Over the next few weeks I’ll publish a series of posts analyzing Robert George’s article, “What is Marriage?”
Robert George authored The Manhattan Declaration and is the Founding Chairman of Maggie Gallagher’s National Organization for Marriage, but don’t let that fool you. He’s an intellectual heavyweight, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University. A recent profile in the New York Times dubbed him America’s “most influential conservative Christian thinker,” and described his reputation:
Karl Rove told me he considers George a rising star on the right and a leading voice in persuading President George W. Bush to restrict embryonic stem-cell research. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told me he numbers George among the most-talked-about thinkers in conservative legal circles. And Newt Gingrich called him “an important and growing influence” on the conservative movement, especially on matters like abortion and marriage…
George has assumed his mantle as the reigning brain of the Christian right.
George published “What is Marriage” in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. It’s been hailed as “a definitive defense of the institution of traditional marriage.” Just two months after its publication, it’s become the most downloaded paper of the past year at the Social Science Research Network.
The article’s over 40 pages long, and my analysis will match that easily. I’ll post it in chunks every two or three days.
Blogging is inherently presumptuous: Look at me! I wrote this! You should read it! But it feels especially presumptuous asking people to read a long, multi-part rebuttal to an academic article. I hope you’ll do it anyway, for several reasons.
- George’s article has substance. If you’re ever frustrated — or even embarrassed — by having to deal with arguments from the likes of Brian Brown and Bryan Fischer, arguments so ludicrous they fall apart on their own, then Robert George will seem like a whole new world. Even if his brain gets it entirely wrong, it’s still a powerful brain.
- George’s article may improve your own thinking about marriage equality. There’s little challenge or growth in dealing with ridiculous opponents. Wrestling with George’s arguments forced me to think more deeply about same-sex marriage and marriage in general. You might find this, too.
- George’s article will be influential. You know those talking points spouted by foes of equality? The next round of them are being harvested from George’s work. Knowing his work will arm you against them.
- I could use your help. Robert George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and I’m…not. I’d like to pull these rebuttal posts into a single downloadable file, something that would benefit from your insights and corrections to this series of posts.
So that starts tomorrow. In the meantime, you can download George’s article here if you want a head start.
I’m not a Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, either, but I’m TOTALLY along for this ride. Thank you for taking it on. Expect to be linked…
Love!
Chili
I am very much looking forward to this. and as for him being so smart, there are different ways of being “smart”!
I look forward to your analysis!
I wonder if this guy can justify not allowing gay marriage with any argument that doesn’t boil down to one of three things…1 “because God said so and that is that” 2. “ew” and 3. “they can’t have kids!!”
Rob, don’t forget that George and his “declaration” also refuses to acknowledge the *real* history of marriage in facor of Maggie’s and NOM’s “fantasies and wishful thinking on the subject which no histoprian or anthropologist would support.
Are those 30 pages sophistry? Just reading the abstract gave me cold feet as to spending my time reading it.
A brief skim-over of the opening pages: the “two competing views” begins with a black/white either/or proposition.
The “conjugal view” omits historical developments including same-sex unions as documented by John Boswell. The “redefining marriage” terminology is, thus, specious/suspect. I would hold that the true “revisionists” are those who codified man/woman legalities.
This neatly side-steps the facts: securing such rights via separate legal arrangements is more costly and secures fewer rights than conveyed by state-sanctioned marriages. ”Free?” Hardly. Separate, more expensive, and less-than-equal.
I note, as well, without having viewed the footnotes entire, that “Gallagher” is referenced. And (oh dear God) Andrew Sullivan . . .
This is an “intellectual heavyweight?” An academic, certainly. But . . . there’s a Shavian phrase that springs to mind (especially given the various Catholic articles referenced) . . . this seems just so much “Jesuitical twittering.”
However powerful his brain, George here is at a disadvantage, because you only have so many intellectual sources of justification when you choose to oppose marriage equality in a secular representative democracy. And judging by the quotes I’ve seen so far, he’s still offering the same tired old arguments cased in a somewhat larger vocabulary.
Take #7′s quote, for instance: he’s arguing that the ability to jerry-rig some marriage-like privileges, provided you have the money, is a justification for having gay marriage banned. This is similar to arguing that we should do away with fair trials because, if your judge is biased, you can simply post bail and skip town. It’s also a self-defeating argument, because if it’s true that gays really can get effectively “married” with a ban in place, then why bother to have a ban? Because “marriage” is a religious concept? Then what about religions that CELEBRATE gay marriage and which are supposed to be seen as equal to Christianity under US law? In the end, his argument boils down to “because I say so,” just like every other homophobe. Which, if we lived in a dictatorship, would be a legally valid basis for banning things, but for now he needs to do better than that. He’s the smartest kid on the shortbus; nothing more.
