Lawrence,

His argument doesn’t even make much sense. He argues for gay marriage, using the tired argument that marriage is a conservative vehicle to ‘civilize’ gays, but then rejects polygamy as ‘a true deformation of the moral precepts involved with marriage.’

Well, why can’t we make an argument that polygamy can ‘civilize’ those who go through sexual partners like a knife through butter? One could easily claim that polygamists commit themselves to a set number of people that they are familiar with, which enhances committment and provides a ‘family’ for raising children (not to mention reducing the spread of STDs).

If you can argue for the positive effects of gay marriage, you can surely argue for the positive effects of polygamy. Supporting either opens the door for weak utilitarian arguments veiled as conservative ones.

Great argument by Mr. Courrèges. Of course. Just as there are people who have a homosexual orientation and who find heterosexual relations onerous and impossible, there are people who are oriented toward promiscuity and who find exclusive fidelity onerous and impossible. So, what an advance of morality it would be if we could lead these multi-partner-oriented persons away from their chaotic and contingent multiple relational lives into a socially recognized and sanctioned set of multiple relationships, so that their promiscuous desires will be civilized and moralized!

This battle is largely about labels and legitimation. Orwell taught us the importance of labels, and the trajectory of the abortion issue has proved him right.

Homosexualists know what they are demanding, while “conservatives” who reconcile themselves to the notion that homosexuals might marry in some sense think they are asking for something else. The conned conservatives think that homosexualists are asking for the benefits of an institution that will civilize them in some way, give them a legitimate outlet for their passions and help them moderate them. I doubt it, no matter what Andrew Sullivan might say.

What they want is what Mr. Auster says so concisely: they want us to baptize their sin. They do not want to be cured, they do not want to moderate their conduct. They want to cloak it in a label that we squares will presumably find reassuring. The idea is that we will support them, either because we are fooled by the label into not seeing that their perversion is still perverse or because we will be afraid of appearing to oppose something so self-evidently good as “marriage.”

Homosexualists rely on the mushiness of modern liberalism that makes “inclusiveness” the highest social virtue. They count on our acquescing in their obsessions so as not to be “exclusive.” I think they have a winning strategy, alas. We’ll see if bigamists and polygamists can appropriate it. They are not a socially preferred class, as homosexuals have so successfully made themselves (largely through the bizarre cult of AIDS “martyrdom,” which mainstream society has swallowed hook, line and sinker). If the test cases for bigamy and polygamy are homosexual combinations, though, watch out! HRS

The same correspondent wrote back to me:

“On the contrary, what the Episcopalians have done is detestable. They have, in fact, baptized sin. But outside the constraints of religion, in the public square where religion is an influence but not the governing law, a move away from secular amorality is a victory. After all, we don’t have laws that disallow adultery. Are we baptizing sin by allowing adultery? What the stain of Christian influence has done is to buffer the effects of this particular sin, by altering the gay lifestyle in a way that makes it less harmful both to gays and the greater society.”

My reply:

I find your reasoning so strange as almost to defy response. On one hand you say that it is detestable for a religious body to approve of homosexuality by making an open homosexual a bishop; religion, you insist, must maintain its moral character. But on the other hand you say that marriage, the central institution of society, should be radically redefined in order to include (and thus improve) the “gay lifestyle.” Thus you accept the fact that homosexual conduct is both contrary to religiously based moral law and socially harmful, yet you want society to alter its most basic institution in order to institutionalize that conduct, because, you believe, this will refine and elevate that conduct. Apart from your odd way of bifurcating the religious and the secular, how do you know that your factual premise is true? What in the world makes you think that a sexual liberation movement based on the notion that everything that people want to do is ok, is suddenly going to accept traditional constraints on behavior? Isn’t it obvious that, instead of homosexual marriage changing homosexuals’ behavior, homosexual marriage will change marriage? This doesn’t go to just different ways of behavior, but to the very definition of marriage. According to an editorial in today’s National Review Online, already Democratic politicians are referring to “non-same-sex marriage” or “opposite-sex” marriage” because, with the advent of same-sex marriage, the word “marriage” no longer means what it used to. This is in addition to the observation I made earlier at VFR that homosexual marriage would mean the abolition of the words “husband” and “wife.” Thus this innovation, which you think will mean marriage changing and improving the attitudes of homosexuals, must, by its very nature (or rather un-nature), result in the destruction of both the concept and the institution of marriage.

