On why I imagine people who are against gay marriage are against it:

[xiphias]

Underneath the following cut tag are concepts which many people on my friends list may find offensive.

But who I'd REALLY like to hear from are people who ARE against gay marriage.

I'd like to put together an argument which, I suspect, may be a reason why people are against gay marriage. This is not an argument which I believe; rather, it is an argument which I can imagine which leads to the same conclusions that I perceive among people who are against gay marriage.

What I'd really love is if people who are against gay marriage would let me know if this argument is close to how you feel.

Anonymous commenting is on, and IP tracking is off. And I'm going to do something which I NEVER do on my LJ: if anyone gets nasty against people, I'm going to delete comments. I'm inviting people to say things which actually, in a real sense, are personal attacks against other people on my friends list.

In other words, if this works the way I hope it will, griffen, you, among other people, are not going to want to read it.

In Leviticus, gay sex is one of the ONLY forms of sex referred to as "an abomination". In Hebrew, it's a much stronger form of condemnation than any of the other things.

It is understood that people will, in their own private lives, make choices that you don't agree with. But to place legal government sanction on this act is to state that you agree with it.

Taking laws against sodomy off the books -- that's fine. By doing that, you are "agreeing to disagree". If it's an abomination, well, it's THEIR abomination, and you can live and let live. If they want to be public, and even have ceremonies -- that's, again, something where you can agree to disagree.

But by placing actual government sanction on such relationships -- that crosses the line between "not opposing" and "supporting". Allowing "abominations" to have the same status as REAL marriages, well, that gives marriages the same status as abominations. And THAT'S why it destroys marriage.

Even "civil unions" can be seen as a live-and-let-live compromise. But this -- putting a real marriage and an abomination in the same category? That calls into question the legitimacy of ALL marriages.

So -- people who are against gay marriage? Is this somewhat similar to how you think about it?

Comments

[mr-clarinet.livejournal.com]

I'm staunchly pro-gay marriage, and so might not be of much value in your quest here, but I'd always thought a lot of the anti-gay marriage camp is somehow based on the idea of linking "marriage" and "family" and therefore "family values"?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

This was what my parents thought (complete with Leviticus), last time I cared to discuss it with them, and I don't see any reason they should have changed their minds.

[ckd]

Have you read penknife's post about this same topic? I found it very thought-provoking.

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

I regularly surprise my friends by expressing ambivalence about gay marriage. Long essay coming soon, I promise; I held off until after Prop 8 out of deference to my friends who cared more about it than I do, and I have a couple of other things to write about first, but I will get to it in the next couple of essays.

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

I am of course not against gay marriage. But I agree that that at least seems like a reasonable argument. If I believed the premise that gay sex was an abomination, then the conclusion is reasonable.

[brooksmoses]

I did as well. Thank you for linking to it!

[arib.livejournal.com]

With regards to religious Jewish or Christian folks that are anti-gay marriage, that's usually the argument I hear.

(I disagree with their reasoning for various reasons of my own, mind you.)

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Penknife's post covers what I think is the most important opposition to same-sex marriage. When there is such a dramatic symbol of marriage (and the roles of "husband" and "wife" within each marriage), as voluntary and negotiable, the patriarchy loses a lot of power to pressure people into getting married, staying married, and supporting the patriarchy in all the ways that married people conventionally do.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

The other part is the fear that, if gay marriage is legal, that *their* pastor/priest/reverend will have to perform them in *their* church or place of worship or be sued/accused of discrimination. "Marriage" means "the kind of marriage I have."

[navrins]

This isn't the argument I've heard from someone who is at least mildly against gay marriage. (I alluded earlier today to the argument I have heard; I forget where.) I also suspect - perhaps wrongly - that while many people may formulate an argument like this, the actualy REASON they are against gay marriage is far more visceral. (Similarly, I'm sure a lot of people who write very cogent, rational, persuasive arguments FOR gay marriage, to try to convince others, didn't actually reach their own opinion because of such arguments, but rather because they wanted to be allowed to marry their sweetie. I don't think this weakens the argument, but it does mean that persuading someone the argument is invalid isn't going to change their opinion.)

Since I'm not actually against gay marriage myself, I won't go into further details here which I may very well be mangling.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

I think it's more than just the text based argument. (I mean, really - how much of Leviticus has most of the country been perfectly happy to ignore?)

The text based argument is something you can point to and makes something that sounds like a rational argument about (at least if you think such religious texts have any place in a rational argument). But there's also the whole cultural stigma bit, which runs pretty deep, still. (Would you call it oppositional sexuality, in that "gay" is posited as the opposite of "straight", and both weak and flawed and yet inherently threatening?)

