It’s striking how much we continue to argue over Martin Luther King’s legacy. Long after his death, and despite his own mixed success in using his prestige to battle poverty and oppose the Vietnam War, Dr. King continues to be enlisted in every new political struggle, especially the push for same-sex marriage. George Clooney is only the most recent public figure to invoke civil rights to argue for same-sex marriage:
As his good friend Viola Davis won the CCA for Best Actress for her role in racial drama “The Help,” Clooney linked that struggle with the current effort to legalize gay marriage.
“I do believe it’s generational, much like the civil rights movement,” the star, who picked up Best Actor at the CCAs, said. “Young people started taking to the streets and things changed. This really is the final leg of the civil rights movement.”
Of course, supporters of same-sex marriage are not the only ones to make this move. Rick Santorum did something similar when he dinged Obama on racial grounds for his failure to recognize the rights of the unborn. Yet both men are wrong.
I freely admit that I see a basic connection between the fights to uphold the rights of black Americans and the rights of the unborn. Both causes are based in our foundational commitment to the dignity of every member of the human family. Yet my friends who are black—whether they are pro-life, pro-same-sex marriage or both—tend to be uneasy when the sufferings of Selma and of Montgomery are used to ready the altar for gay weddings, or to underline the wrong of Roe.
I can see why. As Ramesh Ponnuru has noted, such arguments tend to be used as (not especially persuasive) emotional bludgeons to induce minority Americans to support one cause or another. They diminish the raw, ongoing struggle for racial justice by making it a mere preparation for the next leg of the long progressive march.
Our debates over the meaning of marriage are only confused by spurious invocations of the Civil Rights movement. Meanwhile, the wrongness of abortion is sufficiently clear that it need not depend on the memory of any other righteous cause. Better to let King be King, and to connect his cause to any other only with the greatest care.
However much we disagree on issues like abortion and gay marriage, I am encouraged by the fact that we do indeed share a common, substantive moral inheritance. This day is as good a day as any to be grateful that when we argue over our political settlement, we tug on the same rope, invoke the same heroes. There is a culture war, yes, but it is over a shared culture rather than two separate ones.
January 16th, 2012 | 4:32 pm
It is reasonable to think that things which similar in many ways, particularly in important ways, may be similar in other ways. That is how a lot of good science is done.
But to conclude, or to pretend to conclude, or to attempt to persuade, that things which are superficially alike in a few ways must therefore be alike in all ways is just invalid. Either it’s sloppy thinking or it’s deceit.
Hollywood actors are known for sloppy thinking; there is no reason to suspect George Clooney of deceit.
January 16th, 2012 | 11:43 pm
“the raw, ongoing struggle for racial justice”
Just a slight quibble, but I would argue King’s desire for equality and the destruction of Jim Crow to be a tremendous achievement that has indeed largely been achieved.
January 17th, 2012 | 2:44 am
for some reason, clooney et al persist in their strange belief that there is a “civil right” to metaphysical impossibilities…. while they’re at it, they might as well claim a “civil right” to calling 1+1=4. that would be “the final leg.”
January 17th, 2012 | 10:00 am
for some reason, clooney et al persist in their strange belief that there is a “civil right” to metaphysical impossibilities
andrew,
Civil marriage isn’t metaphysical. If marriage is indissoluble—as I understand Robert George to be saying in “What Is Marriage?”—then civil marriage is fully open to divorced people whose spouses are still alive and for whom marrying is a “metaphysical impossibility.” Same-sex couples (or previously married people with civil divorces) who get legally marred are legally married. I don’t see what metaphysics has to do with it.
January 17th, 2012 | 7:10 pm
Same-sex couples (or previously married people with civil divorces) who get legally marred are legally married.
Same-sex couples can’t be married.
Calling a pig a chicken does not make a pig into a chicken.
They can’t marry. What they have can be legitimized by the state, but it can’t be made into what married couples have, because it is not the same.
January 17th, 2012 | 8:42 pm
david,
i always enjoy reading what you have to say and appreciate your comment.
to clarify, whatever marriage “is,” it cannot be two ontologically different things at the same time. hope that helps.
January 17th, 2012 | 10:21 pm
Blake,
I think we all agree that a duckie is not a horsie, but that does not prove that state governments do not have the authority to legislate, recognize, and perform same-sex civil marriages. If anyone has challenged the legality of same-sex marriages in the United States based on the argument that “calling a pig a chicken does not make a pig into a chicken,” they haven’t gotten very far. It would be a very attractive legal strategy, since if it could be demonstrated the states had no authority to legalize same-sex marriage—in the same way, say, they had no authority to appoint the state governor the king of France—it would definitively end same-sex marriage in the United States and, moreover, retroactively invalidate all same-sex marriages performed so far.
Obviously same-sex couples can legally marry, because they do. Refusing to call a chicken a chicken doesn’t make it not a chicken.
January 19th, 2012 | 12:17 am
I think we all agree that a duckie is not a horsie, but that does not prove that state governments do not have the authority to legislate, recognize, and perform same-sex civil marriages
A same sex union is not the same as a marriage, and can never be.
You are welcome to think the differences irrelevant, but you are outside of the rightful uses of authority when you try to use the power of government to force people to accept your views – views that you can’t get accepted based on the power of persuasion alone.
Your union is nothing but sexual. Marriage is more than sexual. Borrowing other peoples’ kids and forcing them to play along with your lies doesn’t change the fact that what you have is not, and never will be, a real family.
Marriage is valuable because it protects children and women against exactly the sorts of exploitation gays need to rely on. Their reproduction is not healthy – it involves exploiting their supposedly beloved children, and usually involves exploiting their child’s mother or father as well. There is no reason why anyone should be forced to accept that based on “discrimination” arguments: gays neither need nor deserve the so-called “rights” they are claiming.
They – and everyone else – would be better off if they stopped trying to build families out of lies, and accepted that homosexuals are not procreative, and can therefore never build a family together, however much it might grieve them to recognize their biological limits. Children’s rights don’t stop mattering just because gays love their crotch more than their kids.
January 19th, 2012 | 12:20 am
Obviously same-sex couples can legally marry, because they do. Refusing to call a chicken a chicken doesn’t make it not a chicken.
A man dressed up as a woman is still a man. No matter how many hormone shots you take, reality stays real.
And two men can’t marry, because marriage is more than just cheap sex. Buying other peoples’ kids doesn’t make a family, it just makes for exploited kids.
Your “reality” will only feel “real” if you get everyone to play along, or block out all the people who refuse to play. Your Emperor is naked.
January 19th, 2012 | 9:46 am
[...] movement drew the attention of First Thoughts blogger Matthew Schmitz, in a post entitled, “Who Gets to Use MLK’s Legacy?“ Licensed by Creative Commons (Gage [...]
January 19th, 2012 | 7:06 pm
Blake,
You are, of course, entitled to hold your own views and express them. But when you assert that same-sex unions are based on sex, or that gay people are less willing or able to control their sexual urges, you are attacking and demeaning homosexual people. You also undermine your own credibility when you make such false factual assertions. I suggest you consider the repercussions of your statements before making them.
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