Now that same-sex marriages are allowed in New York we can expect gay men to marry at the same rate as heterosexuals, right? No? What do you mean gay men don’t actually want to get married?
Men have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the altar – whether they’re straight or gay.
Same-sex couples can begin applying for New York marriage licenses today, but don’t expect to see many gay grooms at City Hall on July 25, when they can actually start tying the knot.
That’s because in the states that have sanctioned same-sex nuptials to date, lesbians have been marrying in much greater numbers than gay men.
In Connecticut, for example, 3,252 lesbian couples have wed since 2008, when same-sex marriage was legalized, compared with just 2,053 gay guys.
[. . .]
Marital data obtained by The Post show a stark, 3-to-2 ratio of lesbian marriages, compared to all-male unions.
Can we finally stop pretending that gay men are interested in getting “married?” Despite the shockingly high number of gullible people who fell for such nonsense, it’s never been true—and never will be.
Fortunately for homosexual men they won’t have to keep up the ruse too much longer. We are already starting to see the truth—that gay men want society to accept their promiscuous relationships—openly expressed in the media. The only remaining question is whether it will take two years or three before Christians agree that when it comes to sexual partners, more is merrier and monogamy is moribund.
July 7th, 2011 | 9:02 am
I hold out hope that it will take at least three years for christians to decide monogamy is pointless.
July 7th, 2011 | 9:09 am
“Can we finally stop pretending that gay men are interested in getting “married?” ”
Really reaching here, Joe, and it’s not a credit to you; you are better than that. After reading the Post piece, which is really an excuse for a tangential celebrity bit and makes assumptions about reasons rather than actually investigating reasons, the general thesis “Gay men are not interested in getting married” is not demonstrated unless one admits it’s not a general thesis after all.
July 7th, 2011 | 9:10 am
[...] See Get over it. (But perhaps “gay marriage” should be called “girl marriage,” because it looks like gay men don’t marry much even when they’re allowed.) [...]
July 7th, 2011 | 9:43 am
I’ve always found it amusing how conservatives think allowing Gay couples to marry will result in the collapse of civilization. They say we only comprise a teeny tiny fraction of the population, and of that fraction, only the teeniest number want to marry, and yet that ultra-miniscule number of same-sex marriages will cause countless married Straight couples to go running of to divorce court, and no doubt cause their male children to turn into drag queens.
But it really doesn’t matter how many Gay couples want to marry. What DOES matter is that there is no Constitutional justification for denying law-abiding, taxpaying Gay couples the same legal benefits that Straight couples have always taken for granted. Your marriage will not be affected in any way by the fact that the Gay couples next door have decided to tie the knot.
July 7th, 2011 | 9:54 am
Liam Really reaching here, Joe, and it’s not a credit to you; you are better than that.
Am I wrong? If so, then we should see gay men marrying at the same rate as heterosexual men. After all, the homosexual rights activists assured us that there was nothing special about opposite-sex relationships.
Chuck Anziulewicz I’ve always found it amusing how conservatives think allowing Gay couples to marry will result in the collapse of civilization.
So when the homosexual rights activists tell us that their goal is the deinstitutionalization of marriage we should just ignore them, right? And when they say that marriage should have nothing to do with monogamy we shouldn’t care because it isn’t going to affect the institution of marriage, is that what you’re saying?
Your marriage will not be affected in any way by the fact that the Gay couples next door have decided to tie the knot.
My marriage, no? The marriages of my children and grandchildren’s generation? Yes.
July 7th, 2011 | 10:04 am
Can we finally stop pretending that gay men are interested in getting “married?”
This is really pretty ugly. Do all gay men want to get married? I think it is perfectly safe to say no. Do a higher proportion of lesbians than gay men want to get married? It seems to be the case. But a 3-to-2 ratio of same-sex female to same-sex male marriages does not in any way indicate that gay men don’t want to get married. The same would be true of the ratio were 10 to 1 or 20 to one.
The first gay man I know who got married is around 60 years old and has been with his partner for probably 30 years. They went to Connecticut to get married last years, since same-sex marriage was not yet legal in New York. Obviously, they wanted to get married. It was not a shotgun wedding!
Do more gay men want the right to get married than want actually to get married? I have no doubt. But it is just a hostile jab at gay men to say, “Can we finally stop pretending that gay men are interested in getting ‘married?’”
July 7th, 2011 | 10:04 am
@ Chuck: Who is crying that civilization will collapse? Most of those who have been fighting for marriage have claimed that allowing “gay marriage” will result in the collapse of marriage or that allowing it is just one more step toward that collapse.
The only Constitutional justification needed is a rational basis (according to the Supreme Court’s arbitrary hierarchy of tests). The Constitutional test isn’t “how will this hurt you”.
Also, why are you capitalizing “gay”?
July 7th, 2011 | 10:12 am
@Sean. This past Sunday my priest spoke on the difference between optimism and hope. Life would be so much easier if I could just be a Pollyanna like you. And you are, sir, a Pollyanna ;)
@Joe Carter,
Let me add another point to this. It is estimated that around 2.5% of the U.S. population is gay, or roughly 7.5 million men and women. Applying those numbers to yours, we can estimate there are roughly 89,000 homosexuals in Connecticut, of whom 2% of gay men have chosen to “marry.” Connecticut likely has a larger gay population than other states, but let’s assume the admittedly high estimate of 2% applies to every state.
The vast majority of gay marriage activists writing and commenting on this topic have no interest in mimicking a traditional nuclear family, but rather as Michelangelo Signorile has argued,
Or as Dan Savage explained in his NYT magazine cover story, the new redefined marriage is “monogamish” where you sleep with someone new roughly every eight months for the rest of your lives.
But let’s get back to the numbers. So, roughly 2% of homosexual men want to marry, and they are among the 2 % of the U.S. male homosexual population (give or take). No one has numbers for how many of the 2% of 2% are like Jonathan Rauch and want to mimic the traditional nuclear family as best they can, but if the commentators are representational then let’s say a generous 10% of gay married men will fall into that category, or 12,000 individual gay men…roughly .004% of the U.S. population.
The odds of this .004% finding one another are about nil, and what will happen is that members of that .004% will “marry” someone like Dan Savage who will educate them so that they understand that gay male monogamy means sleeping with someone new roughly every eight months. (I’m not suggesting that homosexuals could marry if they embraced real monogamy, but this is how it’s being sold to us in part.)
What’s most depressing is that a large chunk of Americans believe that that four one-hundreths of one percent is actually representative of most gay men (50%? 75%?), and it is on that basis that New York state legislators sold us that it is now necessary to irrevocably redefine the institution of marriage for everyone.
July 7th, 2011 | 10:15 am
David Nickol This is really pretty ugly.
Oh, please. Let’s put away the smelling salts and the fainting couch. And stop pretending that you don’t know what I was saying. Yes, I’m sure that you can find the rare gay male couple that wants to get married. But the majority do not.
Do all gay men want to get married? I think it is perfectly safe to say no.
Do a majority want to get married? I think it is perfectly safe to say no. Did a majority push the issue saying they wanted the right (which they had no interest in taking advantage of) to get married. Definitely.
The same would be true of the ratio were 10 to 1 or 20 to one.
No, a 10 or 20 to one ratio would be a sign that the majority of gay men do not want to get married.
Do more gay men want the right to get married than want actually to get married? I have no doubt.
So why did they care about a right that they have no real interest in? Because all along it was about the normalization of homosexuality, not about marriage.
Tim Also, why are you capitalizing “gay”?
Maybe he is referring to homosexuals from the 18th century. ; )
July 7th, 2011 | 10:17 am
“If so, then we should see gay men marrying at the same rate as heterosexual men.” And, you also imply, that the rate would be seen immediately.
That’s an entirely new argument that no one has made. Because it’s not really an argument but just a hit-and-run. It should be beneath you.
July 7th, 2011 | 10:27 am
Liam And, you also imply, that the rate would be seen immediately.
If gay mean want marriage the same as heterosexual men, then why shouldn’t we see them marrying at the same rate? And why shouldn’t the rate be even higher since there was supposedly so much pent up demand to get married?
That’s an entirely new argument that no one has made.
A new argument? No, I’ll tell you what’s a new argument: The claim that gay men were fighting to get married when the vast majority of them had no interest in getting married. Let’s not treat that as if everyone knew that was the case because the public record shows otherwise.
July 7th, 2011 | 10:30 am
Correction to my earlier comment. My estimated .004% of gay men that want to mimic traditional marriage is not four one-hundreths of one percent, it’s four one-thousandths of one percent of the U.S. population.
Even if my estimates are off by a factor of 10, or 20, or heck 100, we are still talking about a tiny fraction of 1%.
July 7th, 2011 | 10:39 am
[...] The news isn’t the 2:3 ratio its the small numbers. [...]
July 7th, 2011 | 10:45 am
Oh, please. Let’s put away the smelling salts and the fainting couch.
Joe,
I have long since ceased to be shocked or even startled when hostile comments are made on First Things about gay men. Don’t try to make me out to be Aunt Pittypat. I didn’t faint. I said your comments were ugly, and they were.
Certainly based on my own experience, I would say that the majority of gay men do not want to get married. What the future brings, I don’t know. Will the percentage of gay men who want to marry increase of decrease? I don’t know. But you were strongly implying that no gay men actually want to marry, and those pushing for same-sex marriage have ulterior motives.
July 7th, 2011 | 10:54 am
The question, for me, is not whether gays will marry civilly, but how we include gay Christians fully into the church, helping them live chastely if called or marry if called. The ultimately important wedding, after all, is in the church.
July 7th, 2011 | 10:54 am
David Nickol Certainly based on my own experience, I would say that the majority of gay men do not want to get married.
This is really pretty ugly. How can you say that the majority of gay men do not want to get married?
Oh wait, isn’t that what I said that you thought was so horrible?
I don’t know. But you were strongly implying that no gay men actually want to marry, and those pushing for same-sex marriage have ulterior motives.
C’mon, David, let’s stop playing silly Internet games. I don’t believe for a second that you thought what I was saying was that there was no gay men in America who want to get married. You know what I meant just as everyone else who read the post understood what I meant.
I realize that you have a knee-jerk reaction that causes you to take the opposite side of whatever I say. But it makes you look unserious when a few comments later you agree with my main point.
. . . and those pushing for same-sex marriage have ulterior motives.
As you yourself admitted, most gay men have no interest in marrying. Yet that was their stated motive for supporting same-sex marriage. If their motive for pushing same-sex marriage was not for they themselves to get married, then they did indeed have ulterior motives. I don’t recall too many gay activists saying, “Most of us have no interest at all in getting married yet we still think this is the greatest civil rights issue in our lives.”
July 7th, 2011 | 11:32 am
This is really pretty ugly. How can you say that the majority of gay men do not want to get married?
Oh wait, isn’t that what I said that you thought was so horrible?
Joe,
You said, “Can we finally stop pretending that gay men are interested in getting ‘married?’ Despite the shockingly high number of gullible people who fell for such nonsense, it’s never been true—and never will be.”
If you want to claim to have been writing carelessly, I’ll buy it. But if your meaning was that the majority of gay men are not interested in getting married, you could easily have said, “Can we finally stop pretending that the majority of gay men are interested in getting ‘married?’” The obvious response to that would have been, “Who ever claimed the majority of gay men were interested in getting married?” I have never heard anyone make the argument that we should legalize same-sex marriage in the United States because the majority of gay men want to get married.
If their motive for pushing same-sex marriage was not for they themselves to get married, then they did indeed have ulterior motives.
Gay men and women, and a great many straight men and women, support same-sex marriage not because they themselves want to enter into a same-sex union, but because they know that other people really, truly want to.
I realize that you have a knee-jerk reaction that causes you to take the opposite side of whatever I say. But it makes you look unserious when a few comments later you agree with my main point.
