Via a comment caught in our spam filter (“since rescued), I come across a new gay blog with a great name which applies to your humble bloggers as well as many of our readers: The Heterodox Homosexual.
Wish I’d’ve thunk of that one!
Now this fellow makes clear that he’s not a gay conservative (here as well), but he does offer some perspectives in line with things we’ve said here. Having perused his blog, I will say that while I don’t always share his perspective, I do appreciate his insights. He is truly heterodox in the sense that he didn’t offer the groupthink mindlessly repeated on the gay left even if he occasionally borrows their lingo.
And I like the way he approaches the conversation on gay marriage:
Our relationships have worth that doesn’t need affirmation from big government. Also, government has neither the power nor the moral right to make people like us; rather, it can and should give us equal freedom. . . .
The magical piece of paper is neither necessary nor sufficient for a lasting, committed relationship. Some same-sex couples have been together for decades without it. Some straight marriages have gone down the toilet almost immediately.
Obsessed with that magical piece of paper, one left-wing blogger could learn a thing or two from this guy.
Keep an eye on this heterodox homosexual. He definitely has something to add to the conversation.
The website is laughably narcissistic. I hope the good Dr. Camille Paglia pays a visit to his house.
Isn’t “heterodox” usually a euphemism for “unorthodox”, i.e. “heretic”? 🙂 I mean, at least in the eyes of the self-appointed “orthodox”.
I saw this the other day. I think I must’ve clicked on his name.
I get why gays want to be able to marry with the official sanction of government, but what I always end up thinking when the subject of gay marriage comes up has nothing to do with that emotional concern.
Rather I think, “What the hell do you want this for, practically speaking?”
Right now, for at least 50% of heterosexual couples who marry, the institution of marriage turns out to be a nightmare bond, which in many cases results in one of the parties getting financially soaked by the other. As I see it, nowadays, if you have a greater net worth than your partner, entering into a formal marriage contract is a huge mistake. Unfortunately, due to lingering tradition, the institution of marriage continues to float around the heterosexual couple, calling to them like a siren astride a hidden iceberg: your friends do it, your relatives do it, you’ve romanticized the bachelor party/bridal shower and the big, gaudy ceremony and reception — but at the end of the day marriage is above all things a legal contract. Way back when, the classic “till death do us part” clause was honored more often than not, thus repeating the words of the reverend or judge was part of the romance: “Hey, we really mean this!” Nowadays, those words are an unfunny joke; they should be replaced by “till one of us gets tired of the other for whatever reason, then hires a divorce lawyer because s/he realizes he can use this stupid contract we’ve entered into to fleece the other to X extent, X based on what state of the Union in which we happened to make this mistake to begin with.”
Again, I get the emotion behind gay Americans’ push for equal “marriage rights” — I really do. But aside from the right to the lovely imprimatur of government (which will pretty much have to be wrung from the bureaucracy, and not properly won at the ballot box), I think gay people ought to ask themselves, what exactly will the ability to enter a marriage contract do for me?
I mean, aside from gay divorce lawyers.
Very interesting find, Dan. I’m enjoying much of what he has had to say, particularly the pleasure he seems to take in skewering idiots from both the left and the right. Melikes! 😉
Yea well considering what comes with that piece of paper in terms of benefits, protections and privileges….its hardly just a piece of paper.
Yeah, but that’s the point — you have to ask yourself whether such benefits, protections, and privileges are really worth it, if there’s a 50% (at minimum) chance that you’ll enjoy them for a very brief period of time, at which point they’ll turn into headaches, legal bills, and, if you make more money than your soon-to-be-ex-spouse, permanent financial ball-and-chain.
Even if you have kids, I question whether marriage is a good idea. Particularly if one or both of the parties’ parents was ever divorced, which makes them far more likely to get divorced themselves.
What I think gays should do is lobby to win the rights and privileges they seek a la carte, without seeking the dubious “right” to being able to marry in the legal sense. That way, when the relationship ends, parties to a relationship can simply walk away.
A contract that has a 50% or greater chance of being voided, with a high likelihood of incurrence of significant economic penalties by one or both of the parties, does not sound like much of a contract at all to me.
Entering into a marriage contract these days is a far riskier affair than most people realize — especially at the moment they’re signing on the dotted line: they’re in love, romanticizing the prospects of spending their lives together, etc. There isn’t a single other legal contract I can think of that carries such great risks, yet is entered into in an almost giddy, unthinking state of mind.
Thank you very much for the mention.
“There isn’t a single other legal contract I can think of that carries such great risks, yet is entered into in an almost giddy, unthinking state of mind.”
It is, nonetheless, a decision everyone should be able to make for him- or herself — not made for them by arrogant others who “know better.”
It’s a mighty false bravado that says, “Maybe I can’t do it anyway, but what the hell — I don’t want to.”
You have the right to make that choice for yourself. You shouldn’t be able to make it for me, my partner or anybody else.
“You have the right to make that choice for yourself. You shouldn’t be able to make it for me, my partner or anybody else.”