Hmm... In some ways I'd compare it to some of the more anti-female traditions in Islam. I mean seriously, if you look at the Quran, women actually are guaranteed more rights than in other Abrahamic faiths. (Right of divorce, right of property, etc. Hell, right of pleasure during sex, for that matter.)

But there is a convergence of some anti-female material in the Quran with a lot of other cultural influences... and out of that you get everything from veiling (which is only prescribed by wild interpretation) to clitoredectomy. (Though I think the whole issue of veiling tends to be horribly glossed as anti-female when in fact it is much more complex.) And then it gets wrapped up in all kind of other cultural issues around modernization and westernization... (Islamic feminist movements, past and current, are really worth looking into.)

[tpau]

if gay marriage is acceptable, then thier kids will think it is ok to be gay. this is why my parents are against it.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

"Similarly, I'm sure a lot of people who write very cogent, rational, persuasive arguments FOR gay marriage, to try to convince others, didn't actually reach their own opinion because of such arguments, but rather because they wanted to be allowed to marry their sweetie."

Or that they know and are fond of someone and really want that person to be able to marry their sweetie. (At least, last I checked knowing queerfolk correlated most highly with supporting queer rights.)

[bercilakslady.livejournal.com]

"at least if you think such religious texts have any place in a rational argument"

Just to nitpick, I do think religious texts have a place in rational argument. That is, rational argument *about and within the context of the religion itself*. It doesn't have a place in helping to decide secular law.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That's one I don't entirely get. If gay marriage is acceptible, then it WILL be okay to be gay. What do the kids have to do with it?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Oh -- wait -- duh. I just got it.

It's harder to teach a religious point -- that being gay is a sin -- if the culture specifically and publicly accepts it.

[tpau]

well... lets say you are the sort of person who does nto think being gay is ok. causeyou are religious or what not. so you do nto wantyoru kid to be gay. you are then worried thatyour kidmight think it is ok if htey see gay folks gettignmarried

[tpau]

exactly.

[ron_newman]

But is it hard to teach that observant Jews don't eat pork, even though the society around us considers pork to be perfectly fine food?

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing a whole lot of discussion about Prop 8, and "why we lost", and trying to understand why people who voted Yes on 8 did what they did.

I think that it's important work, and it's good that it's being done.

What I *really* want to know, and I'm stealing from other smart people who have already asked this, is why we're only seeing all of this discussion *now*, and we didn't see any of it a couple of months ago, when it might've made a difference.

It's been pointed out that liberals in generally, and the No on 8 people specifically, have a tendency to talk *at* people, when they're supporting something. They talk a lot about how their way is right, and we should all vote for their way because it's right. But they don't talk *to* people as much.

I had a good friend of mine try to tell me, in casual discussion last night about the election returns, that he doesn't think that conservatism or libertarianism is even a reasonable position to hold. Which is dangerously close to the sort of closed-minded One True Way thinking that I've been railing against on the far right.

I'm wandering off topic, and getting wordy. Which probably means that I should stop now, and possibly repost a more coherent version of this on my own journal sometime when I'm not supposed to be working.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

I suspect that for many people who are against same-sex marriage, it really comes down to the "yuck factor". In this culture, there's a lot of shaming and slurs around being queer, a lot of presenting it as something nasty. There is also a lot of shaming around body issues and gender issues that affect what sex acts many people do or do not find "yucky" (as a separate issue from orientation).

Consequently, any cogent arguments that side may attempt to make genearally are merely attempts to justify why they have a gut-level reaction of disgust when contemplating same-sex relationships. Yes, there is the religious angle, but I suspect that this angle has received the emphasis and endorsement of so many for so long (and not fallen away into neglect as other precepts have)due to the yuck factor.

I recently read an interesting article that I can't remember the location of -- I think it was in Salon, they were interviewing this guy who wrote a book about disgust, as an experience and a force in human societies. They noted that people who identify as socially "conservative" tend to let the gut-level reaction of disgust guide them in determining what they believe to be Morally Wrong. In contrast, they found that people who identified as socially "liberal" tended NOT to use this as their sole guide, but to step back from it at least in part and assess its moral rightness or wrongness based on other factors also. (And no, I don't remember where the citation for this study came from, but I believe Google would turn it up, it was pretty recent.)

