Maine got all the attention, but It's interesting to me that Washington State voters supported a bill popularly known as the "Everything but Marriage Act" that gives gay couples all the civil rights of marriage without calling it marriage. Maybe there's a lesson in that. Maybe gay activists should let conservatives have the word 'marriage' if they want their legitimate civil rights. I think that the problem lies in that gays want more than that, though; they want cultural legitimacy, and that's not the state's to give. Cultural legitimacy will come in time, but it can't be legislated. And I'd argue that it's a tactical mistake for gays to insist on marriage rather than civil rights from the state.
One of my basic arguments in this blog is that for us all to get along
we have to separate out cultural issues from political issues as best
we can. Most of my focus has been on criticizing the project of the religious right and cultural
conservatives to insert Christian symbols and religiosity into the
political sphere. I think the insistence by the cultural left on the use of the word 'marriage' in the effort to obtain for gay couples their civil rights is similar to the mistake that the cultural right makes. I think as a tactical matter the gay community would be far more successful in getting the substance of the civil rights they seek if it would separate out the cultural from the political, and in this case the cultural is mostly a matter of language and symbolism.
Marriage is a "cultural" word with deep connections to traditional religious commitments and ceremonies; the terms "civil unions" or "domestic partnerships" use political words with "rights" associations that aren't as culturally loaded as the word 'marriage'. I know that you go down to city hall to get your "marriage license", but I'd argue that marriage is what you do in a church, and a civil union is what you do in front of a justice of the peace–whether you are a gay or straight couple. That's how we should look at it, anyway.
What you get at city hall shouldn't be called a marriage license; it should be called a license for civil union or domestic partnership, and there should be no distinction between those given to straight or gay couples. If you want marriage, go to a church. The problem lies in that Gays haven't been able do that unless they have a license from the state, and it looks like they'll be able to get one now in Washington. Washington gays will now be able to do what straight couples have always done–go to city hall for their license and then to a church to get married. They will be able to do it even though the law did not grant rights that were called "marriage" rights.
The main objection from the gay community to what I'm suggesting here is that the word marriage gives full and equal legitimacy, while civil unions don't. Gays don't want the symbolism of their "unions" to be perceived as second class. I get that but would answer that what they want–cultural legitimacy–is not for the state to give. The state is only concerned to protect rights, and the Washington law passed yesterday does that without calling it marriage, but it opens the way for gays to get married in a cultural ceremony. The state cannot confer cultural legitimacy; you get cultural legitimacy in the cultural sphere and from the cultural institutions that confer it.
The mistake that both the cultural left and right make is to expect too much from the government in this regard, i.e., to see the state as the primary legitimator; it just isn't. And because this issue takes up so much oxygen in the poltical sphere, the electorate is divided and conquered over these cultural issues much to the delight of entrenched power factions which love it when so much energy is directed away from them and all the ways it is aggregating wealth and power.
The stupidity of the cultural left about this is for me astonishing. They are playing right into the hands of people they otherwise want to subvert. This insistence on the politically correct "marriage" for gays is a silly distraction that undermines political efforts in other areas where the cultural right and left, in fact, share common ground. For example, the Wall Street bailout.
So maybe it's time for the gay community left-leaning cultural warriors to rethink their strategy. In the long run they will get their rights, but they'll get them quicker if they don't insist on calling them marriage rights. The voters in Washington showed that they don't have a problem with protecting gay civil rights. My guess is that the people in Maine are much the same. The difference is in the labeling, not in the substance. Let conservatives have their word. Let the primary focus of our energies in the political sphere be about politics, which is not about cultural legitimation, but about power distribution.
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UPDATE: See this post by Sullivan about a gay couple living in a very culturally conservative county in the North Carolina. Key Quote:
I'll keep saying this until I am blue in the face to Gay, Inc. in this country. Get the hell out of the gay ghettos and come live near the people who don't know anyone who is gay and you'll change hearts and minds.
This is how cultural change happens. Gayness is an abstraction for most people, and 30%+ of the 50%+ who are voting down these laws to extend rights to Gay couples are decent, normal Americans who just don't know many Gays. They have the most stereotypical ideas about them as being the outrageous types you see in San Francisco parades. But those Gays who want marriage are people like the rest of us who just want a normal life, to mind their own business, to be good neighbors, to be like everyone else except for one thing, which is nobody else's business.
When Gay couples are your friends and neighbors, they cease to be abstractions, and unless these people voting down gay rights legislation are in the extreme 20-25% that will never change its mind, they will come around to support basic rights for gay couples as soon as they begin to know more as their neighbors.
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