage” and observe the pathological relationship between the “parentified” or prematurely adult child Val, the emotionally needy man-child Albert, and the spouse (played by Robin Williams) who keeps the whole thing together. I have never met a couple that literally throws a drama-queen fit the way that caricature does (though I have met gays who find it amusing to build an “identity” out of making themselves into a parody of womanhood or masculinity) but the part about making it the son’s responsibility to appease and pleases the childish parent is an inherent part of the boundary confusion I speak of.
Then there are boundary confusions between man-woman and between rights-responsibilities.
Once you have inverted the relationship between pleasure and purpose, nothing is too crazy – when the purpose of having a family is to provide someone with pleasure, instead of the purpose of pleasure in making a family being something that presumably exists to support the biological function of reproduction, then the whole family is sick. Which would be readily apparent if the openly biased psychologists “studying” these families would stop testing for irrelevant factors and would start studying real questions, like whether the guilting and shaming and pressuring and hardcore expectations gays put on children (you WILL feel happy, you will NOT feel loss!) is causing denial issues, for instance.
July 3rd, 2011 | 7:57 am
Alessandra
Are you saying that a society that is just composed of people with a homosexual problem is so deformed and dysfunctional that it spells the end of life itself?
Not quite. I’m saying if there was some way to turn a generation of people gay there would be a reproduction problem. Likewise if a victorious culture could somehow convince a huge portion of a population to take vows of chastity (say by becoming Catholic or Buddhist nuns and priests), the same thing could be accomplished. But its hard to see that happening. Could you imagine, say, the British, trying to tell the Irish a few hundred years ago that they should all not have sex with each other?
On the other hand, if something simple like just making sure sons have distant relationships with their father creates homosexuality….well that is something that could be pragmatically imposed on a defeated people.
On the other hand, I don’t think there’s any evidence that peoples who have a portion of the population being non-fertile suffer a disadvantage. In fact I don’t think any culture did or could ever come close to 100% of their fertile members being fertile.
Blake
between the “parentified” or prematurely adult child Val, the emotionally needy man-child Albert, and the spouse (played by Robin Williams) who keeps the whole thing together.
Prematurely adult? He’s a college grad. who is engaged to marry his girlfriend. Unless youre Doogie Houser, graduating college at 12, you’re quite properly an adult at that point. (I don’t know what ‘parentified’ means as an adjective here).
It’s not Robin Williams character who holds everything together. Its his spouse. Williams plays the classic comic character type of the ‘normal’ rational man who inadverently generates chaos by simply trying to make a situation always revert to normality. Nathan Lane’s character held everything together because he was more honest and true to who he was (granted he did cover up the absense of Val’s mother by pretending to be her).
Not to say that we can use fiction as truth but the story does demonstrate my point. Val clearly wasn’t denied his mother by either Robin Williams or Nathan Lane’s characters. He was denied a mother by, his own mother, who was interested only in her career and was simply a woman who could make no emotional connection even to her own child. As a result she couldn’t even be relied upon to be on time to meet her child’s fiance and inlaws….normally something few mothers would ever want to miss.
Look having Nathan Lane as a parent is probably almost as cool as having Gene Hackman as an inlaw, but I’m sure Val would have preferred his mother was more connected to him. But that’s his mother’s fault, Nathan Lane’s character was trying to do what he could. If these were real people and we were able to question them, I doubt he would say that he considered himself a replacement for Val’s biological mother.
Thanks, though, for reminding us of a pretty good movie.
Once you have inverted the relationship between pleasure and purpose, nothing is too crazy
I think I might be able to sum up the whole problem with the ‘procreative definition argument’ by looking at the above sentence. What’s inverted is the assumption that procreation is a purpose rather than a pleasure! Procreation works best when its not a purpose, duty, job etc. but a natural pleasure. Carping about marriages supposedly founded on pleasure misses the point, they all are founded on pleasure! If they weren’t, procreation wouldn’t happen and if it did it would dysfunctional.
Which would be readily apparent if the openly biased psychologists “studying” these families would stop testing for irrelevant factors and would start studying real questions, like whether the guilting and shaming and pressuring and hardcore expectations gays put on children (you WILL feel happy, you will NOT feel loss!) is causing denial issues, for instance.
It sounds to me like you’ve set your assertions up to be untestable. If children of gay parents appear normal, well that’s because they’ve been ‘pressured’ to be happy. If they don’t, well that proves your point. You’ve done the little “heads I win, tails you loose” routine on us.
July 3rd, 2011 | 3:51 pm
Excellent points about The Birdcage.
Now, if you want some good movies about traditional marriage, I recommend A Streetcar Named Desire and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I had been all in favor of traditional marriage, but these movies opened my eyes and convinced me that it must be utterly destroyed—which now, thankfully, it has been.
July 3rd, 2011 | 5:06 pm
It sounds to me like you’ve set your assertions up to be untestable
That is because I am talking about rights.
How many studies prove that gays will or will not suffer harm if they do or don’t get the right to marry? That is not the appropriate way to establish whether someone’s rights are being violated.
The argument should not be that you have the right to use your children any way you want and the burden of proof is on me to prove that the way you’re using them is harmful. Even if you did have a right to use children as if they were resources instead of people, the burden of doing any impact analyses should be on you – the one who wants to make the change.
