Andrew Sullivan recently had his readers ask questions of Maggie Gallagher, the anti-marriage equality activist. One of the questions she was asked was this: “In states where same-sex couples have been allowed to marry, what harm has been brought to individuals or society at large?” This was her answer:
I think we’re in the early stages of seeing my primary concern, which is a transformation of the public understanding of marriage and the separation of it from its roots in the natural family…Gay marriage is not just adding a couple of people onto an existing institution. It requires re-norming the whole institution and making it serve new purposes, instead of its classic purpose across time and culture and history, which is to bring together male and female so children have a mom and a dad.
And yet Gallagher would never even think to suggest that infertile people not be allowed to marry, or older couples who are past child-bearing age. Rob Tisinai points out the obvious:
In other words, same-sex marriage will obscure the purpose of marriage. She hits this theme a lot, and I’ve previously pointed out the problems that arise when you talk about thepurpose of marriage. So now let me hit something else — let me point out that her answer suggests this isn’t about marriage at all. It’s about gays.
See, in 2009 over 110,000 women aged 55 and older got married. That accounted for 5.1% of all marriages that year. The birth rate of women in this group is so small that the Census Bureau and the CDC don’t even report it. For these women, “the” purpose of marriage is not procreation, not about bringing together moms and dads. And by the way, when women in this group do conceive, it’s generally through an egg donor, so even that is contrary to Maggie’s repugnant, repetitive rhetoric about marriage uniting children with “their own mother and father” (that is, repugnant to adoptive parents, at least, who apparently cannot count their children as “their own”).
Now, that 5.1% figure is a bit higher than the 4.1% of adults willing to tell the government they’re gay or bisexual (which itself is different from the fraction who actually are gay or bisexual, but we’re concerned here with people willing to go on the record, as marriage requires).
So this is what Maggie needs to resolve: We’ve got two groups, both of whom wish to marry, neither of whom can conceive on their own. According to Maggie that’s a bad combination. Yet she’s willing to let them marry as long as they’re not same-sex couples. At this point it takes some real tap dancing to avoid the idea that it’s really just all about gays.
Of course it is. Because her argument isn’t really an argument at all, it’s a pretext. It’s an example of special pleading, which is a very common logical fallacy that one must employ when they are not free to express the real reason for their position.
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MikeMa
May 22, 2012 at 9:07 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Got to love someone like maggie who, with almost no effort, manages to show her god’s hateful message clearly and her own bigoted, frightened self-image. I believe that if she couldn’t hate, she wouldn’t, couldn’t exist.
tommykey
May 22, 2012 at 9:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Same sex marriage has been legal in my state of New York since this past July and somehow my heterosexual marriage of 13 years has managed to survive.
Gregory in Seattle
May 22, 2012 at 9:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Mrs. Srivastav (why does she dishonor traditional marriage by not using her husband’s name?) has failed to have any children. Next time she does a Q & A, I would propose the following question:
“You have no children, and by your own definition, have failed to fulfil the sole purpose of marriage. If you have a right to a childless marriage, why should same-sex couples be denied that same right?”
danielkast
May 22, 2012 at 9:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Gregory — Gallagher/Srivastav has two kids.
danielkast
May 22, 2012 at 9:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Regardless, let me express my view that democratic “government” requires re-norming the whole institution and making it serve new purposes, instead of its classic purpose across time and culture and history, which is to allow the rich and powerful to guide the otherwise directionless peasantry.
slc1
May 22, 2012 at 9:42 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re danielkast @ #4
It is my information that at least one of those children was conceived and born before Ms. Gallagher was married. In other words, the sanctimonious Ms. Gallagher had a bastard child, just like Bristol Palin. It’s do as I say, not as I do for hypocrites like them.
danielkast
May 22, 2012 at 9:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@slc1: Absolutely. However, Gregory was in error when he said she had failed to have any children; she has two, one of which was the result of her marriage.
As you say, the other was out of wedlock, so she’s still a hypocrite. I just wanted to make sure we called her out on the right things. :)
Artor
May 22, 2012 at 10:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
All of this misses the original point entirely. She was asked about what HARM same-sex marriage will bring to society or individuals. I still don’t see what harm comes to me from a different understanding of the institution of marriage. She completely sidestepped that issue because, of course, there is no harm that will come of this. It’s all about teh gayz.
mechtheist
May 22, 2012 at 10:11 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have a suggestion to lessen the workload of you guys keeping an eye on the nutters, it might be easier if you just keep track of the few times they manage to tell the truth, just think of the bandwidth savings!
d cwilson
May 22, 2012 at 10:13 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Forget people who can’t conceive children. My wife and I have been married for 20 years and we’ve chosen not to have children. According to Ms. Gallagher’s logic, our marriage must be invalid as well since we aren’t giving children a mother and a father.
Gregory in Seattle
May 22, 2012 at 10:17 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@danielkast #4 – Oops. Somehow, that gets about as much mention as her husband.
cptdoom
May 22, 2012 at 10:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But Ms. Gallagher’s own sexual relationship is not the only “marriage” that is legally recognized in this country yet fails to meet the purpose of marriage she posits. Certainly her ideal family does not include absentee baby daddies, half-siblings or step-parents, but I also highly doubt it includes adulterous partners who have abandoned their families. Yet Ms. Gallagher and the various “protect marriage” organizations with which she’s affiliated make no complaints about either Newt Gringrich or Rudy Guiliani continuing in public life despite being on their third wives – with whom they have no children. In fact, despite her claims to have worked to strengthen the institution of marriage throughout her career, I know of no legal limitations to the recognition of families she supports other than those limiting the lives of LGBT citizens.
