Andrew Sullivan laments the rise of teen marriages which may be partly related to the increase of “abstinence” values taught in schools and church. I wonder if he sees the contradiction between his condemnation of legal, teen marriage and his own nonchalance about gay marriage. I wrote him the following letter:
Why is it more scandalous that children can marry at 12, 13, and 14 (i.e., when they’re biological adults), even though it is well known that a great number of children at those ages are having sexual relations?
Is it not the same reason that conservatives oppose gay marriage: permitting children at that age to marry sends a societal signal of approval for behavior that may be psychologically and physically harmful.
For the record, I think people getting married that young is kind of weird. People have a lot of growing up to do, and a marriage at that age is likely to stunt someone’s ability to pursue any higher level education.
But such marriages are not a sign of some deep immorality. They’re just old-fashioned; they place a premium on chastity over economic mobility. And if they are bad, surely promiscuity among young people of that age is even more harmful. It’s the height of contradiction, though, to condemn such youthful marriages as crazy–and thus proof gay marriage is not so bad–when one does not also condemn the underlying behavior, which I’ve never seen Sullivan do. The truth is, Sullivan thinks of marriage not as a practical way to preserve relations between child-bearing people of child-bearing age, but as a way for him to “find himself” and obtain the social approval he so clearly longs for. He has no understanding or respect for traditional marriages, and thus finds marriages of young people (who would otherwise be having sex outside of marriage) as abhorrent.
Sullivan doesn’t need marriage. He needs to suck it up and accept himself for who he is without trying to rearrange the entire society to avoid confronting an inescapable fact: that many people disapprove of his lifestyle.
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Do you believe that a loving, monogamous, life-long homosexual couple is a more harmful lifestyle to society than the celebrities like Nichole Hilton, Liz Taylor, and Britney Spears who rack up divorces like they were going out of style?
Nothing is more tiresome than reading one blogger question another blogger’s motives. Accept or reject gay marriage on its own merits or failings, please.
Anyway, you’re probably misreading Sullivan. I don’t think he condemns all teen marriages as abhorrent; I think he only abhors marriages of 12-year-olds. If I read his comments correctly, marraige of 14-year-olds strike him as weird, but not necessarily immoral.
Several issues.
James, I don’t know how the harms stack up. They’re both bad. I’ll even concede widespread divorce is probably worse in the aggregate. How many (particularly male) homoexuals are in monogamous relationships? Not many, is the short answer.
Andrew’s viewpoints and motives are apparent on the face of his histrionic discussions on this issue, which always come back to his feeling insulted when people dare to say they don’t approve of homosexuality. So, in an effort to shore up his self-esteem, he knocks all the pecadillos of the much larger and less dysfunctional heterosexual world. It is the only explanation for his illogic.
Well 2 things:
Gay or not gay I agree divorce no matter who you bang has more of destruction of the family itself. SO I would more support, just like the UCMJ, adultery is illegal.
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If you are willing to say that rampant divorce rates are worse for society than gay marriage or civil unions (I’m assuming on the latter; please correct me if I am wrong), then if you are willing to nix the availability of gay marriage/civil unions, does that mean that you also favor laws restricting the ability to divorce in order to combat the damage from divorce rates? Or, alternatively, how about laws making it more difficult to get married (mandatory pre-marriage counseling, a waiting period, etc.)? What parts of the heterosexual rights to marriage are you willing to cut in order to deal with the larger social problems their actions cause?
I’d be willing to make marriage harder to get and divorce harder to get too. I’d like something more like the Catholic model: marriage is for life, unless some impediment affected its validity. Pre-marriage counseling, etc.
Alright, you would favor restrictions on marriage and divorce availability for heterosexuals. Now, considering that the act of having children has a far greater effect upon society than merely getting married or divorced, would you also favor legislation that requires prospective parents to go through similar hurdles before being allowed to have children (i.e. counseling, parenting classes, etc.)?
I wouldn’t be knee-jerk opposed to some kind of mandatory classes on parenting. But since most kids turn out all right, and most parents love their children and care for them well, I’m not sure an across the board measure is required. Social workers already intervene in the cases of poor, young, unmarried, and otherwise “at risk” parents and children. That may be the best solution.
It’s obvious that many people cannot handle the responsibilities of adulthood. They should be helped. But they should accept the controls that go with such help.
“It’s the height of contradiction, though, to condemn such youthful marriages as crazy–and thus proof gay marriage is not so bad–when one does not also condemn the underlying behavior, which I’ve never seen Sullivan do.”
I don’t think Andrew Sullivan finds teen sex condemnable. He just doesn’t like the idea of teens committing to each other.
The impression that I get from many liberals is that they feel that condoning premarital sex is good, because it allows people to marry later and not make commitments too early. From their view, most people should probably wait until they are at least 25 before marrying (if not 30 or later), but they hit puberty at 12-13, so the solution is to make it accpetable to have non-marital sex starting at 16-18.
I, by the way, am a 26-year-old virgin.
I think you’re correct Glaivester on the liberal view. But I think that Sullivan is a little bit obscurantist about it. He mocks teen marriage, but not because he mocks teen sex, but because he mocks marriage in general as proof of heterosexual decadence.
Well, despite high divorce rates, I see things as mostly turning out “all right” as well, so I see little need to be playing around with restrictions on marriage based on some half-baked notion that “many people cannot handle the responsibilities of adulthood.” There are the mentally disabled who lack full faculties, but otherwise the fact that people make mistakes is no reason to get the government (which makes plenty of mistakes on its own — see “abstinence education,” for example) involved.
Why is it such a big deal to deny homosexuals the legal incidents of marriage? Do you really think that going one way or the other on this will really affect whether or not people will be homosexual? If not (which is correct), then what’s the point? Just because you think homosexuality is a sin doesn’t mean we need to punish it, any more than we need to throw people in jail for adultery, gambling, worshipping idols, or other nit-picky sins.
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