But children are not resources, nor are they pets. They are people with interests and needs and, yes, rights of their own. Right now the law says that they have certain rights. Gay marriage relies on the idea that gay rights somehow trump the rights of children – gays can’t even adopt a child without first changing the standards so that gay rights are prioritized before the child’s “best interest” standard, because whether or not it does irreparable harm, it continues to be true that children have reason to value having a both a mother-relationship and a father-relationship, both of which are valuable – and distinct.
If you are dealing with the concept of taking from someone something they have reason to value, the correct burden of proof is on you, not them/those who represent or advocate for them (to establish need) and it’s not at all clear to me why they have to demonstrate harm
(speaking of setting things up to be untestable: just how does one go about proving that one should not do something experimental, if the only acceptable proof involves producing and evaluating the actual products of the experimental procedure?)
July 3rd, 2011 | 7:43 pm
Blake’s reponse is nonresponsive.
July 3rd, 2011 | 10:52 pm
I had been all in favor of traditional marriage, but these movies opened my eyes and convinced me that it must be utterly destroyed—which now, thankfully, it has been.
Well, if you used to belong to a church where all the members had relationships like that, no wonder you’re against the institution.
I would imagine I’d be opposed to marriage as well, if every marriage I’d ever seen had been so unhealthy and dysfunctional that I could literally take those movies as representative of problems that all marriages face.
I believe that the boundary issues typical of the film The Birdcage are typical of all gay families. The reason is this: I believe anyone capable of healthy family life would immediately be struck with the question, why wasn’t this kid allowed to meet his mother? These men are willing to force their child to lie to his first grade teacher, rather than just telling him the truth about his mother.
And that is the whole “Gay Marriage” myth in a nutshell: that even if your mother were right there living in the same town, there is “no harm” in forcing your child into a position where he feels pressured to lie – where, in fact, a child lying to protect his parents is acceptable, but the same child telling the same lies, for the same reason, only where the beneficiary is the child ashamed of the parents, is considered a shockingly selfish thing for the child to do.
You know what’s really interesting about this analogy? In all the time I hung out at that “welcoming” church, I never met a single person who saw anything wrong with that film. They never once thought about how it might influence their child to see a film that openly mocks the infantilized gay parent who needs to be cared for emotionally by the son, or else he’ll lock himself in the closet and threaten drug overdose. They all thought it was heartwarming and funny and “affirming”. The community itself identifies wholeheartedly with the man-child, not the child-man, and sees nothing wrong with extracting huge emotional sacrifices from the child.
And I would argue that the reason the community is not embarrassed by this film (or other media representations like it) is because they have so totally inverted the relationships and boundaries in their own life that they can honestly believe that the purpose of a family is to bring personal pleasure. The child truly does exist to please the parent – not when they are the child, of course, rebelling against their own parents (“that’s different!”).
But consider: of all the questions we’ve studied, have we ever asked the children of gays and lesbians if they’ve ever felt pressured to feel the emotions that their parents chose for them before they were even born?
July 4th, 2011 | 12:00 pm
They never once thought about how it might influence their child to see a film that openly mocks the infantilized gay parent who needs to be cared for emotionally by the son, or else he’ll lock himself in the closet and threaten drug overdose. They all thought it was heartwarming and funny and “affirming”. The community itself identifies wholeheartedly with the man-child, not the child-man, and sees nothing wrong with extracting huge emotional sacrifices from the child.
I’m still not clear how a college graduate who just proposed to his fiance is classified as a ‘child’. As for Nathan Lane’s character, he is pretty emotional but he’s actually the most mature of all the other characters…he is, after all, able to pull off both the ruse and the truth while Robin Williams can only be nervous.
I have no problem talking about the movie’s story by itself but its absolutel of no use as a
Well, if you used to belong to a church where all the members had relationships like that, no wonder you’re against the institution.
All the members? Do like all gay marriages happen in a single church that you just happened to be a member of?
Anyway aren’t you actually making an argument not against SSM but SSP (same sex parenting)? The couple in The Bird Cage were not married. Simply being married does not grant you children. In fact there are plenty of married couples who absolutely will not be allowed to keep children, even their own.
Anyway, look at http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/06/where-the-gay-families-are.html. Notice that the cities where gay couples have the highest percentage of childrearing are oddly areas where SSM is nowhere near being enactd.
So we’ll warn you again. If in real life you are aware of children being emotionally neglected due to basketcase same sex parents you are obligated to report the case to child services. You should have no problem doing this since you seem to be asserting that you just left ground zero of the Church of Dysfunctional SSM.
that even if your mother were right there living in the same town, there is “no harm”…
Since you’re obsessing over the film, I notice you keep neglecting the truth about the story. Nathan Lane’s character never denied Val his mother. His mother denied him a mother.
And I would argue that the reason the community is not embarrassed by this film…
Actually the film was criticized when it came out for overplaying the stereotypes. It works as a funny comedy with good actors, I don’t think it in any way represents the typical SSM couple or a typical SSP situation. I’m a little bit surprised that you would be unaware of this being how closely connected to the gay community your previous church was.
July 4th, 2011 | 7:18 pm
I’m a little bit surprised that you would be unaware of this being how closely connected to the gay community your previous church was.
Nope, all the gay “families” I have known have no problem with showing it to their kids, and no problem with the way “Armand” treats his son.
Obviously the caricature (Albert’s parody of “womanhood”) is over the top. But that’s a completely separate complaint entirely.
His mother denied him a mother.
The mother was the most empathetic character in the movie. She’s the *only* one who expressed concern about whether her abandonment harmed Val, whether Val “needed” her, whether her loss harmed him, etc.
