Rod Dreher interviews Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage, who draws a positive outlook for the future based on past experience.
Rod Dreher: Maggie, you and I are on the same side of the gay marriage issue, but I am pessimistic about our chances for success. You, however, are optimistic. What am I missing?
Maggie Gallagher: Vaclav Havel mostly. “Truth and love wlll prevail over lies and hate.” On that basis Havel took on the Soviet empire. Where is that invincible empire now?
Same-sex marriage is founded on a lie about human nature: ‘there is no difference between same-sex and opposite sex unions and you are a bigot if you disagree’.
Political movements can–sometimes at great human cost and with great output of energy–sustain a lie but eventually political regimes founded on lies collapse in on themselves.
I don’t think of myself as optimistic: just realistic. What does losing marriage mean? First the rejection of the idea that children need a mom and dad as a cultural norm–or probably even as a respectable opinion. That’s become very clear for people who have the eyes to see it. (See e.g. footnote 26 of the Iowa decision).
Second: the redefinition of traditional religious faiths as the moral and legal equivalent of racists. The proposition on the table right now is that our faith itself is a form of bigotry.
Despair is gay marriage advocates’ prime message point. All warfare, including culture war, is ultimately psychological warfare. You win a war when you convince the other side to give up.
So now you want to decide we’ve lost on an issue where, in the March 12 CBS News poll two-thirds of Americans agree with us. I mean, does this make sense?
Here is what I perceive as the basic premise of many, not all, in the “save real marriage” movement: if same-sex marriage is made legal then “real marriage” ends… granting same-sex marriage in and of itself destroys real marriage. I think the premise is wrong, but in the end what I think is meaningless.
I disagree with Gallagher’s assertion that public opinion has not changed much at all. If we take a longer view of the public’s opinion, say even 30 years, the public’s overall opinion has certainly changed! All one has to do is read studies by even Barna to realize that public opinion is changing, particularly among the upcoming generations.
The problem is that an approaching majority of citizens in this country are no longer agreeing with the prevailing arguments of the save real marriage people. They increasingly do not believe that if same-sex marriage is made legal then “real marriages†will be destroyed. They don’t see the reality, except if the premise that same-sex marriage automatically destroys real marriage is accepted. Heterosexuals will continue to get married, no matter what.
This is the problem, I think, with the save real marriage groups appealing to “majority rule” in order to forbid same-sex marriage. By appealing to majority rule, when the majority opinion shifts against their position, to what then do they appeal? The most prominent arguments against same-sex marriage will need to change, once again.
Opposite-sex marriage is in desperate straights, this is true. The desperate straights are not the result of gay people getting “married,” but because of heterosexuals failing the institution of marriage. Much of the save real marriage campaign is using the same-sex issue as a scapegoat – “get our own house in order†might be a better focus, first. I think in the long run getting “our own house in order†will be more persuasive. DOMA laws can be instituted nationally and any positive presentation of homosexual unions suppressed, but the direr situation of heterosexual marriage will not improve because of it. Again, lots of people are beginning to realize this; whether others believe such a realization is good or bad.
Gallagher may be optimistic, but the premise she bases her optimism upon is faulty. The persuasiveness of the save real marriage arguments is waning when viewed over time, because I think a growing number of people do not see those arguments as honest or real despite the earnestness of their champions.
Finally, I’ve been reading a number of books of late about the theological and biblical issues surrounding the Civil War, Mark Noll’s, “The Civil War as a Theological Crisis,” as an example. I am finding it quite amazing the similarities of the two pressing issues of the place of blacks (slaves and free) and the place of homosexuals within the Church and society, each within their own times. There is nothing new under the sun, truly.
I’m not sure:
1. Whether you think opinion matters or not. (It seems so far as the traditional view actually has majority support it does not matter and “appealing” to majority rule is apparently problematic. But it seems to matter greatly that the opinions are changing)
2. I’m not sure whether all is well with “straight” marriage or not. On the one hand heterosexuals will continue to get married whatever happens. On the other hand “opposite sex marriage is in desperate straights”.
3. Pick your conflict and make a comparison – I suggest reading about Temperance for a suggestive comparison.
No, it won’t. I agree with the previous poste.. It will breakdown along state lines. However, I don’t agree with the assumption that no marriage for gays=slavery.I find that an over the top comparison since nobody is imprisoning gays and putting them into enforced servitude
Then of course, we wlll have marriage for polygamists and the permutaions will continue.
I find “Why not allow gays to marry since strights have messed it up so much?” a lousy argument. And of course, gays will “mess it up” just as much as straights have. Just give them time.