It is not because you say certain things that I disagree with them. It is because you and I see things quite differently that you say a great many things that I disagree with. I could just as easily accuse you of a knee-jerk reaction to disagree with everything I say—including word definitions backed up by Webster’s Third International Unabridged Dictionary!
If your main point was and is that, right now, evidence strongly points to the conclusion that the majority of gay men are not interested in getting married, I have no disagreement. What I took exception to were your generalizations and your argument that there was a campaign for same-sex marriage based on the premise that the majority of gay men want to marry. If you can document that any of the proponents of same-sex marriage have ever claimed that the majority of gay men want to marry, I will be very interested in seeing who said such things and under what circumstances.
July 7th, 2011 | 11:43 am
The obvious response to that would have been, “Who ever claimed the majority of gay men were interested in getting married?”
So all those gay men that were saying how they wanted to get married were, what, lying?
Do you really think that the American public is under the impression that gay men think (a) SSM is of utmost importance and (b) few of them have any interest in getting married?
I have never heard anyone make the argument that we should legalize same-sex marriage in the United States because the majority of gay men want to get married.
Seriously? Then you haven’t been paying attention. Do you really think this issue has become so dominant because a small minority of the population (homosexuals) has been arguing that the rights of a tiny subset (gay men who want to marry) have been denied rights?
Let me ask you a couple of clarifying question so that we can get to the heart of our differences:
Do you think the public is under the impression that few gay men want to get married?
Do you think the activists who pushed for SSM made it clear that few gay men have any interest in marrying?
July 7th, 2011 | 11:45 am
The numbers for the five state where SSM is legal:
State … F/F … M/M … combined
—————————————–
CT … 3,252 … 2,053 … 5,305
MA … 8,404 … 4,911 … 13,315
NH … 1,113 … 411 … 1,524
IA … 1,376 … 772 … 2,148
VT … 1,157 … 597 … 1,754
======================
ALL … 15,302 … 8,744 … 24,046
Overall it looks to be about a 2-1 ratio among the tens of thousands of gay married couples. The most important statistic, of course, is that SSM has produced more than 24,000 new families.
July 7th, 2011 | 11:48 am
@David Nickol,
If you had to take a crack at a guess, what percentage of gay men would you say want to “marry” with the intent of never having sexual relations with another man for the rest of their lives. Please note, I’m not asking you how many homosexual men want to “marry” but how many want to “marry” with the intent of permanent monogamy (unlike Dan Savage, Andrew Sullivan, Michelangelo Signorile, et. al. who want to redefine monogamy to be inclusive of promiscuity).
You don’t have to crunch any numbers, I’m just curious what you’d guess as a percentage.
July 7th, 2011 | 11:51 am
“the general thesis “Gay men are not interested in getting married” is not demonstrated unless one admits it’s not a general thesis after all.”
In every state where gay marriage, or civil unions or partnerships have been recognized, participation, especially by gay men, has been minimal. A 2004 study (Andersson, Noack, Seierstad, and Weedon-Feikjar) on Norway and Sweden, where registered partnership statutes give gay couples the same rights and duties as married heterosexual couples, demonstrates this same pattern. In the first eight-years the statute was in place in Norway, there were only 7 same-sex unions for every 1,000 hetero-sexual unions. In Sweden, the number was only 5 for every 1,000.
July 7th, 2011 | 11:51 am
Now it’s “few”. Rhetorical three-card-monty. Talk about arguments made in bad faith. Pot, meet kettle.
July 7th, 2011 | 11:53 am
Here’s some more comprehensive data, though a bit dated: http://www3.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/publications/Couples%20Marr%20Regis%20Diss.pdf
Two of the key findings include:
“In the states that provide legal recognition, more than 40% of same-sex couples have married, entered a civil union, or registered their relationships.”
“Female same-sex couples are more likely than male couples to seek legal recognition.
Approximately two-thirds of legally recognized same-sex couples are female.”
And here’s some data from the Netherlands, which has had same-sex marriage longest: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2011/03/gay_married_couples_less_likel.php
“However, only one in five gay and lesbian couples are married, compared with four out of five heterosexual couples, the CBS said. The Netherlands has some 55,000 gay and 4.1 million heterosexual couples, the organisation says.” (The Netherlands also has registered partnerships, and a substantial proportion of unmarried same-sex couples are in one of those.)
Nonetheless, “[g]ay couples account for just under 2% of all marriages in the Netherlands,” which is actually higher than their proportion of couples living together.
Should it really surprise anyone that a population that, until very recently, had been told all their lives that marriage was impossible, does not suddenly behave the same as a population that has been inculcated into marriage culture from the very beginning? If you think that’s a problem, then legalize same-sex marriage and promote marriage to gay men. If you don’t think it’s a problem, then I don’t see what the point of bringing it up is–other than to stereotype gay men, and demean their good faith, the way this post does.
July 7th, 2011 | 12:01 pm
Liam Now it’s “few”. Rhetorical three-card-monty. Talk about arguments made in bad faith. Pot, meet kettle.
Okay, folks, raise your hand if you thought I was really saying that no gay men in America have any interest in getting married. I was under the assumption that the reading comprehension level at FT was at least on the high school level. But maybe I was indeed unclear.
Are Liam and David justified in saying that my argument is in bad faith? Should I have written my claim in this way:
Would that have been better? And does anyone think they wouldn’t have complained had I written it like they wanted?
July 7th, 2011 | 12:07 pm
JHW Should it really surprise anyone that a population that, until very recently, had been told all their lives that marriage was impossible, does not suddenly behave the same as a population that has been inculcated into marriage culture from the very beginning?
Yes, it should surprise us. It should surprise us that the people who were throwing a tantrum about how the bigots were keeping them from marrying suddenly turn around and say, “Oh, well, we didn’t mean we actually wanted to get married.”
Let’s stop acting as if gay men are a group of infants. The fought for a right that few of them have any interest in? Why is that?
If you don’t think it’s a problem, then I don’t see what the point of bringing it up is–other than to stereotype gay men, and demean their good faith, the way this post does.
Listen, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that gay men were arguing in good faith when they said they wanted to get married and then turn around and say that we shouldn’t be surprised that they don’t actually want to get married. The simple fact is that many of them had not-so-ulterior motives.
July 7th, 2011 | 12:12 pm
Let’s stop acting as if gay men are a group of infants. The fought for a right that few of them have any interest in? Why is that?
Joe,
I don’t know your views on gays in the military and “don’t ask don’t tell,” but for those who argued for the right of gay men and lesbians to serve openly, would you contend the argument could be taken seriously only if the majority of gay men and lesbians wanted to enlist?
July 7th, 2011 | 12:18 pm
I raise my hand. Don’t be so sloppy. It’s bad. For you, less than for me, if you actually want to persuade anyone needing persuading, rather than just rousing the base. Better yet, why not simply have a Technorati tag: “Just rousing the base, not for persuasion”? Then it will be understood as you intended it.
I still question the huge squishiness of “vast majority”. There are a lot of implications and inferences that need to be sifted through with that one. For example, I have a gay family member who has been with his first and only love for 25 years, but they won’t marry in NY until DOMA and related issues are resolved (why might lesbians as a cohort tend to care less – well, first, they might tend to be more likely to have custody of minor children than gay men, et cet.). I know others in a similar boat. Also, there are more single gay men in middle age who lost partners during the 1980s and 1990s who have remained single (and, in essence, celibate – despite the impression of ideologues at both ends that all gay men have tons of sex and sexual partners, actually, that’s not so). Also, one has to consider that many people constructed their lives on the assumption that they were forbidden to marry; overcoming the temporary demographic consequences of that will take time. Et cet. Et cet. Bottom line: getting apples to apples (or at least apples to pears) comparisons takes waaaaaaaay more work than the NY Post piece was intended for (again, it’s really just about Neil Patrick Harris, dressed up for town, as it were) and your facile appropriation of it was not to your credit.
July 7th, 2011 | 12:18 pm
David Nickol would you contend the argument could be taken seriously only if the majority of gay men and lesbians wanted to enlist?
Yes, actually, I would.
July 7th, 2011 | 12:19 pm
“Let’s stop acting as if gay men are a group of infants. The fought for a right that few of them have any interest in? Why is that?”
Joe,
How you choose to exercise (or not) your rights is your choice. For example, about half the population doesn’t vote in the general elections. However that can not be construed to mean that the non-voter has no interest in, or would not fight for, the right to vote.
July 7th, 2011 | 12:22 pm
Listen, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that gay men were arguing in good faith when they said they wanted to get married and then turn around and say that we shouldn’t be surprised that they don’t actually want to get married.
Joe,
Can you point to any evidence at all that the majority of gay men in the United States claimed they wanted to get married? Are you saying that the majority of gay men were throwing tantrums about how the bigots were keeping them from marrying?
July 7th, 2011 | 12:25 pm
“Listen, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that gay men were arguing in good faith when they said they wanted to get married and then turn around and say that we shouldn’t be surprised that they don’t actually want to get married. The simple fact is that many of them had not-so-ulterior motives.”
How about this: some gay men want to get married and argue in perfectly good faith that they want to get married, and when they are allowed to get married, they get married (when they find the right person and the right time, which might not happen immediately, and might never happen at all, just as with straight people.)
Other gay men don’t particularly want to get married but argue in perfectly good faith that it is nonetheless unfair that the law makes that choice for them, and when they are allowed to get married, they don’t get married (or maybe, eventually, they find the right person and the right time and change their minds.)
Still other gay men really don’t want to get married and dislike marriage as an institution, find the whole push for same-sex marriage to be pointless, and say as much.
All the above categories, of course, also apply to lesbians.
July 7th, 2011 | 12:26 pm
@R Hampton
Thanks for the numbers. Let’s look at one state, Massachusetts. 13,315 is two-tenths of one percent of the population of Massachusetts. What percentage of the two-tenths of one percent would you guess entered into that relationship with the full intent of never having sexual relations with another person for the rest of their lives? What percent of the .2% would you say intend on the new redefined marriage to reflect the model advocated by Andrew Sullivan, Michelangelo Signorile, Dan Savage, Paula Ettlebrick and most other advocates of SSM?
July 7th, 2011 | 12:33 pm
Joe, your entire line of argumentation in this post and comment thread is weak and offensive. You made an asinine generalization that invited the critical response you’ve received. Instead of owning your mistake—wouldn’t this be the grown-up, conservative thing to do?—you double down by insulting the intelligence of the people who have rightly called you out for the words you wrote.
Your last comment is particularly pathetic—in the same breath you tell us to stop infantalizing gay men and you accuse them of throwing a tantrum.
July 7th, 2011 | 12:37 pm
“What DOES matter is that there is no Constitutional justification for denying law-abiding, taxpaying Gay couples the same legal benefits that Straight couples have always taken for granted.”
What benefits would those be?
July 7th, 2011 | 12:39 pm
“The most important statistic, of course, is that SSM has produced more than 24,000 new families.”
So none of those families would exist if SSM hadn’t been recognized?
July 7th, 2011 | 12:45 pm
For what it’s worth, I found Joe’s meaning to be perfectly clear and perfectly fair, and I find that David Nickol and others taken Joe to task at ridiculous length and to no good end are indeed behaving like Aunt Pittypat, clutching her pearls and smelling her salts.
July 7th, 2011 | 12:59 pm
“I don’t know your views on gays in the military and “don’t ask don’t tell,” but for those who argued for the right of gay men and lesbians to serve openly, would you contend the argument could be taken seriously only if the majority of gay men and lesbians wanted to enlist?”
Actually, the miniscule number of gays who will join the military because of the removal of DADT is just further evidence that issues like SSM and DADT are really just attempts to normalize homosexual behavior. No one is actually being deprived of any significant rights in either situation.
The ultimate goal is to get society to equate sexuality with race. That allows you to make pariahs of anyone who disapproves of homosexual conduct and, perhaps most importantly, will allow you to go after the tax exempt status of the religions that don’t alter their beliefs to comply with the new morality.
