What’s wrong with gay marriage?
In the latest push for gay marriage here, the article below from CEN (17 September 2010) has been updated. Lisa S Nolland, Ph.D
i. Who will really be harmed by gay marriage? Heterosexual married people.
Even now, trendy married 'straights' are being influenced in their views of what constitutes marriage, and types and levels of commitment to their spouses. If married gays can and do allegedly ‘have it all’ — the wedding ring but also sexual freedom — then why can’t they as well?
According to an article in the New York Times (28 January 2010) of a ground-breaking survey in San Francisco, about half of gay couples surveyed operate with a quite different and allegedly improved relational blueprint from that of the traditional heterosexual marriage model (sexual and emotional monogamy, one lover until death, and responsibility for the children produced by their sexual union).This new paradigm shares much with the old but jettisons sexual monogamy in favour of the practice and values of sexual non-monogamy and ‘openness’, which, far from harming the union, allegedly enhance it! (1)
The Changing Attitude publication, 'Sexual Ethics' (2004), appears equivocal on the issue of sexual exclusivity for its partnered LG flock; certainly serial relationships are seen as a realistic norm for many, and sexual infidelity is actually given a positive spin [p. 10]. Moreover, this document does not insist that sex be confined even to those in 'relationships': '[W]e think it is important to remain open to the possibility that brief and loving sexual engagement between mature adults in special circumstances can be occasions of grace' [p. 11]. Indeed, we are told that 'the exploration of our sexual selves can be something which benefits from involvement with more than one person'. [p. 11] (2)
Andrew Sullivan, America’s most eloquent spokesman for gay marriage, a Roman Catholic and gay himself, acknowledges the necessity of sexual non-monogamy in his classic, Virtually Normal (1995). ‘There is more likely to be greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman’. Gay relationships are said to be more necessarily honest, equal and flexible, an improvement on the traditional (and ‘stifling’) heterosexual model of matrimony (pp. 202-3). In perhaps an unguarded moment, Andrew more recently (May 2006) reiterated this need for sexual ‘outlets’, because, as he admits, ‘momogamy [sic] is very hard for men, straight or gay’. (3)
In the past sexual non-monogamy was furtive and tended to be practiced by one party at the expense of the other. It was preached against and socially castigated through being described in terms like ‘cheating’ or The Affair. Now, after a change in ground rules — both parties know and agree — it is given an ethical facelift, rebranded and sold to the rest of us as ‘progressive’ and exciting. Now, the siren call of 'open' marriage is clearly heard: e.g. the interview with Jenny Block, poster girl for open marriage: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/jul/06/women.features3); Newsweek', Summer 2009 article: http://www.newsweek.com/2009/07/28/only-you-and-you-and-you.html; and Edmonton Sun' s recent: http://www.edmontonsun.com/comment/columnists/mindelle_jacobs/2011/02/04/17160971.html.
However, traditional marriage’s insistence upon sexual exclusivity has had its reasons. Sex physiologically and psychologically glues the partners to each other, to enable them to then focus on each other, their home and children; an ‘open’ relationship cannot be one of complete vulnerability and self-giving, because others are involved at intimate psycho/sexual levels. In serial heterosexual relationships (which we are increasingly seeing: straight men concurring with Andrew) older women who had had the babies and invested in the home (among other things) are the real losers, because their husbands’ wandering eye tends to settle on younger, sexier women.
A final aspect needs to be mentioned here. I do not believe Changing Attitude is in the same category as those LGBT academics and activists in North America whose public aim is to deconstruct traditional — 'patriarchal', 'closed', 'oppressive' — marriage via the legalization of gay marriage. But nevertheless, almost without exception the most vocal gay marriage advocates claim that gay marriage will succeed in revolutionizing traditional marriage, and high time too!
Professor Robert George of Princeton has excellent material in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy here (see pp. 275-9): http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1722155
So gay marriage is not the same as straight marriage in the lives of many of its vocal, trendy, cutting-edge practitioners and advocates, and their views are starting to influence us all. Of course, married people were unfaithful to each other in the past, but they knew they were violating a boundary. Now, all they need to do is convince their spouses of the virtues of sexual non-monogamy and the boundary (and all that was kept whole and sacred by the boundary) itself vanishes.
