Haven’t we gone over this before? “Unfair to men” is not the same thing as “man-hating.”

If someone thought that what I wrote was actually misandrist, I’d prefer that they actually say so rather than simply imply that I wasn’t taking everything into account, or even being sexist. Just as, if they simply thought my argument was sexist, but not hateful, I’d prefer that they be honest and refrain from implying otherwise.

It might be more tactful to say that I was simply being unfair rather than calling my argument sexist, but diplomacy is not always a case of being tactful or nice. Sometimes, when negotiating, you need to be up front and clear about what you mean, and sometimes, for example, it can work to your advantage to back the other person into a corner. As a very short, average looking woman, I’ve often found that men especialy don’t always listen when I’m being tactful or nice. It’s when I refuse to pull my punches and I’m not afriad to let my anger, disgust, or annoyance show, that they start to pay attention.

When they guys at work pull the “smile…it can’t be that bad” crap on me, politely explaining why they are being jerks, even though they don’t mean to be at all, does jack shit. Especially since the civility that politeness requires is hard to differentiate from pleasantness, it often gives the impression that I am simply joking around with them. However, refusing to smile and telling them, usually tactlessly, that they are being jerks, has cut down on the orders to “smile!” considerably.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they think that I’m a little odd, but considering the conversations we’ve had about Star Wars, Adult Swim, and romance novels, I doubt they think I hate men either. No more than I think that they hate women just because they’ve internilized some of the sexism that still prevails.

There’s no question in my mind but that homophobia as is known in western society going back to Graeco-Roman and Jewish traditions has most of its roots in misogyny. Clearly much of the problem, which has almost exclusively focused on male-on-male sexuality, is that of men taking on the passive, penetrated, female role. Even Greece, with its tradition of pederasty, disapproved of adult males having sexual relations, unless the penetrated male was of a lower social position (such as a slave).

For two adult male citizens having equal social status to engage in sexual relations, one would have to volunteer to be the passive partner (all within the understanding of “conventional” sexual intercourse), thereby giving up his male role and privileges and adopting to behave “like a woman.”

It’s too funny to read conservative defenders of “traditional marriage” defend its role in enobling and empowering women when in truth women were considered property or chattel up until modern times. The dowry was supposed to pay the man for the cost of taking on the woman he married. Consider the Biblical commandment that warns “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” Nothing could be more clear about identifying a wife as some thing owned by a man. So please, let’s hear no more invocations about traditional marriage and how it’s good for women.

The idea promoted in most of western culture was/is that the adult male was/is at the pinnacle of the social and natural order, that this was/is his divinely assigned place in the scheme of things, and anything that detracted from him playing this role was unnatural or perverse. Women cannot be given true equality (and they haven’t) because that subverts this ideal. Men who behave unmanly - not only gay, but even passive, emotional, sensitive, compassionate men - are also a threat. Why is it that a man in a dress is always funny, as has been said, but that a woman dressed as a man is either seen as a threat, a throwback to something primitive, or taken as an expression of the woman’s power and confidence? It’s almost OK for women to want to be men, but no man in his right mind would want to become a woman, or so this way of thinking goes. Transpeople have reported here and elsewhere on the change in privilege, even confidence to be out in public, they feel when they switch from one primary gender role to another, either gaining (as male) or losing privileges and a sense of safety (as female).

It’s clear that the patriarchal mainstream that has held power for the past several millenia doesn’t want to give that up. The new pope not only condones a witchhunt against gay priests and seminarians, as if homosexuality were synonymous with pedophilia, but he’s calling for a reduced role for women in the Catholic Church. The early Christian scriptures don’t call for celibacy, don’t call for isolating women, so why does Catholic dogma? When the Catholic Church found out that women contribute 50% of the genetic material to a baby and are not merely passive vessels wherein a man has planted his seed that by itself grows into a fetus, it had to come up with nature-busting ideas of the Virgin birth and the Immaculate Conception. All to deny women any real role in Christ’s birth. Lies and deception packed on top of more lies to preserve male privilege.

Conservative Evangelical and Protestant denominations also want to cast women back into their traditional roles as wives, mothers, and housekeepers. This is one of the goals of the Promise-Keepers, an all-male religious movement.

The Koran gave equality to women but later paddings to those teachings sought to deny that equality, leading to perversions like the Taliban’s take on Islam in Afghanistan. Clearly the theologians involved haven’t gotten over the idea that Eve seduced Adam into committing a sin (as if Adam had no free will or choice); an idea that also one of the supporting roots of our Western misogyny and homophobia.

