The Abolition of Marriage
Lee on Dec 16 2008 at 6:53 am | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Law
Having failed to legalize gay marriage almost everywhere by democratic means, a proposed new approach by its advocates is to revoke marriage rights for heterosexuals, in a kind of retaliatory equalization. In effect, the idea is to abolish the legal institution of marriage for all, if it is to be that some are excluded from its benefits.
Jack Balkin and Ann Althouse debate the merits of this and generally agree it’s a fine idea, if potentially constitutionally problematic. A spectator can only marvel at how one couldn’t have picked a stratagem more perfectly designed to infuriate defenders of traditional marriage arrangements, and provoke even further opposition to gay marriage.
In the course of this discussion, Althouse identifies the effort to ban gay marriage as an appeal to retain a right for “antagonism”, evidently completely blind or indifferent to the fact that is she who is engaging in explicit antagonism against opponents of gay marriage, when she classifies them as exclusively motivated by “bigotry” and “malice.” How this can escape the recognition of an educated woman, given her obtrusively antagonistic use of words, is utterly mysterious.
There is no progress to be made here with such arguments. They only serve to illustrate the obscene depths to which the ideological equalitarian will go to maximize the primacy of equality in all things, and how profoundly they can fail to understand the motivations of their opponents.
There was a time when I thought legally recognized gay marriage was as near an inevitability as one could conceive of. In my view, by opposing it, social conservatives were engaged in one of their many eccentic and pointless Little Bighorn principled stands. I now confess that it is entirely possible this will never happen, as I profoundly underestimated the political ineptitude, counterproductive myopia, and sanctimonious and alienating arrogance of the advocates for equalized sexual rights.
As the population of gay men and women continues to grow, this should be a concern for those of us not directly affected by the debate. Suppressed minority rights, particularly when they are passionately sought, are a powerful force of social instability in any society. Even though Althouse is profoundly mistaken (and highly hypocritical) in charging antagonism, the fact that she and others perceive it in this way, is not healthy.
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