What I Give Up, What Straight People Give Up

[eredien]

I was talking with autumnesquirrel and raxvulpine this weekend about how I wished my journal had more in-depth conversations and commentary on things I cared about.

And then I realized I could just post about things intstead of expecting them to spring up from spontaneous generation (Theory disproved c. 1500, but I apparently just got the update).

--
I was driving home from the doctor's in the car tonight; the song "L.E.S. Artistes" by Santogold came on the radio. I hadn't heard it before, so I really listened to it. Then the chorus hit, and I decided to look up the lyrics when I got home because the post I'd been meaning to write about civil unions vs. marriages for gay people had been crystallized.

(The song is better with music, but I found the music video on Youtube both boring and disturbing, so I've decided not to post anything but the lyrics here; if you want to hear the music you know where Google is. (I think it would be great to try and mix this with David Bowie's "Changes," toward the end.))

The chorus:
I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up
If I could stand up mean for the things that I believe

Last week, I was reading a lot of opions and editorials about the California gay marriage case. I found Marriage Partners by Kenji Yoshino [originally in the NY Times] to be both interesting and disturbing.

In it, Yoshino points out that often the rights of those outside of mainstream society get secured when those in mainstream society see something in it for them, and step into the debate with something at stake.
He posits that straight people are having a hard time finding what's in gay marriage for them, because of the way the debate has been framed.
Many straight people may want to support gay friends or family members, but even those straight people who feel a deep solidarity with the cause of gay marriage probably won't stop getting married--or give up the benefits and social recognition that go along with marriage--to prove a point about a friend. And what about those who don't have any gay friends or relatives, or don't care about those they might have? An already tenuous argument is then made nearly unapplicable.

Yoshino then posits a solution which could make people more emphatic, which I find to be a fascinating, and possibly even more Christian, way of looking at the problem:

What if, after getting engaged but before getting married, straight couples entered “marriage lite” arrangements akin to those available to gay couples in the state in which they marry? [...] The Temporary Domestic Partnership Strategy asks straights to cross over, in a limited way, from sympathy (pity for the plight of others) to empathy (direct experience of that plight). It seems plausible that if a straight couple experienced a temporary domestic partnership even briefly, they would have a more visceral sense of why gays need the right to marry. [...] These couples would experience the importance of the word “marriage” when confronted with the question of their marital status in the myriad places that question is posed.

In theory, this looks great: people in states such as Massachusetts or California could just get married so there would be more incentive for states to enable gay marriage laws on behalf of both straights and gays; straight people in non gay-marriage states learn empathy and are educated by it; no one would be forced to give up any rights (denying marriage rights to everyone, another proposed solution, seems to be trying to shrug off 1000+ years of European history and philosophy in one go, good luck with that); and everyone will gather to hold hands and sing.

Yes. Well.

Here's the disturbing part:

Perhaps most important, the exercise would underscore the universality of the marriage right by demonstrating how much human flourishing is enabled by the right and how much is impeded by its denial. As many gay rights advocates have claimed, the issue is less one of gay equality than of individual liberty....

I think Yoshino's heart is in the right place, and I agree that the issue is about individual liberty (can I marry whom I choose, or or others allowed to forbid me from it?) more than gay rights. And he's got his facts right--there is so much impeded by the denial of that right.

But I think he's missing the point: for those who truly believe that gay marriage is wrong, they believe it's correct, even necessary, to deny those rights, to impede that progress.
Experiencing those impediments and denials firsthand won't necessarily get those folks to change their mind; rather, it may entrench them deeper in their beliefs. A Temporary Domestic Partner arrangement, for such people, would make most of them rather less emphatic. It would be viewed as a strategy to get people who don't have personal connections to the issue to subscribe to an agenda they can't and/or won't believe in, a trial to be endured until it is over. It is a great way to make people resentful.

And--here's the other flaw--for straight people, it will eventually be over. They can get married, and they will. They will go about the lives--albeit delayed--they would have had otherwise, and they will be more hardened against people they may not even know for it.

Not all straight people would become angry; doubtless many would open up their hearts. We can hope for a better world. But the other straight people would know firsthand exactly how much power came from being able to have something that a second-class gay citizenry could not, and would believe it was correct to keep that power.

There's nothing in the proposal to ensure that the temporary domestic partnerships strategy would eventually lead to permanent marriages for both gays and straights, because empathy can't be government-enforced; change will only happen in the hearts and minds of those who are already willing and ready for change.

