Rosin, Sullivan and Douthat
…walk into a bar…
Ahem.
I might be a little biased, but evidence is growing that TAS alum Ross Douthat is the greatest newspaper columnist alive. Take that into consideration when I say that I think his column yesterday on gay marriage — on marriage, really — is one of his best ever.
In his column, Ross puts forward the most eloquent defense I’ve seen of “lifelong heterosexual monogamy” as an institution that should be afforded special status by a society’s laws.
Unfortunately, responses to Ross’s column have been predictably dire. Supporters of gay marriage are increasingly candid about their belief that there can be no legitimate, non-bigoted argument against gay marriage, a view which I believe to be false and says more about a certain kind of narrow-mindedness than about anything else. (At this point I should probably produce my non-troglodyte Ausweis and state that I am in favor of legalizing same sex marriage.) Most responses make a spectacle of the author’s incapacity to consider viewpoints that do not fit neatly into her own biases.
Two interesting responses to Ross that stand out from this sorry lot have been from Hanna Rosin and Andrew Sullivan, two writers whose work I admire.
I’ll start with Andrew Sullivan. Reading Mr Sullivan is often frustrating to me because of what I take to be a reflexive tendency to cast anathema upon ideological opponents with inflamatory language (I don’t find it correct or useful, for example, to describe the Catholic Church’s stance on women in the priesthood as “un-Christian”).
Yet Mr Sullivan put forward what I think is the best response to the column, largely even-handed, generous, and very touching. His post is very much worth reading. If Ross puts forward the best argument on one side, clearly Mr Sullivan puts forward the best response. Even though at times Mr Sullivan comes close to reaching for the flamethrower (I don’t believe, as he seems at one point to imply, that Ross is “indifferen[t]” to gay victims of the AIDS epidemic; and I don’t know what it means to say that the Church is in a “High Ratzinger phase”), he is very generous and lucid.
He (and one would not think it should be noted, but given the other responses it must) actually understands Ross’s argument and gives what I think are the two best responses. That while the ideal Ross extols might be wonderful as a religious or even a moral ideal, it does not necessarily follow that the law should promote it at the exclusion of everything else. And that even if that were true, the fact of countless homosexual unions exists, unions that are worth something, and that denying them the legal protections of marriage is a very heavy, to the point of being inhumane, price to pay for a theoretical protection of another kind of ideal.
But really I don’t do it justice. I basically agree with Mr Sullivan, and felt more attention should be given to a great piece of writing.
“Hanna Rosin’s take”!http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/marriage-was-awesomein-17th-century is also worth reading, considerate and rooted in the teachings of history as it is, although she fails to actually grapple with Ross’s argument in certain key respects.
Where Ms Rosin fails is that, after acknowledging that Ross’s argument is substantially different from the regular litany of gay marriage opponents, she still takes it as a nostalgia argument. Ross wants to “go back” to an era where marriage was defined a certain way. She asserts that the kind of marriage that Ross defends never actually existed, or only existed at the cost of “love or choice.” I actually think that’s highly debatable, but I also think it’s beside the point. Her assertions that “[t]here is no barbaric Orientalist marriage which contrasts with a pure, Western one” and that “[m]arriage in the Bible was almost always polygamous” are correct but also irrelevant, because Ross never claimed any of that.
Just as Ross is a very effective critic of the sexual revolution because he recognizes that it has had many positive repercussions, his critique of gay marriage is worth taking seriously precisely because it doesn’t harken back to some mythical era which he starts out by acknowledging never existed.
If Ross wants to “go back” to anything, it’s not so much an era as ideas — ideas that have been with us for a very long time, even if they were all too rarely practiced.
While I disagree with Ross that snubbing gay couples is acceptable “collateral damage” in trying to strengthen these ideas in contemporary society, that is certainly a goal I associate myself with. And more importantly as it relates to this debate, I think these are ideas that are very important, but easily misunderstood, and thus glibly dismissed.
I thought the very same things when I read Sullivan and Douthat’s pieces — rather unbelievably, here are two arguments about gay marriage that taking opposing positions and yet neither of them make me want to punch myself in the face for having read them.
— rob · Aug 10, 02:22 PM · #
Douthat’s piece is definitely top-notch (even if, like you, I don’t agree with his position on gay marriage). Sullivan’s piece was solid, too. It was generally pretty understanding of Douthat’s piece (though it was a little uncharitble in situations), and reminds me that he is a talented enjoyable writer – at least at times.
