Julian’s favorite whipping boy Stanley Kurtz (and don’t you get the impression that deep down, Stanley Kurtz relishes the prospect of Julian whipping him?) delivers what might be the most poorly argued piece of sophistry (sophistry = scholarly way of saying “feces”) ever to grace the pages of NRO.

I mean it. We’re talking about a rank, nasty, clear-the-room hunk of sophistry. It’s on Kurtz’s pet topic — gay stuff — and it attempts to address what Kurtz calls “the libertarian question.” Interestingly, Kurtz mentions, but never actually addresses the real libertarian position on gay marriage — why should the state be in the business of sanctioning marriage, gay or otherwise?

At any rate, let’s take a look at Kurtz’s piece. I’d say I’m about to give Kurtz a “Fisking,” but I fear he might interpret the term as some underground gay jargon, and develop a case of the shakes. So I’m about to parse him. Or at least his article.

He begins:

Let’s return to the libertarian question. If a man happens to walk around town arm and arm with his adult niece, is that going to make me abuse my teenaged niece? In most cases, probably not. Clearly, however, there is a connection.

Already, off-charts-stupid. Is that really “the libertarian question?” Libertarians support laws in that criminalize victimless conduct in an effort to alter behavior. We approve of laws that punish people who have hurt other people.

And we sure as hell don’t pass laws that restrict one person’s freedom in order to prevent someone else from criminal behavior. In other words, “the libertarian question” isn’t really a question at all. If two consenting adults want to get together, so be it. If they happen to be related, we can frown upon them, and shun them, but they ought to be allowed to get together. If those two adults getting together somehow inspires Joe Pervert to seduce his 13 year-old niece, you arrest Joe Pervert — because he raped his niece. You don’t ban whatever it is that influenced him — be it rap music, video games, or his neighbor who happens to be doinking his own niece, who happens to be 21.

Let’s go on, so we can be enlightened by Kurtz’s “clear” connection:

Our collective horror at incest — even adult incest — acts as a protective barrier against the temptation to incest with minors. The very real dangers of child abuse within families shows us that a significant number of people are potentially susceptible to sexual interest in the children under their control. Our collective taboo on incest, as expressed in our laws, helps to offset that potential temptation.

The mechanism here is embodied in the law, but goes well beyond the mere mechanical workings of the law. The real mechanism is collective and psychological. The law on incest expresses a shared moral value. It is a collective statement. As such, it reinforces a sense of disgust that helps to ward off temptation.

To see the mechanism of our incest taboo at work, imagine a world in which consensual adult incest was legal. Once we see or hear of couples — even a relatively small number — who engage in legal, consensual, adult incestuous relationships, the whole idea of incest with minors becomes thinkable. Preventing incest with minors from becoming thinkable is the purpose of the taboo.

Dumb beyond words. If our laws against consensual adult-with-adult sex act as some sort of psychological dike against adult-on-child incest, does that mean our acceptance of non-incestual adult-with-adult sex also implies acceptance of non-incestual adult-on-child sex?

This is insane. Kurtz is searching for a slippery slope where there’s only firm terrain. Adult-on-child sex — incestual or otherwise — is rape. It takes a clear victim. Consensual adult sex — incestual or otherwise — does not.

It’s the same dumb line we get from the homophobes. Accept man-on-man sex, they say, and next you’ll be stumping for NAMBLA. Well, no. Of course not.

The “libertarian question” Kurtz should be answering here is this one: Why should a sex act be illegal if all parties consent, and there is no victim?

Let’s move on:

The reason we need an incest taboo is because there is no effective way for the state to protect children from sexual abuse by family members. Children are essentially at the mercy of the adults who care for them. So only by building into adults a psychological mechanism of disgust and horror at incest can society protect children from the psychological harm of abuse by close relatives. The taboo runs deeper than the law itself. Yet the law embodies and reinforces the taboo. Were the law to be eliminated — even for consenting adults only — the taboo on incest with minors would be weakened, or break down-maybe not in all families, or even most, but for far too many.

