It seems the Mormons and Catholics are miffed that people are demonstrating against them over Prop 8. Via C&L, the Mormons whine:

Once again, we call on those involved in the debate over same-sex marriage to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility towards each other. No one on either side of the question should be vilified, harassed or subject to erroneous information.

When you realize that they are not talking about what they did to us, but what they claim people are doing to them, you’re going to wet yourself.

Jim Burroway has a good, clear analysis of just what’s going on here in terms of participation in the democratic process.

And the Catholics are just as bad:

“Proposition 8 is not against any group in our society. Its sole focus is on preserving God’s plan for people living upon this earth throughout time,” Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles, said in a statement Thursday.

Not against any group? If you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to talk to you about.

It would appear that lies have gotten to be such a basic part of the fabric of the institutional process here that they can’t quite stop telling them. What amazes me is that people look to these guys for spiritual and moral guidance.

Note to both these jerks: Yes, you have a right to express your opinions, including your opinions about my relationships. Guess what: I have a right to express my opinions about your opinions. The difference is, I stick with facts.

[Reprinted from Hunter at Random. Originally published November 9, 2008.]

Gah! I just lost a major post on race and Prop 8, which I am not gong to reconstruct now. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never.

However, I did find a couple of other things that look interesting. First, Scott Lemieux does a nice dissection of Jeffrey Rosen’s “backlash” argument. It’s the same ridiculous argument, just different details. Take a look. (Why are these silly tropes always advanced by people who claim to be “sympathetic”? That’s almost as good as David Blankenhorn claiming to be a liberal Democrat.)

Lemieux also does a number on Megan McArdle. McArdle’s core argument echoes Rosen’s, which echoes all the “sympathetic” right-wingers who think we should wait for Daddy to give us a present.

Using the courts to establish a right to gay marriage made opponents feel threatened, and railroaded. If socially conservative voters hadn’t felt they needed to protect themselves from activist judges, we wouldn’t be seeing these provisions written into state constitutions. Few of them would probably have bothered to vote out legislators who voted for gay marriage five years from now. But with it on the ballot, in front of them, and worries that judges would make the decision unless they did, they shot it down even in California.

What Lemieux doesn’t call these two on is one simple fact: Going into this campaign, a majority of Californians supported the Court’s decision. Why don’t we deal with some reality here, because otherwise an event like this gets translated in the right-wing mind as a widespread backlash, and, lo and behold, it’s all our fault because we stood up for our rights (which is an attitude that has infected the gay left to an appalling degree). Crap. It was the result of a deliberate, well-funded campaign of lies and scare tactics by groups who want to impose their religious beliefs on the country at large. Frankly, the results of this election seem to me much more to signal the death of the right-wing culture warrriors. In eight years, the anti-gay cartel lost nearly 10% of the vote.

McArdle makes another statement that Lemieux doesn’t call her on, and he should have:

In general, courts are the wrong place to press these sorts of claims. The courts were appropriate for civil rights because blacks were literally denied the right to participate in the legislative democratic process.

Point one: This is a civil rights issue. The participation in the legislative democratic process is an iffy point: yeah, we can vote, but we’re a minority. (I get really tired of having to point out basic civics lessons to the right-wing “intelligentsia.” Constitutional guarantees of civil rights are not subject to the whim of the people. That’s why the Dobson Gang is so hot to amend constitutions. And that’s why in any state with brains, constitutions are hard to amend. Duh.) And as we can see from the recent results of the “legislative democratic process” on this very issue in California and New York, that process can be stymied quite easily by one person. (Let me also point out that it took 30 years to pass a gay-inclusive civil rights bill in Illinois because the Republican Senate leadership kept it bottled up in committee. For thirty years. Talk to me about the “legislative democratic process,” Megan.)

What we’re seeing from McArdle is a minor variation on the “wait for the old white straight men to give it to you.” She and Rosen (and how many others on the right) are advocating a strategy that seems more than anything else to be designed to yield no results at all. But then, conservatives are not about change.