The fact remains that the US is not a Christian theocracy. The fact remains that homosexuality has never been demonstrated to harm society in any way, and thus there’s no secular justification for banning gay marriage. The fact remains that the US Constitution prohibits wanton oppression of minority groups based on cultural prejudices. The fact remains that homosexuality is not a choice, and that scientific evidence confirming this continues to mount. An eloquent tongue can help thicken the veil between these facts and an ignorant reader, but it can’t change these facts to make marriage inequality objectively justified. He has his thesaurus and his logical acrobatics; we have our facts and our logical validity. Somehow I’m not that intimidated.
Rob, I’d certainly like to help out with this little endeavor of yours. The only problem I could see with my involvement would be a potential religious bias (i.e. that the Bible as written in English omits and even censors the full story on same-sex marriage) that conservative Christians could easily write off as “devil-worship,” but that’s only a problem if you consider it to be so. Otherwise, my ideas are yours for the taking.
Not a problem Chip. One of the big selling points of Robert George’s article is that it allegedly puts forth a secular argument for banning same sex marriage, one that is independent of religious belief.
Rob– good idea to take this on. I hope I have some time to write in the next day or two.
From my preliminary perusal, I can make a couple of quick comments. First, the minute one goes on to natural law as a justification for anything, the further you get away from actual natural law. In the realm of what we know, Natural law appears to BE law only when it is applied to basic physical and chemical laws. They are as rigid as they can be, even within the realms of quantum mechanics, the very realm of uncertainty. As you go up the scale from the physical sciences into life sciences, natural law becomes less and less rigid, and more and more a matter of statistics. when you enter the realm of the social sciences, data variation is huge, and the only real laws are statistical in nature. You cannot predict the outcome of any interaction, only the statistical likelihood of a number of outcomes.
A second big point is the confusion of ‘natural law” whatever that may be, with morality.
Someone once told me this is something like slavery in the US – the laws permitted slavery, but slavery is clearly immoral, and thus the laws permitting slavery were not true laws at all. this what George would probably say, except that it lacks any kind of historical perspective. Slavery was not just supported by the Constitution. It was supported for hundreds of years by large numbers of churches, a number of Christian nations (Spain, Portugal, Brazil, England, France, and the good old US of A) and large numbers of church-going individuals as God’s will. Likewise, the burning of witches. Likewise, the Inquisition. All OK according to the laws of God and man, so we were told.
I acknowledge that there is a law according to the nature of things. The laws of physics, chemistry, biology, you name it. But human laws are not natural laws in that sense. Natural is a word applied to them in an attempt to make them not what they clearly are– human inventions. Homophobia and prejudice and bigotry have no genetic basis, and are also not a part of natural law, but they are a part of nature. Human nature.
There is no homosexual gene, true. But there is no heterosexual gene, either. This is where George is using “natural” to mean “this is what I think and it seems right to me.” It is natural to think that the world is flat, but it isn’t. Homosexuality is natural, and it has always existed in every culture and every time.
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that homosexuality is an inborn as heterosexuality, despite the testimony of tens of thousands– if not millions– of gay people, despite the simple logic of “who would choose this”, George believes that homosexuality is a choice– an immoral one that should get no legal support. His beliefs about us are more important than any amount of actual evidence– natural evidence.
A moralizing moralist said this to me: ”Either you are going to acknowledge that there is a law according to the nature of things, or you are going to be a legal positivist which leads to the conclusion that slavery is okay, or abortion on demand is okay, or gay marriage is okay, or discrimination against and imprisonment of people of Catholic or Mormon faith for speaking and living their beliefs is okay simply because the laws say it is.”
This is a false dichotomy, irrelevant and illogical. I don’t have to be a religionist to know that slavery is wrong, or discrimination is wrong. I can be a perfectly moral human being without religion to tell me what is right and wrong. And as far as I can tell, if I relied on religion to tell me that, I would be most immoral indeed. In the immortal words of Mammy Yokum (and yes, I’m showing my age): “Good is better than evil because it’s nicer.’
Very little is black and white. Abortion is a good example here. I’m not fond of it. To me, the moral position is not to eliminate abortion, but to eliminate the need for it. Equally immoral is people bringing more people into the world when they neither want them nor can provide for them. Immoral is back alley abortions that occur because legal abortion is not available. Women pay the price. Immoral is spending literally billions of dollars to rob women of that choice, yet somehow never actually doing anything about abortion. The anti-abortion industry, like the anti-ex-gay industry, is a major cash and power cow for the religious right. How many children died in Darfur while the Mormon church was fighting my civil marriage? how many children could have been fed and immunized for that money on an issue which has absolutely no effect on any Mormon’s ability to worship and believe as he chooses? How many abortions could have been avoided if the Religious right and the catholic church supported birth control? How many could have been avoided if these so called defenders of right said simply, and put up the money for it: “don’t have an abortion. We’ll take care of you and your medical expenses, and make sure your baby is adopted into a loving home. except not the gay ones, of course. Those children are better of as products of abortion.”
Mr George, do you really want to talk about immorality? I don’t think you have a moral leg to stand on.
