Sullivan gives this Mike Potemra quote a “Yglesias Award” nomination, which is given to “writers, politicians, columnists or pundits who actually criticize their own side, make enemies among political allies, and generally risk something for the sake of saying what they believe.” The quote:
“As someone who favors gay marriage, I think this Sanford scandal underscores a central truth. The anti-gay-marriage forces are stuck making a slippery-slope argument when, in fact, we’re already at the bottom of the slippery slope. Here’s a guy, Sanford, who has not just not a moral and religious incentive to keep his marriage vows, but also a political-survival incentive. Yet the public sense of the sacredness of marriage has declined to the point that even he couldn’t do it. How much more could this institution be eviscerated, by letting a tiny, tiny minority of same-sexers join it? (Gays are a small fraction of the population, and the percentage of them who want to get married is a small fraction of the small fraction. The issue is, as the lawyers say, de minimis.)”
We’ll call this the “What’s another torpedo in a sinking ship?” approach. He still is claiming that allowing gays to marry will “eviscerate” the institution of marriage, all he is claiming is that it won’t be by much. I reject that. I think letting people who love each other enter into marriage strengthens the institution. And it doesn’t matter if they are gay or straight.
*** Update ***
Mike writes in:
I’m not saying gay marriage will eviscerate marriage. As a supporter of gay marriage, I was confronting one of the arguments against it by asking a rhetorical question. I was pointing out that the consequences some fear will result from gay marriage have already in fact happened, so they do not constitute a strong argument against gay marriage.
Fair enough.
wvng
I noticed that as well. I think he screwed up the category.
asiangrrlMN
Yeah, I’m with you on this one, John. WTF? “Now that we’ve shit all over it, it’s all yours. You can’t do any worse.” Thanks.
wvng, actually, I don’t think Sully did. Potemra is from NRO, so any support of gay marriage from him is verboten. Still, this sounds awfully like being grateful for crumbs to me.
taylormattd
I think you are reading that wrong.
To me, he seems to be saying the following: “even if, as the anti-marriage people argue, gay marriage is bad for the institution, how much worse could marriage get by letting a few gays marry? I mean really, it’s being eviscerated by assholes like Stanford.”
zoe kentucky
We’ve heard this cynical argument before and it all comes down to how much many straight people denigrate marriage– somewhere along the lines of “hey, they should have the right to be miserable like the rest of us.”
Regardless, it’s a pretty crappy way to say that we deserve equal rights and protections.
dmsilev
No one has ever convincingly explained to me how the existence of gays getting married has any particular impact on their own marriage. Not “the sacred institution of marriage”, but their own specific marriage. Unless their spouse is a closeted gay/lesbian and is just waiting for an opportunity to run off to Vegas to tie the knot with their lover, I’m just not seeing it.
Meantime, God has yet to smite the People’s Republic of Massachusetts for their sinful ways (at least not as of last Sunday, which was the last time I talked with my parents, who live in the Boston area). Or any of the other states that have legalized same-sex marriage.
-dms
Death By Mosquito Truck
Meh, I don’t think other marriages, good or bad, impact my marriage.
Riggsveda
Well said, John.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
.
That’s a very articulate observation. My only problem with it is that the idea reinforces the (in my view) foolish notion that government should decide what marriage is and who gets to do it or what the rules are. People should get to decide that. Within really wide boundaries.
Right now, “marriage” belongs to the religious assholes and the sex police. They have done a really great job with it. A great job of fucking it up, I mean. I’d like to take it away from them and let people decide for themselves what marriage, family and next of kin really mean.
RedKitten (formerly Krista - the Canadian one)
Wait, wait, wait.
I thought that Sanford screwed around because one year ago, he clairvoyantly saw that Obama was going to become President and basically said “Fuck it, the world is over anyway, I may as well get me some.” Now, we’re hearing that he screwed around because the fact that teh gays want to get married was enough to render his own marriage utterly meaningless, null and void?
Are these people sniffing glue? Do they even listen to themselves anymore? And why is their every utterance not greeted with derisive laughter followed by a hearty smack upside the head?
Death By Mosquito Truck
And this?? The marriage battle doesn’t have anything to do with love. It’s about tradition, money and humanity, not necessarily in that order.
