For those of you reading this I would ask of you only one thing: whether you support gay marriage or not, can you at least acknowledge what you are asking of those of us who disagree, who believe our historic marriage tradition is good? … Gay marriage will make it virtually impossible to renew marriage’s central public role, which is not to celebrate private romantic love—hardly any business of government—but to protect children by increasing the likelihood that they will be born to and raised by their own mother and father. Gay marriage makes it impossible to articulate this as a goal of marriage, much less to realise it in real children’s lives.
—Maggie Gallagher’s closing statement in The Economist‘s online debate over same-sex marriage, where she sparred with Freedom to Marry’s Evan Wolfson
christopher di spirito
Hey Maggie. Have you heard you can join Weight Watchers online?
NelsonG
Give that question to a LGBT homeless teen (or someone who once was) whose traditional marriage parents threw out like trash.
jasun mark
Actually, what makes it impossible to take marriage seriously are the serial-monogamitsts who get married more often than they buy a new car. The vanity marriages of Larry King (what… 9 times now?) and the line up of people at chapels in Reno, drunk and marrying someone they met that weekend.
Maggie if you REALLY cared about that whole thing… why aren’t you talking about THAT?
Fitz
OH!!! So THAT is the reason why she thinks marriage should be used as a way to hurt people. well, I am with her, I give up. no gay marriage. And no marriage for infertile people. Marriages dissolve at the point of menopause. And I think children from divorced families should be put up for adoption by married people. And unmarried women who get pregnant should be beat to death.
Donald
“—hardly any business of government—”
Exactly. The government has no business being involved in marriage since it is a religious institution. Instead, government should be issuing civil unions for EVERYONE so society can recognize these unions and leave it up to the church as to whether the union is blessed as a marriage. This would afford all of the civil protections we have been fighting for (property protection, hospital visitation, social security payouts, etc.) without the discrimination of society and backward thinking churches.
However, with religion having such a strangle hold on political power, this will never happen until The Supreme Court decides to get involved.
Paul McMichael
@jasun mark: THAT’S IT!!! Why on earth doesn’t she campaign for NOAD (Nat. Org. Against Divorce) or NOAA (ditto Adultery), NOAQM (ditto Quickie Marriage), NOCHAAOTR (ditto Ceaseless Hurtful Arguing Over The TV Remote), etc etc etc.
They are a much obvious place to start than banning gay marriage which at least would have to consequence of ensuring more kids have two married parents.
Also, why doesn’t she watch the Wedding TV channel? Judging by that, marriage is ALL about a public declaration of romantic love.
Her head is in the sand and simultaneously in her ass. Which makes her ass in the sand…. I think….
One of the CA 36,000
@Fitz: ” And unmarried women who get pregnant should be beat to death.”
You mean, like Maggie “Ignore the Bastard Son and the Invisible Husband with the Hindu Name” Gallagher Srivastav?
Given her ample padding, I imagine your arm would fall off trying to beat her to death. Stoning would be more efficient and less painful– but it would take damn big boulders…!
Fitz
@One of the CA 36,000: I think the best way to kill her is to let her alone in a McD’s for a few hours until she strokes out.
One of the CA 36,000
@Donald: One more time.
Marriage is a CIVIL INSTITUTION and predates organized religious involvement by CENTURIES.
It was, is, and ALWAYS HAS BEEN about the orderly commingling of the assets and sociopolitical status of two interested parties. Initially it was uniting two or more FAMILIES through their children. Marriage was co-opted by religions as a source of additional revenue. Marriage for love is only a couple of centuries old. And the idea of marriage as a purely procreative institution is a very recent right-wing fundamentalist talking point.
People in the US don’t realize that without the involvement of the State, two people can’t join in a legally-binding marriage. The State confers temporary notary status to religious officiants, who then can execute the marriage license the State actually issues. Normally– as is the case in the rest of the world– celebrants get their legal civil marriage at the Justice of the Peace or some state magistrate.
And we know this because…? Because you have to go to a STATE COURT to get a DIVORCE. And, because religious officiants who have executed a legal marriage license must by law end their little God Party spiel with “By the power vested in me by the State of [insert state name here], I blah blah blah.”