And she had no problem showing up when asked. Armand rushed to reassure her she wasn’t wanted, and Albert threw an out-and-out hissy fit – pure unadulterated infantile jealousy – while Val acted astonished: “My mother is willing to meet me!???!!??”
This is why the film reminds me of the gay “families” I have known: the total focus on the parent’s infantile needs and jealousies, and the total lack of awareness – or concern – about how the child is impacted by having so much emotional neediness in one parent.
Obviously humor is exaggerated. But humor is still based on truth – and virtually every gag in “The Birdcage” is based on boundary violations, and the best gags are based on the idea that it’s good and even noble to violate boundaries if the goal happens to make Christian fundamentalists uncomfortable, or put them in an awkward situation.
(However, note that you are the one who chose to reverse my analogy: I originally used the movie to illustrate something I saw going on in real life – I was using the movie to talk “about” my own observations and experiences – you are the one who made it be “about” the movie, reversing the topic supporting analogy/example relationship).
DAVID: I have thought and thought about it, and I just can’t see how today’s modern family is like “Streetcar Named Desire”. Care to share how you can use that particular image as a metaphor for the modern family? I’m absolutely fascinated by the prospect.
July 4th, 2011 | 7:20 pm
The bold type was an accident. (The intention was to “bold” just the word “This”) Sorry for yet another formatting error :x
July 4th, 2011 | 7:26 pm
Prematurely adult? He’s a college grad. who is engaged to marry his girlfriend.
I was referring to details such as the fact that when he was in the first grade, he had to lie to protect his parents from his first grade teacher – the “bigot”.
Such details are scattered throughout the film and is in fact the cause of the film’s precipitating crisis: just as he once lied to protect his parents from “bigots”, he now wants his parents to lie for him to protect the family from “bigots”, only this involves a huge transfer – now, instead of Val being the “meat shield”, it will be the parents who are the ones doing the lying, and Val will be the one enjoying the sense of being protected.
For the first time ever, Val is asking his parents to put his needs first – to take care of and protect him – instead of vice versa, and Albert simply can’t stand it.
The rest of the film is a giant hissy fit, a bombardment of guilt and shaming – with words like “selfish” and so on – until the crisis is “resolved” with Val behaving as he presumably should have behaved all along: by proudly introducing Albert as “his mother”.
It’s really not a very happy ending if you look at it from Val’s point of view: this was his crisis of maturity, and instead of separating from his parents and becoming a grown-up, he crawled back to being what his parents need him to be.
July 5th, 2011 | 12:11 am
The mother was the most empathetic character in the movie.
Here we have a case study of just how out of touch you are.
Let’s review your reasoning here line by line:
She’s the *only* one who expressed concern about whether her abandonment harmed Val,
So you have a mother who abandoned her son as a child, but when he is now an adult after being raised by others she gets to erase all that harm by merely ‘expressing concern’ about her actions years after the fact? I mean here you have Albert, who clearly cares deeply for Val and wants him to be happy, getting raked over the coals by you for being hysterically emotional but at least he was there as best he could be. Clearly the mother being a emotionally mature and successful business woman had more than enough capacity to assert her legal and biological rights to raise her son but opted instead to focus on other things. But you would view emotional Albert as the villian here, who somehow ‘denied’ Val his mother?
And she had no problem showing up when asked. Armand rushed to reassure her she wasn’t wanted, and Albert threw an out-and-out hissy fit – pure unadulterated infantile jealousy
Indeed, although jealousy isn’t always an unjust emotion. Let’s imagine what would have happened if Val’s mother had showed up and Albert skipped town for the night. Kevin (Gene Hackman’s character) would have had a wonderful evening impressed by Val’s ‘normal’ mother. But then that would have been a fraud wouldn’t it…and this is the sort of thing I would think you’d care about since you’ve been pounding on ‘fake family trees’ and such. Val’s mother would have walked away with the credit for being a parent and kudos for producing such a great kid as Val…..but as you say she abandoned Val. If Val’s a great kid, its because of the efforts of Armond and Albert. Maybe Albert should be more ‘mature’ but when you get down to it he is right to be upset about the fraud that writes him off as a nobody while heaping unearned praise on Val’s mother. You can say you find his ‘whiny’ ‘hissy fit’ way of expressing this is grating to your taste, you can say he is in general way too emotional and givin to too much over the top dramatics and fits, you can say that per Christian doctrine he is a sinner and will be dammed, you can say all of that but you can’t deny that he is being treated unjustly and has a right to call that out.
while Val acted astonished: “My mother is willing to meet me!???!!??”
Kind of interesting that you would assert the mother is the most empathetic character in the story huh? For Val to say this imagine how deep her indifference and abandonment must have been….that he would be amazed she would even take an evening to meet his fiance’s and her parents over dinner!
I have known: the total focus on the parent’s infantile needs and jealousies, and the total lack of awareness – or concern – about how the child is impacted by having so much emotional neediness in one parent.
I have seen needs and jealousies with adoptive parents….esp. getting over the top complexes about their children seeking out their birth parents when they get older….but whose needs are infantile here? Is not Val trying to create a totally dishonest impression of his family for the benefit of his fiance’s father? Is he not the one pushing this deception? Is Albert really the infantile one here?
