Why gay marriage is unpopular

The gay rights movement likes to frame the gay marriage question as a civil rights issue, by analogy with Loving v. Virginia . If we are to accept this, race is like sexual practice.The theory here goes, there are black people and there are white people, and the two groups are morally equal, and therefore members of those groups should be allowed to marry whomever they please. And similarly, there are straight people and there are gay people, and the two groups are morally equal, and therefore they should be allowed to marry whomever they please.

Now this argument makes sense to very many people, especially to those of us who are already sympathetic with gay rights. But it is not efficacious. It won’t convince anyone who isn’t already half convinced. In fact, I’m not sure it’s true. Race is immutable, short of plastic surgery. But the people you have sex with, or whether you have sex at all, are choices. (Being gay is generally thought to be innate; I’m not so sure; but actually fucking is a choice.) This is why opponents of gay marriage by and large reject the notion that gay people are morally equal with straights, and the notion that gay people can’t help it. So the civil rights analogy makes no sense to them. There must be another way to convince them. This is diplomacy, after all; meet the other side where they are, not where you wish they were.

It seems to me that a lot of gay rights supporters are simply willing to sit back and let time do their work for them; and time is probably on their side. But legalizing gay marriage through the courts will never create widespread tolerance of gay rights; did Roe v Wade make abortion popular? If gay marriage becomes legal against the wishes of a majority or large minority of the people, homosexuals will get symbolic recognition but not actual safety and protection from discrimination. Isolating the people who think homosexuality is wrong will just intensify them in their hatred.

What would be likely to reach them? Well, it might help, for instance, to read what people on the right actually say about gay marriage. It seems to me that gay rights advocates tend not to read these things, and to reject every argument their opponents make as motivated by unconscious hatred for gays. Or religion motivated by hatred. Is there unconscious hatred? Well, probably, sometimes. We can’t negotiate with hatred--that’s too bad-- but what we can address are the rational and plausible fears motivating most of the enemies of gay marriage. In order to do this we need to understand where the other side stands. No one ever engages in successful diplomacy without making some effort to figure out what the other guy is saying, what he’s thinking, what he wants and what he fears. We can also learn from the world of linguistics that when two people use the same word, it’s not always safe to assume they mean the same thing. Say “gay marriage” to one of its supporters, and he probably visualizes crowds of happy newlyweds. Say “gay marriage” to one of its opponents, and he thinks of much more than that. It’s not just married people to him--it’s one more step on the road towards the institutionalization of tolerance for homosexuality. If those are too many abstract nouns, it’s a step towards a world in which gays and liberals have power and people like us don’t.

Read the right wing and see what they fear. For example, Focus on the Family’s little dystopian fantasy about what they feared would happen if Obama won the election. It’s called “The World in 2016” or something like that. They imagine, for instance, that if we legalized gay marriage, public schools would start teaching children that homosexuality is okay. Christian teachers might be fired for refusing to teach this. Christian churches might be sued out of existence if they refused to marry gay people. Christian ministers or anyone else who said in public that homosexuality is a sin, or is a choice, might be sued or imprisoned.

If this seems farfetched, consider some of the anti-hate-speech laws which have been passed in the past few years in Britain and in the Netherlands. Religious people and MPs have been accused of slander and of hate speech for criticizing Islam. So it’s not so implausible to imagine that something similar might eventually happen here. For instance, the case in New Mexico in which a photographer refused to shoot a same-sex ceremony and was sued for it! Or this case in which a man who was found to have expressed 'hatred' was banned for life from expressing opinions critical of homosexuality in any medium, including private communications. How can people consider themselves liberals and yet do their best to use the legal system to batter people who disagree with them?

Gay rights advocates even strengthen this sort of fear by attributing all criticism of homosexuality to sheer hatred. In fact such criticism is usually based in religion, and calling a belief taken straight from the Bible “hate speech” is not likely to win over the Christians.

So what gay rights advocates should do is two things. First, de-emphasize the unconvincing analogy with civil rights. Instead, frame the argument as a libertarian issue. It is one, basically, and besides, many people on the right can sympathize with libertarian ideas. Second, reassure your enemies. Say for instance:

“We gay people just want to live our lives and hold our beliefs without being interfered with. In return, you can live your lives and hold your beliefs. That’s part of living in a democratic pluralistic society. We understand that you think homosexuality is a sin. --We disagree. But we are willing to preserve and to defend your Constitutional right to continue believing and saying what you do, and teaching your children whatever you think best. You leave us alone; we’ll leave you alone.”

Why can’t they say this?

I believe the gay rights movement is handicapped by its own moral fervor--the moral fervor, I suppose, of feeling like you have to defend your very essence as a gay person. Moral fervor is not conducive to a rational, effective and, above all, compassionate diplomacy. After all, very few people are capable of a compassionate understanding of their enemies when they believe those enemies are motivated by personal hatred for them as people. Maybe the straights would make better advocates.