I’m a little less receptive of Rosin’s piece. She seems to be arguing against some other article rather than Douthat’s. She notes that the form or idea of marriage about which Douthat writes is fragile and “contains the seeds of its own undoing”, but I don’t understand how this serves as any sort of rebuttal. In fact, I would assume that part of the point of Douthat’s piece is that this marriage ideal <i>is</i> fragile, which is why we need to protect it… and why a columnist like Douthat would bother writing about it.
— Jonathan · Aug 10, 02:34 PM · #
PEG, one really good post (complexity), then one bad one (in my opinion).
Here is the core of Dreher’s rationalization (can’t call it an argument):
“This ideal holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship. It holds up the domestic life that can be created only by such unions, in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their biological parents, as a uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing. And recognizing the difficulty of achieving these goals, it surrounds wedlock with a distinctive set of rituals, sanctions and taboos.”
So what he is saying is that, of all the ways to raise kids, a man and a woman who are linked in lifelong matimony, is “uniquely admirable.” Why? Because procreative lifelong heterosexua marrriage isl “a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations….”
What could that even mean? How is this particular form of marriage a “microcosim of civilization?” The dad is the ruling class and the wife does the laboring? The parents enter into an economic partnership to raise armies to defend our borders?” This is stupid.
ANd then what does “organic connection between the generations mean?” I am going to risk assuming that it does not refer to raising kids without pesticides. So I guess it has to mean that the BOTH parents are the biological progenitors of the kids. This is the only possible distinction between gay and heterposexual marriage: the oportunity for both partners to pass on thier gentic material to their children. And this is enough to raise “marriage” out of the reach of gay, non-fertil, divorced, and intentionally childless people. All these groups (except obviously the intentionally childless) can raise children, and even raise children with their alloted share of genetic material, and the evidence says that the kids come out just fine. I personally was adopted, and now have two biological kids of my own, and I can tell you that having the kdis look like me AND my wife, doesn’t make anything any easier or better and definitely not deserving of special sanction. And we are friends with two lesbian couples who both have two kids with one of the mothers and the the same sperm donner, and I for sure as hell cannot see anything less special or valid in their relationships with their children.
And beyond that, what is Ross really proposing here? He agrees that there are no rational reasons for banning gay marriage, but is he saying that because his prefered version of marriage is “worthy of distinctive recognition and support,” that we should somehow create a new marriage certificate? Give lifelong marriage with biological children (we’ll have to test them to be sure they have the proper genentic material) should get tax breaks and a special certificate?
The only way Dreher’s column is valid is as a last whimper of wistful regret from someone who is realizes he is beaten. As anything else, it is a pathetic rationalization.
— cw · Aug 10, 03:12 PM · #
The basic problem with Douthat’s column is that he argues in favor of a Platonic ideal he admits doesn’t exist in the law. He puts forth no argument against divorce, re-marriage, or childless marriage. He’s left holding the bag and stating that the last legal stand should be to keep marriage heterosexual, when all the actually important bits — love, honor, faithfulness, etc. — aren’t subject to legal fiat. And there’s really no justification of that, and certainly not one he presents.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Aug 10, 03:33 PM · #
“The basic problem with Douthat’s column is that he argues in favor of a Platonic ideal he admits doesn’t exist in the law.”
This. It’s my experience that rules in life don’t have to be good rules or even make sense, but they do have to be fair. The fundamental weakness of the case against same-sex marriage is that it holds gay folks to standards that are not applied in any way to heterosexuals.
Mike
— MBunge · Aug 10, 03:59 PM · #
rob and Jonathan: Thank you for your comments. I agree.
cw: I’m not interested in relitigating the same sex marriage issue here, hopeless as that may seem, so I won’t.
Erik: Looking at his column that’s a valid response, but I think that’s because of the limits of the 800 word column. If you look at Douthat’s body of work, he has a lot to say about divorce, re-marriage, childless marriage, out of wedlock births, etc. A substantive part of his book Grand New Party is dedicated to this, but barely mentions same sex marriage, mostly because (as I understand it) his coauthor Reihan and him are on opposite sides of the issue.
