I’m starting to think opponents of same-sex marriage talk to their followers and themselves the way I talk to my dogs.
Long ago I began saying to my Shepherd-mix Lucas, “Who is you? Who is you? You is you!” while roughly scratching his neck or flanks. It has no meaning but it doesn’t need one. The tone of voice is all that matters. It’s just a reassuring noise I make.
Maggie Gallagher offers much the same in the National Review, answering the question, “How does same-sex marriage affect marriage’s relationship to procreation, given infertile couples may marry?”
She begins with a pre-emptive warning:
I have made this argument repeatedly. I understand you either disagree with it or can’t hear it.
I see a third option right away: I can hear what she’s about to say, but I don’t disagree with it, because I don’t understand it. It has no meaning, and I’m no longer sure it’s meant to. I can’t say I disagree with something that’s no more than a meaningless reassuring noise.
Here it is:
Childless and older couples are part of the natural lifecycle of marriage. Their presence in the mix doesn’t imply anything about the relationship between marriage and procreation. They’ve always been there.
Let’s start with “the natural lifecycle of marriage.” What on earth does she mean? So many undefined terms: natural and lifecycle and even marriage — does she mean individual marriages or the institution itself? Alas, she merely drops this proposition as if it were self-evident when it’s really just opaque.
Perhaps (and this is the only sense I can make of it) she means it’s not unusual for specific married couples to go through periods of time in which they have no children, and then do have children, and then are too old to procreate. But of course that would have nothing to do with the question she claims to address, which concerns couples who are infertile or old for the entirety of their marriage, for whom these traits are not merely part of their marriage’s “lifecycle.”
And of those couples, can you truly say:
“Their presence in the mix doesn’t imply anything about the relationship between marriage and procreation.”
Of course not. Their presence “in the mix,” their eagerness to marry, the joy we feel for two 75 year-olds experiencing new love — all these things tell us that marriage is not solely about procreation, or even necessarily about procreation at all. Her statement to the contrary is so clearly false that it makes even less sense than me telling Lucas, “You is you!” which at least has the virtue of being true.
Finally, this:
They’ve always been there.
I have no idea what she means to establish. This is the part making me wonder if she’s referring not to individual marriages but to the institution itself, in which case…two things. First, she needs to back waaay up and explain what she means by the natural lifecycle of marriage as an institution. And second, she needs to recognize that if infertile and old couples have always been part of that institution, then procreation has never been a necessary part of the institution.
So her entire paragraph is meaningless. In her next paragraph, she goes further and establishes that even she doesn’t understand what she’s saying.
I went around saying for years “marriage matters because children need a mom and a dad” nobody ever said: that’s not true because infertile couples can marry. Never, not once. Sexual union of male and female who are co-parents in itself points to affirms, and regulates an ideal.
Of course no one has ever given Maggie that reply. It would make no sense. However…if Maggie were to say, “The only reason marriage matters is because children need a mom and dad,” it would be perfectly appropriate for us to answer, “That’s not true because infertile couples can marry.”*
And in fact, we do say such things to her. In fact, that’s the point of the question her whole argument is supposed to be answering.
And here’s where we get to the Maggie’s fundamental flaw. She fails to see the enormous difference between these two statements:
- Responsible procreation is an important reason for marriage.
- Responsible procreation is the only important reason for marriage.
The first statement is true, but doesn’t rule out marriage for old, infertile, or same-sex couples.
The second statement might rule out such marriages (and if so, then all such marriages), but no one actually believes it — not even Maggie Gallagher.
Folks like Maggie, though, tend say #1 and then pretend they’ve established #2. It’s the only way they can make an argument people might agree with, might find plausible if they don’t look at it too closely, might endorse as long as it stays at the level of reassuring noise.
So I’m struck again by how Maggie opened her article:
I have made this argument repeatedly. I understand you either disagree with it or can’t hear it.
That’s ironic and appropriate. We’ve answered her argument repeatedly, but she literally cannot hear it. Why not? Because she does not understand her own argument, and until that’s fixed, she cannot possibly hear our reply.
*We might also point out the she’s never been able to prove or even offer evidence that children need a mom and dad. The closest she’s ever come is to show kids do best in a stable, loving home with two committed parents.