Misunderstanding Marriage
When the California Supreme Court ruled that the California Constitution required the state to offer marriage to gay and lesbian couples, it did not take long for Jeff Jacoby to roll out his usual screed against gay marriage. The first part is the slippery slope that gay marriage will inevitably lead to.
In American law, certain conditions of marriage have always been nonnegotiable. A marriage joins (a) two people (b) of the opposite sex (c) who are not close relatives. Under that venerable definition, there can be no valid same-sex marriage, no polygamous or other plural marriage, and no incestuous marriage. But if the opposite-sex requirement is an unconstitutional infringement on the right to marry - which the California court explains as "the right of an individual to establish a legally recognized family with the person of one's choice" - then so are the restriction of marriage to two people and the ban on incestuous marriage. If two women who wish to marry each other must be permitted to do so, why not two sisters? Why not three?
This was the same argument that Jacoby made on 21 November 2003. And if gay marriage really were a slippery slope toward polygamy and incest, then one would expect that in the 54 months since the November 2003 decision in Massachusetts that there would be a groundswell of support for polygamous or incestuous marriages. One would think that if one's arguments relied on examples from the real world.
The second part of Jacoby's argument was also in his November 2003 column and in his 16 May 2004 column and his 22 May 2005 column as well. You see, the main purpose of marriage is procreation and gay and lesbian couples cannot procreate.
Men and women are not interchangeable, and same-sex unions—no matter how devoted and enduring—cannot take the place of a married husband and wife. The essential function of marriage is to unite male and female. That is the only kind of union that can produce new life, and therefore the only kind of union in which society has a survival stake.
Of course many gay and lesbian relationships are stable, loving, and happy. But since they cannot do what marriage can—bind men and women to each other and to the children that their sexual behavior may produce—they have never been regarded in the same light as marriage. Somehow, that crucial distinction eluded a majority of the California Supreme Court.
One might think that a responsible paper, one whose editors and owners considered it a paper of record, would encourage its columnists not to make such utterly risible arguments. But the Boston Globe is apparently trying to show that unfettered hackery is still worthy of a byline on the op-ed page.
First, many gay and lesbian couples get married in order that they may raise children, and often those children are the genetic offspring of one of the members of the couple. Every state in the union recognizes the benefit of encouraging a heterosexual spouse to raise the genetic offspring of his or her spouse. Why should it be different for homosexual couples.
Second, many gay and lesbian couples adopt children and raise them as their own. It would be tempting to ignore the fact that Jacoby did not mention that marriage protects adoptive children by providing them with two parents—but Jacoby's younger son Micah is himself adopted.
Finally, while procreation is certainly an activity that each state encourages in marriage, it is hardly a paramount concern of marriage. No state forbids the infertile from marrying, or limits marriage only to those who intend to have children. Menopause, advanced age, tubal ligation, vasectomies, irrational hatred of children, and even a complete lack of libido do not act as bars to matrimony. Jacoby ought to be smart enough to know this.
No, it is the ick factor that drives conservatives like Jacoby. They may talk about the joys of small government, but what they really want is a panopticon that will prevent their neighbors from deviating from the absolutely normal. Fortunately, modern societies are just a little ahead of the conservatives' time.
Labels: gay marriage, ick factor, Jeff Jecoby, utter hackery
