Return by Stanley Kurtz Stanley

¶ … Return by Stanley Kurtz

Stanley Kurtz's article is built upon ten specific points of argument, each of which manages to trump the one that precedes it in its breathtaking degree of convoluted "logic." I will address them one at a time:

Marriage does indeed invoke public expectations of fidelity and mutual support through ritual gestures like weddings. But wedding or no, the public will not condemn a man who sleeps around on another man, or who fails to support his male partner financially. A wedding embodies and reinforces already existing public sentiments about a man's responsibilities to a woman; it cannot create such sentiments out of thin air. "Ritual gestures like weddings" are the least important aspect of marriage as a human cultural institution. Rituals are completely arbitrary, differing from culture to culture and religious group to religious group. "Ritual gestures like weddings" merely commemorate the event for celebratory purposes, and play absolutely no role in defining what married life entails or what values couples choose to embody. In certain cultures elsewhere in the world, "a wedding embodies and reinforces" public sentiments that are diametrically opposite to some of the defining concepts of marriage in this particular part of the world: those concepts include Middle Eastern cultures where "marriage" defines a relationship between one man and as many women as he can support; in certain African cultures, "marriage" defines a relationship between one woman and several husbands.

The only "public" who "will not condemn a man who sleeps around on another man" is that portion of the public who, like Kurtz, oppose gay marriage as a valid relationship in the first place. Anybody without preconceived objections would likely have the same reaction to a man who violated any element of the rules and expectations within his relationship as any other married person who does so.

In the old view, the vow existed prior to the couple, and therefore embodied a set of public standards to which the couple could be held accountable. But in a world of self-created vows, the couple is prior to the promise, which can be made (or withdrawn) at will.

Married people are not "held accountable" to anybody but each other for their marital conduct. If married people were "held accountable" for marital conduct by society, our main concern would have to be the three-quarters of married heterosexual men and nearly half of married heterosexual women who admit to infidelity during the course of their marriages, not to mention married politically conservative elected public officials who violate their marriages "unconventionally" in airport bathrooms or those who prefer to do so more "traditionally" in Washington D.C. hotels every weekend. All couples are entitled to "self-created" marital vows, which is precisely why pastors and rabbis always give them the option to write their own.

Supporters of gay marriage keep telling us that the sky will not fall. What they do not understand is that, when it comes to marriage, the sky has already fallen. It is lying about our feet, and considerable effort will be required even to hoist it back a few yards over our heads. The trouble with gay marriage is that it forecloses that possibility.

If "when it comes to marriage, the sky has already fallen. It is lying about our feet," that is a function of the vast majority of married heterosexual Americans who, when polled, admit to infidelity. If nothing else, the fact that marriage, (according to Kurtz), is in such a sorry state before the legalization of same-sex marriage, then, it is just not possible that the latter contributed to the former, for the same reason that policies of the next presidential administration are not responsible for the current subprime mortgage fiasco or the failed War on Terror, today.

Gay marriage] detaches marriage from the distinctive dynamics of heterosexual sexuality, divorces marriage from its intimate connection to the rearing of children, and opens the way to the replacement of marriage by a series of infinitely flexible contractual arrangements.

The Emancipation Proclamation detached Slavery from the distinctive dynamics of the American economy of earlier times and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 detached racial relations from the distinctive dynamics of racial segregation and social oppression.

Sometimes, the "distinctive dynamics" prevailing in society require detachment from ideas that attitudes that denigrate society by creating illusory "values" and "morals" that are neither valuable nor moral in the least. The last I checked, heterosexual marriage was available to the elderly, those incapable of reproducing, as well as those capable but choosing to remain childless by choice.

C]omplete social equivalence between homosexuality and heterosexuality cannot help but undermine social restraints upon sexuality, thus ushering in the final triumph of the sixties ethos. Like Bronski, vast sections of the gay community support gay marriage... out of the entirely justified conviction that gay marriage will be a critical step in the undoing of marriage itself. [M]any radical gays and lesbians who actually yearn to see marriage abolished (and multiple sexual unions legitimized) intend to marry... As part of a self-conscious attempt to subvert the institution of marriage from within.

As previously mentioned, heterosexual marriages are, by admission, more often not entirely monogamous, and homosexual couples very often choose to remain monogamous. Anecdotal experience also suggests that, unlike heterosexual marriages, the majority of homosexual couples who choose a more sexually "open" relationship tend to do so mutually with each other's consent rather than deceitfully in complete violation of the rules defining their relationship.

As to the suggestion that any part of the homosexual activist community is motivated by the belief that "gay marriage will be a critical step in the undoing of marriage itself," that suggests only that Kurtz assumes (falsely) that homosexuals maintain a reciprocal preoccupation with and antipathy toward heterosexual marriage. Of course, it is also possible that some homosexuals are as convoluted in their thinking as Kurtz. If they exist, they are a minority without much support in the homosexual community.

Gretchen Stiers's 1999 study, From This Day Forward, makes it clear that while exceedingly few of even the most committed gay and lesbian couples believe that marriage will strengthen and stabilize their personal relationships, nearly half of those gays and lesbians who actually disdain traditional marriage (and even gay commitment ceremonies) will nonetheless get married. Why? For "the bennies" -- the financial and legal benefits of marriage.

My personal belief is that the healthiest road to any marriage is to consider it nothing more than the formalization of a relationship that is already as strong and as stable as it ever hopes to be, rather than a vehicle to improve a relationship that needs strengthening" or increased "stability." Unfortunately, that is relatively rarely the case, which may explain, at least partly why, according to Kurtz, the institution of marriage has already fallen" and "is lying about our feet" without any help from homosexuals.

More significantly, a mere 10% of even these most committed gay men mentioned monogamy as an important aspect of commitment (necessarily meaning that even many of those men in the sample who had undergone "union ceremonies" failed to identify fidelity with commitment). And these, the very most committed gay male couples, are theoretically the people who will be enforcing marital norms on their gay male peers, and exemplifying modern marriage for the nation. So concerns about the effects of gay marriage on the social ideal of marital monogamy seem more than justified.

Again, approximately 75% of married heterosexual men and approximately

50% of married heterosexual women cheat on their spouses at some point during their marriage. And these, the very individuals who are so opposed to gay marriage are, theoretically, the same people who would like to enforce their marital norms on others whose sexual relations outside their primary relationship (when they occur) are not as likely to be in abject violation of the very marital values they claim to exemplify for others whose private relationships are none of their concern.

The legal history of marriage demonstrates what should in any case be obvious, that traveling across country and finding out that you are no longer married is an entirely different matter than working up a will or taking a state bar exam. Imagine a married couple, where one spouse is hospitalized after a car accident in another state, losing visiting rights or the right to make medical decisions, because their marriage isn't recognized in that state.