How can Yoshino think that that group of straight people--people already too afraid to entertain the thought that they might have a personal stake in the matter, people already coming from a position of power in Eurocentric tradition and history, people already believing that denying rights to gays is a correct or even divinely endorsed path--could view the Temporary Domestic Partnership as anything other than another reason to deny marriage to gays?
Wouldn't many use their firsthand knowledge of domestic partnerships as a rationale to argue that gays shouldn't have marriage, to argue that roadblocks ought to be there?
Arguably worse could be the false show of empathy, the "Let me show you how much I really felt" model: 'I went through the civil union period too; it wasn't that bad. Except for the time Bob was in the hospital and I couldn't visit. But Bob and I are past that now. No, I can't let you in to see her, just the doctors; it's the law. Tissue?')

Who's to say that the Temporary Domestic Partnerships law wouldn't make people who were already foes of gay marriage even more determined to deliberately engineer laws such that domestic partnerships would be the best option gay people might have (though not hope for)?

And here's where the song comes back in:
The Temporary Domestic Partnership model, however well-intentioned, is dangerously unbalanced.
"What I give up," potentially: the right to marry who I choose.
What straight people give up, potentially: a short time of legal conveniences, societal endorsements, and tax benefits, before those are granted anyway with marriage.

And we gay people would just have to hope it would be worth it to give that up.

Comments

[silussa.livejournal.com]

I recall advocating in one political simulation moving EVERYONE to "civil union", while continuing to recognize religious marriages as a form of same, th us separating the religious and legal/contract aspects.

Nobody, it seemed, liked the idea.

A substantial number of those opposed to "gay marriage", apparently, don't want ANY legitimization of a same-sex couple.

A substantial number of those on the other side of the argument DEMAND "marriage" in the title, no matter how meaningless it may become from a rights perspective.

I don't expect to see this resolve anytime soon, as there are simply too many people on both sides of the argument who are not going to yield one inch of ground, no matter how much they may gain in return.

[eredien]

Hm. Silussa, was that a computer simulation or some kind of controlled experiment?

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

How does he explain the legalization of mixed-race marriages? That wasn't a right the mainstream wanted.

While he's right that a lot of people don't see what the big deal about marriage is, and don't understand what a person loses when they can't get married, those people aren't the main opposition. The main opposition places great value on marriage. They treasure it, cherish it, and don't want any of the icky gays gettin' in on it. Showing them how awesome it is (in some retarded social-engineering way) won't help anything.

A lot of people seem to think that if a change does not happen immediately, if it's not accepted by everyone, then it's not a true, lasting change. I think those people really like SCOTUS decisions. But they're misreading history. Gay marriage is coming; civil unions won't cut it, I think, because early states have rejected it (vermont notwithstanding; california matters more). It'll probably take a generation or so. A bunch of states will perform them, some more will recognize them, and the tension will rise until finally it resolves and the country goes back to more or less unity on the issue. When that happens, the country doesn't bounce back to less rights. It'll take a lot of work, and it's also kind of inevitable.

Cold comfort to gay people in Alabama, though.

I also think the massive PITA of bureaucracies managing so many different rules about who's really married and so on will be telling.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

How does he explain the legalization of mixed-race marriages? That wasn't a right the mainstream wanted.

That's a really good point.

I rather agree with Hoshino that the majority must have some reason to want to grant rights to the minority; I rather agree with you, eredien that the way he proposed wouldn't work. And I find myelf rather wanting to read more books about white people during the civil rights movement, men during the Suffrage movement, etc. Because I think we could learn a lot from that.

Because contrary to Hoshino, at the moment, the way I see gay marriage working is that gays want it REALLY A LOT, and most straight people don't care all that much one way or the other. This is definitely what I see in Massachusetts. Some very liberal straight people want gay marriage because that's the kind of social justice they believe in-- but most of the conservative people who aren't opposed to it say, "Well, it's not what I do, and I don't think it's morally right, but I know some nice gay people, and they do seem to want it awfully a lot, and it isn't my or the government's business to interfere with people's lives. I don't believe that the government should be able to do that." Which is a thoroughly respectable conservative position, in my opinion. So I think that for those people, Hoshino's idea of temporarily inflicting domestic partnership would turn them right off the whole thing. I think.

