Personal Thoughts on Proposition 8

1. Why now, when the election is over and done with and the passage of the proposition to restrict the legal definition of marriage in California to heterosexual couples is a done deal? First, because the fall-out--much of which has focused upon my own church, both institutionally and in regards to individual members, with diverse consequences--continues, and is likely to continue for quite a while to come. Second, because a bunch of mostly Mormon friends of mine and I have just finished a long, rambling discussion of the topic. Third, because Stephen asked me to.

2. What do I think of my church's involvement in pushing the proposition? I have mixed feelings. Part of me has long wished my church would get more political, partly because I think religious voices need to be contended over back and forth in the public realm, partly because I think my church has ideas which could be a helpful contribution to that continuing contention which is modern democratic public life, and partly because--and this is important--by getting political, I hope that my church (which is, by any reasonable measure, still very much a fairly inwardly focused, fairly authoritarian institution) will learn some structural from those modern democratic exigencies, and be therefore better able to handle disagreements and compromises. So yes, the political scientist and fan of organized democratic action in me admires this move by my church, admires its ability to harness foot soldiers and efficient lines of communication in the service of political goal, and I feel this way even while thinking that--pragmatically speaking--more harm than good, in the long run, will come to my church because of its involvement in this particular effort, to say nothing of all the misunderstandings and anger and potential harms that may come to the citizens of California, both gay and straight, because of it.

3. Would I have voted for Proposition 8 if I'd lived in California? I think probably yes, reluctantly.

3a. "I think probably," because I don't live in California, and therefore I'm not confronted directly by personal situations and frustrations and aspirations which could have pulled my beliefs one way or another. As I've said before, arguments over tradition and marriage, in contrast to arguments over, say, abortion, are the sort of thing that "I simply nod my head in regards to, acknowledging their importance...in the abstract, but finding the practical efforts involved in the issue often misconceived and directed against the wrong target." Consequently, I could easily see me being swayed away from my tentative, somewhat theoretical support for it if the issue had confronted me more starkly.

3b. "Yes" for, I think, four reasons:
1) because my church asked me to (more on that below);
2) because I agree with some (but not all) of the philosophical arguments which my church and others who pushed for the proposition adduced as part of their case for the proposition (again, more on that below);
3) because, all things considered, I will almost always side with any proposition or referendum that involves setting matters directly before voters and thereby demands of them democratic deliberation and legislative compromise, rather than contenting ourselves with all-or-nothing decisions issued by courts (this is my wonky, political science preference for democracy coming out again);
3) because--and this is important--it was a narrowly focused proposition, one which would have re-established a formal distinction between same-sex relationships and heterosexual marriages in the state of California, but which would not have removed any substantive rights that gay couples currently enjoy under state law.

3c. "Reluctantly" for at least two reasons:
1) because California is almost certainly the wrong place for this kind of struggle: it is far too large and too diverse to be, I think, responsibly conceived of as an arena wherein an argument about what a community wants or expects or believes when it comes to marriage could be worked out (and if no such arena is being conceived, then we're apparently not talking about collective self-government, but rather than just tyrannies of courts or majorities, take your pick, and I don't want any part in that);
2) because the specific political arguments which the "Yes on 8" side made use of--as opposed to the more tentative and general philosophical ones which I, in part, agree with--were often complete paranoia and nonsense, and such crummy and inflammatory arguments are enough to make me want to vote against something in principle, even if I see the general point of the proposition.

4. In reference to 3b.2 (good grief, I'm writing a lawyer's brief here)...what do I see as the general point of the proposition? A great many people--not entirely accurately, I think, but entirely legitimately just the same--see its general point as one of hate and contempt, of moral busybodies cobbling together a majority and shoving their preferences down the throats of a tolerant and open-minded people. I'm sure there was some of that at play, amongst the thinking of my own people as well as the many others who turned out to pass Proposition 8. But to me, the general point of the proposition was one of drawing distinctions. I do happen to accept the deep cultural and/or communitarian and/or conservative presumption at work behind most traditionalist thinking about marriage: that is, I believe that civilized society depends upon the sustaining of certain norms (like heterosexual marriage), I believe that many (not all, but many) norms reflect essential characteristics of the way the majority of human beings have historically related and will continue to relate to one another, and I believe that opening up social institutions to forced redefinitions--as if said institutions were based on nothing more than self-satisfying, mutually agreed upon contracts--undermines their ability to support and draw the good out of those norms regarding human relationships for the benefit of society. Is that clear as mud, or what? Let me turn, as I always do when it comes to this topic, to Noah Millman, who I still believe thought it through as well as anyone ever has (scroll down a little to get to the relevant post; you should also read his original, lengthy post on the topic, here):

[Many advocates of same-sex marriage want the state to] redefine marriage to mean any exclusive partnership...between any two individuals regardless of their biological sex....That's not what marriage means, nor ever has meant, because the complementarity between men and women is at the heart of the meaning of marriage. Marriage has changed an awful lot over the centuries, and we in the West have ultimately repudiated the polygamy and consequent second-class status for women that were central to marriage for its first few thousand years as a legal institution. But the proposed redefinition would be, essentially, a linguistic falsehood. For that reason, I fear that it would have the practical consequences I identify in my original piece: because it would make the traditional language of marriage relating to complementarity of the sexes appear to be nonsensical, it would make it that much harder for men and women to learn how to relate to one another, and form stable marriages. And because it would have advanced under the banner of rights such a reform would implicitly concede that marriage is a choice rather than a norm - a choice we all have a right to make but, by the same token, the right not to make if we prefer to live otherwise.

