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Saturday, January 03, 2004
SAYING IT AGAIN: I suppose I've made a career, such as it is, out of saying that marriage is important and that children need fathers. Stephanie Coontz has made a career out of saying that anyone who says what I say is a "conservative" suffering from a mental disability called either "nostalgia" or "wishful thinking." In the Sunday WaPo, answering the editors' question, "What Will Last?", she says it again. P.S. Apart from the fact that we disagree philosophically, I have two basic quarrels with her. The first is her remarkable indifference as to whether what she says is true or not. To her, every fact is a tactic; every statement is spin. Read what she says in this piece about the divorce rate and the proportion of mothers at home with children, and you'll see what I mean. The second is that she never comes clean and simply says what she believes in. Instead, everything is a carom shot. She's not pro-divorce, she's just against the people who worry that the divorce rate is too high. She's not for family fragmentation, she's just a realist who recognizes that "family diversity is here to stay." She's not a socialist who spent years writing for obscure socialist publications, she's just against "conservatives," ... etc., etc. As a result, debating her on substance -- I've tried, more than a few times -- is a complete waste of time. It's like trying to nail a piece of jello to a tree. Friday, January 02, 2004
THE CONSERVATIVE CASE (CONT.): In Dissent, of all places, Murray Hausknecht makes what the editors call "the conservative case for gay marriage." He basically argues that marriage domesticates the male sex drive, which is apparently, in his view, something that keeps "conservatives" up at night. Small, personal quibble: He takes a swipe at me in the piece, implying that I disagree with his thesis that one of the social functions of marriage is to regulate sexual conduct. But I don't disagree at all. Mr. Hausknecht, if you are out there: do you disagree with me that another and related social function of marriage concerns child bearing and child rearing? I'm sure you don't. It's silly to suggest that either of us has to pick one and reject the other, isn't it? "No group ever dined and danced their way to civil equality, however sweet sounding the idea. If we are afraid of the fight ahead, we will not win it." From an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution: "A marriage should be defined as a loving, respectful and faithful commitment between two consenting adults." Right. And New Year's Eve should be defined as a time when people stay up late and drink champagne. And a family should be defined as people who are committed to one another. And the Microsoft Corporation should be defined as people who care about computers. Here we are, in the early stages of what is arguably the most important marriage debate since no-fault divorce, and all of a sudden, when it comes to definitions, it's the silly season. People say the most ridiculous things. This guy even says that marriage "does not require" sexual intercourse. Right. And being the leader of a political party "does not require" that you try get people elected. Whatever you say. Thursday, January 01, 2004
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
DISTINCTIONS (CONT.): Jim Rinnert's essay in In These Times, in which he makes what I think is fair to call a gay case against SSM, caused me to ponder the overall state of gay and lesbian opinion in the U.S. on the issue of SSM. It's something I don't know much about, and I'd be pleased to post comments and analyses. But to start, a couple of thoughts. It should hardly come as a surprise that G/L opinion on this issue is not monolithic. At the same time, if your only source of information was the mainstream press (especially the New York Times) you could certainly be forgiven for believing that almost every G/L person in the country is a strong proponent not just of SSM, but in particular a vocal proponent of what Andrew Sullivan, Jonathan Rausch, and other mainstream-press spokespersons on this issue often call the "conservative" case for SSM. In brief, that case is: We respect and revere traditional marriage as a social institution; we only want that institution broadened in a way that would permit us to be a part of it. I'm not sure what label to give this POV -- for the moment, let's call it "assimilationist," in the sense of, we are normal people who want to be a part of the normal mainstream. A second position is the one spelled out very eloquently by Rinnert. In brief, that case is: We are different and proud of it, and while we demand equal rights, we see no need to mimic or assimilate ourselves into conservatizing, heterosexual institutions such as marriage; we can and should create our own institutions and ways of living. A third position is one put forward very strongly by people such as Nancy Polikoff and William Eskridge. Their position is: achieving SSM is one important step toward the larger goal of "denormalizing" marriage (Eskridge) and/or eliminating marriage altogether as a category in law and public policy (Polikoff). Let's call this position "deconstructionist." Here's my own take on these three positions. I respect and can identify with the assimilationists and have no real quarrel with the counterculturalists. It's the deconstructionists that I view as a clear and present danger. I've had enough dealings with hetero deconstructionists to know the damage that they can, and absolutely intend to, inflict on everything that marriage nuts hold dear. I don't want any more of them than we have already, gay or straight. Plus, I worry that gay marriage deconstructionists, precisely because they will be able publicly to assume the mantle of human rights and anti-homophobia, will be able to do at least as much damage as their straight brothers and sisters. (Also, I notice that quite a few card-carrying deconstructionists are suddenly publicly sounding, as of about five minutes ago, a lot like Ward and June Cleaver -- in other words, a lot like assimilationists -- whenever the topic is (SS!) marriage. And I sense that this way of talking is more strategic than genuine.) Well, who in the G/L community lines up where? And how do these divisions compare with divisions among heterosexuals on this issue? I don't know, but here's a guess. I'd guess that, demographically, the biggest G/L group is assimilationist. I'd also guess that the proportion of all G/L who are counterculturalists is significantly higher than the proportion