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marriageisaboutlove

Amanda Marcotte’s article on the opposition to marriage equality is very good. It’s always been strange to hear their arguments — I couldn’t believe they were so stupid to think that seeing gay men getting married would destroy heterosexual marriages. And they’re not! They’re just afraid to come right out and say what really frightens them.

This argument, that same-sex marriage somehow undermines “traditional” marriage, never really made sense to many Americans, for good reason. Since conservatives would rarely define what they meant by “traditional”—saying that it’s about a man and a woman and declining to elaborate beyond that—it ended up sounding like they were saying that if gay people were allowed to marry, then straight people would all get divorced or something. This makes conservatives sound like idiots and ended up backfiring on them, helping many fence-sitters to figure if that’s the best they’ve got, then they must have nothing.

In reality, however, there was a subterranean argument that actually is logical and makes perfect sense. It was never just about man-woman marriages. The tradition that is disappearing is the belief that marriage is a duty, especially for women. As Douthat argues, Americans are rejecting “the old rules, its own hopes of joy and happiness to chase.”

It also becomes obvious why they don’t come right out and say what they mean.

In this sense, Douthat isn’t wrong that “support for same-sex marriage and the decline of straight marital norms exist in a kind of feedback loop.” To accept same-sex marriage is to accept this modern idea that marriage is about love and partnership, instead of about dutiful procreation and female submission. Traditional gender roles where husbands rule over wives are disintegrating and that process is definitely helped along by these new laws allowing that marriage doesn’t have to be a gendered institution at all.

Even they are smart enough to realize that admitting what makes them queasy, that the modern ideal of marriage is about equal partnership rather than a hierarchal master/servant relationship, is objectionable. And to give them a little credit, I think the more enlightened of them are also queasy about rejecting that modern ideal. They may have genuine love for their spouses, and aren’t about to deny that, but at the same time they want that relationship to be about making children and cleaning house. And that’s why all their words about marriage look like vomit on the page, because the whole subject leaves them nauseous with no good solution, for them.

Comments

  1. hillaryrettig says

    Marcotte is always brilliant, and I’m sure she’s correct here, too. But I’ve been thinking lately that if you could somehow eliminate the profitability of hate, a lot of it would go away.

    David Brock in Blinded by the Right, talks about how, after communism fell, his rightwing colleagues consciously looked around to try to find another target to hate because hating is how they defined themselves, and also how they earned their living. The solution was to create the “culture wars.”

    Psychologically and financially conservatives need to hate, and so they actively work to propagate hate. Without these venal leaders, I suspect that a lot of hate-based movements would die off. The ridiculousness of the messaging (to modern ears) is one clue that there’s no “there there.”

    Getting rid of the tax exemption for churches would help a lot.

  2. davidnangle says

    The solution for such people is, and has always been, to grow old and die. To make room for the people that can handle the progress. They can shout and wriggle and squirm, but it’s inevitable.

  3. says

    This sounds like it’s right. Traditional heterosexual marriage is threatened by gay marriage after all, provided that one’s concept of “traditional” opposite-sex marriage includes a requirement that the man gets to be “lord and master” over the woman. By providing a viable model of “equal partnership” marriage, same-sex pairings undermine the comfy master/slave version of marriage that has “worked” so well (for men) for so long.

    Well, that’s just too damned bad, isn’t it? And the frenzied defenders of “traditional” marriage are finally helpless in the face of equal rights (and equal “rites”).

  4. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Marcotte’s analysis sounded dead-on to me. Especially when one looks at the churches being the most vocal about the subject. They all see women as nothing but servants and baby incubators. The thought of an independent woman they can’t coerce into obedience scares them shitless.

  5. Saganite, a haunter of demons says

    Makes a lot of sense. It’s probably no coincidence that these same people also often complain about the “pussification of men” and whatnot, referring not just to homosexuality or effeminate men, but also to a “loss” of traditional gender roles in general. Breadwinner, caregiver and so on.

    @#2

    The solution for such people is, and has always been, to grow old and die.

