Legal Commentary

Yours, Mine and Ours

By Kevin Funnell

Never one to tread where the timid dare not dip their toes, I usually shy away from controversial topics. I find that the prospect of offending some hothouse flower's refined sensibilities so horrifying that I almost always opt to take a middle course, steering between the rocky shoals of "hot opinions" and aiming for the tepid tapioca beach where no offense is given or received, where good feelings and glad tidings abound, and where ... MMMMMMMWWWWAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAA!!!

OK, I couldn't keep a straight face.

I usually dive into any issue bound to offend the politically correct and unleash my Gatling Gun of barbs, if for no other reason than to arouse the professionally aggrieved to spout and spew like harpooned whales on a final breach.

No, that's not "what Jesus would do." Then again, I see through a glass, darkly.

However, for a refreshing change of pace, on the third-rail topic of gay marriage, I'll let Lee Harris, a conservative gay writer, do my talking for me.

Writing an op-ed piece in The Dallas Morning News (free registration required), he called the entire issue a "tar baby."

Gay marriage is rapidly becoming our national tar baby ? something that you cannot touch without getting tar all over you. Once you touch the tar baby, you can never quite get rid of it again.

Frankly, the gay-marriage tar baby perplexes me. I do not understand it. All I know is that I want to keep my distance from it.

The source of my confusion is this. For 18 years, I have shared my life with a member of my own sex, and I have been entirely satisfied with our domestic arrangements. Never once did it occur to me that there was something missing from our lives or that we were the oppressed victims of the heterosexual majority. Never once did I think our lives would be more complete, or more honorable, or more worthy, if only we had been able to get married.

My thought was not that marriage should be only between a man and a woman but, simply and matter-of-factly, that marriage was and had always been between a man and a woman. Marriage as an institution was theirs; it wasn't ours.

Once upon a not-so-distant time, all gay men and women instinctively made this distinction between "theirs" and "ours."

[...]

In the early and creative phase of the gay liberation movement, gays recognized that we were different from them; they recognized that they were different from us. We said, "Listen, we want to have our own turf, our own communities"; and they said back to us, "OK. You can have your own turf and your own communities. But, please, make sure you stay on your side of the line."

This sensible concordat was responsible for the immense progress that gay men and women made in the post-Stonewall era. But it was abruptly shattered with the proclamation of a radically new political agenda that was launched with the publication of Andrew Sullivan's 1996 book, Virtually Normal.

At the center of Mr. Sullivan's thesis was the notion that the distinction between "ours" and "theirs" was illegitimate. To me, this claim made no sense philosophically, psychologically or politically. Gay men are different from straight men; gay women are different from straight women. Nor is there anything demeaning or morally objectionable in our being different.

I see the world differently because I am gay, and I am heartily glad of this fact ? not because I see it clearer or better, but because it allows me to see it from a different perspective and to discover things in that perspective that no straight man could be expected to notice.

No matter how I came to be the way I am, I am grateful that I have ended up as I have. I need no one else's confirmation or blessing to be equal to myself. I deeply love my partner, and I hope to die with him; but there is nothing in my fidelity that requires me to borrow the concept of marriage.

Is friendship a less sacred ideal than marriage? Perhaps it is for them, but it is not ? or should not be ? for us.

This is why I look with such great sadness at the national tar baby with which all of us will soon be smeared. It will needlessly divide straight from gay, gay from gay, straight from straight; it will sully everything that it comes into contact with it. We are no longer practicing the politics of compromise; we are now practicing the politics of Push comes to Shove. Only now we are no longer trying to shove them out of our communities; we are trying to shove our way into theirs.

Of course, to proponents of gay marriage, the issue is defined purely in terms of the language of virtual equality: moral rights, natural rights, legal rights. They see the matter exactly as I originally saw the question of flag-burning and, therefore, are utterly unable to grasp how the other side really feels about the question ? or, when they do notice these feelings, they tend, as I did, to dismiss them as irrelevant to the issue.

But such a superior attitude ignores the heart of the problem: Who gets to define what the gay marriage controversy is really about? If the proponents do, then it is all about legal rights, but if, on the other hand, the opponents get to define it, then it is all about defending an ethical institution that they believe is theirs alone.

When men and women cannot even agree on what they are arguing about, argument is of no avail, and sheer force of will becomes the final arbiter of the controversy ? if we are lucky.

This is not how the American gay community got where we are today, and it is almost a sure guarantee that we will not be where we are tomorrow.

Andrew Sullivan offers a contrary view, as Harris (and we) would expect. To Sullivan, there are, and should be, no differences between straight and gay couples as to the institution of marriage. Marriages between both types of couples should be legally recognized as being the identical institution. The Dallas Morning News "Points" page on which these contrary editorials originally appeared gave Sullivan's piece featured presentation, with Harris' opinion shunted to the side, with smaller font and, unlike Sullivan's, without bold face. Think the MSM might be biased?

For a more detailed analysis by Harris, in the context of a broad defense of traditional values, read Harris' article The Future of Tradition, from the June-July, 2005 issue of Policy Review.

Full post as published by Counseling Kevin on November 02, 2010 (boomark / email).