of all heteros who are counterculturalists. I'd also guess that deconstructionists are a small minority of all G/L, but a very large proportion -- I'd guess a substantial majority -- of G/L who are law professors, cutting-edge theorists and intellectuals, leaders of advocacy organizations, and others who might be called opinion elites. (I'd also say that a great many, but not nearly as high a proportion, of heteros in such positions are also essentially deconstructionists.) Well, even assuming that these categories and estimations are roughly accurate, what does it all mean? Again, I'm not sure. It's worth reminding ourselves that, thank goodness, we don't check the pro-marriage credentials of heteros as group before permitting them to marry. But it may also be worth reminding ourselves that the almost completely homogeneous, white-bread representations on this issue that dominate the mainstream press -- it's so entrenched that Andrew Sullivan now reflexively and flat-out accuses anyone who deviates from the approved position of being a homophobe -- are ... not accurate. Tuesday, December 30, 2003
A GAY CASE AGAINST SSM: From Jim Rinnert in In These Times: The push for gay marriage bothers me in a couple of ways. On one level, it's the problem of the conflict between the two fronts of gay activism: gay liberation and gay rights. These two tendencies were pretty much intertwined from the early days of the sexual revolution through most of the '70s, but by the end of that decade the movement had split. The leather boys, drag queens and bare-chested dykes were at one end of the parade; the political seekers and Dignity members (those craving acceptance by church and state) were at the other. And to gain acceptance, the latter often were all too willing to squelch the exuberance and freedom exhibited by the former. Trish Wilson has been doing some blogging on the new Aussie report on family law reform. (She's even reading the report!) From Robert Samuelson: "The political story of 2003 was, in some ways, the fashionableness of 'hate.'" Overworking in Australia: If parents had the right to return to part-time work following a period of parental leave; had an extension of unpaid parental leave from one to two years; a roster that took family needs in to account or the option of job-sharing or working from home, they might find it easier to manage "the work-life collision" as Barbara Pocock calls it. All these are things that governments can do something about. One of the greatest changes we could make to help people balance work and family is to discourage people from working more than 40 hours a week. "BIRDNESTING": This unusual form of custody is known as "birdnesting" or "nesting," because the kids stay in the nest, while the parents come and go, akin to birds who leave their babies in the nest while the parents gather food. The aim is to give the kids more stability and save them from the wrenching experience of boomeranging between each parent's home. While birdnesting isn't a new concept and is still relatively rare, mediators and divorce attorneys say they are seeing increased interest in the practice. Some courts have even ordered couples feuding over custody to try it. From Mens News Daily: My suggestion to "conservative" (or other) groups that are serious about the defense of marriage is to either support us or get out of the way.Very charming guy. An interesting article on the recent New Jersey Healthy Marriages Summit, criticizing the gathering for being too top-heavy with religious themes and presentations. Getting this balance right -- recognizing that the marriage movement is religiously informed, but is not itself a religious movement, and that it must be open to all, including non-believers -- is very hard, but obviously very important. Monday, December 29, 2003
MORE ON TWO PARENTS VS. MOTHERS AND FATHERS: Mike Pignatello writes: I'd like to explore the issues of adoption and conception a little further because, for those who are fundamentally supportive of equal rights (like Elizabeth, if I may presume!), these issues seem to be the sticking points preventing their support of SSM. I appreciate Elizabeth's comments in support of gay adoption, and I think it's great that many other SSM opponents support gays and lesbians adopting children, particularly when groups like the Family Research Council actively advocate that gays and lesbians should not have the right to be parents at all, for any children whatsoever. My reply: Mike Pignatello is really trying to think this through, as I am really trying to think this through, and I think good things are coming out of it. But his mistake, I think, has not changed. His first posting that I replied to some time ago suggested that if children need "two parents" then a SS couple is just as good as any other kind of couple, and preferable to a single parent. Here, in this posting he says that anti-SSM folks want children to have two parents of the opposite sex, so how can someone support SS adoption but not SS couples using radical reproductive technologies to conceive children, since both deny children opposite sex parents. Some do argue that opposite sex parenting is the heart of the problem, but it is not my argument. My argument is that children need not just any "two parents," or any two parents of the opposite sex, but specifically their mother and their father, the two biological creators who children look to for the most basic and fundamental questions of their own identity. Adopted children have already been abandoned by those parents and need loving homes. This is why I welcome the prospect of gay and straight couples adopting children. But in a world of many fatherless or, increasingly, motherless children, we do not need to have children intentionally created fatherless or motherless by the use of radical reproductive technologies. I don't know if SSM would actually increase the number of SS couples using these technologies. It probably would, but what is more important is that SSM would fully normalize the use of these technologies. In the public square we would be unable to debate or even question these technologies because they would be the only way legally married SS couples could have their "own" children. Yet normalizing the use of radical reproductive technologies to facilitate the new norm of married SS couples is not even my biggest fear. My biggest fear, the one that seems likely to affect many more children, is that a new norm of SS married parenting would reinforce the idea that children in general - whether born of straights or gays - do not need their own mother