Agreed. I 100% accept that. I just think you’re, ahem, not quite thinking through what having that “choice” means. In my opinion, you’re asking for your own prison cell, when right now you’re free as a bird. Right now, there’s no pressure, the state isn’t involved — it’s a dream, it’s paradise. To actually *ask* the state, with all its miserable laws and strictures and on and on and on, sounds like lunacy to me. Gays are *free* from that now.
Though maybe with people it’s like that Aesop fable says: the horse comes to the man and says, “Help me defeat the bull,” then the man says, “OK, just let me put this bit in your mouth and this saddle on your back,” and together they defeat the bull. The horse then says, “Thanks, man, for helping me defeat the bull. You can take out this bit and unsaddle me, now that the job is done.” To which the man — of course — answers, “Oh, no. I have you now. From hereon forward, you shall do my bidding every day.”
Or, put another way:
“Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.”
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
You want your private life and fortune lorded over that much more by the state? Okay — but I’d give it a little more thought before jumping off that cliff.
What I think gays should do is lobby to win the rights and privileges they seek a la carte, without seeking the dubious “right” to being able to marry in the legal sense. That way, when the relationship ends, parties to a relationship can simply walk away.
Actually, JR, if I read you correctly, you believe that all persons, not just gay persons, should lobby for this, and either lobby to get rid of marriage, or just let it die by encouraging straight persons not to marry. Am I correct?
Just visited The Heterodox Homosexual. The author appears to hold a great many opinions with which I would agree. But he also posits a diametric opposition between being pro-liberty and being conservative, with which I don’t agree.
To say more about that: It is true that being pro-liberty and being conservative are not the same thing, and are sometimes even in opposition. That is why we have separate terms for them. Nevertheless, one must have political allies, and as a productive and pro-liberty individual, I find conservatives agreeing with my pro-liberty views – and exhibiting personal qualities that I can admire – more often than leftists do. And when/where I disagree with conservatives, I let them know. They don’t always respond with intelligence and civility, but again, they do so more often than leftists.
Some pro-liberty folks feel very threatened by the Religious Right. I did, years ago. I don’t, any more. To be clear, I feel very threatened by the Islamic Religious Right. And I appreciate the American (or Christian) Religious Right which, to a significant extent, staff the armies and navies that defend my gay rights from the Islamists.
(continued) Perhaps conservatives in America are different, because fundamentally, to be conservatives in America is to wish to conserve the American Revolution and the original form (i.e., except as amended to get rid of slavery) of the American Constitution. Both of those are pro-liberty things. So I can be pro-liberty rather than conservative, BUT, in America, find that I have a great deal in common with conservatives; more so than I do with leftists.
“I just think you’re, ahem, not quite thinking through what having that “choice” means.”
Dogman, in Emperor O’s new world order, perhaps you’ll make Kommandant. By then there will be mind-reading technology in place to help you verify whether you’re accurately judging what other people are thinking.
You know absolutely nothing about what I think except what I have chosen to tell you. I am, at the moment, a very dedicated single woman, thoroughly enjoying playing the field and in no hurry whatsoever to settle down. I am very picky about whom I intend to settle down with, precisely because I do take a lifelong commitment seriously.
Now you know. Before, you didn’t. See how that works? I’m me, you’re you, and we’re two different individuals.
The amount of thinking that I do, what I choose to think about and what decisions I make are up to me, and no total stranger — however well- meaning — has the right to butt in and tell me he or she knows better.
God spare us from all those smart people who know better. They will bring us hope and change. What a nightmare.
“Actually, JR, if I read you correctly, you believe that all persons, not just gay persons, should lobby for this, and either lobby to get rid of marriage, or just let it die by encouraging straight persons not to marry. Am I correct?”
Not exactly. I am not suggesting anyone start a movement of any kind. Moreover, while I get the libertarian argument against the government’s having anything to do with the institution of marriage, I do feel there are norms that must be upheld for the health of the society. Actually, I’m thinking of just one: I support gay marriage, but I am very nervous about tampering with the legal definition of marriage because it’s a sure bet that if gay marriage is legalized, the polygamists will be in court the very next day, and with a pretty sound argument: if you can change the definition of marriage so fundamentally in one way, why can’t you change it in another? This is dangerous not because of Mormons, but because of Muslims. No reasonable person who has done his homework since 9/11 can deny that all non-Muslim societies are facing a real problem in regard to Islam. But I understand how gays feel. And, personally speaking, before I started learning about Islam my view on gay marriage was, “Who gives a damn who marries whom? It’s none of my business.” Now I am more wary. I am still in favor of gay marriage, PROVIDED it is decided on a state-by-state basis, NOT by the federal gov’t, and PROVIDED that any law passed to legalize gay marriage contain strict, crystal-clear anti-polygamy provisions.
But to return to your question, I am simply saying that whatever the institution of marriage once represented, whatever it once was, seems pretty shaky in 2010. Unless you’re much older, the odds are that you and your present significant other will eventually split up. The odds vary from case to case — e.g., two persons whose parents never divorced are far less likely to one day get divorced themselves than are a couple where one or both of the parties are the children of divorced parents — but overall I cannot see how anyone could deny that marriage is the least-dependable major contract a person could enter into.
