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“Nothing imaginable — ,” writes (http://dennisprager.townhall.com/) Dennis Prager, “leftward or rightward — would constitute as radical a change in the way society is structured as this redefining of marriage for the first time in history…Nothing.” He gloomily adds, pulling predictions seemingly out of nowhere: “The California Supreme Court and its millions of supporters are playing with fire. And it will eventually burn future generations in ways we can only begin to imagine.”
And what is this looming apocalypse, Mr. Prager ? “Outside of the privacy of their homes, young girls will be discouraged from imagining one day marrying their prince charming — to do so would be declared ‘heterosexist,’ morally equivalent to racist. Rather, they will be told to imagine a prince or a princess. Schoolbooks will not be allowed to describe marriage in male-female ways alone. Little girls will be asked by other girls and by teachers if they want one day to marry a man or a woman.”
On re-reading the sentence, “Young girls will be discouraged from imagining one day marrying their prince charming — to do so would be declared ‘heterosexist,’ morally equivalent to racist” — it becomes clear what Mr. Prager is afraid of: that heterosexuality itself will come to be seen as suspicious. The very idea of a woman longing for a man, or vice-versa, will itself be seen as discrimination, in his view.
Granted, Mr. Prager has a point – shades of Kinsey – in saying that “sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality.” That glimmer of understanding goes nowhere, however, as demonstrated by his view, “Indeed – and this is the ultimate goal of many of the same-sex marriage activists — the terms "male" and "female," "man" and "woman" will gradually lose their significance.” Setting up his “secular left” as a jumbo-sized straw man, he goes on to state that “On the intellectual and cultural left, ‘male’ and ‘female’ are deemed social constructs that have little meaning.”
Social Constructs Have Meaning
But of course “male” and “female” have meaning; we come across their meaning everywhere, no matter one’s political ideology. And it is blatantly false that same-sex marriage activists seek to destroy all gender meaning. To say that gender is socially constructed is to say, to put it simply, that the meaning of gender – gender as a meaningful sexual identity – is constructed by the language, rituals, expectations, and aesthetics of culture. In other words, gender as a social construct refers to how the biology of sex manifests itself in culture. While we can say, to a cautious extent and with necessary controversy, that “women in general are X” and “men in general are Y,” these are typically statements that describe groups but say nothing about individuals. And how a culture interprets these fuzzy, often dubious, X and Y statements influences notions of masculinity and femininity. The proof is that we find a lot of variation between cultures in how masculine and feminine are defined. A quick example: Scotsmen wear kilts. Here, un-bifurcated garments are seen as the province of women and cross-dressers. A difference in displays of masculinity stemming from different meanings constructed by different cultures.
No. Mr. Prager is quite wrong. The goal is to allow people to follow the best advice ever given: “to thine own self be true and it must follow, as the night the day, that thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Always Choose Love
For all his protestations that he takes it as “axiomatic that a gay man or woman is created in God's image and as precious as any other human being,” going as admitting that it is “unfair when an adult is not allowed to marry the love of his or her choice,” Mr. Prager’s arguments don’t make gay friendly by any stretch of the imagination. He severely misrepresents the agenda of gay marriage activists for GLBT individuals. The point isn’t to say that heterosexuality is bad, or that heterosexual culture-rites are bad, but to say that it’s just as okay to be homosexual as it is to be heterosexual. It is to believe in individual freedom and the responsibility of public government to serve the whole public, not simply parts of it. Young girls – and boys – will be not be made to reject heterosexuality, if that’s who they are, but encouraged to express their own personal preference either for a prince or a princess charming without being condemned for the choice they make.
In fact, the problem stems precisely from Mr. Prager’s belief that “It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction.” It is this cultural authoritarianism that, in telling people that they can’t be who they are, causes the anguish and confusion Mr. Prager is so worried about. Imagine: you are gay and society calls you a sinner, a freak, a pervert, or – to borrow from Mr. Prager’s self-described non-anti-gay argument, a threat to the cultural fabric. How is this different from pre-suffrage men telling women that they are not “fit” to vote, or practice medicine, or become scientists – they should stick with cooking and having babies? How is this different from plantation owners telling blacks that they are an inferior race with limited intellect and character fit only for the cotton fields?
It seems that Mr. Prager views culture as static and authoritarian when in reality culture is (and should be) a living, dynamic force that changes, adapts, grows and strives to become better. Naively, he believes that “social policy cannot be made solely on the basis of eradicating all of life's unfairness.” Solely? No. But what good is culture, society, individual virtue, if these don’t at least try to eradicate what is unfair and unjust? When slavery was abolished and blacks achieved full civil rights, when women were given the vote – these were profound and radical cultural revolutions. But they did not destroy culture. They did not “burn future generations.” Quite the opposite: despite growing pains, these changes enriched and strengthened our culture by overcoming injustice. In November, Californians will face a stark choice: fear as represented by Mr. Prager or love as embodied by thousands of gays who just want to live their lives. I say: choose love.
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