Ed Brayton wrote:
I fail to see how the institution of
marriage can be destroyed without having any actual marriage damaged in any
conceivable way. It's not going to do anything to any marriage that I'm
aware of. No one I know is going to leave their spouse if gay marriage is
legalized, or stop loving their kids, or choose not to get married. If
anyone's marriage is fragile enough that it can damaged by the prospect of
people they don't know being allowed to get married, there wasn't any hope
for that marriage in the first place. And without destroying any particular
marriage, how is the institution of marriage to be destroyed? I've never
seen a logical causal argument made here to support this kind of rhetoric; I
suspect I never will.
I don't oppose same-sex marriage. But I do understand the
argument that same-sex marriage would "threaten" the "institution of
marriage," particularly as that institution is understood in many (though,
of course, not all) religious traditions. The issue is not whether any
given marriage will be damaged, but rather whether the cultural meaning of
the institution -- the set of purposes, expectations, and even cosmic
meanings -- that are ascribed to it will shift in a way that will
unavoidably spill over beyond the merely "secular" realm to religious
communities as well. I think it's useful to think of the "institution of
marriage" as being, at least in part, a piece of cultural capital in whose
meaning various communities invest, and whose value as a bearer of meaning
risks being "appropriated," so to speak, when the state radically changes
the rules.
Consider two analogies: (1) Why do many American Indians object
to the use of Indian names and mascots by sports teams, even when the names
and mascots are not inherently offensive or insulting? One reason is that
the appropriation of names and symbols such as "Braves" inevitably alters
and dilutes the meaning of such names and symbols among Native Americans
themselves. (2) Or consider the "pyrrhic victory" argument in
Establishment Clause debates; that is to say, the argument (which I tend to
support in lots of contexts) that governmental sponsorship of religious
symbols such as creches or religious practices such as prayers threatens to
debase and trivialize the genuine religious meaning of those symbols or
practices. That is to say, creches and prayers, as pieces of "religious
capital" and bearers of meaning, are altered, even in their private use, by
their public misuse.
Now, of course, to understand the argument that same-sex marriage
would "threaten" the "institution of marriage" as it is understood in many
religious traditions is not to support that argument. If nothing else,
filling in that argument would require a really detailed and careful
account of the complicated relationship between marriage as a piece of
"religious capital" and marriage as a civil institution. In any event, I
don't think that religious objectors to same-sex marriage are entitled to
any sort of veto in the contest over the meaning of marriage. But we
should at least be willing to acknowledge that there is something genuine
at issue here.
Perry
*******************************************************
Perry Dane
Professor of Law
Rutgers University
School of Law -- Camden
217 North Fifth Street
Camden, NJ 08102
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.camlaw.rutgers.edu/bio/925/
Work: (856) 225-6004
Fax: (856) 969-7924
Home: (610) 896-5702
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