    I guess, although I’d expect that in a couple decades’ time, other issues will come to the forefront that we ourselves may still be bigoted on and that society will have to wait for us to die off before they can truly change. Then again, as long as we as societies move forward rather than backward, that’s an overall positive, I guess.

    Personally, I expect the next issue (which sounds really stupid, considering it’s not like “previous” issues like racism, anti-miscegenation or homophobia are resolved as yet) to be about transgender rights. Bigotry against this demographic is still rampant, even with some among other disenfranchised groups of today. What’ll come after that, I have no clue, though, but I hope we’ll keep moving forward.

  6. Ogvorbis: failed human says

    This explains what I have been trying to wrap my head around for the past four or so years. Every time someone has made the ‘traditional marriage’ argument, I have immediately assumed they were referring to biblical mores and, since they never elucidated, I (being an idiot) assumed they were referring to the fact that gay marriage is not in the bible. It never dawned on me that, rather than arguing for multiple wives, or wives and concubines, or using a servant if your wife was barren, or no divorce, that they were arguing what I remember hearing in my friend’s church one of the two times I went there: “The child looks to the parents and the wife looks to the husband in the same way that the head of the household looks to god. A man is akin to the god of his household. Parents are akin to god over children [which explains why they had no problem beating the shit out of children for being children].”

    In retrospect, this is obvious. Thank you, Amanda Marcotte.

  7. marcus says

    From the NYT column cited by Marcotte:

    “Unfortunately I see little evidence that people are actually happier in the emerging dispensation, or that their children are better off, or that the cause of social justice is well-served, or that declining marriage rates and thinning family trees (plus legal pressure on religious communities that are exceptions to this rule) promise anything save greater loneliness for the majority, and stagnation overall.
    The case for same-sex marriage has been pressed in the name of the Future. But the vision of marriage and family that made its victory possible is deeply present-oriented, rejecting not only lessons of a long human past but also many of the moral claims that inspire adults to privilege the interests of their children, or indeed to bring children into existence at all.
    Perhaps, with same-sex marriage an accomplished fact, there will be cultural space to consider these lessons and claims anew. Perhaps.
    But seeing little such space, and little recognition that anything might have been lost along the road we’ve taken to this ruling, in the name of the past and the future I respectfully dissent.” Ross Douthat

    PS: Get off my fucking lawn!
    Gee Ross, dissemble much? You asshole.

  8. karmacat says

    I have read how the MRA’s have trouble defining gay marriage. They try to figure out who is the husband, which to them, means who is the “manlier” one. It makes sense because they have trouble with the idea that women are equal to them

  9. marcus says

    Douthat’s argument in a more concise, less-wordy iteration, courtesy of Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore:

    “They’ve just disregarded everything that precedent holds, and they’ve destroyed the foundation of our country which is family,”

    Just as stupid, less verbiage.

  10. EveryZig says

    Heh, so you could say conservatives oppose Marriage Equality as a means to oppose Marriage Equality.
    Really though that article does make and amazing amount of sense. It explains premises from which the “redefining marriage” argument logically follows, and also explains why those premises are too horrible for the conservatives to actually state outright.

  11. Vicki, duly vaccinated tool of the feminist conspiracy says

    Along similar lines, my girlfriend noted years ago that the availability of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts (where she lives) is less of a threat to that reactionary idea of marriage than the kind of marriage my husband and I have is: two people, cooperating as equals, with no children. And that would be true even if he and I were monogamous.

  12. says

    Homosexuality challenges gender and gender roles.
    Gender is constructed via opposites. There are men, there are women, they are fundamentally different and need each other. If you get gay people, they challenge that idea. They are attracted to the same*. If they form functioning families then there is obviously nothing natural and eternal and complementary in a relationship between man and woman. They obviously don’t need each other because each one brings “unique talents” (seperate and unequal) to the table. If two men or two women can form functioning families then maybe people are just people who all have individual strengths and weaknesses and who can learn a broad range of skills. Yes dudes, the Y chromosome is no barrier to ironing.

