So, the
debate over whether gay couples should be allowed to legally marry is (almost)
over. The Commons have voted overwhelmingly in favour of extending this right
to gay people, and all being well, this will be codified and passed in Parliament
later this year. While some are asking whether this ought to be a priority for
the movement (a very good argument describing the impact of the cuts on mental
health services for gay teenagers can be found here), there is a general consensus that this is progress.
However, 175 MPs still
voted against the draft. Some have made eloquent if misguided attempts to
explain their nay saying (cue much ‘soul-searching’); I am going to use an
example from Jim Dobbin, a Labour MP, to exemplify why the arguments against
gay marriage are so weak:
‘We should be promoting equality, not
uniformity, and be able to celebrate difference.'
While he manipulates the words 'equality' and 'difference' I'm not sure that Dobbin understands their meaning. There is to be an
inherent contradiction in the way Dobbin uses the terms. Yes, difference surely is the proverbial spice of life, and must
of course be celebrated and supported. But when a ‘celebration of difference’
becomes an excuse for discrimination, it crosses a line.
To
understand this balance, we can turn to John Stuart Mill’s harm principle; we
are free insofar as our freedom does not get in the way of anyone else’s, and
vice versa, and freedom should only ever be limited to prevent harm to others. We
are all party to and complicit in this concept every day of ours lives. Do you
have freedom to drive on a road? Yes, but only insofar as your driving does not
affect anyone else’s freedom to, well, live. Do you have freedom to drink? Of
course, but the notion will posit that you should only be allowed to do so as
long as it doesn’t affect another person’s freedom to get home safely without being
attacked by an aggressive drunk. It makes logical and moral sense that your liberty to swing your
fists ends where my nose begins.
Dobbin is
free, of course, to pursue whatever ends he wants, including legal marriage to
the woman of his choice; should his freedom extend to his right to bar other
people from doing the same? Absolutely not. To legislate based on this notion
would be to create a society in which legal demands and claims can be
predicated upon a terrifying ‘might is right’ principle (this is not to say
that our society doesn’t de facto
work in this way – I only mean to say that at the very least, it is not legally
mandated that those with the religious/cultural/social monopolies should have
the last word in issues affecting the bodily or emotional integrity of another
person).
Legal
standards also create equality before the law, meaning that the same options
must be open to everyone, at which point it becomes a personal choice as to how
those are utilised or not. In this way, laws are written with the view in mind
that, excluding obviously the legal right to harm another person, people may do
as they please. Abortion is legal, but people are of course free to choose not
to use that freedom. Gay marriage will be legal; those opposed are free to
avoid it. Equality before the law is not uniformity; I doubt that Dobbin would
argue against the right to representation in a court of law, nor that the equal
right of every person to adequate housing, clothing or food has resulted in a
society of bland, identikit automatons.
It is certainly true that in the UK,
civil partnerships, which have been legal since 2004, offer the same benefits
as marriage, which is a major improvement on the laws in the US, where spouses
are not allowed to visit their dying partner in hospital, nor receive the
benefits of a pension to support them after the partner’s death, and a whole
host of other despicable restrictions on love and dignity that heterosexual
couples do not have to face.
In the light of this, many opponents to
gay marriage, such as Sarah Teather, have been asking why gay movements seek
the appellation of ‘marriage’ when their needs have already been provided for:
“Virtually no new protections are offered
to same-sex couples on the basis of this legislation on marriage, and any that
are could easily be dealt with by amending civil partnership legislation.”
Legally speaking, the
two types of ceremony are very similar.
But think about what
the word ‘marriage’ means. It is a deeply embedded cultural and social
institution – religion has no monopoly on the word, and never has – and
therefore culturally, socially, personally, the word has connotations and
implications that are extremely significant above and beyond legal benefits.
Equality before the law must then offer the choice to imbue one’s relationship
with this meaning. Barring this choice on the grounds of personal preference is
unacceptable; it is a nonsensical as saying that because one doesn’t believe in
evolution, it shouldn’t be taught in schools. Welcome to the southern part of
the United States.
Many who oppose access
to this powerful institution do not seem to have made up their minds which
excuse to go for: that gay couples marrying will destroy the social fabric of
the country (to which a nice facetious answer gives that gays would never
destroy any kind of fabric); that it ruins a religious sacrament; or that allowing gay marriage will lead us into some dreadful grey
Orwellian marital conformity, as Dobbin implies.
Well, which is it? It
doesn’t really matter – none of these answers are increasingly archaic;
neither, too, are they a) true or b) good enough excuses to limit equality of
opportunity.
I am not arguing that all gay people– or all straight
people, for that matter – should get married. Not all of them will. There have
and always will be people who don’t chose that path – and as Simon Jenkins
points out, given the way in which clergymen and legislators have always craved
to bring society’s sexual mores under church or state control, ‘It is perhaps odd that gay people should want
to associate themselves with so overt a symbol of that control’, and I
certainly know some people who wouldn’t want to align themselves with it. I
don’t think I want to align myself
with it.
But the difference is that I have always had the choice available to me to go one way or
the other. For Dobbin to talk about celebration of difference and equality,
this choice has to be on offer. I am arguing that for the celebration of
difference to be meaningful, there has to be
a choice. Within an absolute, equal standard of rights on offer, people, with
all their glorious, multifaceted quirks, will always celebrate difference. The differences that Dubbin advocates are not differences but restrictions. The celebration should not and must not be an excuse allowing fists to go swinging into the noses of the celebration of love.
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