Side-step

[howeird]

This, or words similar to this, has been popping up all over LJ lately:

Copy this sentence into your LiveJournal if you're in a heterosexual marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.

It misses the point. Now, I don't happen to agree with the point, but it irks me that people on my side of the fence don't bother to know their enemies. The point is it hurts the institution of marriage. It doesn't harm any individual marriages. I thought about going into gory detail on why, but I frankly don't like these people enough to defend them that thoroughly.

Comments

[howeird]

Can't agree that the decline of an institution equals harm to all its individual parts. I think we agree there has been a decline in the institution known as public schools, yet there are still many excellent public schools.

Proponents of Prop 8 believe adding gay marriage to the institution of marriage will mark a decline in the institution of marriage, but it will not affect the strong individual hetero marriages the proponents are part of.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Proponents of Prop 8 believe adding gay marriage to the institution of marriage will mark a decline in the institution of marriage, but it will not affect the strong individual hetero marriages the proponents are part of.

They're welcome to believe that. Of course, I'm going to ask for evidence to support this belief.

Most folks' evidence is that the church told them so (or reinforced their existing belief). Belief isn't evidence.

Now for the folks who try to cite studies and data, they point to the decline in the number of marriages in countries that allow same-sex marriage and the increase in unmarried couples living together and having children. They fail to note that this is just a continuation of preexisting trends; allowing same-sex marriage had no effect on the numbers.

This shows me that they see marriage as a social control mechanism (and they like social control mechanisms), but extending it is at odds with the other social control mechanisms they want to see extended.

The institution of marriage is built on tradition, but it's a constantly evolving tradition. Modern western marriage dates back barely 150 years; before that love-matches were not the standard and wives were their husbands' property. 50 years ago divorces were rare. People made the same arguments that those changes created a decline in the institution of marriage.