Gay Family Values?

Okay, now that I've gotten the snark out of my system, I probably ought to try to say something substantive on the great gay marriage debate. As Freedom From Blog's least liberal writer, I'm hoping to provoke some contention, although at times like these I wish we/I hadn't scared off Emery's conservative law school buddies, since this is a debate that should take place with the full ideological spectrum present. I started to formulate my argument in response to Sam yesterday, but I left a lot unsaid. So here's my position:

As a matter of principle, I support BOTH gay equality and the institution of marriage. Whoa!, you say, could you be more of a people pleaser? let's just have everything we want at the same time in a happy little utopian harmony. Good point. The real difficulties come when competing values are in conflict. What happens when gay equality and the family come into conflict? As I see it, when the two compete, the family (and, by proxy, marriage) come first.

Gay dignity is certainly important, an argument I'd make from both a democratic and a Christian perspective. Democratic society must avoid treating large segments of its population as second class citizens. And Christians should recognize that the biblical argument against homosexuality is thin, while its arguments for humility and forgiveness are strong. Jesus, for example, never speaks on the issue of homosexuality, and the relatively few negative comments come either in the Old Testament laws (widely disregarded by almost all Christians) and loose statements by Paul in the larger context of sexual excess, which I'd say IS an important theme but one not specific to gays. That said, stable families are the bedrock of a healthy, functioning society. They are the primary institution of education and socialization, they provide a haven from the (more) competitive and alienating world of work and politics, and they can reduce a whole range of social pathologies, such as crime and drug abuse. Familes are also the first line of resistance against absolutist power structures: totalitarian governments always try to atomize society by ripping them apart; for example, by having children inform on their parents, in order to destabilize rival and decentralized power centers. Marriage protects the family by framing it as a commitment to something beyond immediate gratification, making its obligations binding even when they are not pleasant or convenient. If we knew that full gay equality would destroy the social structure of the family, I'd deny gays full equality, recognizing that this was an unfortunate but necessary social evil.

But I'm not convinced that this is, in fact, what gay equality would mean, at least not on the specific issue of gay marriage. Unlike both conservatives and liberals, I see the effect of gay marriage as an open question. It's a practical and empirical question, and, because this is a relatively young issue, we don't have a lot of evidence yet one way or another. Conservatives assume that gay marriage would undermine the family, but there are some good arguments that it would actually strengthen it. Rather than denigrating the institution, you're celebrating and broadening it by extending the ideal of committed monogamy to a class previously exempt. When, in the early days of gay liberation (the 1970s and 80s) the "gay lifestyle" implied recklessness and promiscuity, it challenged family structures with a hedonistic alternative--the bath house ethic--that exerted a destabilizing influence on heterosexual culture as well. By mainstreaming gay relationships, you impose the kinds of salutary restraints on gay sexuality that marriage has long imposed on heterosexuality. And you may help kids in the process. Although I'm sympathetic to the conservative view that heterosexual parents will, in general, be better suited for childrearing than homosexual pairs (since a M/F pair offers a compact microcosm of the adult world), I also believe that a homosexual pair is likely to be far, far better at parenting than single parents are.

These arguments don't settle the issue, of course. In my response to Sam, I raised a couple of potential problems for this argument. If, for example, mainstreaming homosexuality also increases the prevalence of bisexuality, this could create problems for marital stability, since it would multiply the occasions for marital infidelity and suspicion. It's also possible that part of the attraction of marriage, much like citizenship, is its exclusivity. Once you make it universal, people may take it less seriously, just as citizenship lost much of its romance in America once suffrage was made universal. But all this is speculative, and I can't say I know how all of this will turn out. One reason that conservatives should be respected in their caution about this issue is that, once you go down the road of gay marriage, it will be very hard to revoke those rights, turn around, and go back to today's model if the family institution turns out to have suffered as a result of the change.

And yet, given the real possibilities of strengthening marriage as an institution while, at the same time, granting equal dignity to gays, such caution cannot be the final word. That's why I'd support a state-by-state approach, driven by the legislatures, not the courts or Congress. It may be slow and inconsistent, but it's the best venue for a question of such importance and such uncertainty.