Probably not, but I've been thinking about this recently, and it stands to reason that neoliberalism will soon destroy any prejudice against same-sex marriage. This can best be seen in young conservatives who as the future of their party have--finally--figured it out.
It seems as though the trajectory of our society is one that has seen equality extended to an increasingly large population of once-marginalized persons. The Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Civil Rights Act of 1964, etc. There is still one group in the US that is still being denied the kinds of rights us "normal" people enjoy.
But of course, everything I said in that last paragraph is not true. The trajectory of our society has not led to a rise in equality. Quite the opposite. Society is measurably more unequal today than it's been in the past century, even before Jim Crow and women's suffrage. The income inequality gap is increasing rather than decreasing, leaving the largest marginalized group in our country--the poor--to fend for themselves.
What does that have to do with same-sex marriage? I'd like you to consider these paragraphs from a really smart guy:
"It’s no accident that same-sex marriage has emerged as a centerpiece of American cultural liberalism, rather than, say, card check (the Employee Free Choice Act, designed to make it easier for workers to unionize). Card check, despite its euphemistic name, is not about the need for individual choice. Just the opposite; it’s about escaping your individuality, and about the power of collective bargaining. Same-sex marriage, on the other hand, is all about the rights of individuals, and especially their right to form families.
The exemplary attraction of same-sex marriage emerges even more vividly when, as in California, it’s an alternative to domestic partnership—in other words, when the legal and economic issues have largely been factored out. Here, as the complaint recently filed in federal court by the Republican Ted Olson and the Democrat David Boies (opposing attorneys in Bush v. Gore but united in Perry, Stier et al v. Schwarzenegger) asserts, the harm in not being allowed to marry is 'severe humiliation, emotional distress, pain, suffering, psychological harm and stigma.' Of course, once you’ve identified our problems as having nothing to do with the redistribution of wealth, you’ve also identified the solution as one that has nothing to do with the redistribution of wealth. It’s these problems, described in this way, that American liberalism loves to solve. Hence the popularity of the memoir, always committed, like the lawyers in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, to the primacy of emotional distress and psychological harm."
So on the one hand, you see that there is a distinct act of discrimination here which is clearly unfair. But as Michaels reminds us, "The exemplary attraction of same-sex marriage emerges even more vividly when, as in California, it’s an alternative to domestic partnership—in other words, when the legal and economic issues have largely been factored out." Materially, same-sex couples in California are identical to heterosexual couples. And so the "attraction" of the issue is based on the emotional recognition of one's individuality rather than material interests, i.e. class.
As a heterosexual white male I risk opening myself to ad-hominem attacks, but I suppose I'll ask the question anyway: why do people want to be economically unequal and accepted rather than economically equal and disliked? And before you say "ideally you'd want to be both economically equal and socially accepted" let me just remind you about the relationship between the rise in inequality and the push for inclusion among America's social margins. The same-sex marriage example typifies the problem. Here we have a case where a large group of (presumably) poor and (members of a rapidly decreasing) middle class persons are socially antagonistic against a piece of discrimination that--materially--has very little effect on their lives, while the capitalistic structures which grind
I don't think individuality has anything to do with it. Almost everyone who supports same-sex marriage does so because they believe that being denied the right to marry has an adverse legal, economic, and emotional impact on those couples. Almost everyone who opposes same-sex marriage does so because they think same-sex marriage makes God mad.
ReplyDeleteI also don't think that people use individualism as an excuse to oppose (or at least not support) unions, or as a basis for embracing supply-side economics. In fact, I don't think most people (knowingly) support any particular economic theory at all. Inaction might be a problem, but that probably has more to do with ignorance of the issues.
I have to agree with Doug. It's not that people want to support an economy that keeps them poor. It's that they don't know there's an alternative. The public school system does everything in its power to keep children blindly patriotic and unable to think critically about even simple problems never mind economic systems. Look at your freshman, they're a prime example of this. If you want people to think about economic equality and not individuality, you have to change the way they are educated in K-12.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have to say it: WBM would feel differently if his wifey was a man and he wasn't allowed to marry him...her.
See, Sacha, that's just a reproduction of the fallacy. The argument is precisely that your subject position--and your feelings--has absolutely nothing to do with the truth your arguments. To say that you'd feel differently about same-sex marriage if you were gay makes absolutely no difference on the validity of the claim. If you can "feel" like same-sex couples should get married even if you're not gay, it stands to reason that the reverse is true.
ReplyDeleteDoug,
WBM's argument is precisely that our society has transformed economic arguments about class differences into a fetishized desire for recognition. We keep telling ourselves that the inclusion of minorities (into capitalism) will create more equality, when the exact opposite is the case. Including people into capitalism doesn't give you any net increase in equality -- in fact, *more* people are among the lowest percentile of American poor today than they were 100 years ago. All we're doing is replacing rich white males with other kinds of rich people.
I'm curious to know (since this has become your area of specialty) what kinds of meaningful legal and economic differences there are between domestic partnerships and marriages. I suspect that there aren't many. To be fair, the fact that same-sex couples aren't extended the exact same rights as everyone else is, of course, absurd, but winning that battle won't do society NEARLY as much good as some kind of property redistribution. The simple fact that all my freshman *know* that "It's okay for Saudi Arabians to whip women who commit adultery because we have to respect their cultural differences", but don't understand why we're obligated to give to charity should be a frightening sign of how the diversity problem distracts us from real equality.