Here’s some natural law, some morality for you, and you can decide which is worse. I’m sick to death that the course of my life, and my happiness, and those of millions of people just like me, can be subject to your prejudices, whether or you prefer to call them your religious beliefs or just admit them for what they are. I am equally sick that gay people are imprisoned, attacked, murdered, executed, used as political fodder, vilified, condemned, persecuted, jailed, slandered, libeled, and accused of all sort of things that are simply NOT TRUE because someone doesn’t approve, or believes their God does not approve. What about the immorality of what is done to gay people every day in many parts of the world to satisfy that belief?
As I wrote earlier: “Homophobia and prejudice and bigotry have no genetic basis, and are also not a part of natural law, but they are a part of nature. Human nature.”
That doesn’t make them right. It just makes them sad.
Haven’t read the whole George piece, but based on a “Find word” search, it appears that he never takes up the argument that “it’s in society’s interest to nudge bisexuals towards long-term heterosexual relationships and away from long-term homosexual relationships.”
I find that odd, because it seems to me that the “steering bisexuals towards heterosexual procreation” would probably be the strongest secular argument against having Fully Equal SSM. (I’m not saying it’s even a particularly strong argument; I’m just saying that it’s the strongest one available.)
Of course, one problem with the “bisexuals need encouragement to be hetero” argument is that it requires you to accept the premise that bisexuality is real and widespread — i.e., that a considerable percentage of folks are more or less hardwired to find both men and women sexually appealing. And many in George’s “target readership” would prefer not to consider the possibility that homosexual desire can be hardwired at all!
I haven’t gotten all the way through George’s article, either. But what has struck me so far is his argument that a “real marraige” (a term he introduces on pg. 250, and which he only defines, rather vaguely, as having “moral realities that create moral privileges and ob?
ligations between people, independently of legal enforcement.” [emphasis his]): must be consummated by sexual intercourse [pg. 249] which must result in a “bodily good” (or “biological good”). According to George, this “bodily good” is procreation. Our side has already discredited that argument, but George hangs much of his argument on this notion of a real marriage, which he claims is the only kind of marriage the state should recognize [pg. 251], even though it exists–by his definition–independent of state recognition (or lack thereof).
He attempts to address childless marriages, and those in which one or both partners are sterile or simply do not wish to have children, with what amounts to hand-waving [see the final paragraph starting on pg. 254]. His argument appears to be that since only heterosexual intercourse can be procreative (whether a particular instance of it actually is or not), this “fact” somehow endows all instances of heterosexual intercourse (and no other kind of sexual act) with the ability to produce the all-important “bodily good” (which he posits is the most important fundamental characteristis of “real marriage”).
I think this statement on pg. 254 is a good summary of this argument, and the best place to refute it:
Where to start? The idea the the only “bodily good” between two people can be reproduction. Obviously there are many other positive outcomes that sexual acts (not just coitus) can produce for the people involved in them. That George chooses to ignore them doesn’t invalidate them, and doesn’t prove his point.
So far, all his arguments seem to follow this circular pattern: assert some “fact” without providing much evidence other than his or someone else’s opinion, then make subsequent statements based on the original assertion, and use them to “prove” the assertion.
The other thing that struck me are his many suppositions about how “Revisionists” (that’s our side) see certain issues or arguments, or how they (we) would think about them. He makes several claims in this regard, but provides no proof (or even citations).
I look forward to reading your rebuttal.
My friends, I can’t really add too much to your comments. I prefer to read George’s article as well before lodging an opinion.
But to John’s point: George might continue as they all do to cite something aspirational and ideal as what exsists or what is superior.
He’s leaving out another whole demographic (asexual people, celibate marriages), as well as this reality in marriage law and history. Given that there are people with disparate physical ability, perhaps even desire or geography (long distance or separated marriages), he continues to blur reality and conjecture all over again.
As if there is no COEXISTENCE among these different TYPES of couples and how their marriages are made to satisfy each participant is nothing the state can legislate nor cite as a legitimate means of discrimination. It’s the marriage itself that connects all these people, however distaff within it they might be or distaff from OTHER marriages in society.
Parent and non parent marriages coexist, as do marriages of where the partners have different health status or physical compatibility. These ALL are recognized as each legit as the other in the state. As how OTHER people relate or feel about the other has always been immaterial. He’s trying to say that all the things that aren’t legal or accepted in the law for heteros in the SAME situation as gay couples, it’s fair for gay couples to be discriminated against for it.
And regarless that no heteros have negative consequences to society for these differences, he’s trying to say there will be with gay people in the same situation. I know how he can be, he like the others like to think gay people HAVE no similarities, nor any COMMON values and connected social compatibility that is supportable.
That gay people are SO profoundly different, and without anything in common with the rest of society, this is why gay couple’s inclusion can only render marriage unrecognizable from everything else. And even then, is certain NEGATIVELY unrecognizable.
His is an arrogant treatise, that requires rather lazy and arrogant people to get traction. He’s been in this position with little challenge he’s willing to engage. How can anyone else’s exposition be lined up side by side where the public at large can see for themselves?