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What’s Their Real Problem with Gay Marriage (It’s the Gay Part)

August 12th, 2008
By JOE WINDISH, Technology Editor

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Karin Klein takes us behind the scenes at the LATimes editorial board meetings they had with opponents and supporters (separately) of Proposition 8 as they came up with last week’s editorial.

She tells us supporters were “careful to avoid appearing anti-gay.” Still:

At one point, the conversation turned to the “activist judges” whose May ruling opened the door to same-sex marriage, and how similar this case was to the 1948 case that declared bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional. According to one of the Prop. 8 reps, that 1948 ruling was OK because people are born to their race and thus are in need of constitutional protection, while gays and lesbians choose their homosexuality. So much for the expert opinions of the American Psychological Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics that people cannot choose their sexuality. Oh, those activist doctor types.

In any case, one Prop. 8 supporter said, gay rights are not as important as children’s rights, and it’s obvious that same-sex couples who married would “recruit” their children toward homosexuality because otherwise, unable to procreate themselves, they would have no way to replenish their numbers. Even editorial writers can be left momentarily speechless, and this was one of those moments. Aside from this notion of a homosexual recruitment plot — making it understandable where the word “homophobia” came from — this made no logical sense at all.

I’m reminded of an important NYTimes Sunday Magazine piece from a few years back, What’s Their Real Problem with Gay Marriage (It’s the Gay Part). In it Russell Shorto reported on his time spent among the cultural conservatives leading the anti-gay-marriage charge:

I found no one among the people on the ground who are leading the anti-gay-marriage cause who said in essence: ‘’I have nothing against homosexuality. I just don’t believe gays should be allowed to marry.’’ Rather, their passion comes from their conviction that homosexuality is a sin, is immoral, harms children and spreads disease. Not only that, but they see homosexuality itself as a kind of disease, one that afflicts not only individuals but also society at large and that shares one of the prominent features of a disease: it seeks to spread itself. […]

Indeed, a constant refrain among the anti-gay-marriage forces is that they are motivated not by hate but by love. Most of the activists I spoke with say that they know gay people—several said they have relatives who are gay—and that they have approached them, with love, to try to get them to change. […]

At its essence, then, the Christian conservative thinking about gay marriage runs this way. Homosexuality is not an innate, biological condition but a disease in society. Marriage is the healthy root of society. To put the two together is thus willfully to introduce disease to that root. It is society willing self-destruction, which is itself a symptom of a wider societal disease, that of secularism.

Economist Gary Becker of the Becker-Posner Blog is generally considered to be politically conservative. He writes:

One can understand why many gay couples want to be allowed to marry. What I find difficult to understand is why there is so much opposition; for example, I doubt if a referendum legalizing gay marriage would pass in many states. As Posner indicates, allowing gay couples to marry will have little effect on either the attraction or stability of marriages between heterosexuals. I believe this opposition reflects hostility to gays and their unions that can no longer be expressed in other more traditional forms, such as calling them names or harassing them. As a result, the marriage issue has become a rallying point that allows hostility to gays to be hidden behind other reasons.

All of this suggests to me that the real problem opponents have with gay marriage is not that it will extend benefits or threaten marriage. The objection is that it will end the socially acceptable discrimination against lesbian and gay people.



This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Homosexuality, Culture Wars, Political Christianity, Gay Rights, Christian Conservatives, Religious Right, GLBT Issues, Homophobia, Civil Liberties, Society. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 3 Comments

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    It's a very nice analysis. To boil it down further, I would say there are two main reasons people oppose gay marriage:

    1) Homosexuality just icks them out. I know that sounds stupid, but I think it's true. In the end, they just don't like the idea on an emotional level. This is manifested in all of the things the blog post talks about such as protecting children, homosexuality as disease, etc. But ultimately it's a gut feel that doesn't go away.

    2) A true conservative reaction that isn't in the political sense of the word at all. To many millions allowing people of the same sex to marry sounds like a risky thing to allow. They just want to go slow with this.

    Of course, you will find other reasons out there such as, perhaps, a position on judicial philosophy and governance, but I'd be surprised if such sentiments account for more than 5% of the people.
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    Considering that ProtectMarriage.com has decided NOT to appeal the ballot language, what chance do you really see for Prop 8 to pass? I just don’t see a majority of Californians voting YES on a proposition titled ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY.

    Once the churches realize that Prop 8 is an almost guaranteed loser, are they going to do the right thing and let their members know?

    If not, what happens after Prop 8 loses by 40-60 (or worse), and then the members find out that the church leadership was privy all along to internal polling that predicted a crushing defeat? Do the members get their money back?

    Or do they get stuck paying for ads that were run by a campaign that knew it was going to lose but ran them anyway!
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    The Spiritual Arrogants simply MUST have someone or something to feel morally superior to; otherwise how will they know they are "Good Christians"?

    Intelligent people know that there are NO arguments against Marriage Equality (granting all humans civil marriage) that are rational and independent of religious beliefs. So why is our THEOCRACY in control of Civil Marriage? And why are LGBT Americans taxed by this Theocracy that denies them civil rights? Some of us have had enough, and are protesting our government's immoral, unjust laws against our families. GAY TAX PROTEST
 
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