July 7th, 2011 | 1:01 pm
@Douglas Johnson
First, some quibbles with your math. Every marriage involves two persons, so it’s actually two-fifths, not two-tenths. More relevantly, the denominator you want is not the whole population of Massachusetts, but the number of married households, which is something like 1.2 million–a total that gives us about 1%. The Williams Institute indicates that gays and lesbians make up about 1.8% of the population. Given the fact that marriage is a new thing for same-sex couples, and that some same-sex couples may be reluctant to marry because they fear it would out them to their neighbors or their employers (to whom many are still closeted, even in “liberal” states), that number looks reasonable enough to me.
Second, you ask about the proportion who abide by sexual exclusivity. Here’s a link to the SF Chronicle article about the study most often cited by social conservatives: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/15/DD4C1EDP1A.DTL The numbers they have are as follows:
“In her study of gay couples, 47 percent reported open relationships. Forty-five percent were monogamous, and the remaining 8 percent disagreed about what they were.”
This study was of gay men in same-sex relationships, both married and unmarried, in the Bay Area. It doesn’t address the question of how many same-sex marriages nationally are open; I suspect that the number of open relationships is lower among the married and much lower among lesbians, and might well be lower in other parts of the country. But even taking its numbers as generalizable to the question of male and female same-sex marriages generally, it still leaves a substantial number of sexually-exclusive couples: about half, which is enough to call into question the notion that same-sex relationships are inherently incapable of monogamy.
July 7th, 2011 | 1:06 pm
R Hampton However that can not be construed to mean that the non-voter has no interest in, or would not fight for, the right to vote.
Well, yes, actually it kind of does. If you have no interest in voting it is likely that you are too apathetic to fight for that right.
But your point is actually a good analogy for the point under discussion. If someone is willing to fight for their right to vote but can’t be bothered to actually, you know, vote, then it shows that they have some other motive. What they really want, most likely, is not the right to choose representatives but the right to be able to do what they want if they choose, to keep their options open.
David Nickol Can you point to any evidence at all that the majority of gay men in the United States claimed they wanted to get married?
Why don’t you answer my previous set of questions first:
Are you saying that the majority of gay men were throwing tantrums about how the bigots were keeping them from marrying?
Majority? Probably not. But a high percentage were/are.
JHW All the above categories, of course, also apply to lesbians.
True. But what matters, for our purposes, are the percentages of each category.
Imagine if a pollster were to ask, “Would you support gay marriage if you knew that few gay men have any interest in getting married?” The support for SSM would drop drastically.
Liam For example, I have a gay family member who has been with his first and only love for 25 years, but they won’t marry in NY until DOMA and related issues are resolved
Well, of course. Every gay couple in New York will not be happy to share their excuse for why they themselves will not be getting married.
Also, there are more single gay men in middle age who lost partners during the 1980s and 1990s who have remained single (and, in essence, celibate – despite the impression of ideologues at both ends that all gay men have tons of sex and sexual partners, actually, that’s not so).
The number of gay men who remain celibate is an very, very small number. The reason that there is an impression that gay men are promiscuous is because the gay culture promotes promiscuity. It may shame their heterosexual supporters but it doesn’t really shame them.
Also, one has to consider that many people constructed their lives on the assumption that they were forbidden to marry; overcoming the temporary demographic consequences of that will take time.
No, it really doesn’t. Are you even listening to what you are saying? Presumably these men in a long-term monogamous relationship are already living together. What is stopping them from going down to the courthouse and getting a marriage license?
again, it’s really just about Neil Patrick Harris, dressed up for town, as it were)
NPH is a prime example. On the day the law was passed he wrote, “David and I did propose to each other, but over five years ago! We’ve been wearing engagement rings for ages, waiting for an available date.” They have a pair fraternal twins born via surrogate in October 2010. And yet, now he says:
Isn’t five years of “engagment” and two children time enough to put the “cart before the horse?” The truth is that NPH, like most gay men, will likely never marry. Because, as I and others have been pointing out for years, it’s not about the right to marry.
Charlie Collier Joe, your entire line of argumentation in this post and comment thread is weak and offensive.Instead of owning your mistake—wouldn’t this be the grown-up, conservative thing to do?—you double down by insulting the intelligence of the people who have rightly called you out for the words you wrote.
I’m not insulting anyone’s intelligence because no one with half a brain could have mistook my meaning. None of my critics—including my critics—misunderstood. You’re just engaging in the typical faux-outrage because you can’t deny the reality that what I said was true.
Your last comment is particularly pathetic—in the same breath you tell us to stop infantalizing gay men and you accuse them of throwing a tantrum.
Maybe if you’d stop infantilizing them they’d get the message that they can’t get away with acting like infants.
July 7th, 2011 | 1:09 pm
Douglas Johnson,
I don’t know the numbers for SSM or traditional marriages – I couldn’t even make a reasonable guess. I will say this, legally it doesn’t matter. You have heard of Swingers?
July 7th, 2011 | 1:16 pm
Joe,
There’s nothing more to say here. You’re behaving like a jerk, and I can only hope that someone else at First Things has the wherewithal to point it out to you.
July 7th, 2011 | 1:17 pm
Joe, I appreciate your attentiveness and feistiness in this comments section. I happen to agree with you that the larger rationale of SSM is to undermine marriage as an institution. People (not primarily gays, mind you) who yesterday had nothing good to say about marriage, are today extolling gay marriage as a great sign of progress. Only a fool would fail to consider that they may actually be hailing “progress” in the erosion of marriage.
However, I am also impressed by the fact that marriage itself has never had so many friends; and from whatever motives, whole segments of the society (not just gays) who were generally dismissive towards marriage are now committed to viewing it, at least in public, as an intrinsic good. I have no doubt that God could draw some good out of this: a kind of “unintended consequence” that would strengthen rather than unravel marriage (and with it, society).
What follows is a thought experiment. Many advocates of SSM say that enacting it will not weaken but in fact strengthen marriage as an institution. I take them at their word in the expression of that belief, and in their sincerity to see the lives of gays strengthened through marriage.
But there are also other, more conventional ways of strengthening marriage: e.g., eliminating no-fault divorce, fixing the tax code so it doesn’t punish married couples, and insisting that marriage retains benefits that make it distinct from and preferable to domestic partnerships.
Would those advocates of SSM who sincerely want to see marriage strengthened, including commenters here, join in supporting the above and other measures, which would indubitably fortify marriage, and make it harder to dissolve?
July 7th, 2011 | 1:17 pm
“What they really want, most likely, is not the right to choose representatives but the right to be able to do what they want if they choose, to keep their options open.”
Joe, it doesn’t matter what they want or what their motive is — that’s the nature of our Consitutionally protected Rights, they are inalienable. We govern ourselves.
Think of it this way, the members of the Westboro Baptist Church have the right to speak their mind (essentially) — we all do. Few of us have ever protested, though I (and I hope you as well) have an interest in, and would fight for, their right to spout stupid, hateful rhetoric.
July 7th, 2011 | 1:31 pm
Let me just note that the point of the article that Joe linked to was that neither gay men nor straight men want to get married.
So, generalizing in the same manner that Joe does, it would appear that men don’t want to get married. So perhaps only women should be granted the right to marry.
July 7th, 2011 | 1:37 pm
FWIW,
I understood the point of Joe’s post. It was easy.
July 7th, 2011 | 1:48 pm
“True. But what matters, for our purposes, are the percentages of each category.”
I must confess I don’t think the percentages matter at all. (Well, they matter to me, as a gay man who wants to marry, but I can’t understand why they matter to you.)
“Imagine if a pollster were to ask, “Would you support gay marriage if you knew that few gay men have any interest in getting married?” The support for SSM would drop drastically.”
It is pretty easy to manipulate the results of public opinion polls with carefully-chosen facts. Generally the effect they have on poll results is substantially greater than the effect they would have after some thoughtful consideration. Do you think the case for letting lesbians marry is substantially more powerful than the case for letting gay men marry?
“Presumably these men in a long-term monogamous relationship are already living together. What is stopping them from going down to the courthouse and getting a marriage license?”
They don’t want to marry, right now. Not all people think a long-term, committed, monogamous relationship necessarily implies seeking a formal state-recognized status. Maybe they don’t want to alter what already works for them. So? According to the Catholic Church, after all, they’re living in sin either way.
“Isn’t five years of “engagment” and two children time enough to put the “cart before the horse?” The truth is that NPH, like most gay men, will likely never marry.”
A few days after the Marriage Equality Act was passed in New York (and almost a month before it actually goes into effect), NPH tweeted that he and his fiance were not “actively planning” a wedding. You really think that’s evidence that gay men don’t really want to marry?
Maybe some people don’t want to build their lives around the twists and turns of the NY State Senate. Maybe they have other things to do than suddenly rush to plan a wedding the very second they have the ability. Maybe they want to do it quietly, without the media attention that would be tied to doing it too closely to New York’s legalization. It’s not like no straight couples have long engagements–and unlike NPH and his fiance, straight couples have always had the right to marry.
July 7th, 2011 | 1:49 pm
Charlie Collier You’re behaving like a jerk, and I can only hope that someone else at First Things has the wherewithal to point it out to you.
No doubt one of my fellow editors will soon be forwarding me an email that you sent them complaining about my “tone.” It’ll be like old times.
I can see why you’d be upset, though. A Christian apologizing for sodomy? Perfectly acceptable. Criticizing a Christian for apologizing for sodomy? Outrageous and deserving of censure!
R. Hampton Joe, it doesn’t matter what they want or what their motive is — that’s the nature of our Consitutionally protected Rights, they are inalienable. We govern ourselves.
In the case of voting, sure. But SSM is a newly-minted “right”—and a right that few people who it will apply to are interested in taking advantage of.
David Nickol So, generalizing in the same manner that Joe does, it would appear that men don’t want to get married
Eighty percent of men men marry by the age of 44. Do 80% of gay men that have the option plan to get married? If not, then I guess that comparison isn’t really a good one, now is it?
July 7th, 2011 | 1:52 pm
@David Nickol: that quote was just an assertion based on a stereotype of men being coerced into marriage. The article didn’t supply any statistics or numbers of straight men marrying, but I’m sure it’s safe to assume that it’s a lot more than gay men.
The point of the article is that gay men don’t want to get married. Putting that quote in bold face doesn’t change it’s point.
July 7th, 2011 | 2:01 pm
Our government does not create Rights — all it can do is recognize and protect them.
After the ratification of the Constitution, slavery persisted for close to another century. During this time African Americans were DENIED their Rights. With the passage of the 14th & 15th Amendments, the Federal and State finally governments recognized the Rights they always had – unfortunately they did little in the way of protection for another century.
So the argument for SSM is a recognition and protection of the inalienable Rights of Man for all.
July 7th, 2011 | 2:06 pm
Brian,
Would heterosexual families exist if traditional marriage wasn’t recognized?
July 7th, 2011 | 2:20 pm
Eighty percent of men men marry by the age of 44. Do 80% of gay men that have the option plan to get married? If not, then I guess that comparison isn’t really a good one, now is it?
Joe,
The point of the article you linked to is that men—gay or straight—don’t want to get married. “Men have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the altar – whether they’re straight or gay.” (Now, of course, the writer is making the same kind of generalization that you do, and I don’t take him seriously, but you posted the article, not me.) The intended meaning is clear to me. Men don’t get married unless they are forced to by women, and when you have a male same-sex couple, there’s no woman to do the forcing. Accepting the premise of the article, 80% of men would not get married by the age of 44 if they were not “dragged kicking and screaming to the altar.” So according to what is plainly stated in the article, gay men and straight men are the same, in that they do not want to get married. But you are implying that straight men do want to get married and gay men don’t. That is not what the article says.
