Demographic Destiny
In a rare accomplishment, the US Senate managed to avoid embarrassing itself over the issue of marriage discrimination.
Of course, the 49 Senators who voted to support a Constitutional ban on equal marriage have their fingers in a crumbling dike. Future generations will look at their bigotry in much the same way we look at pre-Loving v. Virginia America. If their children aren’t already ashamed, their grandkids will be.
The haters are losing a battle against demographic destiny. Every poll shows that opposition to marriage equality correlates strongly with age. The future is clear, and nobody rationally doubts that America will eventually have marriage equality. The question is can we get there now or do we have to wait a couple decades for the bigots to die of old age. I’m guessing the latter, but as the slim majority becomes an overwhelming minority in state after state after state, momentum on this issue is going to shift pretty fast.
I wonder how those 49 Senators feel about being on the wrong side of history.
June 7th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
[...] « « Demographic Destiny | Home | [...]
June 7th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
With that, I hereby induct you into the Non Sequitur Society, where “we may not make sense, but we do like pizza.”
June 7th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
OK, that made me horse laugh.
June 7th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Indeed, I do like pizza!
I’m not sure what your objection is. Most of the haters are old people. Eventually the old people will fade from political activity and be replaced by young people who are for marriage equality. It’s fairly simple math.
June 7th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
I agree with the sentiments of a commenter here or elsewhere (can’t remember) who noted that government sanction of marriage is kinda dumb anyway, since marriage is really a religious institution. What’s the point of being “married” in the eyes of the gov’t anyway? Kinda dumb if you ask me. I understand the contractual point of view, but how about leave marriage to the religious, and make the gov’t version more of just a simple contract? Then it doesn’t really matter if you’re gay, straight, peanutbutter or jam. Or is that too un-romantic for all the ladies?
June 7th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
ben..Donal Sensing offered up a solution along those lines…disallow the government from handing out marriage certificates (and leave that to religious institutions) and replace that with the government handing out civil unions to any couple (gay or straight) that wants them.
June 7th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
My principal objection is to your use of the word “hater” to describe anyone who disagrees with you on the issue. My non sequitur objection is to the fact that you assume that an issue that correlates with age is going to magically stop correlating with age just as soon as one particular generation dies out and another particular generation replaces it. Did it not occur to you that some young people who support gay marriage today might have a different perspective later in life?
June 7th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
Xrlq:
My principal objection is to your use of the word “hater” to describe anyone who disagrees with you on the issue.
Yes, because everyone knows that a blogger of your stature would never descend into petty name calling. With that, I hereby induct you into the Windowless Glass House Society, where stone-casting is A-OK as long as I’m the one doing the casting…
Did it not occur to you that some young people who support gay marriage today might have a different perspective later in life?
This is a valid point. People generally tend to become bigger dickheads as they get older. Reminds me of this. That said, however, I think BH is closer to right than you are. I suspect people do become more likely to support various forms of bigotry as they get older (and lonelier, and crabbier), but I’d bet that the rate at which this happens is dwarfed by the simple fact that fewer and fewer young people are being raised with such bigotry widely socially accepted.
June 7th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Ben:
I understand the contractual point of view, but how about leave marriage to the religious, and make the gov’t version more of just a simple contract?
For all intents and purposes, it already is. The biggest perceptible change that you’re suggesting (other than the elephant in the room of who’s eligible) is that fewer people would be able to grant marriages — because now as a strictly government contract, only government agents could grant anything legally binding.
Uncle:
I think I hosed a link around “petty” in my comment above. Can you fix it? Thanks.
June 7th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Condemning bigotry and in the same breath Stereotyping old people ?
I’m sure an induction is out there somewhere….
June 7th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
I don’t think he’s stereotyping old people quite as much as he’s demographing them. (Is “demographing” even a word?)
June 7th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
I was referring to your “lonlier and crabbier” comment.
June 7th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
One of these things is not like the others. Let’s see if you can tell which.
Calling scum “scum.”
Calling a moron who happens to be a non-liberal a “non-liberal moron.”
Calling a political opponent who doesn’t hate people a “hater.”
June 7th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
I don’t hate anyone by not approving of gay marriage, and most people I know that don’t approve of it don’t hate anyone either. But I do think it’s a non-issue. If everybody quit calling it “marriage” and called it “civil union,” the controversy would probably go away.
June 7th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Rust:
Well, my remark was intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. If I’d intended to be taken completely seriously, I certainly wouldn’t have linked The Onion. But apart from that, if you’d bother to read carefully, I don’t say anything whatsoever about “old people.” What you inferred, you inferred, but that doesn’t mean I said it.
X:
Because, of course, your particular opinion on whether or not someone qualifies as “scum” or a “moron” is gospel truth. And because I’m certain you’ve never been guilty of making generalizations, either.
June 7th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Bjorn:
If everybody quit calling it “marriage” and called it “civil union,” the controversy would probably go away.
Because “separate but equal” has such a stellar historical track record…
June 7th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
One of these things is not like the others. Let’s see if you can tell which.
Sorry dude, but they’re all the same.
If everybody quit calling it “marriage” and called it “civil union,” the controversy would probably go away.
I agree..but civil unions for everybody..gay or straight.
