Reader Benoni sent me this article that argues that marriage equality is a conservative plot. According to its author, there has never been any progressive argument for the legalization of gay marriage:
There has never been a left case for gay marriage. Nothing that the left, progressives, or liberals have stated in support of gay marriage has ever been anything but a profoundly conservative argument. Gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry for healthcare? That simply shores up the power of the neoliberal state, compelling people to marry and take on the burden for their own care, instead of creating, for instance, a system that grants life-saving benefits to everyone, regardless of marital status. This is a matter of “simple equality?” How is a system that systematically denies those same benefits to single people ever anything but fundamentally unequal? Denying marriage to some is denying them their ability to love or to have their love affirmed? If your love depends upon the recognition of the state, your relationship is in greater trouble than you think. Poor people will somehow benefit from marriage by accessing healthcare through their partners? Poor people’s problems don’t arise from their inability to get married and in a country without universal healthcare, marriage only compounds your poverty. And, really, if you’re poor, neither you nor your partner is likely to have healthcare anyway; the last thing you want is to increase the burden on your household by increasing the number of people in it.
It is a well-known rhetorical trick when one ascribes really bizarre opinions to one’s opponents and then denounces them for holding such pig-headed beliefs. Every single person I know is in favor of marriage equality, including people who are passionately anti-marriage. These people are gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, pansexual, and they all support gay marriage for one simple reason: denying people rights on the basis of their sexual orientation is morally wrong.
So yes, I believe it’s a matter of simple equality and I’ve never heard of anybody denying single heterosexual people the right to get married. It was a matter of simple equality at the time when interracial marriage was made legal, it was a matter of simple equality when women won the right to vote, it was a matter of simple equality when slavery was abolished. And then, as now, there was a chorus of voices claiming that the world would end if this simple equality were achieved. Many of those voices pretended to be progressive and practiced the rhetorical strategy of “yes, but. . .” Just like this article says, “Yes, but wouldn’t it be much more fun to dehumanize gay people and rob them of their rights in order to spite the mean, bad capitalists?”
The idea that the absence of universal healthcare somehow justifies preventing a gay couple from doing what any straight couple can do very easily is bizarre. But what can we expect from a blogger who claims Jezebel is a feminist website?
By all means, let’s fight for universal healthcare and against the discrimination of unmarried couples. But first let’s make sure that nobody is denied the right to organize their personal life the way they wish simply because they are gay.
Clarissa's Blog 
Wow. That’s crazy. I respect people who are against the institution of marriage. But to say that prohibiting gay people from getting married is somehow dismantling the instution of marriage is bigotry masking as radicalism.
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“I respect people who are against the institution of marriage. But to say that prohibiting gay people from getting married is somehow dismantling the instution of marriage is bigotry masking as radicalism.”
– Exactly. Let’s keep discriminating against people for the sake of principles most are unable to uphold. How truly progressive.
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The blog post you linked to sounds like complete rubbish to me.
Your analysis of it isn’t. If you want smaller government, then civil liberties need to be respected too, even if one has a personal opinion that isn’t really in favor of gay marriage. Separation of church and state is essential to maintaining some harmony.
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Marriage is a conservative plot. (not marriage equality)
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Clarissa, you could have a fierce debate with François Tremblay on this. I think that they in favor of equality, but they want to whole bakery, not only a piece of it.
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“Le monde est bouleversé. Personne veux se marier. Justement les gays”. This is what I heard in recent days. Except that I don’t know how to interpret it.
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Of course, people are more eager to have what has long been denied to them.
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Here’s a way to think about it. Nobody wants to file for bankruptcy, but you couldn’t have a law saying black people couldn’t, but everyone else could. You couldn’t say that Hispanics couldn’t divorce, even if you thought divorce was a negative thing. Marriage equality has nothing to do with your particular attitude toward marriage itself. It’s all about the equality.
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“Here’s a way to think about it. Nobody wants to file for bankruptcy, but you couldn’t have a law saying black people couldn’t, but everyone else could. You couldn’t say that Hispanics couldn’t divorce, even if you thought divorce was a negative thing. Marriage equality has nothing to do with your particular attitude toward marriage itself. It’s all about the equality.”
– This is a brilliant way of putting it.
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I completely agree. Other than the fact that heterosexuals have the freedom to choose whether to get married or not. And gays don’t. By the same token, rich people have the choice to use government health services, if they want, on top of their private premium insurances. Poor people don’t and every human being should have access to health services as an intrinsic part of our right to live.
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François Tremblay on this:
I disagree with him on this but I agree that marriage is something that should be abolished, not expand.
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Maybe we should let the people who are actually gay to decide if they want gay marriage. For now, the overwhelming majority says they do. You can’t deny rights you have to other people because of some nebulous ideas. There are real humans with real lives involved in this. For us, this is just an intellectual point. For them, it is actual suffering.
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Sure Clarissa, just like how you shut up on children’s issues because you’re not a child, or black people’s issues because you’re not black…? Oh no, wait, you DO go on about these things! Just more bog-standard Clarrisa-lying…
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I think anybody can debate about this.
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