Part Two of Three

Okay, I’m back, and here is the back story to last week’s entry: After I had written much of my first post, I was poking around on the blog and read the long discussion that followed Al’s posting of the John Danforth op-ed from the New York Times (which I had sent to him, actually, provoking controversy on these pages before my presence became official). I found it interesting that the conversation quickly became fixated on same-sex marriage – and I was shocked and disturbed by some of what was said. Then I realized that my Prologue contained two separate stories relating to the issue of homosexuality. I had started a little list of topics I wanted to write about, and same-sex marriage wasn’t even on it. But clearly it’s on people’s minds, so I thought I would dive in. In the process, I realized that my thoughts on same-sex marriage are incredibly complex. Thus, this is a three-part series rather than one Great-American-Novel-length post. Last week was the Coontz interview as background. This week, I narrate.

In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I spent over two years doing lesbian and gay rights work, among other things, with the ACLU before and immediately after I graduated from law school. I think this gives me an uncommon level of knowledge and perspective about what the movement’s goals are. First off: “converting children” is decidedly not among them. Advocating for a nation in which gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered are treated as full human beings who deserve love, respect, and equality, is. But the remarkable thing about the folks I met in the gay rights legal movement (and the number of lawyers doing impact work is pretty small, so it’s safe to say I met most of them) is how decidedly radical they aren’t. Frankly, I was a little disappointed. I had thought that this was going to be cutting-edge stuff, and everyone was so normal, their goals so modest. I hate to say this because it’s so trite, but they really just want “to be like everyone else” (i.e., have families and community, live peacefully and be happy).

Now, anyone who has gay friends over age 30 will probably tell you some version of the same thing. And by now almost everyone should be acquainted with at least one gay man or lesbian (you know, Mary Cheney and so forth). Which is why the far right’s fears of gay men and lesbians have never failed to mystify me. It took me a lot of research and thought to identify concerns beyond the “ick factor” most self-professed heterosexual men experience when they imagine two men together. (And it is axiomatic that being grossed out by something is not a sufficient reason to outlaw it or to give second-class-citizen status to an entire class of people because of it).

Before I address the theme I believe is at issue, I think it is important to note that (at least in my experience) people who are anti-gay rights rarely attempt to articulate what their concerns are about accepting same-sex relationships. The best that one person close to me could come up with was a sputtering statement that “the parts don’t fit.” That kind of unsophisticated outburst may be fine for drinks around the pool (although I would tend to argue that it isn’t), but it is wholly inadequate when engaging in a public policy debate. I believe it is fair to say that most such debates center around questions of harm – how a law or norm will either prevent or cause harm to people in general or to groups of people. This, in my view, is as it should be, as one of the primary purposes of government is protection of citizens from various types of harm (i.e., the military, police, the FDA, workplace safety standards). And what such an approach means in practical terms is that you can’t just say, “I will not let gays harm my family [by supporting same-sex marriage]” without explaining how and why you believe that will happen. Specifically which gays are going to threaten your family’s well-being? How will they do so? If they will harm you by getting married, why aren’t they harming you by existing? And so on.

My theory about same-sex marriage, based on a great deal of study and reflection, is that the bruhaha is not so much about homosexuality per se as it is about maintaining traditional gender roles. I have expounded on this theory at length elsewhere (See Reconsidering the Gender-Equality Perspective for Understanding LGBT Rights, 13 Law & Sexuality 605 (2004)). Discussing it here is tricky because I’m trying to condense a lot into a few short paragraphs, but here are my basic points:

► “Sexual orientation” is a relatively recent concept that developed in response to historical changes in women’s rights, status, and liberties. Of course, the behaviors of same-sex sexuality have always existed; but the conception of same-sex attraction as an identity did not begin to arise until the 17^th century for men, and the late 19^th century for women. The rise of “sexology” in the late 19^th century gradually gave these identities the name “homosexual” and defined them in terms of defying gender-based norms of proper behavior and appearance, same-sex sexuality being one among many traits giving rise to the diagnosis.

► Gender nonconformity and same-sex orientation are often confused or conflated with each other. For example, people often assume that a woman with very short hair and no makeup is a lesbian, or that a man with a high voice is gay – without any personal knowledge of the individual’s sexuality. These are gender-based cues, resting on the assumptions that women should have longer hair and wear cosmetics in order to be appropriately feminine, and that men should have low voices in order to be appropriately masculine (and these are a few examples among many, many others). This isn’t necessarily an indictment of making those assumptions – gendered expectations of people are deeply embedded in our culture – just pointing out that they are made based on gendered traits rather than sexual ones.