Throughout history there have been rantings against homosexuality and its threat to the stability of the family. Its often put in context of the irresistible sin - that if men try it, they’ll abandon their wives and children, which obviously would not be good for the social order. It brings to mind the incredibly offensive “once you try black, you never go back” expression that has circulated about whites having sex with people of color. Perhaps this is also an implied acknowledgement that many men have a desire for sex with other men, at least at some level, that they feel they have to resist, even to the point of violence against “out” men. There’s documented evidence that shows that men who profess most stridently their hatred for gay men are also the most likely to respond to homoerotic imagery. They seek to destroy what they hate in themselves.

So we finally get around to hate. Hatred of what we don’t like in ourselves. What threatens us with a loss of privilege and a loss of control and power. There’s no real difference between this and racial and ethnic hatreds, religious hatreds, or any bigotry based on difference. The fight for traditional marriage isn’t really about the sanctity of marriage as if that were some holy good. If that were true, there would have been lots more fighting against divorce and domestic partnership laws (the ones that predate same-sex domestic partnerships). Look at the numbers. At the best estimate, 10% of the population is gay/lesbian. Of that number, about 60%, the same as heterosexual persons, live in long-term relationships or desire one. This means that roughly 94% of the population is heterosexual and can engage in traditional marriage as they understand it. How is that so few, seeking to take part in an institution with the idea of benefitting from and ultimate upholding that instituition, threatens it with destruction. Marriage has been on the rocks from some time now, and it isn’t because we gay people were getting married too.

No, what all of these struggles are about is relinquishing privilege and power. Because if same-sex couples can marry, and have families, and have children - esp. in the case of lesbian couples and IVF, what do they need men for? Or women. And if women are equal to men, then men lose their “divine” place at the top of the pyramid. And if men can act in way labeled feminine, as a woman, and that’s OK, then man’s place at the top of the pyramid is not natural, or inevitable, or necessary for society to continue. And what comes crumbling down the “slippery slope” is not a slide into bizarre marriages like someone marrying their pet, as has been suggested by religious conservatives, but rather the huge pyramid of male power and privilege, and in the West you can add white and heterosexual as qualifiers. Don’t kid yourself about how much is at stake. If you assume that there’s only so much power and privilege to go around, someone has to give some up in order for others to share it. And that’s what this fight is really all about. That’s what racism in America is about. That’s what the resistance to true equality is all about. That’s why the Catholic Church wants to subordinate women. And prevent their priests from marrying, to exclude that feminine influence (is anything more unnatural than celibacy in terms of human sexuality?). Gays are not the real problem - it’s what they represent in terms of what is means to be male - and now with the inclusion of lesbian and transgender issues - what it means to be female - that is the problem. Whenever you read or hear “traditional family values” think male privilege.

Ironically, even gay men are not immune from this. because as men they still enjoy male privilege. I’ve listened to hateful misogynistic statements from gay men, even to the point of cursing that they were born of a woman, to a degree that has truly astonished me. But they are, after all, like all of us, products of our culture, and in the most extreme example, a Chinese male whose culture clearly devalues women.

I am not claiming that all homophobia (and its counterpart, heterosexism) can be reduced to an extension of misogyny, but when so many of the historic and current invections about male-on-male sex state or imply that it is evil because of the loss of male privilege and status, the connection is undeniable.

Many of those who oppose the legalization of gay marriage object to being called bigots or homophobes. They insist that their position is based on reason or religion, not hatred. Perhaps it is possible to oppose gay marriage without being…

It also permitted and continues to permit divorce.

If you want to talk about Christianity, please leave the “Judeo” out of it, especially if you’re ignorant.

Thanks.

I’ll quit posting now, I promise.

My husband and I have chosen not to have children at this point in our lives. We may never have children. Is our marriage invalid until we procreate, especially since right now we have sex that lacks a procreative intention? My friend is unable to have children and does not wish to adopt. Does that make her marriage invalid? Biblically, were Sarah and Abraham not really married until she bore Isaac in her nineties? Or did they just quit having sex when they figured out she was barren? Or does just having sex a few times, or even once, with procreative intent validate a marriage? What about marriages where one person is para- or quadrapalegic and unable to engage in the “making babies” kind of sex? Should such people not be able to marry at all, since they can’t even indulge in sex with a procreative intent? Am I the only person who finds this somewhat insulting?

