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I think we must distinguish sharply between marriage as a legal institution and as a cultural/religious custom. The former is a matter of equality and civil rig

I think we must distinguish sharply between marriage as a legal institution and as a cultural/religious custom. The former is a matter of equality and civil rights, but it can be satisfied by the institution of civil partnership. As for the latter - cultural customs and rituals are not rights and don't have to be inclusive. It's not discrimination to have a custom specific to celebrating the relationship between a man and a woman, which is what marriage has been in our culture until now. Indeed, even in past cultures in which homosexuality was considered completely normal and wasn't discriminated against at all, such as ancient Rome, marriage was considered a heterosexual custom and gays didn't want to take part in it any more than Christians feel excluded from Bar Mitzvah, for lack of a better comparison. And if that seems too distant an example, then how about the 1980s? Some of the earliest gay marriage advocates (was it Andrew Sullivan? I'm not sure) were met with criticism in the gay community itself, because some of its members didn't like the idea and considered it contrary to their identity. It is all a matter mindset and I feel like it's a legitimate cultural dilemma - not an issue of equality. I can empathize with people who are attached to the traditional definition of marriage and its symbolism. I don't think you have to carry any ill-feelings towards gays in order to want preserve it and I think it's the case for a significant proportion of gay marriage opponents. This point of view seems quite obvious to me and it's unfortunate that almost no gay marriage supporters recognize it, as it causes unnecessary polarization of the debate. It is a disservice to both the LGBT community, who feel more threatened than they should, and to some of the defenders of traditional marriage, who are undeservedly labelled bigots, ostracized, and even - as in the instance of Brendan Eich - disenfranchised for their cultural/religious beliefs.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
Yes, the distinction is important, but this obviously is all about the legal part - the state has no business in discriminating between sexual orientations, so the state has to either offer marriage for everyone or not at all, and the same for "civil unions". Also, I think it is confusing to say "cultural customs and rituals are not rights and don't have to be inclusive." That is largely correct from a legal perspective, but still makes for a bad society to live in. You probably legally can found a club for white people only, but it's unlikely that that would be a nice club to be in. And also, just because something has a long tradition, that does not make it non-discriminatory. Whether some gay people don't want to marry obviously is completely irrelevant to the discussion, as this is not about forcing gay people to marry. This is about the freedom for those who want to, not about forcing those who don't want to. And even if some gay people feel that it's not appropriate for other gay people to marry, it's not the job of the state to enforce that on those other gay people who actually do want to marry. And I do agree that you don't have to carry any ill-feelings towards blacks in order to want to preserve the traditional definition of who has to sit where on the bus. But that completely ignores that there are people with feelings on the other side as well - people who are excluded, people for whom sitting on "black only" seats is not just a quaint tradition. Those strong feelings about traditional roles do exist and totally are real, be it about the role of slaves, of black people, of women, ..., but that does not mean that living them does not hurt other people. We as a society can (and have to) force people to confront that they are actually causing harm with their clinging to traditional ideas, often for totally irrational reasons. That does not mean that we cannot empathize with those people who sincerely believe that they are losing something when giving up such strong-held beliefs and ideas, but we also can not accept that they hurt other people. And, really, I would want to encourage you to re-read what you write, replacing everything in it that is about gays with black people and mixed marriages and other things that we have figured out a while back, try to read it as a sincere argument. You are used to the idea that marriage is a custom specific to heterosexuals. But you have to consider that people at some point were equally used to racial segregation. There were people using the exact same arguments back then, feeling equally right about how traditionally marriage was for "people of the same race". And yet I would hope that the suggestion of a "interracial union" for those mixed couples who want to get more or less the same benefits that "one-race couples" enjoyed traditionally (so that the traditionalists can keep their tradition of what they perceive to be a real marriage) would seems utterly absurd and inappropriate to you. Then try to extrapolate from that perspective on the past to how you would view this current discussion as a person in the equally (not that) distant future. And then reconsider who is undeservedly labelled a bigot or ostracized.