Interesting post. Write more of these!

[friode.livejournal.com]

I can think of people living together in straight relationships who aren't married. This makes me think that there are plenty of straight people who would not be bothered if you took marriage away from them.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I have a coherent response to this, which is a sure sign that it's an interesting question.

My first reaction: It seems rather more likely that gay marriage will simply continue to spread, eventually engulfing most or all of the "liberal democracies", than it does that a significant number of straight people will try the self-denying option of a temporary legally-restricted civil partnership. This is a hair-shirt move and hair-shirts just aren't very popular. Whether they should be or not is a different question, but most people don't make this kind of very explicit choice to have less rights. (Many of them choose to imprison themselves in economic or romantic relationships that end up depriving them of such rights, but they don't enter into it with that idea in mind.) I think this is both a strength and a weakness of the postmodern west; we refuse to deny ourselves things, even as many of us are quite willing to deny others things. The support for the invasion of Iraq is another great example; a majority of people were in favor of denying American troops and Iraqi civilians a great many things, despite or more likely because of not knowing anyone in either group.

My second reaction is that we are already in the process of "shrugging off 1000+ years of European history". We haven't thrown away the institution of marriage (as I'd like us to, honestly) but we have certainly reshaped it until it would no longer be recognized by anyone who practiced it a thousand years ago. About the only thing that remains is that it generally involves a man and a woman, and that they generally cohabit. The ideas that marriage is about romance (near total acceptance), that divorce is acceptable and sometimes even desirable (near total acceptance), that it is an agreement between equals (slim majority acceptance) -- I don't have to tell you that these are modern ideas. The last one especially is rather radical, and the trappings that surround the institution are only slowly coming around to accommodate what is an established reality for most marriages. With this in mind, it seems very likely to me that gay marriage will continue to advance, because it's not as radical as some past advances, although it does force the society that adapts it to swallow a big gulp of change all at once, rather than a slow trickle.

And then, my third reaction is that the fragmented state of "marriage" as people understand it is a result of the fragmented state of western culture in general. Once things were fairly clear and everyone agreed on the key issues, and if anyone espoused an opinion too far outside the norm, they were punished until they changed their minds or simply shut up. Over time this cozy homogeneity, and the mechanisms for enforcing it, eroded, and people had more freedom but less certainty. Most people seem to like it that way, but there are large sections of western, particularly American, society that want nothing more than to retreat to the certainties of the past. They turn their backs on feminism, gay rights, sometimes even racial equality (although usually not, it's worth noting, on DVD players). Nothing is going to sway these people on the stuff they consider anathema, and over time, I think they will seek more of their own, in the same way that a gay teenager in Alabama ends up seeking his or her own, and moving to someplace more accepting. These people want out of the modernist project and ultimately they'll have their way to whatever extent they're willing to suffer the consequences. And the modernist project will go on without them -- assuming it can continue to paper over its own inherent contradictions.

[davidglasser.livejournal.com]

I feel like I'm totally missing something in the original article. Is it just supposed to be some sort of gedankenexperiment? As far as I can tell, it's suggesting one of two things. Either he wants there to be a law enforcing this TDP period before marriage, or he wants individual couples to choose to do this TDP themselves.

In the former case, the idea that a government that isn't ready to just do the simpler and more called-for choice of just adopting gay marriage isn't going to go and put this weird new law that only has negative effects in place. No government is going to pass a law with the point to educate citizens about why a different law would be better!

And in the latter case, the only couples that would choose to do some gay-marriage-empathy-education step would be those who already support gay marriage.

So, um, what am I missing?

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

That was kind of my reaction. I know of straight couples who aren't getting married out of solidarity with gay couples who can't. But that sort of protest isn't actually going be even noticed unless there are a *lot* of people doing it, and at that point there will be enough of them that they can just go ahead and get their states and/or the federal government to legalize gay marriage already.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

There is no replacement nor substitute for marriage that will have the legal power marriage has received since English Canon Law. A civil union is more difficult to dissolve (which makes divorce very difficult) and does not guarantee the same protections a married couple gets. A civil union isn't even second place: it's bondage without the safe word.

The most compelling ways to sell gay marriage to the rest of America involve comparing anti-gay-marriage laws to the old miscegenation laws and throwing the "two parents" argument back in the faces of those that scream against children out of wedlock and against divorce. None of this is grand logic, but the people arguing the most about marriage being "one man and one woman" are not thinking rationally. They're thinking: "Only white folks deserve my sanctimonious concept of marriage and why can't we just deport anyone I don't like and...".