While it's unlikely to get much of a hearing by partisans on both sides of this struggle, I would note that the above is not an argument against any kind of legally recognized same-sex marriage; it's merely an argument against our currently existing marriage regime (which is by no means the only possible set of marriage laws and understandings available either today or historically) being expanded to include same-sex couples. So what do we do for same-sex couples? We do what Noah suggested: create "a new institution...exclusively for same-sex couples, that would have many--perhaps even all--of the rights and responsibilities of marriage." Will that ever fly? Probably not; the accusations of reviving the principle of "separate but equal" would go up before the ink was even dry on any such law, assuming it ever came to pass. But if so, then perhaps that is just so much the worse for American jurisprudence. We reduce so much to either-or questions of legal rights in this country; partially by (unintentional) constitutional design, partially by inclination and habit. The sort of consensual, democratically deliberated distinctions that might emerge otherwise in the absence of such--distinctions along the lines of "distinguishing between black and white people in deciding which kind of jobs are appropriate for them is unfair and discriminatory, whereas distinguishing between gay people and straight people in determining which sort of marriage union is appropriate for them is not"--simply wouldn't survive in our legalistic environment. To quote Noah once more, "we live in an era when the hegemonic paradigm abhors difference." And, depending on the day you ask me, I might sigh and say that's the way it should be: I mean, I hardly want to throw Brown v. Board of Education out with the bathwater!

I tend to think the French were on the right track when they established PACS (pacte civil de solidarité) to serve as an alternative to marriage in order to avoid unnecessary fights with various religious communities. But they failed to articulate what they were doing as a route for gay couples in particular, and as a result the heterosexual couples looking to avoid the social implications of marriage flocked to civil unions, which warped the legislation's potential to be a model for addressing the deeper issues of "distinction" which I think are--or at least ought to--relevant here, to the extent you think any of this is worth worrying about (and, again, of all the "traditionalist" issues worth worrying about in our individualistic world, this one comes very far down the list). In any case, one last quote from Noah:

"Gay marriage" [has become] a wedge issue rather than a serious topic, and is eclipsing the serious questions about marriage. We are talking about the non-existent "threat" from gay couples instead of talking about the real damage caused by no-fault divorce. [Some] have argued, in a nutshell, that advocates for a more robust marriage culture need to focus on stopping same-sex marriage because that's (a) a popular cause, and (b) a negative trend that has to be reversed before a positive trend can be started. I can't get on that train. I can't tell a lesbian couple with children that I oppose any effort to publicly recognize their relationship because fighting them is the only way to get other straight people's attention, and that I hope, some day, to use that attention to focus on the actual problems of marriage. That's simply not just.

I agree completely...which is why, if the California proposition had moved beyond what I saw as a simply insisting upon a distinction, I wouldn't have voted for it (recognizing as I do that, especially given many of the arguments which were put into play in this election, and the expansive and diverse range of understandings at work on both sides in the huge state of California, the likelihood that anyone seeing the proposition as fundamentally an opening for democratic discussion about distinctions is pretty small).

5. And now, 3b.1--so, I would have voted against it, if it hadn't had been written in the way it was, even though my church, which I am an Sunday-attending, temple-going, life-long member of, had told me to?

Well, yes--partly because my commitment to and belief in the church doesn't ever quite override my reasoning faculties, and partly because the church leadership didn't "tell" anyone to. We are not talking about the man we hold to be a prophet (and we can leave my own personal hermeneutical consideration of what statement actually means for another time...) "commanding" anything in this case. Did our prophet, and all the rest of the church leadership (or at least, that portion of the church leadership which actually spoke out on this matter, which was actually only a tiny minority of all those who could have spoken out) want the Saints in California to vote a certain way? Absolutely, and there were statements read in California wards encouraging members of the church to organize and vote in support of the proposition, and there were references to scripture, and there were statements put out by church media, and there were directives which came down from church leaders giving advice and support to regional leaders in California who contacted members and involved them in various campaign activities, and many millions of dollars were raised along the way. But does that equal "commanded"? I don't think so. As for what happened on the local level--and rest assured, some of it was sometimes ugly--I can't comment, but the official language from Salt Lake was always one of "encouraging" the membership, not ordering them about.

Let's put it this way: Mormons in California were "expected" to vote for and help support the proposition. The question then is what kind of "expectation" we’re talking about. I am expected abstain from smoking or drinking or sleeping with anyone I'm not married to; if I do not so abstain, then by basic commitment to fundamental church doctrines and practices comes into question, and I could lose privileges as a member, or even my membership itself. Often, these kind of lay judgments (and ours is a lay church, so there are many inconsistencies along the way, I assure you) can be socially hurtful, even ostracizing, and they may involve things that have very little to do with the aforementioned fundamental church doctrines and practices. But I just can’t imagine that my bottom-line personal worthiness as a Mormon--usually measured by my receiving of a recommend allowing me to attend one of the Mormon temples--would ever be subject to sanction or judgment on such a basis. Does that mean I would have gone against the preferences of my community casually? For myself, no--I value not just my membership, but also my affectivity for, my belonging to, that community too much. But for me--and, I think, most American Mormons as well, though the majority of them (for reasons more having to do with history and demography than anything else) are already conservative enough on "culture war" issues that the church involvement in this case likely didn't make much difference in the way they were already going to vote--that belonging is just one important factor amongst many others, some equally important. Which is one more way of saying, I suppose, that I'm a liberal communitarian at heart.