and father. When SSM becomes a new norm, those of us who advocate, for instance, for children of divorced or single parents will be challenged by people who argue, "Well, children of same sex couples don’t grow up with their father or mother either. Are you saying there is something wrong with them?" Those who suggest that children need their mother and father will be charged with homosexual bigotry; indeed in the current debate at times we already have been. And because most people fear the charge of bigotry (myself included), in silent deference to the marriage rights of gays and lesbians more and more people will avoid saying boldly what used to be a simple proposition - that children need their father and mother. Meanwhile, children who lack their father or mother will continue grappling with a painful and mysterious identity quest, trying to figure out who they are and where they come from, and forever wondering if some significant answers to those questions lay lost with a parent who conceived them long ago. They will struggle and we - our laws, our norms - will have nothing to say in support of their struggle. Instead, we will be silent and leave another generation of children, born of yet another family revolution, to figure out the ramifications of widespread family experimentation alone. The federal government in Australia has released a new report, Every Picture Tells a Story, with recommendations for changes in family law. Here and here are articles on the report. From Florida: Floridians who are the least lucky in love are the ones most likely to yearn for it, according to a first-of-its-kind marriage and relationship survey recently released by the University of Florida. The Family Formation in Florida Survey included responses from 4,500 Floridians interviewed between July and November. The study was commissioned by the state to determine how Florida residents feel about marriage and the government's role in strengthening marriage bonds. DISTINCTIONS (CONT.): I can't let go of this issue of the "sanctity" of marriage. Today the New York Post has a story with the headline: "MARRIAGE IS GOD'S GIFT: POPE." The reporter says: John Paul said marriage, which the Vatican defines as a sacred union between man and woman, is a "divine" gift that should be defended by society.Actually, the Pope said no such thing. What he actually said is that marriage is a "human and divine reality" and a "human and divine gift." That formulation, which the Post apparently feels free to abbreviate, is precisely accurate. For people of faith, marriage has an important religious dimension. At the same time, marriage for all people is -- first and foremost; notice which word the pope uses first -- a "human" reality. Unlike some of the journalists at the New York Post and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, this pope is a serious thinker, including about the subject of marriage, who uses words carefully. So the next time someone wants to say that marriage is essentially a "religious" issue, you can say: Well, for what it's worth, the pope disagrees. DISTINCTIONS: In the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the editors are pro-SSM and against a federal marriage amendment, in part, they say, on the grounds that people who oppose SSM do so for "religious"reasons, which is a no-no in a society where the Constitution mandates the separation of church and state. They are particulary irritated by President Bush's and others' use of the word "sanctity." About the marriage amendment, they write: The only other amendment to the Constitution that addressed a similar cultural issue -- and which took away rights rather than conferred them -- outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages, otherwise known as Prohibition. That proved such a miserable mistake that it had to be repealed a few years later. The same fate would probably befall an amendment that addressed the cultural and religious meaning of what is essentially a legal contract between two people "sanctified" by religious ceremony.Two quick points. I agree that invoking the "sanctity" of marriage in this context is not a good idea -- I try to say why here. But one of the main reasons why I think that the "sanctity" language is unwise is precisely because it can lead to the kind of confusion that we see in this AJC editorial. It is simply not true -- historically, analytically, philosophically -- that the heterosexuality of marriage is a "religious" construction or imposition, any more than marriage itself (seen as anything other than "a legal contract between two people") is something that was created by religion. And of course it's wildly reductionist to define marriage as "a contract between two people." For goodness sake, if that's what marriage is, I am married to my landlord. Whatever our view on SSM, can't we at least get the basic definitions and concepts right? Sunday, December 28, 2003
In the WaPo, David Moats has an op-ed consistently implying that the people who disagree with him on SSM and civil unions are wacked-out right-wing homophobes. How charming: shrill self-righteousness, anchored in the sure conviction that people who disagree with you are Evil. "WHINING?": A new study, reported in the WaPo, says that women employees complain more about being stressed out than men do, even if the hours of work are the same. The story talks somewhat ridiculously about the "whining gap," when in fact it seems obvious, to me at least, that working mothers tend to feel more responsible for child care and home management than do working fathers, which would largely explain the stress/complaining gap. I saw this fact all the time when I was studying fathers. When fathers are at work, they basically think that by working they are being good fathers. They don't feel conflicted about it, and it helps them be compartmentalized and single-minded. Whereas working mothers tend to worry much more when at work about what is happening to the children (and tend to manage and do more for children while at work), and therefore are much more likely to experience what sociologists would call "role strain." Almost no one who studies this phenomenon likes it one little bit. Most family scholars strongly wish that "working fathers" (notice that the phrase itself sounds a bit off) would feel just as much role strain as do working mothers. But most, don't. To me, that essentially explains this study's main finding. Forget the patronizing stuff about "whining." I can't believe that Richard Morin, the reporter, even said it. |
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