June 7th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
TGirsch:
The terms are largely subjective, sure. If you wish to argue that journalists who can’t read the Fourth Amendment and fast food restaurant owners who refuse to serve non-English speaking customers just to make a lame point are not “morons,” or that cops who arrest innocent couples for asking directions and dictators threatening to appoint themselves for life are not “scum,” knock yourself out. But there is nothing subjective about calling someone a “hater.” That allegation is not a mere statement of opinion; it’s an accusation which is either justified or not justified. In this case, it is not remotely justified. That’s my beef – unjustified name-calling, not name-calling per se.
Manish:
Right. By that logic, first-degree murder and killing in self-defense are no different, either. Both involve killing, blah blah blah. I’m sure that if I called Fred Phelps and the Klan a bunch of “haters,” I’m sure you and TGirsch would just roll your respective eyes and say “there goes Xrlq with his name-calling habit again.”
June 7th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Do you really use the phrase “crumbling dike” in a post against homophobia?
;^)
Just sayin’.
June 7th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
X:
But what constitutes “justified?” The issue in this case comes down to whether or not a large cross-section of the people who actively push for an FMA can be fairly characterized as hating gays and/or gayness. If they can, then there’s no foul in BH’s assessment, and it aligns quite nicely with what you’re famous for doing. And while I don’t think everyone who pushes hard for such an amendment necessarily hates gays or gayness, I think those who do make up a large enough cross-section that BH’s assessment fits.
But among the politicos who are pushing this amendment, I think it’s worse. It’s less that they hate gays/gayness, and more that they’re cynically pandering to those who do. It’s a low-cost (or maybe even no-cost) issue that they can use to “toss a bone” to the more extreme wing of their base, without actually changing anything. (They have to know that it has no prayer of passing, and if it were really all that important to them, why does it only conveniently come up in election years?)
At the core of it all, though, is a simple assertion made by BH: There’s a strong correlation between bigotry and age. Rather than actually attempting to substantively refute this assertion, you (of all people) call him out for what you deem “inappropriate” name calling of those who don’t agree with him politically.
June 7th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Xrlq, I think it’s reasonable to think that some of today’s fair-minded people might become tomorrow’s bigots. Many people do get more conservative as they age.
But if you think aging causes all the bigotry, you’re ignoring a real trend. Imagine the same poll taken 50 years ago, 25 years ago or 10 years ago. Do you think the numbers would look about the same as they do now? Or do you think that, regardless of age, people were more likely to support marriage discrimination in the past as opposed to today?
And I don’t think the issue will magically stop correlating with age. Tomorrow’s youth will be even more tolerant than today’s youth. The population as a whole is getting more tolerant.
And just for the record, I agree with Ben. The gov should get out of the marriage business entirely. If it’s going to grant special rights to certain couples, it should do so fairly. But better to stay out of the mess in the first place.
June 7th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
“and called it “civil union,” the controversy would probably go away”
Let’s just call them “butt buddies”
June 7th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
“I think it’s reasonable to think that some of today’s fair-minded people might become tomorrow’s bigots. Many people do get more conservative as they age.”
Party foul. Equating conservatives as bigots?
June 7th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
people get more conservative as they age, but I don’t think people will suddenly become anti-gay as they age. Most of the older folks who are against gay marriage today were probably more anti-gay when they were younger if anything. It was the times that they lived in. I certainly see people getting more economically conservative, but I doubt large numbers of people are going to become more anti-gay as they get older.
June 7th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
Whaddya mean, “of all people?!” Contrary to the implications of your comments, I am not in the habit of calling people nasty names solely because they disagree with me. I don’t recall ever calling you a bad name, for instance, and it’s not because we exactly agree on all the issues. BH, by contrast, refuses to acknowledge so much as the possibility that people of goodwill can support traditional marriage. Big difference.
Then again, even if there were no difference, that wouldn’t justify BH’s bigotry in labeling anyone who disagrees with him a bigot. Argue that I’m a hypocrite if you must, but don’t pretend that proves I’m wrong.
June 7th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
But eventually they’ll die, and they’ll be replaced with people with a more tolerant outlook.
However, as evidenced by the struggle for civil rights for the melanin-enhanced among us, it will be a long struggle even then.
That said, seeing crap like the FMA going down in flames is a positive sign for the Forces Of Good (TM). It’s akin to seeing miscegenation laws expunged from the books.
June 7th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
X..would you object if BH referred to someone who is against inter-racial marriage as rascist or a bigot?
June 7th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
Everyone is missing the real issue here. these senators as all their ilk could care less about the marriage issue itself. In order to get their worthless a**** elected (which is all they really care about) they made all sorts of promises to all sorts of groups including the religious far out of it. Now they can go back to them at election time and say “see I kept my promise and supported you. Its not my fault the other slackers in the senate didn’t vote for it. Re-elect me and this time it will pass for sure,etc……” And the wheels keep turning.
June 7th, 2006 at 11:57 pm
No. If there are any legitimate, non-racist reasons why anyone would oppose interracial marriage, I have yet to hear them. By contrast, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to support traditional marriage, as well as a few illegitimate ones. If BH had limited his name-calling to those who have demonstrated antipathy toward gays, I wouldn’t have taken him to task over it. Instead, he chose to paint the overwhelming majority of the population with an obscenely broad brush, as if to suggest that his ideas were so self-evidently right that only a bigot could possibly disagree with them. That makes him the bigot.