The point about your initial post that is offensive is that, like the author of the newspaper article you link to, you made a sweeping generalization”
Your defense now is not that you said what you meant—that is, that the majority of gay men don’t want to get married. Your defense is, “Come on, you knew what I meant.” Under other circumstances, it might be a sufficient defense, but given your evident low opinion of gay men just as exhibited in this thread alone, for you to be clearly understood when making a statement about gay men—infantile, tantrum-throwing, dishonest people with ulterior motives—you are going to have to say exactly what you mean, because people can’t automatically assume, “He really didn’t mean it to be as bad as it sounds.”
July 7th, 2011 | 2:32 pm
@JHW,
Thanks for the response, I appreciate the reply.
I just checked some numbers and the 13,315 is not the number of couples but rather the individual homosexuals who are married. I found another number closer to 16,000 (no actual census data exists). So we are still talking about two-tenths of one percent of the total population.
You responded with data showing that about 45% are monogamous, so under one-tenth of one percent of the total population.
What we don’t know is even what percentage of that <.01% who call themselves monogamous understand gay male monogamy as the highly popular Dan Savage does, where he defines monogamy in gay male "marriage" to mean having sex with a new man every eight months.
My overall point is that most Americans contemplating this issue imagine gay male "marriage" to be this thing where most gay men only want the traditional ideal of marriage (actual monogamy) for themselves. That isn't remotely true. Even if it were the case I'd still be against redefining marriage for a whole host of reasons, but let’s at least be honest what we are talking about.
July 7th, 2011 | 2:38 pm
The point of the article is that gay men don’t want to get married. Putting that quote in bold face doesn’t change it’s point.
Tim,
Actually, the information in the article was that more lesbians get married than gay men. If gay men didn’t want to get married, there would be no statistics showing the ratio of lesbian marriages to gay-male marriages.
To say, “Gay men don’t want to get married,” is to make a false generalization. I don’t see why that is so hard to understand. All you have to do to be on fairly solid ground is to say most gay men don’t want to get married. I say “fairly solid” because I know of no polls that have been taken of gay men regarding whether or not they want to get married. As I said, based on my own personal knowledge of a handful of long-term same-sex partners I know, I do not believe that currently the majority of gay men intend to get married. But that is quite different from saying, “Gay men don’t want to get married.”
July 7th, 2011 | 2:44 pm
@R Hampton
You write:
This is common argument, i.e. all marriages don’t live up to the ideal of monogamy and child-rearing and therefore we can no longer say that marriage has anything to do with monogamy and child-rearing.
If a fellow who was baptized a Roman Catholic became an atheist would we then say that Roman Catholicism has nothing to do with faith in God because not all Catholics believe in God?
When you say that legally it doesn’t matter, I take you to mean that since you can be legally married and promiscuous, then marrying without the intent of monogamy is irrelevant.
Well I think you will find some family law, especially with regard to child custody, that does not render promiscuity irrelevant. But there are other problems with accepting an immorality because it is legal.
July 7th, 2011 | 2:45 pm
@ David: The information in the article is what the point of the article is. Everyone reads articles for the information within it.
Oh, sorry… MOST people read for the information within the article. I didn’t mean to offend with my false generalizations.
July 7th, 2011 | 2:51 pm
“Would heterosexual families exist if traditional marriage wasn’t recognized?”
Of course. You are missing my point. You are claiming SSM created 24,000 new families. However, those 24,000 families could still exist, even if there was no SSM.
This is where the attempt to equate a government’s “failure” to recognize same-sex marriage
with a government’s prohibition of mixed-race marriage breaks down. A gay couple is free, in every state in this country, to live together, openly, and call their living arrangement whatever they like.
The mixed-race couple in the Loving v. Virginia case had the police raid their house in the middle of the night, based simply on reports that a white man and black woman were living there together. When Mrs. Loving produced a DC marriage license to defend her living arrangements, she and her husband were arrested. They were convicted of violating miscegenation laws and sentenced to five years in prison. The sentence was suspended based on the condition that they never return to Virginia together again.
The long-overdue overturning of miscegenation laws did create families — mixed-race couples could live together openly, and not have to worry about thugs with badges kicking their doors in in the middle of the night.
July 7th, 2011 | 2:55 pm
Douglas Johnson,
I have read the Girgis/George/Anderson paper “What Is Marriage?” and one of the points they make is that marriage is permanent. Taking just the highlights: “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 . . . . ”
Given the 50% divorce rate and the existence of no-fault divorce laws in every state of the United States, how many heterosexual Americans (or even just heterosexual American Christians) do you think subscribe to the ideal of conjugal marriage that Girgis/George/Anderson define? If those who do not consider fidelity/monogamy to be a sine qua non of marriage are considered unfit to marry, how should we regard those who do not consider permanence an essential aspect of marriage?
July 7th, 2011 | 3:01 pm
@R Hampton
You write:
This is absolutely right, but hoo boy…
Do you believe that the distinction throughout all of human history that marriage was between a man and a woman was arbitrary, inconsequential, and therefore ultimately it was synonymous with “two persons” all along?
Same sex marriage did not even exist as a concept until a handful of years ago. You refer to “inalienable rights.” By “inalienable” Jefferson was referring to those rights bestowed upon man by his Creator. How can a right be inalienable if it was invented by political advocates in the last few years? Or are you suggesting that marriage meant SSM from the beginning but no one ever discovered that ancient intent until the last few years?
I imagine what you mean is that, yes, SSM was invented in the last couple decades by advocates, but it is now discussed as a “human right” and therefore it is human right. But that is a positive law understanding that we create our own human rights. Your use of “inalienable” from the Declaration of Independence cannot apply in this case.
I discuss this point more at length here.
July 7th, 2011 | 3:14 pm
@Douglas Johnson:
I don’t think that’s correct. The Williams Institute study I posted above gave a number of over 10,000 same-sex marriages, and it’s a few years old. Here’s another article from three years ago with the over 10,000 number: http://articles.cnn.com/2008-06-16/us/feyerick.samesex.marriage_1_lesbian-couples-gay-lesbian-advocates-kris-mineau?_s=PM:US
I’m pretty sure Dan Savage’s marriage would have been counted as “open” in the study the article discusses. Most long-term committed relationships that are “open” are not all that open. It is largely a choice between an expectation of sexual exclusivity and a “monogamish” relationship, not between a “monogamish” relationship and total promiscuity.
July 7th, 2011 | 3:20 pm
David Nickol,
You write:
I addressed this in my answer to R Hampton and I’ve addressed it to you before. But you are asking my personal opinion of how I think we should regard these folks. If a man marries with no intent of being monogamous with his wife I think we should regard him as a cad who tricked his wife. The law should favor her a great deal in awarding child custody in her divorce because of this. If a couple marries with no intent of being committed to one another I think we should regard their marriage as demonstrably destructive to the institution and to family (plenty of evidence to prove this point).
(With regard to the George paper I would have to re-read the entire section you quote as you often laboriously contort meanings far removed from the authors’ intent. I’m not going to re-read it in the next couple weeks.)
July 7th, 2011 | 3:27 pm
Douglas Johnson,
You are conflating a Catholic morality on marriage with a secular legality. The Catholic Church does not accept divorce as a matter of principle – couples are eternally married. Others, including some Christian sects, believe Divorce can be a moral policy (given difference is the details). Thankfully, our nation does not enshrine sectarian laws upon ourselves, so it is up to each of us to govern our Rights of Conscience.
“Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right.”
– James Madison, “Property”, March 29, 1792
July 7th, 2011 | 3:37 pm
@JHW
Dan Savage’s “marriage” would have been counted as monogamous in the study because the studies must rely on the interviewee’s responses, and Dan Savage regards a new sexual partner every eight months as “monogamish” in the male gay world. He should certainly know of what he speaks.
Likewise, Andrew Sullivan has argued that gay marriages are monogamous, but he said it’s a monogamy that is inclusive of promiscuity.
But just as monogamy can’t be inclusive of promiscuity without rendering the word monogamy meaningless, so too marriage cannot be inclusive of homosexuality without also render the word meaningless. Indeed, various posters on this site are constantly forced to argue that marriage has nothing to do with husbands and wives, it has nothing to do with children, it has nothing to do with monogamy and it has nothing to do with any sort of permanence. Rather it is somehow just this beautiful, amorphous, and infinitely undefinable thing.
The reason, I think, so many SSM advocates are unwilling to state what they really believe–that marriage is meaningless–is because that’s what the defenders of marriage say you are arguing. And so the fiction that SSM truly is about monogamy, the best interests of children, permanence, etc. must be maintained, or else you haven’t a chance in the political arena (don’t worry, you’ll probably win). This is why the honesty put on display by Paula Ettelbrick (past Executive Director of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission), in her article “Since when is Marriage a Path to Liberation?” is so rare:
July 7th, 2011 | 3:44 pm
Douglas,
As a matter of principle, what we choose for ourselves is an unalienable Right. So Mankind is free to invent new things and ideas and to use them without permission or regulation (save for Thomas Jefferson’s comment about broken legs and picked-pockets). More from Madison:
“Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man’s house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man’s conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.
“That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. A magistrate issuing his warrants to a press gang, would be in his proper functions in Turkey or Indostan, under appellations proverbial of the most compleat despotism.
“That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called…
July 7th, 2011 | 3:44 pm
as you often laboriously contort meanings far removed from the authors’ intent.
Douglas Johnson,
At last I get some recognition! I do work very hard at contorting authors’ intended meanings, and I am pleased to see you recognize it as the hard work that it is.
Please let me know if you believe I have contorted “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 . . . . ” to mean something more than it says. I read it to mean marriage is lifelong, with no divorce, until the death of one spouse.
July 7th, 2011 | 3:50 pm
@Douglas Johnson
Dan Savage does not claim that his marriage is monogamous. “Monogamish” is a term he uses to distinguish the sort of open relationship he has from the sort of open relationship many people imagine.
I have not read Andrew Sullivan carefully enough on this subject to speak definitively as to what he thinks, but I doubt he has the position you suggest.
It is really past time for you and other opponents of same-sex marriage to stop lumping together every academic or activist who supports gay rights into a single category of thought. Paula Ettelbrick opposed making marriage a central part of the gay rights movement: that’s the whole point of the article you quote, indicated pretty clearly by the title. It should not surprise anyone that there are plenty of people who support a radical revision of family structures and norms. It should not surprise anyone, either, that some of them are gay or lesbian. Neither of those suggest that same-sex marriage seeks to achieve such a revision: indeed, most of the radicals, including Paula Ettelbrick (as well as, e.g., Nancy Polikoff and Michael Warner), think it won’t. That’s their point.
Here’s a decent article on the subject: http://www.metroweekly.com/feature/?ak=6213
July 7th, 2011 | 3:53 pm
Laymen lack a vocabulary to talk about the statistics of groups. When we say “X do not want to A” we generally mean that the “majority of X” or “the typical X” does not want to A. If we say that “Christians eat pork,” we do not mean that *every Christian eats pork – some will be vegetarians, etc.
Suppose men must be dragged to the altar and that 80% of men are successfully so dragged by women. In a pairing of two men, we would expect 0.8*0.8 = 0.64 as the probability that both men would mutually drag each other altarwards. But a man reluctant to be the draggee is also unlikely to want to be a dragger. So that is a high estimate.
A prime incentive to marry (and the key reason why there was ever a compelling State interest in the bedroom) is the commitment to care for any offspring that might result from the sexual activity. This is simply not a factor in this case, and so there will be less of an inclination to assent. To the Late Modern, who is inclined to think only of himself, children are simply invisible.
The commenter who derided the notion that allowing homosexual couples to be considered as “married” would lead to the collapse of civilization had it backward. It is the collapse of civilization that has led to the “emptying out” of marriage by “walking through.” We already have instances of a woman “marrying” the Eiffel Tower, a woman “marrying” herself, a man “marrying” his golden Labrador retriever, not to mention Hollywoodlings “marrying” five or ten times since time immemorial.
