Another Round in the Marriage Equality Wars
Their scare tactics have been revealed as outright lies. Their religious arguments have been thrown out of court. So now the anti-equality forces have to come up with a new argument against us. Get out your handkerchiefs, this is going to get weepy.The latest attack on our rights comes from conservativeNew York Times contributor Ross Douthat. In the storm of anti-gay and anti-Judge Walker tantrums that raged through the Sunday news shows and op/ed pieces over the weekend, Douthat begins by actually dismantling the standard anti-equality arguments and pointing out how they’re outdated or simply wrong: marriage has not been one-man-one-woman for thousands of years, heterosexual monogamy is neither common in history nor particularly desirable in evolutionary terms, and the nuclear family is a sociological anomaly. So what, as Douthat asks, are the anti-equality forces really fighting for?
Apparently, sentimentality. Douthat uses the very unlikelihood of “traditional” marriage as an argument for superiority. Because heterosexual monogamy and the nuclear family that depends on it are so biologically difficult, so historically rare, and so ultimately uncommon even among those who most desperately espouse them, they must therefore be more valuable, more precious, and more worthy of defending than any other kind of human relationship. In other words, Judge Walker got it exactly wrong (although Douthat never goes this far): heterosexual marriage is superior to same-sex marriage, Douthat says, simply because it’s apparently harder to achieve
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