In his seminal Transformation of Intimacy (1992), Anthony Giddens predicted that the boundary would vanish. Though doubtless Giddens would be pleased, the rest of us are dismayed.
ii. Who will really be harmed by gay marriage? All our children.
Because it will become part of the cultural air we breathe that marriage and family is at heart all about adults’ desires, and not those of far more fragile, vulnerable children who need and want their own mothers and fathers. As Jennifer Roback Morse insists, 'Rather than attaching children to their biological parents, same sex marriage is the vehicle that separates children from a parent …'When we come to our senses 30 years from now and realize that we have perpetrated a grotesque injustice, not a single child born fatherless or motherless within a same sex marriage will get his missing parent back.' (4)
Shifting marriage from this historical norm means that those whose professions involve working with children and families must share the new views (about children, mothers and fathers) or be either legally or socially disadvantaged or excluded, and more broadly people’s values, lifestyles and corresponding social mores are insidiously influenced. We are seeing this occur now.
Self-described liberal David Blankenhorn, in his Future of Marrriage (2009), argues that this is the primary reason he is against same-sex marriage: children will and are being damaged.
Gay marriage automatically negates the realities and requirements of gender. Adults may get along without it, but the psychological and developmental needs of children have not changed nor will they do so simply because of new PC dictates. Daddy is not Mummy, regardless of how hard he tries, and vice versa. This reaches close to home, for my husband was a single father for a while (his first wife died) when his son was small. Those who rear children alone often do a valiant job but the toll is immense. The sexes are physiologically, anatomically and psychologically different (5) and if at all possible, input from both parents enables children to reach their full potential.
iii. Who will really be harmed by gay marriage? All of us who care about family and sexual morality.
Lining up behind gay marriage advocates are other voices for other and far more alternative ‘orientations’ and sexual minorities. Did you realise the ‘LGBT’ acronym is just the start of a new ‘sexual alphabet’? Over the course of this year, Bishop Gene Robinson has publicized affirmatively the existence of these other sexualities. (6)
One of them, polyamorists (plural loves), or polys, insist that their modes of ‘doing’ family (numbers of adults in various kinds of sexual relationships, having children and just getting on with it) are as legitimate as the LGBT’s and need proper protection, representation and affirmation in the public square. For them, why draw the line at two adults? Why not three? Why not five? Why not more?
Attorney Ann Tweedy, of the California Western School of Law in San Diego, argues for ‘Polyamory as a Sexual Orientation’ on the US-based SSRN, the Social Science Research Network. (7)
Moreover, according to the Vancouver Sun (9 June 2010), poly (polygamous, but also polyamorous) families have gone to the British Columbia court to challenge the legal reality of a two-adult conjugal family home. (8) More on polys can be found at Polyamorous Percolations (PP) , the best-informed global poly website I know. (9) According to PP, the evidence-collecting part of the court case has finished; everyone now waits until the end of March for the second part of the case to begin. (10)
Beyond the three I have mentioned, there are of course many other reasons people are worried by the implications of gay marriage. Because most of these developments have either been downplayed or ignored entirely by the mainstream media, most people know nothing of what is presently in the pipeline and therefore are about ten years’ out of date. However, these developments have huge consequences for each of us.
If we do not call this ‘progress’, what are we willing to do about it?
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29sfmetro.html?_r=2; for the survey itself: http://www.thecouplesstudy.com; for research on gay non-monogamy: http://www.thecouplesstudy.com/?page_id=128
(2) http://www.changingattitude.org.uk/publications/PDF/booklets/Sexual-Ethics.pdf
(3) Andrew Sullivan, ‘Two Generations’, 31 May 2006; http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2006/05/two_generations.html
(5) http://www.gendermatters.org.au/Home.html
(6) http://www.tsm.edu/News_and_Events/Grant_LeMarquand_Speaks_to_TEC_House_of_Bishops.htm [accessed: Sept 2010]
(7) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1632653
(8) http://www.vancouversun.com/Anti+polygamy+case+gives+rise+kinds+family+forms/3130406/story.html
(9) http://polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/
(10) http://polyinthemedia.blogspot.com/, entry of II February 2011
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