You know you could rewrite this play in a way that had nothing to do with a gay family. You could write a turn of the century play about a man who had a child with his first wife but she then divorces him but leaves him her son. He then remarries a woman who raises her stepson as her own. when it comes time to be engaged, the son proposes to create a false life to the parents of his fiance who are strictly against divorce by having the ex-wife appear and pretend to have been the one who raised him all along. (You could add some element that would make the 2nd wife unacceptable to the inlaws…perhaps she’s a ‘commoner’ or from Ireland and this is a strict English royal type family…..) How would the 2nd wife react to having to pretend to not exist while the woman who abandoned her son playacts as if she’s spent the last 20 years being a good wife and mother? Probably quite emotionally and with a lot of jealousies. Would you call her infantile for doing so?
Obviously humor is exaggerated. But humor is still based on truth – and virtually every gag in “The Birdcage” is based on boundary violations,
Actually the humor is slapstick and that type of humor is based on inverting the way the world ‘should’ work. The way the world ‘should’ work is that the highly intelligent and unemotional Armond and Val should be able to easily pull one over on Gene Hackman….esp. since their business is theatre and since the drag show is premised on convincingly deceiving the audience. But this is inverted for the humor. Val and Armond are too nervous to pull off the deception. Albert, the one whose supposed to be too emotional and high strung to do this sort of thing, saves the day both by doing a better job at pulling off the ruse than either Val or Albert and when the truth comes out (again not because of Albert but because Armond foolishly tried to enlist Val’s neglectful mother who enters at the totally wrong time) being totally forthright and honest to all with no pretenses.
Also this type of humor often works by gently chastising those who are in the wrong. Val and Armond are in the wrong both for putting forth a lie to the inlaws and for disrespecting Albert. Likewise Gene Hackman is also in the wrong because he is no real Christian but a superficial hypocrite who thrives on being ‘seen’ as a Christian rather than actually being one. He is the type who would be first in line to be tossed into hell in a Flannery O’Conner story. He shares, with Armond and Val, the vice of pride. Since this is a comedy, though, no one is beat up too much in the end. His pride is gently punished by being forced to go drag in order to slip out of the club which is being staked out by reporters itching to catch a photo of him cavorting with gays. (It’s also ironic that Hackman’s character is a politician who thrives on deceptions like the one he is briefly the victim of, he is obsessed with managing the public’s perception of him doing such things as sneaking out of his own house making his family climb down a ladder with him in the middle of night to avoid being seen by reporters)
Re: Val being a ‘man-child’
I was referring to details such as the fact that when he was in the first grade, he had to lie to protect his parents from his first grade teacher – the “bigot”.
It’s been a while since I saw that movie….but does that make him an adult as a child? Or does it make him a child who lies about his parents? Look if we step away from comedy, having a mother who abandoned you is probably a pretty serious blow…..in many ages I could see how a child would be inclined to lie about that to save himself from school yard bullying and taunting. But who has done this here; Albert and Armond, who seem to have done the best they could given their circumstances or Val’s mother?
It’s really not a very happy ending if you look at it from Val’s point of view: this was his crisis of maturity, and instead of separating from his parents and becoming a grown-up, he crawled back to being what his parents need him to be.
And what do his parents need him to be? His parents have no need and no cares at all for the Senator’s approval. The Senator’s opinion is only important to them because Val feels he ‘needs’ his blessing to marry the Senator’s daughter. From Val’s point of view, he has no problem with Albert. He cares little about his neglectful mother who abandoned him. The only reason he feels any stress at all is because he thinks that the Senator won’t accept the truth about the people who raised him and therefore must be conned. At the end he has hardly ‘crawled back’ at all. He and his fiance reaffirm to both their parents that they will marry each other no matter what….in other words both assert their status as grown ups who no longer need childish decpetions to justify their decisions and desires.
July 5th, 2011 | 12:18 am
By the way, The Bird Cage was not written by gays or gay family advocates. It comes as an Americanized version of La Cage Aux Folles, which was written in 1973 by Jean Poiret….who I don’t think was gay since he married Caroline Cellier and had one child with her. It’s a comedy of mores and manners which is why its essential to have two polar opposite stereotypes playing against each other (the ‘fundamentalist Christian’ Hackman versus the most gayish gay Albert played by Nathan Lane).
July 5th, 2011 | 5:53 am
And what do his parents need him to be? His parents have no need and no cares at all for the Senator’s approval.
His parents need him to pretend that he is proud and happy to have a freakish man-child for a “mother”.
As if a thousand boundaries weren’t being violated.
Albert is “just like a mother” except for the part about being totally devoid of empathy. And in this he is like so many gay fathers who would only too happily insist that Solomon chop the baby in half rather than let go of “what I am entitled to”. Me me me me me me me me me.
July 5th, 2011 | 10:50 am
Blake
His parents need him to pretend that he is proud and happy to have a freakish man-child for a “mother”.
His parents need this? Perhaps but Val doesn’t seem to have any beef with Albert. The impression I get is that Val is perfectly happy with Albert and the only reason he feels the need to hide him is because of his desire to win the approval of the Senator for marrying his daughter. I get the impression that if the Senator was the type that would have no problem with Albert, Val wouldn’t have cared.
Albert is “just like a mother” except for the part about being totally devoid of empathy.
That’s odd to say. Not only does Albert emphasize with Val to the point that he is willing to go thru with the ruse to preserve Val’s chances of marrying the girl he loves, he also is better at pulling off the ruse than either Armond or Val because of his empathy with the Senator’s love of traditionalism. In fact, you may recall the Senator himself finds Albert’s empathy so real that he starts to actually become enamoured of him and desires to save this ‘simple, honest woman’ from what he perceives as a crafty, deceptive, ‘European’ Armond who he thinks has been taking advantage of his wife. Of all the characters, the truth is that Albert is the most honest and innocent . He is emotional, yes, but he seems to be the only character who has no interest in manipulating others.