Comrade Stuck
It’s the wingnut wail from losing the culture wars. the writing is on the wall with the dawning of a new generation, and now they respond with, well it’s all fucked up anyway, so who cares. Sour grapes and the world record for being wrong on principle and never admitting it
Poor babies.
Surabaya Stew
Me thinks that Mr. Potemra was being tongue-in-cheek when talking about the “sacredness” of marriage. Others might see it differently, but I think the “Yglesias Award” nomination is deserved.
The Grand Panjandrum
I can proudly say my newly adopted state of NH now has marriage equality. I am thrilled for my neighbors will now have the benefits and rights I currently enjoy. It’s really a no-brainer.
demkat620
Yeah, I don’t want to hear anymore from the “Culture Warriors”
Full rights for all citizens. No more separate but equal.
Marriage and repeal DADT.
And call it marriage not gay marriage. Give them their rights.
gbear
John Cole + Gay Marriage + Comments = Reason to avoid this thread.
I’m heading out for an evening scooter ride and a scoop of Black Hills Gold at The Grand Creamery.
Comrade Stuck
@gbear:
= wisdom
Xanthippas
Well, I think he can suck it. Gays are getting marriage whether the culture warriors want to “let” them in on it or not.
JL
The rep who introduced the marriage between a man and woman law in GA was divorced and had committed adultery. Family values and stuff some times takes the back seat.
Jon H
@RedKitten (formerly Krista – the Canadian one): “Now, we’re hearing that he screwed around because the fact that teh gays want to get married was enough to render his own marriage utterly meaningless, null and void?”
That’s clearly not what he said.
He seems to me to be poking at the NRO-ites who think marriage is sacred and special and gay marriage would tarnish it.
Jon H
@Xanthippas: “Well, I think he can suck it. Gays are getting marriage whether the culture warriors want to “let” them in on it or no”
Work on your reading skills. He said he supported gay marriage.
vg
Really? I thought the bizarre part was this:
Here’s a guy, Sanford, who has not just not a moral and religious incentive to keep his marriage vows, but also a political-survival incentive. Yet the public sense of the sacredness of marriage has declined to the point that even he couldn’t do it.
Not only does the author seem to think this is a reflection of general decline in moral values in society (and that it’s really the public’s immorality that caused this), but he thinks there’s been a major change in recent years in the frequency of adulterous affairs amongst people in positions of power. Astonishing.
JL
@gbear: People can accuse me of skimming a post cuz I do but clearly what John said was
Xanthippas
Or, work on yours. I’m clearly referring to his use of the term “let.”
Genine
Maybe I’m off, but I definitely didn’t read it that way. I saw what he was saying as “tongue-in-cheek.” He wasn’t really saying that marriage is on the decline, so let the gays have it. He was pointing out the double-standard on the right-wing thinking of marriage.
But, I could be wrong.
Comrade Stuck
People have been cheating on their spouses since the first married couple. Nothing new. The difference is that social mores have changed to allow married people who hate each other to get divorced more easily, sparing children from growing up in an atmosphere of forced cohabitation. That is all that has changed and it has nothing to do with an increase in randy politicians and proposed gay marriage. Once gays can marry freely they will just as freely come to hate their spouses in equal numbers with straights and life will go merrily on.
Indylib
I’ll tell you what has killed the “sacredness” of marriage – the loosening up of the social restrictions on divorce. It’s really that simple. No one’s else’s marriage or lack of marriage effects marriages in general, but the ability to go into a marriage knowing that you can get a divorce and not suffer social ostracism has made staying or not staying married as much of a choice as deciding to get married in the first place. It’s usually expensive, usually painful, but it is no longer something for which you are shunned by the neighbors for doing.The religious wingnuts won’t admit this or come out against divorce because too many of them want the ability to get out of a bad marriage (bad being a very subjective term) themselves. This is the same kind of hypocrisy they spew about stem-cell research. The scream about the blastocysts that are destroyed to do stem-cell research, but don’t seem to have a problem with the thousand tossed in the trash every year when the expiration date is up at the fertility clinic. Why? Because they want the ability for themselves or their family and friends to use fertility clinics if they can’t conceive naturally. edit sorry about the run-on paragraph, I spilled coffee in my keyboard yesterday and my return button won’t work.
