John Corvino

Tag: politics

  • The Trouble with Common Ground

    First published at 365gay.com on April 4, 2009

    Readers of this column occasionally complain that I’m too nice to our enemies. They may have a point.

    I’m an easygoing person by nature. It’s not a deliberate strategy; it’s just who I am. Most of the time, the trait serves me well, though there are times I wish I had a reputation as more of an asshole. People generally steer clear of assholes, for fear of provoking them, and sometimes it’s good to be feared.

    Even though my being “Mr. Nice Guy” wasn’t chosen for strategic purposes, I try to use it to my advantage. It gives me influence with a certain group of people. And it’s shaped my career as a gay-rights advocate, one who aims for thoughtful engagement with the other side.

    Such engagement can be productive. For one thing, the more our opponents know us personally, the harder it is for them to demonize us. (Not impossible, obviously, but harder.) Part of my life’s mission is to create cognitive dissonance for those who would label all gays as angry deviants.

    But engagement is also important because, like it or not, our opponents still capture majorities in most states. I don’t doubt that the tide is shifting strongly in our favor, but we’ve got a lot of work to do. One effective way to reach the movable middle is to take opponents’ concerns seriously.

    I say “one effective way,” not “the only effective way.” There’s a place for militant activism. And I’m not just saying that because I like getting along with people—militant activists included. I really believe it.

    There’s a character type in the GLBT community that I sometimes jokingly refer to as the Angry Lesbian. You know the type. They need not be lesbian, or even female—indeed, some of the best examples I’ve known are men. But they’re angry, and they want you to know it.

    They’re angry at our opponents. They’re angry at me for civilly engaging those opponents. They’re angry at the schools who host our debates—for giving the opposition a platform, as well as for not providing (take your pick): (a) free parking; (b) accessible seating; (c) more Q&A time; (d) universal health care.

    They’re angry at the world generally, and they’re going to let everyone know it.

    There are times when I’m sincerely grateful for Angry Lesbians. They jolt us out of our complacency. They remind us that these issues can have life-or-death implications. Yes, they make us uncomfortable, but sometimes we should be uncomfortable.

    So they have their role, and I have mine. Both have their uses.

    It’s tempting to cast the resulting alliance as a “Good Cop/Bad Cop” strategy. Tempting, but not so easy. For when it comes to moral issues, “Good Cop/Bad Cop” seems unstable—maybe even unsustainable.

    In this debate, the Good Cop tells opponents, “You have reasonable concerns—just like the many other decent people who share your views. Let’s hear those concerns so we can address them thoughtfully.”

    The Bad Cop tells opponents, “Your ‘concerns’ are prejudice, pure and simple. And the best way to stamp out prejudice is to make life as uncomfortable as possible for anyone who tries to express it. That’s how society handles bigots: we don’t accommodate them; we ostracize them.”

    Needless to say, these strategies are at cross purposes. One cannot simultaneous tell people that one wants to hear their concerns and also that they’d better shut up if they know what’s good for them.

    I don’t pretend to have an easy answer to this dilemma. The debate is unlike, say, the health-care debate, where everyone agrees that healing the sick is a good thing, and the disagreement is over who pays for it and how.

    The gay-rights debate is a debate about whether our deep romantic commitments are a good thing. It’s about the nature of family, the authority of scripture, and other core moral issues. It cuts far deeper than “who pays for it and how?” (which, admittedly, has its own moral entanglements).

    I agree with the Angry Lesbians that the other side is wrong—badly wrong, wrong in ways that profoundly harm innocent people. And I can understand their desire to marginalize anyone who doubts the moral value of our relationships. I get it. I get it strategically, and I get it personally.

    But, for reasons both strategic and personal, I can’t join their approach. So I keep doing my “Good Cop” thing, hoping for synergy in this unstable but necessary alliance.

  • Strange Bedfellows

    First published at Between The Lines News on March 12, 2009

    Recently I wrote about a proposed compromise by David Blankenhorn, who opposes gay marriage, and Jonathan Rauch, who supports it.

    On the Blankenhorn/Rauch proposal, the federal government would recognize individual states’ same-sex marriages or civil unions (under the name “civil unions”) and grant them benefits, but only in states that provided religious-conscience exemptions, allowing religious organizations to deny married-student housing to gay spouses at a religious college, for example, or to refuse to rent out church property for gay-related family events.

    The Blankenhorn/Rauch proposal has prompted much discussion, including a counter-proposal from Ryan Anderson and Sherif Girgis at the conservative website thepublicdiscourse.com.

    Anderson and Girgis—who unlike Rauch and Blankenhorn, come from the same side of the debate—reject the original proposal as granting “too much to revisionists and too little to traditionalists.” As they see it, traditionalists don’t merely seek to secure their own personal religious liberty, but to promote what they see as “a healthy culture of marriage understood as a public good.”