Again, what the hell is he talking about? Are there really people out there who really want to rape children they are related to, but refrain because there are laws against adult-on-adult incest?

If Kurtz is looking for a clear, unambiguous taboo that will prevent adult-on-minor incest, here would be my suggestion:

IT IS SOCIALLY UNACCEPTABLE TO RAPE CHILDREN IF YOU ARE RELATED TO THEM. IT IS ALSO SOCIALLY UNACCEPTABLE TO RAPE CHILDREN IF YOU ARE NOT RELATED TO THEM.

Clear enough?

Let’s take Kurtz’s argument a bit further: There’s also no effective way for the state to protect children from abuse by opposite-sex, unrelated babysitters or teachers. By Kurtz’s logic, we should make non-incestual heterosexual sex a “moral taboo” too, lest babysitters and teachers misinterpret society’s acceptance of heterosexual sex as the green light to seduce 10 year-olds.

Kurtz then turns to homosexuality:

The taboo against homosexuality works in a similar fashion. But what, exactly, does the taboo on homosexuality protect? There is more than one way to approach that question, but the short answer is: The taboo on homosexuality protects marriage. Or, to look at the same problem from a slightly different angle, the institution of Western marriage, in its most traditional form, has been protected by a many-sided taboo against all sexuality outside of its confines — and against non-procreative sexuality within it. Just as the taboo on incest reduces the temptation to child abuse, the taboo on non-marital and non-reproductive sexuality helps to cement marital unions, and helps prevent acts of adultery that would tear those unions apart.

As an ultimate symbol of sexuality for the sake of pleasure (rather than reproduction) homosexuality has traditionally been taboo. That taboo was embodied and expressed in sodomy laws. Rigorous enforcement of these laws was secondary — and in any case, next to impossible. The important thing was the statement of collective values made by the laws against sodomy. By making homosexuality taboo, the law reinforced the idea that the highest and proper purpose of sexuality itself was to bind and energize families.

First, a rather regrettable choice of words there at the end. I’m assuming Kurtz meant to write, “the….purpose of sexuality itself was to bind and energize marriages.” If anyone other than the husband and wife (i.e. “the marriage) are getting bound and energized by sexuality, well, then we’re back to the whole incest thing. But okay. I’ll cut him some slack.

Kurtz may be right that at least some of the sodomy laws were passed in an effort to strengthen marriage, and to promote procreative sex (though many of them still on the books were passed — or in the case of the Texas law, reinstituted — in direct defiance of the gay rights moviement).

But he loses me when he says that sodomy laws that apply even to married couples somehow prevent adultery and strengthen marriage.

Really?

Does Kurtz really believe that any and all non-reproductive sex is detrmental to marriage? I’d argue just the opposite. If you’re only having sex to make babies, first of all, you’re not having much sex. You’re also probably having lots of babies, which means you have lots less money, and lots more stress. That also means that as soon as you decide you’ve had all the kids you want, you’ve also decided that you are finished having sex — forever.

This, apparently, is what Kurtz considers “a healthy marriage.”

I’d call it hell.

Also, how does banning all non-reproductive sexual activity within the confines of marriage prevent adultery? I’d think that if, after one child, a man’s wife at age 27 tells him she’s done having babies, and that he therefore has had the last orgasm of his life with her — I’d think that might induce a man to start looking for other options, don’t you?

As for homosexuality being “the ultimate symbol of sexuality for the sake of pleasure,” well, I guess that’s true — if you’re homosexual. But if you’re Kurtz’s ideal, healthy, married heterosexual couple, I’d think that homosexuality to you would represent the farthest thing from “sexuality for pleasure’s sake.” For heterosexual couples, “sexuality for the sake of pleasure” is probably better represented by a condom, a birth control pill, or a blowjob.

If you’re not gay, I’m not sure the fact that gay people have sex for purposes other than baby-making would have any influence at all your own feelings about whether sex should be used to express your feelings for your mate or solely for baby-making. Is Kurtz really suggesting that a heterosexual couple might say to themselves “you know, God says that sex is just for procreation. But on the other hand, our neighbors Blaine and Kyle have crazy sex all the time, and they’re both men! So let’s have non-procreative sex too!”

