Same-Sex Marriage

So I was driving my son to school today, and we were listening to Stephanie Miller on the radio. And this caller came on the line who was complaining that Stephanie's show spent "way too much time on gay marriage any more". He told her she needed to understand that if gay marriage was going to be legalized, a whole lot of other things would need to be legalized too, such as polygamy, and marriages between men and dogs. So Steph and her co-hosts responded in the standard way that most people do respond to this allegation, which was to pooh-pooh this argument. The argument was just silliness, they said, nobody was stepping up in favor of bestiality or pedophile marriages. And then they made some jokes about New Coke and marriage being a brand, that were moderately funny.

But they left me kind of unsatisfied. It seemed like there was a flaw to the logic there. And I found myself wondering, well now, what if in the push for marriage equality, someone did step up and demand the right to marry their dog (or, as in, say, Korea, their pillow)? Aren't there better arguments out there besides just, "well, nobody wants that to happen"?


So I went back to the original source of the whole man-on-dog argument, Senator Rick Santorum (and I include the link to his name, not because I think there is anybody left in the world who doesn't know of the Senator's other life as an internet meme, but just to do my part and make sure it always stays at the top of the Google search list), just to see what point it was exactly, that he was making. Here's what he said:

Santorum: "Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality" --

Here, the AP reporter got a little uncomfortable, and interjected:

AP: I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out."

You can kind of understand, can't you? The examples he uses are outrageous, offensive to just about anyone. They don't sound like they belong in a discussion about ordinary, regular same-sex couples possibly getting married, to most of us. But to social conservatives like Santorum, it is their outrageousness that is the point. Essentially this is what Santorum is saying: Personally, I do not mind if people engage in disgusting, gross perversions such as bestiality, pedophilia, or, *shudder* even homosexuality, as long as they keep it behind closed doors. But marriage is about keeping society stable, and when two gross, disgusting creepazoids get married, that makes society less stable, not more so. There are two things wrong with this argument:

Number one of course, is that the judgment of what is or is not disgusting, is a subjective one. Leaving sexual fantasies and fetishes aside, isn't most sex kind of disgusting if you're an outsider watching? Aren't all bodily functions, for that matter? Think about eating. Really think about it, picture the teeth, coated with saliva, and imagine them masticating the food slowly into a paste. Now imagine it going down your slimy gullet, to fall into the pool of acid that is your stomach.

Let's face it, humans are animals, and a lot of what we do is pretty gross, if you think about it. That's why most of us don't think about it much. If we took the time to really obsess on our own grossness, much less the grossness of the people around us, we wouldn't be able to handle living with people at all. We'd probably all end up being miserable recluses, like Gulliver, after he'd seen the Yahoos.

My second problem is with the idea of marriage as a tool of social control. In the US, there are a lot of material advantages that you can only access as a married person. These include tax benefits, and survivor benefits, next-of-kin status and access to your spouses's retirement income. My list isn't even a summary, because I leave so many things out. If you take a look at the complete list on Wikipedia, you'll see that it's as long as your arm. This country seriously offers couples a lot of incentives to marry and stay married.

I am willing to acknowledge that these were mostly put into place because it was thought that having more married people in the country would make it more stable. I've heard various arguments about whether or not that was true, but okay, let's say for argument's sweet sake that it is. There is some research to show that married people are happier than single ones, that they do better at work, live longer, and have better sex. There's also some evidence that children tend to do better when they grow up in two-parent homes. So let's grant the pro-marriage advocates their first point: A society with a lot of married people will probably be more stable.

But there's no good evidence out there, to say that the genders of those married people have anything to do with their happiness or stability. Social conservatives practically admit this any more too, what with the lameness of their arguments. They argue that two sexes are necessary in a marriage because it bridges the gap between men and women, and because women "domesticate"men, especially when they act out a traditionally "feminine" role. And then there is the old argument that only two-sex marriage results in procreation, an argument that seems especially lame these days, when almost half of the women giving birth in the country are single.

So if all you want is the stabilizing effects of marriage, it makes sense to encourage same-sex, as well as two-sex couples to marry. But if what you are really after is a more stable society, I would question whether government incentives for marriage of any kind are the best way to go. Weddings are a source of great profit, granted. At their beginnings, they benefit wedding planners, and retail stores, and caterers, and resorts in Las Vegas. At their ends, they benefit divorce lawyers and all the employees of the local county courthouse. But statistics say that 41% of first, 60% of second, and 73% of third marriages in America, end in divorce. So that so-called "stability" we want so badly, are we really getting it in exchange for all the incentives we offer?

My advice, would be to take the money the government spends now on marriage incentives, and put it toward programs that are guaranteed to improve society's stability. The best predictor of how successful a person will be for example, is the quality of their education. Furthermore, research shows that the best way to grow an economy is through investment in education. Why not put more money into educating our kids, and less into encouraging their parents to get married and divorced a couple of years later? Research has shown that unemployment destabilizes both families and the wider economy. Why not put more money toward job creating, or at least getting money into the hands of the unemployed and their families. Research shows the high social costs of incarceration. Why not put some money toward finding better ways to deal with non-violent offenders?

There are lots of ways we could use government resources, that would provide a much greater stabilizing effect than promoting marriage, whether two-sex or same-sex, and I personally would like to see the government take its nose out of the marriage business. Give family rights to all couples, whether same-sex or two-sex, whether married or unmarried. Let them take responsibility for each other and for the children they raise. Let them marry or not, in the church of their faith-tradition (if any), according to their own good judgment. It is not the government's place to put a moral judgment on whether or not people have a ring on their finger, or a certificate signed by a preacher in front of a couple of witnesses. It is not the government's place to get picky about whether a man loves a woman or another man, or what they do together in the bedroom; let's leave that to the prurient obsessions of the Rick Santorums of the world.

...And there now, I've just done what all liberals do: I've gone on and on for far too long talking about something, instead of condensing it neatly and adding a laugh to keep an audience interested. That's the difference between me and Stephanie Miller. It's why she's the one with a lucrative radio contract, and I'm just a stay-at-home blogger, ah me.

But I can at least offer a laugh for the end of this blog-post:



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