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The conservative argument for gay marriage
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In light of recent developments in Iowa, Vermont, and the District of Columbia, this seems like a good time to explore this topic and share my thoughts on the subject.
Where do we begin? I'm afraid the first few paragraphs here are going to be an aside, before I get into the titular topic. And this is one of my longer ones.
If I were a member or associate of one of the more- perhaps we shall describe it as the ivory tower- caste of conservatism; the Cato, Economist, or perhaps Daily Beast affiliates, I should begin this way;
I would find a mainstream or even liberal-minded publication to amplify the reach of my message. I would begin the piece by providing a resume; that is the standard way of doing things when suggesting that mainstream conservatism is wrong about an issue, I believe. In a bizarre and unbecoming mixture of defiance and grovelling, I would list my qualifications for calling myself conservative, with the general gist being that I am in no way not a conservative. I should probably use the inclusive "we", trying to weight my nominal target audience to my side before getting around, very apologetically, to the actual meat of the substance. I should be hesitant, and play the role of the good cap to the progressive or liberal bad cop; I would walk a tightrope, delicately trying to convince left-leaners to like me, and trying to convince right-leaners that I'm on their side, and, heck, I probably don't even really mean what I say anyway.
It would be entirely unworthy of anyone trying to follow in the footsteps of Burke, Adams, Hayek, Buckley and other great minds of the individualistic, libertarian tradition. It would also be a highly disingenuous attempt to exploit left-wingers, who would in turn be trying to exploit me. It would be a marriage of convenience between enemies; they would be trying to, in effect, destroy the actual body of conservatism and replace the Republican party with Blue Dog Democrats, so that the Progressives can occupy the Democratic Party themselves. I would still be trying, I think, to actually build up conservatism to a politically powerful force, arguing that "moderation" was needed to win elections. I would have good intentions. But probably no one would actually take me very seriously.
At least, that's the way I've viewed most of the articles, blogs, movements, magazine articles, and other such that have emerged from the largely more secular factions of conservatism in the past few months, and I don't suppose I'm alone in this. Without naming names, I'm not going to subject myself to this sort of nonsense.
The truth is, over the internet, I can't prove that I'm a conservative to a bunch of strangers. And if I could, it certainly wouldn't mean anything- this kind of logic is ridiculous and reveals exactly the sorts of problems that have become endemic to conservatism in the United States. It is, of course, entirely possible for someone who holds themselves as a conservative, and who genuinely tends to think and speak and vote on political issues from a viewpoint entirely consistent with conservative principles to make a mistake or to allow personal prejudice or simply poor logic to bring them to a wrong conclusion.
So. I may not be a conservative at all, and if I am, it certainly doesn't mean that on any given issue my argument is consistent with the core tenets of conservative thought. Although conservatism is intrinsically tied to individualism, in the realm of ideas, it is not the individual who counts at all; my arguments for why it is consistent with conservative principles to support gay marriage must stand entirely on it's own, without any help at all that would derive from my own person. I could be the reincarnation of George Washington for all it matters.
What matters is the idea.
And, I should get this out of the way now, I'm as deeply confused by the argument of moderation as I think and hope that most conservatives are. I have never, in my life, heard a good reason given why one should moderate an idea that happens to be true. A bad idea, of course, should just be abandoned. It therefore makes no sense to me to suggest that the principles of consevatism must be moderated; if they are wrong, they aren't worth fighting for at all. If they are right, then defeat is only a reason to fight harder, and confusion a reason to get back onto the right path.
"Moderation", wrote Oscar Wilde, "Is a fatale thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."
I could also be bashing on other apostates of mainstream conservatism, I suppose, to get back to the point of being ingratiating to the World Net Daily and Free Republic crowd. That being the case, let me take a moment to alienate them as well.
If I were certain right-wing pundits that typically blogged for the above sites or on radio, I would probably make my argument this way; I would take one or two facts which are more or less indisputably true. I would weave around them a bombastic lot of vitriol and throw it down onto paper, and suggest that everyone who disagrees is an idiot, a traitor, a communist, or worst of all, a RINO (Republican in Name Only).
