Saturday, September 09, 2006
Engage in a clear, concise argument, please
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John Kitterman
Kitterman is associate professor of English at Ferrum College.
Every fall I worry about how I am going to teach my composition and American literature students to become better writers and readers. As the world becomes increasingly complex, it is vital that people notice assumptions and unsupported opinions, and find fallacies in reason.
If college grads cannot think clearly, then we are in for a rough future. Everyone has virtual space for their opinions, but few take the time to sort out what they mean.
Case in point: I have yet to read a convincing op-ed piece in these pages against gay marriage. That's not to say good arguments cannot be made: I find them in magazines and even in my students' papers occasionally. But the commentaries in The Roanoke Times generally would have to be rewritten to get a passing grade in freshman comp.
For example, Jerry Fuhrman in "Shredding the social contract" argues that as long as gays had sex in the privacy of their bedrooms, libertarians could tolerate them, but once they demanded the right to marry, they reneged on their "implicit agreement." As he puts it, "What was tolerated if kept private was now -- as required by law -- to be sanctified. Chaos has ensued."
I wonder what gay people think about this "agreement": As long as they stay in the closet they will be "tolerated"? Aren't married gays still going to be having sex behind closed doors? And how does law "sanctify" marriage? Gays already can be married in some churches. What most want, however, is the legal right that heterosexuals have, with all the attendant benefits.
Julian Bond argued in "Virginia is no longer for lovers" that gays are looking for the legal equality that black people fought for during the civil rights movement. Bond made an accurate analogy between gay marriage and interracial marriage.
It is inspiring to see a leader of Bond's stature closing ranks with gay people in this contemporary civil rights issue, just as whites and blacks stood side by side in the 1960s. If local black activists also were to come forward, it would be another powerful moment in history.
But Fuhrman called Bond's comments "slippery" -- why, I have no idea, as he never elaborated. Like his flippant use of the word "chaos," as in the slightly megalomaniacal statement, "we fully intend to bring order out of this chaos," Fuhrman uses loaded terms to make emotional what should be a rational discussion of what the Constitution owes to all Americans. He seems to think that gays are inferior citizens, as whites once thought of blacks.
Perhaps Americans are afraid that homosexuals are becoming too "normal." What scares people is that marriage is a new category that falls outside of previous ones about gays; it in effect desexualizes gays, and as Fuhrman's essay revealed, conservatives want gays to go back in the closet and just have sex.
It is not a fear of losing the traditional family that motivates amendments like the one on the ballot this November, but rather the fear of acknowledging that categories like "traditional family" are artificial and often manipulative. Like the category "miscegenation," they are based on false assumptions.
My students read about how the colonists dealt with people who were unlike themselves. The Pilgrims locked up, banished or executed "strangers": Indians, Quakers and rebellious women.
Even the founders like Jefferson struggled to reconcile their sense that Africans were inferior with a conviction that all men were created equal. But at least Jefferson and the other deists did not justify their inherited cultural assumptions with the Bible. To fall back on the Old Testament to condemn homosexuals is not really an argument; it is an ideology. And to call gay marriage unnatural is not logical: What about marriage is natural?
Anyone who has worked with gay people knows that they are in every respect except their sexual orientation just like the rest of us.
They are good workers, which is why most of the Fortune 500 companies have partnership insurance benefits, and they are good parents, with some 30 percent of gay women raising children. Why should their children and partners be deprived of the rights that other children and spouses take for granted? Is that what we want the world to see as representative of American democracy?
Is Canada sliding into "chaos" now that gay marriage is legal up north?
Let's be rational in our conversations about this subject, and remember that America still needs to live up to the ideals of the founders.