He goes on:

Of course, over the last 30 years, the taboo on homosexuality, like the broader taboo on a purely pleasure-seeking sexuality inside and outside the confines of marriage, has substantially broken down. And it’s not surprising that, as a consequence of our changed understanding of sexuality, the rates of divorce and out of wedlock birth have dramatically risen. Of course, at the same time as the divorce rate has risen, the weakening of the old taboos has substantially increased our personal freedom. And our new sexual freedom has benefited no one more than homosexuals, who no longer serve, in nearly the degree they once did, as ultimate symbols of forbidden sexuality.

On balance, I think we as a society have gained much from the weakening of the old sexual taboos, although it is important to keep in mind that we are in fact dealing with a trade-off here. Traditional sexual taboos protect marriage, and their weakening cannot help but weaken marriage — even as they increase personal freedom. But again, on balance, I believe that at least some of the weakening in the old sexual system has been worth the trade-off.

A whiff of concession here, but it’s blown away by the absurd linking of divorce rates to relaxed sexual mores.

I’d submit that divorce — and its prevelance — has actually strengthened marriage. How? Because the marriages that do surivive today are the real thing. People once got married for reasons other than love. Some women married while young, pretty and fertile to be sure they and their kids would have four walls and a loaf of bread once she wasn’t so young, pretty and fertile. Some couples married for convenience. Others for religous reasons. Some got married because the girl got pregnant.

Today, women can provide their own walls and loaves of bread. Today, when men beat their wives, it’s acceptable for their wives to leave them. Today, we’re less likely to marry because “it’s time,” or just because it’s the thing to do. Today, women can suppot children on their own, and we have better birth control that can prevent unwanted pregnancies from happening in the first place.

Today, all the loveless reasons for marriage can be factored out, which probably means that a higher percentage of marriages today than ever before occur because the two people getting married actually dig each other — and if they find out later that what they thought was love was really something else, they part ways instead of enduring a loveless marriage.

And because all that sex they had in the meantime was for “non-procreative” purposes, there are fewer and fewer kids around who have to endure the split.

I think all of these are generally good things. They may add up to fewer marriages overall — and maybe a few more divorces — but they add up to greater general happiness for all the parties involved.

Kurtz then returns to his old stomping grounds — gay marriage:

What we need to understand — but do not — is that gay marriage will undermine the structure of taboos that continue to protect heterosexual marriage — and will do so far more profoundly than either the elimination of sodomy laws, or the general sexual loosening of the past thirty years. Above all, marriage is protected by the ethos of monogamy — and by the associated taboo against adultery. The real danger of gay marriage is that it will undermine the taboo on adultery, thereby destroying the final bastion protecting marriage: the ethos of monogamy.

The idea that heterosexuals — even married heterosexuals — are more prone to monogamy than commited gay couples I think is misguided. Charming, but misguided. That’s not to say that the amorous gay man stereotype isn’t accurate. It probably is. But it’s not because they’re gay. It’s because they’re men. We’re all horny. And we’re all weak.

Studies show that up to half of married men have cheated on their wives — and those are merely the ones who admit it to pollsters. If heterosexual marriage as an institution were dependent on monogamy, heterosexual marriage would never have lasted long enough to become an instutition.

Marraige has survived because each party gets something it needs from the other — and what its getting is more important than what it has to give up. In the past that might have been security, financial support, someone to raise the kids, someone to prepare meals, or sex on demand. In the past as well as today that might include companionship, love, affection, acceptance — and like gooey sentiments. If every marriage ended at the first instance of infidelity, I’m guessing most of us could count on one hand the number of married people we know.

That’s not to say that fidelity isn’t noble or desirable or helpful. But to say it’s essential to marriage as an institution flies in the face of reality. Men are dogs. Men have always been dogs. And yet couples still get — and stay — married.

