Unless your premise is that homosexuality should be criminalized, you'd be hard pressed to find a convincing argument against same-sex marriage. I know, because I've been looking for one. It's not that I want to be against it, but it's one of those issues where I can see merit to only one side of the argument, and that always makes me suspicious.
But there are people in favor of gay rights who nevertheless believes that the U.S. isn't ready for same-sex marriage. Bruce Carroll (via Volokh) in the Washington Blade worries about a backlash that will result in widespread constitutional bans at the state level. Jeffrey Rosen makes a similar argument in The New Republic.
In effect, they are saying: don't push the issue. Americans aren't ready to do the right thing yet.
At the very least, these are refreshingly honest arguments. But it's hard - for one thing - to retrofit them to worthy and successful civil rights issues of the past. There is no question that, for example, Martin Luther King, jr (not to mention Rosa Parks) did things that provoked angry reactions and tragic spillover. I don't have time to research this, but my guess is that political activism against the civil rights movement also intensified and even persevered in some places - temporarily, at least.
Bruce Carroll and Jeffrey Rosen need to take into account the opposite effect: posing the marriage question will force a great number of Americans to rethink some of their prejudices against gay people.
This is particularly the case when it comes to same-sex marriage, because the most common prejudice against gays - or at least gay men - is that they're mostly promiscuous. On the assumption that marriage is a way to discourage promiscuity, the interest in same-sex marriage would challenge that prejudice. And anyone who gives this further thought, will recognize that if gay couples want to adopt children (which they can), the state has an interest in conferring certain legal obligations (and benefits) on this union. In other words, it's very hard to be pro-family and against same-sex marriage at the same time.
People are against gay marriage because they are uncomfortable with homosexuality to begin with; because they have a semantic problem with "marriage" applying to anything but different-sex couples; or because their religion prohibits it. There are a couple of attempts at more fanciful arguments, such as Sam Schulman's in the November 2003 edition of Commentary, but none of them seems to hold water, as far as I can tell.
Bruce Carroll thinks that most Americans haven't come to terms with gay people as people to grant them the right to marriage each other; that the "radical gay" community (among them, he says, Log Cabin Republicans) must rather use limited resources for public awareness campaigns.
The Atlantic Monthly tells us that in at least 99 percent of American counties, gay and lesbian couples live together. I would have to imagine that a vast majority of Americans have gay neighbors, colleagues, family members, etc. - in other words, that they have had an opportunity to get to know someone who is gay well enough to wish them well. (The Atlantic has also published an interview with Jonathan Rauch, who has written a book on this very issue)
Now, Bruce Carroll cites an opinion poll that shows that 2/3rds of Americans oppose same-sex marriage. This strengthens his argument, of course - 2/3rds are enough of a majority that (unlike, say, abortion rights) there's little political penalty for supporting it, something John Kerry seems to believe.
Carroll would help us if he referenced the precise poll he's talking about. A brief search online seems to indicate that very old polls (1996-1997) show approximately 2/3rds opposed, but local polls, such as this one in Hudson County in New Jersey, show a majority in favor. An article published by the Gallup organization shows an interesting ambivalence.
Even if we accept Carroll's premise that Americans aren't ready for same-sex marriage, we need to know the nature of the opposition. If it's prejudice against a perceived "homosexual lifestyle," then we need more Ellen and less Jack McFarland. If it's simply cognitive dissonance about the term "marriage," then we need to negotiate terms; if it's religious conviction, it's time to stress the separation between "church" and state.
The issue of same-sex marriage has brought public opinion on homosexuality to a tipping point, not just in the US but in most of Europe as well. Carroll does well to advise caution on how to promote it, but the effort needs focus rather than weakening.
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