If Albert really was only concerned with getting approval from Val and everyone else for being gay he would have insisted on humiliating Val by throwing his gayness in everyone’s faces. In fact, Albert goes to extremes to try to give everyone exactly what they want. A ‘normal traditional’ mother whose ‘salt of the earthness’ is so charming to the Senator that he is happy to bless his daughter marrying Val. Remember the only reason it doesn’t happen that way is because of the bumbling of Armond, Val and the actual mother.
And in this he is like so many gay fathers who would only too happily insist that Solomon chop the baby in half rather than let go of “what I am entitled to”. Me me me me me me me me me.
I think its pretty clear your understanding of things here is rather warped. I notice you haven’t addressed your moral failure that causes you to see Val’s mother, the least sympathetic character of all, as some type of hero.
July 5th, 2011 | 12:45 pm
I think its pretty clear your understanding of things here is rather warped. I notice you haven’t addressed your moral failure that causes you to see Val’s mother, the least sympathetic character of all, as some type of hero.
No, I don’t see her as heroic.
What I actually said was that she was the only one who showed any sign of empathy or concern re: Val’s well-being.
That isn’t saying much.
But I wonder why you ignore the actual point of what I said, which had to do with boundary issues.
The point is not whether or not these fictitious characters are good or bad people, or whether the people I met in real life were good or bad people. I can assume that they were and are all good people. But if you are a good person, living according to bad rules, then the outcome is going to be bad.
The rules that I saw in the so-called “gay community” were toxic rules. Now, I understand I cannot see “the whole gay community” – that in fact there is no such thing. But the entire case for gay marriage is bound up in certain boundary violations, the most important of which is the peculiar and unreasonable belief that it is somehow reasonable to expect a child to not mind losing one of life’s most precious relationships because his parents are narcissistic, emotionally needy, or infantile.
I believe that grownups should take care of children, not the other way around. Gay marriage is based on perverting this fundamental assumption: the entire structure requires “gay rights” to “trump” the interests of children. There is a conflict between the way gays want to construct their family vs. the decision that would be reached if we valued the child as an equally important stakeholder.
Or, to put it back into the movie terms, if we were to assume that two gay men are raising a child, and that child’s mother were living in the same town, is it really reasonable to expect the child to “lie about who his parents are” to his elementary school teachers, as opposed to simply telling the child who his mother really is, and maybe even arranging a meeting or two?
If we were genuinely making decisions based on what is best for the child – instead of simply justifying ignoring the child’s interests because we want to make decisions based on what is best for an emotionally needy man-child or two – would these be the decisions we make?
July 5th, 2011 | 12:46 pm
Perhaps but Val doesn’t seem to have any beef with Albert.
Did you know there is a drinking game where you down a shot every time Armand shames or guilts Val for not playing along with what Albert needs?
I didn’t make this up.
July 5th, 2011 | 4:10 pm
The point is not whether or not these fictitious characters are good or bad people,…
On the contrary, that is exactly the point. Val’s mother is bad because she neglected her son and cannot be relied upon to even simply be helpful to him in meeting his future inlaws. Val is bad for being ungrateful, seeking to diminish and disrespect the sensitive Albert. Armond is bad for participating in a deception. That’s not to say that these people all deserve to be lined up against a wall and shot, but at the base of things you are either doing things that are good or bad. If you are doing bad things, you should stop and do good things instead. That may sound childish but sometimes life is that simple….actually its usually that simple which is often the point comedy illustrates.
The rules that I saw in the so-called “gay community” were toxic rules.
But there is no such ‘rule’ in the movie. Albert is very simple. He did his best to help Armond raise Val. To be written off as if he did nothing and to have the woman who neglected Val receive the praise he rightfully earned was hurtful. It’s just that simple, it is wrong to hurt people unjustly. Albert was hurt unjustly.
Val doesn’t have to call Albert his mother. Doesn’t even have to necessarily call him a ’2nd father’ or ‘stepfather’. But Val was wrong not to acknowledge Albert’s contribution to his life. For all yout talk of crossing boundaries, that’s a pretty relevant one.
I believe that grownups should take care of children, not the other way around.
Leave aside the fact that the ‘grownups’ did make a pretty dramatic effort to help Val in the movie, Val is not a child. The only ‘taking care’ you’ve really pointed out was that Val lied about his father being gay as a child. That wasn’t ‘taking care’ of Armond and Albert. That was, strictly speaking, selfishness on Val’s part. Armond and Albert, owning a gay nightclub, had no problem being openly gay. It wasn’t like they were Jews in Nazi Germany and Val was essential to helping them keep their cover!
As far as we can tell in the movie, Val was raised to be an intelligent, good looking and well educated man whose college was presumably provided by Albert and Armond. He has moments of selfishness and immaturity but he is basically a pretty good kid who no one could really dislike. When he says to them “think of me for once”, you have to honestly ask how he could have been where he was if they hadn’t thought of him thru the years? Val is no different from any other young adult who has the delusion that his parents didn’t really do anything for him when in fact he is mostly just not seeing what they did….and Albert and Armond are like many parents who let the guilt trips that ungrateful children lay on them convince them to do yet more for the children.
If they were really obsessed with themselves, why play at the ruse at all? Why not say “we don’t care about your love life, why should we cater to this stupid bigoted Senator who despises us?” When the ruse is up why help the Senator escape the club without being seen by the photographers? Why not force him to be embarrassed and thereby have his anti-gay agenda discredited? Or why not try to blackmail him? Instead they forgoe these tempting possibilities because ‘the child”s interest is getting married to his daughter and they don’t want to ruin that for him.
