This morning, BBC news magazine posted an article entitled "The gay people against gay marriage" discussing the various positions taken by members of the LGBT community against the vaguely defined notion of "same-sex marriage". However, as often happens with a tricky tangle of issues like this one (and one brimming with emotional fervour and firmly held convictions) opinions and views on a variety of questions are thrown together as opposing arguments to a single question. Perhaps this is intentional to pose a more striking headline and solicit reader reaction, but as a confusion i seem to come across all the time in conversation i think its worth the intellectual exercise of trying to untangle this particularly common miscommunication.
Essentially, the confusion arises from the distinction between the two possible questions the journalist could have posed to the individuals he was interviewing and those the individuals being interviewed understoof as being asked. These questions could be formulated as follows:
1) "do you think that homosexuals should be enabled/capacitated to contract a union with the same rights and responsibilites as a traditional marriage?" (what i will call ´the legal reform question´)
2) "do you think that a union between a homosexual couple should be given the same social recognition/linguisitc denomination as a traditional marriage?" (what i will call ´the social recognition question´).
Differentiated in this way, it is clear that one need not answer the second question in the positive if they have so answered the first. Further, the relative political aims of those campaigning for legal reform and social recognition can be much more simply distinguished.
For, as i understand it, most western homosexual couple tend to hold to a libertarian philosophical slant or if not we could at least agree that it would be to thier great benefit to campaign for legal equality capacitating them to contract relationships containing the "bundle of rights" similarly contained in a traditional marriage. This is the sense in which i think we would generally consider "gay people" being "for gay marriage". However, in response to the second question the article duly notes that although a heteronormative might (somewhat patronisingly from their perspective) presume that same sex couples might aspire to the social recognition of a traditional marriage, it is completely understandable that many may not, and indeed resent the suggestion that they should. This is the group of responses which celebrates the distinct nature of civil partnership, reproaches "contortions" or religious traditions to accomodate same sex coupels or is generally ambivalent about everything aside from "the legal stuff".
And this i feel is correct, if not in fact crucially important to the political neutrality of the legal system. In my homosexual couples generally should campaign for legal equality and capacity to organise their affairs in the same way heterosexual couples are able to; the relative legal and philosophical merits of this proposition being able to be debated and discussed in an openly professional, expert environment. Quite distinct should be kept the social issue of how we are to percieve the effects of this freedom of action: people who want society to view their relationship as a "beautiful marriage" and not an "unholy abomination" have the unenviable task of needing to change opinions - "hearts and minds" - and this is not a change which can simply be legislated for. People are not going to wake up tomorrow and say that since today i am legally obliged to call it a "beautiful marriage" my views yesterday on it being an "unholy abomination" are totally forgotten. One might convincingly argue that it being enshrined in law as "the state´s view" could have a powerful long term effect on perceptions but this brings us back to the question of what perception we (if we were the state) would want to create if this were so.
And so it is my view, which is wary of my own heteronormative upbringing, that the social recognition question should generally be kept apart from the legal reform question, barring an overwhelming community consensus in one direction or the other. That is to say that the relative merits of homosexual coupels being given equal rights should be debated professionally in one arena and the relative merits of homosexual couples being socially or linguistically recognised as a married couple debated in quite another - the state only making a declaratory legislative statement on the latter if it is clear that by that point the vast majority of the LGBT community wish to be percieved in one way or t´other.
The meat of these debates should hopefully be the subject of a later post.
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