What’s worrisome about this is the degree to which the rabid right’s “activist judges” mantra has worked its way into the dialogue, to the extent that even the left wing now assumes that a judicial decision such as this has “imposed” something on someone. I suppose there’s not much help for it, except to object to it loudly whenever you see it, because people tend to be sloppy about their use of language, which plays into the culture warriors’ hands — witness their sliding definitions of “theory” when discussing evolution — or for that matter, their shifting “definitions” of marriage. The outcry is always about “creating new rights,” when in fact, it is the opponents of change who are creating new rights. (I discussed this, I believe, in my deconstruction of Rod Dreher’s essay a day or two ago — they’re absolutely correct, there is no “right to gay marriage” except as they’ve created it as a straw man. The right is “marriage.” It is being withheld from a class of citizens without adequate reason. I still insist that is the only valid framing.)

Well, that’s today’s profound little post. McArdle is such an easy target.

[Reprinted from Hunter at Random. Originally published November 8, 2008.]

I like this ad. The punchline is just great.

[Reprinted from Hunter at Random.]

Amendment 2, and Proposition 102, and every civil rights bill ever brought forward. It’s most relevant to the marriage issue, but it does apply to the others.

This passage from Joseph W. Campbell¹ struck me:

The tribal ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage, burial, installation, and so forth, serve to translate the individual’s life-crises and life-deeds into classic, impersonal forms. They disclose him to himself, not as this personality or that, but as the warrior, the bride, the widow, the priest, the chieftain; at the same time rehearsing for the rest of the community the old lesson of the archetypal stages. All participate in the ceremonial according to rank and function. The whole society becomes visible to itself as an imperishable living unit. Generations of individuals pass, like anonymous cells from a living body, but the sustaining, timeless form remains. By an enlargement of vision to embrace this superindividual, each discovers himself enhanced, enriched, supported, and magnified. His role, however unimpressive, is seen to be intrinsic to the beautiful festival-image of man — the image, potential yet necessarily inhibited, within himself.

Social duties continue the lesson of the festival into normal, everyday existence and the individual is validated still. . . .

Rites of initiation and installation, then, teach the lesson of the essential oneness of the individual and the group. . . .

This is what we’re fighting for.

[Reprinted from Hunter at Random.]

1. Joseph W. Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. New World Library, 2008, p. 331. (back)

Excellent post by Timothy Kincaid on the core argument against same-sex marriage as expressed by Dr. Albert Mohler, who, as you may remember, is President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Distilled to its elements, Mohler’s argument is this:

Marriage is a differentiating term. And limiting the use of that term to heterosexuals will justly place limits on the stories, laws, families, and especially the aspirations of gay people. And that is a good thing. If gay couples are restricted from calling their relationships “marriage” they can be set apart and condemned. They should not aspire to be treated like me.

Now, of course, he does not put it in those terms. He’s neither a fool nor intentionally insulting. But behind his insistence on owning the words “marriage” and “husband” and “wife” is a proprietary instinct not based on his own reflections but rather on gay exclusions.

I think Kincaid has got it cold: the whole stance of the anti-gay religious right is that gays should not be treated equally. He sums up exactly what it is that Mohler and the rest of the anti-gay right want to stop:

Young kids coming out today dream of marriage and a fairytale life not unlike that of their classmates. They aspire to honesty, self worth, and advancement based on their merits, unhindered by discrimination or bigotry. And heterosexual kids today have expectations of their gay friends and siblings that mirror those placed on themselves.

Can’t have that, now, can we?

Do I need to belabor the fact that Mohler’s argument, and the entire campaign against gays by his colleagues, are fundamentally opposed to our basic American ideals and traditions? I didn’t think so.

Kincaid’s previous posts on Mohler and SSM are here and here.

[Reprinted from Hunter at Random.]

A little footnote to Jonathan Rauch’s comment that the marriage strategy is “exhausted and counterproductive”: according to a report from Connecticut,

A new poll says 53 percent of Connecticut residents support last week’s state Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay and lesbian marriages.

42% oppose it. When you think about what the numbers most likely would have been even five years ago, for a tired old strategy, it doesn’t seem all that counterproductive to me. It certainly seems more productive than waiting around for the majority to decide that it’s time we were allowed to marry.

This seems to be what Rauch favors:

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan.

[Reprinted from Hunter at Random.]

Sorry — I just had to use that.

