Same sex marriage in California

In California the state supreme court overturned a ban on gay marriage, essentially making the largest state in America the second state allowing same-sex marriage. This is probably the start of something that, in the course of the next generation, will move from being seen as bizarre or dangerous to common place and normal. In fact, the change taking place (visible especially when talking to young people across the political spectrum) is similar to changes in rights to women or blacks earlier this century. In a generation or two people will be wondering why had there been so much bigotry?

Yet for many people, this is a horrendous decision, threatening the cultural values that hold our society together. Do they have a point? Is this a threat to the family and family values?

On the one hand, the idea this threatens the family seems on its face absurd. The idea that the ability of a gay couple to marry will cause families to suddenly fall apart is clearly ridiculous. No father or mother is going to say, “well, gee, gays can marry now so maybe I should leave my spouse and try being gay for awhile.” How many young couples will choose not to have a family, or treat their family differently because the gay couple down the street now can be legally wed? Indeed, why should the sex and love lives of other people make a difference to anyone? Sure, hardly anyone would want to see people of any sexual orientation engage in intimate acts in public, but allowing already gay, devoted couples to marry hardly alters what the public experiences. This corresponds to my generally libertarian principles: what other people choose and do is their business, and who am I to judge it? I wouldn’t want to be forced to live a life having to deny my basic desires, why on earth would I want to do that to others? For all these reasons, I’ve always thought not allowing gays to marry is a sign of ridiculous backwardness on the part of society, busybodies who somehow think it’s their business to control the love lives of others.

Yet, one has to be fair. The argument against gay marriage is more complex, and has its roots in traditional conservatism. Traditional conservatives were distrustful of anything that threatened the customs and norms of society. It is probably best represented by people like Edmund Burke, who argued, correctly, that the French revolution was going to go bad because society is not held together by laws and governments, but by tradition and culture. The French revolution dismissed religion, tradition, and French customs in favor of rule by pure reason. Soon society fragmented, and it was only a military dictator like Napoleon who put it back together.

Traditional conservatives (as opposed to the usual US right) also are skeptical of a capitalism that values Madonna over Mozart, allows stores to open on Sunday mornings instead of preserving traditional family worship time, and sees people as moving away from the kinds of behaviors, manners, and social norms that defined a more stable and “normal” past. The argument is that allowing gay marriage is part of a general decay of social norms and values which will ultimately fragment society and foster a nihilistic sense of entitlement by individuals to be able to do their own thing, regardless of the cost to society. Gay marriage is not wrong because there is anything wrong with being gay, they would argue. It’s wrong because it sacrifices traditional social norms at the alter of individual freedom/license. It is symbolic of a decline in our social cohesion.

That argument has its strengths, but ultimately I think it fails because it doesn’t appreciate that the modern West has replaced old ‘traditional values’ with a new set of cultural norms. These norms are not “anything goes,” and in fact many of those who most stridently support gay marriage also volunteer and are active in a variety of community building activities. The culture of the “West” is defined not by traditional moral values, but rather values which come less from traditional religious practices, and more from principles of liberty and mutual respect. It’s a pragmatic view of ethics (philosophical pragmatism). This has a lot in common with the ‘cognitive empathy’ discussed yesterday. People no longer focus on things that are different, with a desire to demand conformity to a particular moral code or set of practices. Rather, diverse practices and moral beliefs can co-exist, much like different ethnic groups can co-exist, as long as they act towards each other in ways that are not unjust or disrespectful. In that sense, this is simply a further evolution of the culture of US and the West. And, unlike the French revolution, it’s not a sudden overthrow of all that is traditional, it’s happening slowly, with a new generation showing very different moral ideals than the generation before. That is a kind of natural cultural change, not destabilizing, but in fact helping build a stronger community. Not that there won’t be political and social arguments and battles over the way our world is changing. Such is progress.

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