If this good name-calling / bad name-calling dichotomy seems overly complicated, it’s really not. Sometimes, the shoe fits. In other case, it doesn’t. My beef is with shoes that don’t fit. You and TGirsch, by contrast, seem to have a problem with shoes in general.
June 8th, 2006 at 3:38 am
BH: “Xrlq, I think it’s reasonable to think that some of today’s fair-minded people might become tomorrow’s bigots. Many people do get more conservative as they age.”
Maybe I’m inferring something you did not intend but it sure looks like you just said that conservatives are bigots and not fair-minded. Do you need a rewrite or is that what you meant?
Back on topic:
Get the government out of the marriage business and out of the special privileges business (e.g., tax breaks) and the issue goes away. It appears to me that the reasons gays want “marriage” and the reasons some others object to it have little in common. That is to say it appears that marriage is desired by gays to obtain government or corporate privileges (taxes, health care, etc) and it is objected to based on religious or historical precedents that have defined marriage as one man, one woman.
An area with conflicting reasons: marriage carries with it a certain respect/endorsement from society at large that gays might wish to gain while those who object to gay marriage do not wish to respect/endorse being gay but don’t necessarily wish to penalize the gay person.
June 8th, 2006 at 10:12 am
People are complaining because I wrote that
To be clear, I don’t equate conservatism with bigotry. However, to the extent that social conservatives support marriage discrimination they are bigots.
Xlrq claims there are legit (i.e. non-bigoted) reasons to support marriage discrimination sufficient to trump the horrors of discrimination. I disagree. If you stand opposed to the equal provision of government rights based on gender and sexual orientation, you are a bigot.
June 8th, 2006 at 11:31 am
Xrlq:
Contrary to the implications of your comments, I am not in the habit of calling people nasty names solely because they disagree with me.
Maybe not solely because they disagree with you. You claim it’s because the names fit. Contrary to your complaints, you haven’t really demonstrated that BH is “in the habit” of calling people anything, nor have you really demonstrated that the name BH used doesn’t fit here. So again, where’s the foul?
Wow, bonus points for the bait-and-switch! I had no idea that anyone here was opposed to traditional marriage. At issue here is not whether “traditional marriage” (a vague and frankly inaccurate term at best) should be allowed to continue, but whether to also allow a certain new kind of marriage. I’m not aware of any supporters of same-sex marriage who have any designs on doing away with “traditional marriage.”
as if to suggest that his ideas were so self-evidently right that only a bigot could possibly disagree with them.
Well, unless institutionalized discrimination against homosexuals somehow doesn’t count as bigotry, I fail to see how the proverbial shoe doesn’t fit. In fact, since much of bigotry is rooted in ignorance, it seems to me that the charge of bigotry is far less controversial than the charge of hatred.
My beef is with shoes that don’t fit. You and TGirsch, by contrast, seem to have a problem with shoes in general.
Can’t speak for Manish here, but in my case, it’s less about having a problem with “shoes” (name calling), but a dispute over whether or not the shoe fits (by and large, I think it does), and whether or not you are hypocritical in calling someone else out for name calling (I think you are).
Joe:
Uhh, not everyone here missed that issue. I mentioned it in the second paragrah of this comment.
June 8th, 2006 at 11:32 am
Crap, messed up my copy and past. “Wow, bonus points” above should come after the italicized “as if to suggest.”
June 8th, 2006 at 11:33 am
Crap. Mistyped “paste.” I’m on a roll today…
June 8th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
He’s done that himself. In the comment immediately preceding yours, he proudly announced that anyone who disagrees with him on this issue – read: the overwhelming majority of the population of the U.S. and almost every other industrialized country – is a “bigot.” If he’s going to keep lobbing a charge like that, the burden is on him to show that it is justified, not on everyone else to prove a negative.
Maybe in some ways having nothing to do with this discussion, but in terms of one man / one woman as the basic definition, there’s nothing vague or inaccurate about it. Very few countries have gay “marriage” today, and as recently as 20 or 30 years ago – or just about any other time prior to that in recorded history – none did.
Potato, potahto. I suppose it wouldn’t bother you in the least if, rather than taxing you to death, the government instead went on a money-printing orgy, claiming that these newly minted dollars pose no threat to the ones you already hold.
BH made both charges. Are you now admitting that at least the term “hater” was inappropriate? Besides, it’s somewhere between extraordinarily naive and too clever by half to call traditional marriage “institutionalized discrimination against homosexuals,” as if that’s what the institution was created for.
If that were true, why the links to the two idiot categories of mine, without so much as an argument that I had wrongly called anyone a a bad name? This is not the first time you’ve made an issue over my alleged “name-calling habit” in a context that implies your beef is with name-calling per se, and not just the inaccurate variety.
Only because you insist on blurring the distinction between justified name-calling and unjustified name-calling. That you may disagree with me as to whether a given instance of name-calling is or is not justified or not does not make me a hypocrite.
June 8th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
The haters are losing a battle against demographic destiny. Every poll shows that opposition to marriage equality correlates strongly with age. The future is clear, and nobody rationally doubts that America will eventually have marriage equality. The question is can we get there now or do we have to wait a couple decades for the bigots to die of old age. I’m guessing the latter, but as the slim majority becomes an overwhelming minority in state after state after state, momentum on this issue is going to shift pretty fast.