Or, to put it back into the movie terms, if we were to assume that two gay men are raising a child, and that child’s mother were living in the same town, is it really reasonable to expect the child to “lie about who his parents are” to his elementary school teachers, as opposed to simply telling the child who his mother really is, and maybe even arranging a meeting or two?
From the movie I don’t recall anything Val said that indicated he wasn’t aware of who his mother was from a very early age. Likewise if the mother was living nearby, was apparantly on good terms with the father and the father had no animosity towards her there would be no reason for Albert or Armond to ‘arrange’ a meeting. Even if the state had SSM, the mother would have no problem asserting her rights.
Did you know there is a drinking game where you down a shot every time Armand shames or guilts Val for not playing along with what Albert needs?
I would have never thought that the movie would make a good drinking game movie…perhaps it might be if you’re driving since most of the movie, as I remember it, is centered on the ruse with the guilt trip from Albert only coming at the beginning.
Who exactly plays this drinking game? If its gay people who like the movie doesn’t that refute your point? By implicitly making fun of Albert’s neediness, they are acknowledging he is a silly character….or at least one with a silly flaw. I ask because I just find it hard to imagine a bunch of straight guys sitting around watchin the Bird Cage drinking on Albert’s emotionalism.
The movie isn’t really about the dynamics between Armond, Albert and Val but about the interaction between the two families…. If you want to say that Albert is a flawed character because he’s emotionally needy I suppose you can say that. I suppose if you were making a movie about a person raised by a show business couple…one of whom is a drama queen type diva you could explore how this could be a problem for a child. You could make another movie, a prequal if you will, where maybe Albert isn’t so much the hero. But in Albert’s defense he’s probably not much worse than many other stepparents and I wouldn’t be surprised if his positive qualities cancelled out his bad ones. Armond for all his great emotional stability remains a bit too rational….a bit too eager to solve problems by any means necessary (i.e. the elaborate deception).
July 5th, 2011 | 6:40 pm
The point is not whether or not these fictitious characters are good or bad people,…
On the contrary, that is exactly the point. Val’s mother is bad because she neglected her son and cannot be relied upon to even simply be helpful to him in meeting his future inlaws
She “neglected” her son because she and Armand made a deal.
For some reason, it was
July 5th, 2011 | 6:55 pm
What is interesting about the Birdcage – well, first, about the boy’s mother, I should point out that the tone and tenor of the film would change dramatically if you imagined the character of Albert as a female instead of a male. The transgressions become both far more obvious and far more disturbing – because the set of behaviors that gays engage in when they covet and “take over” someone else’s child (blurring the line between biological parent stepparent) is not acceptable and is rightfully seen as monstrous and threatening when people who aren’t gay do it. A woman who puts her insecurity as a stepparent over the child’s sense of reality would be a horrifying thing.
And this is central to what is disturbing about The Birdcage in general. Normally, the character who is out of sync with society is the one that grows and changes in the course of the film. In this film, the one who can’t adapt to society stays static, while everyone else learns how to take better care of this man-child.
The boy learns to stop being ashamed of his stepfather’s unwillingness to accept and behave according to social norms, and “grows up” – becomes more mature – to the point where he is able to be a “good sport” about his stepfather making a scene at his wedding, as if there were something not only normal but cute about a “mother” making herself the center of attention instead of accepting that the young people are naturally the center of attention at a wedding. (because it’s always cute when gay men behaving like women do things that women could never get away with doing, right?) Likewise, Armand and the senator “grow up” so that Albert doesn’t have to; he can remain a “charming” child who never needs to accept the normal responsibilities that are part of belonging to a relationship, a family, or a community.
The “point” of the movie is that Albert has the right to be just what he is, and it’s up to the rest of us to appreciate him. In the process of making this point, there are boundary violations all over the place. Dysfunction is held up as a virtue. Albert is an extreme vision of all take and no give.
It’s an extremely narcissistic vision.
July 6th, 2011 | 12:31 pm
She “neglected” her son because she and Armand made a deal.
Indeed, she made a deal because she had no interest in caring for her son. She considered other things more important. Here you’re carping about adults who put their needs above the needs of children yet the only character who clearly does this is Val’s biological mother. Albert, for all his emotionalism, clearly wants to see Val happily marry the Senator’s daughter and goes to extremes to see that happens.
A woman who puts her insecurity as a stepparent over the child’s sense of reality would be a horrifying thing.
I think you’re confusing the issue by constantly referring to Val as a ‘child’ when he is an adult man. If this was a movie about Albert getting upset about a Val visiting his mother as a child, that would be disturbing. But we have no indication that Albert ever did anything to stand in the way of Val and his mother, the neglect was due to his mother’s total lack of motivation.
Again you’re analysis of Albert is totally at odds with reality. Say Albert did indeed ‘grow up’. Does that alter the fact that he apparantly played the role of a stepparent for Val’s upbringing? Should he not be at Val’s weddng? Not have an honored place?
And speaking of narcissism, Val is the one who is basically trying to construct an absurd fraud on his future father-in-law all for the purposes of supposedly ‘fitting in’. Notice none of the supposedly narcissistic characters are asking anything of Val or the Senator. Val is not asked to be gay, not asked to even accept the flamboyant drag club as his lifestyle. Its been a while since I saw the movie but I beleive he appears first on screen living on his own and living as a very conventional life. Neither Armond or Albert seem to have any problem with this.