July 7th, 2011 | 4:01 pm
A peanut-butter and jelly sandwich no longer need include peanut-butter, jelly, or slices of bread, nor need it be something one eats for lunch. Almost no one wants to redefine his or her cocker spaniel as a p, b, and j. But we all must fight to the death — or else be killed — to secure that “right” for the handful who do.
July 7th, 2011 | 4:09 pm
Brian English,
If I understand you correctly, hypothetically a State could prevent mixed-race couples from marrying as long as it did not prevent them from living together or harass their private life, or to put it in your words; “free, in every state in this country, to live together, openly, and call their living arrangement whatever they like.”
July 7th, 2011 | 4:14 pm
@R Hampton,
Your misreading of Madison aside, your first paragraph agrees entirely with my characterization of what you believe, i.e. you think that inalienable rights are whatever we think them to be. Whew! Argument resolved.
July 7th, 2011 | 4:15 pm
“I have not read Andrew Sullivan carefully enough on this subject to speak definitively as to what he thinks, but I doubt he has the position you suggest.”
In his book in support of gay marriage, Sullivan asserts that one of the benefits of SSM could be that heterosexuals will get over their whole monogamy hang-up.
July 7th, 2011 | 4:18 pm
“If I understand you correctly, hypothetically a State could prevent mixed-race couples from marrying as long as it did not prevent them from living together or harass their private life, or to put it in your words; “free, in every state in this country, to live together, openly, and call their living arrangement whatever they like.”
You don’t understand me correctly. You continue to confuse prohibition with recognition.
July 7th, 2011 | 4:28 pm
@JHW
You write:
Just curious, what do you think many people imagine? I was a tad surprised at a marriage plan that included sleeping with someone new every eight months, or that that meant something akin to monogamy in the gay world.
Anyway, appreciated the back and forth with you. I’ll have to end it here.
July 7th, 2011 | 4:57 pm
@Brian English
I can’t find my copy of Virtually Normal at the moment, but I don’t think Andrew Sullivan makes that claim. He does make the claim that male same-sex relationships are more likely to be tolerant of extramarital sex, but I don’t believe he makes a clear evaluative claim as to whether that’s good or bad, nor does he suggest that opposite-sex relationships will acquire this feature from same-sex relationships.
@Douglas Johnson
A lot of people seem to think that open relationships mean not only a lack of absolute sexual exclusivity but also a lack of sexual rules, i.e. each partner is perfectly free to have sex with whomever he or she likes without repercussions. Dan Savage’s point, as I understand it, is that in most open relationships straight or gay (including his own), extra-marital sex is had within strict limits negotiated between the partners, and each remains the other’s primary sexual partner. Hence, “monogamish”, i.e. mostly monogamous (and hence distinguished both from promiscuity, where there are no rules, and polyamory, where there are multiple primary sexual partners.)
July 7th, 2011 | 5:10 pm
“You think that inalienable rights are whatever we think them to be. Whew! Argument resolved.”
Of course they are. Imagine if we had to petition the government every time some one had a new idea, made a discovery, invented a musical instrument, founded an organization, etc. — it would be the ultimate bureaucratic nightmare.
Instead we enjoy the Freedom of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. These Rights are dictated by our conscience, from are inherent to Humanity (granted by God, Allah, the Greek pantheon of Gods, Nature, etc., take your pick) and to our Creator alone are we accountable.
“our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
– Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia”, 1784
FYI: It’s because of Madison and Jefferson that our Constitution recognizes and protects Religious Freedom (the Right of Conscience)
July 7th, 2011 | 5:19 pm
@JHW
You are correct! Dan Savage did set rules on his “mostly monogamous” “marriage” that limit it from unlimited promiscuity. Here’s the quote:
So mostly monogamous means anything put feces, pets, incest, children and the necrophilia. I wonder what it means in Europe?
July 7th, 2011 | 5:24 pm
“You don’t understand me correctly. You continue to confuse prohibition with recognition.”
Glad to have made my point — I hope that now you understand why your mixed-race argument was flawed. Simply letting a couple live together and calling it whatever they like was not enough to protect Civil Rights of inter-racial marriages — likewise SSM.
July 7th, 2011 | 5:33 pm
“I can’t find my copy of Virtually Normal at the moment, but I don’t think Andrew Sullivan makes that claim.”
It wasn’t in Virtually Normal. If I remember correctly, it was in his contribution to Same-Sex Marriage Pro & Con: A Reader.
July 7th, 2011 | 5:38 pm
The monogamish argument can be better analyzed in terms of whether one considers it something to forgive (it’s wrong, but the forgiver needs to let go of the burden of holding onto the wrong, for his or her own good) vs excuse (it’s wrong but understandable in some way) vs justify (it’s right). Savage straddles all three, depending on his mood, for which equivocation I think he is deeply wrong. Sullivan has been more on the forgive vs excuse straddle, a narrower equivocation.
There is a considerable tradition of treating adultery as an object of forgiveness: meaning, it’s wrong, but can be forgiven – a failure by the wronged spouse to forgive may be itself either excused or, more narrowly, justified. Savage tends to insist on forgiveness on the part of the wronged spouse – he’s harder on the wronged party than the adulterer. And that’s whacked (and a lot of gay and lesbian folks would agree; a lot of straight people would not necessarily agree, though they might pretend to keep their mouths shut in front of certain people in a way that gay and lesbian people won’t).
In my experience, most people seriously equivocate forgiveness/excuse/justification in all sorts of hard situations (not just adultery) and minor situations, and horrible misunderstandings ensue. If Dan Savage had merely delved into that issue, instead of going further in a more grandiosely “pragmatic” way, he might have done a much better here. What the public, gay and straight, need is more coaching on learning what it means (not just intellectually, but emotionally and spiritually) to forgive vs excuse vs justify a wrong.
However, that kind of discussion does not lend itself to getting lots of daily hits…..
July 7th, 2011 | 7:10 pm
JHW:
The limits don’t matter. Even if the limit it to one person, it still becomes an issue over time. If anything, its the LACK of facelessness that hurts more, and will lead to trouble. Because then intimacy can develop.
When you open up a marriage, you are saying your partner isn’t enough, and may never be enough in the matters specific to marriage. No amount of restrctions wipes that away.
As for SSM, the article cites all of 15k total marriages in Mass. for over 7 years. At best, legalizing seems to have served a tiny minority of people even among a minority. If Sullivan’s argument is true, its time for the gay community to show they really want what the fought for by lining up for it.
July 7th, 2011 | 9:42 pm
Your marriage will not be affected in any way by the fact that the Gay couples next door have decided to tie the knot.
My marriage, no? The marriages of my children and grandchildren’s generation? Yes.
Actually your marriage will change.
How can the rules that govern an institution be changed, without affecting the participants?
If you’ve ever played a board game with a group that plays by “modified” rules, you’ve probably noticed that even a single change can result in a wildly different game.
It is a fallacy to suppose that because a change is gradual rather than acute, that therefore it is not a significant change. As gay activists well know (and are banking on).
There is a growing field of study that addresses the question of how classification schemes underlie and thus shape reality. We do not yet have the vocabulary necessary to discuss the intangible assets, liabilities, effects, etc. that result from intangible changes – and this lack of vocabulary is the only way marriage will be successfully defended, because what gays want to take away from marriage are these intangible things – the very things that make both marriage and family function as institutions.
The specific institutional rules under attack include some that will definitely change not just gay peoples’ marriage:
“Fidelity is an important part of marriage” changed to new rules not only permitting, but recognizing infidelity as a legitimate part of marriage
“Every member of a family has obligations, according to his role in the family” will be changed, so that powerful family members can exploit or take advantage of vulnerable family members – even to the point of treating their child’s other parent as a disposable commodity, and treating the child itself as a consumer good.
“A family is a group of people united by blood” will be changed, so that the government is required to actively discourage and even punish people for preferencing biological ties over other types of ties.
“Severing the relationship between a parent and a child is done only at need – as measured by what is best for the child”…hey, if adoption works when we require parents to submit to the ‘child’s best interest’, that means that adoption will work even when parents don’t feel like submitting to what’s best for the child. Right?
The most significant change:
“Marriage is an institution that supports the act of procreation – protecting women from exploitation, men from “baby games” (and other forms of estrangement), and the child from abandonment. Marriage links children to both paternal and maternal family lines, creating the strongest of all possible bonds: the threefold bond of kinship, legal recognition, and love.” …gay marriage, of course, relies on exactly the opposite: it needs lots of abandoned babies (and actually claims a right to manufacture more); it relies on exploiting women, and it grants women an express right to play baby games at the expense of their child’s father.
It is about disrupting, not encouraging, what is best for a child – including, but not limited, to a healthy bonding with one’s own biological kin, a family unit that is bound in terms that are expressly above the fickleness of individual emotion (whereas gay marriage exalts the fickleness of individual emotion) and stable enough to be above power games (where gay marriage is a power game).
There are lots of rules that will change. We apparently aren’t even going to start talking about which – or how – until after gay marriage is law.
July 7th, 2011 | 9:46 pm
“A lot of people seem to think that open relationships mean not only a lack of absolute sexual exclusivity but also a lack of sexual rules, i.e. each partner is perfectly free to have sex with whomever he or she likes without repercussions. Dan Savage’s point, as I understand it, is that in most open relationships straight or gay (including his own), extra-marital sex is had within strict limits negotiated between the partners, and each remains the other’s primary sexual partner. Hence, “monogamish”, i.e. mostly monogamous (and hence distinguished both from promiscuity, where there are no rules, and polyamory, where there are multiple primary sexual partners.)”
But nobody wants to redefine marriage. Really. Truly.
Change the possibilities of who can form a marriage? Not a redefinition. Change the exclusive nature of the relationship? Not a redefinition.
So now the word marriage is being used to describe a relationship between any two people who may wish to form a relationship that may or may not be exclusive and may or may not be permanent and may or many not be any other thing that the partners wish to “negotiate” it to be.
But people who think that marriage is being “redefined” or “undermined” are just paranoid. Really.
July 7th, 2011 | 10:13 pm
The scary thing of this discussion is that supporters of gay marriage (e.g. Brian Hampton) really seem to believe that marriage is bestowed by the state! So, am I married to my wife because I got a piece of paper at the county house, or because I stood in front of my friends and of God in Church and I gave myself away for life? Pleeease!
I tell you, I am starting to wish I never got the stupid marriage license, just to show that marriage per se has NOTHING to do with whether or not the state wants to recognize it for purposes of public policy. I am still waiting for somebody to explain why public policy should care about two guys living together, but apparently no gay marriage supporter has thought that through.
You know, getting that piece of paper at the county building is now a “fundamental right.” Seriously!
July 7th, 2011 | 10:57 pm
“So now the word marriage is being used to describe a relationship between any two people who may wish to form a relationship that may or may not be exclusive and may or may not be permanent and may or many not be any other thing that the partners wish to “negotiate” it to be.”
Nothing new here. Arranged Marriages, political marriages, “power” marriages, open marriages, etc. — all of these existed before SSM, even before this nation was founded, and will no doubt continue. The main difference is that, in the past, it was taboo to discuss the intimate details of one’s marriage.
This purposeful ignorance shielded society from having to acknowledge the humbling truths everyone hid in order to maintain a polite and proper facade.
Now that’s not possible. We have access to a wealth of statistics on all sorts of private behaviors: how frequently the average couple engaged in sex, how many partners they had, their fetishes, etc.
We simply can not sustain the Victorian mask of our forefathers — yesterday’s discrete mistress or shameful opium habit is today’s acknowledged affair or meth addiction support group.
Marriage was never so virtuous as the SSM-opponents seem to believe. The societal problems they see caused and/or made worse by tolerance of homosexuality are more of a reflection of the private lives made public than a great moral decline.