► Being intimate with members of the other sex, and not with one’s own sex, is one aspect of gender-role expectations in our culture. In other words, having sex with men is something that women are expected to do in order to be considered “real” women, and vice versa for men. [There’s some really disturbing history that goes along with this having to do with rape and misogyny that, if I were to try to explain it, would require me to say things that would curl your hair, so I’ll leave this point at that for now since the history lesson is not necessary for the purposes of this discussion.]

► Finally, our culture’s movement toward equality for gays did not develop in a vacuum. It is not a coincidence that greater acceptance and visibility of same-sex relationships began to occur at about the same time as the second-wave women’s movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. Far-right organizations such as the Family Research Council are not factually wrong when they make this connection, as well as connecting acceptance of gay rights with acceptance of premarital sex, divorce, single parenthood, and abortion. What do all of these things have in common? It is obvious to me: all of the above issues relate to gender, and more specifically the ways in which marriage as a social institution and as a personal relationship no longer limits women’s (or men’s!) range of life possibilities as it once did. With respect to gay rights, the connection is: In previous generations, people who were gay used to marry people of the opposite sex in order to have a reasonably peaceful life – living as an out gay man or lesbian was not a realistic option for most. Now it is not only a realistic option, but increasingly has replaced passing as the more desirable option. This was made possible by the changes in the twentieth century that freed women from the necessity of marriage and motherhood. Certainly there is debate on the merits of these changes, but it is impossible conceptually disconnect gay rights and women’s rights.

So, in my view, the reason that the marriage issue, rather than the repeal of sodomy laws or the popularity of Will & Grace, has become the lightning rod is because of preexisting anxiety about male-female marriage caused by the precise things listed above, plus the movement of women into the workforce (which provided the financial independence that was a necessary precondition for the proliferation of divorce, prolonged singlehood, single motherhood, and so on). Many people are still reeling from all of these social changes – they have not accepted or adapted to them. And for those people, marriage is a vulnerable and embattled institution on the brink of extinction. One more change, the Dobsons of the world believe, will push marriage, family, and community into the dustbin of history.

How same-sex marriage will cause this to occur is not exactly intuitive. As many same-sex marriage advocates have pointed out, how could it be harmful to a struggling institution to have more people participate in it, believe in it, and promote it? If you believe that marriage and commitment are good for society, why isn’t it better to have more people in committed, long-term relationships?

The way that conservatives typically answer this question is emblematic of my earlier comment about failing to articulate the real concern: everyone’s favorite logical fallacy, the slippery slope. “If two men, why not three men? Why not a man and a dog? Why not six men, two ducks, and a lampshade?” Frankly, I have never seen fit to give this line of thought much more than an eye roll. Certainly it could serve as fodder for an interesting theoretical conversation, but in terms of reality, the likelihood of such proposals is not on the charts, far-right conspiracy theories notwithstanding.

So the bestiality/polygamy argument seems to me a red herring, a way of saying, “if we let this happen, what’s to stop people from doing absolutely anything that strikes their fancy?” The biggest and most real source of this anxiety, though, is not what could happen, but what has already happened. It’s just easier to slow down the engines of social change than to throw the whole train in reverse – i.e., it’s easier to make gays the scapegoat for the changes that have been occurred with respect to marriage than to point the finger at your relatives, friends, and neighbors who are divorced, who cohabitate, or who are single parents. And it is also really easy to see these anxiety-provoking behaviors as individual moral failings instead of changes that have occurred on a societal level and for reasons that have everything to do with the movement toward women’s legal, political, and social equality. That doesn’t make them unequivocally good things in and of themselves. But it does mean that we have to understand and evaluate them in the context of how and why they occurred. And that includes recognizing same-sex marriage and increasing acceptance of same-sex relationships as of a piece with other changes in the stringency and centrality of gender roles in our society.

Next week I’ll talk about the purposes and merits of government recognition of intimate relationships.

P.S. I haven’t had time to do much commenting in the past week, but I have been reading the comments and just want to say that I have been really impressed with the respect and courtesy reflected therein. I look forward to having some very productive conversations with all of you.