gay marriage hypothesis

I think I may have mentioned a few weeks back, I was watching CNN for a moment, and they were staging the debate over gay marriage, with a CNN moderator who was obviously all in favor of gay marriage. I say "obviously" because of the following: as the polling data came up on screen, it showed that every age group was significantly opposed to gay marriage by huge majorities except one, 18-29 year olds, who were largely supportive of gay marriage. The woman spokesperson for a traditional marriage group observed something like "the data shows that the younger, the less experienced you are, the less you've lived, the more likely you are to favor gay marriage," to which the host (not the gay marriage proponent proper but the "objective" host) replied, "it's been my experience that there's a lot of wisdom [!] in young people that we could learn from." Got that? People in their 30s and 40s and 60s and 70s should look to college kids for their wisdom. They're such sages. Who better to know about what marriage is and requires than people living in dorms or with a group of friends who like to throw keggers on Fridays?

One is tempted to say that if 18-29 year olds are our society's font of wisdom, perhaps CNN is not the place to go for savvy social commentary, but rather MTV or maybe Nickelodeon. Anywho...

But what occurred to me only later was this: very few people marry while in their teens or early twenties, so maybe, just maybe, the salient piece of data that CNN didn't offer was the polling data about gay marriage that addressed whether the poll respondent was or was not married. I started to notice in my own life that my friends who were most loudly trumpeting gay marriage were themselves single. Was it not so much age but marital status that made the difference?

So, this a.m. I decided to look and see if I could find that little piece of data, and I came across an ABC News poll that more or less confirmed the hypothesis. Yes, it's true, twentysomethings are the only age group with a majority in favor of gay marriage, but the more important fact, to my mind, was this: Unmarried people are in favor of gay marriage by a 48-47 split; among married people, 28 percent are in favor and 63 percent are opposed.

Now THAT is an interesting number! What does it say about "gay marriage" that by a far greater than two-to-one margin, people who actually know what marriage is are opposed? What does it say that the majority of support for revising marriage so radically comes from people with zero experience of marriage?

Finally, this data could complicate the constant claims that since young people are so "tolerant," gay marriage is inevitable, because as the older die off, blah blah blah. For if marriage itself makes one more likely to defend traditional marriage, the fact that young unmarrieds are for gay marriage hardly means that they will stay that way forever.

Another factor that may apply is the de-sensitizaiton to "gay-ness" that has occurred in the younger group.

I have one in college and one getting ready to go and, one thing that is different since I attended is the number of images, articles, and groups of gay couples that are prevelant on campuses today.

I remember still being shocked when seeing two guys holding hands. In the the entry-way to a student center we visited was a display that included images of guys kissing, gay couples with childeren, ect... If you saw this everyday (and more) for four years, you wouldn't be shocked anymore.

I absolutely agree with your statement regarding the youth being the sages of our society.

I also noticed at almost every entertainment award show, there is now the profucntuary statement regarding support for gay marriage.

a la, "by the way, I'm a big open-minded tolerant lover of human rights...and the Tony goes to Liza!", is another curious matter. It seems like a bit of moral exhibitionism, and I wonder how much of the support isn't just posturing for the cameras, so to speak. I tend to doubt the sincerity of the more boastful political positions, as they seem more about certifying the virtue of the person who espouses them than about the people they purport to benefit.

that I always notice about that "younger person" statistic, too--kids tend to want to rebel against the older generation, and often become more socially conservative as they grow older. Having children changes a lot of your social views, as well.

Stihl, I like your point as well, though, about the desensitization. I sometimes joke that HG TV does more for norming homosexuality than any other form of media. On the other hand, it also reinforces stereotypes--gay guys whose homes are immaculate and beautifully decorated, etc..

What is interesting to me is that in certain settings, such as university campuses, the sense that is given is that it's a done deal. We "know" what homosexuality is, we "know" that it's precisely analogous to race or ethnicity. Given that, the approach makes sense, I suppose: the "look, we're just like you" approach to a kind of integration.