More on Jonathan Rauch’s comments on the Connecticut SSM case, Kerrigan vs. Commissioner of Public Health:

Rauch makes a point of noting that Connecticut has passed civil unions legislation that gives same-sex couples the same legal rights as married couples:

It’s a defensible analysis. But here’s the thing: like California, and very much unlike Massachusetts in 2004, when that state’s Supreme Court ordered SSM, Connecticut was not proposing to give gay couples nothing as an alternative to marriage. To the contrary: in 2005, the state legislature enacted civil unions, granting every state right and responsibility of marriage, and withholding only the designation “marriage” itself.

Rauch ignores the very pertinent point that civil unions are not equal to marriage. From the opinion:

We conclude that, in light of the history of pernicious discrimination faced by gay men and lesbians,1 and because the institution of marriage carries with it a status and significance that the newly created classification of civil unions does not embody, the segregation of heterosexual and homosexual couples into separate institutions constitutes a cognizable harm.

This was also a key element in the California decision: the term “marriage” in and of itself constitutes a value that is left out of alternative, newly created institutions such as civil unions and domestic partnerships. To miss that point is to miss the whole point of the debate.

Rauch:

As the smart dissent, by Justice Borden (joined by Justice Vertefeiulle), notes, most political observers in Connecticut agreed that the conversion of civil unions to marriage was just a matter of time, and “sooner rather than later.” The state’s steady stream of pro-gay legislation, topped off by civil unions, makes the idea that gays need the court’s protection from a hostile majority seem obsolete. So says the dissent, and I’d add that, as a political matter, we ought to be maturing beyond official victim status, not welcoming it.

This is a point that parellels my comments in my brief prior post: Rauch is conflating the political and the judicial here, which is something that, all propaganda aside, we assiduously try to avoid. It’s a matter of process: The court isn’t allowed to say “Well, it’s going to happen eventually, so we’ll just wait.” That is not in its purview (although several courts have tried that tack on related issues, and New York and Washington state actually avoided the issue altogether and threw it back to the legislatures by the simple expedient of asking the wrong questions.) Rauch’s criticism of the court and its decision seems to be based on this idea that the courts should be content to wait; my contention is simply that they’re not really allowed to do that. They have to decide the cases before them, particularly if there are fundamental rights issues involved. (We see a similar process going on right now in New Jersey, where the court told the legislature to come up with something — very much akin to what happened in Massachusetts — and the legislature came up with civil unions, which are now being seen as not equal to marriage. This one will be the result of legislative action, but the court has already spoken: this is just the court’s instruction working itself out.)

Rauch again:

Second, the issue before the court was: Is man-plus-woman a discriminatory restriction on marriage, or is it part of the very definition of marriage? I, and probably most visitors to this site, hold the former view; but it’s foolish to pretend that the notion of same-sex marriage isn’t newfangled. If the people of Connecticut aren’t quite ready to go all the way to changing what many regard as the core definition of marriage, should it be unconstitutional for them to compromise on civil unions while catching their breath? In effect, what the court has done here is to make patience illegal.

Back in May, commenting on the California decision (”Hold the Champagne”), I called this kind of all-or-nothing thinking “legal totalism”, which,

it seems to me, is tailor-made to rule out any kind of accommodation, even if that accommodation gives gay couples most of what we need with the promise of more to come (soon). I think SSM is a better policy than civil unions. And I think denial of marriage to gay couples is discriminatory. But to make even a well-intentioned compromise ILLEGAL strikes me as a step too far, and a good example of how culture wars escalate.

And now, once again, a court pulls the rug out from under a compromise that gives us 95 percent of what we want uncontroversially.

First off, the whole “patience” thing is bizarre. I think I see his thinking here — it would be nice if we all just waited our turn like good boys and girls, and eventually papa will give us something nice. Y’know what? I wasn’t a particularly good little boy. Secondly, we’ve seen where that has gotten us — and it doesn’t seem to matter which party is in power. Somehow, when it comes to gay rights issues, the Republicans just laugh in our faces, and the Democrats can only deal with one issue at a time — not ours.

I’m also bemused by the term “legal totalism.” What is the alternative? “Legal partialism”? I answered that in my earlier post: can you imagine a court coming down with a decision that “all are nearly equal under the law”? Sorry, but constitutions tend to be written in absolutes.