This form of rhetoric is more clever than it sounds. It's not, technically speaking, an ad hominem; the insult doesn't substiute for the argument, it just makes it a lot less likely that there will be a careful, measured discourse where alternative interpretations of the same data or counterweighting facts are brought into play.
But I'm not interested in doing that either. I would say that conservatism, as a political movement, has been infiltrated, corrupted, and brought low by social conservatism; specifically, those that tangle the two and try to use political means to enforce their vision of society. Mayberry values. While I disagree with the methodology and half-heartedness with which would-be reformers have approached the conservative base, I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment behind them. There's been a deeply anti-intellectual vein running throughout conservatism in the past few decades. Areas of the country that were once, believe it or not, strongholds of conservativism- California and New England spring to mind- are now regarded as "liberal" playgrounds- not, supposedly, real America. On the other hand, others may think that I'm full of rubbish and not really a conservative at all. I'm not interested in an endless exchange ofthe No True Scotsman fallacy.
The pavement does have to hit the road eventually. One wants to actually win elections so that one can actually do some good. Rejecting large swaths of the nation out of hand seems a poor strategy, but again, while one may have to compromise in life to achieve goals, one doesn't moderate or mute one's own ideals.
To the matter at hand, then. Gay marriage. Why should someone who calls themselves a conservative support, or at least condone it? Well, it doesn't really seem to affect anyone else much and they want to get married, but assuming that's inadequate on the face of it, let's move forward.
First, a discussion of terms. It is not perfectly clear these days what is to be meant by the term "conservative". Derived from the Latin conservare, to save or preserve, socially it should mean one who protects and preserves the social traditions of whatever particular culture that person is from, or at least naturalized to. In terms of fiscal policy, it would mean one who avoids running deficits, and that certainly doesn't fit based on the last thirty years evidence.
What does one conserve politically? I think the answer must be political power. A conservative could also be described as a cynic or realist of human nature; one who believes that power corrupts, and that the immense power of the law for good or evil (but more often evil) must be fettered and controlled with a system of checks and balances and a strong rule of law. Democracy isn't enough; there must be an independent judiciary, a free press, transparency and accountability in government, branches weighted against each other and then accountable to the public. As we have seen repeatedly and tragically in past decades, without these foundations democracy simply becomes a dictator appointed by mob. We may point to Hamas in the Gaza Strip of Israel, for instance- it's defenders love to point out that it won free elections, and then neglect that afterwards it used violence and murder to drive the defeated opposition out of the region and seize complete control of all functions of government.
A progressive, generally, may be defined by goals, which are altruistic and equally unrealistic. A conservative is defined not by ends but by means; conservatism is the belief that you can't rush utopia.
Assuming that one accepts this definition of a political conservative, one sees a number of potential conflicts with the self described social conservatives. It's important to note here that being a strong Christian or a "Culture Warrior" or whatever, like being a hippie, pagan, homosexual or whatever you wish, isn't a bad thing in and of itself. However, when one begins to use the power of the law and government to preserve some concept of American culture, religion or values against the entirely natural and peaceful tides of cultural change, one is no more conservative, politically, than if you had used the same to enforce a new vision of society by law.
The power of the law is not to be used to control society and culture- either to move it forward or to make it stand still. No matter how good one's intentions. Society will either evolve or devolve on it's own; there is nothing conservative in saving people from themselves by removing the burden of free will.
Conservapedia, for instance, gives this definition of conservative;
A conservative is one who adheres to principles of limited government, personal responsibility and moral values.
And then lists such things as wanting to illegalize pornography, drugs, homosexuality, and the rejection of evolution as desirable conservative policies, all of which require expanding government enormously, removing personal responsibility and having the government run your life for you. An absurd and absurdly obvious contradiction.
Moving forward, I'm going to assume that there is a consensus that political conservatism and social conservatism are separate things, and that the latter cannot be allowed to influence the former. The power of government can never be used to make people live "good" lives simply for their own good. If one does not accept this as a premise, any question of whether or not homosexual marriage can be allowed falls entirely to personal preference.