RedKitten (formerly Krista - the Canadian one)
Jon H — I think the way it’s written, it really could be interpreted either way
Indylib
@Surabaya Stew: That’s what I figured, too, until I realized that he was writing from a bunker in Greater Wingnuttia (NRO). I think context matters here.
JL
@Comrade Stuck: I agree, because why would gay marriage affect my children anymore than the gays next door would. They wouldn’t.
What’s interesting where I live is the asshole who introduced the bill in my state was concerned about his children about gays but not about his own actions and his own penis. I am so tired about the self righteousness that is being aired on TV.
Today I actually felt sorry for Sanford after reading his love emails. It was like reading Bridges over Madison County or something until I said hello he is making his own decisions and I actually hated Bridges over Madison County.
MikeJ
In the US there was never any social restriction on divorce, just financial. There are any number of movies from the golden age of Hollywood about the great fun people had going to Reno to live for six weeks to get a divorce. If you could afford to travel three thousand miles to live on a dude ranch for a month and a half there was no disgrace in getting a divorce.
“Social restrictions” exist to keep poor people in line.
WyldPirate
Yes, marriage has been “eviscerated”.
We all should think back to fond “good old days” of marriage when it was the norm for real men to be able to beat the hell out of their wives and children at will. And let’s not forget that secure feeling real men had that their neighbors would most likely “mind their own business” and that their women had few alternatives to stop being their husbands punching bag.
/sarcasm off
Marriage ain’t a walk in the park for everyone, just like life.
KG
@28: yeah, but the context is:
1. he supports gay marriage
2. he’s criticizing the socons who have eviscerated marriage enough on their own
3. he’s point out their own inconsistencies and stupidity – you know, what the rest of us do on a daily basis.
The other way to look at it is to say, he agrees with the basic socon position that marriage is being destroyed, but that it’s being destroyed by hetrosexuals, not homosexuals, thus arguing that allowing gays to marriage is a non-starter anyway. By ceding a point to his opponents (rightly or wrongly), he’s making a large point, that’s a classic debate move – everyone from Socrates to Ben Franklin to Obama has used it in some respect.
JL
@RedKitten (formerly Krista – the Canadian one): Totally love you but his last sentence is pretty clear.
New topic, I love your name. So can you help me with a new name? I’m a sexy gorgeous almost 60 year old female whose spouse left me for his sister. What do you suggest? Obviously I’m pretty good at demo-ing stuff also.
I have be working on my bathroom and actually have a dumpster which is really called a roll over, who knew. By the way, I have wonderful sons and can’t wait until we hear about you baby. I had back labor with the baby who is 6’4″ and now thirty which was scary but easier. Even thirty years ago I was fortunate enough to have a midwife by my side. Husbands are great but having that female there proved invaluable.
Stefan
Here’s a guy, Sanford, who has not just not a moral and religious incentive to keep his marriage vows, but also a political-survival incentive. Yet the public sense of the sacredness of marriage has declined to the point that even he couldn’t do it.
Umm, I think hypocritical, ostentatiously religious men like Sanford have had a lot of trouble keeping their marriage vows throughout all of history, even when “the public sense of the sacredness of marriage”, whatever that is, was at its strongest (I suppose at the time that men married twelve year old girls for the sake of the dowry).
Comrade Stuck
Yea, I think it’s a cool name too. Kind of like a sultry spy codename. Redkitten
Maybe it’s time to become un-Stuck
gex
It not only strengthens the institution, it strengthens our society.
There are obvious policy arguments for allowing marriage. While people gripe about their tax dollars “subsidizing” gay marriage, they don’t stop to understand why government gives these benefits to married people in the first place.
About a year ago, my girlfriend was unemployed and had serious gall bladder issues that required the removal of the gall bladder. Fortunately, my employer provides partner benefits, so I was able to provide insurance for her. Absent that, tax payers would have been covering those costs.
Essentially, we support these relationships because these social bonds provide a level of support that would otherwise fall upon the government to provide. As a legal stranger to my girlfriend, no one can make me pay for any of her debts, or make me provide anything to her that she might get from the social safety net.
Calouste
I think that had more to do with Sanford’s private sense of the sacredness of marriage. Conservative victimhood in full flow as usual, it is always other people who force them, never their own responsibility.