    *Though they still uphold the idea of the Self and the Other

  13. Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy says

    Davide Futrelle actually made a post about some MRA reactions to marriage equality and one of the prevailing themes is “who is the man in the relationship?” It’s a pretty impressive display of mental gymnastics watching them try to reconcile all of their various contradictory beliefs which intersect at the idea of same sex marriage.

  14. marcus says

    Vicki, duly vaccinated tool of the feminist conspiracy @ 11
    “Two people, cooperating as equals, with no children. ”
    It is interesting, and amusing, to me that the only kind of relationship, in 40 odd years of relationships, that I’ve ever participated in, strikes such existential terror in these folks.
    Even accounting for the Dunning-Kruger, I think that it would be reasonable to say that most marriages function as ‘Two people, cooperating as equals”, as long as equal=women doing most of the heavy lifting, and men having the deciding vote in the important decisions… Actually I guess they don’t cooperate as equals.
    Never mind. Carry on.
    I think I see what they’re afraid of…

  15. petesh says

    Marcotte has become a must-read, along with Ta-Nehisi Coates and Krugzilla. They operate in different spaces, and you don’t have to agree with everything any one of them says … but I usually do.

  16. eeyore says

    The Catholic Encyclopedia of Heresies lists homosexuality as a heresy, and I never used to understand why. But I finally figured it out:

    Homosexuality is the ultimate rejection of gender roles. In my same-sex household, nobody ever says, “I can’t mop the floor/do the dishes/clean the bathroom because I’m a guy.” That never happens. Since there are only two guys in the entire house, if we tried dividing chores up into men’s work and women’s work, a significant number of necessary tasks would never get done.

    And that extends to the bedroom as well. Nobody ever says, “I can’t perform this sex act because I’m a guy.” There may be other reasons, such as if someone isn’t in the mood, but nobody’s gender is a factor when it comes to having sex.

    And because Catholicism has gender roles as a central foundation, without which the entire edifice comes tumbling down, homosexuality is not only a heresy; it’s a heresy that poses a far greater risk to the church than mere quibbles over whether the wafer becomes literal body.

  17. tezcat says

    This also explains why they say that the definition of marriage hasn’t changed for 2500 years. I guess they don’t accept that it no longer has to do with the transfer of ownership of a woman.

  18. unclefrogy says

    in fairness there is a cultural war and there has been a cultural war all along in the sense there has been pressure for change how society organizes it self since the ideas of Liberty, fraternity and equality first stated to push forward in the 18th century. It has been slow going but relentless.
    So I kind of sympathize with those resisting the change because they are afraid of changing and they are on the wrong side. There is a case to be made that the cult of the authoritarian is a recent development that is more closely associated with the development of agriculture and that we humans were much more egalitarian in the previous thousands of years. The only real question is when the positive changes the things like marriage equality signify will reassert themselves not if they do so.
    It is a direct threat to society as we know it because there is much of society as we know it that is arbitrary and artificially perpetuated by authoritarian force and control.
    I sympathize because they will lose which is painful.
    uncle frogy

  19. Kichae says

    I really think it’s simpler than all that. I fully agree with her argument, but I think the focus is too focused on 1 issue.

    Conservatives oppose anything that threatens their control *or* their illusion of control. They’re seeking validation for their beliefs, behaviours, and positions in life by having everyone look and behave just like them. They need to be both special/exceptional *and* a representation of the majority/average.

    In an authoritarian framework, having control means having control *over* something or, preferably, someone. Being exceptional requires having someone who is lesser than to be compared to. There is absolutely no way to do this in a society that embraces equality of any kind, whether that equality is between races, sexes, life partners, neighbours, neighbourhoods, cities, countries, employment positions, educations, or whatever. The entire mindset is built on the notion of hierarchy.

    You can’t be a better than if you don’t have a lesser than, after all.

  20. HolyPinkUnicorn says

    Leave it to social sourpusses like Douthat to so predictably object every time the slightest bit of progress is made. Funny how conservatives–though they would call themselves reactionary authoritarians if they were being honest–all of a sudden (like Rand Paul’s recent screed in Time) have a problem with liberty and freedom when it comes to the traditional understanding of things like marriage.

