I completely agree with Will Baude that the suggestion in this article that marrying couples apologize to their gay friends for getting married (in the wedding invitation!) is both condescending and grotesque. But I don't see what's silly or trivializing about not wanting to participate in an institution that unfairly excludes others. In fact I'm not sure I agree that going to Massachusetts to get married is a strictly symbolic action -- isn't that Massachusetts marriage qualitatively different from other marriages, even if it's just a matter of being able to respect yourself in the morning? I wouldn't play golf at a country club that excluded women, but the fact that I'm a man shouldn't make that choice somehow less meaningful (in fact, if I were a woman, I wouldn't have a choice to make in the first place). The only difference between these two scenarios is that going to Massachusetts requires positive action, but I don't see that as a compelling argument that one is symbolic while the other isn't.
When I got married last year, I did think pretty carefully about all this -- I never considered actually going to Massachusetts, but I did investigate whether it would be possible for a hetero couple to get a "civil union" under exisiting law, and I remember musing that the most ideologically coherent step would be to forego marriage altogether. Don't tell my wife, though!
I think all of the examples you give are symbolic, in that the difference to you is not in the tangible benefit package you are offered, but in the intangible . . . (dare I say "symbolic) things associated with it. I may be conflating the "intangible" with the "symbolic" here, though, so if that were the limit of our disagreement, it would not be important.
Hopefully I will produce a post defending my off-the-cuff inclination that the Massachusetts vacation project is silly.
We probably don't disagree. My sense was that you were using symbolic diminutively, and I wanted to establish that this kind of action can be meaningful. If you want, though, you can probably argue that meaningful and symbolic are similar rather than dissimilar terms.
Nothin' wrong with symbolism-- see my recent post on why flag-burning is symbolic of federalism. But not all symbols are created equal.
Where do you play golf? We should go. Or is that symbolic?
I take issue with the comment that marriage is an institution that unfairly excludes others. Its existence is simply reflecting the way pretty much all of us are sexually. There are a few who are not this way, and it rubs some others the wrong way, but ultimately they are us, as seen in their desire to expression devotion. But the way they are sexually is obviously different from the way we are and marriage is an institution we created becasue we are this way. We should help set up civil unions so as to encourage and perhaps even celebrate! their devotion. A different way for a different way to express what we share in common, what's wrong with that?
Ted -- yeah, that was a pretty big hypothetical I guess, since I don't play golf. I've been wanting to go over to Columbus Park and give it a shot though.
Scof -- my point wasn't to argue the merits of gay marriage, but just to discuss the apporopriate course of action for those who believe that it should be allowed. I will say that while there are probably plenty of interesting and maybe even compelling ways to argue against gay marriage, yours is completely bizarre -- it's an arugument that could be made about interracial marriages without changing a single word -- us and them, separate but equal.
The interracial marriage point is good, my girlfriend reminds me of the fact the up until about 50 years ago we couldn't get married because of those laws. If we rightfully moved past these laws, why can't we move past it for gay marriage? Again I think it is because the definition of marriage is quite tied up in the obvious and dominant heterosexual nature of the lot of us.
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