July 7th, 2011 | 11:28 pm
@Douglas Johnson
I have little desire to explain or defend either Dan Savage’s relationship or his view on relationships to you or to anyone else in this discussion. You are misrepresenting him, but more to the point, Dan Savage represents only himself. My sole point was that Dan Savage does not present his relationship as monogamous, contrary to the suggestion by you and others in this discussion that he and other gay men are engaging in some elaborate deception. My attempt to clarify what he meant by “monogamish” was not intended as a defense either of his approach to marriage or of his usage of terminology.
@Dblade
See my first reply to Douglas Johnson for an assessment of the Massachusetts numbers, and my first reply to this thread for more comprehensive data on the numbers of same-sex couples seeking relationship recognition. I think the evidence is broadly consistent that many same-sex couples do seek such recognition but also that substantially fewer do so, proportionately, than opposite-sex couples. I and others have provided some reasons here for why that lower rate might occur; there are other suggestions in the Williams Institute study I link to above.
@pentamom
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Dan Savage wants to change the way contemporary marital norms work–just like a great many other people and organizations throughout history, including, for instance, religious organizations campaigning against divorce today. But Dan Savage’s fight doesn’t have anything to do with the legal rules we have for entry into marriage. There is no law in this country denying recognition to open opposite-sex marriages. There are, however, many laws in this country denying recognition even to exclusive marriages between same-sex couples–even though there are plenty of exclusive, long-term, and committed same-sex relationships.
July 8th, 2011 | 7:30 am
I think Mark Steyn’s comments regarding Europe and the crediting rating agencies….whoopsadaisy! I thought this was The Economist forum!
Hmm…come to think of it, his comments on the credit rating agencies seem to fit perfectly well here as well, or on just about any issue separating the left and the right (although I would refer you to Genesis 3:5 if you want to go all the way down to the bottom turtle):
July 8th, 2011 | 7:33 am
“Imagine if we had to petition the government every time some one had a new idea, made a discovery, invented a musical instrument,”
I take it you are unaware of the existence of the Patent & Trademark Office in Washington?
“FYI: It’s because of Madison and Jefferson that our Constitution recognizes and protects Religious Freedom (the Right of Conscience)”
You actually believe that Madison and Jefferson would have supported SSM?
Since you like to quote Jefferson, why don’t you track down the reformed criminal code he wrote for Virginia, which provided for the castration of “sodomites.”
“Glad to have made my point — I hope that now you understand why your mixed-race argument was flawed. Simply letting a couple live together and calling it whatever they like was not enough to protect Civil Rights of inter-racial marriages — likewise SSM.”
I’ll try one more time. The problem was not that Virginia did not “recognize” the Loving’s marriage. The problem was Virginia recognized it as a crime, for which a couple could be arrested, tried and imprisoned.
July 8th, 2011 | 7:38 am
@JHW, @R Hampton @Nickol and other proponents of redefining marriage here. Are you print subscribers of First Things, or did you come here primarily to debate the redefinition of marriage? BTW, I think it’s fine if you did just come here for the debate. I guess I’m just curious what brought you to First Things in the first place. Do you largely agree with what’s written in First Things, or like me and TNR, do you read it to see how the other side approaches issues?
July 8th, 2011 | 8:35 am
“Can we finally stop pretending that gay men are interested in getting ‘married?’”
Of course we can. Because it’s perfectly clear all they want is to see heterosexuals forced into marrying people of their own sex.
Because otherwise, the issue begs a response: So?
July 8th, 2011 | 9:59 am
proponents of redefining marriage here. Are you print subscribers of First Things, or did you come here primarily to debate the redefinition of marriage?
Douglas Johnson,
I began by occasionally reading free content on the First Things site. Then I began to comment on First Thoughts and On the Square. Then I began to read and comment on Secondhand Smoke, but I stopped both reading and commenting. A few months ago I became a paid, digital subscriber to First Things so I could read everything on the site, including the archives.
I do not think, from a Christian point of view, marriage can be “redefined.” Civil marriage laws can be changed, but that does not change the “definition of marriage.” My religious education was Catholic, and in the Catholic Church, marriage is permanent. Civil marriage in any country where divorce and remarriage is permitted (and that is every country in the world except the Philippines) does not conform to Catholic marriage in an absolutely critical aspect. The almost universal acceptance of civil divorce and remarriage did not change the concept of marriage for faithful Catholics one iota, and I do not think the acceptance of civil same-sex marriage will either. That is, of course, unless the there is some “development of doctrine” within the Church that brings a new understanding of human sexuality.
July 8th, 2011 | 10:19 am
Because it’s perfectly clear all they want is to see heterosexuals forced into marrying people of their own sex.
Todd,
I have a concept for a television reality show based on this idea, but I can’t figure out which network to pitch it to. :P
July 8th, 2011 | 10:53 am
Since I threw credit rating agencies and the Greek debt crisis into this argument, I might as well throw in a word or two about pot legalization. Better yet, you can just check out the link.
Why? Because like the arguments in the link above, advocates of redefining marriage make the wrong arguments to support their case. Some of those include:
1) People who oppose redefining marriage lynch black people. Granted that’s slightly overstated but the train of thought goes something like this…you oppose redefining marriage and in the Jim Crow era a black man could be lynched for even touching a white woman, and if you don’t agree to redefine marriage you’re a bigot from the same family as the KKK. Granted it’s presented a more refined form than my Reader’s Digest version above, but we all understand the translation.
2. Redefining marriage doesn’t effect you, and so you oppose it because you just want to hurt homosexuals. This one isn’t overstated. I suppose if you were in a debate in front of a neutral crowd maybe the fear of the accusation might win over some neutrals, but I doubt it. But using that argument here? Why? What does it accomplish? The corollary argument goes like this:
3. My sister is gay and I love my sister, so of course I support redefining marriage. This is, of course, another way of saying absolutely nothing. Like everyone living in a large city, I have plenty of close friends that are gay. Redefining marriage is right or wrong, but if my assessment of right or wrong depends on how many gay people I know or whether or not they’re related to me, then I’m ridiculously shaky ground logically.
4. In 1874, there were these two Boston women living together who could have been lesbian, and people called it a “Boston Marriage” because they were not dependent on a man and so you see marriage has been same sex all along–we’re aren’t redefining anything. Please.
5. Redefining marriage is consistent with the original intent and understanding of the Founding Fathers. You might as well argue that it is the intent of the Pope to redefine marriage. Again, if you were debating in front of a crowd of neutrals perhaps you could convince someone in the crowd that this is the truth, but in a forum like this where no one is neither undecided nor that dim, why on earth would someone try and drag such an argument out on First Things?
Okay, outta time!
July 8th, 2011 | 1:03 pm
I remain mystified about this “redefining” of marriage. I’ve heard more about it from opponents of same sex unions than from any gay or lesbian people I know or read. Honestly, the whole thing only makes sense (from the conservative view) if homosexuals are going to force heterosexuals into marrying people of their own sex.
I don’t have enough information to tell generally if opponents of same-sex unions are bigots. Some of these folks have really poor arguments, especially the ones who quote imaginary poor arguments from the other side.
I find it deeply ironic that the part of the relationship that is sinful in a traditional Christian context goes completely untouched in these discussions. Nearly everything else at stake: visitation, commitment, financial sharing, adoption, medical insurance, etc., is actually a moral good, or at worst morally neutral.
Christian consistency would seem to demand that opponents lobby even more diligently to forbid sex outside of “traditional” marriage. And yet they don’t take that tack. Anybody wonder why?
July 8th, 2011 | 2:01 pm
OK another SSM post, another hundred plus comments….let me just toss this out…hope I’m not making a point someone else made but then why should it matter since Joe has no qualms repeating his errors, why should I have qualms about pointing them out?
Can we finally stop pretending that gay men are interested in getting “married?” Despite the shockingly high number of gullible people who fell for such nonsense, it’s never been true—and never will be.
Whom exactly is pretending here? I have never heard anyone assert that all or even most gay men want to get married. I have no idea why this would even merit an argument in the debate about SSM? On one of the previous threads the issue of low rates of marriage in the African American community was raised….I wonder is Joe arguing that there’s some magical demographic trip point for marriage? If 40% of gay men want to marry will he support SSM but if 39% of blacks get married he will argue for a law banning blacks from marriage? If not then why make it?
July 8th, 2011 | 3:25 pm
Gays want to be included in a social equation that does not judge their sex lives negatively. Christians judge gay sex negatively. It is objectively bad and undesirable. Gay ‘marriages’ are Unions-contrary-to nature. All pretty simple.
July 8th, 2011 | 6:11 pm
Gays want to be included in a social equation that does not judge their sex lives negatively
OK but that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with SSM.
July 8th, 2011 | 7:06 pm
Boonton, when the black community, beset with a tremendous amount of marital partners incarcerated or dead, can muster 40% marriage rates, and relatively well-to-do gays can’t, well…
They argued they wanted marriage. I think it’s fair to expect them to, well, get married in numbers that are sizable relative to the gay community. It’s also fair to expect them not to redefine it by making it “monogamish.”
It’s not seeming to be the case, so I think it’s fair to ask if marriage was really wanted. As opposed to being pushed by straight supporters, or passed because somehow this makes gays more equal, not that they cared to actually do it.
July 8th, 2011 | 8:32 pm
Recently, in a brief filed by Obama’s justice department it claimed that homosexuality is immutability. In that case, we should ban both inter-orientation marriage as well as same-sex marriage of two heterosexuals. For the brief implies that it is in fact a perversity either for people of the same gender to marry if they are not homosexual or for people of different genders to marry if one or both of them are gay.
Here’s the problem: the idea of marriage arose from the nature of men and women and their begetting of children, period. The fact that gays want to call their “unions” marriage is sweet and all, but it’s no different than dwarfs wanting to be called “tall” by redefining “tall” as a height greater than one inch. Okay, you’re “tall,” we tell the dwarf. Okay, you’re “married,” we tell the gays. But in both cases we know it’s a complete charade, similar to a drag queen being flattered when his suitor thinks he’s a real woman.
July 8th, 2011 | 8:42 pm
Todd writes: “Honestly, the whole thing only makes sense (from the conservative view) if homosexuals are going to force heterosexuals into marrying people of their own sex.”
That, of course, assumes that marriage is an exclusively private institution. It isn’t. It’s a public institution, one that requires that the rest of treat all marriages the same under the law. This means that the Christian photographer who doesn’t want to work a “gay wedding,” just as she would not want to work an orgy or a gluttony party or a bachelor party that includes strippers and porn, will in fact suffer the wrath of the law. Christian and orthodox Jewish universities and colleges will lose their federal funding. Home owners who don’t want to rent to gay couples–since they believe such couples engage in a serious moral wrong, sodomy–will be punished. Parents who object to their views of marriage and family being ridiculed and marginalized in the public schools will have no remedy for the state’s persecution on this matter.
What is ironic, of course, is that for years liberals have insisted that the state should take no position such controversial moral questions, that it should be neutral and non-judgmental, honoring the private conscience of “deeply held beliefs.” What we know now is that the entire project was first class, prime bulls**t. It’s always been about replacing one ethos with another, one understanding of sex with another, and literally not tolerating any dissent on the matter.
Prediction: with a decade the question will be raised, “How do you know your parents are your parents?” It seems easy now, since most of us who were brought up our natural parents will appeal to that very fact. But we will be told that the whole idea of “natural parents” is racist, since it relies on “genetics” and the “patriarchal family,” both of which marginalize gays and are thus “hateful,” “mean,” and “discriminatory.” You will told that your parents are whomever the state says they are. The appeal to you being a product of their conjugal act of love will be rejected as homophobic, racist, and arbitrary.
This will happen. Give it a decade. The premises are all in place.
Yes, Todd, they are out to get dissenters, and they will not rest until we are all gone, sequestered in diversity training camps, or sheepishly silent.
July 8th, 2011 | 9:43 pm
They argued they wanted marriage. I think it’s fair to expect them to, well, get married in numbers that are sizable relative to the gay community. It’s also fair to expect them not to redefine it by making it “monogamish.”
