How Conservatives Lost Marriage

Unsurprisingly, the Weekly Standard is just as dishonest about gay marriage as it has been about the war in Iraq. In this week's issue, a feature by David Blankenhorn (via Slate) attempts to associate positive attitudes toward gay marriage with a purported "decline" in marriage in Europe. The whole enterprise is disingenuous. What Blankenhorn means by "marriage" is not being "married" in the sense of having a legal "marriage" relationship, but being in a "traditional marriage" which is "authoritative" in two senses. On the one hand, traditional marriage would be the only legally sanctioned form of adult sexual cohabitation. On the other, traditional marriage would be coercive in the sense that there would be legal obstacles to divorce.

Blankenhorn argues that gay marriage was more acceptable in European countries where there were few signs of attachment to "traditional," "authoritative" marriage as opposed to marriage as a marriage "as a private personal relationship." But Blankenhorn was extremely disingenuous in not reporting any percentages on the number of people in the United States who view marriage as a "private personal relationship" rather than an "authoritative institution." Of course, there was good reason for Blankenhorn to fudge. That's because few people in the United States have any belief in marriage as "an authoritative institution." I've never talked with anyone below the age of 70 who didn't believe that marriage was a "private personal relationship" that you could enter and leave when you chose. That's one of the reasons why there are high marriage rates and high divorce rates. People in the U. S. view marriage as an appealing personal relationship that they can leave if it doesn't work out.

So, how did conservatives lose gay marriage? The answer is the conservative campaigns to promote traditional values, family values, and two-parent families during the 1980's. What conservatives like Dan Quayle did was to promote marriage as the "moral," "meaningful," and "responsible" way for loving adults to co-habit and raising children as a big part of the meaning of adulthood, indeed a big part of the meaning of love. Personally, I've found it to be that way for myself.

But guess what. Gay people are Americans and gay people are just as susceptible to these kinds of value campaigns as everybody else. As a result, gay people began to focus more on "marriage" as an appropriate or, in many cases, the only appropriate way to express their love for each other. That's a great thing and sentimental straight people like myself even get emotional about it. Of course, gay people deserve a lot of credit for the progress they've made in being able to live openly in American society and the struggle for recognition for their marriage rights has been a significant part of that progres. However, much of the initial impetus for the gay emphasis on marriage rights was inspired by conservative cultural warriors.