The Aerie
In her recent column, published in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard’s Professor Mary Ann Glendon leverages the prestige of her position for the service of some rather jejune propaganda. One would assume a Harvard Law Professor to have some analysis or insights to lend to her cause, yet she repeats in a rather straightforward manner the bland fallacies that gay rights advocates have been shooting down in flames since the ancient days of computer bulletin board systems.
In the second paragraph of her WSJ article she claims, ‘a four-judge majority has ruled in favor of special benefits for a group of relatively affluent households.’ “Special benefits” is of course a conservative codeword for rights extended to any minority group except the very wealthy, when they are called “tax breaks.” In the case of gays, these special rights include the ability to visit a family member – partner or child – at a hospital bedside, and the ability to claim to be married when applying for overseas travel visas, etc.
Her use of the term ‘relatively affluent,’ is very interesting. The Right usually condemns what it calls “class warfare” -- at least they do so when one points out that Dick Cheney earns more money in a year than most Americans will earn in their lifetimes. Apparently broadbrushing homosexuals as possibly having a little more money than their neighbors is an acceptable use of class warfare for the conservative movement.
Ms. Glendon continues to the kernel of her argument: that gay rights are “really a bid for special preferences of the type our society gives to married couples for the very good reason that most of them are raising or have raised children.” I would expect a PhD to have more discernment. The conservative myth that society somehow established a benefits package called “marriage” for those raising children always comes as a surprise to those of us, gay and straight, involved in raising children. I check my mailbox every day for the benefits enrollment kit, which has yet to arrive. The reality of marriage, at least in America, evolved out of a form of chattel ownership wherein the wife and children were considered property of the father. That it is not now what it once was attests to the fact that marriage is fluid, changing, and evolving. Conservatives decry those changes, but were it not so then Ms. Glendon might have had a very difficult time gaining her husband's or father's permission to become a Harvard Law Professor.
According to conservatives, the breakdown of civil society must soon follow upon gay marriage, and Ms. Glendon does not disappoint, “Now, in the wake of the Massachusetts case, local officials in other parts of the nation have begun to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples in defiance of state law.” But civil disobedience is an American tradition even older than the Right’s conservative myth of marriage. Ever since the Boston Tea party, courageous Americans have stood forth to point out when law and justice have parted ways. Now in San Francisco and elsewhere we see people daring to risk their careers by saying “Enough!” to the nonsense of bogus DOMA laws.
Perhaps fearing that civil collapse is too abstract for her readers, Ms. Glendon returns to the pragmatic dollar-and-sense issues that might seem likely to resonate with the Common Man. “Next to nothing has been said about what this new special preference would cost the rest of society in terms of taxes and insurance premiums.” Such arguments would sound familiar to civil-war era Representative C. L. Vallandigham of Ohio, who opposed freeing the slaves on the grounds that it would be much too expensive. Most conservatives are states-rights advocates like Vallandigham, who argued AGAINST amending the U.S. Constitution to impose Federal will upon all the States. The financial challenges brought by extending justice to all citizens present a worthy challenge: the alternative of perpetuating injustice upon some citizens for the fiscal convenience of others is not one this free nation has ever been inclined to accept. Besides, if one were to speak plainly one would have to observe that the Social Security system is broken, anyway, and will need a complete overhaul if it is to offer benefits to anybody in ten years.
Ms. Glendon does approach making a good point when she says, “How can one justify treating same-sex households like married couples when such benefits are denied to all the people in our society who are caring for elderly or disabled relatives whom they cannot claim as family members for tax or insurance purposes?” But she's only bringing up the topic in order to launch the paralyzing “if you can’t make it perfect don’t try to fix it at all” argument. I for one would be perfectly willing to entertain the notion of extending the definition of family dependency to cover disabled relatives – I’m just not willing to sacrifice equal rights for all citizens until such time as everything else in America is perfect.
