Maggie Gallagher Is A Whiny Bitch

After a week of guest-blogging on The Volokh Conspiracy, that's about the most charitable thing I can say about her. Over the past few years I've read much of what she has written and I always thought it boiled down to "sex makes babies so we shouldn't allow gay marriage" which of course makes that kind of sense that doesn't. So I was generally interested in seeing what she was going to say in a series of posts geared toward lawyers. Five days and approximately 20,000 words later I've discovered she basically thinks that "sex makes babies so we shouldn't allow gay marriage".

I feel justified in making the judgment that I do (ie, Maggie Gallagher is a whiny bitch) because that's about the level of sophistication her arguments took ("like the first ingredient is a husband and a wife, duh").

I also feel justified in critiquing what she has to say because we are equally qualified to comment on marriage and social policy. We both have undergraduate degrees from ivy league schools (Dartmouth '99; Yale '82) in fields unrelated to social policy (Chemistry; probably English and since none of her biographies seem to indicate what it was, I'm guessing it has nothing to do with government or sociology). We both have published an equal number of peer-reviewed articles on marriage (zero; zero). We both worship the whore of Babylon (Catholics, you know). We both have a checkered past with payments for expertise (she was payed by the Administration to espouse their policies in print; I was payed by a university to "volunteer" my time a local high schools). She's married and I'm not, but I'm gay and she's not so as far as "gay marriage" is concerned I think we can call it a wash. The only thing she's really got on me is that she's "thought about marriage" an awful lot; me probably not nearly as much. But if thinking a lot about something can be considered a qualification, I think Oslo's a bit behind on giving me my Nobel.

With that out of the way, I was going to go over her arguments post by post, but I've decided that they aren't worth taking a look at in that much detail because she tends to repeat herself a lot. Instead I'll look mostly at her last entry. According to "bad time management" we do not get treated to the

theories of the cognitive nature of social institutions, the relevance of the New Institutionalist Economics’ understanding of isomorphic institutional change, the developing legal pressures in Canada to repress opposition to its new normative understanding of marriage, or even why I think the most likely outcome of same-sex marriage is not polygamy but to the end of marriage as a legal status.

which is a shame because something substantial like that is what I was interested in hearing. Instead we get treated to five days of "sex makes babies, duh" rhetoric. My guess is time management has nothing to do with it; my true belief is that the woman has absolutely no qualifications whatsoever, let alone knows the definition of "isomorphic". Ok, that was a bit harsh, but for all her grandstanding and considering the venue I would expect something a little less sophomoric. She spent a great deal of time making a case for the importance of procreation to marriage, which is becoming more and more like a strawman argument. Not many same-sex marriage advocates argue against the importance of marriage and child rearing; what I've been searching for these past few years is a reasonable argument to connect "sex makes babies" with "gay marriage will end marriage as a legal status".

Maggie seems to be making three general arguments against same-sex marriage. 1) Analogies to no-fault divorce; 2) Connections to generativity; and 3) "Gender matters".

On the first point, I believe she is misguided. She brings up the history of no-fault divorce and the mantra about someone else's divorce not affecting your marriage. The disconnect here is that, in the case of no-fault divorce, it is easy to see how a climate of divorce might effect, not necessarily current marriages, but the decisions of the next generation to get married. If the next generation grows up in a world where individual marriages are statistically less permanent, two people entering into one might also treat it as less permanent. After all, monogamy is hard. But what exactly does the marriage of the gays down the street do to heterosexual marriage? It's not exactly as if same-sex marriage would realistically make a straight person think that he could just as easily marry someone of the same sex. So what does it do?

Dissociates marriage from generativity, obviously. If the gays down the street can get married without having children, what does that say about my marriage? Well, according to Maggie, "marriage as a public act is clearly no longer related at all to generativity, and the government declares as well it has no further interest in whether children are connected to their own mom and dad." Really, Maggie? But people are still having babies. Husbands will continue to be responsible for the children of their wives, presumably their children. And what about that so-called "sterility strawman"? Her answer, I must cite in full:

A subtler argument sometimes made is this: well, we have some non-procreating couples in the mix. Why would adding SS couples change anything? Two points: SS couples are being added to the mix precisely in order to assure that society views them as “no different” than other couples. This intrinsically means (if the effort is successful) downgrading if not eliminating the social significance of generativity (procreation and family structure). The second truth is that both older couples and childless couples are part of the natural life-cycle of marriage. Their presence in the mix doesn’t signal anything in particular at all.

Really, Maggie? Older couples and childless couples are part of the natural life-cycle of marriage? How? How exactly, if they aren't generating any children, can they be part of the natural life-cycle of marriage? Because they are a man and woman? That's borderline tautological. She's trying to defend the definition of marriage as between only a man and a woman based on procreation (not child-rearing, by the way) and generativity, but a male-female couple who cannot participate in either procreation or generativity are still part of the natural life-cycle of marriage precisely because they are a man and a woman and not two men.

See, according to Maggie, gay marriage is filled with gender contradictions:

Gender doesn’t matter, except when orientation is involved, in which case gendered sexual desire matters so much we are morally obligated to restructure our most basic social institution for protecting children, so that all adults get their needs for intimacy and social affirmation met equally. Orientation, as a classification, assumes gender is a real and significant category of human existence; but apparently only for gays, and not for children.

But gender does matter, obviously. It matters equally for heterosexuals as it does for homosexuals; it just doesn't matter so much for the institution. Maggie would like to believe that marriage has nothing to do with adult intimacy, and while maybe the government doesn't care if you love your spouse, perhaps Maggie forgot why she got married. Children are the ultimate expression of love, but I'm guessing it is not exactly for the sheer love of children and the future of the human race that Maggie chose her particular husband. But what I don't understand is the above statement in light of Maggie's (reluctant) support for single and gay adoption. Her constant bleating of "mothers and fathers matter" can obviously be halted if a child can be saved. What her real beef seems to be with is artificial reproductive technology (ART) and alternative family structures, but that's a whole other can of worms I'd rather not get into.

It is important to make the distinction, though, because the burning question which she is unable or refuses to answer is why, given the current state of ART and of adoption laws, how the very important role that marriage plays in connecting children to their fathers will diminish any faster with a small number of gay marriages. And her focus on sex is also very confusing and contradictory; her position seems to be that all procreative sex should occur only within marriage and if you can only have non-procreative sex you cannot get married. Well, exactly what kind of message does that send exactly? That sex outside of marriage is fine as long as it doesn't result in any babies?

I do think there is an elephant in the room (like there always is): Maggie finds gayness icky.

I really do think, btw, that this is what bothers most ordinary people: an instinct that their government, against their will, is telling them (and will re-educate their children) that everything they know about marriage (like the first ingredient is a husband and a wife, duh) is wrong and must now change. Upon penalty of being officially labeled bigots by their government. And everyone knows its open season on bigots in our society.

Well cry me a river, Maggie Gallagher! You might be labeled as a bigot if you oppose same-sex marriage! I oppose affirmative action and hate crimes. Many consider that bigoted. But I've got some convincing (I think) arguments that say affirmative action harms minorities and society as a whole, and we would all be better off without it. Can Maggie offer any convincing reason why gay marriage is harmful to gays? Why yes, she can! Societies can't survive without marriage and since gay marriage will obviously cause the downfall of marriage in Western society, western civilization will crumble and be replaced by something else that isn't so gay-friendly. See, this society is the best we're going to get, so we should just be grateful we aren't hanged to death for our perversions. Yes, that's really her argument as to why gay marriage isn't in the interest of gays.

Color me unimpressed.