    The issue I’ve always had with this traditional understanding nonsense, beyond just its rigid sexual orthodoxy (at least until very recently), is how it’s frequently used as a social cudgel to hammer into the masses the unquestionable rules of, what people like Douthat call, sex difference, procreation, and real permanence. Notice how not only is happiness missing, but he ignores how to handle absent, dominant, and/or abusive partners.

    I’ll add one more stupid belief about marriage that needs to be dropped; the idea that marriage automatically=unhappiness. I heard it repeated numerous times last Friday, though usually as a dumb joke, that now gay people can get married and be unhappy like the rest of us. The doesn’t sound all that evolved from Scalia’s belief that a long-lasting marriage constricts one’s freedom regarding what you can say.

    Really, is it that different if a same-sex marriage supporter basically says “Hah! Marriage isn’t about happiness, because married people aren’t happy!” than if homophobic Douthat-types say “Marriage isn’t about happiness, it’s about duty!” And frankly, being witness to some genuinely unhappy, though nonetheless heterosexual, marriages being endured for years and decades, is more than enough to see that marital unhappiness is no joke.

  21. zenlike says

    HolyPinkUnicorn,;

    Wow that screed by Rand surely is a rambling mess, redefining words like liberty to have totally different meanings, and even redefining the meaning of words between consecutive sentences. In this one rant he also manages to express his distaste of minimum wages, and his support for state rights even if it means states enforce a local theocracy. Libertarianism US style: weed and theocracy, all in one neat vile package.

  22. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re @21:
    That link you posted for Rand Paul’s screed is not working for me. It sends me to donotlink with a glimpse of the headline of the Time article. Even after “signing in” to the donotlink site, the page still won’t scroll down to let me read the rest of the page.
    In conclusion; I need some advice on how to read that screed.
    R. Paul is somewhat amusing to read when disregarding him completely. Supposing him as just speaking satire to yank our chains.
    please help

  23. HolyPinkUnicorn says

    @slithey tove #23

    Sorry if it wasn’t working. Here’s the original Time link. (Amanda Marcotte also wrote a response to this article at Slate and at Pandagon.)

    I guess from the standpoint of satire Paul is amusing, as Marcotte says he “demonstrates the legal acumen of an 8-year-old.” Though to be fair, I would sum up a lot of modern libertarianism this way; ostensible adults boiling down their political views to “I don’t wanna share!”

    And he reveals just how nutty he can be at the end of the article:

    The Constitution was written by wise men who were raised up by God for that very purpose. There is a reason ours was the first where rights came from our creator and therefore could not be taken away by government. Government was instituted to protect them.
    We have gotten away from that idea. Too far away. We must turn back. To protect our rights we must understand who granted them and who can help us restore them.

  24. wcorvi says

    I think it’s much simpler and less insidious than that. I think these guys are in fact homosexual, and if they could get divorced and marry their boyfriend, they would, in a heartbeat, and they figure pretty much everyone else would, too. This of course WOULD destroy ‘traditional’ marriage.

  25. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re 24:
    Thanks for the direct link HolyPinkUnicorn.
    Still have to express my inability to comprehend the relevance of, To protect our rights we must understand who granted them and who can help us restore them. (how that relates) to abolishing the government from preventing two people, regardless of gender identity, establishing a marriage contract.
    sheesh. *clears*throat* [I can’t continue trying to talk in Rand Paul’s phraseology.]
    I mean, how is making the government impose fewer restrictions, abandoning our freedom to the big government? And all this emphasis on the “redefining” word. They imply the new definition is more narrowly defined, when actually it is an expansion of the previous use which was a narrow definition.
    Once again, (reiterating), how does it damage existing marriage to allow more people to get married? What is so bad about this redefinition? The usual response is to throw back horrific hypotheticals, like bestiality, polygamy, pedophilia, etc. which are totally manufactured out of ‘whole cloth’.
    My response would be a more reasonable hypothetical: At a swim meet, everyone must have a swim buddy for safety. What is the advantage of only allowing mixed gender buddies and disallowing same gender buddies? If two male buddies are swimming, are all the male+female buddies gonna drown?