Love your optimism, dude. Too bad it doesn’t jibe with reality.
First off, you’ve fallen prey to the “Young People Control the World” fallacy. You’re not the first one; the Democrats thought thousands of new 18 year-old voters would automatically deliver them victory clear back in 1972. The truth is, people normally become more conservative as they age, especially after they have children and pay income taxes. Indeed, the most reliable indicator of a person’s political views is not income or race or age; it’s whether or not they have children. And when people have children, they tend to raise them based on how they were raised.
Nor do I see the millions of recent immigrants bailing you out. Let’s see, which immgrant group will enthusiastically support gay marriage? Arab Muslims? Latino Catholics? African Christians?
In that regard, gay marriage is probably hitting it’s high-water mark. As Mark Steyn is fond of pointing out, in the 2004 election 25 of the 26 states with the highest birthrates voted for Bush; Kerry won all 16 of the lowest-birthrate states. Considering that gay marriage has exists only in a couple of the bluest of blue states, I don’t see this issue getting any more popular nationwide. The fact that not a single anti-gay marriage statewide ballot initiative has been rejected by the voters lends support to this.
Or to put it more simply: My wife and I have four children. Andrew Sullivan and his boyfriend have a beagle. Which family will have more political influence in the 2020 elections?
June 8th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Xrlq:
In the comment immediately preceding yours, he proudly announced that anyone who disagrees with him on this issue … is a “bigot.”
First of all, he does so because what he describes fits the definition of bigotry. Secondly, since when does the “vast majority” argument have any relevance? If we rewind to a time when the “vast majority” of Americans supported racial segregation, does that magically make supporting segregation non-biogted?
in terms of one man / one woman as the basic definition, there’s nothing vague or inaccurate about it
But why do we get to cherry pick what’s “traditional” and what’s not? Sure, you don’t have to go back very far to find a time when few if any same-sex marriages existed, but you don’t have to go much farther back than that to get to a time when few if any interracial marriages existed; and you needn’t go back much further than that to get to a time when a wife was subservient to her husband by law. And not much further than that to get to a time when wives were considered property. So by what right do anti same-sex marriage advocated get to ignore all those other changes to marriage that have happened over the years and claim that the true meaning of “traditional marriage” is limited to the genders of its participants?
I suppose it wouldn’t bother you in the least if, rather than taxing you to death, the government instead went on a money-printing orgy, claiming that these newly minted dollars pose no threat to the ones you already hold.
Yeah, because those two things are clearly the same thing. That analogy doesn’t even pass the laugh test, even if you ignore the absurdity of the “marriage is just like currency” premise.
Are you now admitting that at least the term “hater” was inappropriate?
No, but that’s never been particularly relevant to my point, which was that you least of all people have any room to gripe about someone applying incendiary names to others. Someone who’s fond of calling someone “Richard Cabeza” isn’t exactly the most credible source of judgment on when name calling goes too far, in my estimation.
Besides, it’s somewhere between extraordinarily naive and too clever by half to call traditional marriage “institutionalized discrimination against homosexuals,” as if that’s what the institution was created for.
Huh? How is the intent of the creation of the institution relevant to whether or not it’s discriminatory? This is even less relevant in the case of marriage, wherein most of the original justifications for its creation are no longer relevant anyway.
This is not the first time you’ve made an issue over my alleged “name-calling habit” in a context that implies your beef is with name-calling per se, and not just the inaccurate variety.
Actually, I oppose your name-calling because I generally find it to be gratuitous, and often mean-spirited. You may have felt that I was attempting to imply that name-calling is unconditionally bad, but I am on record concerning my policy on name-calling. In any case, for the umteenth time, at issue here is not the appropriateness of name-calling, but the appropriateness of you calling anyone else out for name-calling. It would be rather like me complaining that somebody is “too loud.”
Only because you insist on blurring the distinction between justified name-calling and unjustified name-calling.
Not really. If I wasn’t clear enough, let me clarify. I think that BH’s name-calling in this context (in particular, the charge of bigotry) is largely justified. On the charge of hatred, he probably paints with a bit too broad a brush, but I don’t think it’s nearly as overbroad as you seem to think it is. For all their attempts to gussy up their opposition to same sex marriage, for the vast majority who oppose it, their opposition boils down to gays are different, and different is icky, and icky is bad. Some of this is grounded in hate, some of it in ignorance. Even the religious objections aren’t terribly weighty when you look into them, and I contend that these probably fall into the “ignorant” and “hateful” categories in equal parts.
On the issue at hand, I’ve seen exactly zero compelling arguments as to why heterosexual marriages should be allowed but homosexual marriages should not. Absent such an argument, I don’t see how you can avoid classifying such an exclusion as bigoted and discriminatory.
June 8th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Captain Holly,
It is true that young people get more conservative as they age, but the population as a whole is getting less conservative on the issue of marriage discrimination. While *some* of today’s tolerant youth are tomorrow’s conservative bigots, many of them are not.
Today’s youth and today’s elderly are more tolerant of homosexuality than yesterday’s. And tomorrow’s youth and elderly will be be likewise more tolerant than today’s. The trend toward getting more conservative as you age is being outweighed by the overall demographic shift.
It’s not going to happen over night, but my guess is that things aren’t going to get much worse for very long. Progress is being made and will continue to be made. In 20 years, there will be considerable opposition to hate amendments. Too bad we have to wait 20 years to find out which one of us is right!
