Columnist Russ Douthat first acknowledges that “traditional” marriage is anything but traditional.<\/p>\n
The norm historically as well as biologically has been a kind of polygamy, with marriages still often serving as a form of social or political contract in many parts of the world.<\/p>\n
Nor is lifelong heterosexual monogamy obviously natural in the way that most Americans understand the term.<\/p>\n
If \u201cnatural\u201d is defined to mean \u201ccongruent with our biological instincts,\u201d it\u2019s arguably one of the more unnatural arrangements imaginable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So if gay marriage doesn’t violate long-standing cultural traditions — or some sort of biological “natural law,” as some have argued — why oppose it?<\/p>\n
This is where Douthat begins his heavy lift and the cracks in his argument begin to show.<\/p>\n
First, he asserts that heterosexual marriage is “a particular vision of marriage, rooted in a particular tradition, that establishes a particular sexual ideal.”<\/p>\n
I think this is true enough, so long as we acknowledge (Douthat doesn’t) that a) this ideal is rarely fulfilled, and b) the ideal isn’t shared by everyone, not by a long shot.<\/p>\n
Divorce is the norm in the United States and studies show that even many of the couples who remain in wedlock til death do them part have affairs or occasional infidelities.<\/p>\n
What’s more, fewer and fewer Americans come from “a particular tradition.”<\/p>\n
We come from kabillions of different traditions, ranging from a wide array of Christian sects (some embracing gay marriage) to a disinterest in religion.<\/p>\n
(As I’ve written here before, “non-religious” is the fastest growing type of “faith group” in the US.)<\/p>\n
To his credit, Douthat does concede that roughly half of Americans think gay marriage is fine, which means that banning it isn’t in fact our “ideal.”<\/p>\n
But he fails to tip his hat to another key fact:\u00a0 A lot of us don’t see marriage in any form as the desirable norm.\u00a0 Thirty percent of women in New York have never tied the knot.<\/p>\n
Still, with all these caveats, it’s fair to acknowledge that for a lot of Americans “traditional” marriage is the goal that they strive for, for themselves and their children.<\/p>\n
Sadly, here’s where Douthat’s “best-bad” argument completely falls apart.<\/p>\n
He goes on to claim that the chief virtue of marriage is that “lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable \u2014 a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations \u2014 that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.”<\/p>\n
To drive the point home, he adds that “if we just accept this shift [to gay marriage], we\u2019re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate.”<\/p>\n
That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Most of this is hoo-ha.<\/p>\n
Firstly, the idea that through any part of human history, one-man-one-woman heterosexual marriages have been a “microcosm of civilization” is discounted by the first half of Douthat’s essay, in which he acknowledges that this simply isn’t historically true.<\/p>\n
Which leaves him with the old stand-by that heterosexual marriage is better because of the “organic connection between generations” — meaning, of course, that men and women can have babies.<\/p>\n
Anyone even remotely conversant with human nature — or the Bible, for that matter — knows that the ability to procreate has never produced moral, civilized or even particularly Christian behavior.<\/p>\n
People treat each other with decency, respect and long-term commitment because we nurture and teach one-another to respect those values.\u00a0\u00a0 Not because we have the biological capacity to reproduce.<\/p>\n
It’s also hokum to suggest that good heterosexual marriages require “some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different.”<\/p>\n
My marriage is pretty great and I have absolutely zero interest the public acknowledging the fact.\u00a0 Nor, in order to justify my marriage, do I need to be assured that it is “a unique and indispensable estate.”<\/p>\n
What Douthat misses is the happy fact that this particular culture war debate doesn’t resemble the abortion battle, which really is a zero-sum situation.<\/p>\n
In that fight, someone wins and someone loses.\u00a0 It’s either a woman’s right to choose, or it’s a murdered baby; there’s no middle ground.<\/p>\n
But with marriage, it doesn’t work like that.<\/p>\n
I am a married heterosexual man (my 15th anniversary was last week!) who has never been divorced and never had an affair, and I am surrounded by similarly long-term committed married gay couples.<\/p>\n
It turns out we can all have exactly what we want, just by embracing the idea of marriage and fidelity, and then by leaving each other the heck alone.<\/p>\n
So what’s left if it it turns out that gay marriage doesn’t hurt anyone or anything?<\/p>\n
At the core of his essay is a very real sense of grievance on the part of people who see their society changing rapidly, with one ideal (marriage) being redefined because of the influence of another ideal (tolerance).<\/p>\n
Douthat captures that anxiety, that sense of nostalgia, fear and sadness eloquently.\u00a0 Unfortunately, he tries to wrap his emotion in an argument that doesn’t make sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Same-sex marriage is a big deal in New York — and here in the North […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4861],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2478,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2467\/revisions\/2478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}