Against same-sex marriage---a reply to Matt Riddle

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thread beginning June 6 at 2:54am

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It seems to me that support for same-sex marriage correlates strongly---not perfectly---with disbelief in the law of chastity, the idea that sex should be confined to marriage. Believers in the law of chastity tend to take marriage itself much more seriously. It is therefore vexing to have people who on the whole have been rather dismissive of marriage trying to change its character for those who of us who have taken it seriously all along. Another correlation is support for gay marriage and support for abortion. It is also rather vexing that a class for whom breeding is not a central occupation, and that usually supports those who prefer to abort rather than bear and adopt, now wish as a class to be considered equally valid adoptive parents, perhaps even irrespective of the wishes of the birth parent.

If the law changed to allow the marriage of same-sex couples, I concede that I am little more worried than you are for how our generation conducts itself. What most worries me most would probably take about two generations to really set in: widespread bisexual opportunism, increasing selfishness, increasing misery. A world in which it is particularly bad to be poor, or powerless, or a child.

An image of this is the roving band of male chimpanzees, who keep their testosterone levels up by homosexual activity. On meeting a female, they each try to persuade her to wander off alone for a few days for a consortship. If all are unsuccessful at persuasion, they take turns anyway. Think of what happens in prisons! You never really did answer my question as to why three or a dozen gay men should not be permitted to marry.

Among the relatively well-protected parts of the social order where we are, perhaps there will be little change. Our subculture was not immune to heightened divorce levels in the late seventies after the enactment of no-fault divorce, and it seems to be highly susceptible to internet porn right now. But perhaps we'd be okay at first. It would probably hit the less protected parts of our society first, and possibly with more ferocity than the no-fault divorce laws ever did.

Or maybe what will really smash things up is a nasty movement propelled into power in a kind of culture-war countercoup. I still can't really tell the extent to which fascism and nazism were reactions to, or heirs of, the campy permissiveness of impotent Weimar. Probably they were both.

In the short run, though, things would be pretty normal. I've lived elsewhere, Matt. I spent much of my teenage years in a subdivision in Auckland where many of the surrounding families where headed by single woman who counted themselves lucky if they could drag some sorry thing back home from the disco on a Friday night, and maybe keep him for a day or two. I've lived in Sydney, in Canberra, in Melbourne. I am well aware how easily Chicken Little arguments are offered here for things that work reasonably well elsewhere---single payer health care, national curriculum, national education funding, government regulators with teeth, family support transfer payments, vastly smaller military budgets, vastly smaller prison systems.

Even in the short run, however, and even in the judgment of those most directly affected, I do not believe that the effect of the change you propose would be entirely positive.

I once worked for a non-profit that had its office in a United Methodist Church building complex that somewhat resembled an LDS stake center. Apart from a few differences in dress code and dietary laws, and the fact that their church ran a day care, these people had between them much of the social feel of an LDS ward, and were even similar in racial compostion. I did not my self see anyone who was manifestly homosexual, but this particular parish, led by its chief pastor, dissented from the mainline UMC view that deprecated same-sex relationships. A major part of my job back then was conducting brief interviews with a variety of people. Some of the people I interviewed were members of that parish.

I remember one woman, in particular, who was getting ready to move out of the "retirement palace"---her words---that she had built with her husband, so that they could sell it. A few years earlier, the husband had decided, after two decades of marriage and the raising of a daughter together, that he was gay. So this couple separated and divorced, but still they continued attending this parish. Within a year of separating, the ex-husband was living with a male partner he had found. She described coming to their church for Christmas Eve services, to see her ex-husband and his new partner both singing in the choir. I wondered what their daughter thought about all this, but it appears she turned out to be "accepting" of all this. This woman had lost her intended future, and was of an age when she would likely remain single for life. She came across not bitter, not angry, just sad. Her ex had thought it would be a great idea for their daughter, her, him, and his new partner to all have Thanksgiving together. She was struggling with this a bit, but it was not a forgone conclusion that she would reject the idea. She was trying to be as accepting as she could be, and succeeding about as well as possible I suppose. In a way, she was a model of what her parish thought a Christian should be under such circumstances. I, on the other hand, left that interview with heightened appreciation for LDS church discipline.

All that occured under current law, of course, and it is even possible that broader availability of same-sex options might have prevented that particular marriage in the first place. I find it unlikely, however, that the change you propose would lower the number of such cases. This is where it really matters that the incidence of bisexuality in practice is higher than the incidence of exclusive homosexuality, and that self-perceived orientation can drift or remain broad over a lifespan.

Still, there are troubling glimmers even now of new insolence. What gives some bureaucrat who runs the Provo City Pool or Utah Transit the right to decide how large a 'family' may reasonably be? Why is it that it now not uncommon to find self-described feminists who consider pornography okay, even liberating? The feminist old guard would have burned to the ground the offices of the on-campus porno magazines that Ivy League schools now openly harbor.

At present, I have little problem with polygyny, or even polyandry. For each of those, I can find at least some historical cases when they seem to work. Maybe they make sense now, at least in some settings.

I am not holding up our current system of marriage as perfect. From my mid-teens until marriage lasted just over two decades for me, and I never really liked being single or childless during any of that time: I simply accepted with regret that I did not yet have a wife, did not yet have children. That acceptance did me some good and no harm. I remember a bishop once telling me that about 30% of faithful LDS women would not get the chance to marry a faithful LDS man in their lifetime. Long-term singleness or childlessness are simply not things I would wish on any adult capable of treating a spouse or children with consistent decency. I do not wish that on my single LDS friends and relatives. I do not wish it on other decent adults either.

Several years ago, in Glen Burnie, Maryland, I took my family to a sandwich bar for a rare treat. My two eldest children were eyeing rubber balls in vending machines---we had little left after paying for the food, and the price looked a little steep, in any case, so we said no when they asked. A little later, the two eldest were each playing with such a ball. At the next table were the only other people in the room, a clearly lesbian couple. One if these women was enjoying my children's pleasure in their new acquisitions. My wife and I are extremely careful who gets access to our children and under what conditions. We are careful, insistent, even loud, about who is permitted to take pictures of our children. Under most circumstances, someone who furtively slipped gifts to our children would invite incandescent wrath. But not here. The couple stayed a little longer, and then left, never glancing in the direction where my wife and I sat. I am far from sure that that couple would make bad parents.

Nevertheless, and here is where allowing same-sex marriage starts to really bite: if my wife and I were to die tomorrow, and if no married sibling could take them, their faithful LDS aunts would nevertheless rate ahead in our eyes of any unmarried couple or same-sex couple we could imagine, however decent and resourceful. I am not averse to having other parents choose differently for their children---with agreement of the adults involved it is already possible under current law for a child to be sent by its parents to a gay friend or relative, complete with an affidavit that essentially confers guardianship. But I would want our wishes for our own children to be respected, and not second-guessed by a court, the way it would likely be if same-sex couples are permitted to marry.

Frankly, issue is the issue. If it weren't for the bearing and rearing of children, what real need is there for marriage?