    They believe that the Blankenhorn/Rauch proposal undermines that public good, because

    “it treats same-sex unions (in fact, if not in name) as if they were marriages by making their legal recognition depend on the presumption that these relationships are or may be sexual. It thus enshrines a substantive, controversial principle that traditionalists could not endorse: namely, that there is no moral difference between the sexual communion of husband and wife and homosexual activity—or, therefore, between the relationships built on them.”

    Anderson and Girgis instead propose the following: “revisionists would agree to oppose the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), thus ensuring that federal law retains the traditional definition of marriage as the union of husband and wife …In return, traditionalists would agree to support federal civil unions offering most or all marital benefits.” But these unions “would be available to any two adults who commit to sharing domestic responsibilities, whether or not their relationship is sexual,” provided that they are “otherwise ineligible to marry each other.”

    In other words, there would be federal civil unions for gays—but also for other domestic pairs: elderly widowed sisters, for example, or bachelor roommates.

    At first glance, their claim that Rauch and Blankenhorn base their proposal on “the presumption that these relationships are or may be sexual” seems strange. After all, Rauch and Blankenhorn never mention sex, and the state neither knows nor cares (nor checks) whether people are having sex once they’re married or “civilly united.”

    On the other hand, people generally assume (with good reason) that marriages and civil unions are sexual, or more broadly romantic. Romantic pair-bonding seems to be a fundamental human desire—for straights and gays—and part of what marriage does is to acknowledge pair-bonds. It does so not because the government is sentimental about such things, but because it recognizes the important role such bonds have in the lives of individuals and the community.

    Anderson and Girgis are correct that there are other important bonds in society, and we may well want to extend more legal recognition to them. There is no reason that two cohabitating spinsters shouldn’t be granted mutual hospital visitation rights if they want them.

    But the question remains whether we want to extend “most or all” federal marital benefits to any cohabitating couple otherwise ineligible to marry, as Anderson and Girgis propose.

    And this question prompts additional ones: why limit such recognition to couples? Mutually interdependent relationships don’t only come in twos. Oddly, Anderson and Girgis seem to have more in common with radicals who seek to move “beyond marriage” than they do with anyone in the mainstream marriage debate.

    Also, why limit such recognition to couples “otherwise ineligible to marry”? Can’t an unrelated man and woman have an interdependent relationship that’s not sexual/romantic?

    Anderson and Girgis write that, “Our proposal would still meet the needs of same-sex partners—based not on sex (which is irrelevant to their relationship’s social value), but on shared domestic responsibilities, which really can ground mutual obligations.”

    And there’s the crux: Anderson and Girgis assume that sex has social value only when open to procreation. But that’s just false, and most Americans know it. We acknowledge sexual/romantic relationships not merely because they might result in children, but also because of their special depth. Sex doesn’t merely make babies; it creates intimacy—for gays and straights alike.

    The problem is that Anderson and Girgis divide couplings into two crude categories: (1) married (or marriageable) heterosexuals, and (2) everyone else: committed gay couples, elderly sisters, cohabiting fly-fishing buddies, what have you. They then implausibly suggest that those in column two are all of equal social value.

    As David Link writes at the Independent Gay Forum, “The authors of this proposal are quite honest that they find it impossible to view same-sex couples in the category of marriage. But if these are the two categories offered: aging sisters or married couples, I’m betting more Americans who don’t already have an opinion, would view same-sex couples as more like the married couples than the sisters. With apologies to the traditionalists, the days when a majority of Americans simply closed their eyes to the loving—and sexual—relationships of same-sex couples are coming to an end.”

    As they should.

  • Can We Find Common Ground on Gay Marriage?

    First published at 365gay.com on February 28, 2009

    There is something very satisfying about ideological purity and the righteous indignation that often accompanies it. It can be fun to paint one’s opponents as crazy and stupid (and sometimes they make it all too easy to do so).

    Less fun, yet potentially more productive, are attempts at common ground. As much as I enjoy a good zinger, I’m a conciliator by nature. And so I was intrigued by a recent proposal [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22rauch.html] by Jonathan Rauch and David Blankenhorn seeking compromise on same-sex marriage.

    Rauch is one of gay marriage’s sharpest defenders; Blankenhorn, one of its ablest critics. The two have clashed on multiple occasions. If I had to recommend only two books on this subject, one from each side, they would be Rauch’s and Blankenhorn’s.

    In last Sunday’s New York Times, the pair co-authored a surprising proposal. The crux is this:

    “Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will.”

    Currently, various states offer some sort of legal recognition to same-sex couples. The idea would be to provide federal recognition to these arrangements while allaying opponents’ fears that doing so would erode their religious liberty.

    So under the proposal, no church would have to rent out its parish hall for a lesbian wedding; no religious college would have to provide married student housing to a gay couple, and so on. Any state that insisted on such requirements would be ineligible for federal civil union recognition.