  26. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re @5:
    I strongly object to throwing around such accusations, based only on their opposition to this cause.
    I understand their objections more along the lines of simple arrogance, as in I think it’s icky, and I’m such a good person, I just want to stop everyone from getting icky.

  27. Rabidtreeweasel says

    I can give you some depressing conformation of her theories. My parents are members of a fundie church. I wanted to find out what their pastor was saying on the issue so I looked up his sermons on line. In his sermon, he blasts feminism and compares the societal “obsession” with equality to the current “revolutionary sex” taking place through ssm. Also blathers about Charleston being about religion, not race. smdh

    http://mediaplayer.hcbc.com/sermon/jesus-is-the-better-promise-1454

  28. Jeff W says

    In reality, however, there was a subterranean argument that actually is logical and makes perfect sense.…The tradition that is disappearing is the belief that marriage is a duty, especially for women.

    I don’t see it like that, although I won’t go so far as to say that I think it’s incorrect. I had always thought there were three intertwined arguments in the conservative “case” against same-sex marriage and none of them were quite about marriage as a “duty.” The first two are bad arguments; the third seems like a more plausible philosophical argument but I would hope it is not a winning legal argument.

    The first—about same-sex marriage “undermining” so-called “traditional” marriage—was simply that letting same-sex couples get married was along the same lines as letting “the wrong people” into the country club. Once that happened—once the exclusivity was gone—the value was somehow diminished as well.

    The second—that marriage was about “procreation”—was actually a “marriage-is-a-societal-license-to-have-sex-but-we-don’t-want-to-say-that-so-we’ll-label-it-‘procreation”” argument along with the position that “we don’t want to give that same license to same-sex couples.” Although the “procreation” argument was clearly pretextual as to same-sex couples, it was also pretextual as to marriage itself—as indicated by the same reason: absolutely no attention was paid to whether opposite couples could actually procreate. In the case of opposite-sex couples, even those who could never have children, there was no problem—they married, got a societal license to have sex and the fiction that the sex was somehow “procreative” was not so overtly challenged. That same-sex couples couldn’t procreate in the same way exposed the “societal-license-to-have-sex” idea underlying marriage in a way that was extremely threatening but that was almost incidental—the real point and objection for those giving the procreation “rationale” was that they simply did not want same-sex couples to have the same license to have sex. (This dynamic is closer to the “duty” argument but I think truer—same-sex marriage was more overtly saying that marriage was a societal sanction to have sex with a partner, which threatened the pretense maintained about procreation for traditional marriage.)

    The third was how same-sex marriage “redefined” marriage. The framing was all wrong and the conservatives never got the argument right—because marriage had changed endlessly over the years—but I think the best version of it would have relied on something like the idea of constitutive rules. An example of that is chess where the rules governing movement of the various pieces constitutes chess—you can’t move the pieces as in, say, checkers, and have it still be chess. (By contrast, you can still be said to be “driving” whether you do it on the left or right side of the road—those rules are “regulative.” Changing “definitions,” e.g., polygamous marriage or chattel marriage, could be viewed as “regulative.”) Had the argument been made simply that having a man and a woman was part of what “constituted” a marriage since the writing of the Constitution—and it was in the province of people or legislators to say that—it would have been a better argument than any argument that was actually made because it at least had some facial plausibility. (It still, I hope, would not be a winning argument.)

  29. consciousness razor says

    An example of that is chess where the rules governing movement of the various pieces constitutes chess—you can’t move the pieces as in, say, checkers, and have it still be chess.

    Of course, over the course of many centuries, people did change the rules of chess. They did that with the intention of making it a better game, as they saw it, which is the sort of thing you can do if you’re not preoccupied with dubious assumptions that such things can’t change or that they must already be perfect. People saw a way to improve what they were doing (if not perfect it), so they did that, because they didn’t care about anything like “redefining” what some existing thing is. Things just are what they are, and your definitions obviously don’t have any actual effect on them.

