“Marriage” debate

Here is the video and transcript of a debate between traditional marriage advocate Maggie Gallagher and Michelangelo Signorile, a homosexual talk show host and supporter of same-sex “marriage.”

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Paul G. writes:

My computer’s a bit slow, so I didn’t watch the video of this debate. I read the transcript, however, and I wasn’t at all impressed with Ms. Gallagher’s answers. I get the monthly marriage law digest newsletter (a summary of all the changes in marriage law through the US in that month) which she edits, and it’s very helpful and informative. But I don’t think she made a convincing case for a traditional concept of marriage.

She never mentions, for example, that the term “same sex marriage” is a contradiction in terms—like “square circle” or “crooked straight line”—because, while “marriage” hasn’t always meant “monogamous”, it has always and everywhere meant “heterosexual”. Gay marriage advocates, being raised in Western culture, where monogamy has long been the rule, are trying to keep the historically contingent aspect of marriage (monogamy) while throwing out the historically sine qua non of marriage (heterosexuality). Their view of history tends to be fairly myopic and triumphalist, however, and I doubt most advocates of gay marriage understand that the Western monogamous concept of marriage is a minority opinion even today, and much more so throughout history (even including the Old Testament).

Furthermore, she could have done a much better job of emphasizing that, in a democracy, the people should be allowed to make the decisions fundamentally to alter basic social institutions. If, in California, the people had voted to recognize gay marriage, that would have been legitimate (wrong, I think, but certainly legitimate, which is all anyone is ever guaranteed in a working democracy). Instead, a handful of unelected ex-lawyers foisted a new and radically different definition of one of the most basic social institutions on the people of California without their consent. They reacted accordingly. (Tellingly, the anti-Prop. 8 folks are still using the courts to try to circumvent the people’s decision—all but admitting that they can’t get gay marriage through legitimate means, and are instead brazenly resorting to force.) If gay marriage advocates want to change that using legitimate means, they are welcome to. That they are stacking the deck by using physical and legal force as well as moral bullying strongly suggests that they hold either the opinions of their opponents or their chances of winning without any undue influence in contempt.

LA replies:

I haven’t read the debate yet myself. I should have mentioned that it was sent to me by someone who felt that Gallagher had not done a good job of holding up her end of the argument.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 21, 2008 11:43 AM | Send