June 8th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
Bullshit. He describes a point of view that he doesn’t like, and you think it’s OK because it’s a point of view you don’t like, either. It has nothing to do with bigotry.
Again, your “estimation” assumes that name calling is name calling is name calling. What you’re conveniently neglecting is that unlike BH’s “bigots,” whose only sin is having the audacity to disagree with BH, the guy I call Richard Cabeza had to pull a lot of nasty, mean-spirited, personal shit on both me and others before I even considered calling him by anything other than his real name. So your non-point about name-calling is not taken.
June 9th, 2006 at 1:30 am
It is true that young people get more conservative as they age, but the population as a whole is getting less conservative on the issue of marriage discrimination. While *some* of today’s tolerant youth are tomorrow’s conservative bigots, many of them are not.
On the issue of homosexuality, I would agree; on the issue of gay marriage, I highly doubt it. Not when you have anti-gay marriage initiatives consistently passing by three-, four-, or even five-to-one margins. Either people are lying to the pollsters, or the pollsters are fudging their data (probably the latter).
This might sound a bit arrogant, but I would guess most people are like me when it comes to the issue: We don’t give a damn who screws whom — as long as they’re consenting adults — but we do have a problem with gays using the courts to force a new definition of marriage on everyone else. And the two positions are not mutually exclusive.
Today’s youth and today’s elderly are more tolerant of homosexuality than yesterday’s. And tomorrow’s youth and elderly will be be likewise more tolerant than today’s. The trend toward getting more conservative as you age is being outweighed by the overall demographic shift.
In general and with most issues, yes. But as we have seen with abortion, a funny thing can happen in the inexorable rush to Utopia.
Back in the early 70′s, polls showed an overwhelming majority of youth supported abortion rights. Today it’s just the opposite: For the first time, a majority of college-age Americans oppose Roe v. Wade. The adamantly pro-choice segment of American society, ie, the one that opposes any and all restrictions on abortion, is getting older. Pro-choice politicians and more importantly pro-choice judges are slowly dying or retiring.
I predict the “tipping point” as it applies to Roe will occur within the next decade, and by 2020 you’ll see abortion as primarily a state issue. Ironically, it’s likely that things will return to the way they were before Roe: A few states will permit abortion, most others won’t. And other than the hard-core feminists, most Americans will be satisfied with it.
Some people have been impolitic enough to point out the obvious reason for this: The dedicated, pro-choice activist women were the ones who were the most likely to have an abortion, while by contrast the pro-life women weren’t and as a result they had significantly more children. In effect, the pro-choicers aborted themselves into political oblivion; there is no “second wave” of pro-choice women because most of them were never born in the first place.
This phenomenon applies even more strongly to gays and lesbians. Despite anecdotes of a baby boom among gay couples, the truth is they don’t reproduce (or adopt) anywhere close to the rate of the straights, for obvious reasons. Not only that, but the straights that are most likely to have children nowadays are the conservative ones that oppose gay marriage: Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons, Muslims. I predict that within 20 years, if not sooner, you’ll see that pro-gay marriage majority switch to an anti-gay marriage majority, just as happened with abortion.
But we don’t have to wait until 2024 to find out. The elections this fall will give us a big clue if my prediction is correct. My personal theory is that virtually all polls today fail to account for these changing demographics, which explains in part why almost every major pollster underestimated Republican turnout in the last two elections. In my opinion, there has been a major shift in the political paradigm since 2001, partly caused by 9/11 and party caused by a flood of young Republicans.
If the Republicans, with all their problems, can hold the House and Senate and add seats in the process this fall, then that will be very strong evidence of a fundamental philosophical change in American society. The Democrats, with their anti-family, anti-children attitudes are in decline in part because they have failed to fulfill the most basic of all obligations: That is, raise a new generation to take their place.
June 9th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Captain Holly,
As I said, time will tell. I’m optimistic that increasing tolerance will lead to decreasing support for marriage discrimination. Even if the country gets more conservative, I think conservatives themselves will be less likely to support marriage discrimination.
You’re right that the religious folks are outbreeding the secular humanists. And I agree that has demographic implications. I do believe, though, that even with the ebb and flow of sentiment, the whole world is slowly moving in the right direction on this issue.
June 11th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
The only way I can see support for gay marriage reaching a solid majority is if, after it has existed for a long period of time in some states, people in other states conclude it hasn’t harmed marriage as an institution. That may well happen, for all I know. But BH won’t be happy with that result, since it requires acknowledging that people who are reluctant to jump into the great unknown now, based on what no one can know now, are anything other than “bigots.”
June 12th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Xlrq,
The great unknown? The notion that ending marriage discrimination threatens hetero marriage is just the scare tactic of the haters. What, exactly, is the harm that is feared? And what is the mechanism by which this harm will be done? It’s a laughably weak argument.
Besides, some European countries have had some version of nondiscrminatory marriage or schmarriage for over a decade. Marriage rates are up, divorce rates are down and rates for children born out of wedlock look the same as in other countries. In other words, the “great unknown” is just scaremongering, cryptobigotry and denial of reality.
June 12th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
BH, are you for real or are you some computer algorithm? Perhaps you’re oblivious to how predictable your responses are, not to mention being in no danger of persuading anyone of your position. Have you ever actually WON a debate by calling people “bigots,” “haters,” or some other political swear word du jour?
