Discussion for article #237987
Isn’t Douthat gay? He presents as such on television as I’ve seen him.
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This is a brilliant observation. Ross would, of course, argue that marriage is a duty for both men and women. However, your argument makes it clear that traditional marriage, as mourned for by Mr. Douthat is not about love and commitment, but duty and child rearing.
But these supporters miss the bigger picture. Marriage as an institution of oppression has long been over. There is no more stigma for divorce in our society. I believe the fight for marriage equality has saved this institution. It is turning an institution of strict control of gender roles and repression into a celebration of love.
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Found the piece by Ross Douthat to be pretty lame & nearly unreadable. His argument was like a balloon - no internal structure, filled with hot air, and tended to drift about where ever Douthat’s emotional wind blew.
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Amanda Marquette has nailed it. The anti-gay marriage argument – that it was a competitive alternative for heterosexual individuals – never made any sense, or course. But Amanda’s argument – that gay marriage changes marriage – rings true: marriage now is about love, not dominance.
And this is at the heart of Kennedy’s argument – that this has not been the case in the past, but is now. And now access to marriage for loving couples is a civil right that takes precedence over states’ rights.
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No. As a man who also sounds gay, I have to say don’t assume sexuality from listen g I someone’s voice.
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I also found Douthat’s column lacking in so many ways. It is a typical conservative bloviation of a few facts and then attributing a causal relationship. It’s like saying the sun rises in the east, therefore, men are superior to women. That’s right, it makes no sense. Bottom line Douthat’s view appears to be an appeal to return to the days of arranged marriages, wives as chattel and criminalization of homosexuality. I would also point out something else and realize it is only anecdotal, but here is the reality. Just eight weeks after the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the Iowa DOMA law in 2009, my 24-year-old daughter married a really good guy. They have given me 3 grandchildren. My son also has married and wants to have a family. These four millennials must not have gotten the memo.
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"Marriage is, bit by bit, becoming more about a partnership between
equals who choose each other for the purpose of love and happiness.
Which means it’s becoming less about giving men control over women’s
lives. "
Makes sense to me. Mrs darr and I got married as equals…as partners in an enterprise (the family we wanted). We love each other and are best friends to boot. I would wish that everyone who wants it can have it. I do not control her. She does not control me. We are equals and that seems quite fair to me. And it has been this way for us for 3+ decades.
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I wish that were true, but the sad fact is there remain many women in our society who are trapped in loveless and/or abusive marriages and lack realistic options for starting over and making it on their own.
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Indeed. Homophobia has always been deeply psychologically intertwined at its very roots with misogyny.
But what about women who are homophobes, you ask? Yeah, well, enablers abound I suppose. To some extent, perhaps the answer might lie in asking whether the reassurance of having a sub-class lower than themselves is what allows them to complacently participate in their own degradation by their pig husbands.
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This sense that marriage is optional offends Douthat greatly, as he sees it as an immoral shunning of duty.
Is that the kind of hot pillow talk that helped him bag Mrs. Douthat?
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That’s a bit contorted TPM…but oh well. Really, if Conservatives would drop their objections to the crap they made up ( an assault on traditional marriage isn’t a consequence of the SCOTUS ruling ) about this thing they wouldn’t have much to bitch about. True, you cannot just come right out and say fuck the faggots so if that’s where you really are then you need the BS as cover. “Its a choice” or "the Constitution doesn’t say anything about gay marriage " are bogus but they allow you to bitch under cover.
Douthat probably has Neanderthal opinions of women. But he’s a bigot in other ways as well. It’s their real motivation. Hating on the Gay’s…and that’s been around way before the Bible or the Constitution.
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This argument sounds pretty plausible to me. Thanks for sharing it.
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Gay men seem to like women as people, though, and respect them. If this thesis on Douthat’s reasoning is accurate, he certainly does not like women (except in their place).
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Douthat voodoo that youdo so well.
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Uh, no. The real reason conservatives oppose gay marriage is because (using the 14th and 1st Amendments) it destroys the last legal authority of religions over a vital legal status.
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Try getting remarried in the Catholic church and you will see that that just isn’t true.
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This is very incisive. However, the idea that marriage is all about love winning and equality and thats why state law must respect it in any form is not totally accurate under the court’s holding. The court recognized 4 basic principles as to why marriage is so important. Those boil down to 1) autonomy about personal life; 2)unique intimate bond in which to develop profound human experience; 3) important for nurturing of children and family; 4) key building block of social order.
So while I agree that much of conservatives agitation about this issue is really a veiled yearning for a less equal and less free “traditional marriage” it is also possible that conservatives believe that ssm or other “looser arrangements” do not further these 4 fundamental purposes of society’s special treatment of marriage.
For instance, Justice Kennedy accidentally (I would think) maligned divorced families and unmarried parents by asserting that children of gay parents are stigmatized and experience profound instability because their parents are not married.
So even with the Supreme Court’s framing, there is room for disagreement about what kinds of relationships meet the key principles of why marriage is of constitutional importance. Douthat may be expressing the sense that ssm or other looser, optional affiliations do not meet these four principles the way a more restrictive and dutiful attitude towards marriage did.
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There are two married women couples on my street, we are friendly with the women, they are good people, and until what they do disrupts my marriage I can’t think about the old, worn out assault on marriage lie the right wingers love to drag out.
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While I deeply disagree with his argument, I will give him credit for at least having the balls to make it. So many on the right stop at the “it hurts my marriage” nonsense.
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