But her argument also fails the historical test, for it is only recently that “family” meant the nuclear family. Throughout history, both with arranged marriages and those marriages that were love matches, one of the key purposes of marriage was to link extended families or clans. This was especially true of the socially prominent and those who wanted to be, who used their family connections to signal their importance.
It was the larger extended families that stepped in when the inevitable scourge of death or disease prevented the biological parents from raising their children and often did as good, if not better, jobs than the nuclear family. Throughout history we can point to individuals who did not have the warm, fuzzy two-parents-married-until-death upbringing, but still prospered and made productive, important citizens. We see the impact of this reality in the law, which uses blood ties as a significant basis for determining an individual’s concern in a family or estate matter. In fact, the only way to supercede one’s extended biological family is to marry.
greg1466
May 22, 2012 at 10:26 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And all this time I thought it was sex/lust whose purpose it was to bring together male and female to produce offspring. I keep wanting to point out that marriage is an abstract concept of human creation whose purpose is to encourage fidelity or advertise ownership, depending on your point of view. But what’s the point when your talking to someone who thinks literally everything was created by their invisible sky daddy.
Doug Little
May 22, 2012 at 10:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Fuck and here I was thinking Marriage was about companionship and a nice tax break when filing jointly. Well I’d better let my wife know that we have to get busy pumping out some kids, I’m sure she’s gonna be thrilled.
kermit.
May 22, 2012 at 10:48 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
tommykey said Same sex marriage has been legal in my state of New York since this past July and somehow my heterosexual marriage of 13 years has managed to survive.
So, I live in the state of Washington. I wonder how legal gay marriage in NY is threatening my marriage? Perhaps the state boundaries somehow prevent the social effects from spilling over into our more obviously godly state.
In any event, these same people – or their grandparents – were making the same arguments 50 years ago about overruling the miscegnation laws. I remember this, and it’s a matter of public record. So, what’s the big deal? Clearly the Traditional Institution of Marriage® has already been destroyed.
kaboobie
May 22, 2012 at 11:13 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Just last week, we marked the eighth anniversary of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. It was a full year and a half after this that I (a woman) married my husband (a man). Our marriage has not been threatened either by the existence of same-sex marriage or our mutual decision not to have children.
Not that facts will ever change the mind of an unrepentant bigot like Maggie, but I think we need to keep pushing the fact that no one is trying to stop couples who will remain childless (by choice or circumstance) from marrying.
Modusoperandi
May 22, 2012 at 12:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t know about you, but I think that “Roots & the Natural Family” sounds like a funk band.
Quodlibet
May 22, 2012 at 12:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Marriage equality doesn’t transform the public understanding of marriage as much as it extends it.
The real truth is that marriage equality strengthens the “institution” of marriage, by making it possible for more people who wish to do so to marry and form families. It’s absurd that the “family values” proponents fail to understand this.
Mr Q and I (hetero couple) will mark 30 years of marriage this month. In our state of Connecticut, the legislature wrote marriage equality into law several years ago; since then, we’ve celebrated with several same-sex couples on their wedding days. And yes, each of those weddings had a definite effect on our marriage! One of these weddings was of a couple who had been together 25 years, and another was of a couple who had been waiting 15 years for the “right” to marry. Of all the weddings I’ve attended in my life, these two were the most beautiful and the most meaningful. As often happens when we attend friends’ weddings, we sat quietly through those two services, holding hands and listening to those vows again, and renewing them to each other silently. The deep love, devotion, and steadfastness of these couples who had been waiting so long to marry made us appreciate and value our marriage, which we were able to undertake at will 30 years ago.
I have yet to see any deleterious consequences of marriage equality. The changes I see have all been for the good.
Yeah, if by “natural family” you mean control of women’s sexuality, control over male inheritance, control and transfer of property (including women and girls), and the like. To a large degree (especially among landed persons), marriage was developed and formalized as a means of controlling and manipulating geopolotical alliances and the inheritance and transfer of property. That “public understanding” is obsolete and irrelevant.
abb3w
May 22, 2012 at 1:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sounds like Maggie Gallagher’s excuse is a mix of “natural law” and “change is bad, mkay?” to me.
twincats
May 22, 2012 at 5:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
1. Happy Anniversary!
2. I have never had the privilege to attend a same-sex wedding, but feel the same way about the subject. I feel that my (also hetero) marriage will be even more meaningful when everyone everywhere is able to marry the person they love.
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
May 23, 2012 at 2:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
not quite. when you listen to interviews with her, it becomes obvious that she’s been so hellbent on this “traditional marriage” thing because her baby daddy wouldn’t marry her. she keeps on saying that if marriage had been “stronger” when she got pregnant, she would have had a respectable “shotgun wedding” with her baby daddy doing the “honorable” thing.
basically, she’s still pissed her Republican boyfriend didn’t fall on his knee and propose the moment she told him she was pregnant
Jadehawk, chef d’orchestre féministe
May 23, 2012 at 2:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
but you don’t understand! her boyfriend didn’t marry her when she got pregnant!!@!
uncephalized
May 23, 2012 at 11:43 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ugh. I always want to shout, “who the f$$$ are YOU, you tiny-minded, benighted fool, to tell me the purpose of MY marriage? You have no right to decide these things for me or anyone other than yourself. My marriage has nothing to do with yours, so f$$$ off!”
And I’m in a straight marriage, which will probably produce children. I’m not even the target of her venom. I can’t even imagine how gay people must feel getting this kind of evil pointed at them day in and day out.