STANDING UP TO GET DOWN
It may be worth the masochistic headache to read more closely DC's reponse to the recent David Blakenhorn promo piece for his futurology book on marriage in the Weekly Standard.
I've serialized the first part of a critique below. I may regret doing that, because the whole of it is not finished; but this is just a crappy little blogalogolog, not some paid-for essay in the TNR or something.
PERFECTLY POSITIONED PREJUDICE
As non-gay supremacists seek to consolidate their legislative “gains”, comes soft-speaking David Blankenhorn, non-lexical defender of “the definition of marriage”.
Of course, there is enough confusion about what is “marriage” to go around the table. Anyone who has done much debating on the topic of gay marriage knows that one clear problem is that most non-gays don’t have a deep theological understanding of their own marriage. Among non-debaters, the putative views range from the Elvis Chapel to the Catholic catechism, from the well-formed to the ... well, funny.
Nor did the ‘debate’ on gay marriage in the past year or so do much to elucidate or sharpen. The epitome of the flannel ears of the non-gay supremacists can be found in the answer to one question: Which state legislatures had more than fifteen minutes of debate on the issue? So far as I know, the answer is none. In the one case I looked at, the mean-spirited State of Virginia, the radical relationship law (aka "Super DOMA") was moved and voted without any annoying debate.
Bird in hand, the burden shifts. Folks like Blankenhorn can now rely on prejudice and “common sense” views to cultivate and to maintain what amounts to an unnecessarily discriminatory status quo in many states. For good or ill, many high judges about town let stand the flimsy legal predicates that shroud the special Providence of the eye of reason: marriage is merely what we say it is. (Twisted, some even revel in wonderment at the new Federalism …)
To be sure, Blankenhorn comes to the party dressed, but only in the half-tones of half-truths. With good-fight credentials unfurled, he wants to make sure children are raised in the ideal way, an enthusiastic formulation that contextually is demagogic misdirection and code word support for the flimsy predicates that lift the one ring to rule them all, the non-gay marriage ring. Having been children themselves, how are gay people, let alone properly married ones, opposed to raising children well? Does anyone really believe that two lesbians kissing in Vermont were the ‘last straw’ in an imaginary series of events that broke up a non-gay household of three in South Carolina? Groups like the Promise Keepers have done more for the children of non-gays than all of the Blankenhorns (or Arkes), on the basis of responsibility and respect – two values that are neither conservative or liberal, gay or non-gay, nor “defined up” by non-gay exclusivity.
Few groups know more about campaigns on behalf of “the children” than do gays (although non-whites were savagely treated to a period of saving the future from mongrel children). Gays know too well the half-truths in these arguments, so “Save Marriage, Save the Children” is a bogus non-starter. If you want to save the children, save the little gay and lesbian ones from the despair of not having adequate relationship recognition and celebration. After that, encourage people who choose to have a family that includes children to get their own vows right. Finally, do homework: the relevant U.N. declaration is primarily directed at odious state ownership of children. Marrying gay people cannot even be a remote cause of such a trend nor a de facto refutation of the UNDHR.
TOWARDS A GAY THEOLOGY
[to be continued]