— PEG · Aug 10, 04:05 PM · #
I didn’t think Douthat’s article was all that enlightening — it certainly isn’t logical. For one thing, a judge’s decision doesn’t alter the distinct virtues of heterosexual marriage, and allowing gays to marry and receive equal treatment under the law doesn’t prevent anyone from recognizing the distinct virtues of heterosexual marriage — as a matter of fact, heterosexual marriage remains unchanged. When two individuals of opposite sex marry, they are committing to each other in a special way that homosexual marriage doesn’t change. Heterosexual marrige can be as special as it ever was, but it’s here we run into trouble. The social institution of marriage is an abstraction and speaking of it as if it’s a real thing is misleading — there is no social heterosexual marriage, only marriages between individuals. If the individuals involved view their marriages as special and virtuous, then that’s all that matters. Gay marriage being outlawed doesn’t change anything but the legal ramifications, so if the virtue and special nature of heterosexual marriage depends on laws, benefits and the legal right to use the term “married”, then the foundation is pretty weak.
— Mike Farmer · Aug 10, 04:29 PM · #
Both columns are surprisingly decent. Allow me one small picknit with Douthat’s. He writes:
Not really. Ross needs to study the latest in sexual conflict, mate guarding, offspring vulnerability, testes size and concealed ovulation. Example:
In other words, monogamy might have several Darwinian advantages. This, of course, has nothing to do with Douthat’s larger point. Which means I just wasted your time.
— KVS · Aug 10, 04:51 PM · #
“I’m not interested in relitigating the same sex marriage issue here, hopeless as that may seem, so I won’t.”
But then you praise a column that essentially does that. There is nothing new in it. It’s just the very tiniest last shred of the “marriage is for procreation” argument.
— cw · Aug 10, 04:53 PM · #
I’ll double down on CWs contention that this is an eloquent way to admit defeat. Ross writes:
He never says why it’s a great idea, why it’s unique and indispensable, why it’s worth honoring and preserving (because of it’s allegedly Judeo-Christian origins? — because we’ve been living with it for so long? — because he feels it in his bones? — because dad did it?). Isn’t he basically saying, hey, I know we can’t win with arguments from deontology, nature and utility. And since the only things left in my bag are appeals to credulous traditionalism and the Catechisms of the Catholic Church, I’m going to use those?
Not exactly compelling, is it. He concedes nature and utility and gives the game away. Fine with me, and remarkable.
— KVS · Aug 10, 05:25 PM · #
PEG,
I agree that Ross wrote an excellent column, but I also think he is wrong to suggest that a strong philosophical argument can’t be made that “[l]ifelong heterosexual monogamy is natural; gay relationships are not.” Natural law philosophy does make such an argument and you’ll find some excellent summary remarks in support of that argument here:
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2010/08/some_thoughts_on_the_prop_8_de.html
I especially direct your attention to the comment by Professor Feser at 8:39PM.
Thanks!
— Jeff Singer · Aug 10, 05:36 PM · #
Mike,
First of all, I just checked out your blog and I liked it! Secondly, those who promote the idea of “gay marriage” are the ones who aren’t being logical — gays and lesbians are already treated equally before the law, they just don’t like the treatment and want to refine what marriage means.
Finally, this statement seems strange: “Gay marriage being outlawed doesn’t change anything but the legal ramifications, so if the virtue and special nature of heterosexual marriage depends on laws, benefits and the legal right to use the term “married”, then the foundation is pretty weak.”
While I agree our most important institutions in some sense exist before the law, wouldn’t you agree that how we define these institutions will impact how they are shaped by individuals and society? Substitute “property” in your thought experiment and I think you’ll begin to understand what I’m getting at.
— Jeff Singer · Aug 10, 07:11 PM · #
It doesn’t really matter; gays will get their fancy pieces of official-looking paper, and everyone else will go on snickering about these fake “marriages”. We’ve shown a remarkable ability to tolerate flagrant departures from reality, but there are always limits. Douthat, as usual, wants to have his liberal, tolerant, pluralist cake and eat his conservative, traditionalist, Christian one too. It doesn’t work…it never works.
— Matt Weber · Aug 10, 07:17 PM · #
Well said, PEG.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Aug 10, 07:38 PM · #
Jeff,
Property ownership, if it was considered a special right for whites, but not for blacks, wouldn’t change if blacks are allowed to own property. It wouldn’t be exclusive to whites, but the ownership would be the same as it was before, and all the virtues of ownership would be unchanged.