    Let’s be clear on what the proposal would NOT do. It would not create legal statuses for same-sex couples in states that did not already have them.

    It would not prevent gay-rights advocates from continuing to press for full marriage rights, or gay-rights opponents from continuing to make the case against them.

    Nor would it “downgrade” Massachusetts and Connecticut same-sex marriages to civil unions. States would continue to recognize same-sex relationships in whatever ways they choose—as long as they don’t require religious organizations to do so. But the federal government, which currently recognizes NONE of these statuses, would recognize them all under the common name “civil unions.”

    What the proposal would do is allow the federal government to say, “If your state recognizes you as a couple, so do we.” It thus takes federalism seriously, with the federal government deferring to the states on the issue of who’s legally united—as it usually does.

    The proposal has already generated a good bit of discussion in the blogosphere. Some of it simply misunderstands the proposal; much of it—not surprisingly—is critical.

    Certainly, the proposal deserves a rigorous discussion from all sides. In order for that discussion to be more productive, I’d like humbly to suggest some guidelines:

    Rule #1: Do not criticize the proposal by saying, “The other side is not going to like it because…” Let the other side speak for the other side.

    Rule #2: Do not respond to an admirable attempt at peaceful negotiation by immediately ratcheting up the rhetoric. For example, at the National Review Online Maggie Gallagher writes, [http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTllZTZjYmQ4NzlkZGNiMTkzYTNiYzIyNTM3N2ZlZDQ=]

    “From where I stand, it looks like the progressive/democrat position states: If you believe marriage means a husband and wife, you are not just wrong, you are downright wicked and deserve to have your home address put up on the internet so strangers can harass you.”

    Oy. That violates Rule #1 and Rule #2—in one sentence!

    Nobody doubts that there has been excessive rhetoric on both sides. There are advocates who claim that anyone who opposes marriage equality is a hateful bigot; there are opponents who hold that gays by their very existence offend God.

    But thankfully, there are also those like Blankenhorn and Rauch who are interested in moving us past such conversation-stoppers. Let’s take the cue.

    Rule #3: If you don’t like the proposal, suggest a better idea.

    Note: “Give us full marriage equality!” is not what I mean by a better idea. Sure, that’s what would happen in my ideal world. Rauch’s too. And no one is saying that we should stop making the case for it.

    But in the meantime, there’s a proposal on the table that would provide federal rights and benefits to those in state-issued same-sex unions. Moreover, it’s a proposal that one major same-sex marriage opponent has endorsed.

    I don’t doubt that the proposal prompts some legitimate concerns on both sides. But if we can discuss those concerns with the same spirit of cooperation that Blankenhorn and Rauch have demonstrated, we might actually make some progress.

  • What’s Best for Children

    First published at 365gay.com on January 30, 2009

    I don’t have children, I don’t want children, and I don’t “get” children.

    Some of my friends have children. I like their children best at two stages of their lives:

    (1) When they’re small enough that they come in their own special carrying cases and stay put in them.

    (2) When they’re big enough that they don’t visit at all, but instead do their own thing while their parents do grownup stuff.

    In between those stages, children tend to run amok, which makes me nervous. My house is full of sharp and heavy objects. I did not put them there to deter children—honest!—but I am more comfortable when children (or their parents) are thus deterred. It’s safer for everyone involved.

    Having said that, I admire people who have children. I have a flourishing life largely because I was raised by terrific parents. When others choose to make similar sacrifices, I find it immensely praiseworthy.

    Which may be why opposition to gay adoption makes me so angry.

    Mind you, I am not by nature an angry person. Regular readers of this column know that I go out of my way to understand my opponents. Rick Warren compares homosexuality to incest? Well, what did he mean by the comparison? What was the context? What’s motivating him?

    Attack gay parents, however, and my first impulse is to pick up one of the aforementioned sharp and heavy objects and hurl it across the room.

    That’s partly because these attacks criticize adults who are doing a morally praiseworthy thing. And it’s partly because the attacks hurt innocent children, toward whom I feel oddly protective, despite my general aversion.

    Back in November, a Miami Dade circuit judge ruled that Florida’s law banning gays from adopting is unconstitutional. This is very good news.

    The Florida ban took effect in 1977, the era of Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell. We’ve come a long way since then—or so I’d like to think.

    Yet the Florida religious right is trotting out the same old arguments, repeatedly insisting that having both a mother and father is “what’s best for children.”

    Let’s put down our sharp and heavy objects for a moment and try addressing this calmly.

    Every mainstream child health and welfare organization has challenged this premise. The American Academy of Pediatrics. The Child Welfare League of America. The National Association of Social Workers. The American Academy of Family Physicians—you name it.

    These are not gay-rights organizations. These are mainstream child-welfare organizations. And they all say that children of gay parents do just as well as children of straight parents.

    But let’s suppose, purely for the sake of argument, that they’re all wrong. Let us grant—just for argument’s sake—that what’s best for children is having both a mother and a father.

