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Debitage on the Same-Sex Marriage Debate

Posted by Ampersand | December 29th, 2003

I’ve been meaning to link to this Debitage post on same-sex marriage for a while, which seems to me to be very on-target.

After reading a few recent attempts to justify heterosexuals-only marriage, I’m starting to get what some of the secular opposition to gay marriage is all about. I never bought the idea that secular arguments were just lame rationalizations for religiously-based opposition to homosexuality (though certainly many people accept both sets of reasons).

At first sight, the arguments put forth seem bizarre. No reason is given why the stable, loving family that anti-gay-marriage arguments idealize can’t be composed of members of the same sex. Indeed, it would seem that such an arrangement is exactly what homosexual couples who want to get married are aiming at. The thing is, though, that keeping gays from marrying isn’t the point. The point is to preserve loving, socially rich family relationships against the percieved encroachment of distanced, individualized, contractarian interactions. To put it in Marxist terms, they fear the commodification of social interaction. Gay marriage is simply a symbol of this cold and lonely world. We can’t make a law that says spouses have to love each other (rather than simply making a convenient deal), so the struggle is fought out on the symbolic terrain of gay rights.

Read the whole thing.

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2 Responses to “Debitage on the Same-Sex Marriage Debate”

  1. NegroPleaseDotCom's peripheral vision Writes:
    December 30th, 2003 at 2:47 pm

    timely linkage
    posts, articles, and the like of things that have been on my head in the past 24 hours.

    This comment was written by NegroPleaseDotCom's peripheral vision.
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  2. Anonymous Writes:
    February 27th, 2004 at 5:50 am

    Social Conservatives Fears about Same Sex Marriage
    A very interesting idea I encountered is that there is a link between the current opposition to same sex marriage and the 1970’s opposition to the legalization of divorce. Basically, social conservatives fear the erosion of the family. If marriage …

    This comment was written by Anonymous.
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