    Not central to the point above, but because I’m interested in the game…. There were actually many different variants of chess in different places early on anyway (analogous to local customs/laws about marriage). But as it started to have more international recognition and solidified into a fairly specific and definite concept no matter where you were, all sorts of rules changed over a long period of time. Lots of new ideas about castling, checkmating, capturing en passant, pawn promotion, how most of the pieces moved, that white always moves first…. And now professional players agree on more rules (which aren’t necessarily enforced in casual games) concerning things like forcing a draw, that touching a piece forces you to move it, that you can’t take back a move, how tournaments are structured, and so forth. There are also different variants of chess that really do go by some other name, like “bughouse chess” or whatever, but the rest of that is just talking about what people simply call “chess” (in English).

    In any case, it’s clear that people don’t need to think of it as some fixed thing like the platonic form of the number 5 or absolute Newtonian space. There’s no general philosophical problem at all with something being dynamic (or relational or subjective or whatever the case may be). There’s a very long tradition of that, no matter what you’re talking about. Indeed, they could cite Heraclitus, that everything is constantly changing, if they really feel like. So I just don’t see how sophistry like that could hold any water.

  30. Lesbian Catnip says

    #3:

    By providing a viable model of “equal partnership” marriage, same-sex pairings undermine the comfy master/slave version of marriage that has “worked” so well (for men) for so long.

    M/s works quite well for those that consent to it. I’d rather have it phrased that women have been coerced into this historically, rather than paint with the same brush healthy modern day couples/groups coming to the table as egalitarians and leaving with an M/s agreement, some of which include women as the “M” and men as the “s.”
    -Token BDSM commentator.

    #12:

    Yes dudes, the Y chromosome is no barrier to ironing.

    The Y chromosome does not a dude make.
    -Token trans commentator.

    Moving on…

  31. says

    @34, Lesbian Catnip

    Well, pretend slavery is not the same as real slavery (or even “real metaphorical real slavery”). So I can’t see that metaphor being broad enough of a brush to paint modern day BDSM couples.

  32. Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y says

    M/s works quite well for those that consent to it. I’d rather have it phrased that women have been coerced into this historically, rather than paint with the same brush healthy modern day couples/groups coming to the table as egalitarians and leaving with an M/s agreement, some of which include women as the “M” and men as the “s.”
    -Token BDSM commentator.

    BDSM culture did not originate the terms “master” or “slave,” which have an extensive use outside its term-of-art usage. Outside that term-of-art usage, the absence of consent is implicit in the connotations of the terms, so there’s no reason for going “oh, that must mean ME!” when someone uses it in a different context.

    Also consensual BDSM dominance-and-submission practices are radically distinct from “slavery” as it is meant in other contexts…in fact, why exactly are you implying otherwise?

  33. Jeff W says

    consciousness razor #33

    Of course, over the course of many centuries, people did change the rules of chess.

    In any case, it’s clear that people don’t need to think of it as some fixed thing like the platonic form of the number 5 or absolute Newtonian space…There’s no general philosophical problem at all with something being dynamic (or relational or subjective or whatever the case may be). There’s a very long tradition of that, no matter what you’re talking about. Indeed, they could cite Heraclitus, that everything is constantly changing, if they really feel like. So I just don’t see how sophistry like that could hold any water.

    Thanks for the interesting information regarding chess.

    Well, the fact that people did change the rules of chess and that people don’t need to think of whatever it is as some fixed thing are our arguments against that position.