Unlike some of our acquaintances over at syracuse, I can actually entertain an "if you believe x, then what would you say about y" scenario. And if I believed that sexual orientation was both innately biological and immutable AND essentially separate from morality--like skin or eye color--I would have to follow the line that gay activists are currently following. I get their argument. The thing is, I feel that it's a false analogy for a number of reasons. This is what never gets discussed, in any public forum that I've seen. It's what you're not allowed to talk about publicly--the fact that all of us know people who were once gay, and now aren't, or who were once straight, and now aren't, and how there seems to be all kinds of slippage in gender and sexual orientation, so much so that it seems that choice does play a role in gayness. I've known too many women for whom lesbianism was the ultimate statement of their feminist sensibilities to not question what is now put out there as common knowledge.

But let's imagine we could talk about it--the fact that gayness seems not to be exactly like race or gender. I wonder what would happen--why are we so resistant to opening up this particular issue?

innate homosexual desires, in some cases are physical traits. But....being gay is cultural, there is a huge difference.

What Traditional society expects from the individual is to suppress homosexaul desires and not act on them. This is opposed to repressing which would mean denying the existence of the homosexual desire.

But, there are lots of physical desires we ask members of society to suppress or control. Where we are now waffling on are those desires they do not have a direct impact on others (hey, I'm not hurting anybody else). But, everything we do evetually has an impact.

I suppose you have heard that the two very upfront lesbians we knew in grad school, B & L, are no longer an item, and that L has moved on to heterosexuality. Mrs Joe finds that very perplexing! But then I think of Anne Heche and I think of Corin Tucker, the singer for a riot grrl band I liked, who went from very politically queer to married to a man and mother of a child. WTF? It's not exactly eye color or race, is it?

Marriage always existed. The Jewish attempt to recognize this fact of human life is found in Genesis. In the Jewish understanding, human beings are inherently and -- through their very human nature -- called to share their lives with one another. This is especially true between a man and a woman, whose complementarity can be life-giving and creative, participating in the very divine nature of the Creator. Not all other early cultures AGREED with the Jewish understanding, of course, but history does bear out an understanding that a man and a woman belong together, and every culture found ways to celebrate such an undertaking. So, is marriage a "right"? Certainly it is, and as I tried to say somewhat humorously before, in many cultures it was seen as an obligation.

Culturally, marriage was often seen as simply a matter of social contract, where "goods and services" were transferred from one party to another. The "rite of manumission" (the tradition of the father "giving away the bride") has its roots there. The father had the legal rights and obligations related to his daughter; by this act he transferred those rights and obligations to the groom; the father was no longer legally responsible for his daughter. Other traditions, such as dowries and so on, developed as well. Was the wife often considered part of the "package deal" of "property"? Yes. But this is how those cultures sought -- on a positive note -- to keep order and to be clear who was responsible for whom.

Now let's move on to Christian history. A couple of facts: Believers, of course, were to be found in a variety of cultures from the very beginning. Even in the New Testament we read of Jewish followers of Christ (such as Peter and Andrew), of Jewish followers who were also Roman citizens (such as Paul), of people from around the known world OUTSIDE of Judaism (just re-read the passage from Acts we just had on Pentecost). Each of these cultures had different ways of regarding natural and legal marriage. So, fact number one: early Christians weren't interested in getting involved with creating a NEW system of marriage: if the state was taking care of it, that was fine. The regulation of marriage was always seen, by the Church, as a matter for the state to handle. And, as long as the State was taking care of it, the Church didn't need to. This is why, for example, that we don't find much church legislation or ritual regarding marriage until the Middle Ages, after the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of a more decentralized system in the West known as feudalism. This does not mean that the Church wasn't INTERESTED in marriage; it's just that the rites of marriage were more focused on the State. Remember that until American and French revolutions, starting back with Constantine in the Fourth Century, Church and State worked together. They were seen as TWO "perfect" societies; that is, societies that had complete authority within themselves to govern, raise taxes, enact laws, raise armies and so forth ("Perfect" here did NOT mean that they were MORALLY perfect; rather, it refers to a sense of complete autonomy and autochthony). This is why things have always been a bit strained between Church officials in Rome and the Church in America: we began to speak of Church and State as distinct realities, whereas from the 4th Century through the 18th Century, it was always "Church AND State" working together. Both Church and State were seen as called and blessed by God: the State to care for all of the human needs of people, and the Church to care for specifically spiritual needs; they were partners, and for some things the State was in charge, and for other things, the Church was in charge. Consider the old title of "Holy Roman Empire" for example. Marriage was seen as falling properly in the domain of the State. This is NOT to say that the Church was not interested in marriage! Far from it; but in the compartmentalization of responsibilities, this was first a responsibility of the State; how the couple lived AFTER they were married was of particular concern to the Church. But the state of the marriage (including things like divorce, civil annulment and so forth) were matters for the State. This gets complicated from the very start of the Constantinian era, however, since Constantine makes Christian bishops Roman judges (that's where the ring and the miter come from: these were signs of the Roman judge); sometimes the bishop was acting in his civil capacity, and sometimes he was acting in his ecclesial capacity.

