According to Michael Kinsley no one ever imagined the idea
of gay marriage until 1989. From then on, this idea has taken over the minds of
Americans with stunning rapidity.
Kinsley concludes that there can only be one reason why gay
marriage has never existed: no one ever thought of it before.
Kinsley explains:
One
reason the idea of gay marriage, or “marriage equality,” spread so fast is that
it seems obvious once you think about it. It was a genuinely new idea when it
first appeared in this publication in 1989. As was not the case with civil
rights for African Americans, feminism, or for that matter gay rights
themselves, there was no long history of opposition to be overcome.
The challenge was simply getting people to think about it a bit.
Think about what, exactly?
Kinsley says that the issue was: “… a right (to marry
someone you love) that every other American already enjoys.”
As I have been wont to point out, throughout most of human
history most people did not marry someone they loved. The idea is more novelty than human universal. Most cultures do not have
elaborate courtship and dating rituals. They arrange marriages for the good of
the community, not for the affections of the individuals involved.
It is surely a good thing that spouses come to love each other, but
that is not the same as saying that you should marry someone you love. If
marriage were an expression of love, then surely someone would have thought of
allowing same-sex couples to participate. If no one thought it, then perhaps
Kinsley's premise is wrong: marriage is not an expression of love.
In truth, marriage is an arranged alliance between two
families for the purpose who producing new members who belong to both families,
and who thus, in their flesh symbolize community unity.
One would do well to consult Claude Lévi-Strauss’s book: The Elementary Structures of Kinship.
If that is what marriage has always been, it makes sense that no one ever imagined gay marriage.
In Kinsley’s rosy scenario gay marriage was an idea whose
time had come. The idea has gone viral because once people started to think
about it, it seemed perfectly obvious.
If Kinsley is correct then why do gay activists demonize and
stigmatize anyone who does not assent to it. Are they saying that all human
beings throughout all of human history up until 1989 had constructed the
institution of marriage to discriminate against homosexuals?
To Kinsley, proponents of gay marriage have tried to deprive
their opponents of the right to free expression. It is not, shall we say, a sign
of great confidence in the rightness of their position.
He is especially concerned that John Hopkins Professor Dr.
Ben Carson was forced to withdraw as commencement speaker by the Johns Hopkins
Medical School because he had publicly rejected the notion that the union of
two individuals of the same gender should be called a marriage.
Kinsley is puzzled by the fact that those who have won the
debate and are fast on the way to make gay marriage the law of the land have
not been more magnanimous in victory.
In his words:
Behind
the First Amendment is the notion that good ideas have a natural buoyancy that
bad ideas do not. In fact, the very short (as these things go) debate
about marriage equality demonstrates this. Denying Carson the right
to speak was not just unprincipled. It was unnecessary. The proponents of
marriage equality have not just won. They have routed the opposition. It’s a
moment to be gracious, not vindictive.
But, did the proponents of gay marriage rout the opposition
because their ideas were right and true, or was it because they made it a civil
rights issue and tarred all their opponents as bigots?
Keep in mind, as Kinsley intimates, that the idea of
freeing yourself from oppression is as old as time. Whether it is freedom from
enslavement or from abuse, the idea is not a human novelty.
Gay marriage, however, dates to 1989.
Surely, homosexuals have suffered oppression and abuse and
have even been murdered for their sexual preference. In some parts of the world
it is happening today. Everyone favors laws that punish such persecution
severely.
Yet, that is not the point. The question is whether
acceptance of gay marriage will solve these problems. And whether demonizing
anyone who disagrees with it is productive or symptomatic.
Kinsley is especially appalled that the achievements of a great
pediatric neurosurgeon should be erased because he does not agree with gay
rights activists on a single issue:
All [Carson]
did was say on television that he opposes same-sex marriage—an idea that even
its biggest current supporters had never even heard of a couple of decades ago.
Does that automatically make you a homophobe and cast you into the outer
darkness? It shouldn’t. But in some American subcultures—Hollywood, academia,
Democratic politics—it apparently does. You may favor raising taxes on the
rich, increasing support for the poor, nurturing the planet, and repealing
Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, but if you don’t support gay marriage,
you’re out of the club.
Kinsley adds that it is wrong to say that someone who does
not support affirmative action, for example, is ipso facto, a racist. Finally, Kinsley takes out after the leftist thought police for trying to repress free expression and to impose political
correct opinions on the populace.
He does not call it political correctness, but the description fits:
… to
make support for marriage equality the test of right thinking on gay issues is
absurd. In fact, the very idea of a “test of right thinking on gay issues” or
any other kind of issues, is absurd. Gays, who know a thing or two about
repression, ought to be the last people to want to destroy someone’s career
because they disagree. In their moment of triumph, why can’t they laugh off
nutty comments like Carson’s, rather than sending in the drones to
take him out?
There is, Kinsley continues, no special virtue in taking
offense. It is good that he has the courage to call out people who mostly agree
with him for playing “the great game of umbrage.” He is correct to add
that this game has been destructive to the great national political debate.
In Kinsley’s words:
The
dean calls Carson’s remarks “hurtful.” They weren’t hurtful to him, unless he’s
hopelessly oversensitive. The dean was just making a move in the great game of
umbrage that has clogged American politics, where points are awarded for
taking offense at something the other guy said. No one, when confronted with
some opponent’s faux pas, or some stray remark that can be misrepresented as a
faux pas, ever reacts anymore with: “Who cares?” Instead, it’s: “I am deeply,
deeply offended by this person’s remarks. She should drop out of the race
immediately, or quit her job, and move into a nunnery to contemplate her sins. And
we certainly can’t let her speak at commencement because ...”
So it goes in a culture that tries to ensnare everyone in a
narrative of sin, guilt and penance. If you believe that once we all cleanse
ourselves of our sins we will magically know how to solve the debt problem and
the unemployment problem… raise you hand.