June 12th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Xlrq, you can duck the substantive debate by blustering about words like ‘bigot’ and ‘hater’, but the fact remains that until somebody actually articulates what the harm is and how that harm will come to pass, it’s nothing but thinly veiled discrimination.
June 12th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Xrlq:
Bullshit. He describes a point of view that he doesn’t like
Wrong. He describes a situation wherein an entire class of people is essentially excluded from a state-recognized institution for no good reason other than the fact that group is unpopular, and where the opponents of that class’ inclusion are frequently (though not always) guilty of fearmongering and hatemongering. I fail to see how this doesn’t qualify as bigotry. Instead, you insist that there are “legitimate” reasons to continue to exclude those people (without bothering to hint at what those reasons might be), and make risible comparisons between marriage and currency.
BH’s “bigots,” whose only sin is having the audacity to disagree with BH
You don’t get it, and I suspect you never will. Their sin is not in disagreeing with BH (and me), their sin is excluding an entire class of people from a common institution for no good reason. Bigotry such as this may be “just a point of view” from where you’re standing, but from where I’m standing, it isn’t.
Have you ever actually WON a debate by calling people “bigots,” “haters,” or some other political swear word du jour?
Mwahahaha! Another case of pot meet kettle.
June 12th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
BH:
I’m not “ducking” anything. I’m more than willing to discuss the pros, cons and potential pitfalls of traditional marriage, gay marriage, civil unions, or any other angle of this issue, with anyone who can discuss the issue like an adult. I am not, however, willing to hold any such discussions with YOU, as you’ve repeatedly shown yourself to be incapable of such a thing.
TGirsch:
No, I absolutely get it. For both you and BH, there is no such thing as a friendly disagreement, at least not on this issue. No one advocates “excluding an entire class of people” from an institution that has never included them before “for no good reason.” If you’re really so full of yourself that you cannot fathom how anyone else’s reasons for supporting traditional marriage can be “good” reasons – solely because you happen to disagree with them yourself – then you’ve made it clear as day who the bigot is.
June 12th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
X:
If you’re really so full of yourself that you cannot fathom how anyone else’s reasons for supporting traditional marriage can be “good” reasons
Not quite. If I were new to the debate, and simply hadn’t heard any of the arguments against same-sex marriage, or if I were unduly dismissing said arguments without appropraite consideration, you might have a point. But I’ve heard plenty of these arguments, and none of them are any good by any objective standard of measure. Perhaps there are some mythical “good reasons” out there that I haven’t heard, but the ones I’ve heard amount to little more than fearmongering (e.g., “If we allow this, what’s to stop polygamy and bestiality?!?”).
So as I see it, there are two issues here. The first (and the reason I jumped in) is the appropriateness of you whining about someone else’s name-calling. We’re clearly not going to agree on that one. The second is the issue of whether or not the name is fitting. If it helps to set aside the names for a moment and discuss the underlying merits, I’m more than willing to do that. (You’ll note that I haven’t called you anything.) As BH says, the proof is in the pudding, and until someone comes up with some decent evidence that same-sex marriage will somehow harm the institution at large, I don’t see how opposition to it can be classified as anything other than ignorant at best and bigoted at worst.
June 13th, 2006 at 12:35 am
TGirsch:
Translation: none of them are persuasive … to you. They are persuasive to a lot of other people, however, and that doesn’t automatically mean everyone is wrong except you. I’m also not sure a 100% objective answer is possible, or even desirable. In any event, it’s quite a leap from identifying a view as “subjective” and denouncing it as “bigoted.”
I think ignorance is more likely. However, this is a shared ignorance on everybody’s part, not one particular to the anti-gay marriage crowd. It’s not an unreasonable hypothesis that gay marriages will probably function similarly enough to straight ones for it to make sense to extend marriage to gay couples, but it is a hypothesis nonetheless. Only when gay marriage has been commonplace for at least a generation will it be possible to know. Maybe gays will overwhelmingly decide the current no-fault divorce rules are great, while straights like me will argue it was a mistake. Or maybe they’ll decide that marriage doesn’t really make sense at all, as long they get powers of attorney, inheritance rights, etc. Or maybe they’ll decide on a set of rules that just happens to match the rules that straights have independently decided were best for them. Or maybe not. While civil unions seem like a reasonable compromise to me, fully merging an unknown into a known, and hoping for the best, strikes me as a reckless thing to do.
June 13th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
fully merging an unknown into a known, and hoping for the best, strikes me as a reckless thing to do.
And this is where we differ. Excluding an entire class from an institution for no compelling reason (and to me, compelling evidence = solid evidence that tangible harm would result) strikes me as the reckless thing to do. When we’re talking about extending rights and privileges, I think the burden of proof lies squarely on the side of those who want to withhold the right. Clearly, much of America disagrees. Then again, much of America disagreed with the idea that blacks should be afforded equal rights, and found the arguments against doing so persuasive. Does this make equal rights for blacks a “subjective” matter, and opposition to such rights somehow not bigoted?
