Just FYI -- while I agree that it's flawed, I actually think the MA system (as enacted, without the gutting that Romney attempted) has a lot of sense to it. It annoys the hell out of everybody, but that's the nature of a compromise. As a first cut, I think it's okay: room for improvement, but a fair start. (The flaws you list are *entirely* intentional -- it simply wouldn't function without them.) But that's a separate discussion, that we can talk about some other time.
Wouldn't it make more sense, from an achieving-ends standpoint, for the gay-marriage lobby to argue for the abolishment of heterosexual marriage in the eyes of the law and give everyone civil unions?
Sure, and some actually do so. But there is absolutely a snowball's chance of hell in that actually happening, at least on the national level: while it's a fine and logical proposal, logic has *nothing* to do with this issue. Think about it this way: people always react most strongly when something is taken away from them. This proposal, no matter how constructed and no matter how sensible, would be taken as "Those Gay People Are Taking Marriage Away From Us!", and that interpretation would be used to fan mass hysteria on the subject. I can think of few better ways to destroy the gay-rights movement.
Politics is, as they say, the art of the possible. The most possible track to equal rights is more or less the one we're currently on, IMO. It's by no means ideal, but it looks to me to have the highest probability of success...
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Date: 2008-05-17 05:59 am (UTC)Just FYI -- while I agree that it's flawed, I actually think the MA system (as enacted, without the gutting that Romney attempted) has a lot of sense to it. It annoys the hell out of everybody, but that's the nature of a compromise. As a first cut, I think it's okay: room for improvement, but a fair start. (The flaws you list are *entirely* intentional -- it simply wouldn't function without them.) But that's a separate discussion, that we can talk about some other time.
Wouldn't it make more sense, from an achieving-ends standpoint, for the gay-marriage lobby to argue for the abolishment of heterosexual marriage in the eyes of the law and give everyone civil unions?
Sure, and some actually do so. But there is absolutely a snowball's chance of hell in that actually happening, at least on the national level: while it's a fine and logical proposal, logic has *nothing* to do with this issue. Think about it this way: people always react most strongly when something is taken away from them. This proposal, no matter how constructed and no matter how sensible, would be taken as "Those Gay People Are Taking Marriage Away From Us!", and that interpretation would be used to fan mass hysteria on the subject. I can think of few better ways to destroy the gay-rights movement.
Politics is, as they say, the art of the possible. The most possible track to equal rights is more or less the one we're currently on, IMO. It's by no means ideal, but it looks to me to have the highest probability of success...