I would endorse civil unions for everybody-which won’t happen.
And I’m resigned to being called a bigot. After all, I experinced months of this f merely for saying I was not voting for Obama.
FenelonSpoke – please reread my last paragraph. I’m not comparing, as your wrote, “gays=slavery.” What I was comparing his how Christians dealt with the issue of the place of black people and slavery in the Church and society during the time of the Civil War and the way Christians are dealing with the issue of gay people in the Church and society in our own time. The issues of biblical interpretation, theological reflection, et.al., are very similar. This is the primary reason I think Gallagher’s optimism is misplaced.
My comment about the direr condition of heterosexual marriage is not at all an attempt to justify homosexual marriage (if that was your implication). It is simply saying that the saving of the institution of marriage (as the folks define it) has nothing to do with whether same-sex couples are granted the right to marry or not. The anti-gay marriage campaigns, and Gallagher’s article seems to support this, attempt to equate stopping same-sex marriage with “saving real marriage,” as if the granting of same-sex marriage automatically means the destruction of “real marriage.”
“Real marriage” is in trouble specifically because of heterosexuals – and only heterosexuals can fix the problems within their own marriages. If there is real sincerity among the anti-gay marriage crowd in wanting to save real marriage, then to be consistent they should spend at least an equal amount of money, time, and political effort in passing laws that end diverse rights, etc., but they don’t because too many of them divorce. Scapegoating is much easier.
Anti-gay marriage folks are coming off to the general public (that makes up the voting majority opinion) as being hypocrites because their own marriages fail at about the same rate as non-Christian marriages. The scare tactics of many anti-gay marriage folks are negatively impacting the cause of Christ among the now unchurched majority by defaming Christian integrity. Barna Research’s book, “unChristian,” details this phenomenon very well.
Of course, this dynamic works to change the public’s opinion of same-sex marriage to the advantage of homosexuals wanting to marry, and harms the cause of those opposed. Christians should be consistent, and the general public doesn’t see them being so! Younger generations just don’t buy it. That’s what the data says, regardless of what people, like Gallagher, want to believe or advocate.
Finally, I keep hearing people argue that if gays are granted the right to marry, then it simply sets in motion the idea among young people that marriage really isn’t worth anything, so why get married. I think this is faulty logic, and the trends over the last couple of decades suggest that a growing number of people don’t buy it.
BobG: I don’t think anyone really believes that heterosexual marriage is threatened by same-sex legal equality on the civil side. There may be some pols who beat that drum for cheap thrills, but I doubt if anyone in this audience, which tends to be a fairly intelligent, discerning group, believes that. The “protecting heterosexual marriage” is just a kind of marketing tool for political campaigns. My guess is that within a generation, secular same-sex unions of some type will be widely recognized throughout the United States, but that no mainstream Christian denomination (including the Episcopal Church) will recognize or perform same-sex religious marriages.
The real issue for intelligent Christians is whether, given scriptural guidance that non-marital sexual relations, including homosexual relations, are incompatible with Christian precepts, Christians can support secular equality in civil “marriages”, “unions”, or whatever one calls these arrangements. The tension is between the poles of believing that we are not of this world and that our religious rites and duties are independent of the activities of the state, and our convictions that, as citizens in the world, we should not stand by when secular institutions remove inhibitions/impediments on activity that leaders of our faith have instructed us to regard as immoral. As someone suggested, the Temperance movement might provide some useful analogs, but I take your point that some of the rhetoric does resemble the religious discussions on both sides of the slavery debate in the pre-Civil War era. I am almost old enough (and enough of a history buff) to have direct memories of that. I certainly am old enough to remember Biblical references on both sides of the Civil Rights debates of the 1950s and 60s. Again, the focus is the always uneasy sense of involvement/detachment that Christians have with reference to the temporal world. And I can say that fairly of persons on both sides of the secular equality issue for gay unions issue.
There is, however, a real concern (and one sees it expressed here frequently) that the debate is not purely secular and that, while Christian heterosexual marriages are in no way implicated, there may be forces at work that seek to force or inveigle acceptance of religious marriage as a rite that can extend to same-sex couples. That debate is purely theological and is completely divorced from the merits/demerits of the secular debate. I have been and remain fairly confident that the Episcopal Church in the United States will not introduce or accept same-sex marriage as a recognized religious rite. But the suspicion is widespread that we are on that path and that there are clever, agenda-driven, devious people pushing us in that direction. I personally don’t believe we are anywhere close to that position as a church, but I have seen evidence that prevents me from entirely discounting the fears of my brothers and sisters who fear otherwise.