In today’s NYTs “On Religion” column, Sam Freedman tells the story of Ray Boltz, the 50-something year old pop star Christian singer and long-time married father who, a couple of years ago, came out as a gay man. Now Boltz has a new life, and a new CD fearturing a song in support of same-sex marriage.  The song is called “Don’t tell me who to love.” That title got me curious, so I looked up the song, listened to it a few times, and spent the morning thinking about it.  The chorus says:
Don’t tell me who to love, don’t tell me who to kiss
Don’t tell me that there’s something wrong because I feel like this
I know what’s in my heart, that should be enough
Don’t tell me, don’t tell me no, don’t tell me who to love
I agree that no one out there in society, me included, should tell Ray Boltz who to love. As he says, what’s in your heart is what matter most, when it comes to who you love.Â
But is that the only — is that even the main — point, when it comes to marriage? Mr. Boltz certainly seems to think so.  His argument is crystal clear. No one should tell me who to love. Marriage is society’s recognition of love.  Therefore, no one should tell me who to marry. I think that Mr. Boltz is (now) rock-solid certain on this point – and of course, he ain’t the only one who thinks about it this way!
But I don’t think about it this way.  I don’t think that marriage as a human and social institution can be accurately understood as society’s recognition of love, or, to put it negatively, as society’s way of saying that you get to love whoever you want. To me, and I think to many people who support gay rights but oppose gay marriage, society has no business telling Ray Boltz who he can kiss; but there is, apart from that question, what lawyers call a state interest in recognizing and to some degree regulating male-female pair-bonding, primarily because such bonds typically produce children and collectively produce (nearly) all of society’s children. Â
The argument itself is long, and each point in it is certainly debatable, but my only real point today, regarding Ray Boltz’s plea, is that there is at least arguably a difference between telling him who to love and telling him the conditions under which he can participate in the social institution called marriage — even if he and many others insist that there is no difference at all.
Categories: General
I agree David. I support civil unions (with all the benefits of married couples) but not gay marriages – at least not yet. Sometimes I feel like a walking contradiction yet, in my mind, marriage by definition is between a man and a woman with the possible (likely probable) purpose of creating little people. So Mr. Boltz can love all he wants with whomever he wants but when it comes to marriage….there is a difference.
When I stumbled on Alex Jones’ broadcast of your take on gay marriage, I immediately re-posted it on my facebook. I loved the way you articulated the rights of children and the purpose of marriage.
Because of my upbringing in San Francisco, I got a lot of hate message from old friends who couldn’t believe I would oppose gay marriage.
They’ve “never been more offended in [their] life”
But those friends had the privilege of a father and a mother. that they grew up with. that they knew and were cared for by.
there are really not enough donor kid stories out there and ‘children of gay parents’ stories out there in this debate. people forget that kids grow up into adults.
[...] David’s post, below, is evocative, beautiful, makes you think. And a few short words leapt out at me. He referred to “those who support gay rights but oppose gay marriage.” [...]
Yay! The FS blog is back! Hi Elizabeth and David!
Lee, I think there is an easy, logical and practical way to avoid that contradiction: by defining Civil Unions as being exactly like marriage but lacking the right to conceive children together, to create genetic offspring using the couple’s own genes. People should simply not have the same right to reproduce with either sex, we should only have a right to reproduce with someone of the other sex, and be prohibited from attempting to reproduce with someone of the same sex, using any sort of lab-facilitated method to create “female sperm” or “male eggs”.
My argument must be very familiar to Elizabeth and David, I hope (and I hope avoiding it wasn’t the reason the blog closed comments down for so long). It’s called The Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise and it is composed of three federal laws to be enacted together:
1) Stop genetic engineering by limiting conception of children to the union of a man and a woman’s sperm and egg.
2) Federally recognize state civil unions that are exactly like marriages but do not grant conception rights.
3) Affirm in federal law the right of all marriages to conceive children together using their own gametes.
With those CU’s, Mr Boltz here can love whoever he wants and have equal protections, but he should not be allowed to conceive biological offspring with another man. This way he could be prohibited from procreating with his spouse, without stripping the right to procreate from marriage.
Hey John!