Reply #55: Hmmmm

[waggawagga]

I don't think it's that simple. Let's just assume for the sake of argument that a "domestic union" (or whatever) gives a couple exactly the same rights as being married. The whole controversy is about a word.

One change which has not occured as a result of the Civil Rights movement is some disappearance of race as a means of self-identification. Go back to the great days of the 1960s and many (might as well be honest) white liberals, I think, had this sense that the whole concept of race would disappear into some great melting pot of humanity.

Hasn't happened. Not only that but it's not likely to happen. For reasons complex and deep if there was no discrimination in society people would still notice race, take pride in the sense of belonging which goes along with this, this would affect who they dated, and so on. Maybe this will go away in a thousand years but it's also possible that this sort of thing will just become benign.

Race, I think we'll agree, is rather superficial (that this overlaps with culture, history, and might even still have some ability to appeal to people's tribal instincts, is just a phenomenon of our times).

Gender, however, I'll suggest, is much more deeply rooted in people. No serious person thinks that distinctions between men and women are going away (or that society has any likelihood of transforming into something like this). A lot of discrimination against gays and lesbians, historically and today, is just based on the fact that their behavior, at least in areas connected to sex, romance, family, etc., does run against the grain of the larger society.

Not saying this to suggest that there's anything necessary or inevitable about discrimination. But this quality of "going against the grain", or, minimum, it being the exception to the rule, I think, will always be there.

To imagine this disappearing one has to postulate either the disappearance of gender as a force in human society or some change in human nature encourages people to base some very personal definitions on some abstract idea of humanity.

Hmm, I'll be more specific. If the same percentages hold, and why should they change, it makes no sense to me that a 14 year old straight girl, 50 years from now, or 500, won't think of the word "marriage" in terms of, "I'm going to marry some boy", but instead will think in terms of some definition which is genderless. This is a dumb idea.

All of this challenges, I think, you're "separate but equal" argument on two grounds. First, one big problem with the old "separate but equal" doctrine was that it was never equal. If the whole controversy is about a word then this problem doesn't come up (the rights are equal, the words are different).

Second, is the distinction based on something real? My prediction, most straight people will always think of marriage as being between "one man and one woman" because for them, essentially, it is, gender is all important to what this word connotes, even if you leave religion out entirely.

And how reasonable is it for courts or legislatures to impose some different word? This would be like banning not just legal distinctions based upon race but mention of it (you could do this but you can't really expect that people to go along, and on some level they'd be right not to, what you'd be constraining is people's ability to describe).

My hunch, gay marriage will probably always have this footnote quality to it (even if there are no legal distinctions whatsoever, even in a society where there is no discrimination, because what causes people to draw the distinction is substantial).

And if that's the case then how important is the word? Or is this a situation where you can split the difference somehow (eg. to gays, lesbians, and those who are sympathetic, a marriage is a marriage, but that won't necessarily intrude on the associations most people make between this word and, frankly, one man and one woman).