“The Worst Thing about Gay Marriage” by Sam Schulman, The Weekly Standard, June 1, 2009.
“Going with the Flow” by Joel Belz, World, June 6, 2009.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Schulman’s piece reads like a parody. Or, is this thrice married and possibly alimony-burdened writer simply envious of allegedly no-strings same-sex play some say gay guys get? In contrast to the caricature, he says: “Every day thousands of ordinary heterosexual men surrender the dream of gratifying our immediate erotic desires. Instead, heroically, resignedly, we march up the aisle with our new brides, starting out upon what that cad poet Shelley called the longest journey, attired in the chains of the kinship system.” Is this laud or lament?
He rightly objects to accusations that all opposition to gay marriage comes down to “biblical literalism or anti-homosexual bigotry”. But overlooking the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he adds: “I think that the fundamental objection to gay marriage among most who oppose it has very little to do with one’s feelings about the nature of homosexuality or what the Bible has to say.” He aligns most opposition to his own odd argument. Saying, “Gay marriage is not so much wrong as unnecessary”, he warns, rather at odds with this mild rebuke, that gay marriage will destroy “something as basic to our existence as gravity”.
He says straight and gay couples “enjoy exactly the same cozy virtues”, e.g., “the enviable joy of living forever with one’s soulmate, loyalty, fidelity, warmth, a happy home, shopping, and parenting”, but he claims the two couples are essentially “not the same”, as marriage is about kinship, not romance. Romance did evolve in only the last few centuries, but it’s now an essential expectation of Western couples, straight and gay.
Juggling in-laws from multiple marriages, he’s nonetheless fixated on “the kinship system”, maintaining that marriage “is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult [and so] it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage. Virginity until marriage, arranged marriages, the special status of the sexuality of one partner but not the other … these motivating forces for marriage do not apply to same-sex lovers.” But in the West, they also apply to fewer heterosexual lovers. So what’s his point?
He also proposes these counterfactual objections to same-sex marriage: it “fails utterly to create forbidden relationships”, “gay copulation [fails to] become in any way … more noble after marriage”, it “will be a letdown”, it “does not create the fact (or even the feeling) of kinship between a man and his husband’s family” and it has “no tedious obligations towards in-laws [and] won’t have to face a menacing set of brothers or aunts should they betray their spouse”. Oh, brother! Where’s your argument?
Moving from the offbeat to what is, so sadly, yet another disdainful assault on gay folk from World magazine’s fundamentalist founder, we find him boasting of “a little ‘shoe-leather reporting’”. Belz interviewed fifty shoppers at his local Wal-Mart. He elicited their views on what he calls the “aberration” of homosexual marriage. Then he ambushed the supporters with an offensive rhetorical query. He admits the “statistical meaninglessness” of this exercise, but his gambit was to get to the gotcha! He says “it’s at that level of their answers that we might all begin to prepare for the thunderous collapse of our culture and society” – shades of Schulman’s warning about the loss of gravity. Here’s what he pretends is the clincher question: “Why, based on your justification of homosexual marriage, should North Carolina not also endorse polygamy – or even the marriage of a man and his very lovable dog?”
Given the absurdity of his canine analogy, it’s no wonder he’d have to add: “It’s clear that not a single one of the 14 had ever once pondered such a matter. But much worse, they didn’t care, and nothing I could say even fascinated them with the argument.” What argument? The supposed clincher was but an insensitively stupid insult.
But Belz is so “fascinated” with his “argument” that he seems not to have “ever once pondered” the irony of posing such a question to North Carolinians. He asserts: “There’s no way 14 out of 50 Americans even 15 years ago would have said that homosexual marriage was an OK thing with them.” Is there any way that 14 out of 50 Americans (especially North Carolinians!) would have said that interracial marriage was OK in the ‘40s, ‘50s or ‘60s – I mean the 1940s, 1950s or 1960s – forget the nineteenth century and before. Belz’ fundamentalist forefathers split from their Northern brethren over slavery and racial segregation and “there’s no way” many in his own church would have tolerated interracial marriage even a couple of decades ago. Does he not know that his interspecies analogy was an earlier era’s analogy to interracial marriage? Does he not know that the religiously self-righteous in Jesus’ day trashed all gentiles as “dogs”?
Belz believes he’s on God’s side in this matter. But so did those who opposed racial integration and interracial marriage. And the Bible verses used back then to back up their disdainful treatment of “dogs” are still in the Bible – but they’re not read the same way in our day. And on Belz’ polemical polygamy, one doesn’t have to argue for polygamy in our culture of peer partnership to note the polygamy of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Besides, isn’t serial polygamy tolerated in even conservative churches nowadays?
Belz complains of the “vapid thoughtlessness” of gay marriage supporters, accusing them of “offer[ing] their empty approval, not because they’ve thought it through and come to a reasoned conclusion, but more because such pondering is just too strenuous for them.” Well, has Belz thought it through within a deeper hermeneutic, a more historically informed theology and a more honestly empathic pastoral and evangelical sensitivity after having gotten to know Christians in committed same-sex marriages?
In a more recent World interview, authors of a survey of religion in America are asked about waning political influence of American Christians. They reply: “That’s true concerning gay marriage” but indicate that issue is the exception.