Gay Marriage: Theologil and Moral Arguments - Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

Contents:

• BAN GAY MARRIAGE, DEPORT DREAMERS: DOUG MASTRIANO’S EXTREME VIEWS CGHT ON TAPE
• WHEN GAY MARRIAGE WAS RADIL
• SOME ON THE RADIL QUEER LEFT STILL THK GAY MARRIAGE IS BAD FOR THE LGBTQ COMMUNY
• WHY GAY MARRIAGE IS RADIL
• GAY MARRIAGE: THEOLOGIL AND MORAL ARGUMENTS
• AT THE DAWN OF GAY LIBERATN, SAME-SEX MARRIAGE WAS A RADIL IA
• RELATIVISM AND GAY MARRIAGE
• GAY MARRIAGE IS GOOD FOR AMERI
• CONTRACEPTN, GAY MARRIAGE: CLARENCE THOMAS SIGNALS NEW TARGETS FOR SUPREME URT

BAN GAY MARRIAGE, DEPORT DREAMERS: DOUG MASTRIANO’S EXTREME VIEWS CGHT ON TAPE

It's certaly possible that I'm still argug wh the people I was argug wh back the 1990s, when there were few tellectual lbian and gay voic who believed tryg to break to marriage was a good ia.

So let me the 1990s, lbian and gay lears, eher anizatnally or tellectually, almost universally had eply lefty crentials. Or they thought that was a wrong-head, false-nscns pursu of assiatn, a flat-out ntradictn of the movement that they believed they stood for: sexual liberatn, or creative ways to regnize alternative fay I never unrstood-I still don't unrstand-how they uld see the the gay and lbian "" as a lefty movement.

But a Venn diagram, the "" of lbians and gay men would overlap only slightly wh the "" of a progrsive movement. They seemed to believe that ordary lbians and gay men should be followg some tellectual vanguard, tacklg all the pillars of general opprsn one swell foop (as my father ed to say).

WHEN GAY MARRIAGE WAS RADIL

It was phed ferocly by Middle Amerin lbians and gay men: physicians' assistants and middle managers, stay-at-home moms who sperately need to get listed on the health surance of their state-trooper partners, graphic signers who fell love and wanted to spend their liv together-and who wanted to lnch that wh the same social celebratn, the same civil sanctn that their brothers and sisters had had. Graff wr on social-jtice and human-rights issu, particularly discrimatn and vlence agast women and children; marriage and fay policy; and lbian, gay, bisexual, and transgenr liv. ) the mid-1990s to unter both the antigay folks and Andrew Sullivan's high-profile ntentn that marriage was herently nservative and would domtite gay men.

So 's weirdly dissonant when gay neons and femist lbians publicly sist-the former wh enthiasm, the latter wh distate-that same-sex marriage would be a nservative move, nfg sexual ee radils si some legal cellblock. Makg lbians and gay men more visible legally will sist that there is no tradnal pe: that our society surviv not by rote but by heart.

SOME ON THE RADIL QUEER LEFT STILL THK GAY MARRIAGE IS BAD FOR THE LGBTQ COMMUNY

In the space of two days this week voters North Carola approved a nstutnal amendment effectively banng same-sex marriage and US Print Barack Obama ma clear his view that gay and lbian upl should have the chance to wed.

WHY GAY MARRIAGE IS RADIL

We Southerners have held the le for tradn and moral tth about marriage every time the issue has been put on the ballot how cisive the North Carola vote was, and given that gay marriage proponents have lost every state, even culturally liberal California, is temptg to thk we n stand athwart history yellg, "Stop! In my newsroom experience, is taken as given that any opposn to gay marriage n only e om rank would no more take a fenr of tradnal marriage serly than you would take a segregatnist serly - or so the thkg go.

GAY MARRIAGE: THEOLOGIL AND MORAL ARGUMENTS

Tryg to expla philosophilly why homosexualy is not the same thg as race draws blank is simply not somethg to be reasoned about, pecially not wh my generatn of journalists: too young to have seen the black civil rights movement, and who are not about to miss out on their own versn. Though I firmly believe there is only a superficial nnectn between gay marriage and ter-racial marriage, the legacy of the civil rights movement the South is precisely why I thk marriage tradnalists are gog to lose the long n.