So why bother with such a crapshoot? Would you sign another huge contract knowing it could be broken so easily, and at such tremendous cost to you? Heterosexuals (men and women alike, but men more than women due to the particulars of most of the divorce statutes) are already screwed, because there are all sorts of deeply-ingrained pressures on them to marry. Look at how absurd it is; it’s like a mass-delusion. Everybody has weddings, goes to weddings, and we still toast and cheer the bride and groom as was done in yesteryear; there’s this feeling that somehow, the mere fact of the ceremony and reception makes the forever-vows real. How else could we give such parties, hiring photographers and bands and so on, when we’ve been to so many similar affairs, whose vows were dissolved by divorce but a few years (or less) after they were taken? Now when I attend weddings, they tend to feel like charades to me — or at least potential charades. When I hear those vows, they sound so innocent, they’re anachronisms. In the past, when marriage was a reliable institution, it wasn’t because of the ceremony or the reception, it was because of the cultural attitudes that were held at the time. As those attitudes have eroded, along with them has gone the reliability of the marriage contract. At present, that contract is readily broken; in fact, the cultural attitudes now *favor* divorce over the “sanctity” or seriousness of the vows. What does “vow” mean, anyway?
So why make the promises to begin with — why bother, especially when ending the contract is such a potential nightmare?
Think of it this way: Have you ever lived with somebody? Have you ever had a relationship for a year, two years, or longer, only to see it end for good for whatever reason? Well, if you weren’t married, breaking up may have been emotionally painful, but it didn’t leave you broke. You weren’t handcuffed to your ex after the split; you moved out or your ex did, or you both did, you divided up your stuff as best you could, and it was a wrap. There were no lawyers, racking up the hours squabbling over how to divvy up your present property and, no less, how much of your future earnings you would have to forfeit in the future. Because you hadn’t made a legal contract of the relationship, you could more or less simply walk away. Whether you were sad or thrilled about the breakup, you benefited from that freedom: to be alone to nurse your wounds or to pop a bottle of champagne — but in any case to be *really* alone, untethered to another human being. Free.
As our present VEEP might say, That’s a big f*@king deal.
What I’ve long heard from gays is that they want the same rights regarding hospital visits, inheritance rights, etc., as married hetero couples have. If such is the case, then I think gays should pursue those rights a la carte. If you want to make further legal arrangements binding yourself to your partner (a foolish mistake, I think, needless to say) from here to eternity, well, I’m sure it can be arranged. But remember the Aesop fable and the Dostoyevsky quote I alluded to above: right now gays are free in a way that heterosexuals *wish* they could be. Right now, you may enter into and dissolve relationships as you see fit. But if you bring the government into your life, you can kiss that freedom goodbye forever.
I think gays should ask themselves, Why would I want to do that? Because you want the honor of the state allowing you to check the “married” box on your W2? To be able to hyphenate your name? Fine — but understand, the government won’t give a crap about you any more than they did before, except to the extent they can tax you, and sweep up campaign contributions from divorce lawyers eager for more clients — more ruined relationships they can milk for every penny they can.
Do you really want to trade your freedom for that?
Lori,
Take it easy — I *don’t* think I know better than you. Not as an individual. I meant “you” in the general sense. Look, gays have felt marginalized for most of human history, and now that’s changing, and part of the de-marginalizing process is demanding access to the same institutions that heterosexuals have access to. The thing is, what if some of those institutions are more likely to cause trouble than good in *anyone’s* (straight or gay) life?
Just because there are institutions out there that you don’t have access to doesn’t make them good or, from a rational standpoint, desirable institutions. As a Jew, I don’t have access to the KKK, but I’m not exactly crying myself to sleep over the loss. (No, I’m not comparing marriage to the KKK; it’s just an analogy.) And right now, in my opinion, marriage is a poor, undependable institution. If it were a stock, it would be rated as junk.
The question is, why is this so? Well, because marriage isn’t just a word; because any institution is only as good as the foundation upon which it stands. What marriage was years ago is not what it is today. The rise of the divorce lawyers, and the attitudinal shift in the culture favoring divorce at the drop of a hat, has made the institution more of a legal arrangement than a cultural one. It’s not about the protection of children or the nuclear family, or about the lifeling commitment of two persons to one another; it used to be about such things. Marriage used to be serious, but it isn’t anymore — it is in fact markedly *unserious*.
By any rational standard, marriage is a bad bet. With a 50% fail rate, marriage is really about divorce. About divorce lawyers wrangling over property and child custody and alimony payments.
People being people, they love to ignore the reality. And for the old images of marriage they have nostalgia: they want the ceremony and the reception; they want to say the vows and for the vows to be true, even if they’ll stand before a judge and take back every word a year or two or five years later.
So it isn’t about you, Lori. I don’t know you, and if you want to marry a man or a woman, I don’t care. It’s none of my business. Speaking just for myself, as a cultural observer, I see gays pushing for gay marriage, and it’s like I’m watching a horror movie. The people are approaching the monster who’s hiding just around the corner, they’re about to get gobbled up, so I shout at the screen, “No! Don’t go there! Run away!”
That’s all I am saying — sorry if I offended you.