I really can’t figure out what Rauch’s baseline is here. Is it simply that he wants to avoid controversy? And how do we make any progress that way, particularly since the controversy, when all is said and done, is not of our making? I hate to cast it in these terms, but we are in a fight. Trying to be quietly persuasive is going to get us exactly nowhere when we have very well-organized and well-funded opponents who are determined that we get nothing — the Dobson Gang is not afraid of controversy. That’s how they make their money.

As for the definition of marriage, I don’t understand why Rauch is allowing himself to fall into the trap of thinking that there has always been one fundamental definition of marriage. I’ll even grant that the idea of same-sex marriage is “newfangled” as such things go. (There are those who would argue quite convincingly against that assessment, starting with anthropologist Patrick Chapman and sociologist Stephen O. Murray.) Anyway, even granting that, if the traditional definition of marriage is one man, one woman, so what? Like we’ve never discarded traditions in this country? Like our basic system of government was traditional in the eighteenth century?

Rauch:

But at the moment I wish nothing more than that our side would recognize the court-driven SSM strategy for what it has become: exhausted and counterproductive.

I’m dubious. Massachusetts still has same-sex marriage, a constitutional amendment there failed, Proposition 8 in California will pass only if the Mormons manage to pack the polls, and both New York and New Jersey will probably have same-sex marriage laws on the books within a year. Watch for Vermont to follow suit. And I can hardly wait to see what the court in Iowa decides. The “exhausted and counterproductive” part just doesn’t hold water. As for it being a “strategy,” whose? The major gay rights organizations were dragged kicking and screaming onto this particular bandwagon, and still haven’t been very useful. Rauch’s implication seems to be that there’s some master plan in place, when it’s really been an ongoing battle waged mostly by individuals, starting in Hawai’i in 1993. And considering the way things have been going the past few years, I think the tide has turned.

(Side note: I discussed Rauch’s comments on the California decision here – (scroll down to the section titled “Compromise.”)

[Reprinted from Hunter at Random.]

Just a brief comment on this column by Jonathan Rauch and his criticisms of the Connecticut Supreme Court decision affirming the right to marriage for same-sex couples.

Back in May, commenting on the California decision (”Hold the Champagne”), I called this kind of all-or-nothing thinking “legal totalism”, which,

it seems to me, is tailor-made to rule out any kind of accommodation, even if that accommodation gives gay couples most of what we need with the promise of more to come (soon). I think SSM is a better policy than civil unions. And I think denial of marriage to gay couples is discriminatory. But to make even a well-intentioned compromise ILLEGAL strikes me as a step too far, and a good example of how culture wars escalate.

And now, once again, a court pulls the rug out from under a compromise that gives us 95 percent of what we want uncontroversially. Once again, other states are put on notice that they’d better not enact civil unions unless they want to get SSM instead.

The major problem with this, in my view, is that compromise is not the role of the courts, and Rauch is fuzzing the issue by insisting that the courts should allow compromises that violate fundamental rights to stand. Courts are faced with basic principles that are simply not amenable to that — I mean, what kind of compromise is allowable in the concept that “all are equal under the law”? Compromise is what happens in legislatures, as it did in Connecticut on this issue.

As for culture wars escalating, let’s be very clear on why this is a front in the so-called “culture wars” to begin with: James Dobson, Donald Wildmon, Peter LaBarbera, Matt Barber, et al.

I don’t have time for an in-depth post right now, but you can be sure I’ll come back to this — watch for updates.

From Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog, this comment on yesterday’s Connecticut Supreme Court decision, with some background from a CT legislator:

In 2007, the legislature’s Judiciary Committee successfully passed a bill to change the name of “civil unions” to “marriage.” That bill came out of the committee on a bipartisan, 27-15 vote. In fact, 25% of all the members of the legislature sit on that committee.

All of Connecticut’s political leaders, Democrat and Republican, have supported equal rights for gays and lesbians. All of our members of Congress support this as well. For example, Chris Shays, our state’s only Republican congressman, has spoken numerous times about his support for full same-sex marriage rights and has said that if he was a member of the state legislature he would vote in its favor.

For nine years, Connecticut’s legislature and courts have been moving along the same path towards full equality for gays and lesbians. It is almost certain that the 2009 session of the legislature will vote to support marriage equality. The Supreme Court said our constitution requires it. The legislature will do it because it is the right thing to do. In Connecticut, this has been a bipartisan effort from the start and I’m sure the next legislature will overwhelmingly endorse today’s ruling.