CIVIL MARRIAGE was first. You’ve got it precisely backwards. Religions should get the F!CK out of civil marriage.
redball
If she didn’t look so much like Rosie O’Donnell, this would be a bit less ironic & comical. 🙂
She sounds like such an uneducated piece of bigoted trash.
In Maggie Gallagher’s war room:
“Oh no, the gay = pervert argument is losing ground…umm, gee, I guess we can try to make this about the children! People will buy that, right??”
Too bad the data aren’t panning out for her “argument”–no, exercise in wishful thinking.
Girl, BYE!
mikenola
I find it hard to believe that the author cannot answer this question!
boiled down it is “….but to protect children by increasing the likelihood that they will be born to and raised by their own mother and father. Gay marriage makes it impossible to articulate this as a goal of marriage, much less to realise it in real children’s lives.”
The answer is very simple, worry about yourself and quit trying to impose your belief on US. Gay marriage in no way “makes it impossible” to do anything, except institutionalize hatred and bigotry like you and your religious hate mongers keep pushing on Constitution Loving Americans!
I promise you, WE won’t be trying to legislate you out of existence, have you arrested for your immoral and hate filled rhetoric or prevent you from visiting your loved one in the hospital.
If you don’t believe in SSM, don’t marry a person of the same sex.
If you don’t believe in having children with a person of the same sex, don’t get fertilized for that purpose.
If you don’t want to see respect taught in schools, get ready to be very disappointed.
That is you answer maggie, but of course you already know that SSM won’t affect you at all, except remove your income stream.
Kenster999
She’s confusing gay *parenting* with gay *marriage*.
gregger
@NelsonG: Thank you, that’s perfect.
Kenster999
To clarify my previous comment: banning gay marriage won’t stop gay parenting. Gay parents will continue to adopt, use artificial insemination, surrogacy, etc.
Banning gay marriage will only have the effect of ensuring that the gay parents of these kids don’t have the benefits and protections that come from marriage (insurance coverage for the family/kids).
anonymous
I really don’t understand why these people won’t just make the consistent argument that people who can’t have children shouldn’t have sex (including infertile and menopausal couples). Period. Every discussion I have read of this ‘new natural law’ idea always stops at this point–someone questions the obvious problem that if procreation is so important, and indeed is the ‘special thing’ about ‘traditional marriage’, then why can infertile and menopausal couples have sex, but not gays? Never get an answer–it’s just special because it could be fertile, but its not. But it’s still special. Because it is. Why? It is. (Let’s just call a spade a spade–it’s because buttsexxs unreasonably bothers a certain class of people, not for any high minded philosophical purpose) Gay philosopher John Corvino, who is actually an academic unlike Mrs. Gallagher, on the Independent Gay Forum has a good article on this rhetorical silliness. This just goes to show these people aren’t actually serious about ‘traditional marriage’. They should just condemn all non fertile sex, and that would be consistent, if extremely unpopular. I guess they really don’t care about the fact that neither Jesus nor Paul were married or thought marriage was this essential aspect of life (Paul only allowed it to prevent fornication). I guess they don’t really care that Jerome and Augustine and Tertullian and John Chrysostom didn’t think getting married was that great either, and thought celibacy was the clear path to God. It’s easier to ignore all the early Christian writing that claims celibates go to a higher level of Heaven than married couples. Because that’s not popular, and would condemn all the anti-gay preachers that think it’s okay to use birth control, or get divorced, or that marriage is as good or better than celibacy. Totally unimpressed by the rhetoric. Traditional Buddhists, consider statements by the Dalai Lama and Sangarashitta, which basically condemn sex as problematic to spiritual development, but are much more consistent on this, and generally less offensive to people who don’t share their perspective.
jacknastion
Banning straight divorce will do a lot more to protect “traditional marriage” than allowing gay marriage. We’re gay, we weren’t going to marry women regardless of whether or not we can marry our boyfriends.
Michael
I understand the confusion about how to reply–her statement is mystifying, and seems to ride on unimaginable assumptions.
1. Who says that’s the primary public role of marriage? If that were the case, wouldn’t it be time for civil unions or denial of marriage for the infertile, or for those who marry past childbearing age, or for the childless by choice?
