Comments Elsewhere

Jason:

Indeed I am. If government did not exist, marriage still would exist. Marriage would still exist at least so long as two people promised one another (and their God(s) and communities) that they would care for one another no matter what, that they would help one another through good times and bad, and that they would forsake all others.

Fair enough; that’s not how I use the word “marriage,” but if that’s how you intend to use the term, and use it consistently that way, then you’ve probably got a linguistic right to it. However, it does seem that this complicates the argumentative ground between you and, for example, Rauch. I haven’t read Rauch’s book, but I have read previous articles, and from those and from the passage on political strategy that you cite, it seems pretty clear that he’s claiming that gay marriage is something that doesn’t yet exist in most of the United States, that ought to be brought into existence by means of democratic political processes. If that’s his conclusion, then he and you might just be using the word “marriage” in two different ways.

Just as a side note, do you take a vow to forsake all others to be essential to a marital relationship? If so, aren’t you defining (open) polygamy out of existence?

To the extent that certain third parties decline to recognize my marriage, they are thwarting my pursuit of happiness, and they are frustrating the very purpose for which I appointed them, and for which I pay their salaries.

I think this is a very romanticized picture of what government officials do and how they are selected and paid. I’m not sure you ought to hinge your case for the requirement on it. In any case, though, the point again is that this seems to complicate the question of where the debate between you and Rauch lies. It’s not that you disagree that third parties ought to be required to recognize the union, apparently; it’s that you disagree over which third parties ought to be required (or, better, in which roles third parties ought to be required) to recognize it.

In these senses, I think Nancy gets things just about right, particularly in the last paragraph. It would be a just and equitable solution for the government to offer civil union contracts to all, but it would not be a practical one. Shame that it isn’t, though, as the word marriage so often has such strongly religious overtones that it leads us into trouble.

My suspicion is that many people tend to react much more positively to legal recognition of family rights within queer relationships much better in particular cases than they do to the abstract question of “gay marriage;” for example, that even many overt bigots who spit fire at the notion of “gay marriage” would object to a court invalidating your will and giving all your effects to your sibling or third cousin or whatever rather than giving them to your spouse. (Similarly denying your spouse the right to act on your behalf in medical decisions.) So why not skip straight over civil unions, even, and simply eliminate “marriage” as a legally recognized category altogether, i.e., to simply devolve the legitimate issues you cite to family law, to be decided case-by-case. This has the advantage of shifting the fight to the terrain on which you’re strongest; it also has the advantage of offering a nice rhetorical strategy for both pro-SSM camp (“eliminate heterosexist privilege! put all families on an equal footing!”) and the anti-SSM camp (“take marriage out of the hands of the judicial activists! let the churches define marriage for themselves!”)