Actually the black marriage rate is about 66% meaning 2/3 of all blacks will get married at some point in their lives. But the marriage rate meaning out of 100 random black people, how many are married TODAY at this moment, is 35% (http://www.bookerrising.net/2007/09/statistics-about-black-americans.html).
Joe doesn’t really give us any rate data. He tells us that in connecticut there’s about 3 lesbian couples for every 2 gay couples….but that hardly seems like a dramatic imbalance.
As for what to ‘expect’….who are you to ‘expect’ anything? Do you expect blacks to get married more? Interracial couples? Do you assign these demographic groups goals and timetables for things like divorce rates, infidelity, etc.?
Personally I think people who try to do a non-monogamous type of marriage will mostly see it blow up in their own faces (there’s a reason swingers mostly didn’t make it out of the 70′s) but I have no idea what marriage ‘rates’ will be for vaious groups nor do I think it matters much. We know that over time marriage rates can vary a lot so even 20 years of data, IMO, wouldn’t help us much.
Seriously if you or Joe want to make marriage some type of group reward based on demographics then please just say that and accept it.
Thomas Aquinas
In that case, we should ban both inter-orientation marriage as well as same-sex marriage of two heterosexuals. For the brief implies that it is in fact a perversity either for people of the same gender to marry if they are not homosexual or for people of different genders to marry if one or both of them are gay.
Why? I think I’m more aware of the fact that I’m heterosexual than any test the gov’t can give me. Are you unable to tell about yourself? I have no problem with the gov’t assigning you a marriage partner as you seem unable to know who or what you are, but the rest of us should generally be trusted to decide ourselves.
The rest of your arguments is the usual train wreck of illogic that’s been refuted time and time again now. If you insist we’ll do it yet again.
July 8th, 2011 | 9:58 pm
R. Hampton, changing from legally and socially viewing such arrangements as an aberration from what marriage is supposed to be, to just another normal form of marriage, is in itself a redefinition. You might like the change, but that doesn’t make it any less of a redefinition.
July 8th, 2011 | 11:04 pm
No one has raised the topic of the acceptance of contraception on the path to today. In Mary Eberstadt’s article, Christianity Lite, she writes “Yet “extraordinarily enough,” as William Murchison puts it in his book Mortal Follies: Episcopalians and the Crisis of Mainline Christianity (2009), “a question barely at the boundary of general consciousness thirty years ago has assumed central importance to the present life and future of the Episcopal Church.” Why this remarkable transformation? In part, because the reformers at Lambeth and elsewhere did not foresee something else that in retrospect appears obvious: The chain of logic leading from the occasional acceptance of contraception to the open celebration of homosexuality would prove surprisingly sound.
That is precisely why the change in doctrine over contraception has been used repeatedly by Anglican leaders to justify proposed changes in religious attitudes toward homosexuality. Robert Runcie, for example, former archbishop of Canterbury, explained his own personal decision to ordain practicing homosexuals on exactly those grounds. In a BBC radio interview in 1996, he cited the Lambeth Conference of 1930, observing that “once the Church signalled . . . that sexual activity was for human delight and a blessing even if it was divorced from any idea of procreation . . . once you’ve said that sexual activity is . . . pleasing to God in itself, then what about people who are engaged in same-sex expression and who are incapable of heterosexual expression?”
July 9th, 2011 | 6:05 am
David Nickol
July 7th, 2011 | 10:04 am
Can we finally stop pretending that gay men are interested in getting “married?”
This is really pretty ugly. Do all gay men want to get married? I think it is perfectly safe to say no. Do a higher proportion of lesbians than gay men want to get married? It seems to be the case. But a 3-to-2 ratio of same-sex female to same-sex male marriages does not in any way indicate that gay men don’t want to get married. The same would be true of the ratio were 10 to 1 or 20 to one.
=============
Personally, I am offended at how much homosexualists lie about the problems in attitudes and behaviors concerning sexuality that are present in the lives of people with a homosexual problem or a bisexual mentality.
I think this collective lying is what is pretty ugly.
In other countries who furnish statistics about homosexual marriage, the rates are around 1% or so for the homosexual population. This is minuscule compared to the rates of married heterosexuals.
And in France, for example, where they have not legalized homosexual marriage, but have instituted the famous PACS civil union, there is a visible decline and erosion in heterosexual marriages. There are a considerable number of French heterosexuals who are outright hostile to marriage and this is something that evolved along with the normalization of homosexuality and other deformed liberal attitudes concerning intimate relationships.
The decline in marriage rates and the rise in PACS are also accompanied by an indisputable rise in “living together” arrangements, which do not even include any PACS.
So, when homosexualists chide conservatives about being paranoid that homosexual marriage will destroy heterosexual marriage, it’s just another ugly ruse. In a country like France, it all happened as a package.
The underlying changes that even allow a society to consider some kind of homosexual marriage (or civil union) are destructive to traditional marriage and they are destructive to our understanding of dysfunctional psychologies concerning sexuality.
All of this homosexuality justifying cannot be done without an ignorant institution of homosexuality as an inborn condition.
If society invested its energy into helping people with a homosexuality problem solve their problem in the first place, none of this ridiculous circus would be necessary.
July 9th, 2011 | 3:27 pm
In other countries who furnish statistics about homosexual marriage, the rates are around 1% or so for the homosexual population. This is minuscule compared to the rates of married heterosexuals.
Alessandra,
Has this data about the number of same-sex marriages in other countries just come to light?
Nobody ever claimed the majority of gay men were just waiting for the law to change so they could get married. To claim somehow gay people duped everyone into thinking that all gay people were just chomping at the bit to legally marry, and to claim it was all a lie is just preposterous.
And if anything takes the cake for absurdity, it is Joe Carter’s apparent belief that the majority of gay men and lesbians should have wanted to enlist in the military before the government should have considered abolishing “don’t ask don’t tell.” Did the United States need to wait to have its first woman doctor until the majority of women wanted to go to medical school?
It is a supreme irony for those who oppose same-sex marriage to claim, on the one hand, that it is a threat to to the very foundation of civilization, and on the other hand to claim to be outraged that only a minority of gay people want to get married.
All of you people who claim to have been deceived about the number of gay people who want to get married are staunchly opposed to same-sex marriage and have been fighting against it. The people who approved same-sex marriage are not complaining that they were fooled into believing that the majority of gay men and lesbians want to get married.
This is all a phony argument. I challenge anyone to come up with one piece of evidence that those campaigning for same sex marriage ever claimed that if same-sex marriage were just legalized, the majority of gay people would get married.
July 9th, 2011 | 4:28 pm
The 3 to 2 ratio IMO really says very little. I was a bit surprised in the previous thread when I tried to get a hold of some hard numbers for SSM divorce rates from Canada (BTW, Canada has SSM for about 5-10 years now so any predictions being made about SSM, we have some actual data to check against) to find that SSM divorce rates for females actually seems higher than males.
I suspect Joe’s a bit to flip about ‘men have to be pushed to get married’. The reality is on the flip side women may be a bit too eager to get married and as a result are too quick to say yes when its not clear the relationship is really stable. You may find that gay men have the same ultimate marriage rate than gay women….just that gay men will take longer to ‘settle down’ to marriage but when they do they will tend to last longer and have less divorce than gay women marriages.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm
There are about 6.8 marriages per 1000 people. So Connecticut has about 1,000 male-male marriages per year and 1600 female-female marriages per year. If there is about 382,352 gay people in Connecticut, then their marriage rate would be exactly the same rate as for everyone else. According to the census, Connecticut has about 3.518M people in it. If you assume about 5% are gay, that’s only 175,914 gay people….
I don’t know the distribution of gay men to gay women but then Joe has previously cited surveys that show that the number of gay people is less than 5%. It would seem then that either from a male or female perspective there is no shortage of gays who take advantage of marriage when its made available from either the male or female side. In fact one could ask why gays seem to marry at a rate that’s greater than non-gays?
But before we go down that road we should consider that some of the figures represent a ‘backlog’ of gays waiting for marriage to be legalized as well as gays form other states (like nearby NY). So I wouldn’t assume just from the data Joe presented that gays have a higher marriage rate than non-gays.
July 9th, 2011 | 6:15 pm
In other countries who furnish statistics about homosexual marriage, the rates are around 1% or so for the homosexual population.
Heh, I missed this unsourced reference. That would mean Joe cited about 5K SSM for Ct. If Alessandra’s figure is correct, then Ct. must have a gay population to the tune of 500,000. With only 3.5M in population, 15% of the population would have to be gay! Yet at the same time people like this will, in other contexts, demand that we use ‘lower’ figures of 1-2% of the population being gay!
July 9th, 2011 | 6:57 pm
BTW, I built a simple Excel model of marriage ‘rates’. Consider 100 people who have a ‘low marriage rate’ of 1%. In the first year, there’s one marriage leaving 98 single people and 2 married people (each marriage takes two people out of the pool of single people). By year 30 you have 55 single people and 45 married people. If you’re off a bit and the rate is actually 2% by year 30 you end up with 70 married people and 30 single.
This is very simplistic. It doesn’t account for divorce or widows. It also assumes all marriages happen within only the original pool of 100 people with no death rate either. But it does illustrate a point….it doesn’t take a very high marriage rate to end up with a lot of people married at some point in their lives.
July 10th, 2011 | 2:26 am
Boonton
July 9th, 2011 | 6:15 pm
In other countries who furnish statistics about homosexual marriage, the rates are around 1% or so for the homosexual population.
Heh, I missed this unsourced reference.
======
Boonton, since you seem to have a lot of time on your hands, why don’t you compile all the official sources and stats for countries which have legalized SSM and post them here?
Let’s see if you can show any real basis for questioning what I posted. I’ll be waiting.
“Heh” indeed.
July 10th, 2011 | 3:34 am
David Nickol
July 9th, 2011 | 3:27 pm
In other countries who furnish statistics about homosexual marriage, the rates are around 1% or so for the homosexual population. This is minuscule compared to the rates of married heterosexuals.
Alessandra,
Has this data about the number of same-sex marriages in other countries just come to light?
Nobody ever claimed the majority of gay men were just waiting for the law to change so they could get married. To claim somehow gay people duped everyone into thinking that all gay people were just chomping at the bit to legally marry, and to claim it was all a lie is just preposterous.
============
No, it hasn’t just come to light (and these very low rates also go for female SSMs as well, in other countries).
In regard to “duping the public,” the question is: is there any part of homosexualist rhetoric that does not dupe the public?
I would say no, generally speaking. You can start with the “inborn condition” nonsense that foments a lot of justifications for the false normalizing of homosexuality.
As I have conjecture before, if we considered that a person’s homosexuality problem could be solved, the issue of SSM would be quite meaningless or much more meaningless than it is today.
Another central tenet to the normalizing homosexuality rhetorical strategy is to affirm incessantly and in automated form that “homosexuals are just heterosexuals.”
This claim is made over and over again despite numerous data that prove it is false. This claim has been used in a way to clearly dupe the public. And I must repeat what Hannah Arendt so wisely and insightfully stated decades ago: it takes two people to tell a lie; one to tell it and another to go along with it. Obviously, she was talking about dominant myths and stereotypes.
Homosexual activists are responsible for spreading numerous lies and myths and distorted information about the problems with homosexuality, but part of the responsibility also lies with liberals and others who uncritically or irresponsibly adopt these lies at true representations of reality.
Normalizing homosexuality has much more to do with normalizing an entire package of misinformed, destructive concepts and precepts about intimated relationships and sexuality intensely and fervently promoted by liberals (porn, prostitution, promiscuity, sex outside marriage, etc.).
Even when data was patently available about the extremely low numbers of homosexuals who got “married” (in other countries where it was legalized), homosexual activists continued to insist 1) that homosexuals were just like heterosexuals, 2) to deny, trivialize, minimize all the attitude and behavior problems that exist related to homosexuals that entail this particular result.