    Even with that major concession, our opponents’ conclusion doesn’t follow. The problem is that their position makes the hypothetical “best” the enemy of the actual “good”.

    Indeed, when discussing adoption, it’s a bit misleading to ask what’s “best” for children.

    In the abstract, what’s “best” for children—given our opponents’ own premises—is to not need adoption in the first place, but instead to be born to loving heterosexual parents who are able and willing to raise them.

    So what we’re really seeking is not the “best”—that option’s already off the table—but the “best available.”

    What the 1977 Florida law entails is that gay persons are NEVER the best available. And that’s a difficult position for even a die-hard homophobe to maintain.

    It’s difficult to maintain in the face of thousands of children awaiting permanent homes.

    It’s difficult to maintain in the face of gay individuals and couples who have selflessly served as foster parents (which they’re permitted to do even in Florida).

    It’s difficult to maintain in light of all the other factors that affect children’s well-being, such as parental income, education, stability, relationships with extended family, neighborhood of residence, and the like—not to mention their willingness and preparedness to take on dependents.

    What the Florida ban does is to single out parental sexual orientation and make it an absolute bar to adoption, yet leave all of the other factors to be considered on a “case-by-case,” “best available” basis.

    Meanwhile, thousands of children languish in state care.

    For the sake of those children, I resist my urge to hurl heavy objects at the Florida “family values” crowd. Instead, I ask them sharply and repeatedly:

    Do you really believe that it is better for children to languish in state care than to be adopted by loving gay people?

    Those are the real-world alternatives. Those are the stakes. And our opponents’ unwillingness to confront them is an abysmal moral failure.

  • Gene Robinson’s Scary Prayer

    First published at 365gay.com on January 23, 2009

    When Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson was invited to deliver the invocation at the inaugural kickoff event, I expected some conservative evangelicals to complain. And they did.

    Forget the fact that Robinson’s invitation seemed like a token gesture after the controversial choice of evangelical pastor (and Prop-8 supporter) Rick Warren for the inaugural invocation—a far more prominent platform.

    Forget the fact that Warren himself praised the choice of the openly gay bishop as demonstrating the new president’s “genuine commitment to bringing all Americans of goodwill together in search of common ground.”

    Indeed, for the moment, forget common ground. As one right-wing blogger put it, a good evangelical doesn’t seek common ground with the “Bishop of Sodom.”

    And so they complained. Not only about Obama’s choice of Robinson, but about the prayer itself [full prayer at http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/faith_and_politics/gene_robinsons_prayer_for_pres.html. ]

    What grieved them so? Was it the prayer’s failure to mention Jesus? Its lack of scriptural references? Its line about blessing the nation with anger—“anger at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people”?

    Yes, yes, and yes.

    But those were not the parts that worried the evangelicals who contacted me a few days ago. They were concerned that Robinson’s prayer expressed a theme that they “have been trying to warn people about for some time now,” and they wanted my comment.

    What is this worrisome theme? What sinister agenda had the “Bishop of Sodom” expressed in his prayer, wittingly or unwittingly?

    It turns out that the troubling line was this: “Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance, replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences.”

    Puzzled? The line strikes most of us as innocuous, or even benign. “Genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences”—who can argue with that?

    But that’s not the part that bothered them. They were worried about “freedom from mere tolerance.”

    We will not appreciate the right-wing mindset—or for that matter, the culture wars—until we understand why that sentiment scares our opponents.

    When Robinson says “Bless us with freedom mere tolerance,” our opponents hear “It is not enough for you to tolerate us. You ought to embrace us. You ought to approve of who we are, which can’t be easily teased apart from what we do. After all, our relationships are a deep and important fact about our lives—just like yours are. So what we are asking is for you to give up your deep conviction that these relationships are sinful and instead affirm them as good.”

    That is in fact precisely what we are (or should be) asking for, and precisely what Bishop Robinson is praying for.

    No, we don’t seek such affirmation because we need our opponents’ validation. Rather, we seek it because it reflects the truth: our relationships are just as good as theirs.

    We seek it for another reason as well, one that frightens them even more. Statistically speaking, some of their kids will turn out gay. I want those kids to know that there’s nothing wrong with them. I want them to be able, insofar as possible, to count on their parents for affirmation and support.

    And that’s where the culture war really is a zero-sum game, and “common ground” is impossible without dramatic concession: we want their kids to believe something that is diametrically opposed to what they want them to believe. There’s no point in sugarcoating that conflict.

    If I were religious, I might pray over it, as Warren and Robinson do—although when it comes down to specifics, it seems they are praying for very different things.

    Or are they? One need not be a relativist to recognize that we all have an imperfect grasp of the truth, a truth that we nevertheless seek. When we find it—or at least, firmly believe that we have—we don’t want it to be merely “tolerated.”

