Maggie Gallagher has been guest-blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy all week, patiently explaining the legal, economic, and social case against ratifiying same-sex unions as "marriages." The first post is here, October 17th at 10:34 a.m., or (for a while anyway) you can just go to the main page and scroll around.
This is Maggie's goal for the week:
I’ve learned from much experience that when two intelligent people cannot even understand how the other person’s can possibly believe their own argument—that’s when something really interesting is going on.
I have no illusions I’m going to spend this week persuading people to change their minds on gay marriage. So I’d like to try to do something else big and important: to “achieve disagreement”. To figure out for myself, and maybe for you too, what has changed that makes the original, cross-cultural, historic understanding of marriage literally unintelligible to so many of this country’s best and brightest. In the process, maybe some advocates of gay marriage will understand why, quite apart from any disagreement about sexual orientation, so many Americans are deeply disturbed by the idea of gay marriage.
She's trying to get opponents to understand her position.
I read somewhere (sorry to haul out that canard) that classically, a student of debate and rhetoric first had to learn to accurately summarize the position of the other side. Unless he could state the opponent's position clearly, to the satisfaction of the debating opponent himself, the debater was not considered fit to make his own arguments.
It makes sense on two levels. First, why should you score points for arguing against a position you clearly cannot understand? Second, why should an intelligent and worthy opponent want to debate you if you cannot respect him enough to enunciate his position with your own voice?
The comments are quite hostile, but I have great hope that many regular VC readers will come away with a renewed appreciation for the arguments from "the other side."
Next week, Dale Carpenter, a proponent of same-sex marriage (and a lawprof from my own University of Minnesota), will be guest-blogging. I am looking forward to reading his arguments and hoping that through them I will be better able to understand and argue against the most cogent positions promoting SSM.
UPDATE: I asked one of her detractors, and by no means the least articulate, in the comments to try to summarize Maggie's position accurately. He summed it as follows:
So, in her view:
1. Marriage is not marriage if two people marry who either know they are not interfertile....or have no intention of engendering babies together.
2. Use of AID, or adoption, doesn't count. It's still not marriage if the couple intend to adopt or plan to have children via artificial insemination.
See what I mean? He actually cannot do it. How on earth can two people argue if they mischaracterize each other so poorly?
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