A threat to modern marriage [gay marriage and gender relativism]

Newsday ^ | May 23, 2004 | MYRA MARX FERREE

[Cracker72]

Myra Marx Ferree is a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of numerous articles on changes in family roles and social policy in the United States and Europe.

May 23, 2004

After more than 1,000 gay and lesbian couples were married in Massachusetts Monday, the first time in U.S. history that such unions were legally recognized, opponents said they would step up their fight for a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a union strictly between a man and a woman.

"This issue is boiling," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told the Associated Press. "It's gone from an academic debate to a real public policy crisis."

President George W. Bush reiterated his support for the amendment in a written statement: "The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges."

The pro-amendment forces, who market their cause as the "defense of marriage," now will engage in a national effort to elect sympathetic congressional candidates. However, the amendment has had trouble gaining momentum on Capitol Hill, and there is indeed reason for heterosexuals to oppose it.

The majority of Americans don't have or want the kind of marriage that this amendment assumes. Their anxieties about homosexuality open them up to being enlisted in a cause that stands opposed to their own interest in having marriage based on the idea of a freely negotiated partnership.

The "defenders" suggest that until now marriage has always been the same. They are wrong. The institution has changed considerably, allowing husband and wife today to define their roles in marriage independent of their gender. The "defense of marriage" is an attack on this modern version of marriage, not a defense of the marriages most of us actually have.

[Jim Noble]

I'm waiting for the FR moral relativists to proclaim marriage among gays does no harm. Or to ask me "What harm does it do?"

The point of the article (made unwittingly by the authoress) is one that I and others have already made here many times-the harm is real, all right, but it's already done.

Pretended marriages by homosexuals became possible only AFTER thirty plus years of pretend marriage between men and women. The legal institution of marriage was eliminated in America between 1969 and 1975 (see the excellent Why No One is Married for the full argument).

Since legal marriage became a temporary at-will arrangement to collect loot from others, it became untenable to refuse the benefits to those who did not wish to "marry" opposite-sex partners.

[shaggy eel]

BUMP