Maggie Gallagher has been actively involved in the marriage debate for about four years, as she notes. So her reactions to the first legal California marriages at the National Review's site are worth a read.
She raises some stock objections like the prospect of polygamy. "Elite legal minds get to figure out what they think and break it to the rest of us once they’ve decided." I've already said my piece about using the word elite in these debates.
But she leads with a discussion of the New York times article that looks at same-sex marriages in Massachusetts four years after they became legal, which I discussed recently. She focuses on those couples mentioned in the piece who have open relationships.
Still, Mr. Erbelding said, in what to the old-fashioned ear is the most astonishing single sentence in the whole piece: most married gay couples he knows are “for the most part monogamous, but for maybe a casual three-way.”
For the most part . . . except for the casual three-way?
But hey, if the word “marriage” can be redefined as a civil-rights imperative, why balk at lesser ideas like “monogamy” or “fidelity”?
What Gallagher fails to point out is that marriage already has been defined as a civil rights imperative if you and your partner are of the opposite sex. In fact, it's often called a fundamental right and a human right. How we jump from a high moral and legal language of marriage to open relationships is beyond me. What is the causal link? If we looked at studies of opposite-sex marriages, wouldn't we find a mixture of fidelity, divorce, cheating, swinging, and so forth? How any of those realities that befall particular marriages bear upon marriage being a fundamental right is unclear in her argument.
The issue is that marriage is entangled in a number of languages simultaneously--religious, legal, cultural, psychological, economic, etc. Monogamy in marriage suffers from personal fulfillment gone awry, the mobility of our society, and the commodification (elitist word) of people, but that does not justify closing it to some couples because of sex. Gallagher's piece suffers because she fails to untangle these countervailing languages.
Perhaps she ignores the comparison to heterosexual relationships because she is so focused on gay sex, citing the anecdote of another opponent of same-sex marriage:
“I have never been at a soiree with multiple straight “committed” couples in which someone suggests we take off our clothes and see what happens, but I’m sad to say it’s happened with gay friends in long-term relationships. Of course, I know, many men cheat on their wives. But they almost never define their marriage as something that accommodates adultery.”
What is glaringly absent, though, is any discussion of lesbian relationships. If Gallagher viewed studies (maybe she has) that showed relationships between two women are the most stable and involve the least infidelity, would she argue for a marriage hierarchy? Extra marriage rights for lesbians, basic marriage rights for opposite-sex couples, and nothing for gay men?
Arguing from the ways in which people manage their relationships to their right to marry won't get Gallagher where she wants to go. And it has nothing to do with equal protection under the law.
Showing posts with label elitism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elitism. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
"Elite" opinion: A paradoxical usage that obscures more than it reveals
Accompanying the American obsession with polling to check the pulse of public opinion is a growing tendency in the blogosphere to label views that are at odds with the majority’s opinion (or the undefined average American) as elite, or even more strongly, elitist. The second word is stronger because it means one is a partisan of that which is elite, not simply that one happens to be elite in some descriptive sort of way.
But the words elite and elitist are thrown around without explanation. They are conversation stoppers, not because they have to be, since one could with just a little effort explore them, but because they are ad hominem attacks. (The use of Latin probably makes me an elitist.) In that regard, they function a lot like the word “gay” in middle school hallways. “That’s so gay.” Is the use of the dismissive phrase “But that’s elite opinion” so different, after all?
Absent from most discussions in which these epithets are thrown around are considerations of power and of time. To use an example in our own back yard, how is it meaningful to describe opponents of the effort to make English the official language of Nashville “elite?” What precisely joins the opinion of progressive knowledge workers and immigrants other than its minority status? Minority status with power perhaps equals elitism. Consider global warming. Most Americans think it is a reality and 49% in one poll last year believed it is having a serious impact. But a smaller group is using its power to block significant changes in policy that could reduce global warming. Yet they are seldom described as suffering from elite opinion. They are, however, hit with a host of other epithets that it would be useful to explore in a future post. And those epithets obscure more than they reveal, too.
I’ll bring the point even closer to home. Does the fact that many of my friends and I advocate marriage equality make us elitists in a state that overwhelmingly opposes such a policy change? If so, the word elitist erases the fact that we can’t exercise the rights of marriage. Gone is the discussion of the higher taxes levied against us, our lack of certainty about being able to visit our partners in the hospital, the wrangling we endure over child custody, etc.
And that seems to me to be the paradox of the use of the word elite. It allows the speaker magically to change the subject of the conversation and make those with the disadvantage (or those defending them) appear to be the villains out to pull one over on the majority in some zero-sum game of rights. So much for power.
Perhaps the word time will strike more of a chord. Polls are a slice of opinion at a particular time. Unless several are taken together over time, they’re just lag indicators of where the majority was on a particular issue. Let’s apply that thought to another marriage example. The recent passing of Mildred Loving of the famous Loving v Virginia case, in which bans on interracial marriage were struck down, comes to mind. Wouldn't we find it quaint and even laughable or perhaps disgusting to find descriptions of her supporters as elitist, even though we know most Americans would not have approved of her marriage at the time the case was decided? Now more than 75% of Americans approve of interracial marriages. Should we call the rest the victims of elite opinion? It makes absolutely no sense to call anyone advocating the protection of minorities elites. It adds nothing to the debate and it obscures the actions, positions, and rights of those involved.
But the words elite and elitist are thrown around without explanation. They are conversation stoppers, not because they have to be, since one could with just a little effort explore them, but because they are ad hominem attacks. (The use of Latin probably makes me an elitist.) In that regard, they function a lot like the word “gay” in middle school hallways. “That’s so gay.” Is the use of the dismissive phrase “But that’s elite opinion” so different, after all?
Absent from most discussions in which these epithets are thrown around are considerations of power and of time. To use an example in our own back yard, how is it meaningful to describe opponents of the effort to make English the official language of Nashville “elite?” What precisely joins the opinion of progressive knowledge workers and immigrants other than its minority status? Minority status with power perhaps equals elitism. Consider global warming. Most Americans think it is a reality and 49% in one poll last year believed it is having a serious impact. But a smaller group is using its power to block significant changes in policy that could reduce global warming. Yet they are seldom described as suffering from elite opinion. They are, however, hit with a host of other epithets that it would be useful to explore in a future post. And those epithets obscure more than they reveal, too.
I’ll bring the point even closer to home. Does the fact that many of my friends and I advocate marriage equality make us elitists in a state that overwhelmingly opposes such a policy change? If so, the word elitist erases the fact that we can’t exercise the rights of marriage. Gone is the discussion of the higher taxes levied against us, our lack of certainty about being able to visit our partners in the hospital, the wrangling we endure over child custody, etc.
And that seems to me to be the paradox of the use of the word elite. It allows the speaker magically to change the subject of the conversation and make those with the disadvantage (or those defending them) appear to be the villains out to pull one over on the majority in some zero-sum game of rights. So much for power.
Perhaps the word time will strike more of a chord. Polls are a slice of opinion at a particular time. Unless several are taken together over time, they’re just lag indicators of where the majority was on a particular issue. Let’s apply that thought to another marriage example. The recent passing of Mildred Loving of the famous Loving v Virginia case, in which bans on interracial marriage were struck down, comes to mind. Wouldn't we find it quaint and even laughable or perhaps disgusting to find descriptions of her supporters as elitist, even though we know most Americans would not have approved of her marriage at the time the case was decided? Now more than 75% of Americans approve of interracial marriages. Should we call the rest the victims of elite opinion? It makes absolutely no sense to call anyone advocating the protection of minorities elites. It adds nothing to the debate and it obscures the actions, positions, and rights of those involved.
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