Coontz’s The History of Marriage details how marriage in the Western world has changed over time from basically an arrangement where a man owned a woman and her main purpose was to provide him sons, to an economic arrangement, to the companionate marriage idea so many of us subscribe to today. I recommend it to everybody here, if you haven’t read it yet. Her point was, if I recall correctly, that, like it or not, it is unlikely (barring some dystopian fundamentalist takeover like that in The Handmaid’s Tale) that we will ever return to a “biblical” version of marriage. Too many Christians and Jews embrace the idea of marriage as a partnership over marriage as a baby-making endeavor. They may hold both ideas at the same time–but as Coontz demonstrates, the idea of companionate marriage in itself is what brought about things like women’s rights in the marital area and the push for gay marriage (She makes the argument far better than I could even sum up. Read the book!) And very few people are going to give up the idea of companionate marriage completely. Maybe in a hundred or so years we might see a change, but culturally, right now, we view marriage as a union between two people who are going to support each other (and any children they may choose to have) and form a social, legal, economic partnership. We also think love should have a lot to do with it. When viewed that way, it seems unsupportable to deny people the right to form such unions based on whether they can procreate with their partner or not.

Whew! Sorry I ran on so long.

I agree that we disagree! No problem.

AB, I think you’re missing the point. The scale of the drudgery would be the same, whether or not the legislation was changed by replacing “marriage” with “civil union” or was amended to abolish any reference to marital status.

I understand that some people are very attached to the institution of marriage because of religious reasons.

And even more people are very attached to the institution of marriage because it’s a simple and convenient way of acquiring a bundle of rights which we call “marriage”.

I guess I would just prefer to start afresh with something that isn’t so tangled up in contested religious and cultural beliefs about women’s place in the world.

In short, you are a radical revolutionary! The problem with being for radical revolution in order to create needed change is that radical revolutions very seldom happen, and the one you are advocating simply doesn’t have a chance. If you really want to accomplish real change in marriage, making it less biased and unequal, you are much more likely to succeed in your goal if you campaign for marriage reform, than if you campaign for abolishing marriage completely. If you just want to sound like one of the cool kids, and don’t actually want to see real change, keep right on advocating the abolishment of marriage.

What is it in marriage that is worth reforming all parts that are still biased and unequal?

Please see the Story of Abigail at post 37. Whether or not we choose to call something “marriage,” our society needs to establish the privileges and duties we have toward one another. If you move to another city, and I quit my job to move with you, am I entitled to unemployment compensation (because my duty to live with you takes priority over the job, rendering my termination “involuntary”) or not (because my duty to live with you is discretionary, rendering my choice to leave my job “voluntary”)? The answers to such questions turns on whether courts recognize my relationship to you as different than my relationship to a stranger. In this sense, government cannot avoid entangling itself with evaluating people’s relationships to one another.

The most we can hope for is government policy that does not discriminate on the basis of irrelevant criteria.

I understand that some people are very attached to the institution of marriage because of religious reasons. I’m appreciative of that, but I don’t think it’s a good enough reason to have the state institutionalize it. Others have a historical attachment and believe we should not overturn institutions with a long history easily. I’m much more sympathetic to this argument, but I think that marriage has a long enough history of legitimizing pretty awful things against women–legalized rape, discriminatory tax treatment, and so forth–that it *is* worth looking at ending its entanglement with U.S. law. Why not reform it to make it less unequal? Judging by the recent posting about the potential legislation in Indiana to make IVF illegal for unmarried women, I think the trend is pretty clearly not in that direction. (Or at least, it would be a terribly contested series of fights.)

The most convincing argument I’ve seen for why marriage is still necessary on the state level is Amp’s contention that it allows us to name our own next-of-kin. That is a necessary and valuable part of marriage; I guess I would just prefer to start afresh with something that isn’t so tangled up in contested religious and cultural beliefs about women’s place in the world.

I am actually open to being persuaded on this. It’s just that Amp’s is the first argument I’ve ever come across that didn’t fall back on religion or a sort of conservative, cultural “it’s just right because it is” argument.

…I’m a little agog at this belief. Of course, to many Americans who never travel abroad, it might not be a problem that they no longer had access to an internationally-recognised legal relationship, but I would have thought that the sheer drudgery entailed in going through every single legal reference to marriage in every single piece of legislation in every single state (and all federal legislation) and replacing “marriage” with “civil union” would be enough to put any non-revolutionary off it completely.

What is it in marriage that is worth reforming all parts that are still biased and unequal?