[amberdine.livejournal.com]

Your summary sounds right to me, though in my experience as a Catholic, I don't even hear it explicated so clearly. It's just "Protection of the Family" to which I always wind up going "Huh?" and have to go do research to figure out what the heck the actual rationale is. Because I'm innately libertarian and it's hard for me to comprehend this kind of thing. :-/

Another argument I see is that without regard to religion or culture, throughout history, all societies have been built upon male/female reproductive family units. Human children need a stable family for proper upbringing, so it is beneficial to all of society to support such units as much as possible. Since same-sex couplings can never naturally produce children, and do not have the normally-expected combination of male and female influences, they are not an acceptable analogue.

And, the final argument I see (which is really the only one that persuades me) is like jadasc said, that if same-sex unions are legally declared to be equivalent to marriage, that churches with contrary beliefs will be forced to perform them. I have no idea what protestant churches would do if that came to pass, but I know the Catholic Church in the USA would have to shut down its parishes and go underground.

I know a group of seminarians in this country who honestly expect to live out at least part of their career as priests in prison. I think that's expecting an awful lot of change to happen very fast, but, such things have happened historically, elsewhere. Already in this country Catholic hospitals and charities have had to shut down due to legislation which would force them to do something contrary to Catholic teaching, if they had continued to operate.

[(Anonymous)]

Let's hope this anonymous comment thing works. I'm sorry it's so long. First I thought I didn't have time to write it all out, then I realized I had the time to write it all out but not to make it shorter. In fact, the comment I wrote at first is bigger than the maximum space allowed, so it'll have to appear in two parts. Here we go:

I'm lukewarm on gay marriage, but not because I think gay sex is an abomination. Far from it, I have gay friends I adore, who are married to each other and have children, and are some of the happiest most exemplary couples I know (not that they should have to model that behavior, but it just so happens they do).

It's not that I oppose gay marriage so much as I'm angry that it is a priority for either side. In my view gay marriage is mostly a stick the right wing has used to beat progressives into submission. Gay marriage is maybe number 3721 on my list of urgent problems facing society. In a perfect world I'd like for gay couples to have inheritance and visitation rights and all, I just see many more urgent problems in line ahead of that.

I admit that there's an element of political calculation here: I don't want to spend a nickel of political capital on gay marriage because I often find that gays couldn't care less about or actively oppose my own progressive priorities (I'm basically an old-fashioned tax-and-spend-and-regulate liberal).

TBC

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

At least, last I checked knowing queerfolk correlated most highly with supporting queer rights.

There was an anecdote in a newspaper somewhere...(goes digging through browser history...)

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/11/the-view-fro-44.html#more

A 75-year-old, retired cop was standing in line waiting to vote. The couple in front of him just happened to be a young gay couple with their (I presume adopted?) daughters. They didn't preach, they didn't try to convince him of anything. They didn't even *mention* Prop 8. Mostly, they talked about football.

As the gay couple moved out of line to go vote, the narrator, standing behind the cop, saw him open his ballot, scribble out Yes and mark No on 8. Just like that.

People fear the unknown, and they fear things that they don't understand. Their preacher fills their heads with images of fire and brimstone, on TV they see flamboyant, militant LGBT people at pride rallies, or things like Folsom. A lot of these people have never even *met* an openly gay individual. They can't comprehend the human aspect of the problem, because they've never needed to.

We can't counter fear with polished rhetoric and fancy speeches. We need to make the unfamiliar be familiar. Go out and *talk* to people. Ask them why they're voting in favor of 8, and then *listen* to the answers. Start a conversation with them, instead of just speechifying about how they're wrong for being so discriminatory.

[(Anonymous)]

Continuation (now with bold for people in a hurry):

I'll try hard to word this next part without offending, because I truly don't mean any disrespect. I'm more socially conservative than most of my friends, more as a matter of emphasis than of opposition to any given freedom. I'm disturbed by the way the language of rights has been co-opted to stand for what to me is just sexual consumerism. I'm disturbed by the anti-feminist backlash I've noticed lately in progressive circles. It's the whole Bill Maher ideology, which sounds to me like, "Hey baby, I fully respect your right to spread for me in whatever freaky style you deem wisest, and you're 100% free to have an abortion if you get knocked up. What's that? Equal pay? Oh, honey, I've got to go. Text me." To me, for the state to ratify gay relationships is like the state ratifying your right to choose the tattoo or designer sunglasses of your choice: nice, and certainly the right thing if I'm pressed to think about it, just trivial compared to burning issues of economic policy, education, and health care. I guess that means I'm OK with heteronormative policies for the time being. Sorry.

This probably makes me a bigot. I'm not sure I can beat that rap. But I swear it's only a matter of emphasis, of how I allocate my political time, not of actively going out of my way to oppress anyone.

All this said, the anti-gay-marriage initiatives in CA, AZ and FL were disgusting. That the right wing wasted everyone's time and energy on those things makes me sick.