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Why It's Now Okay to Write the Truth About Gays and Marriage
09/03/2003

I didn't comment on the New York Times article about gays in Canada not really wanting to get married (except to undermine the institution itself). I figured others with broader audiences would make more or less the same point that I would have: "This is a surprise?" However, I do want to weigh in on the discussion over why the Times would publish something that gives the first-look appearance of devaluing a major weapon of the gay-marriage advocates when the debate hits the United States.

Jonah Goldberg suggests that "it's a sign of how far the pro-gray marriage argument has progressed that The New York Times now feels comfortable to float stories more or less undermining the idea of gay marriage." Stanley Kurtz thinks the Times was "covering the return of the debate within the gay community itself" and that the NYT audience just sees "dissing monogamous marriage as a downright cool thing to do."

I think there are elements of truth to both men's assessments. (And I would remind Mr. Goldberg that he, ahem, surely contributed to any overconfidence on the part of those stumping for gay marriage.) However, I think another aspect that oughtn't go without highlighting is that the argument for gay marriage (as with many other liberal positions) consists of patchwork logic. The various questions that arise in discussion are addressed individually, and no big picture analysis is allowed (mostly because that's the conservative position, broadly speaking).

Two pieces of the patchwork are reconciled in the Times article and could be seen as a potential motivation, assuming that the paper's objective is to back gay marriage (which I do assume). The first argument that this latest news furthers is that gay marriage will occur in too small a population to affect the entire institution of marriage. In the last round of discussion about the issue, I read multiple people arguing that there simply aren't enough homosexuals in the population for them to have an effect on the majority where marriage is concerned. The second argument that is furthered (and united with the percentage patch) is evident in this quotation:

"Ambiguity is a good word for the feeling among gays about marriage," said Mitchel Raphael, editor in chief of Fab, a popular gay magazine in Toronto. "I'd be for marriage if I thought gay people would challenge and change the institution and not buy into the traditional meaning of 'till death do us part' and monogamy forever. We should be Oscar Wildes and not like everyone else watching the play."

Both Goldberg and Kurtz have cited this quotation as confirmation of the conservative assertion. However, the implication, here, is that these Canadian gays aren't interested in marriage because they don't think they can undermine the institution. To be sure, yesterday (I think), Kurtz gave some reasons that the situation in the United States is very different. But if such arguments are summarily ignored (and I have no doubt that's what the Times et al. will do), the Times article can be seen as a strategic maneuver, confirming what conservatives have been saying, yes, but only so as to undermine its practical import in the debate.

When the battle rages in the States, those who oppose gay marriage will be painted as acting from paranoid bigotry when they address the tepid outcome in Canada. When they point out, as Kurtz did yesterday, that Canada has already granted most of the "rights" of married couples to cohabiters, which combined with universal healthcare makes actual marriage only significantly different from "registered partnerships" on a personal level, proponents will move the debate either into the rights-based rhetoric with which they are so comfortable or into the question of why marriage ought to be a public question at all.

In other words, the outcome in Canada will act as a funnel to the areas in which the advocates for gay marriage are strongest. Of course, even their strongest arguments are built on false premises — it is dramatically to the public good to encourage marriage as it traditionally stands and not to dilute it into oblivion with government support for cohabitation — but the debate over the premises is more subtle and considered than often proves compelling for the general public. From the point of view of the Timesians, it isn't as important to be right as to erode the will of the public to oppose the cause.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 03:26 PM EST