There are enough people who have less of an external incentive to keep their marriage intact than Sanford, get the opportunity to break their vows, yet decide to turn down that opportunity.
ronin122
@gbear: Not sure, neither the topic in the post nor the comments have mentioned Obama in context with DOMA or DADT yet so we’re still safe.
I guess not anymore….
gex
@The Grand Panjandrum: Well about 25% of the same marriage rights as you. The existence of DOMA disallows any state from granting full marriage rights to gays.
Comrade Stuck
@ronin122:
Hush
ronin122
@Comrade Stuck: Sorry but I am kinda like the Joker in that I like adding a little anarchy here and there (though partly also because I can be a dick). That said I really don’t want the thread to devolve into a 500+ comment thread like the last time. Methinks it irked JC a lot.
Indylib
@MikeJ: Tell that to my Grandmother who got divorced in 1940 and was considered by her neighbors and family to have been the next worst thing to a complete slut for leaving and divorcing a man who was physically abusive. She was told by her own parents that she had no right to leave him, because she had promised “before God” to stay with him until she died (and they were not particularly religious, certainly not in a wingnutty way), disowned from the family and finally moved to the city from the town where she had grown up, because she couldn’t get a job. She was legally able to get the divorce, but she served as a warning to other young women about the societal consequences of getting a divorce. Maybe I should have used a different term, but can you really say that you don’t believe there was any pressure from society in past history of just the US to not get divorced even if it was legal?
gex
@gbear:
Also:
Gay marriage + Sanford = peak thread comments
RedKitten (formerly Krista - the Canadian one)
My new nick pretty much found itself. I have red hair, and my husband’s pet name for me is “Kitten”. :) I’ll think about what name you could have, but considering your description of yourself, you might as well call yourself “Wonder Woman” and be done with it — you sound awesome!
(Aside: Your spouse left you for HIS sister? That’s not one you hear every day.)
Tim in SF
Marriage has been legal in Massachusetts for some time now and the divorce rate in that state has gone DOWN slightly.
I’m in one of those 18,000 legally married same-sex couples and somehow my neighbors’ marriages have survived.
I would like to see one breeder couple say they got divorced because of same sex marriage. ONE. Show me ONE.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
I haven’t read all the comments, so I may be repeating someone else’s observation. But none of this “gay marriage” crap would be an issue if the US would recognize that “marriage” is essentially a religious concept. So, to return to Constitutional principles, eliminate all “married fining jointly” preferences in Federal Tax Law as well as a myriad of similar preferences throughout, including those involved with Social Security. We eliminate the religion, we eliminate the favoritism granted to what should be merely individual and private commitments, gender preference being totally irrelevant. and Government involvement an unwarranted intrusion.
Comrade Stuck
@Ronzoni Rigatoni:
You brute. Now you went and made baby Jeevus cry.
glasgowtremontaine
JL: Perhaps “Demo Derby”?
kommrade reproductive vigor
I don’t see that. I took it as jab at all the assholes (some of whom aren’t even married cough K-Load cough) who believe that marriage can stand up to nine bazillion straight couples screwing around and getting divorced, but letting a few gays and lesbians get married will cause the whole thing to go kablooie.
This is the crap part of his statement:
Before the comma, whatever, I’m still hoarse from the marathon late-night college debates. After the comma, What? “Oh don’t worry, even if you do let them into your club, not enough of them will try to get in to make you uncomfortable.”
Fail.
*And thinking the fact that someone doesn’t want something they can’t have anyway proves your argument is a large fraction stupid.
Tonal Crow
No. It has always been difficult to maintain long-term sexual fidelity. It is not a practical constraint for most humans, and, by giving it such surpassing importance, we set ourselves up for failure. But sexual fidelity is only one of many vows that usually accompany marriage. Others include friendship, assistance, comfort, material support — and providing a healthy environment for any children. By overstressing sexual fidelity, we have come to condone throwing away the rest when the first is broken.
We’d do far better to accept our “adulterous” natures, agree to sexually-open marriages, and stress the other vows that, in the end, do much more to determine whether spouses have a “successful marriage”.
