Better Arguments #2: Does the NoH8 Campaign Understand Their Opponents?

Posted on 28 June 2010

NoH8 posted their latest PSA this week (embedded above), and it had two effects on me.  First I thought, Wow, that’s a good PSA.  It gets their point across, does it in a compelling way, and summarizes the best argument I’ve heard for state-licensed same-sex marriage.  The second thought that ran through my mind was… That’s the best argument I’ve heard for state-licensed same sex marriage.  Even David Boies, the attorney for the plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 case in California used it as his main argument… and that’s it?

Now, it wouldn’t be fair of me to require that the PSA should make an intellectual argument when PSA’s are axiomatically designed to persuade in the way audiences are persuaded, which these days is by appealing to their emotions. But having followed the live tweets of the court case, there doesn’t seem to be any intellectual argument at all that addresses their opponents’ arguments.  If there were, you’d think the plaintiffs would have offered it.  So it appears that the PSA really does represent the best argument we’re likely to get for some time for same sex marriage.

Which is why I wonder whether those in favor of same sex marriage even understand their opponents best arguments, or if they do realize emotional appeals are all they have to support their case and are moving forward anyway.  It’s probably a bit of both, and it probably depends on who you ask, so let me just ask about the NoH8 campaign.  Do they get it?

One glance at the name suggests that they don’t; it makes the mistake of assuming that those who disagree with them about Proposition 8 and the state licensing of same-sex marriage must do so because they hate gay people.  But that was then, when they started their organization.  This is now.  Perhaps they’ve been educated and are stuck with the name.  Perhaps.  But I kind of doubt it.

Like I said, the PSA was well-executed. It uses the concept of language to communicate their point that same sex partnerships and heterosexual partnerships are just different “languages” or expressions of love and have no bearing on the purpose of marriage; and that the purpose of marriage is as an expression of love itself between two human beings.

I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, but they chose the mutable (that means ‘changeable’) characteristic of language to symbolize sexual orientation.  Since they probably don’t agree that sexual orientation is mutable, I realized a few minutes into thinking about the PSA that they might be making the implicit argument that whether one is born gay or not and whether it can be changed or not are really beside the point.  Instead, the question of same sex marriage is about whether the people in the relationship being of the same sex interferes with the purposes of marriage.

And I would agree with that assessment.  I’m just not sure if they actually made that point or if I’m giving them too much credit and am reading too much into this.  Regardless, it’s a question worth asking, just as asking whether the number of people in the relationship interfere with the purposes of marriage or whether the species of the beings involved in the relationship interfere with the purposes of marriage.  They’re all good questions to ask.

And to answer those questions we have to figure out what we mean by marriage.  So what does NoH8 mean by ‘marriage’?  Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that what they mean by marriage is each person’s commitment to the same sex relationship itself.  The argument made in favor of same sex relationships conflates whether the state ought to allow those relationships with the question of whether states ought to license those relationships and call them marriage.  And that I think is where their argument fails.  It assumes they are the same thing when they are not.  (Side Note: This seems to explain their insistence that state licensed marriage is a human right, because then I’m forced to wonder in what non-arbitrary fashion is it considered a human right that doesn’t cause it to cease to exist as a concept distinct from the generic word ‘relationship’, and that’s worth another blog post right there, so I will leave it for another time.)  See, no one in their right mind has any problem with allowing same sex relationships.  Its the licensing of them and calling them marriage that is the sticking point, so proponents of same sex marriage need to make that distinction if they want to be relevant and avoid setting up a straw man.

Now I can understand why the distinction isn’t made.  It doesn’t occur to us to ask why states license marriages in the first place.  I think that’s pretty normal.  When each of us get married, we are getting married because we love the other person.  The PSA makes good use of tapping into this idea and applying it to same sex couples.  And a lot of heterosexuals think that because they view marriage primarily as a means of commitment to the person they love that that’s all there is to it.  And so they assume that if that’s all there is to marriage, they correctly conclude based on that assumption that homosexuals should be able to marry too.  Based on that reasoning, the only reason they can fathom for opposing same sex marriage is because of bigotry.

But is there more to it?  Or are they right and is that all there is to marriage?  Is it just the commitment and love two partners have toward each other?

Proponents of Prop 8 make the point that marriage plays a far larger role, one that isn’t intuitive or obvious, but is there and vital nonetheless.  They reason that how children grow up affects their character and how they interact with others as adults.  Therefore the more stable a child’s environment is and the better they are able to learn about themselves, and the more stable environments and proper role models there are for children, the more stable that generation’s society will be because there will be more well-rounded people in that generation.  These children will have children, who will have children, who have children, all rippling into the future, creating a long tail effect that affects the stability of that society over the course of the next century or two and beyond.  So it seems that how children grow up is very important to the future of society. And what’s the most stable environment for a child to grow up in?  As the defendant attorneys argued in the courtroom, the research with the best methodologies all tended to show that it is a two-person, committed and loving household with parents of the opposite sexes.  This they say is why the state has an interest in licensing only to heterosexual couples and taking children out of abusive households.  That’s the argument for Prop 8 in a nutshell, with a million qualifications left unsaid.

So if marriage is about love but also about child-rearing and contributing to the stability of society over the course of centuries, and the best households for raising children are heterosexual two-person committed and loving households, then yes, licensing same sex marriages and encouraging them interferes with the purpose of marriage.

So perhaps opponents of Prop 8 should focus on those propositions, instead of appeals to equal rights and accidentally setting up straw men, as they are the lynch pin for the Proposition 8 argument.

Obviously, how you view what marriage is affects how you answer the question of whether or not the societal approval and encouragement of same sex marriage interferes with the purposes of marriage.  It also affects how you answer who or what can marry each other.  Hopefully this post will provide some understanding to each side’s arguments, and provide some of you a few good ideas for arguing for same sex marriage that will actually move the debate forward instead of repeating what David Boies repeated in the court room, or worse, stymieing it in the morass of politics and name calling.  Hopefully I have described each side as if I were in favor of it.  If I haven’t, please correct me in the comments.  I’ve no interest in debating the merits of each argument, but I do want to know if I have represented each side accurately and not set up a straw man.  What do you think?