This is really the trend. I expect both New York and New Jersey to pass laws legalizing same-sex marriage next year; California has done so twice (only to have them vetoed by Schwarzenegger, who was waiting for the court’s decision). A constitutional amendment in Massachusetts never got past the legislature, and attempts in Illinois to put a referendum on the ballot have failed twice in a row.

If the laws do pass, and there’s no reason to think they won’t, watch for the Dobson Gang to start fulminating against “elite politicians” ignoring the will of the people — a will only the rabids seem to be privy to, while the people aren’t.

Note this statement by Gov. Jody Rell of Connecticut:

The Supreme Court has spoken. I do not believe their voice reflects the majority of the people of Connecticut. However, I am also firmly convinced that attempts to reverse this decision – either legislatively or by amending the state Constitution – will not meet with success. I will therefore abide by the ruling.”

Newspeak? Maybe? The Supreme Court’s decision doesn’t reflect the will of the people, but any attempt to override it through action by the people’s elected representatives will be unsuccessful.

WTF?

[Reprinted from Hunter at Random.]

Back to David Blankenhorn again, and, picking up where we left off, he comes up with this howler:

For these reasons, children have the right, insofar as society can make it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. The foundational human rights document in the world today regarding children, the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically guarantees children this right.

This is beyond misrepresenation — it’s an outright fabrication. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is quite exhaustive, and nowhere does it specify that a child has the right to be raised by his or her biological parents. In fact, one can argue quite effectively that this is not the case, since the Convention routinely includes “legal guardians” as legitimate caretakers and has an entire section on adoption, all of which can quite easily be interpreted as including families headed by same-sex parents. (I might also note that the Convention also recognizes the role of single parents, through its use of the form “parent(s).”)

Blankenhorn’s arguments are full of holes, as well. A couple of examples:

Do you think that every child deserves his mother and father, with adoption available for those children whose natural parents cannot care for them?

If every child has a right to be raised by his or her biological parents, any child offered up for adoption has had its rights violated. Blankenhorn is attempting to cast the blame on those who are trying to rectify that situation — i.e., same-sex couples.

Do you suspect that fathers and mothers are different from one another?

Oh, lordy, not this one again. In what way(s), please? Be specific. And prove that those qualities that you ascribe to mothers cannot be found in fathers, and vice-versa.

The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin posited that, in many cases, the real conflict we face is not good vs. bad but good vs. good. Reducing homophobia is good. Protecting the birthright of the child is good. How should we reason together when these two good things conflict?

They don’t conflict, and Blankenhorn hasn’t made the case that they do. Reducing homophobia, if it leads to acceptance of same-sex marriage, and protecting the rights of children to be raised (and I’m quoting from the Convention here) “in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding,” seem to me to go hand in hand. (And do keep in mind that those who adopt children actually want them: they aren’t “accidents” or unlooked-for consequences or just something that you create without thinking about it — they are specifically sought out by people who want to love them and care for them.)

Here is my reasoning. I reject homophobia and believe in the equal dignity of gay and lesbian love. Because I also believe in the right of the child to the mother and father who made her, society should seek to maintain and to strengthen the only human institution - marriage - that is specifically intended to safeguard that right and make it real for our children.

Legalized same-sex marriage almost certainly benefits those same-sex couples who choose to marry, as well as the children being raised in those homes. But changing the meaning of marriage to accommodate homosexual orientation further and perhaps definitively undermines for all of us the very thing - the gift, the birthright - that is marriage’s most distinctive contribution to human society. That’s a change that, in the final analysis, I cannot support.

Given what I’ve discussed above, this statement is worthy of Lewis Carroll at his best. Since he hasn’t substantiated this “right of the child to the mother and father who made her,” this is pretty much empty posturing, as well as being internally contradictory: Blankenhorn claims to believe in the equal dignity of gay and lesbian love, although he spent his first couple of paragraphs denying the customary legal and social recognition of that love, and tries to tie marriage to a right of children that he’s created out of whole cloth. I suppose, in Blankenhorn’s world, heterosexual couples get married with the idea first and foremost of having children, no unmarried couples have children, there are no unwanted children, and gays and lesbians are welcome to have their relationships ignored by the law (and should be grateful for that much, I guess). Regrettably, from Blankenhorn’s standpoint, that world doesn’t exist (and I think I would still support same-sex marriage, even if it did). And then, based on his completely specious idea that marriage is all and only about providing children with biological parents, rejects the idea that same-sex relationships are as worthy of recognition and support as their opposite-sex counterparts.

