For better or for worse, same-sex marriage is one of the most successful social movements in American history. Its claims were outside the realm of political possibility as recently as the early 1990s. Now its victory is probably inevitable. It has succeeded largely because so many of its opponents have been so inarticulate, and””this is crucial””have failed to pass on their views to their children. According to Gallup, 46 percent of Americans oppose same-sex marriage, with 53 percent in favor. The percentage in support has doubled in only fifteen years. There is a sharp generational divide: among those eighteen to twenty-nine-years-old, 73 percent support same-sex marriages. That number drops steadily with age, to 39 percent of those 65 and older. The result has been a massive political shift. Barack Obama is the first Democratic president to support same-sex marriage. He is also the last Democratic president to oppose it. The Republicans have begun, painfully and grudgingly, to do likewise.
So What Is Marriage? is an important book. It is clear, tightly reasoned, and a remarkably fast read for a dense philosophical argument. It should be instantly recognized as the leading statement of the case against same-sex marriage, together with Maggie Gallagher’s half of Debating Same-Sex Marriage (coauthored with John Corvino). Gallagher’s strategy is consequentialist, turning on baleful but improbable predictions about the effect of same-sex marriage on heterosexual familes. The authors of What Is Marriage?, on the other hand””Sherif Girgis and Ryan Anderson are unusually bright graduate students, and Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Politics at Princeton””are proponents of the New Natural Law theory, a philosophical school whose leaders are the Catholic scholars Germain Grisez and John Finnis….
Folks may want to read a couple of earlier response to Koppelman’s basic point (namely, we make it all up) [url=http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/12/2263/]here[/url]
and [url=http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/01/2350/]here[/url].
Thx driver8, I’ll want to look at that.
I’ve only done a preliminary read-through of the piece, but the first sentences surprise. Opposition to SSM is not like silver spoons or family furniture, a legacy bequeathed to children. When the author says that folks have done a poor job passing on their opposition to SSM to their children, I’m bemused: the generations will often regard things quite differently.
At some point, the wave of defeats for opponents of SSM (I live in RI, where it was signed into law yesterday) has to cause people to wonder why more effective, more persuasive and plausible arguments were not offered against this. In RI, hours and hours of testimony against this legislation were broadcast from our state house judiciary hearings: let’s just say that the opposition did not muster its deepest thinkers.
A case can be made against SSM, but so far, the limelight has focused on the rather alarmist and implausible arguments the reviewer attributes to Maggie Gallagher, and dismisses. If better and more persuasive arguments are not found, I think the near future of this issue will be much like the recent past.