Ross Douthat is a strange dude:
IT now seems certain that before too many years elapse, the Supreme Court will be forced to acknowledge the logic of its own jurisprudence on same-sex marriage and redefine marriage to include gay couples in all 50 states.
Once this happens, the national debate essentially will be finished, but the country will remain divided, with a substantial minority of Americans, most of them religious, still committed to the older view of marriage.
So what then? One possibility is that this division will recede into the cultural background, with marriage joining the long list of topics on which Americans disagree without making a political issue out of it.
In this scenario, religious conservatives would essentially be left to promote their view of wedlock within their own institutions, as a kind of dissenting subculture emphasizing gender differences and procreation, while the wider culture declares that love and commitment are enough to make a marriage.
I wonder if Mr. Douthat understands how he comes across to women. It sounds like he thinks women are only worth marrying so that they can have men’s children. Loving them is not necessary. Being committed to them is not necessary.
Throughout his column he refers to the “older definition of marriage,” but he doesn’t mean by that what you would think. For me, the older definition of marriage was that it is necessarily between a man and a woman, not that it was all about procreation. I’ve known too many childless couples or exclusively adoptive parents for me to ever have had Douthat’s view of marriage. For me, marriage is primarily about commitment. Two people take a vow involving certain promises. If they then procreate, that’s their choice.
When Douthat discusses “traditional marriage,” he’s talking about something else. He actually thinks that people like me who support gay equality and marriage want to destroy traditional marriage.
If your only goal is ensuring that support for traditional marriage diminishes as rapidly as possible, applying constant pressure to religious individuals and institutions will probably do the job.
Maybe that is just sloppy english, but it appears to say that there is a movement to undermine traditional marriage. But why would I, or anyone else, want to keep people from getting married? It seems that we’re talking past each other until you realize that Douthat is talking about more than just men and women making lifelong commitments to each other. He’s talking about a view of marriage. It’s a view that places little importance on love and commitment, and sees the whole endeavor as a way to propagate the species. It’s a view more consonant with cultures that have arranged marriages than it is with American or European culture.
The thing is, even in cultures that arrange marriages, it’s not so much about procreation as it is about money, power, and prestige. Families and their fortunes are joined for the purposes of mutual advancement. In these cases, the families take precedence even over procreation.
In other words, I don’t think Douthat’s kind of marriage actually exists anywhere in the real world, except in his imagination.
When Obama was first elected POTUS a friend and I were discussing our absolute shock and amazement at the development and the conversation turned to Rush and Hannity and their ilk, and what their reaction would be. I explained that they all had suddenly become ‘powers of good’.
What I meant is that they just cannot help themselves. They are what they are, and as they speak their opinions, the average person will be more and more offended. As they grasp at their slowly eroding influence, they will have to go further and further out on the tree limb.
And eventually the American public will cut the limb off.
Shorter version…..I love it when Republicans talk. Every time they say something, they lose a vote.
.
…and gain another. Let’s talk about the real 47%: the 47% who voted for John McCain and will vote for any/every future Republican nominee, absolutely regardless of their individual identity, history, etc.
The Big Sort already happened. No one (speaking statistically) has switched parties since 1980. No one will ever switch parties again. The only variable is who sits home (or is blocked from voting).
Except that that 47% consisted disproportionately of older white dudes who are gradually dying off and reducing as a percentage of the total population.
And you contradict yourself: you say that Republicans will gain a vote for every vote they lose and then go on to say no one has switched parties since 1980 or will ever do so again. So where will these Republican gains come from? Women? Younger voters? Hispanic and African Americans?
The Republican outreach program is working real good with those demographics…
Votes as cast, not voters as party adherents. There is no contradiction. In terms of the original commenter’s analogy, every rhetorical bomb thrown by a Republican motivates one Democrat and one Republican to actually vote instead of sitting home.
Except the GOtPer line is getting shorter while the democratic line is getting longer.
At a certain point yer line ain’t long enuf no matter ho motivated that MINORITY of total voter might be.
I find it interesting that the thought of all existing together and respecting each others way of marriage is no where to be found. Seems that to Douthat you must attack others that choose a different path. He also uses his opinion to believe that just like him, others will try to destroy Christianity.
Isn’t that the essence of conservatism? Intolerance, inflexibility, hate, and certainty in things that can’t be proved or don’t exist (ex. creationism) and absolute denial of things that have been proven (climate change).
They are small people with small minds doing hateful things. Which is mission accomplished in their small world.
It’s not hate, it’s fear. They’re been conditioned to see change as the destruction of their way of life. It’s why stupid arguments like “the libruls are trying to destroy traditional marriage!” gain traction on the right.
NO ONE wants to destroy marriage, traditional or otherwise. It doesn’t even make sense. But that’s the only lens they can view gay marriage through.
We’re still coming to take their guns, too.
Isn’t this part and parcel of the “forced childbirth” movement?
Women are to be vessels of reproduction. It’s less about biology and procreation and more about what the “proper” role of women should be.
Side by side the argument asks that we come to the aid of the Christians who, on the one hand, tell us over and over that they are victims, that their marriages are frail and must be shorn up by denial of their neighbors’ love; while simultaneously telling anyone within earshot that to be a Christian is to be blessed by God’s love and strength.
In the 60’s when the birth control pill first entered our culture there was a burst of identity crisis as relationships for the first time could take the aspirin out from between their knees and actually be proactive in making life’s choices; the entry of an unexpected child into their lives was greatly diminished and suddenly education, careers, financial stability were all achievable. It can’t be stated enough how the birth control pill lifted the spirit of America. Sounds staid, but it did.
I wonder if it could be less about the imagined values of “traditional marriage” and more about the loss of control the American Taliban theocrats think they should have over the rest of us?
This actually isn’t too surprising given a quote from Douthat’s book:
Source: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/03/fear-of-reese-witherspoon-look-alikes-on-the-pill.html
I was wondering about that. I checked, and he is married, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s ever had a satisfying sexual experience.
The “terms of our surrender” he calls it! To summarize: If the Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage in all 50 states, we’re still going to hate gay people, but you don’t get to call us bigots. OK?
Ross Douthat is a strange dude:
I’m sure it’s been said a million times but I’ll say it again. Why did the NYT give Douthat a column? Did they not read his prior works before they hired him? Did they want to inflict on us more people who should be in a shrink’s chair and not in the op-ed pages working out their personal problems?
Um, . . . that’s not an exception?