- gocarsno 13y ago
  First of all, thanks for a thoughtful response. I think your comparisons between race and gender are superficial. There fundamental differences between the two concepts. We still have separate toilets for men and women, and nobody suggests it's offensive. I haven't seen fashion designers catch any flack for preparing separate collections for different genders. It is normal to sometimes seek the company of your own gender, e.g. to have "a ladies night out" - but deliberately inviting only white friends would raise eyebrows, to say the least. Nobody's weirded out by a bachelor party, either. There are many gender-related or even gender-exclusive traditions, places, institutions, and businesses. In other words, we aim for a post-racial society, in which race is considered outdated and irrelevant to personal and social relations. The gender dynamic is different. In some respects gender is, in fact, separate but equal.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
    I think the differences are far less fundamental than you think. Some places indeed do have unisex toilets nowadays, and while I think few if any people consider separate toilets explicitly offensive, at least so far, they do actually pose a problem for some people, which is why I think it is not unreasonable to consider switching to unisex toilets everywhere. The problem with the current scheme of toilet separation is that there are both people who do not identify as either explicitly male or female, and in particular people who identify as a different gender than their biological one, for those people the scheme doesn't really work (and actually sometimes leads to real-world conflicts when they are perceived by others to be overstepping boundaries when they go to the "wrong" toilet). And if you think about it, the separation doesn't really make all that much sense. After all, you don't have separate toilets at home either, do you? And it's not like you couldn't have any privacy in public toilets nowadays, which a gender separation might be a crude approximation for. Also, you have to distinguish between enforced categorisations and self-identification. A "ladies night out" probably is not really strictly about genitals, but rather a heuristic description of what kind of activities are planned, so if you happen to be a biologically male transgender, who identifies as female, and who is interested in taking part in that activity, behaving in that social role, you hopefully would not be excluded due to your biology. In particular, there is a difference between (biological) sex and social roles traditionally associated with certain biological sexes, commonly called the gender. This whole fight is not about getting rid of those roles, but rather about the freedom for each individual to choose their role independently of their biology (and also the freedom to reject both roles). Just as you can like or dislike swimming, you can like or dislike behaving according to what is traditionally considered "male" or "female" behaviour, and you should be able to choose to behave according to any of those roles as you like to, and not be forced by society to fill one of the roles because of your biology, just as you can freely choose to pursue swimming, or to not pursue swimming. That does not mean that we should ban swimming or "behaving female" or "behaving male". Also, all of this obviously is not to be confused with a distinction that is based directly on biologically determined differences. If you do only have one kind of genitals, then services for the other kind of genitals probably aren't for you, just as pedicure is not for people who don't have legs. But that's not exactly something that needs regulation or social pressure to enforce. And if you look at it from that perspective, it might actually be more analogous to race than you think: Yes, inviting only white friends would be considered weird. But inviting people "for a day of doing what was traditionally what white people did" (and by that I don't mean anything "anti-black" or anything, just typical cultural differences)? You probably would not phrase it that way, but conceptually I don't think anyone would find anything wrong with that, and I guess part of why you would not phrase it that way is simply that it's the "majority/privileged/normal" thing anyhow, so it's unusual to name it explicitly, but looking at it from the other side, consider, for example, "black music": It would be perfectly fine to have a "black music festival", but inviting only black musicians or only admitting black audience would be racist, and there also is no stigma anymore for white people to be interested in "black music", listening to it and even participating in it. It's a culture that was traditionally associated with "race", and we dropped the exclusion, but we still kept the culture, and even name it according to where it came from. As such, I would say: No, gender is different and equal, but separation as it is commonly understood should not have any place there. Just as different kinds of sports are not "separate but equal". You should be free to engage in any sports activity that you like, and you should be free to engage in any gender role that you like, and just as you usually won't find many swimmers swimming in the football stadium, you won't find many people into male roles at places where people meet "to be female", but it's noone's business to enforce some separation.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago

Yes, the distinction is important, but this obviously is all about the legal part - the state has no business in discriminating between sexual orientations, so the state has to either offer marriage for everyone or not at all, and the same for "civil unions". Also, I think it is confusing to say "cultural customs and rituals are not rights and don't have to be inclusive." That is largely correct from a legal perspective, but still makes for a bad society to live in. You probably legally can found a club for white people only, but it's unlikely that that would be a nice club to be in. And also, just because something has a long tradition, that does not make it non-discriminatory. Whether some gay people don't want to marry obviously is completely irrelevant to the discussion, as this is not about forcing gay people to marry. This is about the freedom for those who want to, not about forcing those who don't want to. And even if some gay people feel that it's not appropriate for other gay people to marry, it's not the job of the state to enforce that on those other gay people who actually do want to marry. And I do agree that you don't have to carry any ill-feelings towards blacks in order to want to preserve the traditional definition of who has to sit where on the bus. But that completely ignores that there are people with feelings on the other side as well - people who are excluded, people for whom sitting on "black only" seats is not just a quaint tradition. Those strong feelings about traditional roles do exist and totally are real, be it about the role of slaves, of black people, of women, ..., but that does not mean that living them does not hurt other people. We as a society can (and have to) force people to confront that they are actually causing harm with their clinging to traditional ideas, often for totally irrational reasons. That does not mean that we cannot empathize with those people who sincerely believe that they are losing something when giving up such strong-held beliefs and ideas, but we also can not accept that they hurt other people. And, really, I would want to encourage you to re-read what you write, replacing everything in it that is about gays with black people and mixed marriages and other things that we have figured out a while back, try to read it as a sincere argument. You are used to the idea that marriage is a custom specific to heterosexuals. But you have to consider that people at some point were equally used to racial segregation. There were people using the exact same arguments back then, feeling equally right about how traditionally marriage was for "people of the same race". And yet I would hope that the suggestion of a "interracial union" for those mixed couples who want to get more or less the same benefits that "one-race couples" enjoyed traditionally (so that the traditionalists can keep their tradition of what they perceive to be a real marriage) would seems utterly absurd and inappropriate to you. Then try to extrapolate from that perspective on the past to how you would view this current discussion as a person in the equally (not that) distant future. And then reconsider who is undeservedly labelled a bigot or ostracized.