I welcome your thoughts.
But if something effects you directly, you react to it differently than you would if it didn't. Not to say that WBM doesn't agree that gay people should be allowed to marry, but if someone was saying he personally couldn't get married, he probably wouldn't dismiss identity politics so quickly. It's only from the position of straight white male that he can so easily say things like race, gender and sexuality don't matter, or shouldn't matter. Of course they shouldn't, but they still do.
ReplyDeleteI think you missed my point entirely. To say that "he'd feel differently" if he were gay is *not* to say that he'd be any closer to being false in his beliefs (that's an obvious ad-hominem fallacy). The equivalent would be to say that your subjectivity creates truth, which leads to you all kinds of problems.
ReplyDeleteYour line of questioning doesn't solve the problem, because opponents of same-sex marriage can simply say "Yes, you and I come from different backgrounds. Our subject-positions create different truths. Let's respect our differences instead of disagreeing about what is true."
Well, the scope of the rights conferred by a domestic partnership are going to be defined by the individual state. Let's assume that in California, domestic partnership confers all of the legal and economic rights of marriage and, as Michaels said, "the legal and economic issues have largely been factored out." This does not make the issue more attractive. In fact, in California the issue only arose because of a court decision, and was then voted down by Prop. 8. Consider what that means: there were more people in California concerned with eliminating a cost-free grant of rights to others than there were people who wished to retain those rights.
ReplyDeleteAs to the other point, I think that inclusion of minorities into capitalism does create more equality, in a sense. Even if the capitalist system itself is fundamentally unfair, excluding groups of people from that system is even more unfair.
I don't think society has transformed economic arguments about class difference into anything. I just think that these arguments used to have more appeal when they advocated a radically different way of doing things. What are people supposed to get passionate about now, economically speaking? "Advocates of the estate tax unite. You have nothing to lose because your relatives are most likely poor enough to fall within the statutory exemption." It just isn't sexy enough.
Ohhhh....I wanna play
ReplyDeleteSo, I'll admit, after getting half-way through your blog, I passed out, woke up, made some coffee, got a dictionary and finished your blog.
Now, since Prop 8 happened here, in California, I can tell you, it's been talked about quite a bit among my fellow coworkers. Pretty much all of the people I've talked to who appose same-sex marriage -and I was shocked at how many people are against it- were motivated by a similar theme: Religion and/or religious viewpoints which have been adopted as societal 'norms' and fear. I was surprised at how many people told me that if same-sex marriage went through, they were convinced it could possibly lead to their own children becoming gay. Seriously, they were worried that their kids would turn gay, because 'the law says it's okay to be gay'. And others just thought it was "gross". No one discussed economic impacts or separation of class or any of that high-brow type stuff. Everyone's argument, to me, sounded archaic and full of fear. Did you know that most of the Pro-Prop 8 ads were funded by the Mormon Church and purely created as fear tactics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PgjcgqFYP4
Everyone knows there has never been a real separation of church and state and it's gonna be a long time until it actually comes to fruition. If the bible had a stance against inter-racial marriage, I'm convinced that it would be illegal too. And undoubtedly, it would have been masked with a completely different agenda. I'm sure it would have become legal one day, but not without a long fight. Religion, specifically the Christian religion has slowed down many, if not all, of our social progress. Not to go on a rant about religion, but it seems to be the key factor in this one, to me.
I've wanted to post here for a while now, but I haven't had any time to do so. I want to respond the final post about religion, which I've been thinking about for a few days. I think positing the motivation of religious belief as separate from that of economics is a grave mistake. I'm sure it's true that the majority of the citizens who voted for Proposition 8 did so for religious reasons. But when the Christian church tells us that homosexuality is a sin, they ignore the work of serious scholars who say otherwise, and they ignore the words of Jesus who says to love your neighbor. Now, usually when you find someone ignoring reason like this, it's because ignoring reason serves some interest of theirs. Ignoring the work of scholars who have solid evidence that all forms of sexual expression are okay in God's eyes prevents the church from selling a product to a prime demographic. MLK said of the poor southern worker: "when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man." The very same thing is true with homosexuality today; the only difference is that churches have created an appeal that reaches audiences beyond poor people. The church trades on the solid base of essentialist gender roles to convince people that they should fear homosexuality. Convincing people that they’re better than some gay boogeyman serves at least two purposes: first, it gives conservative politicians a larger voting base that will choose them based on these “values,” which will allow them to enact the economic policies they want (which is exactly what MLK was talking about). Second, it makes people feel an affinity with the church because they’re all in the same big heterosexual club, and then they will donate money to the church (this is huge – churches make a lot of money these days. Just look up how much land the Mormon church owns sometime, or the yearly member donations to Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church).
ReplyDeleteThis is Gina, by the way. I tried to post with my Google account, which wasn't working, so I had to use my LiveJournal username.
Here here, Gina. Good discussion all around.
ReplyDelete