It is opinions like those expressed in this article that make my blood boil. Herein, a small-time writer from SoCal says that he has apparently reached “a point of annoyance” with the gay rights movement’s assertion that equal marriage is a civil rights issue. He suggests that the movement switch to a different argument to try to win hearts and minds—but then makes no constructive suggestions about what type of argument would win over those against gay marriage.
So, if the civil rights argument is not working, what will? Should we argue that greater legal acceptance of gay people would create a more fashionable society? Or perhaps the ever famous “when the gays moved in, the neighborhood became so nice” so let’s allow them to get married so that they will buy condos together and our presently crime-blighted neighborhood will become beautiful and full of wonderful dining options would be more effective? Hey, it worked in the South End.
But while both of these arguments may actually be true, this is first and foremost a civil rights issue. While the writing is not supreme, the Metro Newspaper has been running a series this week on gay marriage. Today’s paper showcased three couples with different issues contributing to their desire to be married. One story was about two women who never understood the importance that all of their gay friends placed on marriage. Then one of the women died. The other was denied the right to visit the body before it was cremated and their child was denied his legal mother’s Social Security benefits due to the Federal DOMA. Another story was about a New Yorker and his long-term boyfriend, who happens to be from Taiwan. The Taiwanese boyfriend faces the fear of deportation if he cannot hold down a steady job, which is far from easy in the current economic crisis. Yet, despite the fact that they could be married in Connecticut, Massachusetts, et c. it wouldn’t really matter. The Federal DOMA forbids the USCIS from allowing the New Yorker to sponsor his Taiwanese boyfriend for a green card. Yet a generic straight American man that meets a generic straight Chinese woman on a Tuesday could marry her Wednesday and sponsor her application for a green card on Thursday. The disparity hardly seems fair.
Yet this author chooses to justify this discriminatory treatment on the basis of biology. Man and woman were created to go together and procreate, he says. But, in the eyes of the article’s author, if the only reason that the New Yorker cannot marry his partner is because of the biological inability to procreate, then he really should be out there on the picket line protesting “infertile marriage”. Yes, infertile men and women should not be allowed to marry because it is “turn[ing] an age-old institution and the socio-cultural context in which it exists up on its head.” After all, the only societal purpose that marriage serves is the proliferation of our species (which, with only 7 billion people, clearly needs even more population). Sucks when your own words can be used against you. And if your more generic argument is that gay marriage is simply unnatural due to biology then you should sponsor a campaign against plastic surgery. And if you are so worried about threats due to the modernizing of an age-old institution, then what you should do is move to ban divorce, re-illegalize miscegenation (which was never allowed before a few decades ago), or make women chattel once again (they were historically property in marriage).
The author complains that opponents of gay marriage that cannot really provide more than monosyllabic explanations of why they oppose the practice are labelled as “ignorant.” But maybe just maybe, if all of your arguments have extremely compelling counterarguments, you need to just accept the fact that you may be pretty ignorant after all.
