I'm not sure I agree with him, but he makes a compelling case that the battle for acceptance is being fought in the wrong arena. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107957087464258698,00.html?mod=opinion -- March 18, 2004 Selma to San Francisco? By SHELBY STEELE It is always both a little flattering and more than a little annoying to blacks when other groups glibly invoke the civil rights movement and all its iconic imagery to justify their agendas for social change. I will never forget, nor forgive, the feminist rallying cry of the early '70s: "Woman as ******." Here upper-middle-class white women -- out of what must have been an impenetrable conviction in their own innocence -- made an entire race into a metaphor for wretchedness in order to steal its thunder. And now gay marriage is everywhere being defined as a civil rights issue. In San Francisco, gay couples on the steps of city hall cast themselves as victims of bigotry who must now be given the "right" to legally marry in the name of "equality" and "social justice." In the media, these couples have been likened to the early civil rights heroes whose bravery against police dogs and water hoses pushed America into becoming a better country. "I don't want to be on the wrong side of history," a San Francisco radio host said about gay marriage. "Maybe we're looking at thousands of Rosa Parks over at city hall." So, dressing gay marriage in a suit of civil rights has become the standard way of selling it to the broader public. Here is an extremely awkward issue having to do with the compatibility of homosexuality and the institution of marriage. But once this issue is buttoned into a suit of civil rights, neither homosexuality nor marriage need be discussed. Suddenly only equity and fairness matter. And this turns gay marriage into an ersatz civil rights struggle so that dissenters are seen as Neanderthals standing in the schoolhouse door, fighting off equality itself. Yet all this civil rights camouflage is, finally, a bait-and-switch: When you agree to support fairness, you end up supporting gay marriage. But gay marriage is simply not a civil rights issue. It is not a struggle for freedom. It is a struggle of already free people for complete social acceptance and the sense of normalcy that follows thereof -- a struggle for the eradication of the homosexual stigma. Marriage is a goal because, once open to gays, it would establish the fundamental innocuousness of homosexuality itself. Marriage can say like nothing else that sexual orientation is an utterly neutral human characteristic, like eye-color. Thus, it can go far in diffusing the homosexual stigma. In the gay marriage movement, marriage is more a means than an end, a weapon against stigma. That the movement talks very little about the actual institution of marriage suggests that it is driven more by this longing to normalize homosexuality itself than by something compelling in marriage. The happiness that one saw in the faces of the newly married in San Francisco seemed to come primarily from the achievement (if only illusory) of ordinariness. After all, many of them had lived together into old age. Love does not require marriage but, for gays, ordinariness does. And happiness for these couples was in the imprimatur of ordinariness. But marriage is only one means to innocuousness. The civil rights framework is another. To say that gay marriage is a civil rights issue is to imply that homosexuality is the same sort of human difference as race. And even geneticists now accept that race is so superficial a human difference as to be nothing more than a "social construct." In other words, racial difference has been made officially innocuous in our culture, and its power to stigmatize has been greatly reduced. Evidence of this is seen in the steady, yet unremarked, rise in interracial marriage rates for all of our races. So if gay marriage, like race, is about civil rights, then homosexuality is a human difference every bit as innocuous. Thus, America should treat homosexuality like it treats race and give gays the "right" to marry as it once gave blacks the right to vote. So gays benefit from the comparison to both race and civil rights, and this has provoked hostility and even outrage in black America. Black leaders as liberal as Jesse Jackson have distanced themselves from the gay marriage issue, and among black churches an actual movement against gay marriage is unfolding. There is a religious dimension to this, but more broadly there is a simple resentment at having blackness implicitly compared to homosexuality. The civil rights movement argued that it was precisely the utter innocuousness of racial difference that made segregation an injustice. Racism was evil because it projected a profound difference where there was none -- white supremacy, black inferiority -- for the sole purpose of exploiting blacks. But there is a profound difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality. In the former, sexual and romantic desire is focused on the same sex, in the latter on the opposite sex. Natural procreation is possible only for heterosexuals, a fact of nature that obligates their sexuality to no less a responsibility than the perpetuation of the species. Unlike racial difference, these two sexual orientations are profoundly -- not innocuously -- different. Racism projects a false difference in order to exploit. Homophobia is a reactive prejudice against a true and firm difference that already exists. Institutions that arise to accommodate these two sexual orientations can never be exactly the same. Across time and cultures, marriage has been a heterosexual institution grounded in the procreative function and the responsibilities of parenthood -- this more than in either love or