    That’s as true of Rick Warren as it is of Gene Robinson.

    As I pointed out to my evangelical caller, I’m sure that he wants me, a skeptic, to move beyond “mere tolerance” of Christianity to embrace Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior.

    No one who values truth wants it to be merely tolerated. We “tolerate” nuisances; we embrace truth.

    That doesn’t mean that we believe that truth ought to be forced upon people, as if that were even possible. And this is where I think our opponents’ fears, while palpable, are ultimately unfounded.

    We want them to move from mere tolerance to embracing the truth. They want us to do the same—although they see the truth quite differently. We will attempt to persuade each other.

    But we cannot force truth—not by legislation, not by court decisions, and certainly, not by prayer.

  • Margie Christoffersen’s Freedom – and Ours

    First published at 365gay.com on December 19, 2008

    Marjorie Christoffersen seems like a nice enough person by all reports, including those of gay friends and acquaintances.

    But Christoffersen made a $100 donation to Prop. 8, which stripped marriage rights from gays and lesbians in California. Now some customers of El Coyote, the landmark Los Angeles restaurant where she worked for two decades, are boycotting.

    After angry protests, Christoffersen has tearfully resigned. Meanwhile, some of the other 88 employees have had their hours cut, and business is down about 30%.

    Is this outcome the predictable result of taking rights away from a community that has been burned once too often? Collateral damage in an ugly culture war?

    Or is it a step too far—punishing an entire business (and a gay-friendly one at that) for the private act of one employee, a generally decent person who can’t quite yet wrap her mind around gay marriage?

    A few facts are worth noting as we ponder these questions.

    Christoffersen’s small contribution was a personal one, not supported by the restaurant (except rather indirectly, insofar as it pays her salary).

    True, she is the owner’s daughter and a familiar fixture there, but at El Coyote she kept her Prop. 8 support to herself (unsurprisingly, given the sympathies of her coworkers and patrons). It became known only as activists scoured donation rolls for “hypocritical” Yes-on-8 donors.

    Indeed, in the wake of the controversy over Christoffersen, El Coyote has given $10,000 to the efforts to repeal Prop. 8—a substantial public penance for their employee’s private $100 “sin.”

    El Coyote has many gay employees, including managers. While they were aware of Christoffersen’s Mormonism and her conservative political beliefs, they got along well with her. They report that (apart from the marriage issue) she was supportive of her gay friends and coworkers.

    Some of those gay coworkers are now hurting. And it’s not just because they miss Christoffersen or hate seeing her so upset—she can’t discuss the incident without crying—but also because, with business slowing down, they fear for their jobs.

    Meanwhile, opponents of marriage equality have begun to use Christoffersen as an example of how gay-rights advocates want to destroy freedom of religion, speech, and conscience.

    What do I think?

    I think Margie Christoffersen sounds like a basically good person, someone who is wrong on marriage equality but is (or at least was) possibly winnable on that point someday.

    I also think the simplistic black-and-white approach that suggests “You’re either with us or against us” works even less at the level of day-to-day life than it does for, say, George Bush’s foreign policy.

    I think punishing El Coyote for the contributions of a single employee—one whose views on this subject hardly seem representative of its management or staff—is certainly overbroad and probably counterproductive.

    And yet I also appreciate the outrage of those who want nothing to do with anyone and anything even remotely associated with “Yes on 8”—a campaign which not only took away marriage rights, but did so by despicably portraying gays as a threat to children.

    Against that ugly backdrop, it’s hard to get worked up about a diner’s business slowing down.

    What concerns me most, however, is not misdirected punishment of El Coyote, or the occasionally harsh words for Christoffersen.

    What concerns me most is the right wing’s misusing this case as Exhibit N in their ever-growing catalog of alleged threats to their freedom.

    For example, in the National Review Online, Maggie Gallagher refers to the protests and boycott as “extraordinary public acts of hatred” and criticizes “the use of power to silence moral opposition.”

    But nobody “silenced” Margie Christoffersen. She expressed her viewpoint by contributing; others expressed theirs by boycotting. That’s how free expression works.

    So call the boycott counterproductive if you like, or reckless, or even mean-spirited. I might quibble with some of your characterizations, but I see your point.

    But please don’t call it a violation of anyone’s rights. Neither Christoffersen nor El Coyote has a pre-existing right to anyone’s patronage.

    Don’t call it a violation of her religious freedom, unless religious freedom means the freedom to strip away others’ legal rights without their being free to walk away from you.

    And for heaven’s sake, don’t call it a violation of her freedom of conscience.

    Christoffersen is free to think, speak, or vote however she likes. Others are free to avoid her.

    In the culture war, as elsewhere, freedom is a sword that cuts both ways.

  • Not There Yet

    First published at Between the Lines News on December 4, 2008

    I have a confession to make. I’m getting ever so slightly tired of the reaction to Prop. 8.