And — again — I just don’t see how alleged gay infidelity somehow undermines straight couples’ monogamy. We cheat because we give in. We don’t cheat because it’s the hip thing to do.

But Kurtz tries to explain:

Gay marriage threatens monogamy in two ways. First, gay marriage threatens monogamy because homosexual couples — particularly male homosexual couples — tend to see monogamy as nonessential, even to the most loyal and committed relationships. Of course, advocates argue that legal gay marriage will change all that — that marriage will make gays more monogamous. But it is just as likely (indeed, far more likely) that the effect will go in the other direction — openly non-monogamous married gay couples will break the connection between marriage and monogamy. (For more on this, see the NRO Gay-Marriage Debate, particularly my, “Point of No Return.”)

Even more powerfully, gay marriage threatens monogamy through its tendency to lead, on a slippery slope, to the legalization of polygamy and polyamory. (For more on this, see my Commentary article, “What Is Wrong With Gay Marriage.”

Kurtz isn’t done making his point, but I have to interject here. Normally when you cite other sources in a persuasive essay (and by “persuasive” I’m referring to this piece’s genre, not its efficacy), you cite them because they provide evidence to the point you’re making. Maybe it’s a study, or some compilation of statistics. If it’s another person’s opinion you’re citing, it should be an “appeal to authority” — your point is only bolstered if it’s shared by someone who’s an acknowledged expert in the area you’re discussing. Note that Kurtz’s appeal to authority — twice — is to…..himself!.

But I digress….

It’s important to understand what the danger of openly non-monogamous gay marriages, and of legalized polygamy and polyamory, really is. The key problem here is not, say, that polygamous marriages are unfair or exploitative to women. (That is a legitimate concern, of course, but it is not the greatest social danger posed by legalized polygamy.) The real problem is the effect of openly non-monogamous gay unions, and of legalized polygamy and polyamory, on the ethos of monogamy.

Even in the wake of the sexual-cultural changes of the Sixties, there is still a strong consensus in our society that marriage means monogamy. That consensus is expressed in the taboo on adultery. Legal recognition for group marriage, and for openly non-monogamous gay unions, would effectively destroy the taboo on adultery. That doesn’t meant that everyone would instantly go out and commit adultery — any more than everyone exposed to legal incestuous unions between consenting adults would engage in child abuse. But there would be a significant social effect — and it would be over and above the weakening of marriage that has already occurred in the wake of the changes since the Sixties.

All sorts of questionable assumptions here. First, I’d submit that the biggest threat polygamy poses to society most certainly is the exploitation of underage girls. Sorry, but the damage done to a 12-year-old girl forced into sexual bondage with some sleazy 60 year-old cult figure is far more tangible than theortical ponderings about the state of the “monogamy ethos.” But that’s beside the point.

I just don’t understand why Kurtz and other conservatives need the state to help them stay loyal to their wives. If he and his wife have personally pledged lifetime fidelity to one another, why does that fidelity somehow hinge on whether or not society at large thinks fidelity is a good thing? Are conservatives afraid they lack the willpower to refrain from doing what all the cool kids are doing? Why the need for reinforcement from the legislature?

The rest of this passage still hinges on the idea that marriage as an institution dies without monogamy. And, again, there’s a shitload of infidelity out there. And yet marriage lives on.

More:

The libertarian asks, Just because two married gay men live next door, is that going to make me leave my wife? In a way, the answer is “Yes.” For one thing, as a new generation grows up exposed to gay couples who openly define their marriages in non-monogamous terms, the concept of marriage itself will gradually change. No doubt, movies and television in a post-gay-marriage world will be filled with stories of the “cutting edge” understandings of open marriage being pioneered by the new gay couples, even if the actual number of such married gay couples is relatively small.

A large segment of the gay community looks forward to gay marriage for precisely this reason. Many thoughtful gay activists see same-sex marriage as a chance to redefine marriage itself — stripping marriage of what they see as its outdated and constricting connection to monogamy. And of course, even more powerfully than openly non-monogamous gay marriages, legalized group marriage would destroy the taboo against adultery. (Lot’s of potential for movies and TV there.)