— Mike Farmer · Aug 10, 08:21 PM · #
Sullivan and cw both touch on this, but I’m going to repeat it because I’m not really sure what Douthat and those sympathizing with his point of view would say about it.
How does Douthat avoid the conclusion that the adoption of orphans is a less “uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing” than the raising of one’s own children?
— Consumatopia · Aug 10, 11:43 PM · #
I’m with KVS. Why is it a great idea? In the pantheon of other Western ideas — freedom of speech, separation of church and state, the notion that there are universal human right (many of which are now recognized by non-western countries) — I’m not sure it’s even in the top 10.
For that matter, I’m not sure it’s even an idea. To whom do we attribute this brilliant idea?
— Derek Scruggs · Aug 11, 02:32 AM · #
Jeff, your link to the metaphysical discussion can be summarized as: “Gays. Ick.” Arguments from natural law theory are no more compelling than when they were made by Clarence Thomas.
But even accepting natural law for a moment, tell me with a straight face that you think all those people who voted against gay marriage looked to natural law for their rationale? For that matter, that even 10% of them did?
I’m going with the “ick” argument.
— Derek Scruggs · Aug 11, 02:48 AM · #
How does Douthat avoid the conclusion that the adoption of orphans is a less “uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing” than the raising of one’s own children?
There’s a strong belief (dunno how much is cultural and how much is biological) in the importance of genetic connections — people generally feel a special responsibility (and a special relationship) towards the children that they’ve brought into the world. I see Douthat as suggesting that the heterosexual marriage+family institution is well-designed to exploit these feelings to help hold the whole thing together. It’s not that any given adoptive parent-child relationship is necessarily less valuable or wonderful than any given biological parent-child relationship, but that having a two-genetic-parents cultural norm for society in general provides a stronger framework than just a “love makes a family” norm, because the former can draw on that special sense of connectedness.
That’s my reading anyway, FWIW.
— KenB · Aug 11, 04:13 AM · #
Great articles and it’s so helpful. I want to add your blog into my rrs reader but i can’t find the rrs address. Would you please send your address to my email? Thanks a lot!
— supra skytop · Aug 11, 06:41 AM · #
I was talking about orphans specifically because that’s a situation where talking about two competing “norms” doesn’t make any moral or historical sense. We as a society want to encourage people to raise their own children. But for some children, this is no longer possible. So society has encouraged other parents to pick up the slack, to adopt children other than their own to raise. Our society—both our churches and our government—jumped through hoops to consider these adoptive families as culturally and legally equivalent to biological families. And the institution of marriage has played a role in that equivalence—we prefer to see married couples adopt children.
It’s not enough to avoid dissing “any given adoptive parent-child relationship”. Even judged institutionally, I believe that most people and churches regard the adoption of children who need parents as much a fulfilment of the purpose of marriage as having and raising one’s own children. Because they aren’t competing “norms”, they’re supporting norms—we want parents to raise their own children, but someone still has to raise children that can no longer be with their biological parents.
So I don’t think Douthat’s argument makes sense. It superficially seems to make sense, because we associate lesbian parents with donated sperm and gay parents with surrogate mothers and donated eggs—methods of becoming parents that, by design, result in the conception of children that will be raised apart from biological parents. But that association isn’t absolute—not everyone using those methods is homosexual, and not all homosexual parents employ those methods.
— Consumatopia · Aug 11, 12:33 PM · #
If Ross wants to “go back” to anything, it’s not so much an era as ideas — ideas that have been with us for a very long time, even if they were all too rarely practiced.
This is exactly the reason why I thought Douthat’s column was an abysmal failure. Clever, but ultimately too tenuous to hold together under scrutiny.
His argument is Thomistic (no surprise there), and MacIntyrean in particular: lifelong heterosexual monogamy is a practice (in a very technical sense), with its own particular internal goods that make their own particular contribution to human flourishing, and as such it should be protected and encouraged. The key premise here is that lifelong heterosexual monogamy is indeed such a practice; that it does in fact have these particular internal goods that can be produced in no other way. What, in other words, can lifelong heterosexual monogamy do for us that nothing else can?
Douthat’s answers are `a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations’. He never explains just what either of these goods is, nor why lifelong heterosexual monogamy is the only sort of family that can deliver them, nor even why they are good and valuable. I suppose the `organic connection’ business has something to do with procreation and raising children. But as he concedes earlier in the column, there are all sorts of different ways to arrange childcare, and family relationships that are both looser and broader than lifelong heterosexual monogamy are extremely common among our species; if anything, lifelong heterosexual monogamy just looks like one option among many with respect to this good. And, frankly, I have no idea what `a microcosm of civilization’ is supposed to be, much less how a family built around lifelong heterosexual monogamy is supposed to be one.
