the world's dumbest issue
2004-11-03 : 6:32 p.m.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." -H.L. Menkin

How many gay people want to get married, really?

I don�t mean just having a wedding, I mean being legally bound together in such a way that if you ever want to part ways, you also have to go before a judge and divide up the property. I, for one, would rather have plastic forks hammered into my eyes. I only need to glance at the state of marriage among heterosexuals in America to see that to push for �marriage rights� is to batter one�s way into a burning house. No thanks.

In western Europe, a region white middle-class gay activists love to hold up as ideal, marriage rates among heterosexuals have declined precipitously and continuously for the past 30 years. Rates of childbirth out of wedlock have risen in proportion to that decline, and research shows not that there are actually more single mothers, simply that men and women live together, have children together, share finances together...without getting married. Yes, many western European nations have �civil union� provisions that allow GLBT relationships to attain some legal status. But to focus on GLBT civil unions is to miss the really interesting thing: those civil union systems were set up for heterosexuals, who are no longer interested in getting married.

Heterosexual Americans still love to get married, of course. This is a romantic culture, and everyone loves a wedding. But they don�t tend to stay married, and lawyers make zillions of dollars every year helping �happy couples� divvy up their money and children. And I�m quite content to never ever take part in that American ritual. Frankly, if gay marriage were fully legalized in a form identical to heterosexual marriage, I seriously doubt that many gay people would want to take part either.

And there�s the root of my complaint: �gay marriage� is the very archetype of the kind of issues that keep American�s distracted while the oligarchs steal us blind. On the one hand, it�s an issue that will actually impact the lives of very few people. CNN�s exit poll data showed that 4% of voters identified as gay or lesbian (and 23% of them voted for Bush, incidentally). But let�s be generous. Let�s assume that a full 10% of the electorate is gay/lesbian, and they�re just not outing themselves to the exit pollsters. The Census Bureau estimates that as of 2003, there are 216,071,664 Americans aged 18 or older (based on the Census 2000 finding that 25.7% of the population is under 18). That would give us 21,609,166 gay and lesbian folks, although that is an exceedingly liberal estimate. In 2000, 54.4% of Americans old enough to be married were in fact married and not separated from their spouses. Let�s assume that marriage rates would be the same among gay people, though again, that�s probably an unrealistically liberal assumption, especially among men. Though many might get married, I have a hard time imagining that at any given time, 54% of gay men would be married. But still, let�s go with it. So that would give us 11,755,386 married gay people, or 5.44% of the total adult US population (or slightly less, since �marriage age� on the US Census is 15). However, since we�ve made some very generous assumptions about the prevalence of gay identity (as opposed to that of same-sex behavior) and what marriage rates among gay people might look like, I am willing to guess that the actual percentage would be something more like 3% of the adult US population.

Either way, the point is clear. It�s a fringe issue. Lots of people will hate me for saying so, but that�s the truth. �5.4� also happens to be the precise percentage of Americans who are unemployed and looking for work. Sorry, but I�m a lot more worried about things like jobs, healthcare, child poverty, infrastructure spending, and other factors that actually impact the quality of life for Americans. 28.6% of American households have an annual income of less than $25,000 (there are an average of 2.59 persons per household). In this America, I�m just not all that excited about making sure that Chaz and Jeffrey can get their marriage license.

On the other hand...

Outside of the gay white middle-class club, the range of feeling about gay marriage runs from lukewarm support to intense opposition, and therein lies the disastrous miscalculation involved in pinning our political capital on marriage rights.

To put it simply, outside of the gay community, there is no sector of American society that strongly supports gay marriage. There are affluent white liberals who will express support, but the truth is that the wealthier people are, the more likely they are to vote for their own economic self-interest. Poorer people are far more influenced by social controversies, but that�s the rub: poor people are more socially conservative. So the populist base of the Democratic party (poor whites, union members, African Americans, and Latinos) will range from weak tolerance to strong disapproval where gay marriage is concerned. On the other hand, the base of conservative opposition to gay marriage is very large and extremely energetic. They believe, and they believe strongly, that it is wrong.