That’s my point. I admittedly fail to grasp the difference between discrimination by race and discrimination by gender. This is particularly the case if homosexuality does indeed turn out to be a genetic predisposition rather than a simple lifestyle choice. “Bigoted” is bound to get a reaction, but I genuinely believe that shoe fits. And as I stated way above, bigotry is not necessarily born out of hatred; it can just as easily be born of ignorance. That’s why I continue to argue that “bigot” is the less-controversial of the terms BH used.
June 13th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Xlrq, the boogeyman argument will get you nowhere. You still have not identified how ending marriage discrimination will harm marriage as an institution or even any one particular instance of marriage. You have not you shown how letting men marry men and women marry women is going to prevent any hetero couple from getting hitched.
Moreover, you haven’t even begun to explain how such putative harm (especially such harm discounted by the odds of it coming to pass) is so great that it justifies the discriminatory treatment of an abused class of society.
Your insistence that marriage-discriminaton is justified by something more than anti-gay animus is belied by your complete refusal to attempt that justification.
As an aside, I thought you had libertarian leanings. I find your paternalistic objection to no-fault divorce a little surprising. In NY, we lack no-fault divorce. Instead we have couples who conspire to lie to get their divorce and courts that are complicit in these most obvious lies. I suspect that a nationwide reversal of no-fault divorce law would be subverted by the everyday judges who are everywhere sympathetic to couples who want to go their separate ways.
June 13th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
TGirsch:
In that case, you might as well concede the slippery slope argument against gay marriage, which I have not advanced myself but others have. If the burden is on those who wish to exclude any class, why is it better to discriminate against people who want more than one spouse, or against people who’d like to marry their cousin (or even brother or sister, if they are willing to be sterilized)? Taken to its logical conclusion, your argument would require every state either to abolish marriage outright, or to extend it to every group of two or more (or one?!) consenting adults who seek it.
To my mind, the question of whether men and women are so interchangeable as to make a homosexual relationship enough like a straight relationship to warrant a legal marriage or marriage-like status is an empirical question. Whether the two are so similar that both institutions should be governed by identical rules is a separate, far more ambitious issue. As long as either question remains open, experimentation is fine, but there’s no reason to drag the other 98% of us into that experiment.
1. I doubt that. Do you really find separate men’s vs. women’s bathrooms offensive, on a par with the black vs. white bathrooms that were prevalent in the Jim Crow era?
2. That’s not the issue here, anyway. To argue that distinguishing traditional marriage from gay marriage is a male vs. female discrimination is to exalt form over substance. The question is not whether men should have more or less rights than women (as would be the case if, say, men were allowed to unilaterally divorce their wives but their wives had no reciprocal rights to do the same), but whether or not gay unions are different enough from straight unions to warrant the state treating them differently. You are free to argue that they are not, but it’s hardly the open-and-shut case you make it out to be.
June 14th, 2006 at 12:50 am
X:
Actually, there’s a pretty good empirical case to be made for not prohibiting cousins from marrying, even though I personally find the practice distasteful. Siblings are admittedly a tougher nut, but I think the possibility of reproduction and the known genetic risks of such incestuous breeding (never a worry in same-sex marriages) presents the very sort of potential tangible harm that BH and I have been requesting. Beyond that, if both partners were willing to demonstrate that they’d been sterilized, what the hell, why not?
The case against polygamy is actually quite easy to make, just from the sheer complication of it. In the event that one spouse becomes incapacitated, who gets power of attorney, the ability to make medical decisions, etc.? In a two-person union, this is clear, but in a three-or-more person union, there’s all sorts of room for messy multi-party conflict that the state is best served avoiding. Similar issues come with things like divorce, death and inheritance, etc. And a one-person union is simply nonsensical from a legal perspective.
Do you really find separate men’s vs. women’s bathrooms offensive, on a par with the black vs. white bathrooms that were prevalent in the Jim Crow era?
Excellent point. Score one for the X-man.
The question is … whether or not gay unions are different enough from straight unions to warrant the state treating them differently.
Well, sort of. The question isn’t just that, but on which side we should err. In other words, should the burden of proof be on those who wish to engage in gay union to show that they aren’t different enough, or on those who wish to prohibit this to demonstrate that they are? You seem to favor the former, whereas I favor the latter.
In all of this, I should note that I don’t think there’s any constitutional requirement to recognize same-sex marriage (or, indeed, to recognize marriage at all), at least not at the federal level (maybe in some state constitutions, there are provisions that can be construed that way — I don’t know). I simply think that recognizing same-sex marriage is the right thing to do, given the absence of any compelling evidence of harm.
Of course, as mentioned way, way up there, this is all much ado about nothing, since the whole anti-gay-marriage hubbub is little more than election year grandstanding.
Finally, most of this thread can be taken as evidence that name-calling is generally not a good idea, at least not if you want people who disagree with you to take you seriously. If your goal is to preach to the choir, then by all means fire away with the name-calling. If it’s to convince people and bring them around to your point of view, then it’s generally counterproductive (which isn’t to say that there aren’t cases where it’s warranted).
June 14th, 2006 at 11:24 am
The law could provide for that in any number of ways. It could say that in the event of a conflict, the older marriage prevails over the newer one – or maybe the other way around. Pick one, make that the law, problem solved. We have to make arbitrary decisions for corporations, limited partnerships and LLCs, why not do the same for three-way marriages (or overlapping ones, if you take the position that each member of the harem has her own separate marriage with … uh …. me?!)