This tells somethg about the future of gay marriage, given the domance of the "civil rights" narrative the public is monly known,. Gay marriage opponents like to tell themselv that people get more nservative as they age - te, general, but unlikely this long as the tradnalist posn on same-sex marriage, almost universally held only 25 years ago, is treated as irratnal hatred and nothg but by the media, bs, and social el, there will be powerful social and psychologil prsure to shun .

Prejudice - eher the bad sense of mdls bigotry, or the good, Burkean sense - is the only thg keepg gay marriage at will not last, pecially as the social, legal, and mercial price for holdg fast to tradn creas, as certaly will, now that same-sex marriage mands the high ground the US social and cultural hierarchy.

AT THE DAWN OF GAY LIBERATN, SAME-SEX MARRIAGE WAS A RADIL IA

Gay marriage plet the stutnalisatn of the sexual revolutn, agast which the forc of social nservatism and relig tradn have been pleasg as ballot box victori are, I see no reason for the long feat to reverse, at least not my lifetime. More pennts who lean toward the Democratic Party (81%) favor gay marriage than Democrats (71%).

Mastriano’s remarks on gay adoptn were prevly highlighted by the Washgton Bla, and NBC News highlighted Mastriano’s belief that Islam was not “created equal. On June 28, 1969, patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, physilly risted a police raid and sparked several days of rtg.

RELATIVISM AND GAY MARRIAGE

Those who intified wh gay liberatn -- many of whom also intified as femists, hippi, socialists, anti-racists -- were generally hostile to stutns like marriage and the ary that later generatns would clamor to enter.

GAY MARRIAGE IS GOOD FOR AMERI

" Revolutnary Love: An Introductn to Gay Liberatn nmned "the whole nuclear fay stcture" for yokg "woman to man, and children to both, a box that lims human growth. Between 1970 and 1972, among the dozen or so Amerin same-sex upl who sought civil marriage licens, three pursued lawsus to the bter end: Jack Baker and Mike McConnell Mnota, Marjorie Jon and Tracy Knight Kentucky, and John Sger and Pl Barwick urts that heard the s rpond ntemptuoly, but the gay lib movement, on the whole, did not. " Disapproval wh the gay muny me not om radils intified wh Stonewall but om more ut, nformist, "tablishment homosexuals, " who generally were olr and often eply is, que precisely, "tablishment" gays who assume the public face of same-sex marriage.

The major gay-rights ligatn firms exprsly choose platiffs like Kris Perry and Sandy Stier for their palatabily to middle Ameri. They are mols of the rpectable most Amerins 1969, when every state but Illois had an anti-sodomy law on s books, there was no such thg as a rpectable homosexual. In 2007, when the California Supreme Court asked, on s own iative, whether the state's separate-but-equal problem -- marriage for straights, domtic partnership for gays -- uld be solved by elimatg marriage altogether, platiffs said no.

Lynne Pfhul, a founr of Louisville's Gay Liberatn Front (she acpanied Jon and Knight to the unty clerk's office), explas that applyg for a license was "a ncrete, visible thg. The s were signed, as the Washgton platiffs put , "to generate public discsn about gay people and gay relatnships, " which is exactly what they did.

CONTRACEPTN, GAY MARRIAGE: CLARENCE THOMAS SIGNALS NEW TARGETS FOR SUPREME URT

Fally, marriage offered -- and ntu to offer -- an excellent vehicle for prsg the claim, fervently embraced by the Stonewall generatn, that "gay is good. " Takg advantage of marriage's privileged associatn wh sex and romantic love, the first platiffs proclaimed not only the polil equaly of straights and gays but the moral equivalence of heterosexual and homosexual relatnships. The one tactic left for nservative gay marriage opponents is a radil one: don’t let anyone get married.