I would venture to say that in a certain sense, they are right. Despite their apparent differences, I think that both the Europeans and the American �Religious Right� share a common insight about America, an insight that the gay marriage activists (and American liberals in general) just don�t seem to grasp. That insight is that marriage is, in point of fact, a religious institution. It serves certain secular ends in a capitalist societies, to be sure, but that doesn�t change the fact that marriage is Judeo-Christian in provenance, shape, and inner meaning. This realization has different consequences in Europe and America. European societies have become almost entirely secular, so they, recognizing the religious nature of marriage, turn away from it. Americans, on the other hand, are a deeply religious people. Like it or hate it, that�s just the truth about our culture. Being a religious people who have in the past looked to marriage to provide a righteous and faithful structure for their sexual and familial lives, heterosexual Americans live with an undercurrent of deep anxiety over the present unhealth of most heterosexual marriages. And they�re right to be anxious, because American marriage is an institution in crisis. There is almost nothing in this hyper-consumerist, hyper-sexual culture to support stable marriages. The offshoot, of course, is that they see the push for gay marriage as the proverbial last straw. This is the issue where they say �this far, no further�.

What we end up with, then, is a tiny and weakly committed base of support for GLBT marriage rights, and a very large and very passionate opposition composed of people from all classes, races, and genders. When I say �very passionate�, I mean �so mad that they�ll go vote when they might not have otherwise done so�. And in a nation so evenly divided on other issues, that is a recipe for the certain failure of the progressive cause.

When all is said and done, I am bitterly disappointed at the way Democrats have allowed the Republicans to bait us (and the rest of American) into heated wars over social issues that are not particularly amenable to any kind of dialogue or compromise (you either think marriage is a civil contract or an institution ordained by God; you either think that abortion is murder or it�s not...no one really changes their minds about stuff like this, because you�d have to change your whole worldview to come to a different conclusion). So you if you believe that abortion is murder, that�s an urgent issue � there are lives at stake � and you will have no choice but to vote for candidates who oppose abortion in order to save lives, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with those candidates about economic and policy issues, which can always be renegotiated later. That�s why the Republicans love social/moral issues.

As long as Democrats continue to pander to the (mostly white, mostly middle-to-upper-class) cultural left, Republicans will continue to capture votes from those demographic groups that are natural Democratic constituencies (the poor, women, Latinos, union members) � precisely the groups who suffer most under Republican economic regimes. The Republicans know that Americans are for the most part profoundly religious, and fairly socially conservative. They know that more than half of Americans attend church at least once a month (which you would never know from watching TV or movies); that�s why 11% of African Americans voted for a party with former Klan members in its leadership last night. That�s why 48% of Latinos (the group with the lowest rate of high school graduation in America) voted for a party that has consistently sought to undermine funding for public education last night. That�s why the GOP constantly pushes social and moral issues to the center of the public square; that�s how they trick people into voting against their own natural self-interest. That�s how they�re stealing us blind. Surely you don�t think that Dick Cheney gives a rat�s ass about gay marriage or abortion, do you? What he cares about is keeping the mob distracted with topics like that while he funnels tax-dollars to huge corporations.

The time has come for us to decide what matters most. Almost all classical Democratic policies proceed from a basic concern for the dignity and well-being of citizens, regardless of birth, class, or social standing. And that is as it should be. But we need to get a better perspective on some of these issues. In a society that fully honored the dignity of all its citizens, we would surely extend full equality before the law to people regardless of their sexual orientation. But there are a lot of battles to be fought. This is a nation where children starve to death on the streets, and do so in very large numbers. This is a society with structural inequalities based on class and race built into far too many of our basic policies and services. This is a country whose foreign policy is creating such hatred around the world that terrorist attacks seem more, not less, likely than they did on September 12, 2001. And we will now face those threats without the support of the North Atlantic alliance that we led for more than half a century, and that this administration has managed to destroy in 2 years. This is urgent.

