Marriage Security and Insecurities - NYTimes.com

In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.

David Brooks: I guess the Supreme Court hearing on same-sex marriage is pretty much dominating the week.

Gail Collins: Whew. I was afraid you were going to demand we discuss college basketball. Go, Marquette!

David: Well, I confess that my emotional life right now revolves around the question of whether Indiana can win a slowed-down, half-court game against a quality opponent. Fortunately, their next two prospective opponents, Syracuse and Miami, are run-and-gun type teams. But I thought it unfair to burden you with that. All of us in the coastal media have to overplay the importance of these same-sex marriage Supreme Court hearings and I?m trying to do my part.

Gail: Even if the Court comes up with some weenie dodge-the-issue ruling, I think we?ll remember this as a big moment that marked a dramatic change in American attitudes.

David: Like everybody else, I?m kind of amazed by the shift in public opinion on this issue. In 3,000 years of Western civilization, no major culture has shifted this fast to give gays and lesbians equality, as the U.S. and Europe have recently. It?s astounding.

Gail: The civil rights movement was the transcendent experience in modern American history. The people didn?t just accept social change ? they gradually re-evaluated their whole history, and it made them extremely sensitive to issues of fairness. And once the American public decides something?s not fair, the battle is pretty much over.

David: I?d ascribe part of the shift, as Frank Bruni did the other day, to those gays and lesbians who were brave enough to come out and show the world what they look like. I?d also say that the deal was sealed once the issue became about marriage. That is, once gays and lesbians were seeking access to one of the most traditional institutions in society, then they were bound to win more support.

Gail: Let?s give some special credit to the normal, run-of-the-mill TV entertainment industry. I have a very clear memory of watching the first season of ?The Amazing Race? in 2001. Each pair of contestants had some little ID tag, like ?bowling moms? or ?fraternity brothers.? There were two guys with a ?life partners? tag. That was the very first time I thought: ?Wow, this is going to work out.?

David: This leads to a general rule. If you want to win respect for your formerly excluded group, try to be more culturally conservative than anybody else. This is something the great and underappreciated A. Philip Randolph understood. You can be politically radical if you are culturally conservative and still get a hearing. The radicals of the 1960s got this one wrong.

Gail: That may be part of a larger rule, which is that people have to be able to identify with the excluded folks. The greatest warriors for gay marriage have been the average gay people who came out to their families and friends and communities. I grew up in one of the most socially conservative neighborhoods in Ohio, and my parents were traditional Catholics. But in her old age, my mother got her home health care from a guy who was gay, who was wonderful to her. Before she died, she rode a float in the Cincinnati Gay Pride Parade.

I don?t know what plans Rob Portman, the Republican senator from Cincinnati, has for the next parade. But we all know what happened to his position on gay marriage when his son came out.

David: Does this feel reversible to you? Everybody is simply assuming that gays and lesbians are winning more acceptance and respect and that this status can never be taken away. I guess I sort of think that is true, but history is full of reversals and shifts. Let?s say evidence develops over the decade that same-sex marriages are not stable and that the outcomes for children are not as good. I guess that might turn the tide. I see opponents of same-sex marriage already turning to Darwin (Oh, the irony!), arguing that children do best when both parents are biologically connected to them.

I wouldn?t be surprised if same-sex marriage shook out the way hetero marriage has ? great stability at the top of the educated class, great instability among the less educated.

Gail: Well, it?d certainly be fascinating if we discovered that gays were better at being married than heterosexuals are. Talk about irony.

David: What should we make of people who opposed gay marriage? Should they be treated like Bull Connor and thrown onto the bad guy lists of history? Is opposing gay marriage now the moral equivalent of opposing the Civil Rights Act, a stain and career ender?

Personally, I don?t think the two are quite comparable. Straight marriage had been around for thousands and thousands of years. It?s not disgraceful to be careful about seeing it redefined. I was never an opponent of gay marriage, but I can?t dismiss the skepticism of people who instinctively resisted change to an ancient and fundamental institution.

Gail: There have been tons of politicians who were slow to accept equal rights when it meant changes in the established social order. Many eventually came around, admitted they were wrong, and were forgiven. But the ones who actively choose hate-mongering don?t ever get a pass.

David: Speaking of marriage, what do you make about Mayor Bloomberg?s posters that try to raise awareness about the downsides of teen motherhood. I would have phrased them differently, so that they don?t appear to stigmatize parents, but I?m glad he?s at least publicizing the facts about this issue.

Gail: Mike Bloomberg, I?m sorry to say, is a walking advertisement for term limits. We?re now in year 12 and lately, everything he does sounds like a nag. I?m looking forward to the day when he can go off and underwrite the gun control movement 24-7.

David: There is no social trend more harmful to America?s future than the rise of out-of-wedlock birth, and aggressive steps need to be taken to reverse this trend.

Gail: The bottom line on single parenthood is the massive changes in the American economy. Women no longer have to stick with unhappy relationships in order to survive. And if they want to have children, they no longer necessarily need a man to support them. I understand your concern, but telling them not to do it isn?t going to work.

David: There are two related issues here. First the rate of teenage pregnancy, highlighted in the poster campaign, and then the rise of single parenthood generally. I?d say the problem is not women leaving unhappy relationships. It?s teenagers having kids before marriage, without any prospect of marriage, while living in environments in which marriage is not even a social norm. It?s the absence of marriageable men. It?s the absence of working-class jobs. It?s lonely people wanting a child they can care for and love. It?s a million different things woven together. Somehow we have to reverse the decline in marriage, without trying to solve every last contributing factor, since unless we can get more kids living in stable homes, all the problems just get worse.

The job is to make marriage more attractive (which basically means creating more men who are worth marrying) and making single parenthood less attractive (which means attaching some stigma to it since the economic penalties are already so profound). The trick is making single parenthood less attractive while not stigmatizing those who are in this position, usually because of ?a series of complex causes and no fault of their own.

I guess the posters fail that test, but at least someone is trying to inform the public about the facts.

Gail: Conservatives were sure that if you eliminated welfare for single moms, it would eliminate ? or at lease greatly reduce ? single motherhood. So in 1996 we had welfare reform. Did not change the trend in the least. Soon half of all babies will be born out of wedlock.

I?ll rally around your ideas to help make lower-income young men more employable. But I don?t think the stigma idea is going to work at all. Let me recommend better high school sex education instead. And maybe a generous contribution to Planned Parenthood.

David: You show me a sex-ed program that works and I?ll give you Marquette as national champion.

Source: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/marriage-security-and-insecurities/

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