Gay Marriage

I went down to the State House last Thursday to see what I could see. What I saw wasn't very pretty. On one side a group of angry, wacky people calling themselves "Christians", and on the other a group of equally angry, but not so wacky, advocates for gay marriage. Everyone was saying something, but no one was listening. It wasn't really the place for dialogue. Part of me wonders if dialogue is still possible. Dialogue necessitates that both sides be on the same page, but on this issue they seem to be coming from two different worlds.

On other social issues, the opposing sides can at least see each other's good points. But on gay marriage, you are more likely to get a look of "What planet are you from?" from a friend who disagrees with you. Each side sees their conviction as self-evident. So, rather than try to argue my own conviction in these pages, my hope is to help opponents and proponents of gay marriage understand each other a little better.

Both sides, to start, have severely caricatured the other. The other side can easily be scorned without thought and derided without hesitation when both sides are cordoned off in "conservative" or "liberal" camps. Such labels are unhelpful. The "conservative" label suggests an unthinking commitment to merely human traditions. People who question gay marriage are accused of an arrogant, obstinate desire to preserve The Old Way, simply because it is The Way Things Are Always Done.

The "liberal" label is often used with a sneer against imagined libertines who only think about sex, and who are likely to suggest group marriage or horse marriage if given the chance. People arguing for gay marriage are accused of actively trying to dismantle Civilization itself, simply to satisfy their selfish desires.

To be sure, there are several individuals for whom those two descriptions would actually apply. But on the whole, neither side would describe themselves in that way.

Far from thinking themselves self-interested, the average liberal sees herself as fighting for the good of others, especially if she as a heterosexual doesn't stand to benefit from gay marriage. She sees her motivation to be love, not licentiousness. She sees, perhaps, a gay friend who really loves his partner and really wants to be able to marry him. She thinks the best way to help him is to help the cause that will get him what he wants. A more accurate label for advocates of gay marriage, rather than liberals, might be "allies". "Love your neighbor," a chant I heard from the allies at the State House rally, sums up what motivates them. Allies believe the best way to love someone is to give them whatever they most deeply want.

The average conservative wishes to conserve something not for tradition's sake, but because the something is worth conserving. He doesn't believe something gets its worth from simply being old, but that its being old is at least a testimony to a worth it may already possess in itself. Not all things that last a long time, of course, do so because they are good. Slavery lasted a long time, and it was not good. The best way to test whether something old is also something good is to ask if it is also something true.

The idea of human rights eventually prevailed over the idea of slavery because the idea of human beings as property is not compatible with the truth. Slavery never had any worth to conserve because it did not conform to the truth of unalienable rights -- humans really do have an objective right to their life and property. In a thousand years, if human rights are called into question, they will not be defended simply because they are old, but because they are true -- they conform to the nature of reality.

When a conservative looks at marriage, between a man and a woman for so many centuries, its longevity does suggest to him that many people before him, much wiser than he, thought there was something true about heterosexual marriage. But his conviction to oppose gay marriage only comes when he discovers that gay marriage is indeed not true -- not conformable to the nature of reality.

Here is where both sides have the hardest time understanding each other. The ally is used to thinking of marriage as a human invention. If it were, then the conservative would be pretty arrogant in demanding it remain unchanged, for human inventions are meant to be flexible to meet human needs. But the conservative says marriage should not be changed because it cannot be changed -- because it is, like human rights, a basic fact of reality. Man is designed to be with a woman, they hold, and a woman with a man. To depart from the design is actually harmful, because reality is designed to be good and a good used wrongly ceases to be good. In their mind they are also loving their neighbor. They believe that the best way to love someone is to do what is really best for them, not always what they want. "Realists" might be a better label for them.

Realists believe that the nature of marriage, like the fact of human rights, exists independently of what people think about it. Just as no one can decide that people no longer have the right to not be tortured, no one can decide that marriage is something it is not. Asking, "If two people love each other why can't they get married?" makes as much sense to a realist as asking, "If somebody wants to walk across a canyon, why can't the air hold her up?" Realists are deeply concerned that just as a car running on the wrong fuel will eventually stop working, a departure from the reality of marriage will have unforeseen, harmful consequences for children and the society at large, despite how innocent the proposal seems at the moment. Realists agree that heterosexuals have made a mess of marriage, by already departing from its design for devotion, loyalty, and permanence, but they see that as no reason to depart even further.

Both sides, then, see their campaigns as ones of love. The question of the best way to love turns on facts. Allies may never agree that homosexual unions are against the design of reality. But they should be willing to look to Scandinavia and Norway to see what gay marriage really does to marriage in general. Realists may never agree that the state should grant all privileges of married couples to gay couples, but they should recognize the need for some (hospital visitation, insurance benefits). The Allies should be sure they are allied with the truth, and the Realists need to get real about practicing what they preach.

Jack Grimes is a senior majoring in philosophy and political science. He can be reached at Grimes@tuftsdaily.com.