Divorce could be tricky for three-way marriages, where A and C want a divorce from each other but neither wants a divorce from C. It would work, though, with two-way marriages uninhibited by laws against polygamy, where each legal link between any two persons is considered a separate “marriage” in its own right, and can therefore be severed without disturbing the others. As to inheritance, I see no reason why it’s any harder to leave property to my three wives, share and share alike, than it would be to leave the same property to my two sons, share and share alike, if something happened to both me and my one wife.
True, but no more so than a one-man LLC, which some states allow, or a one-man corporation, which all states do. If the goal is to have the state act as though all lifestyles are equally wonderful, and all equally deserving of state recognition, when who is the state to leave anybody out?
That’s basically right, but with two caveat. First and foremost, I think a distinction needs to be drawn between quasi-prohibitions like today’s ban on gay marriage (do what you want, and the state will leave you alone but not recognize your marriage) and genuine prohibitions on private, voluntary conduct (do what you want, and you’ll end up fined or imprisoned). Where true prohibitions are at issue, as with the criminal penalties for polygamy and the criminal penalties faced by the Lovings in Loving v. Virginia, I agree that the burden of proof should be on the one seeking to prohibit the conduct rather than on those seeking to engage in it. But where the only issue is whether or not the state should give its seal of approval, that’s a different matter entirely.
Second, portraying this as prohibition vs. allowance obscures the fact that it’s not an either-or choice between gay marriage and no legal recognition of gay couples. Civil unions are another option, which can work just as well for gays while leaving the age-old institution of traditional marriage undisturbed. Given the choice between two versions of the same goal, one of which will have unpredictable results on traditional marriage, and the other of which will not affect traditional marriage at all, shouldn’t this one be a no-brainer?
June 14th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
X:
In what way would civil unions differ from “marriages,” other than in name? Is this really, at the end of the day, simply a battle over semantics? If a civil union was identical in every way to marriage, except that same-sex couples are permitted, and that you don’t get to call it “marriage,” that’s a compromise I’d be more than willing to accept in the short-term.
If, on the other hand, a civil union is some form of “marriage lite,” where some benefits and legal institutions associated with marriage are still withheld, then I’d have to object to that.
Re: Polygamy, a lot of what you say is much easier said than done, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg concerning the complications that are introduced with the third party. Suppose man A marries woman B, and then decides he wants to also marry woman C. Does woman B have any say in any of this? If so, what are her legal options?
The bottom line, is polygamy is far, far messier than two-party marriages (much moreso than same-sex marriages could ever dream of being), and that in and of itself is a good practical case against state-recognized polygamy.
Re: One-man LLCs and One-man corporations versus one-person marriages, the example still doesn’t wash. These business entities exist to enable a distinction between personal assets/liabilities and business assets/liabilities. They’re often abused, no doubt, but I’m not willing to say that it’s a nonsensical idea. Whereas in the case of one-person marriage, what is hypothetically split from what else? The benefits and institutions associated with marriage are useless and nonsensical in the context of a single party, and that’s simply not true of one-person corporations or LLCs. Especially since, in the latter two cases, additional parties can be added after-the-fact, in many cases without substantial effort. Sell stock in your one-person corporation to Person B and Presto!, you’re a two-person corporation.
June 14th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Also, I take exception to your characterization of the only thing being at issue is the state simply “giving its seal of approval.” It goes well beyond that, in that marriage confers various legal and economic benefits not available to the unmarried. If marriage were simply a meaningless title handed out by the state, I’d be inclined to agree with you, but it’s a lot more than just a “seal of approval.”
June 14th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
None necessarily, all potentially. Basically, rather than straight out copy marriage as an institution, I’d poll gays as to what aspects of marriage it is that they want. Specific legal incidents they can use, such as hospital visitation, inheritance rights, etc., would be included, but parity for parity’s sake would not be an objection. And when deciding on what the rules for divorce should be, it would be up to the gay community to decide what’s best for them, without regard to whether that same system happens to be the best for us over on the marriage side. I would not be at all surprised, for example, if the gays decide that no-fault EZ-divorce is the way to go, while straights decide differently. Hell, I don’t even rule out the possibility that lesbians might want one set of rules for themselves, distinct from the rules that apply to civil unions of gay men. All this is, for the most part, uncharted territory.
After both (or all three) institutions have existed side-by-side for at least a generation, if they’ve all evolved in the same direction, and there’s no reason to think they’ll diverge later, then the institutions could be merged then. Legal and judicial economy, not “marriage equality” as an end in itself, should be the principal driving forces.
So do “seals of approval” of other varieties, as well. But an alternative institution could confer some of those benefits, all of them, or possibly some other benefits not included in marriage. In any event, the absence of legal benefits deriving from such a seal of approval is hardly the same as a prohibition. To argue otherwise is to dilute the meaning of “prohibit” to the point where current law not only “prohibits” gays from getting married; it also “prohibits” straights from remaining single.
October 27th, 2006 at 10:07 am
[...] As co-blogger Brutal Hugger said here: Every poll shows that opposition to marriage equality correlates strongly with age. The future is clear, and nobody rationally doubts that America will eventually have marriage equality. The question is can we get there now or do we have to wait a couple decades for the bigots to die of old age. I’m guessing the latter, but as the slim majority becomes an overwhelming minority in state after state after state, momentum on this issue is going to shift pretty fast. [...]