First of all, kudos to the guests on today’s Diane Rehm Show on WAMU radio. The debate was civil between Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution and author of Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, and Maggie Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, and editor of www.MarriageDebate.com.
He is gay and author of a recent and thoughtful op-ed piece in the New York Times about why marriage has become important to the gay community.
I often wonder why, in such interviews, more reporters don’t ask the simple question: What is the threat to traditional marriage if we allow gay marriages? Well, Susan Paige, the USA Today reporter sitting in for Rehm, didn’t quite articulate it clearly, but Gallagher did respond with what I assume for her was the reason.
I think it would make enormous difference for our understanding of what marriage is. Marriage is a great cross-cultural, historic, inter-faith, idea [that] has been rooted in the fact that sex between men and women makes babies. You need to make the next generation, and those children need a father as much as a mother. And to say that two men in a loving union, two men in a union, a loving union, are a marriage is to say that marriage is not about this thing anymore. We won’t have a word that means bringing together the two halves of humanity to make and raise the next generation.
So this marriage amendment fight is to preserve a word? Well, let’s call gay marriage something else! Let’s call it Cockamony or Vagimony. Hell, I’m open to suggestions.
Seriously, if we’re worried that children need fathers and mothers, let’s focus on the marriages that produce a sizable majority of them. That would be the heterosexual ones. They are the ones that are failing our children. If Gallagher, who seemed sincere and not bigoted at all, can’t come up with a better answer, let’s keep asking the question.
Her second point was that if gay marriage is accepted, people who believe in only heterosexual marriages will be branded bigots, with “enormous social consequences.” You know, white folks who opposed integration, seemed to get over being branded bigots. I mean, they didn’t get ostracized from society. In fact, many of them ran for office and won prominent positions in our government. It’s like saying we’ve got to stop Italians from marrying because if we don’t, people who hate Italians will be called bigots. We wouldn’t want that to happen.
Gallagher has gotten a lot of mileage in the last couple of months promoting a study that shows in Massachusetts, few gay couples are getting married. There are many reasons only about 16% have. Rauch say that’s the case in Europe because marriage has been devalued. I’ve known a number of young European women who lived with our family when my kids were young, and indeed they can’t understand why we’re so hung up about sex outside of marriage and why marriage is so necessary for commitment. (Get your mind out of the gutter; that’s not what I meant.) One young woman’s mother, widowed when she was young, lived with a man for decades afterwards. Her daughter has built a home with her partner. They haven’t married and really haven’t thought about it.
As Rauch points out, in the U.S., it’s very different. He also points out that saying only 16% of gays have married in Massachusetts is misleading. They’ve only been able to for a couple of years, and they don’t have a lot of role models to choose from. But more important, since legalization, gays are apparently marrying at the same rate as heterosexuals.
Gary Gates, a specialist in gay demography at the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, was given an advance look at the study. He disagreed with Gallagher’s suggestion that relatively few gays and lesbians were opting for marriage.
Looking specifically at the Massachusetts data, and noting the limited time period of 20 months, he contended that a sharply higher percentage of gays and lesbians were deciding to marry than heterosexuals of marrying age.
We know why the marriage amendment is important. It’s politically important. But how will it harm traditional marriage? I’ve yet to hear an even plausible, let alone good, answer.