Nice Try
Professor Dale Carpenter’s piece on today’s NRO is a carefully massaged bit that attempts to streamline areas of agreement with conservatives about traditional marriage and ultimately, gay marriage.
First, Carpenter assumes that one can be a true conservative and support gay marriage. If you’re socially liberal (i.e., favor gay marriage) then you are not a true conservative. David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan, Jonathan Rauch, and George Will are not true conservatives–they are moderates at best. A true conservative is conservative in his social views (marriage, abortion, gay rights) and his fiscal philosophy (free markets, little goverment regulation, etc.). Carpenter doesn’t espouse a conservative case for gay marriage. Rather, he supports a moderate one.
Carpenter lists ten premises that he believes both proponents and opponents of same-sex marriage can agree on. Sorry to disappoint, Professor Carpenter.
His first premise:
(1) Marriage benefits society, and so anything that harms marriage harms all of us, whether married or not.
Not all marriages benefit society. For example, a marriage between one man and one woman who are closely related (brother/sister, 1st cousins) do not benefit society as do a conjugal union whose consanguinity is more distant, if at all related. Why? Because the offspring of the former are more likely be degenerative and bear children (though precious) with disabilities and other birth defects. (Carpenter acknowledges that “[m]arriage should remain reserved for two adult persons not closely related by blood”–a tension with his first premise he apparently does not recognize). Marriage–meaning the traditional union of one man and one woman–benefits society because they bear children and provide the optimal childrearing environment for those children. Same-sex marriage would not nor does it provide that societal benefit.
What benefit does same-sex marriage provide? Carpenter advises that the benefit of same-sex marriage would be (1) encouraging long-term commitment of gays and (2) “settling” gay men (whatever that means). So what? Where is the benefit? What would that long-term commitment produce for society? A reduction in the amount of HIV cases per year?
Moreover, does mere “encouragement” or “settling” of a minute (though politically active) population within society warrant a radical defintional change of marriage?
SSM advocates cannot rely on the traditional or results-oriented marriage benefit if they want to change its definition. Rather, they must assert (as Carpenter does) that marriage is about individual satisfaction (i.e., lasting commitment) and that if individualistic then denying gays the opportunity to marry is unconstitutional discrimination because as individuals they choose to sate their lust in a same-sex relationship.
The benefits society receives from traditional marriage are benefits that a same-sex coupling cannot provide (procreation and optimal child-rearing environment) to society at-large. Any disagreement between “conservatives” is not going to change the societal benefits of sustainability that traditional marriage provides. That’s already settled.