As for Sanford’s failure to maintain sexual fidelity, it’s his responsibility, not that of some “decline[]” in the “public sense of the sacredness of marriage”. Don’t Republicans always screech that they’re “the Party of Personal Responsibility”? Why are they blaming society for their own faults?
demo woman
Formerly JL Marriage is always a two way street.. My situation was just more extreme.
Hopefully gbear comes back and actually reads all the comments. By the way thanks for the new moniker.
gex
@Ronzoni Rigatoni: So why does your freaking holy man say “by the power vested in me by the state of…” when marrying you? Because marriage is a religious institution? I call bullshit.
Xanthippas
Speaking of which, who saw Greenwald’s post about this right-wing moron on what marriage is “supposed” to be like. According to this guy, marriage ain’t worth it for a guy unless he can tell his wife to have dinner ready when he gets back from hunting, which will be whenever the hell he feels like it and no sooner.
Mayken
@dmsilev: Not to mention the Netherlands or Canada, to name just a couple of countries with SSM.
MikeJ
Was she rich? If so, I would be very, very surprised with social opprobrium being attached to her. If she wasn’t rich, no, it’s no surprise that people considered her divorce bad. Which was my point.
Charlie Murtaugh
Fucking well said, John.
Anne Laurie
Five years and counting, yay us Massholes! But the statistic that really scares the bible-thumpers is that the longer gay marriage has been legal, the fewer people polled think that gay marriage “should be” illegal. In other words — as with so many other progressive social advances — once people discover that gay marriage (segregation, birth control, child protection laws) doesn’t actually bring civilization-as-we-know-it to an end, despite what Everybudy Sez, that’s one more useful boogeymonster lost for the forces of tradition.
Aimai
The problem with the piece is thevassertion that Sanford violated his private,personal, voluntary, and political convictions because “the public” decline of marriage made him do it. It’s the kind of straight up soci. Al engineering structuralist argument that conservatives reject when it is applied to crime or drug use or poor peoples educational outcomes. It’s also more than merely hypocritical– it is false. Sanford fell out of love and wanted something he could have–a grown up divorce, shared child custody,a split of marital assets,child support, social obliquy from her friends, some problems with his church and party. He didn’t want the inconvenience. A guy who commits messy public adultery instead of honestly dealing with his prior commitments is not someone who doesn’t repect marriage any more than a thief doesn’t respect money. He just wants to have it all without regard to other peoples rights and feelings.
Aimai
Michael D.
HOMOPHOBE!!
Smgumby
I don’t read it quite as you do. It seems to me, he is saying that marriage is ALREADY eviscerated — mainly by people like Sanford who claim to want to defend it. It seems to be pointing out that allowing the “small fraction of the small fraction” of people left out of the institution will do nothing. It basically makes a mockery of the whole “protecting the sanctity” meme.
henqiguai
@gex (#52):
Because marriage is a religious institution
I think you’re confusing “matrimony” with “holy” matrimony. “Marriage” is a contractual agreement; we then kick in with tradition and sanctify the arrangement with a religious imprimateur (or some such drival).
grumpy realist
Anyone who thinks that couples used to stay together and there was never a time when people didn’t effectively divorce hasn’t read much American history/literature or checked their own family histories. My own grandparents lived apart for a chunk of their lives.
binzinerator
@Tonal Crow:
Wise words. As my wife told me long before we were married, it’s hard to think we’d have sex with the same person for the rest of our lives. I thought so too. Still do. But here we are. Same person, after 15 years. Sure we’re glad and all that, but we both think it’s bizarre.
So apparently you can believe fidelity is not the only vow or even the most important vow in marriage and still find yourself in a monogamous relationship. Oops! Heh.
All I can say is, what we’ve learned so far is that even if fidelity is not a be-all end-all goal in marriage, it may fortuitously prove to be within the limits of the effort one is willing give to it, or at least within one’s will to make such effort.
Don
This is one of the big reasons I think it’s a mistake for the Obama administration not to issue an executive order and extend same-sex benefits to Federal employees. Visibility helps. The under-30 crowd is so much more on the side of equality because they grew up seeing gay couples and think “so what?” Not only is getting people coverage and protection NOW always the right move, it’s a way to let people see these couples in every state.
Not to mention that it makes the Fed a more attractive employer and helps them compete with companies like IBM and Apple and all the others that already offer partner benefits.