    I don’t think that position—that people get to say what “constitutes” something or what is referred to by a word without regard to the broader context—is a winning or even particularly good position, especially when the word has, as “marriage” does, so many legal and societal implications (so it’s not like “chess”); I think it’s just better than the positions that were taken, which were, on their face, ludicrous, pretextual or non-existent. (In fact, I recall that the New Jersey Supreme Court had, at one point, reached a decision somewhat like that: as long as same-sex couples had the same rights as opposite-sex couples, it was not irrational for the legislature to reserve the word “marriage” for opposite-sex couples, conveniently ignoring the fact that, at the time, what New Jersey called those couples had clear implications for those couples in other states, if, for example, those couples then moved to neighboring New York, which, at that time, recognized out-of-state same-sex marriages while not allowing them in-state, or had to enforce some rights there—all of which shows some of the problems with that type of reasoning.) I’m glad, at least, that now, with the Supreme Court decision, any discussion of these arguments is counterfactual.

  34. qwerty says

    Even before having gay marriage as a possibility, gays in a relationship called each other “partner” which implies more equality in the relationship than the norms of “traditional marriage.”

  35. says

    Zeno @ 3

    By providing a viable model of “equal partnership” marriage, same-sex pairings undermine the comfy master/slave version of marriage that has “worked” so well (for men) for so long.

    Other way around, I’d say

    eeyore @ 17

    Homosexuality is the ultimate rejection of gender roles.

    I think it was Justice Ginsburg who pointed out that the end of couverture and associated legal principles paved the way for same-sex marriage—when the law doesn’t distinguish between husbands and wives, it loses a major part of its basis for requiring exactly one of each.

  36. mildlymagnificent says

    Rabidtreeweasel

    I wanted to find out what their pastor was saying on the issue so I looked up his sermons on line. In his sermon, he blasts feminism and compares the societal “obsession” with equality to the current “revolutionary sex” taking place through ssm.

    Yep. I’ve been thinking along the same lines. All sorts of people comment that feminists can’t get married and still be feminists. The idea that women can marry men and share obligations, tasks and duties on a case-by-case, who likes/dislikes what, who’s available or better suited basis rather than on a gendered and/or authoritarian basis seems not only to not cross their minds, but to be literally unthinkable.

    Same sex marriages – whether of men or women – completely exposes that issue. And that’s A Good Thing. For everyone.

  37. loopyj says

    Same-sex marriage, or rather, the government recognizing same-sex marriage as equal to hetero-sex marriage, undermines the ‘traditional’ belief and value that married people are socially and morally superior to unmarried people (especially those living in sin), and that straight people and their relationships are especially socially and morally superior to gay people and their relationships. That’s why you had all those homophobes saying that they’d be just fine with ‘civil unions’ for gay people, so long as it wasn’t called ‘marriage, because if gay people could have marriage, then what the state would be saying (and now in the U.S. is saying) is that straight people and their relationships are no better than gay people and their relationships. Much like the attitude of those who were resistant to racial integration (and of modern racists everywhere), the anti-gay bigots feel that marriage is sullied by letting those perverted gays get their filthy hands all over it.

  38. johnhodges says

    Regarding our rights being granted by our Creator. Thomas Paine wrote The Rights Of Man to explain this theory. Paine was a Deist. He accepted that assorted philosophical arguments (primarily the Argument From Design) were convincing grounds for believing in a Creator-god, but he rejected, vehemently and at length, the trustworthiness of any and all claims of “divine revelation”. (e.g. the Bible.) He argued against the “Divine Right of Kings” and for equality of rights of all men, because “men are not born with saddles on their backs, and others born booted and spurred to ride them”… men were more or less comparable in their capacities, differences were due to social circumstances. Frankly, his argument, and also that of John Locke, does not stand up well to criticism.

    Modern American Christians often make the claim that it was the Christian god in particular that granted us our rights. (So, therefore, non-Christians have no rights.) I have always wanted to ask “WHERE and WHEN did this Yahveh character ever give us any rights?” Certainly he never gave us freedom of religion; on the contrary, he decreed the death penalty for anyone who worshiped a different god. (This would include Jews and Muslims; the Christian god is a trinity, the Jewish and Muslim gods are not.)

    As an atheist, IMHO rights come from peace treaties, explicit or implicit. A particular treaty will last longer if there is no one seething to change it; equal rights and equal opportunity for all would seem to be the terms most likely to leave the smallest number dissatisfied.