His argument is pure tripe, as well as being dishonest on a fundamental level. And that’s about as polite as I can be when presented with something this egregious.

Back to David Blankenhorn:

Blankenhorn quotes a “research brief” from Child Trends on the ideal family structure for children:

In 2002 - just moments before it became highly unfashionable to say so - a team of researchers from Child Trends, a nonpartisan research center, reported that “family structure clearly matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage.”

The only problem in this context is that the study doesn’t deal with children of same-sex parents. It is concerned exclusively with opposite-sex and single-parent families and deals with poverty, teenage pregnancy, and similar concerns as they affect children. (See here (PDF).) On that score, I fault the authors for an overly broad summary conclusion, since their study didn’t deal with a whole population. In point of fact, the studies that do deal with comparisons of children of same-sex and opposite-sex parents find no difference in development or emotional wellbeing. Here’s a summary by Charlotte Patterson of the research, posted on the APA website, along with cites of the literature. Once again, Blankenhorn is doing a quick surface scan for data that agrees with his conclusions.

OK, it’s that time. I have to run off and earn money.

Really, this is like shooting fish in a barrel. Has Blankenhorn ever done any real research?

Later.

[Reprinted from Hunter at Random]

[This is the first of a series of guest posts, reprinted from Hunter at Random.]

David Blankenhorn periodically comes out with an OpEd against same-sex marriage, apparently with the idea in mind that if you keep repeating arguments that have already been refuted, that makes them irrefutable. I was alerted to this one by this post at Pam’s House Blend. Ol cranky does a decent job of countering Blankenhorn, but, with the election news being as tired and depressing as it is (and we won’t mention the economy), I thought I’d do some deconstruction of my own.

Blankenhorn starts off with what I guess are supposed to be his credentials:

I’m a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same-sex marriage. Do those positions sound contradictory? To me, they fit together.

And your point is? Given what comes after, that just demonstrates that liberal Democrats are just as prone to being wrong as anyone else. Then we get into the “meat”:

Many seem to believe that marriage is simply a private love relationship between two people. They accept this view, in part, because Americans increasingly have emphasized and come to value the intimate, emotional side of marriage and, in part, because almost all opinion leaders today, from journalists to judges, strongly embrace this position. That’s certainly the idea that underpinned the California Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage.

Well, no. Unless you only want to look at part of the picture — the part that supports your opinion. (We’re verging on faith-based science here: conclusions first, then find the evidence that fits.) The idea that marriage is “simply a private love relationship” gets a lot of notice — mostly from the right — but it’s not something that anyone who favors SSM has tried to base an argument on. As for that idea “underpinning” the California Supreme Court’s decision, read it yourself. You’ll find that Blankenhorn has presented a simplistic view of the Court’s decision, which is based on the constitutional issue of whether the state has a compelling reason to exclude same-sex relationships and families from the same treatment as that of opposite-sex families, which in the Court’s judgment it failed to present. What is key from this decision is the very simple idea that relationships between same-sex and opposite sex couples are of equal dignity and validity under the law, which is the part that Blankenhorn doesn’t want to talk about.

He goes on:

But I spent a year studying the history and anthropology of marriage, and I’ve come to a different conclusion.

Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.

This is pretty laughable. If you followed my recaps and discussions of the debate at Box Turtle Bulletin between Glenn T. Stanton and Patrick Chapman, you know that the history and anthropology of marriage present a much more varied and complex picture than Blankenhorn admits. (Here’s Jim Burroway’s wrap-up on that.) First off, people certainly don’t need a license to have children. That in itself is a ludicrous statement. And historically, marriage has been a social mechanism, a business arrangement, a means of cementing political alliances, an attempt to certify paternity, and any number of other things, in which children are often part of the deal, but not a requirement. (And I might add that children are less a requirement today than ever before.)

Marriage is, in its simplist terms, a social mechanism by which members of a community can identify couples as couples and assign them their appropriate status as part of the community. That’s the nut, and that’s the issue in the campaign for marriage equality.

I’ve got to run, but I’ll try to come back to this tomorrow.