But marriage is redefining itself all the time. We don’t think much of arranged marriages any more, for example. Marraige is no longer an “out,” or the “honorable thing” to do in case of pregnancy. If Kurtz wants marriage to survive, he’d better be willing to see it adapt. People will continue to find familial arrangements that best fulfill their needs and wants. No amount of government-sponsored social engineering is going to change that. If man-woman-baby is still the optimal social arrangement for all parties involved (and most of the time, I believe it is), then man-woman-baby will continue to be the arrangement most of us opt for.

As a conservative, Kurtz buys into this theory as it applies to markets, why do things suddenly change when we’re talking about choices that are personal/social instead of financial?

This next passage is my favorite:

Still, the libertarian asks, Would the group marriage next door really make me leave my wife? Maybe not. Of course, the married commune next door might invite the two of you over for some fun, with potentially problematic results for your marriage.

Sorry, but if the prospect of a communal marriage merely existing in your neighborhood poses problems for your marriage, I’d suggest you might want to reexamine your marriage. I’d like to think my future wife and I would welcome a group marriage home into our neighborhood. Not because it might induce into adultery, but because they’d probably be immensely entertaining, and we’d have all kinds of cool “freaky neighbor” stories to tell our friends. If ever we’re bored, we could always invite the whacko group marriage people over for dinner and charades.

More:

But even that is not the real problem. The deeper difficulty is simply the breaking of the taboo on adultery. Sodomy laws were barely enforced, yet they made a collective statement about social attitudes toward non-marital and non-reproductive sexuality. Similarly, incest laws are rarely invoked. Yet their existence reinforces the horror of incest, and helps prevent the sort of violations that make incestuous temptation thinkable.

So let me get this straight (pardon the pun): Sodomy laws were rarely enforced. They sure as hell didn’t prevent sodomy, because there’s still lots of sodomy going on, and always has been. Kurtz says he likes them because of the “collective statement they make about social attitudes….”

In other words, Kurtz thinks sodomy laws work because they reinforce the idea that there’s something dirty and unseemly about being gay. They work not because they prevent sodomy, or because they penalize sodomites, they work simply because they make gay people feel bad about themselves — and grant state-sanctioned legitimacy to those people in society who want to gay people to feel bad about themselves.

Kurtz’s incest comments are even wierder. He says that adult-on-adult laws against incest work because they keep those adult-on-child incestual impulses at bay. I explained above one reason why that’s absurd.

But there’s more:

Incest still happens. So obviously those laws don’t work.

Unless Kurtz is implying that we all (or at least many of us) have urges to molest the minors we’re related to, and that we’re only prevented from doing so by bans on adult-on-adult incest.

Kurtz seems to be arguing that there’s really no difference between people who have sexual feelings for other adults and people who have sexual feelings for children — that the only thing that’s keeping most of us from raping children are these laws that say sex for reasons other than procreation is wrong.

I don’t know about you, but if every single anti-sodomy and anti-incest law were repealed, I’d still be attracted to physically mature women. And I’d still think that people who want to have sex with children ought to be locked up, treated, and, if necessary, castrated.

More:

So the mere social statement that marriage does not mean monogamy is where the real danger of legalized gay-marriage and polyamory lie. And the collapse of consensus about shared social institutions really does effect us as individuals. Once we as a society no longer take it for granted that marriage means monogamy, you may not decide to leave your wife. But you may be more likely to give in to the temptation of an affair. And that could mean the end of your marriage, whether that’s what you wanted going into the affair or not. (For another way of looking at this problem, see my, “Code of Honor,” where I compare the operation of the taboo against adultery to the working of a college’s anti-cheating honor code.)

Another appeal to authority. I’ll have to check this Kurtz guy out, Stanley. You seem to think highly of him. The rest I’ve already covered.

As with the taboos on incest and sodomy, society can’t enforce the taboo on adultery with laws. Laws on matters of sexual conduct do make a difference, but less as enforcement mechanisms than as embodiments of common values. Precisely because the state cannot monitor and prosecute adultery, society writes a taboo against the practice into our hearts. The laws of marriage as currently constituted embody and express that taboo. Transform those laws, and the taboo will disappear.