And now turn to the Senator. Here is a man who seems to terrorize his family with his needs to manage his public image. He objects to his daughter’s marriage to Val not because he thinks lowly of Val or because he is thinking about his daughter’s happiness but because he is obsessed with the ‘respectability’ of Val’s family. You wasted so many bytes trying to show us that Albert was being ‘taken care of’ by ‘the child’….in reality the only one that applies too is the Senator. Notice that at no point do either Albert or Armond object to the idea of Val marrying into a family with such a notable anti-gay politician. At no point do they presume that the very different lifestyle sof either themselves or the Senator should in any way restrict the children. In contrast, the Senator seems to almost believe his wife and daughter exist as campaign props for himself.
In fact, your bias here is pretty blatent. You begin by praising a neglectful mother who not only passes up raising her son but passes up even having a minor role in his life (even Christmas cards seem too have been too much for her) because she was more interested in her career. You neglect the Senator who bullies his daughter based only on his needs for good public relations. And you focus instead only on Albert’s rather innocent emotional weakness.* It seems you’re so obsessed with SSM that just about any evil a heterosexual parent might do is excused with you while the most minor of flaws in Albert are blown up to be some type of ‘mommy dearest’ relationship.
* And note the Senator is correct about Albert when he was under the impression he was a woman. He feels that he is being taken advantage of by two ‘overly sophisticated’ men. And in reality he is. Both Armond and Val presume its their job to ‘manage’ Albert and his silly emotions throughout the entire movie. You ignore the point that Albert is justifiably hurt by the attempt to write him out of the picture of Val’s life but he sets that aside for Val’s sake.
July 6th, 2011 | 4:48 pm
I think you’re confusing the issue by constantly referring to Val as a ‘child’ when he is an adult man.
And I think you are missing the point.
The story The Birdcage is about the transition from child to man – from the little boy who knew how to handle his parents being out of sync with society (by lying to shield them from situations they found uncomfortable) to a young man independent of his parents.
I say child because he is an adult child. The word child has two meanings – it means an immature human, and it also has a meaning within a generational context: parents and children remain parents and children in relation to each other.
Except in the case of Albert and Armand, where the boundary between generations is confused: Val was a child in the physical sense, but was not allowed to be a child in the generational sense.
The parent-child relationship is simply not compatible with the “having a family is primarily about having a parenting experience” mindset. A child is not a thing you enjoy. A child is a person that you nurture and protect. A good parent has the primary task and responsibility of caring for the child, and the parents in this film failed at that task – they count themselves successful because Val looks nice and talks nice, but even there we must notice that they take pleasure in Val’s normalcy not because they genuinely believe it’s a better way of life, but because it vindicates their choices in how they chose to use and experiment with Val. “Look – he turned out well, so therefore we are good parents!” Except they are not good parents.
And this is significant because it is not a quirk that is unique to the particular characters in this film (who, after all, do not exist). It is a “quirk” that belongs to the very idea of changing the definitions of family and parenthood – for the express purpose of enabling people to enjoy the pleasures of parenthood and family membership without being liable for the responsibilities.
But you can’t separate the pleasures from the responsibilities. Families can only work if everyone does their part. When the balance of giving and taking gets skewed, the family becomes dysfunctional (and will collapse when Val and his wife have their first child, and are forced into another coming-of-age moment, this time evaluating the question of what a parent owes a child, as they decide what sort of parent they want to be – this is why studies that test only whether 14 year old children of gays describe themselves as happy or get good grades are inadequate to really say anything about the effects of what gays are doing to their children: the effects will be spread out maybe even over generations).
So going back to our coming of age narrative: Val fails to make the transition. In the end, his own needs remain secondary to his father’s and his father’s childlike lover. His parents will never act like parents, except when it pleases or amuses them to do so, and Val will pretend it does not matter and he does not care.
It would be just one more film about a highly dysfunctional family except for one thing: for all your justifications (and they are justifications), this is the model upon which gay marriage is built – boundary violations confusing the role of child vs. the role of adult, confusing the obligations of parenthood such that children are forced to parent their parents.
This has a word. It is a known form of child neglect/abuse.
July 6th, 2011 | 5:26 pm
Boonton:
On the other hand, if something simple like just making sure sons have distant relationships with their father creates homosexuality….well that is something that could be pragmatically imposed on a defeated people.
=============
I knew this was coming. Boonton, that’s a really simplistic and ignorant distortion of what happens in the mind of someone who develops a homosexual problem. The factors which contribute to the development of a homosexual psychology are multiple and for some men, the deformed relationship with their father can be a primary factor. It’s not the only factor and it’s not a simple factor. Simply adding the adjective “distant” doesn’t even begin to describe a dysfunctional relationship.
There is nothing simple in a dysfunctional relationship between a man and his son, nor its consequences, whether they involve homosexuality or not. The only extremely simplistic view here is your take of father-son relationships.
Don’t mistake your denial of the power and the complexity of the impact that primary relationships can have in the development of a person’s psychology for what happens in reality. I guess for simplistic minds, everything in the world of human relations is simple. Reality is quite the contrary.
Your desperate theory that some barbaric group would need to come up with a silly plan to specifically try to deform all adults into dysfunctional parents so that they could produce a homosexual problem in every child is beyond ridiculous.
