A good argument against gay marriage
Why Ross Douthat fails to deliver
I agree with Luke that Ross Douthat’s argument against gay marriage in the NYT is bad political philosophy. A good argument against gay marriage needs to clarify:
(A) What values gay marriage threatens,
(B) The process by which it threatens those values,
(C) The values protected or promoted by the legalization of gay marriage, and
(D) Why the values gay marriage threatens outweigh those it promotes.
Douthat focuses on the (A) category and completely ignores the other three. He argues that gay marriage threatens the Western ideal of “lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate.”
This ideal holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship. It holds up the domestic life that can be created only by such unions, in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their biological parents, as a uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing. And recognizing the difficulty of achieving these goals, it surrounds wedlock with a distinctive set of rituals, sanctions and taboos.
The point of this ideal is not that other relationships have no value, or that only nuclear families can rear children successfully. Rather, it’s that lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.
He concludes by doubting that a society “that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining” the idea that heterosexual monogamy is “unique and indispensable.”
I think Douthat’s probably right about heterosexual marriage being different and important in the ways he outlines; regardless, let’s assume he is and then examine the ways in which he ignores the (B), (C), and (D) that a good argument against gay marriage requires.
On (B): Why does heterosexual marriage require “distinctive recognition and support” to flourish? Doesn’t it receive this recognition in society already, regardless of what the law says? If not, is it possible to provide this special recognition while at the same time allowing gay marriage as a matter of law? If we allow gay marriage, will there really be less and worse heterosexual marriages? The answers to these serious questions may in fact come out Douthat’s way (though I doubt it), but he doesn’t even engage in any of them, possibly because he’s ignorant of (C) the good values promoted by gay marriage. Douthat finds one vague, potential cost of gay marriage and then ends his argument, with no need to fill in the details to see if it’s really comes out to be on the whole negative.
On (C), to deny marriage to homosexuals, but to allow heterosexuals to marry conveys to gay people that they are less worthy individuals and citizens, with less to contribute in the almost sacred realm of family and romance. Douthat and others may say: They do have less to contribute! But to make a serious argument against gay marriage, one has to understand how it feels to gay people when they hear this and what it says about American equality to make this statement–and how these costs are outweighed.
The values that gay marriage promotes are (very generally) equality, recognition of the equal fundamental worth of all citizens, self-respect, and maybe even liberalism. By liberalism, I mean here the general notion that a society of free and equal individuals works successfully by it’s own organic processes, free from government engineering. The notion that the state needs to create legal inequalities in order to protect social institutions (e.g. heterosexual marriage) contradicts the standard form of individualistic liberalism that most Americans (on most issues) support.
Douthat may have taken the first step toward a reasonable argument against gay marriage. But, like those before him, he has a long way to travel before we can take it seriously. As it stands now, it reads like erudite and thoughtful ideological mish-mash.
-Jake
Photo by Flickr user See-ming Lee used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Related posts:
- Married with (biological) children
- Human rights and gay marriage
- Gay marriage & polygamy
- Gay marriage, continued . . .
- Is gay marriage pro-family?
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[...] week Jake commented that Douthat needs to explicitly outline the process by which gay marriage threatens the values he [...]