This is in fact the argument that progressives tend to make in favor of homosexuality- that it is beautiful, natural, and just like straight marriage. The last point can be rebutted easily by pointing out that gay marriage is between two people of the same gender and straight marriage is between two people of different genders, and so is pretty easy to prove wrong. The former two points are a matter of subjective opinion.
This argument seems to fail, since most people in America express at least some opposition to gay marriage.
Therefore, one cannot argue that gay marriage should be legal on the basis that most people support it, since they don't. However. The function of the law is also to protect the rights of the minority from the fickle prejudices of the majority, which is how anti-miscegenation laws were struck down after all.
The moral and religious arguments against gay marriage, then, we can dismiss out of hand from a consevative viewpoint. It is not the role of government to enforce good behavior or to make moral judgment calls, and the prospective of it being such is very frightening indeed.
A common counterpoint is that if we legalize homosexual marriage, then we have to legalize polygamy, incest, beastiality, necrophilia and pedophilia, in addition to whatever other sexual deviancies people can come up with. This is usually dismissed by progressives by way of saying that gay relationships are much more pretty and aescetically attractive than these, but that argument falls back on enforcing one's own moral norms. The argument is half right. It's impossible to conceive of a rational argument for criminalizing polygamous and incestuous marriage that doesn't apply to homosexual marriage. The others involve parties that are legally incapable of giving consent or signing a contract, however, so we can leave these out.
So by broadening the horizons thusly, the question actually shifts. It's not simply whether or not homosexual couples can marry; pursued logically, the question is actually whether or not any number of consenting adults have the right to form a marriage, or whether it's a type of contract the government of a state is only obligated to offer to a man and a woman.
At this point, most of the arguments seem to fall down to the role of family being to promote child-rearing. This isn't a terrible argument, actually, but I think it's insufficient for a few reasons.
1) The state has generally expressed no interest in actually enforcing that heterosexual couples in any way attempt to raise a family. Many married couples don't have children and are incapable of doing so.
2) The state has no interest in encouraging the raising of natural children over adopted ones anyway. The counter argument is that children raised by gay couples turn out worse, but
a) The proof for this is pretty bare, and
b) Status-based discrimination tends to be a bad idea anyway. If the numbers were meticulously counted and gay parents produced children that performed slightly better than those raised by straight couples, would anyone really support a ban on straight adoption? Heretofore I've been calm, but this is actually a sensitive issue to me; I've had a lot of friends raised in the Foster Care system in this country, and any loving halfway functional home would've been better than what they had.
3) Just generally, I'm not comfortable with the power of the state being used to prod people into producing or raising children explicitly. It's not a particularly oppressive power, but setting the precedent that this contract exists solely to stimulate child rearing seems to be at least giving the slippery slope a good looking over.
In summary:
The primary role of government is to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but it itself is a tremendous potential threat to liberty. To use the power of government to enforce a moral code or force someone into a moral life is a violation of consevative principles and erodes the bedrock of liberty. Moral and aesthetic arguments are therefore useless when attempting to preserve the Western tradition of marriage as a social contract between a man and a woman. The last argument, that the contract of marriage serves a vital role in building the family as the basic unit of American society for raising the next generation, fails to demonstrate where non-standard unions are either grossly inadequate to the same task, or harmful to these other unions by their existence.
I genuinely hope this argument strikes the reader as objective. My purpose was to phrase the argument in terms that are logical, fair, and in keeping with the values of our Constitution, since, frankly, most of the existing arguments I read for gay marriage are absolutely awful if you don't already agree that homosexuality is pretty neat. My hope would be that the most strictly religious Christian conservative, who simultaneously believes that the goal of conservatism is not to force a Christian theocracy on the United States, might read the above argument and be persuaded to at least seriously examine whether or not gay marriage, like numerous forms of free speech and religious practice, falls into the category of things one may not approve of, and even strongly condemn on a social level, but which one should tolerate as a political necessity to a free and fair society.
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