Nonsense. There are lots of laws against things that people do anyway, and that society doesn’t really frown much upon (downloading music, for example, or speeding). And there are lots of things you can do that are legal that will win you more scorn from society than things that aren’t legal. Giving a particular set of values the state’s impromateur doesn’t “write those values on our hearts.” If they’re values we subscribe to, they were on our hearts all along. If they’re values we don’t subscribe to (how about segregation?), we’ll probably ignore the laws — which is precisely why sodomizers went on sodomizing in spite of the fact that there were laws telling them they weren’t allowed to sodomize.

The ongoing need for shared social understandings on matters pertaining to the family and sexuality does not fit neatly into the libertarian playbook. Social and sexual taboos are the stuff of traditional societies. But the truth is, so long as we live, not merely as isolated individuals, but in families together, we shall be in need of social and sexual taboos.

“The ongoing need for shared understandings?” Sounds like a line from a handbook on diversity advocacy. Why do we as a society need “shared understandings” about sexuality? We’re individuals, not collectivists. We all have different wants, desires, needs, and inhibitions when it comes to sex. Why do we need society to tell us which of us are right in those wants, desires, needs and inhibitions, and which of us are wrong? More importantly, why do we need a state to codify those “correct” wants, desires, needs and inhibitions into law? Why not let each pursue his own happiness, so long as he doesn’t harm any of the others?

If the controversy over Senator Rick Santorum’s remarks has made it possible to openly discuss the real basis of our shared social and sexual understandings, then it will have done some good. Unlike Sen. Santorum, I would rather accept some disruption in family stability than go back to the days when homosexuality itself was deeply tabooed. The increase in freedom and fairness is worth it. Yet there has been a terrible social cost for the changes of the sixties. We need to mitigate those costs. And we certainly do not need to risk the destruction of an already weakened family system by radically undermining the ethos of monogamy.

Gay marriage would set in motion a series of threats to the ethos of monogamy from which the institution of marriage may never recover. Yet up to now, our society has been unable to face the real costs and consequences of the proposed change. That is partly because of an understandable sympathy for the gay-rights movement. But it also reflects the sheer inability of modern folk to grasp the operation, necessity — or even the existence — of the system of moral consensus and prohibition upon which society itself depends.

This is his conclusion, so I’ve already covered most of it.

There is at least one area where I think Kurtz is correct — I don’t dispute that monogamy is desirable, or that families are important, or that man-woman-baby is probably the best scenario for all three — and therefore for society at large.

But Kurtz is wrong when he says that the family has been undermined by the absence of a state-imposed “ethos” or “moral concensus.” The family, for the most part, has been undermined by too much state engineering — most notably by the way the welfare system has incentivized illegitimacy and fatherless families.

Marriage (and, therefore families) I think is generally improving at the upper-income levels because people are holding off and marrying for love, not for convenience. Studies have shown — and my own experience has borne out — that young professionals today are waiting longer than ever before to get married. (I’m too lazy to look up the statistics.) As explained above, they’re utilizing birth control and — horror! — non-procreative sex to postpone having children, too. Seems to me that all this means that the marriages that do happen will be stronger, and the children that are born into them will be wanted, and born into the right environments.

The state of the family at lower income levels, of course, is a different story — and it’s precisely because government has perverted the decisions low-income people make about their families. That it is liberal and not conservative government doing the imposing I think makes little difference. Left to their own devices, people will make the choices that make them most comfortable, secure, and happy.

It’s only when government gets involved that those choices go askew.

And so it’s wrong when government gets involved — be it with welfare laws meant to encourage egalitarianism, or with “moral consciousness” laws meant to encourage a particular set of values.

Ok. I’m done.

You may all now go about having non-procreative sex with TheAgitator.com’s unmitigated blessing. And if you wear one of these, you’re sure to have more!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2003 at 3:58 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.