Let�s be honest. We need Democratic candidates who can connect with the American people. Not with the tiny fraction of American people who attend Hollywood fundraising events, but the churchgoing, working-class, socially moderate-to-conservative people who make up the vast majority of the American electorate...and who are getting screwed by the GOP. We need candidates from the South. A candidate who has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and who�s not afraid to talk about it wouldn�t be bad either. And believe me, there are such people. Many such people. The radical secularists of the cultural left are so busy working through their resentments about their childhood Sunday School experiences that they don�t understand this, but the fact is that Christians make natural liberals (and I�m not just talking about theological liberalism; Christian orthodoxy veritably requires a progressive economic order). If this seems like an odd statement to you, I would advise that you get a Bible (there�s one in the drawer of every hotel room) and read through the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Democratic Party has become too secular for its own good; we have become unable to speak the language that most Americans use to describe the meaning and purpose of their individual and social lives, and this must change.

I pray that the Democratic Party will abandon it�s dalliances with social/moral �issues� that only serve to divide Americans. I pray that the Party will turn away from these tired �New Left� identity politics and take up the unfinished work of the progressive tradition: a party of the people, building coalitions based on the real, material, socioeconomic interests of all the people. It is that kind of coalition-building that will make possible the renewal of the great promise that is America.

Postscript: Living in the Red

Let me note that I�m not arguing for or against the evangelical/Republican position. I worry that liberals simply have no understanding of the people who put George Bush back in the White House last night. And that worries me because they are the majority of my fellow citizens. We need to understand one another, and the truth is that cultural ethics of the left are largely represented in our television and movie media as �normal�, whereas the cultural ethics of the �red states� are often represented only in caricature as dangerous, repressive, and backwards. So we end up talking past each other, because we don�t understand them. And since we�re all Americans, we�d best remember that �they� are �us�, and spend some time getting to know each other. I come from a family of archetypically �red state� Americans: Republicans, Southern Baptists, Wal-Mart shoppers. What I know about them is that a) they are not ignorant; b) they are solidly middle-class (not the �poor white trash� stereotype that northerners so love); c) they are not hateful or racist people, and are in fact kind, friendly, welcoming, enjoyable folks. And I disagree with them about almost everything, and have struggled for years to understand why. But I do know this: they are as different from each other as any other group of human beings. They are people, not stereotypes. My mother is one of the kindest, most generous and non-judgmental people I have ever known. She goes out of her way to welcome my GLBT friends and partners to our family functions. And she listens to Rush Limbaugh nearly every day. And she believes that the world was created 10,000 year ago, in precisely 7 days.

Postscript: The Future of Gay Politics

The push for the civil recognition of gay marriages has also done inestimable damage to the future progress of gay civil rights in America. As of today, 11 more states have the explicit illegality of same-sex marriages embedded in their constitutions. I suspect that this issue may eventually get enough traction to push through a constitutional amendment. I hope not. But either way, what is clear is that decades of work will be required to undo the setbacks of last night. And it�s more than a setback for marriage rights. Gay marriage has become a surrogate issue for the moral impact of gay lives on society at large. For 25 years, opinions about homosexuality have been gradually and steadily becoming more liberal in the United States. But the fight over gay marriage may have in fact reversed that trend. Did you know that HIV infections are on the rise again among young gay men? Did you know that in the last budget cycle, the Bush Administration didn�t want to allocate ANY money to HIV prevention education? We will be undoing this damage for many years.

And to the white, middle-class gay and lesbian activists who mistook their own sense of entitlement to play �house� in the suburbs for all queer people�s dream of full dignity and equality as citizens, I�d like to say: I hope it was worth it to you guys, because it sure doesn�t look that way to me.

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