I’ve been waiting to see a response from other social conservatives to the recent Gallup Poll which reports that Americans now favor “gay” marriage by a percentage of 53% to 45%.
This year’s nine-percentage-point increase in support for same-sex marriage is the largest year-to-year shift yet measured over this time period. Two-thirds of Americans were opposed to legalized same-sex marriage in 1996, with 27% in favor. By 2004, support had risen to 42% and, despite some fluctuations from year to year, stayed at roughly that level through last year.
I haven’t seen much yet along those lines, so I’ll say something myself. I don’t expect to convince anyone of anything (I rarely do), and it goes without saying I’ll be compared to a Nazi, but I’ll do it anyway, because it’s been on my mind.
First of all, I’m not entirely convinced by the figures. My experience is that people with liberal views are generally oversampled in such polls.
But that doesn’t alter the fact that, beyond question, acceptance of homosexuality has been growing rapidly among Americans. Among young people, it’s barely an issue anymore.
Barring some major critical event, like a movement of the Holy Spirit or a re-make of Rocky Horror Picture Show, it would appear that gender-neutral marriage is in our future. How are we to think about that?
For me, the answer is clear. I shall despair of my country. I do not consider this a minor issue, a cosmetic matter, a sideshow. In my view, even if conservatives sweep all the elections and take all the seats of power for the next century, it will mean nothing if we lose the marriage battle.
It’s a matter of fundamental issues.
What is political conservatism about, when you pare it down to essentials? It’s not about the Christian religion. It’s not about low taxes, except as a byproduct. It’s not about “live and let live.”
It’s about restraining the growth of government. Keeping free people free to live their lives without having to ask anybody’s permission to do most of the things they do.
How do you keep government small?
By relying, I think, as Edmund Burke famously said, on “the little battalions” of society. The free, non-centralized associations by which people bind themselves together through promises of obligation and mutual support.
The most basic, and most important, little battalion is the marriage of a man and a woman.
It is often forgotten, at the present stage of the debate, that marriage is not something that a lot of people (men especially) naturally want. It’s in a man’s nature to range free, to “spread his seed” whenever he gets the opportunity, and to flee to distant parts when his actions threaten to produce a baby for which he might be expected to bear responsibility.
In order to induce men to marry, and to remain married, society has developed the institution of marriage. Men are induced to enter into marriages through incentives such as social status and tax benefits. They are taught (or used to be) that it is a shameful thing for a man to leave a string of fatherless children behind, and an honorable thing to raise a family with one woman. There are also (or used to be) penalties for men who break their marriage covenants.
All this is pretty much gone now. Illegitimacy no longer bears any stigma. Divorce is easy and “no fault.” A very good argument could be made (though that isn’t my purpose here) that the entire marriage battle was lost long ago. “Gay” marriage is just the coup de grace, the final, killing blow.
“But why” asks the honest modern questioner “should gay marriage make any difference? Isn’t gay marriage also a contract voluntarily entered into by free persons? Does it make us less free if we spread the freedom around?”
This question misses the point. Marriage isn’t primarily about rights. It’s about obligations. It’s about who will take care of the children, and who will take care of elderly parents.
The special status marriage used to enjoy was meant to insure that, as much as possible, there would be stable environments where children could be raised. Once those children were adults, they were expected to care for their parents in their declining years.
Now that marriage has become, not a matter of obligations, but the “right” of two (or more, I assume) individuals to demand, on penalty of law, that everyone “respect” their feelings, these obligations to the previous and future generations no longer form a central purpose for the institution. Experimental forms of marriage mean experimental arrangements for child-rearing (if children are reared at all, which is becoming increasingly rare—see Europe) and the support of the elderly.
And experiments mean failures. Experimentation, after all, is a system of purposely making one mistake after another, in order to learn through trial and error what works.
In the case of the many family failures we may expect, who will then care for the children and the elderly?
Obviously, the government.
Thus, ever-growing government becomes inevitable, regardless of how many Republicans you elect.
In short, the state has won. I see no escape from ever-greater government control, outside of some kind of disaster, or wholesale conversion to Islam.
It’s not a future I enjoy contemplating.
I’m not sure I want to enter into a long debate here, but it seems to me that while “the entire marriage battle was lost long ago,” the question of gay marriage is unimportant, and blown out of context.
Here’s why: gay marriage is about *increasing* commitment. It is about allowing people of the same sex to face the same (admittedly vanishing) social coercion towards faithfulness provided to heterosexual couples.
You can say it is wrong; you can say that, from a Christian perspective, it implies an acceptance of sin. But I cannot see how it erodes marriage, and I certainly can’t see how it could have an effect in any way comprable to no-fault divorce (or, more controversially, birth control).
No-fault divorce is explicitly about increasing the ease with which people abandon monogamous relationships; legislation supporting such claims reflected a society intentionally abandoning the concept of marriage as a lifelong, socially-enforced commitment.