Ms. Glendon returns again to her claim that marriage is only for those having children: “Shouldn't citizens have a chance to vote on whether they want to give homosexual unions, most of which are childless, the same benefits that society gives to married couples, most of whom have raised or are raising children?” This conservative propaganda is no doubt confusing to the thousands of gay parents in this nation: apparently Harvard’s Law Professors have never heard of adoption, step-parenthood, or in-vitro fertilization. But if childrearing is so important to the definition of marriage, where then is the conservative cry to deny marriage to childless couples? Speaking as a parent, I did not have children in order to revel in the benefits of supposedly reduced taxes and increased SSI payouts. (Admittedly I did have children so that eventually I would no longer have to mow my own lawn.)
Within the Massachusetts decision, Ms. Glendon discovers “…that children do not need both a mother and a father; and that alternative family forms are just as good as a husband and wife raising kids together.” The conservative myth that only Ward and June can stamp out Beaver Cleaver is not merely bigotry, but it shows just how far separated are conservatives (or at least Harvard Law Professors) from modern social reality. Modern experience tells us that what children need is NOT “a mother and a father.” What children REALLY need are loving and attentive adults to raise them. The genders and specific roles of those adults are not important. Healthy, vibrant, and creative children graduate from high school every year, having been raised by grandparents, step-parents, single parents (widowed and otherwise), and sometimes even gay parents. What the modern divorce rate has shown those of us who care to look honestly at the issue of childrearing is that love and attention matter more, much more, than demographics of the adults providing it.
Then Ms. Glendon proceeds to outline the usual slippery-slope fallacies that the Right claims will result from gay marriage. Such imaginative fiction is always entertaining. I can tell horror stories too: about a world where gay youth commit suicide due to oppression and judgementalism. A world where anti-gay rhetorical violence in the media leads to physical violence against gays in the street. Where the death of a lifelong companion results in an elderly person becoming homeless due to the inability to inherit. Where gay soldiers are free to die for their country, but not free to live in truth. A world where the worship of the mythology of marriage supplants life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Unlike Ms. Gledon’s fallacious fantasies, my horror stories come out of the headlines. If society can gain the courage to embrace and endorse gay marriage, my homosexual neighbors might live a little more safely as well as a lot more freely.
Among the fantasies that she entertains, “Every person and every religion that disagrees will be labeled as bigoted and openly discriminated against. The ax will fall most heavily on religious persons and groups that don't go along. Religious institutions will be hit with lawsuits if they refuse to compromise their principles.” Apparently this Harvard Jurist has so little faith, in both her fellow man and the protections offered by founding principles of this nation, that she would stain the U.S. Constitution with the offal of her fear. I don’t think any person with so little faith in the protections offered by the First Amendment should be teaching impressionable youth regarding the subject of Constitutional law.
She continues, “Many Americans are rightly alarmed that … four judges in one state took it upon themselves to make the kind of decision that our Constitution says belongs to us, the people.” We’ve all grown used to this kind of inflammatory rhetoric coming from politicians, but for a jurist to show such blatant professional disregard for her colleagues is scandalous. The practice of repeating whatever propaganda is churned out by Right-wing think-tanks has gone too far when a Harvard Professor of Law can make such disrespectful utterances without examining them for both reasonableness and professional propriety. The judges have rendered a decision, presumably after due and proper consideration, and a Harvard Professor of Law ought to recognize and respect those efforts, even if she disagrees with the conclusion. Instead she merely parrots the “judicial activism” accusations invented by conservative D.C. pitchmen. How professionally insulting that is to her colleagues on the bench.
Having spent the last few paragraphs indulging in increasingly hysterical rhetoric, Ms. Glendon attempts to salvage a nut of reasonability at the end, “Whether one is for, against or undecided about same-sex marriage, a decision this important ought to be made in the ordinary democratic way … as President Bush stated, "in a manner worthy of our country -- without bitterness or anger."” Anyone who does more than skim the first and last paragraphs of her article will recognize that Ms. Glendon’s concern is not truly for the preservation of marriage, the protection of children, or the fiscal savings to be garnered by continuing to deny equality to those born homosexual. Ms. Glendon has provided ample evidence that she is merely another mouthpiece of the conservative propaganda machine, lending the proud name of Harvard to the service of the continued oppression of her fellow citizens. Harvard might want to examine whether such an association is in its best interests.
The Wall Street Journal article closes by informing us that Ms. Glendon is Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard. She might do well to review some of the philosophies of her predecessor:
‘The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right’ –Learned Hand