Entry tags:

gender, politics

The liberal case against gay marriage
Susan M Shell's The liberal case against gay marriage is the best example I've seen yet of an argument against gay marriage that doesn't appeal to religion or overt homophobia. Unfortunately, I find it rather a weak argument, full of unsupported assertions, question-begging and rhetorical flourishes that, although entertaining, do nothing to prove her case.

I'm not going to reproduce the whole essay here, but I encourage you to read it before you read this series of essays.

The liberal case against gay marriage opens with descriptions of the two main factions in the debate over same-sex marriage. The first, according to Ms Shell, is largely a traditional Christian one, promoting an ideal of the monogamous heterosexual familial relationship; the second a "liberationist" one, seeking freedom from all rules in order to pursue happiness.

I find this division unhelpful because of what it excludes. Although it's true that both factions have a voice in the debate, there's a third faction, ignored by this model, that is at least as vocal as either of the first two: those who believe that marriage is and should be the cornerstone of family and society and go on to reason that it shouldn't be denied to committed same-sex couples, especially those raising children together. We - I count myself among this faction - consider the marriage of a same-sex couple on the same terms as the marriage of an opposite-sex couple: a public declaration of the bond between them to strengthen that relationship in the eyes of society and the law.

The debate can better be considered in terms of a conflict between those who believe that biological sex determines or should determine a person's role in life and those who reject that contention. Opposition to same-sex marriage frequently includes an overt or implied appeal to the importance of traditional gender roles: that children need mothers and fathers, for example, or that sterile heterosexual couples are promoting the ideal of sexual complementarity.

This classification, much more than Ms Shell's model, includes most of the main voices in the debate. Someone who believes gender roles should be fixed is unlikely to see SSM as anything more than a politically correct word trick; someone who subscribes to the traditional Christian ideal of the family may well concede that a gay couple should have their family recognised.

Having defined two factions that don't sum up the whole debate, Ms Shell then seeks a compromise between the two poles, "[an] approach that is fair to both". She refers to liberal thinkers such as Locke, who considered marriage as "a contractual arrangement between two individuals for the sake of mutual advantage and the generation and rearing of children". Apparently, that one word "generation", literally construed, is more important than the rest of the concept of what marriage is; otherwise extending this concept to include arrangements between two individuals of the same sex would cause no difficulty.

Ms Shell then notes that

The question is complicated by a common, relatively recent view that … all forms of family life are to be celebrated equally as products of individual choice, at least so long as they make people happy.

I'm not sure what "relatively recent" means, but the idea that where there is love and mutual support there is a family, regardless of blood ties, is hardly a new one. All cultures have stories celebrating adoption as a way to give children to the childless and provide for those who would otherwise starve. The first example that springs to mind is The Caucasian Chalk Circle, based on the story of the judgement of Solomon, in which a child's parentage is under dispute and the woman willing to sacrifice her own happiness in the child's best interests is declared the mother.

In the same paragraph, we read of the "liberal presumption in favour of allowing people to define marriage however they choose" - a subtle straw man. Few advocates of SSM believe that the marriage laws should be suspended and everyone should be allowed to make up their own rules. On the contrary, many of us have described again and again the ways in which formalised marriage strengthens both the couple involved and the wider society. Married couples have great freedom to define their marriage how they choose, but the rights and responsibilities associated with marriage as an institution remain fixed by the government.

We look, not to abolish marriage or even to redefine it so radically as to make it unrecognisable, but simply to interpret it in an even-handed way that makes sense in today's world. When men and women were considered as so different that one could be the property of the other, it made sense to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Now that views of gender have changed, it need no longer be a given.

Ms Shell concludes her introduction by asking what justification there is for restricting this freedom to define marriage other than favouring one particular religious norm. The answer, she promises, can be found in an examination of marriage "as it has been understood and practiced almost universally". Examining marriage with a different set of presumptions, I have indeed come to an answer, but it's rather different from hers.

On to part two