Moreover, in terms of child-rearing, gay marriage seems (almost) a non-issue. Certainly some couples can apply for adoption (since they already do, without being legally recognized). But for the vast majority…it is, by definition, concerned with people who aren’t producing or raising children.
The diminished centrality of the family may in fact be one of the biggest maladies of contemporary American society. But I honestly don’t see what gay marriage has to do with that tragedy. There are many more direct ways (pornography, increasingly long work weeks, financial instability, a lack of other organic relationships within society, a decline in Christian belief) of attacking marriage, and I see these attacks as far more significant.
That said…I don’t see marriage as dead. Most people I know are either happily married or wish to be happily married, and their view of marriage involves lifelong commitment supported by intentional decisions and sacrifices. Living marriages may be decreasing among the central population, but they are not dead by any stretch of the imagination. So perhaps panic is not called for.
My response is simple–look to Europe. Look to Europe.
I’d like to quote what a wise man once wrote:
“He brings in witches!” someone yelled.
“That’s right, he brings in witches! And why? Because witches are so easy to spot! Because our sentries can see them far off, and smell their fires and hear their loud music! Now think, my friends — what does it mean when your enemy parades his loudest, most colorful, garish battalion before your eyes? Why would he do that? Why would he want to attract your attention?”
There was mumbling, but no one answered aloud.
“I’ll tell you why! It’s a diversion! He wants you looking at those terrible witches, and talking about those terrible witches, and torturing and burning those terrible witches, so he can attack you somewhere else! Some really important part of the line, like Charity, or Justice. And you won’t be prepared for that attack, and he’ll hit you with disguised, camouflaged troops — much more dangerous, much harder to spot, and stronger far.
The real danger to our society comes from boys who won’t raise their kids, and girls who sleep with boys and don’t insist they become men. This results in fatherless children, who are a lot more likely to end up depending on the state.
I don’t recall calling for “gay-hunts.” My concern is that a social order which used to be centered on the rearing of children and familial care for the elderly is being replaced by an order centered on one’s feelings–with all obligations bounded by the coming and going of the feelings. Bald assertion that such a fundamental change can be made without major consequences seems to me naive. There will be casualties, and a lot of them. Government will step in to meet the created needs, taking part of our freedom at every step.
I didn’t mean to say you called for a gay hunt, and I’m sorry if I came off that way. My point is that a lot of homosexuals are “in your face” about their sexuality, and that this makes same-sex marriage a big, visible issue. However, it is not the real danger.
I agree that we need to go back to a focus on obligations. That is the real fight. But as far as I can tell, the issue of same-sex marriage is a distraction. A married homosexual couple is not less obligated than a coupe of unmarried homosexuals.
The rhetoric used to justify same-sex marriage, in terms of feelings rather than obligations, is bad. But that is a symptom rather than a root cause.
My position is that same-sex marriage, being based in affirmation of the partners, rather than a system of kinship and procreation, is essentially different from opposite-sex marriage.
I think Lars is on to something. From how I understand it, marriage is supposed to, in principal, do three things: 1) provide mutual affection between monagamous spouses; 2) provide procreation for the furtherance of society; and 3) provide a healthy environment for the raising of children.
Only heterosexual marriage has the possibility of meeting all these points. Some will raise the issue of barren couples, but I don’t think we want the government testing for fertility any more than for love. That’s where the clause “in principal” comes into play.
Homosexual marriage isn’t an the ultimate issue, yet if proponents manage to alter any of those three points it will impact society at large and in a significant way.
For the record, I also do not want to enter into a long debate.
Being infertile myself, I probably focus more on the “stable household” aspects of marriage than on its child-protection function. I’m in favor of cultural institutions that foster long-term commitments of people living together under a roof — whether they’re old buddies, sisters, intergenerational families, or gay couples. All of these arrangements decrease reliance on the Nanny State.
I’ll be more ready to worry about the corrosive effects of gay marriage when we turn away from nonmarital sex, nonmarital procreation, divorce, and abortion.
I believe a fundamental difference b/w American political conservatives and libertarians is the desire by conservatives to uphold Christian or traditional morality by the law. That’s the essence of the marriage debate to me. Will the state support moral relationships with their marriage laws or will they work against them?
When people who don’t care about God want a church wedding or more generally legal marriage, they want it because they believe it’s the right thing to do. God, whoever he is, will bless them for it. That’s what gay activists want too, which is the reason gay marriage will not be the end of the argument. The activists want society–everyone–to accept immorality as right and good.
What’s working against gay marriage legislation is the definition of marriage. All marriages would have to become civil unions if moral sexuality was taken out of the definition. If any two people want to get married for whatever civil benefit there is, what reason can be given to deny them that isn’t morality based?
I agree with Phil – in case anyone cares