"The Great Defector" - Bell X 1
Hey there. I had picked out several darker songs, but then opted for one that made me feel happy.
I found myself having hit the wall a bit in terms of writing. I generally write fast, which I'd like to associate with effortlessness, but the truth is that it sometimes takes a lot out of me mentally. I think a lot about what I might write -- sometimes for days or hours, depending on how reactive a piece might be -- not just the line of attack, but words and phrases and the aesthetics of a piece. And then after I've cranked out a bunch of stuff over a few days it's like the well runs dry. And as I observed to Deborah the other day, after writing a bunch of pretty aggressive pieces I really do feel like I've poured out the contents of my spleen and am left wasted. Alas, it's not that cathartic. The problem has been described, the enemy attacked, but nothing has changed. The consolation is to have either clarified my own thoughts on a subject or to have possibly stimulated some small discussion or engaged our small community in a way that feels vaguely useful -- even if only as a tool for promoting our collective bond.
So after watching Countdown and Rachel Maddow, I found myself looking for something tonight that didn't involve the shameful Sherrod affair. (Rachel Maddow was, for the second night running, simply brilliant on this, delivering a devastating rebuttal to Bill O'Reilly. In any just universe, Maddow would be the biggest star in television news.)
Anyway, I ended up reading this speech by Jonathan Rauch, which was a further explication of an article he had written regarding the book Red Families v. Blue Families, which I've discussed extensively here, and the issue of gay marriage. Rauch, among other things, writes for National Journal and strikes me as very smart and very fair -- a guy with a well-developed point of view, but someone who is generous when dealing with opponents. I think in this speech too generous. In essence, what Rauch does in this speech is construct a rationale for the opposition to gay marriage as follows:
In Red World, things look very different. The Red project is to maintain the linkage between sex, marriage, and procreation. In Red World, de-linkage has wrought all kinds of social problems.
Same-sex marriage, in this view, is in some sense the ultimate symbolic assault on what is left of the unity of sex, marriage, and procreation. “Ultimate,” I might add, in both senses of the word: “extreme,” but also “last,” the blow that completes the most destructive demolition work of the sexual revolution. After gay marriage, in the Red view of things, how can sex, marriage, and procreation ever be put back together again?
Rauch, I should point out, is a strong advocate for gay marriage. In this speech, he makes a couple of significant errors in his quest for fairness. First of all, he starts with the premise that opposition to gay marriage is not simply based on homophobia because there is not the same level of opposition to gay people having custody of or adopting children. Here is the money quote:
I would merely point out a kind of integrity in their position. If it were all about animus against homosexuals, or if it all stemmed from lies about a gay menace to children, the custody and adoption issues would be paramount. The deeper arguments here are over what constitutes family normalcy, and how we structure the transition to adulthood, and who is entitled to set up a family at a time when many American families are under all too much stress.
This is naive to the point of blindness. In fact, gay adoption and having a gay parent receive custody of a child have been bitterly contested areas well within the present day. Indeed, George Rekers, the infamous "rent boy" pastor and psychologist, was, until his escapades were exposed, making a living in part as an expert witness in Florida testifying to the unfitness of gays as parents in support of our nation's fourth largest state's policy against allowing adoption by gay people.
Rauch constructs this elaborate logical framework to explain what is, in fact, simply the manifestation of a prejudice. I think there is a far simpler explanation for this phenomenon. For whatever reason, a significant segment of right wingers has an awfully difficult time with "others" -- whether they be black, muslim, hispanic, gay, etc. -- this is especially true when it comes to gay right wingers seemingly, who dwell in a very sad but large closet. The tribal instincts in this group run strong and there is an almost constant need to stoke hatred and fear of the "other de jour" -- hence the recent hysteria over the "Ground Zero Mosque" or the mythical beheadings at the border.
Their best efforts notwithstanding, however, gay Americans have achieved a pretty breathtaking leap of acceptance in the society in recent years. Indeed the overwhelming wedge issue for right wingers of a few years back continues to recede rapidly as a source of political gain and if demographic analysis of the attitudes of young people are accurate, will likely fade into oblivion within a decade. The two big barriers remaining to gay people are the right to marry and the right to serve openly in the military. Once those doors have been opened there will simply be no remaining social stigma attached to being gay. And, for whatever reason, this kills these people. Hence the desperate efforts to stop what I would like to think is inevitable.
The interesting thing is that I suspect if the Supreme Court goes on to find a Fourteenth Amendment right for gay people to marry, the backlash will be short and mild. Unlike abortion, there is no mythical victim to rally around. And unlike school desegregation, there will not be some contested area of public space over which to fight. Since marriage is ultimately a very private institution, its enormous legal significance notwithstanding, I just don't see that there are going to be the same friction points as schools or clinics for the right to rally round and focus their hatred upon.
In a relatively short time, we are going to look back at this debate and shake our heads that it ever occurred. I wish Rauch, however fair he would like to be, would not give aid and comfort to the other side by pretending that they are motivated by anything more noble than hatred and their own strange and misplaced sense of disgust.