adult fulfillment. Marriage is simply the arrangement by which humans perpetuate the species, whether or not they find fulfillment in it. The true problem with gay marriage is that it consigns gays to a life of mimicry and pathos. It shoehorns them into an institution that does not reflect the best possibilities of their own sexual orientation. Gay love is freed from the procreative burden. It has no natural function beyond adult fulfillment in love. If this is a disadvantage when children are desired, it is likely an advantage when they are not -- which is more often the case. In any case, gays can never be more than pretenders to an institution so utterly grounded in procreation. And dressing gay marriage in a suit of civil rights only consigns gays to yet another kind of mimicry. Stigma, not segregation, is the problem gays face. But insisting on a civil rights framework only leads gays into protest. But will protest affect stigma? Is "gay lovers as ******s" convincing? Protest is trying to hit the baseball with the glove. The problem with so much mimicry is that it keeps gays from evolving institutions and rituals that reflect the true nature of homosexuality. Assuming, as I do, that gays should have the option of civil unions that afford them the legal prerogatives of marriage, isn't it more important after that to allow quiet self-acceptance to lead the way to authentic institutions? The stigmatization of homosexuals is wrong and makes no contribution to the moral health of our society. I was never worried for my children because they grew up knowing a gay couple that lived across the street, or because several family friends were gay. They learned early what we all know: that homosexuality is as permanent a feature of the human condition as heterosexuality. Nothing is gained in denying this. But neither should we deny that the two are inherently different. The gay marriage movement denies this difference in order to borrow "normalcy" from marriage. Thus, it is a movement born more of self-denial than self-acceptance, as if on some level it agrees with those who see gays as abnormal. Mr. Steele, a fellow of the Hoover Institution, is the author of "A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America" (Harper Collins, 1998).
This article has the same problem that every other argument that bases marriage on procreation has because it ignores the fact that there are many marriages between opposite genders where procreation never takes place or is never even intended. THe only way this argument would hold is if legally any couple who marries is required to procreate.
Perhaps married couples without kids are also living lives of mimicry and pathos, and they too can never be more than pretenders. This might be quite startling to them.
i think he's talking about the historical roots of marriage and suggesting that gays begin new traditions that speak directly to their experience. we have as very dear friends a lesbian couple who have adopted a beautiful vietnamese boy. although not "married", and they haven't had a commitment ceremony, they are no less a family than my wife and i and our children. i also could care less if they got married and would be happy to attend such a ceremony. on a macro level though, one wonders if ultimate acceptance by hetero america is best served by pursuing this issue. why not fight for civil unions, and all the rights that go with them? also, is there any reason why a civil union ceremony couldn't be performed in a church, assuming the church in question would agree to preside?
Why not do away with marriage as a legal govt. sanctioned institution altogether then? If there is no distinction legally between marriage and a civil union then what is the point of the term?
I actually found myself agreeing (a bit) with the contention that making this a civil rights issue diminishes other civil rights battles of the past. However, i was more compelled by his recognition that this is about societal acceptance and 'normalcy.' Since he didn't call homesexuality abhorent, devient, or sinfull, and in fact, acknowledged that it's a permanent feature of human condition, and that stigmatization is wrong and hurtful to the moral health of society, i found the article a stronger argument for, rather than against gay marriage. His only argument against, was that there could be no procreation. And as such he dismissed non-procreating marriages as imposters. IF you don't accept that position, then his whole pretense crumbles
Like many on this subject, Steele mixes up the state and spiritual aspects of marriage. Most people (gays included) would probably agree that love in a pure sense needs no governmental recognition. And the idea that they should create new traditions isn't necessarily a bad idea. Such traditions, however, belong in the spiritual/private realm. Marriage in the civil realm is essentially an economic agreement, in which the two persons agree to be responsible for one another. Because the state recognizes that marriage promotes stability on a micro and macro scale, they award all sorts of economic and legal benefits to marriage. By denying gay partnerships to these benefits to , the state is essentially marginalizing them economically and legally. The problem with the civil union is that it creates a "separate but equal" class. The Supreme Court rightly determined that separate education can never mean equal education in Brown v. Board of Education, and I think this can be applied to marriage as well. Creating a separate class allows a big loophole that could cause civil unions to receive fewer of economic benefits that marriage does. Now I think the state should do away with marriage and simply award civil unions only. Marriage would thus be reserved for spiritual institutions.