Perhaps it's time for another tactic: make marriage look boring, since really it is. Have ads where two women or two men have a grumbling time in public or any other normal married spat. Then shave the narrator say "It's just like your life. Why deny anyone the chance to be annoyed with one's spouse?"

I'm immensely in favor of gay marriage. Unfortunately, I'm seriously unsure whether I'd want to get married to a man or a woman. The battle has given marriage a patina. Meanwhile, it's an expensive way to prove you'd be willing to accept someone else's debts. Why should I ruin my credit rating just to prove I love someone? That sounds like a drunken dare.

There are positive sides to marriage. Everyone of legal age should be able to marry anyone else of legal age other than blood relatives. The blood relatives portion is important: marrying into your own family, even without breeding, is a way to avoid inheritance taxes.

[davidglasser.livejournal.com]

Re: divorce, a state senator in PA (Vince Fumo, not usually my favorite Philly politician) used an excellent tactic a month ago. He proposed an amendment to an anti-marriage amendment that would also ban no-cause divorce (and generally, divorce in all but a few circumstances). While obviously that amendment would have failed, it would have needed to be debated, and the right-wingers pushing the main marriage amendment were not really interested in standing up in the state house and arguing that divorce was less of a threat to marriage than gay marriage; last I heard, the original amendment died without a vote.

http://www.fumo.com/Press_Releases/GayMarriageDivorce5-6-08.htm (the last sentence is priceless)

(See also http://www.fumo.com/Press_Releases/GayFamilyRally5-5-08.htm . "Today, we are all homosexuals. You, me, every legislator, every staff member, every visitor to this Capitol, is gay. Because we are all Americans.")

[sternbunny.livejournal.com]

I think that another argument against the TDP having success is that the people who are so hardcore set against gay marriage are also frothy about living together before marriage. You'd have to have some sort of...housekeeper/chaperon to make sure there was no hanky panky. And how do you build a future marriage that way?

Beth

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Neither. This was an online simulation/quasi-game which allowed the players to simulate being political figures in the Federal Government.

The original attempt (successful) to get the idea passed as legislation in the simulation's California was successful. At which point, you'd have thought from the reaction of other players that California had declared war on Texas, or something.

Nobody, and nothing that I'm aware of besides their own views, prompted the reaction both ways.

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of the book Gay Marriage (http://books.google.com/books?id=kp6rA_wbWy0C&dq=same+sex+marriage+good+for+america&psp=1&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0) by Jonathan Rauch, which offers what is essentially a conservative argument in favor of same-sex marriage. His thesis is that couples making a commitment and taking responsibility for one another in the way that is both socially signaled and legally implemented by marriage is good for society, and is therefore something which society should expect of people, including people who choose a partner of the same sex.

As he points out, the idea that people who want to live together and (particularly) raise a family ought to get married is slowly eroding, and if the conservatives want to save it, their only hope is to legalize same-sex marriage as soon as possible.

[baxil.livejournal.com]

I really like this. It cuts open the ball of fears around the debate and forces the anti-marriage forces to actually defend their stated positions.

It's a shame something like this isn't possible with, for example, the California amendment on the ballot.

[blushingflower.livejournal.com]

The only reasons anyone should need to support gay marriage are these:
"right is of no sex, and truth is of no color. God is the father of us all, and all are brethern."
and
"where a wrong is done to one man, it is done to all men."
Injustice for one is injustice for all, and I want to live in a country where everyone receives equal treatment under the law, regardless of how that hurts or helps me, personally.

[eredien]

Do you have a link to that?

[eredien]

How do these two sentences follow from each other, friode? I don't see the connection.

straight people who are not married don't equal straight people who are married, who very well might make some kind of outcry.

[eredien]

You can do it. I know of several couples who've done it. But it's not the path I chose.

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, no. This was about two years ago; the game itself is now defunct, due to player-admin conflict. (not as uncommon as one might think, sad to say)

[sternbunny.livejournal.com]

Wow, a chaperon...that's interesting. I don't think I could handle it. It was enough with my little brother living with me for a while while I was dating.

Beth

[eredien]

Oh! I misread. Didn't mean a chaperone--just meaning a lot of people who don't want to live together before marriage.