Any reference to Cana as the "first sacramental marriage" won't wash, as homiletically attractive as it might be. The story of Cana has really nothing whatsoever to do with marriage, but with Jesus' first public act of ministry at the request of Mary. In fact, most of us would highlight the Eucharistic overtones of the event, not the matrimonial. We don't know what the first "sacramental" marriage was. The first Church legislation that we find (or at least its one of the earliest things I'm aware of) concerning marriage involved the marriages of clergy! When a bishop, presbyter, or deacon wished to get married, THESE marriages were to be performed IN THE CHURCH, since they were church ministers and the responsibility for church things rested with the Church, not the State. So, notice that this means that clergy were marrying AFTER ordination, which was always seen as something highly unusual in the later Church.

Eventually, in the early Middle Ages, the Church got more involved in the legal aspects of marriage since the State was no longer as well equipped to do so. By the 12th and 13th Centuries, the church had developed its own laws regarding marriage and conditions regarding divorce. In other words, the "list of responsibilities" between Church and State evolved so that the Church took on greater responsibility for what had originally been a responsibility of the State. Still, the marriage ceremony itself was more often than not done OUTSIDE of the church. For example, it was not unusual for a marriage ceremony to be conducted at the side entrance ("under the porch") of the church. Notice -- OUTSIDE the church. The side door was usually closest to the priest's house next door. Then, AFTER the CIVIL celebration of marriage under the outside porch, the wedding party MIGHT go into the church and celebrate the Mass, for the first time now as a married couple; but this was optional. This is also why at this time we begin to find ritual books containing rites of marriage: since the church was getting increasingly involved in the actual celebration of marriage rites, some guidelines were needed. Also, the Church needed to keep records about all of this, FOR LEGAL PURPOSES, so the system of canons regarding marriage expanded greatly.

So, to summarize: First, to marry is a natural right and, in the view of some cultures -- such as the Hebraic -- an obligation given by God to human nature itself as part of God's creation. Second, historically, the responsibility to handle the legal aspects of marriage, since it involved the transfer of property rights, money, land, etc.) was seen by early Christians to be a proper matter for the State to regulate; Christians were more concerned about what happened to the couple AFTER they were married, or what was to happen if a Christian wanted to marry a non-Christian. Eventually, as political and social climates evolved in Europe, the Church became increasingly engaged in the civil aspects of marriage. This does NOT mean that "the sacrament" of Matrimony didn't exist prior to this; it just means that the church and state cooperated in the thing. The CIVIL marriage of two Christians -- EVEN TODAY -- and even if they marry in the presence of a judge or justice of the peace, is still seen as potentially a sacrament. Classic case from canon law: if two baptized Christians get married by a JP, then later divorce, and one of them later wants to marry a Catholic, is an annulment needed? Yes, because that person was a baptized Christian and potentially could have been living in a marriage we would consider sacramental, even though the person involved may not have thought of it as a sacrament. WE do.

I could go on, but let's see if this helps for a start.

Was that post all original from you or paraphrased from somewhere else? Either way, I'm impressed and would welcome the opportunity for future exchanges here between the two of us.