Effects of the Vast Minority

You've heard all those arguments about how 2–5% of the population couldn't affect the marriages of the rest? Well, Michael Sellitto disagrees:

As has been posted here before (I believe), and the media covered, there is a small, but growing, group of heterosexual couples who choose to not get married because their gay and lesbian friends cannot marry. They feel that getting married would be uncomfortable and distasteful, given the lack of equality for their friends and family.

At the same time, the "gays don't need marriage" crowd are doing a great job convincing straight couples--who automatically get more common-law protection than same-sex couples--that they (opposite-sex couples) don't need marriage either. Why should opposite sex couples feel the need to marry when they see their gay and lesbian friends told that they do not need marriage to protect them or their children? ...

A federal marriage amendment would only exacerbate these issues. Straight couples who were iffy before the FMA would be pushed over the top to being completely uncomfortable taking part in "marriage" when their friends and family are written out of the US Constitution.

Apparently, knowledge of and admiration for same-sex couples — with children — is so pervasive that we will become a nation of socially liberal activists! I know absolutely nothing about Mr. Sellitto, but it seems to me that his argument is indicative of the tendency among social liberals to believe that, not only are their beliefs universal, but the circumstances in which they personally form and apply those beliefs must also be universal. To simplify in context: because heterosexual couples whom one knows are so supportive of gay acquaintances and their claims to marriage rights that they might be willing to forgo marriage for themselves, such protests will become a significant trend.

I'm going to go out on a limb, here, and suggest that it simply is not the case, and never will be, that the majority of people in this country are close to such families. Moreover, it seems plausible that many of those who are and who approve will be those who also support corrosively permissive rules for heterosexual marriage. Couples who see marriage as little more than a contract are couples for whom marriage can be a cultural and political statement.

More importantly, if demographics are to be believed, the people most in need of a strong cultural message for marriage — those less inclined toward nuclear families and less able to absorb the repercussions of eschewing them — will be the least likely to know any poster families for the gay marriage movement. If that's the case, the less well-off will receive not the marriage-affirming message that Sellitto argues would accompany experience with married same-sex couples, but the cultural message that marriage isn't about families so much as couples.

To the (limited) extent that the anti argument actually is that "gays don't need marriage," it suggests that homosexual relationships don't beget children. In every particular, their families are a matter of direct choice. As I've written several times:

A strong cultural expectation of marriage is most important for those whose behavior makes marriage preferable even though it mightn't be what they would choose in a void. A couple whose members thoroughly commit to each other purely as a matter of choice — considering that commitment to be absolutely binding (as Sullivan believes all marriages should be) — are in no need of a public institution, or at least the "spouses" need it less. To get to the point, marriage isn't meant to be a choice, strictly speaking, because those who would choose it don't require incentive, and the real benefit of marriage isn't the perks, but the familial structure for children.

In the context of "strong cultural expectation," note something that Sellitto slipped into his post: "straight couples--who automatically get more common-law protection than same-sex couples." Inasmuch as only 16 states recognize common-law marriages, I'm not sure that Sellitto is correct in his assertion (and common-law marriages differ from marriage only in the method of entrance).

Assuming he's talking about something else and characterizes it correctly, however, his insinuation seems to be that all cultural acknowledgments of sexual difference ought to be erased to the point that presumptions about same-sex relationships ought to be no different than presumptions about opposite-sex relationships. For "common-law protection" to extend to gay couples, regardless of relative frequency, two men living together must evoke the same legal and cultural reaction as a man and a woman living together. Supporters of SSM may not have a problem with that, but the position is a radical one, with tremendous consequences for society.

If this Michael Sellitto is the same as the New Yorker who wrote to Russ Maney of Snitch Newsweekly, however, debate about cultural consequences isn't likely to bear much fruit:

If you look back in time, almost all of the great men of history were essentially raised in same-sex environments. The wealthy class would send their men off to boarding schools where they lived with other boys and were taught by men. All of their developmental years were spent almost exclusively with males. And, call me crazy, but I have a lot of respect for the Founding Fathers, and I think they were pretty successful.

In a world in which the history of boarding schools is legitimate evidence that children don't do better with a parent of each gender perhaps it does make sense that an amendment confirming the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman would spur men and women to abandon marriage.