GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

Several critics of my “Monogamous same-sex adultery” piece in the San Francisco Chronicle complained that I had taken the anecdotal evidence of a single Web site (despite the fact it was and remains linked to by prominent LGBT groups as a “marriage resource”) and used that to conclude that the entire gay and lesbian community doesn’t understand the tight connection between marriage and monogamy. Well, my friend Dan Blatt of GayPatriot has already found little mention of monogamy at gay Web sites, so I thought I’d check out mentions of monogamy in the leading gay-marriage books. I searched at Amazon for “monogamy” in several important LGBT books on the subject, and here is what I found:

• In Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People’s Right to Marry by the father of the gay-marriage movement, Evan Wolfson, mentions monogamy precisely once.

• In Why marriage? The history shaping today’s debate over gay equality by perhaps America’s most talented gay historian, George Chauncey of Yale, there are only three mentions of monogamy, two of them critical.

• In The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and my Family by Dan Savage (not a fan of mine), monogamy is mentioned eight times in 304 pages, all but two in a critical fashion. The book contains phrases like (and I couldn’t see the whole page just the phrase so I guess it’s possible he’s being sarcastic or critical) “the erroneous notion that monogamy defines marriage.” There’s also a quote from Yale academic Jonathan Katz saying that “same-sex marriage may, in fact, sort of de-center the notion of monogamy and allow the prospect that marriage need not be an exclusive sexual relationship among people.” And people think gay marriage won’t change – and hurt – marriage?

• Richard Mohr’s The Long Arc of Justice: Lesbian and Gay Marriage, Equality, and Rights contains no positive mentions of monogamy in 160 pages, but it does have this gem: “compelled monogamy is not an essential component of marriage.” Now, I know of no state or city that has literally “compelled” monogamy – but in most marriages monogamy is compelled by the commitment (“forsaking all others”) the husband and wife make to each other. Will that be equally important in same-sex marriages? Apparently not.

• Since Jonathan Rauch appears to understand marriage better than most of his allies, I was hopeful that his Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America would be the exception. But it contains just six mentions of monogamy, of which only four are positive.

As the evidence builds that the “marriage equality” crowd does not understand the fidelity aspect of marriage – the Web site presented as a “marriage resource” that is hostile to monogamy; the lack of mentions of monogamy at same-sex marriage Web sites; the E-mails I received that were offended I would try to insist that marriage change gay couples, rather than the other way around; and now the gay-marriage books that are either hostile to or silent on monogamy, we’re getting to the point that someone on the other side is going to have to present some evidence that LGBT people actually do see the importance of monogamy in marriage. Otherwise, I think I’ve pretty much proven my case that the marriage equality movement has no idea what marriage is.