On the other hand, I noticed that you chose to ignore the example mentioned of a culture that has a pattern of fomenting homosexual ephebophile abusive relations for men on a pretty wide scale. And we can observe this happening today. No need for a barbaric culture wanting to foist their homosexuality plan on innocent conquered peoples to achieve their domination of the world! Sounds almost like a weird sci-fi, 007 against Mr. Evil set in some remote, exotic past.
So silly that it’s quite funny.
July 7th, 2011 | 1:13 pm
Blake
The story The Birdcage is about the transition from child to man – from the little boy who knew how to handle his parents being out of sync with society (by lying to shield them from situations they found uncomfortable) to a young man independent of his parents.
Errr no its not, its the classic comedy of manners style of slapstick that generates its amusement by putting together very different people. Val is not the focus of the story and he certainly doesn’t experience much character development during it. In fact, he’s basically the same person at the end of the story that he was at the beginning. The only character who may have actually changed is the Senator!
A good parent has the primary task and responsibility of caring for the child, and the parents in this film failed at that task – they count themselves successful because Val looks nice and talks nice, but even there we must notice that they take pleasure in Val’s normalcy not because they genuinely believe it’s a better way of life, but because it vindicates their choices in how they chose to use and experiment with Val. “Look – he turned out well, so therefore we are good parents!” Except they are not good parents.
Well we aren’t given much information about childhood but you haven’t made a case for why here. The fact that Val turned out well isn’t evidenced by the fact that he is ‘normal’, its evidenced by the fact that he is a generally good natured person. Granted he has some flaws but they are mostly flaws of age (being a bit immature)
Your objection to Albert and Armond as ‘bad parents’ is purely existential, meaning you simply object to the very existence of Albert and Armond as people. But people are ends in themselves, not means to an end. They don’t exist for your pleasure or needs nor the needs of anyone else. Albert is bad because he’s not a woman. But to tie this into the topic, Albert didn’t make Val. He simply cares about Val and does his best for him. If Val is missing something for not having been raised by his mother, his beef isn’t with Albert but with his mom.
So going back to our coming of age narrative: Val fails to make the transition. In the end, his own needs remain secondary to his father’s and his father’s childlike lover. His parents will never act like parents, except when it pleases or amuses them to do so, and Val will pretend it does not matter and he does not care.
Note that they act more like parents than the daughter’s parents do. But then you’re really missing the movie on all the levels. Val’s motivation in the film is to marry his fiance and overcome the potential objection of the girl’s father. This is not a movie about a son resolving issues with his parents and Val is simply not written like that as a character.
Alessandra
Thank you for breaking us out of our seminar on The Birdcage…
I knew this was coming. Boonton, that’s a really simplistic and ignorant distortion of what happens in the mind of someone who develops a homosexual problem. The factors which contribute to the development of a homosexual psychology are multiple and for some men, the deformed relationship with their father can be a primary factor. It’s not the only factor and it’s not a simple factor. Simply adding the adjective “distant” doesn’t even begin to describe a dysfunctional relationship.
Can you present what you believe to be the primary cause of homosexuality?
Your desperate theory that some barbaric group would need to come up with a silly plan to specifically try to deform all adults into dysfunctional parents so that they could produce a homosexual problem in every child is beyond ridiculous.
Again it may not be a plan, it may simply be an accident. For example, let’s just say its caused by being too close to mom, to distant from dad. Then that may be an unintended side effect of a people who suffer a grevious defeat. If the men are slaughtered as in Troy or simply taken as slaves then the children’s connection to their father’s would become distant and connection to mothers would become more intense as the widows cling to their children.
OK granted you say its not as simple as just ‘bad daddy relationship’…..but if you’re talking about causes then you must have some type of theory in mind…simply saying it may be one thing for one gay person, another for another is just a long winded way of shrugging your shoulders and saying you don’t know.
July 7th, 2011 | 1:48 pm
Trying to grasp Blake’s ‘boundary’ argument, I think I got it:
Val fails to make the transition. In the end, his own needs remain secondary to his father’s and his father’s childlike lover. His parents will never act like parents, except when it pleases or amuses them to do so, and Val will pretend it does not matter and he does not care.
See it’s very common for children, esp. teens, to feel embarassed of their parents. It’s quite common to think that your parents are weird and your friends’ parents are ‘normal’ or ‘cool’….. A transition to adulthood normally means you set those things aside. Your parents are your parents, good and bad, and you accept them as such because as they get older quite often you as an adult have to start accepting responsibility for them.
Blake’s POV, though, is perverted, literally. He sees things the opposite of what they should be seen as. He sees a woman who can barely cancel a business meeting to see her son’s fiance as exhibiting empathy and a man who sets aside his legitimate hurt feelings in order to help facilitate a young man’s attempt to win the affection of his fiance’s father as a monster.
Blake would think that a mature Val would exhibit maturity by being angry and upset at his dad for not being ‘normal’. He bemoans the fact that Val sets aside his feelings about his parents in order to leave them behind so he can marry his girlfriend. In reality, though, that is what Val should be doing…not creating convoluted performances to depict his parents as something they aren’t. To him Val should be a warped, bitter young man angry that his parents weren’t like the ‘cool kids’ parents from high school. That would be a ‘transititon to adulthood’! Blake is literally a pervert here! Seeing good as abad and bad as good!
This has nothing to do with whether or not Val’s parents are ‘normal’. As an adult Val honors his parents for what they did for him even though they are flawed because as his parents, just as the Senator’s daughter loves her father even though he is very clearly flawed as a parent (well to everyone with normal eyes, no doubt Blake sees little problem with the man)
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