From A Tenable Belief:
In an April 29 column in The Washington Post, William Saletan “notes that 6,000-7,000 couples have taken up covenant marriage since 1997, and over 40,000 gay and lesbian couples have taken their commitments to the maximum level allowed, be it registering as domestic partners, civil unions, or marriage….”
Fewer than one percent of heterosexual couples have upgraded their marriages at a time when self-described moral conservatives have succeeded in passing constitutional “protection” of these lackluster couples from the threat of loyal and monogamous same-sex-attracted couples.
Given the unpopularity of truly committed marriage among the religious rightists, in all seriousness why not permit covenant marriages for gay couples?
Covenant marriage is an “upgrade” and “truly committed”?Says who?
Not to self-promote too much, but I have a response to this at Gay Spirituality and Culture. There are a couple of problems with his proposal:
1. Many gay couples getting married essentially have been, for 30 years. How condescending is it to ask them to go through premarital counseling, etc. etc?
2. The covenant marriage movement, as Mr. Saletan avoids saying, is primarily a religious revival. The way they interpret marriage promotes headship/patriarchal systems of family, reduces sexuality to a binary system, and writes that into the creation of the world (Christ/church = male/female).
3. Saletan argues that you can’t just demand marriage, but you must earn it. Unfortunately, that isn’t true, from the perspective of the number of failed heterosexual marriages out there. But that’s a different point–from a civil perspective, with the right blood tests and paperwork, and both parties being of appropriate age, you sure as hell can demand marriage. Unless you’re gay.
Sorry, but though his proposal tries to get ‘both sides’, he manages only to insult the justly motivated fight for equality, and to mix civil and religious marriage into one big mush. That’s why we are getting nowhere in the public debate–unlike his claim that it is an unwarranted ‘demand’ for a ‘right’ which marriage is not.
More detail at the URL attached to this post.
And yes, grant and dale are right–covenant marriage isn’t an ‘upgrade’, but a different concept of marriage altogether. Marriage between same-sex partners can be a covenant (as opposed to a contract), but not in the terms of this particular movement.
Thanks, CK.
The link inside your first message was broken (it was missing the http) so I’ve updated it to point to the permalink for your analysis.
“…and to mix civil and religious marriage into one big mush.”
And that is the crux of the whole same-sex marriage debate.
It’s probably high time that the US come out of the puritan era and separate the civil aspect from the religious aspect of marriage. That way, if a denomination did not support same-sex marriage they wouldn’t have to worry about it. Churches can already refuse to marry any couple they deem unfit to be married in their churches anyway.
Also, I’m somehow very uncomfortable with a clergyperson presiding over what is in effect a civil matter, and I would think the clergy themselves would probably think the same thing if they really sat down and thought about it.
Okay–I know this is probably off-topic, but I don’t know where to put this question on the boards. I finally saw I Do Exist. While the DVD has a softer edge than other antigay documentaries, its intentions are fairly clear. I love when talking about gay stuff, you see sleazy pictures, but everything is bright and shiny if it is dealing with exgay stuff. Anyhow, the interviews seemed pretty forced and awkward, and I did not quite buy anyone’s story. However, Noe Gutierrez seemed the most humble and approachable. I did not buy him saying that he was now exclusively heterosexual, and his comments there seemed forced. He offers no proof that he is now straight even though he says he is. So I go online looking for Noe’s site. It is no longer available. My question is what happened to Noe?
Looks like Noe still owns his domain name, deepbluefusion.com, but the site is no longer hosted anywhere. Dr. Throckmorton’s site still lists Noe’s site on his links page; some of his own homepage links (to his editorials, and truthcomesout.com) are dead; the Truth Comes Out CD (on which Noe appears) is still for sale at CDBaby.com. Generally, there just aren’t clear signs of 2006 updates to Throckmorton’s site, so none of this speaks to me as being anything out of the ordinary for a slightly neglected site.
A whole lotta nuthin, in summary… I just hope he is well wherever he is.
Saletan’s proposal has a tongue in cheek aura. If you consider that if “covenant marriage” were the only kind gays and lesbians could enter into, there would be more lesbians and gays in covenant marriages than straights. That “thought experiment” is worth a chuckle or two.
And ~who~ was it exactly that the RR said was changing the definition of marriage? Gay people?
Oh yeah, right, hypocrisy strikes again – self righteousness masquerading as righteousness.
Actually, these statistics are as revealing as the FOTF advice on marrying an ex-gay.
Anti-gay Couples Avoid Covenant Marriage.[This article]
Advice from FOTF related media on marrying an ex-gay who could not admit to being opposite sex attracted [sorry, cannot find the link, it’s been archived on this site]
Those two article tell you all you need to know about the politically motivated ex-gay and anti-gay movements!
Aaron, I’m glad you noticed that. And it’s something that I’ve picked up on and commented on before.
Perhaps the gay folks here might agree, but I can’t speak for them.
But being straight isn’t a deliberate declaration and what does that really mean in one’s life?
I mentioned that heterosexuality isn’t a chosen orientation, so that anyone who had a life as a gay person, wouldn’t come off as authentically convincing they were no longer gay.
There are the trappings of straight life: opposite sex spouse, maybe kids.
But NOBODY just casually qualifies a married couple’s sex lives in the public discourse. There are assumptions that are made, but the imagination is left at the bedroom door.
Nobody questions frequency, or quality.
Unless one or the other spouse complains to a confidante…that’s something NO ONE would dare to ask questions on.
So having the opposite sex spouse and children is meaningless in qualifying one’s orientation, right?
However, EX GAYS are invested in convincing straight people that they aren’t gay.
They also are invested in convincing gay people of it too.
But then, that would take some acting. Some sort of acquired persona.
Even actors who get paid millions to be someone else, don’t do it 24/7. There is a lot of pressure. In public life, and definitely in private life.
And the opposite sex spouse isn’t likely to want to think they failed to help their formerly gay spouse maintain a robust new orientation.
When it’s all said and done, it IS like breast implants.
You can show them off to all your friends, and convince some people that can’t see you without your clothes that they are yours.
But they are still NOT real.
I hope I didn’t make this difficult to keep the thread going that is on topic.
But Aaron reminded me of something that was bugging me at the time.