    I know I shouldn’t. I know that the loss in California is terrible, and far-reaching, and deserving of attention. We had marriage, and voters took it away. A majority took away minority rights in a close election. That sucks.

    I also know that we should do everything possible to capitalize on the outrage gays and their supporters are feeling right now, organizing marches and coming out to their friends and family and whatnot. The last thing I’d want to do is curb their enthusiasm.

    And if I follow any of the above with a “but…,” it’s going to look like I don’t really mean it—even though I do. What happened in California really sucks.

    But…

    It’s important, as always, to maintain some perspective.

    Gay and lesbian Californians will go back to having virtually all the statewide legal incidents of marriage via domestic-partnership legislation. That’s not quite as good as marriage, but it’s better than what most of the rest of us have.

    Here in Michigan, not only do we lack domestic-partner legislation, our constitution bans it. And our attorney general interprets that ban as prohibiting public employers from offering health-insurance benefits to same-sex partners. We had them, and voters took them away.

    So while California may have been the first state to take marriage away from gays, it’s hardly the first to take rights away from gays—or the most significant in terms of tangible benefits.

    This past election day, Florida passed a ban similar to Michigan’s, and thus much worse than California’s Prop. 8. Not only did it pass, it passed with a whopping 62% of the vote. With all the fuss over California, you may not have heard about it.

    Arizona passed a ban that was limited to marriage, and thus less obnoxious than Florida’s and Michigan’s (and many others). But Arizona’s ban appeared on the ballot only because of a dishonest last-minute parliamentary maneuver—another story you should have heard about, but probably didn’t.

    And for what may be the worst bit of gay election-day news, consider Arkansas, which passed a ban on unmarried persons serving as adoptive or foster parents. That ban was specifically targeted to fight “the gay agenda,” but what it means is that thousands of children who could have stable loving homes will instead languish in state care.

    Of course, we could broaden our focus even further, and note that in some parts of the world, being gay is still grounds for arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. In that light, even Arkansas looks downright welcoming.

    None of this should make us any less outraged about what happened in California. I repeat: what happened in California sucks.

    But I hope the people getting outraged about California will take a moment to look around at the rest of the country—and the world—and get even more outraged. Because what happened in California is nothing new.

    For some years I’ve noticed a kind of myopia from some quarters of the GLBT community. They tell me: “We’ve won this war, John—gayness is a largely a non-issue. Sure, there are some stragglers in the South and the Midwest, but they’ll catch up soon enough. In the meantime, trying to engage them just dignifies their bigotry. It’s time for you to accept that we’re living in a post-gay society.”

    Prop. 8 stung so much, in part, because it proves that we are not there yet.

    This myopia is not limited to California, or even the coasts, though it does show up more there. It exists anywhere that liberals have the luxury of spending their time mostly around other liberals. (I write this as a liberal philosophy professor in an urban center, so I’m hardly immune to the phenomenon myself.)

    And so when Sally “Gays are a bigger threat than terrorists” Kern gets re-elected by a 16-point margin in Oklahoma, these liberals look on with a mix of perplexity, smugness, and pity. That is, if they look on at all. (In case you missed it, Kern’s comfortable re-election happened on November 4, too.)

    Of course, the other side has its own brand of myopia, as we all continue to become more polarized and isolated.

    What’s the solution? As I’ve said over and over again—in columns, in speeches, in any forum available—we need to keep talking to each other. We need to engage our opponents. We need to keep making the case.

    If there’s a silver lining to this Prop. 8 defeat, it’s the wake-up call that reminds us that we’re not there yet.

  • Happily Ever After, Delayed

    First published on November 06, 2008, in the Los Angeles Times

    On election night, I was less anxious about whether Barack Obama would become president than about whether a certain little girl could marry her princess.

    I’m talking about the girl in the “Yes on 8” commercial who came home from school after reading “King and King” and announced, “And I can marry a princess!”

    Not in California, she can’t — at least for the time being. Proposition 8 passed 52.5% to 47.5%, after a $74-million battle.

    I say “for the time being” because nobody expects this to be the end of the story. Already, gay-rights lawyers have filed a challenge in the state Supreme Court, saying the measure is an illegal constitutional revision. The cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles did the same, as did the first couple wed in Los Angeles. It remains to be sorted out whether gays and lesbians married since June 17 will have their marriages annulled, or converted to some other status, or what.

    Domestic partnerships will remain an option for same-sex couples in California. Other states, mainly along the coasts, will continue to recognize same-sex relationships: some with domestic partnerships, others with civil unions, and a few with outright marriage.

    Eventually, this hodgepodge will prove legally unwieldy, or socially inconvenient, or morally embarrassing — probably all of the above — and California will revisit the marriage question. If trends continue — gay-marriage opponents drew 61% of the vote in 2000 but only 52% on Tuesday — marriage equality will someday prevail.

