This week seemed to be a time for liberals to rejoice. Despite the drumbeat of bad news from Iraq, nearly every news outlet pushed that aside to offer jubilant scenes from Massachusetts where gays and lesbians were celebrating their long-awaited legal marriages with throngs of well-wishers. The handfuls of naysayers were shown in tiny clusters outside municipal buildings carrying posters of invective and kneeling on the ground praying for their condemning God to intervene. He didn't.
People who take their earth science and biology from a literal reading of the Bible will never be convinced that allowing gay marriage is a social good and one that will ultimately prove to be a stabilizing force in society. But there are plenty of self-described political conservatives who will respond to logic and reason and it is for them that today's clearest thinker on the subject, Jonathan Rauch, wrote the book: Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America. He should have added, "and Good for Conservatives." This week in Massachusetts has been a positive one for conservative values, even if those on the right don't want to admit it.
Rauch, a writer in residence at the Brookings Institution, cut his think-tank teeth at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. He understands how to speak to a right-of-center audience, so much so that conservative scholar Charles Murray recently declared his support for gay marriage, citing the book as convincing.
Rauch's primary point is that homosexual relationships are not going to go away; and if they are an established fact of life, then the question becomes: how to treat those relationships to best secure other values in society? Conservatives particularly claim to care about such things as fortifying the institution of marriage for heterosexuals, securing the care and protection of children and encouraging strong families that help themselves rather than looking for government handouts.
Rauch argues that society would be doing far more damage to these conservative values either by trying to legally repress homosexual relationships or by offering gays some form of domestic partnership or civil union - what he calls "marriage-lite" - than by simply granting homosexuals the right to enter into full-fledged marriages.
On protecting marriage as an institution, Rauch says the gold standard of marriage is best preserved by the viewpoint: "If you want the benefits of marriage, get married." Otherwise, he says, "as society makes room for unmarried but devoted same-sex couples, custom and law will provide cohabitants with many of marriage's benefits - only without the bother of formal commitment, legal responsibilities, or a messy divorce."
The threat to marriage, according to Rauch, is not that homosexuals want to get married, but that straight couples don't want to. The marriage ban exacerbates this by turning "gays into walking billboards for the irrelevance of marriage."
As to children, Rauch responds to those who say that marriage is for procreation by reminding them that sex is for procreation, marriage is for building families. He agrees that marriage is the best environment for raising children and wonders why conservatives don't seem to consider the 28 percent of homosexual couples with children. Through artificial insemination for lesbian couples and the use of surrogate mothers and adoption for gay men, homosexuals are raising children in increasing numbers. These children would be far better off growing up with the stability of married parents.
The choice here is not whether children of a homosexual parent will live with a mommy and daddy, because that is not going to happen. They will either have two caring, legally responsible adults in a relationship recognized by the state, or they will have two adults in their lives but only one who has a legal obligation to their care.
Now, which family situation is more closely aligned with conservative values?
Supporting gay marriage also helps stabilize society by providing added security to otherwise vulnerable single people. Rauch says that, "from society's point of view, an unattached person is an accident waiting to happen." Marriage means there will be a support system in place to address a sudden illness, an accident or a bout of unemployment. It gives adults a safety net that might otherwise be left to government to provide.
Come on. Conservatives gotta love that.
Opponents of same-sex marriage on the right , such as Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., like to ground their arguments in historic traditions. "Marriage is between a man and a woman," Santorum said last summer, because "every civilization in the history of man has recognized a unique bond." President Bush, in calling for a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage, said "The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution ... honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith."
Well, actually, as Rauch points out, the historical norm for marriage is between a man and women, not a man and a woman. Out of 1,154 past and present societies, anthropologists document that 980, a huge majority, have allowed polygamy (and anyone who wants to quote the Bible in this debate should also check it for the multiple wives of God's chosen, including Abraham and Jacob). This inconvenient fact suggests that history and tradition might not be the place from which to draw rhetorical firepower.
Conservatives who are open to rational argument have got to think this out. Objecting to same-sex marriage is fighting against interest. What is happening in Massachusetts is an embrace and affirmation of traditional values. Really, it's time to put down the protest signs and join the party.