To examine the question of why so many homosexuals have a host of deformed attitudes about sexuality and intimate relationships is to puncture the myth that homosexuality is inborn, because we begin to see that underlying homosexuality there are much more profound issues.
We start to wade into the territory that needs to be investigated: psychology and sociology, culture and ideology.
Homosexuality is a product of an ensemble of deeper, underlying emotional and psychological issues, along with forceful cultural elements and social conditioning.
Homosexual activists have been duping the public that all of these extremely critical, underlying elements are inexistent, or, that they must be brushed aside and not investigated. It is collective ignorance, largely willful in many instances, that hold up the dogmas of homosexualist ideology.
Another rhetoric element that was quite false was the claim made that all the problems that homosexuals exhibit in the psychological realm are due largely to the fact that their homosexuality had not been accepted. Thus the blame for most of the problems homosexuals exhibit is put onto the people who correctly understand that homosexuality is a problematic byproduct of deeper underlying issues.
What we see in many cases, however, is the more homosexuality is drummed down on everyone as viable and inborn, and it is touted as normal, little does that do to change or resolve all kinds of relationship and sexuality problems homosexuals and bisexuals exhibit. The blaming claim, therefore, is largely bogus.
“Nobody ever claimed the majority of gay men were just waiting for the law to change so they could get married. To claim somehow gay people duped everyone into thinking that all gay people were just chomping at the bit to legally marry, and to claim it was all a lie is just preposterous. ”
In my view, the claim was made, but perhaps more indirectly than directly. If you say that homosexuals are just like heterosexuals, then homosexuals should do most everything like heterosexuals. That includes wanting to get married just like heterosexuals. This is clearly false.
The claim was made that not having homosexual marriage is extremely harmful to homosexuals, and that not only civil unions, but also living together arrangements will never even come close to the horrible harm caused by not having SSM. Then the overwhelming majority rejects SSM and continues largely with promiscuous, or living together only, or other arrangements. Something in that claim about the importance of marriage plainly contradicts itself.
If you ask me, it’s as duping as you can get.
To counter your DADT example, consider illegal immigrants who have been pleading for citizenship, and who correctly claim this would be a veritably crucial right for them to have.
If the government offered tomorrow to legalize all current illegal immigrants, how many would all of a sudden say, oh no, we don’t really want it, we just want the right to perhaps have it one day, but it’s hardly important to have, really.
We just didn’t want to feel like second-class citizens, but there aren’t really any major benefits to citizenship, so we’ll skip it.
We want Equality Now only in theory. The citizenship itself we don’t really care for. We prefer our illegal lifestyle. Did we dupe you by saying that getting citizenship was a fundamental human right and then clearly rejecting it? Not at all.
July 10th, 2011 | 6:44 am
David Nichol wrote:
“And if anything takes the cake for absurdity, it is Joe Carter’s apparent belief that the majority of gay men and lesbians should have wanted to enlist in the military before the government should have considered abolishing “don’t ask don’t tell.””
That is obviously right. I have no wish, myself, to serve in the armed forces, nor am I Jewish, but I should be outraged by any suggestion that Jews should be denied the right, or relieved of the responsibility, of defending the nation under arms.
Such a decision would certainly affect me personally, for it would be a direct challenge to the notion of civic equality and its abandonment renders the rights of all of us precarious (in the Latin sense of “enjoyed at sufferance”).
July 10th, 2011 | 9:06 am
Let’s see if you can show any real basis for questioning what I posted. I’ll be waiting.
three points:
1. I have been trying very hard to find and present marriage stats for countries and states that have SSM. This is not a very easy task but it has yielded some interesting observations.
2. My ‘basis’ for questioning your stats is that your stat has no basis unless and until you present some type of source that can be evaluated.
3. The other ‘basis’ for questioning your stat is that your stat is inconsistent with other claims. For example, gays can’t both make up less then 3% of the population and also make up 15% of the population…which they would have too in order for Ct. to have a 1% SSM rate. Even if you just want to make up your facts, have the good manners to make them up in a consistent manner.
July 10th, 2011 | 3:08 pm
@Gayle Trotter
I don’t know if you are still following comment on this post, but I just wanted to thank you for what you wrote. You are exactly right, and it’s a point I sometimes neglect although it should be at the forefront of every discussion regarding marriage and the church. Indeed, the movement to redefine marriage grows stronger, not because homosexuality has been normalized, but because it furthers the license of total sexual autonomy for everyone else.
July 10th, 2011 | 8:19 pm
Duglas
Indeed, the movement to redefine marriage grows stronger, not because homosexuality has been normalized, but because it furthers the license of total sexual autonomy for everyone else.
I haven’t really addressed this argument much because my first instincts are to write it off as simply not serious but let me pretend its a serious argument…I ask in what way? In what way is the individual person living in a Western developed country today not capable of enjoying a state of total sexual autonomy? A person is free to engage in almost all conceivable extremes of sexual behavior from living a lifetime of total chastity to having sex with multiple people every day for as long as their bodies can perform. In terms of sexual autonomy, we are more or less at the libertarian point where your freedom extends everywhere except where it would infringe upon the freedom of other individuals (i.e. rape, child molesting). I suppose there’s a few things you aren’t allowed to do like have sex in the middle of Times Square at 2 in the afternoon……but I fail to see a large number of people who want to do that nor do I see how SSM would help their cause in any relevant way. We can also add to that list prostitution, but if your goal is to legalize prostitution it’s a lot simplier to just do it directly and around the world it was made legal in many places without SSM.
So what exactly does someone need a ‘license’ for in the name of total sexual autonomy? For example, a gay man who wants to have sex with lots of gay men today is, well pretty much free to do it. If swinging isn’t happening among straight couples as much as it did in the 70′s, it’s hardly due to the iron fist of the law stopping it.
So gays aren’t gaining any additional sexual autonomy from SSM….but you claim ‘everyone else’ is getting it via SSM. How? If Jim and Bob down the street live together with a civil marriage license, I’m really unclear how that opens the door for me to do anything sexually that I already can’t do. In fact, from the point of view of sex the fact that Jim and Bob may be legally married is, well, actually a bit boring…unless maybe Jim and Bob were holding off having sex until they could legally marry. In which case perhaps the right would care to give them $30K in speaking fees for advocating ‘love waits’ rather than Sarah Palin’s daughter.
July 10th, 2011 | 11:38 pm
Boonton,
You missed the point. Give it a little thought and then try again.
July 11th, 2011 | 1:07 am
Boonton
July 10th, 2011 | 9:06 am
Let’s see if you can show any real basis for questioning what I posted. I’ll be waiting.
three points:
1. I have been trying very hard to find and present marriage stats for countries and states that have SSM. This is not a very easy task but it has yielded some interesting observations.
========
Well, isn’t that interesting?
Given that there is quite a bit of data publicly published on the Internet (among other sources) for other countries which have legalized SSM, you simply just can’t find it.
No matter how much you tirelessly search, while everyone else can easily find this data, you simply can’t. Curious, isn’t it?
Booton: 2. My ‘basis’ for questioning your stats is that your stat has no basis unless and until you present some type of source that can be evaluated.
If you haven’t noticed, I’m applying the same principle to you. I just wanted to underscore that you don’t have a single piece of data that contradicts anything I’ve said. Not one.
Furthermore, you’re confirming that your basis for saying I have written something incorrect is your complete (and persisting) ignorance on the subject of any and all SS marriage data for other countries.
As I said, I’ll be waiting.
I bet anything that *you* will never find easily accessible published data that proves you wrong. It’s just a mystery, but that’s how your particular Google engine works.
July 11th, 2011 | 5:21 am
Alessandra,
I have found various SSM stats for various states and countries and I presented them here as I found them. That being said, finding what you want is a challenge.
I’ve asked you for a reference for your 1% figure, you’ve failed to provide one and since you’d rather waste time telling us how easy it is to use Google it’s fair now to disregard your ‘fact’ as just being something you made up.
Nevertheless, we also see that whatever the ‘marriage rate’ is, its almost certainly going to be a very small percentage for any given population group since it doesn’t take a very high rate to eventually produce a supermajority in a population that are married.
July 11th, 2011 | 12:05 pm
Cross-country comparisons are going to be difficult, because the incidents of marriage and its alternatives vary widely between different jurisdictions. One has to take account of factors, such as the alternatives offered by civil unions, their degree of flexibility compared to the available matrimonial property régimes and, also, the degree of testamentary freedom, as against reserved shares in favour of surviving spouses, children and other relatives, comparative ease of dissolution and so on.
Only consider the popularity of a PACS with opposite-sex couples in France.
July 11th, 2011 | 6:27 pm
Canada seems like it would make a good cross county comparison with the US. It appears to have just straight SSM and has had it since 2005 so we are going into 6 full years of data (enough to test some of the predictions made by anti-SSM). It’s also a relatively large country so you have less of the ‘Vegas effect’ where marriage stats are inflated by out of towners going to Canada just to get married (although some of that distortion happened no doubt).
One difficulty I found was stats simply not being quoted in ways that make for easy comparisions….for example one site may provide very good detail on straight marriage divorces both by year and by year of the marriage….but another only references the total number of SSM divorces over a 5 year period leaving no easy way to see where, if at all, SSM differs from heterosexual marriage in metrics like divorce, seperations, etc.
July 12th, 2011 | 2:13 pm
July 11th, 2011 | 5:21 am
Alessandra,
I have found various SSM stats for various states and countries and I presented them here as I found them. That being said, finding what you want is a challenge.
===========
I didn’t see any post of yours concerning SSM rates and totals for other coutries and their sources.
Could you provide the thread links to where you posted all of this information?
July 12th, 2011 | 2:21 pm
Boonton: I’ve asked you for a reference for your 1% figure, you’ve failed to provide one and since you’d rather waste time telling us how easy it is to use Google it’s fair now to disregard your ‘fact’ as just being something you made up.
===========
Just as I am saying that you are making up that no data exists on the Internet and in other sources for SSM in other countries.
And, it’s true, I don’t waste my time with someone who insists that no data exist.
Have you even found the names of the countries where SSM has been legalized or has this been an unsurmountable battle as well?
Maybe we should assume that if you haven’t found the names of the countries, it’s because the countries themselves don’t exist.
July 12th, 2011 | 3:43 pm
Could you provide the thread links to where you posted all of this information?
Look at the previous SSM threads, specifically one where I asked anti-SSM advocates to make actual predictions that they were willing to be judged on. I think that was the thread that went up right after NY state passed SSM (I believe it was titled “No satisfaction in SSM” or something like that). I’m not going to do a lot of leg work with the above request of yours because I’m pretty sure you made quite a few comments on the thread so you should have no trouble finding them.
And, it’s true, I don’t waste my time with someone who insists that no data exist.
At no point did I say the data doesn’t exist. I only stated that it was challenging finding the data you wanted when researching this. You’re the one who stated that you had seen data indicating non-US SSM rates of 1% or less. I asked you for a source on this and I also pointed out that depending on how you define ‘marriage rate’ 1% can actually mean a very sizeable portion of the population getting married. To date you’ve provided no source to your data but have produced numerous excuses that boil down to ‘Google it yourself’. I have Googled it myself and presented my findings. Until you support your case with real facts I think its quite justified to assume you’re a fraud here.
July 17th, 2011 | 6:43 pm
I have Googled it myself and presented my findings. Until you support your case with real facts I think its quite justified to assume you’re a fraud here.
============
As I said, the interesting thing is that you google and you google and you never find anything that contradicts what I have said. And yet you acknowledge that data exists.
Perhaps before shouting fraud, you should improve your googling?
By the number of posts you write here, you certainly have a lot of time to google away. But nothing you ever find substantiates your claim that my information is wrong.
Complete ignorance is not a very good basis for calling other people frauds, you know.
Name calling, without a shred of evidence, is really the resort of people who have lost an argument and don’t want to face it.
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