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In a recent public forum, Jon Rauch told David Blankenhorn that,
"We agree that the anti-miscegenation analogy is flawed -- although we disagree on how flawed it is."As I go through Blankenhorn's book, "The Future of Marriage", it becomes clear, to me at least, that his observations, analyses, and conclusions would be at home under the motto of The Opine Editorials:
-- Marriage and Children [MP3 File] (Source: A Conversation about the Effects of Same-Sex Marriage, 18-April-2007, Ethics and Public Policy Center).
"Defending marriage on the firm ground of reason and respect for human dignity."Blankenhorn described the racial analogy along the lines that we have, in various posts, here at The Opine Editorials. [See footnote below]
Here is Blankenhorn on "The Analogy":
[Read More...]
The analogy has become a powerful shaper of our national conversation. It is repeated constantly. [...] as if playing a surefire trump card, that prohibiting gay marriage is basically the same as prohibiting interracial marriage.
The analogy is moral dynamite. [...]
But the analogy is false -- not simply intellectually weak, not merely confusing or misleading, but entirely and totally false. [...] At a deeper level, yesterday's proponents of anti-miscegenation laws have more in common with today's proponents of gay marriage than with those who oppose gay marriage.
[...]
The core problem that marriage aims to solve is sexual embodiment -- the species' division into male and female -- and its primary consequence, sexual reproduction. The core need that marriage aims to meet is the child's need to be emotionally, morally, practically, and legally affiliated with the woman and the man whose sexual union brought the child into the world. That is not all that marriage is or does, but nearly everywhere on the planet, that is fundamentally what marriage is and does.
[...]
But whenever someone seeks to prevent an interracial couple from marrying -- say, by passing anti-miscegenatin laws -- that person is weakening the institution of marriage, because promoting racism by enforcing racial seperatism is not one of marriage's public purposes. [...] [That would be] turning an institution designed to bring women and men together into one that often keeps them apart.
[...]
[T]oday's proponents of same-sex marriage in the United States are seeking to restructure marriage and use it for a special purpose. That purpose is to gain social recognition of the dignity of homosexual love. [...]
Diminishing homophobia is not one of marriage's public purposes. [...]
There is no true analogy between yesterday's racists and today's defenders of marriage's customary forms. The only accurate analogy is between the advocates of anti-miscegenation laws and the advocates of same-sex marriage, since each group wants to recreate marriage in the name of a social goal that is fundamentally unconnected to marriage.
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Footnote:
Opine Posts referred to above:
See this comment I made in a discussion about the analogy.
Loving Analogy, still flawed
Identity Politics, Love Your Label
The race and gender analogy
The core need that marriage aims to meet is the child's need to be emotionally, morally, practically, and legally affiliated with the woman and the man whose sexual union brought the child into the world. That is not all that marriage is or does, but nearly everywhere on the planet, that is fundamentally what marriage is and does.
ReplyDeleteThis makes it seem like marriage happens after a child is born, as if marriage was just another word for state-enforced child support according to paternity testing. I know that Blankenhorn is not well-liked by father's rights activists, so this fits him. I find it offensive that he goes out of his way to put "brought" in the past tense, as if a child has to be born before there can even be a marriage. Why avoid mentioning that everywhere on the planet, marriage has to happen before the couple is allowed to have sexual union, because everywhere in the world, marriage is the right to conceive of children. I bet he thinks that not being opposed to pre-marital sex is important for his liberal cred, or maybe he just has such an oversocialized need to be good that nothing that he did can be bad or wrong. That shows he's a liberal too.
And the anti-miscegenation analogy is more than an analogy, it is precisely the same thing. In both cases, it is denying conception rights to couples that society doesn't approve of conception of children from. The difference is there is a supportable basis to banning same-sex conception, many supportable basis in fact (risk is only the most obvious). He could be much stronger in his point that today's SSMers have something in common with the racists - they ARE racists, still. They seem to buy into the idea that everyone has a race, and that races are very different, as different as men and women are. Their LGBTSQQ identity politics trains them to see everyone in terms of labels for race and religion too.
John,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. The contraception mentality comes into play though. I was taught that children can wait for personal interests for an indefinite amount of time and that is even if you even want children, because of contraception and abortion children are now an option, not an expectation within marriage.
There has been a surge of marriage/motherhood within educated women with some resentment. Some women, like my grandmother, who left home at 14 and worked in the mills with no formal education loves the idea that finally someone in the family gets to stay home. They see women getting an education (mine was lame though), staying at home, then doing non-laborous non-dangerous work later in life as a success story three times over.
This doesn't fit into the identity politics that I have been trained in as a student. I'm suppose to a proud and empowered woman, but I can't experince anything remotely and autheticly feminine because well that would make someone else not feel good about themselves. It would create an inequality of resulting behavior in our lives and that cannot exist according to their belief system.
I agree with Chairm's assertion that Blankenhorn's approach would fit well with Opine's motto, and I find his work very palatable, convincing, and useful, just as I do with the posts here that fit the motto.
ReplyDeleteJohn Howard, I disagree that anti-miscegenation laws are precisely the same thing as marriage laws that require one man and one woman. One of the most dramatic differences is the fact that a man and a woman, of any race, could have one night of passion that results in a child. The only way for two women to procreate would be with a highly risky and very new technology. For two men, procreation is completely impossible. Same-sex procreation and interracial procreation are not the same at all, which makes an analogy of the respective marriage laws inapt.
Chairm made this distinction in the Loving Analogy post he linked above:
"The Loving decision did not find marriage to be flawed; it found the racial caste system to be unconstitutional."
Loving was primarily about race, whereas the current same-sex marriage debate is about sex. Two very different things.