gocarsno 13y ago
First of all, thanks for a thoughtful response. I think your comparisons between race and gender are superficial. There fundamental differences between the two concepts. We still have separate toilets for men and women, and nobody suggests it's offensive. I haven't seen fashion designers catch any flack for preparing separate collections for different genders. It is normal to sometimes seek the company of your own gender, e.g. to have "a ladies night out" - but deliberately inviting only white friends would raise eyebrows, to say the least. Nobody's weirded out by a bachelor party, either. There are many gender-related or even gender-exclusive traditions, places, institutions, and businesses. In other words, we aim for a post-racial society, in which race is considered outdated and irrelevant to personal and social relations. The gender dynamic is different. In some respects gender is, in fact, separate but equal.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
  I think the differences are far less fundamental than you think. Some places indeed do have unisex toilets nowadays, and while I think few if any people consider separate toilets explicitly offensive, at least so far, they do actually pose a problem for some people, which is why I think it is not unreasonable to consider switching to unisex toilets everywhere. The problem with the current scheme of toilet separation is that there are both people who do not identify as either explicitly male or female, and in particular people who identify as a different gender than their biological one, for those people the scheme doesn't really work (and actually sometimes leads to real-world conflicts when they are perceived by others to be overstepping boundaries when they go to the "wrong" toilet). And if you think about it, the separation doesn't really make all that much sense. After all, you don't have separate toilets at home either, do you? And it's not like you couldn't have any privacy in public toilets nowadays, which a gender separation might be a crude approximation for. Also, you have to distinguish between enforced categorisations and self-identification. A "ladies night out" probably is not really strictly about genitals, but rather a heuristic description of what kind of activities are planned, so if you happen to be a biologically male transgender, who identifies as female, and who is interested in taking part in that activity, behaving in that social role, you hopefully would not be excluded due to your biology. In particular, there is a difference between (biological) sex and social roles traditionally associated with certain biological sexes, commonly called the gender. This whole fight is not about getting rid of those roles, but rather about the freedom for each individual to choose their role independently of their biology (and also the freedom to reject both roles). Just as you can like or dislike swimming, you can like or dislike behaving according to what is traditionally considered "male" or "female" behaviour, and you should be able to choose to behave according to any of those roles as you like to, and not be forced by society to fill one of the roles because of your biology, just as you can freely choose to pursue swimming, or to not pursue swimming. That does not mean that we should ban swimming or "behaving female" or "behaving male". Also, all of this obviously is not to be confused with a distinction that is based directly on biologically determined differences. If you do only have one kind of genitals, then services for the other kind of genitals probably aren't for you, just as pedicure is not for people who don't have legs. But that's not exactly something that needs regulation or social pressure to enforce. And if you look at it from that perspective, it might actually be more analogous to race than you think: Yes, inviting only white friends would be considered weird. But inviting people "for a day of doing what was traditionally what white people did" (and by that I don't mean anything "anti-black" or anything, just typical cultural differences)? You probably would not phrase it that way, but conceptually I don't think anyone would find anything wrong with that, and I guess part of why you would not phrase it that way is simply that it's the "majority/privileged/normal" thing anyhow, so it's unusual to name it explicitly, but looking at it from the other side, consider, for example, "black music": It would be perfectly fine to have a "black music festival", but inviting only black musicians or only admitting black audience would be racist, and there also is no stigma anymore for white people to be interested in "black music", listening to it and even participating in it. It's a culture that was traditionally associated with "race", and we dropped the exclusion, but we still kept the culture, and even name it according to where it came from. As such, I would say: No, gender is different and equal, but separation as it is commonly understood should not have any place there. Just as different kinds of sports are not "separate but equal". You should be free to engage in any sports activity that you like, and you should be free to engage in any gender role that you like, and just as you usually won't find many swimmers swimming in the football stadium, you won't find many people into male roles at places where people meet "to be female", but it's noone's business to enforce some separation.