    In the meantime, expect things to get messy. A same-sex couple married in Massachusetts (for example) will have absolutely no legal standing when traveling in California. A lesbian couple with a domestic partnership in Oregon may have to get married if they move to Connecticut. New Yorkers wed in California before the passage of Proposition 8 may have their marriage recognized by their home state but not by the state that married them. And so on.

    Both supporters and opponents will argue about whether the courts are the appropriate venue for resolving these issues. Traditionally, a key role for the courts has been to protect minority interests against the whims of the majority. One of the especially painful ironies of the Proposition 8 vote is the fact that historically oppressed minorities — including blacks, Mormons and Catholics — were among the measure’s strongest supporters.

    It’s worth remembering, however, that the courts follow social trends more often than they set them. When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws against interracial marriage in Loving vs. Virginia, the majority of states had already repealed such laws. (Incidentally, California was the first.) As disappointing as the legal setbacks are, they pale in importance next to the cultural shift undeniably underway.

    One thing is clear: That shift is on the side of gay and lesbian equality. More and more gay and lesbian couples are openly committing to each other, having weddings, and even calling it marriage. The word is important. Princesses don’t dream about someday “domestically partnering with” the person they love. They dream about marrying him — or, in a minority of cases, her.

    To that minority, a bare majority of California voters sent a discriminatory message: You are not good enough for marriage. Your relationships — no matter how loving, how committed, how exemplary — are not “real” marriage.

    But “real” marriage transcends state recognition of it. And that’s another reason why this debate will continue. Because it’s not just about what California should or should not legally recognize. It’s also about what sort of relationships are morally valuable, and why. And that’s a debate that, slowly but surely, gay-rights advocates are winning.

    The path to inclusion is not always direct and the pace of change almost never steady. This setback is by no means a final verdict. In the coming years, gay and lesbian citizens will continue to tell our stories. We will demonstrate that, like everyone else, we are worthy of having someone to have and to hold, for better or for worse. More Americans will realize that such relationships are a good thing — not just for us but for the community at large.

    When the smoke from this battle clears, Americans will realize that gays are not interested in confusing children or in forcing princesses on little girls who don’t want them. But they also will realize that, when girls grow up to love princesses, they deserve to live happily ever after too.

  • Five Dumb Ideas about Morality

    First published at 365gay.com on October 31, 2008

    On the eve of the election, I am pleased that my fellow Democrats have finally learned not to concede “moral values” language to the other side.

    In past elections, we heard a lot about “values voters”—a code-term for right-wingers on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Senator Obama, among his many talents, has made the case that we should all be “values voters;” that foreign, economic, and environmental policy are moral issues; and that compassion, equality, and justice are values, too.

    Still, my fellow liberals often have a hard time with the language of morals—whether because of an admirable humility, a lamentable wishy-washiness, or both.

    That aversion results in a number of common but dumb claims about morality and ethics. (Like most philosophers, I use the terms interchangeably—there is no “standard” distinction.) Here’s my take on these claims:

    (1) “Morality is a private matter.” To put it bluntly, this claim is nonsense of the highest order. Morality is about how we treat one another. It’s about what we as a society embrace, what we merely tolerate, and what we absolutely forbid.

    While morality respects certain private spheres—and while some moral decisions are best left to those most intimately affected by them—morality is generally quite the opposite of a “private” matter.

    (2) “You shouldn’t judge other people.” This claim is not only false, it’s self-defeating. (If you shouldn’t judge other people, then why are you telling me what to do?)

    The reason this claim sounds remotely plausible is because of a slight ambiguity in what it means to “judge other people.” Should you go around wagging your finger in people’s faces? Of course not. No one likes a know-it-all, and pompous moralizing is counterproductive.

    But it doesn’t follow that we shouldn’t make any moral judgments about other people’s behavior. Doing so is often the best way to figure out what traits to emulate and what mistakes to avoid.

    (3) “I don’t need anyone’s moral approval.” If this claim means that individuals don’t need the moral approval of any other given individual, then fine: there will always be those whose moralizing is ill-informed, sloppy or insensitive—and thus best avoided. But to deny that we need the moral approval of anyone at all overlooks morality’s crucial social role.

    Morality, unlike law, does not have formal enforcement procedures: police and courts and the like. It relies instead on social pressure—encouraging glances and raised eyebrows, nudges and winks, inclusion and ostracism. (Interestingly, some right-wing bloggers have reacted to my recent work by worrying about “court-enforced moral approval”—as if that concept made any sense.)

    Moral pressure can help us be our best selves. But in order for it to work, we need to take other people’s moral opinions seriously most of the time. Just as unreasonable or unenforceable laws erode our confidence in law itself (think Prohibition), widespread dismissal of others’ moral views erodes morality’s social function.