In short, lifelong heterosexual monogamy is supposed to be about two great ideals — one which is horribly vague and one which isn’t really that closely associated with lifelong heterosexual monogamy.
— Dan Hicks · Aug 11, 01:38 PM · #
“In his column, Ross puts forward the most eloquent defense I’ve seen of “lifelong heterosexual monogamy” as an institution that should be afforded special status by a society’s laws.”
Baloney.
I understand the argument about monogamy. But what does “heterosexual” have to do with it?
The argument that monogamy is beneficial applies equally to both heterosexuals and homosexuals. How about you explain to us why heterosexual monogamy is special?
In Douthat’s argument, the “heterosexual” part is superfluous, and he obviously includes it only because of his religious beliefs (which is bigotry, in my opinion.)
— Socrates · Aug 11, 01:59 PM · #
look PEG.
the japanese have been doing full term goat embryos for a decade. within five years we will be able to buy bene tleilax host wombs for full term human ectogenesis. then your biological argument goes out the window. SSM couples will be able to have biological children with donated gametes, just like het couples get fetility therapy today.
Douthat is crappy wistful rationalization and magical thinking like always. Marriage has evolved.
conservatism has to be dragged kicking screaming and screaming into the 21st century.
Time travel to the past is impossible because of closedform timecurves.
Conservatives can make their peace with the future or go extinct.
ca m’ete egal
— matoko_chan · Aug 12, 02:00 PM · #
Douthat’s post doesn’t deserve the praise and respectful treatment it has received. It’s incoherent, as many critics have pointed out. It’s also not new. It’s a retread of the ‘procreation’ pseudo-argument, and it fails to address objections that should be obvious, even if critics had not been pointing them out for years.
The previous commenters have done a good job pointing out the flaws in Douthat’s ‘argument’, but I have a bit to add.
Douthat is right, historically, about acceptance of homosexual relationships being part of the same sexual revolution that has weakened the stigmas attached to divorce and unwed childbearing. But logically the connection is indirect, and the cases are distinguishable because homosexuality is (mostly) unchosen.
What I mean is, I can imagine that utilitarian considerations might lead our society to restore the stigmas against divorce and unwed childbearing to something like their previous intensity, although probably in somewhat different form. (I should clarify that personally I find the utilitarian case unconvincing.) Given what we now know about homosexuality, there’s not much of a utilitarian case for restoring the taboo against it. By the same token, continued acceptance of homosexual relationships is no logical barrier to re-stigmatizing the other behaviors.
For example, we can imagine a society in which divorce requires a finding of fault, and the party at fault cannot marry again but only enter a ‘civil union’. There’s no reason such a society could not also recognize both same-sex and opposite-sex marriages. And I would argue that this is the sort of thing that actually follows if you accept Douthat’s assumptions.
— David Tomlin · Aug 14, 08:28 AM · #
“Douthat’s post doesn’t deserve the praise and respectful treatment it has received.”
Bravo!
I don’t understand why so many bloggers and commenters feel it’s necessary to reply to the particulars of Douthat’s writings. It’s nothing more than dressing up his wolf (his devotion to the teachings of the Catholic Church) in sheep’s clothing (all those fancy words).
He’s not arguing honestly, and never intended to. He starts from a religiously predetermined conclusion and tries to construct sparkly secular arguments to prove it must be so.
All you clever folks know that. Why do you let him get away with it?
— dfriedmn · Aug 15, 02:33 PM · #
Why do you let him get away with it?
because they are all terrified of uniparty America, which is what is going to happen anyways for a while at least.
all conservative memes have failed, and they are ideologically bankrupt.
Sully, TNC, they link Douthat because they are in pantswetting of the conservatives going down and being reduced to a single party system.
The people here are just porn fluffers for conservative failmemes as far as i can tell.
i say, let it burn.
we survived the Whigs flaming out.
something else will evolve to take conservatism’s place.
something better.
— matoko_chan · Aug 15, 04:58 PM · #
Let’s see PEG defend Ross’s latest steaming pile.
DIAF poseurs.
— matoko_chan · Aug 16, 10:11 AM · #