Same-sex marriage vs. civil unions

Linguist George Lakoff sheds some light on the same-sex marriage debate by looking at the language being used on both sides. He says, “When conservatives speak of the ‘defense of marriage,’ liberals are baffled. After all, no individual's marriage is being threatened. It's just that more marriages are being allowed.” But conservatives feel their core values are threatened by it (their model of society uses the "strict father family" metaphor - see Lakoff for more). They also use the term “gay marriage” rather than "same-sex marriage" because gay marriage means gay sex and Americans are squeamish about that.

On the liberal side, Lakoff helps explain the marriage vs. civil union debate:

Progressives are of two minds. Pragmatic liberals see the issue as one of benefits - inheritance, health care, adoption, etc. If that's all that is involved, civil unions should be sufficient - and they certainly are an advance. Civil unions would provide equal material protection under the law…

 

Idealistic progressives see beyond the material benefits, important as they are. Most gay activists want more than civil unions. They want full-blown marriage, with all its cultural meanings - a public commitment based on love, all the metaphors, all the rituals, joys, heartaches, family experiences - and a sense of normality, on a par with all other people. The issue is one of personal freedom: the state should not dictate who should marry whom. It is also a matter of fairness and human dignity.

Reading the stories of gay couples getting married in San Francisco, you get a clearer picture of why civil unions – just having legal benefits – is not enough. As Lakoff says, they want “full-blown marriage, with all its cultural meaning.” Josh Marshall posted some of the email he got on the subject, including this piece by someone who got married recently in SF:

We waiting in line for about 9 hours and were prepared to camp out on the side walk overnight if we had to. In line behind us were two women who had driven 27 hours from El Paso with their son in tow. Just in front of us were two women who had flown in from Virginia and two men who'd flown in from Kansas City. There were also lots of Bay Area couples there. There were couples with babies in strollers and one couple with an aged mother in a wheelchair and hooked up to oxygen.

See also the photos taken by Derek Powazek at ephemera (via Twilight Café.)

So here are all these gay people clamoring to get married – people who actually hold the institution of marriage sacred. But the conservative right doesn’t want to allow it. On the other hand, they apparently can’t pay heteros enough to get married. Over at It’s Not Me, It’s You, Leslie derides the Bush administration for trying to pump $1.5 billion into programs and initiatives to promote “traditional” marriage “to an apparently uninterested heterosexual public.” She has a better suggestion for promoting marriage to heteros:

Legalize same-sex marriage.

Think about it. In art, cinema, literature, and pop culture it’s the gays who pave the way. They gentrify the ghettos. They set the fashion trends. They make the unattractive cool for the rest of us. Why not legalize gay marriage and then turn the Fab Five loose on reluctant straight grooms? It’s a win-win for everyone!

9:33:03 AM      trackback []