Why assume marriage has to be biased and unequal? Why not, instead, reform civil marriage to make it less biased and unequal?

Actually, I’m not a revolutionary. Never was that cool. I’m a pretty boring, run-of-the-mill, pragmatic policy wonk. I think I was very influenced by having studied abroad in high school and in college in countries that either have de-institutionalized marriage (Sweden) or created the ‘civil union’ alternative for gays and ended up having a fair number of straights prefer that to marriage (France). I’m not inclined to see removing ending civil marriage (but leaving all religious marriage stuff to churches and synagogues and so forth) as a very revolutionary social policy at all. I am intrigued, however, by your statement that

>>I guess I just don’t understand the mentality of someone who would rather throw out the baby with the bathwater. I never did understand the kind of people who, faced with the prospect of doing a long, intricate, and worthwhile reconstruction job, would rather smash the thing to pieces and declare it not worth repairing.>>

If I may ask–what do you see as the “baby”? What is it in marriage that is worth reforming all parts that are still biased and unequal? (I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m genuinely interested.)

Curiously enough, I meant exactly what I said. Over all the world, there are examples of marriages which are not heterosexual unions - two men or two women joining in what their own culture defines as a marriage: there are examples of marriages which are not intended to be permanent: there are examples of marriages which are never intended to create children.

Your argument that the “natural state” of marriage does not include any examples of marriage which don’t fit your definition means that you have to discard many marriages, worldwide, present and past, as “unnatural”.

The argument for gay marriage rests on the idea that we must treat equally all adults regardless of what forms of consensual sexual behavior they engage in.

Ideally, it would be even simpler than that. The argument for SSM rests on the idea that we should not legally classify what adults can do based on their sex. As Jack Balkin (Yale Law prof) explained this theory:

It violates sex equality to tell a man he cannot marry another man when a woman could do so. It violates sex equality to tell a woman she cannot marry another woman when a man could do so. The ban on same-sex marriage makes an illegal distinction on the basis of the sex of the parties.

The advantage of this argument is that it does not call into question any state restrictions on marriage other than the sex of the partners, so it raises no constitutional problems about whether the state must now allow incest or polygamy. It is also premised on a category of state discrimination (sex discrimination) that is already well established as unconstitutional, so there is no need to create a new category of suspect classification or recognize a new fundamental right.

–ahem (Nope, Not A Serious Political Blogger.)

I used to feel that way about “homophobia.” After all, I was raised to make that argument in my sleep, I was a good little theocon. “We’re not afraid, phobia is when you’re afraid, we just disapprove for ethical reasons!”

Then, in the course of deconstructing Passion of the Christ, I kept hitting a) all the massive homophobia rampant in Mel Gibson - and when a guy keeps saying “I’m not gay! I’m not gay! Look how manly I am, you don’t think I’m GAY do you?!?!? I have six, count’em , SIX kids!!! You would never mistake THIS manly man for a faggot, would you???” then there is really nothing you can call it except, yes, homophobia - and the curious mix of overt anti-gay bigotry, romanticized male companionship, fetishization of the male body, and BDSM in the corpus of his films…I had to stop and reconsider.

A lot of things. The general obsession of the Christian conservative side with homosexuality. The specific fixation on male homosexuality by the male dominated Church. The queasy combination of eroticized violence, nubile young men, and emphatic male chastity (from women at least) elevated in christian art from the Renaissance on - and the constant worry of the conservative men around me as to whether or not they were sufficiently “manly” and whether or not something they did might be construed as “gay.”

To make a long story short, I concluded that not only was “phobia” spot on, but it was time to start using the word as a challenge - why exactly *are* you guys so obsessed with what gay guys do in bed? Why are you so threatened by their very existence, let alone the idea that they should have equal civil rights? Why are you “tolerant” ones so emphatic that you don’t mind the so long as they stay in the closet - that is, so long as you don’t have to think about them, can pretend they don’t exist? Is it that it raises the possibility that there is not such a cut and dried difference between “gay” and “straight,” that you might be forced to face certain disturbing truths about yourselves?

–Or what? Huh? Huh? I want to *know*, dammit, you manipulated me into voting Republican and convinced me there was nothing else moral I could do, now I want some ANSWERS after having been coopted to supporting bigotry all those years, I’ve looked at those bible passages and the original texts and I’m not seeing the logic in this, unless taken as a whole complex of disordered male insecurities and phobias–

Needless to say, there’s been a deafening silence on the matter from that quarter.