    (4) “Morality is just a matter of opinion.” Whether boxers are preferable to briefs is “just” a matter of opinion. Whether coffee tastes better with cream and sugar is “just” a matter of opinion. To call our moral values “just” a matter of opinion, by contrast, is to ignore their social and personal significance.

    The problem here is that people start with a legitimate distinction between facts and values—in other words, between descriptions of the world and normative judgments about it. Unfortunately, the fact/value distinction morphs into the much fuzzier fact/opinion distinction, which then morphs into the fact/ “mere” opinion distinction—suggesting that values are unimportant. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    (5) “There’s no point in arguing about morality.” Moral problems are practical problems: they’re problems about what to do. “Agreeing to disagree” is fine when the stakes are low or when the status quo is tolerable. But when something is badly wrong in the world, we should strive to repair it. That often requires making a persuasive moral case to our neighbors.

    My own experience as “The Gay Moralist” suggests that moral arguments can make a difference—which is not to say they do so instantly or easily. Sometimes they require an extended back-and-forth. Sometimes, they help us get a foot in the door so that an emotional connection can be made. But the idea that they never work is not merely defeatist, it’s downright false.

    In short, we should all be moralists—liberals and conservatives, religious and secular, red-staters and blue-staters—because we all need to figure out how to live together.

  • Redefining Marriage? Or Expanding It?

    First published at 365gay.com on October 24, 2008

    I’ve been doing a lot of same-sex marriage debates lately, and thus interacting with opponents—not just my debate partner, but also audience members, some of whom will soon be voting on marriage amendments.

    Recently one of them asked, “Where does your standard of marriage come from?”

    From her tone, I could tell she meant it more as a challenge—a purely rhetorical question—than as a genuine query. Still, I wanted to give her a good answer.

    But what is the answer? My own “standard” of marriage, if you can call it that, comes from my parents and grandparents, whose loving, lifelong commitments I strive to emulate. That doesn’t mean mine would resemble theirs in every detail—certainly not the male/female part—but I can’t help but learn from their example.

    That wasn’t the answer she was looking for, so she asked again. This time I tried challenging the question: talking about “THE” standard of marriage suggests that marriage is a static entity, rather than an institution that has evolved over time. Historically, marriage has been more commonly polygamous than monogamous; more commonly hierarchical than egalitarian. It changes.

    I pointed these facts out, adding that our standard for marriage—or any other social institution—ought to be human well-being. Since same-sex marriage promotes security for gay and lesbian persons and, consequently, social stability, it meets that standard.

    She wasn’t satisfied. “But if we don’t have a single fixed standard,” she continued, “then anything goes.”

    There’s something rhetorically satisfying when an opponent’s fallacies can be identified with neat names: in this case, “false dilemma.” Either marriage remains solely heterosexual, she was saying, or else society embraces a sexual free-for-all—as former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum put it, “man on man, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.”

    No, no, no. The fact that boundaries change and evolve does not entail that we should have no boundaries at all, or that where they’re drawn is entirely arbitrary. Again, the standard is societal well-being, and everyone agrees that “man on dog” marriage fails to meet that standard. Let’s not change the subject.

    Her challenge reminded me of those who cite the dictionary and then object that same-sex marriage is “impossible by definition,” since marriage by definition requires a husband and wife. Dictionaries reflect usage, and as usage evolves, so do dictionaries. (Ever try to read Beowulf in the original Old English?)

    More important, the dictionary objection founders on the simple fact that if something were truly “impossible by definition,” there would be no reason to worry about it, since it can’t ever happen. No one bothers amending constitutions to prohibit square circles or married bachelors.

    But my rhetorical satisfaction in explaining “false dilemma” and the evolution of language was tempered by the reality I was confronting. My questioner wasn’t simply grandstanding. She was expressing a genuine—and widely shared—fear: if we embrace same-sex marriage, than life as we know it will change dramatically for the worse. Standards will deteriorate. Our children will inherit a confused and morally impoverished world.

    Such fear is what’s driving many of the voters who support amendments in California, Florida, and Arizona to prohibit same-sex marriage, and we ignore or belittle it at our peril.

    And so I explained again—gently but firmly—how same-sex marriage is good for gay people and good for society. When there’s someone whose job it is to take care of you a vice-versa, everyone benefits—not just you, but those around you as well. That’s true whether you’re gay or straight.

    I also explained how giving marriage to gay people doesn’t mean taking it away from straight people, any more than giving the vote to women meant taking it away from men. No one is suggesting that we make same-sex marriage mandatory. Our opponents’ talk of “redefining” marriage—rather than, say, “expanding” it—tends to obscure this fact.

    Not all fears bend to rational persuasion, but some do. In any case, I don’t generally answer questions in these forums for the sole benefit of the questioner. Typically, I answer them for benefit of everyone in the room, including the genuine fence-sitters who are unsure about what position to take on marriage equality for gays and lesbians.

    To them, we need to make the case that same-sex marriage won’t cause the sky to fall.