You write: “What the stain of Christian influence has done is to buffer the effects of this particular sin, by altering the gay lifestyle in a way that makes it less harmful both to gays and the greater society.” On one hand, you’re saying that the influence of Christian morality can make the gay lifestyle less harmful; on the other hand you’re calling that influence a “stain.” No one who had favorable views of Christian morality would call it a “stain.” This makes me question your sincerity in this discussion.

“After all, we don’t have laws that disallow adultery.”

There are still vestiges in some states. A man who has committed adultery will sometimes lose more of his property when the marriage is dissolved than a man who gets a no-fault divorce, for example. Those vestiges should be strengthened, extended, and restored; not dismissed as nothing.

Modern people have such odd notions about the law. To a modern something is either categorically “legal” or categorically “illegal”: it either has no authoritative consequences whatsoever or results in a plenary loss of rights. Life is never actually lived that way though, not even within the morally pathetic confines of the present-day court system.

Evidence from the Netherlands indicates that on average, a “married gay” has “extramarital” sexual relations with 8 other males per year.
So how have they been domesticated? Did they reduce their amount of sexual partners from 28 to 8 upon “matrimony”?

Many conservatives seem to believe that same sex unions (SSU, I refuse to say marriage) will introduced moral parameters to these relationships. Many heterosexuals seem to labor under the same false beliefs before marrying philanderers. Marriage hasn’t stopped many skirt chasers (ask Senator Clinton). Moreover, I haven’t heard the gay advocates of SSU praise the benefits of monogamy. Instead all I hear about are the other benefits such as health insurance and social security. I have yet to hear gays argue that recognition of SSU will improve their behavior. Why do we think promiscuous gays are desperate to change their behavior? If life threatening STD’s won’t change behavior, will marriage?

Many conservatives fail to see that SSU will poison the atmosphere for marriage. In order to make SSU acceptable, the courts have had to devalue marriage by de-emphasizing and belittling the importance of procreation in marriage. The value of fidelity and exclusiveness only makes sense in light of procreation. Legalization and celebration of SSU will complete the redefinition of marriage into “going steady.”

To summarize what TCB said, the “conservative” advocates of SSUs and the gay and left advocates of SSUs use two quite different and contradictory sets of arguments. The “conservatives” say SSUs will improve gay morality and thus strengthen society; these are “conservative” values. The gay and left advocates are just wanting rights, perks, prestige, and a gay collective afflatus connected with the “full affirmation” of their humanity and identity; these are left-liberal arguments. So far, so good. But now get this. The “conservative” advocates never seem to take note of the left’s agenda. The “conservatives” believe (to the extent that any “conservative” advocate of SSU can be thought to be serious about anything), that only the “conservative” vision of SSU will obtain. They completely ignore the agenda and desires of the left and the gay advocates.

The “conservatives” are behaving toward the left on this issue just as they behave toward them on, say, immigration, another issue where they are on the same side, though for different reasons. The “conservatives” think that immigrants will all assimilate and become democratic individualist Americans just like the “conservatives” themselves; meanwhile the left and the immigrants want group rights and multiculturalism. The “conservatives” support the same immigration policy that the left supports. But somehow the conservatives imagine that only the _conservative_ vision of immigration will prevail. There is an overweening narcissism involved in this. The “conservatives” just assume that the left’s desires and agendas don’t exist or will have no effect.

It’s the same with the “peace process.” Western liberals assume the Palestinians “want the same things as us, peace, laptops, globalization,” when in fact they want completely different things, war, the murder of Jews, the re-conquest of Palestine. Examples of the same syndrome could be multiplied.

So, getting back to the SSU issue, one argument our side needs to make is, when a pro-gay “conservative” makes the David Brooks argument for SSU, say to him, that’s what YOU say it’s all about, but it’s not what almost all the GAYS say it’s all about—and they’re the people who will be actually involved in these SSUs! So what makes you think YOUR preferred vision of SSU and its social and moral effects is going to prevail over THEIRS?