2. What on earth is the threat she imagines to parental childrearing? Parental abandonment of children? Divorce? Remarriage? Adoption? Parental death? Children running away from home? Kidnapping? Death of children? What do any of these necessarily have to do with gay marriage? How does the legal recognition of gay relationships contribute to any of these?
3. To the extent that gay relationships being legally recognized and legitimized would affect childrearing, it would be in potentially allowing for legal custody arrangements for those who have children and later enter into same-sex domestic relationships–which could be seen as formalizing and reinforcing parental responsibility after a break-up.
Somewhere in the shadowy mists of half-conscious assumptions underlying this inane remark lurks the right’s single greatest dread: that legitimizing gay relationships will encourage more closeted people to leave unfulfilling heterosexual marriages. That’s the only threat that gay marriage might conceivably offer to straight marriages–but it’s misconceived, because the threat in this case does not proceed from legitimation of gay relationships, but from homosexuality itself. (People will leave intolerable marriages whether there’s gay marriage or not.) Somewhere in the murk, these people want to believe that if you don’t recognize alternate sexuality, it won’t exist. I, on the other hand, do believe in fairies.
KevinVancouver
@One of the CA 36,000: WELL SAID !!
Cam
I will answer her question if she can answer mine.
Maggie. As a Crusader for “Traditional Marriage” why do you not wear a wedding ring, why do you keep your own last name, and why are you and your husband never, ever in the same location?
scribe
@Cam: if you were married to that, would you stand next to it????
Steve
“For those of you reading this I would ask of you only one thing: whether you support gay marriage or not, can you at least acknowledge what you are asking of those of us who disagree, who believe our historic marriage tradition is good?”
For those of you that stigmatize an entire community of people, can you at least acknowledge that what you are advocating is discrimination and negatively impacts an entire demographic of people? A demographic, I would like to add, is populated with both adults and children alike. Children? You know? Those people we supposedly love so much we have to protect them from… themselves and each other? Such backasswards thinking.
“but to protect children by increasing the likelihood that they will be born to and raised by their own mother and father.”
Their own mother and father? Adoption? Abortion? It doesn’t really matter, because the right-wingers apparently hate both.
“Gay marriage makes it impossible to articulate this as a goal of marriage, much less to realise it in real children’s lives.”
You realize that kids with gay parents are real kids too, right?
In short, what I’m trying to say is: Shut up you idiot.
Matthew
In a time of desperate UNDERpopulation (6 million? What kind of wussy species are we?) it’s good to know that someone has the back of all those married couples reproducing, and those lazy-ass sterile ones who get a free ride.
Schteve
@Kenster999: Precisely. She is either (in the more likely case) aware of this and purposefully doesn’t care about the wellbeing of children with same-sex parents, or she is (in the less likely case) delusional and somehow thinks that preventing same-sex couples from marrying will result in more children being raised by a man and a woman. I really do want to find this mysterious straight couple which is hedging their decision to have a child on whether the gays can marry.
redball
@Schteve: You probably give her too much credit. As Mikenola alluded to, she is first and foremost aware of the CHA-CHING in her bank account.
Amoral prostituting scumbag.
Matthew
@Matthew: That should have said billions.
Matthew
@Matthew: That should have said billion.
McMike
Her “logic” is laughable. Hmmm, so maybe if I stop wearing black t-shirts there will be, somehow, more white t-shirts in the world. I’m guessing she’s assuming for every gay person that can’t marry a straight person will have a baby? I don’t get her attempt at logic at all.
How is gay marriage going to affect someone else’s marriage?
btw, she is a LESBIAN. She looks like Jabba the f’n Hut and, as someone has already pointed out, she looks like Rosie O’Donnell (ie, lesbian!)
anonymous
She looks like Jabba the f’n Hut and…
Woah there mister, why you gotta go and insult Jabba like that?
Timothy
Perhaps if I remotely believed that marriage’s central public role was to protect children by increasing the likelihood that they will be born to and raised by their own mother and father.
But It’s not. Never has been but certainly isn’t now.
And while heterosexual marriages in and of themselves make it impossible to make that marriage’s central public role (due to legal equality within the relationship, no-fault divorce, marriage of the elderly, marriage of the infertile, marriage of those who choose to avail themselves of birth control), same-sex marriage add only a minuscule of weight to that already burden.
adman
Marriage is about stabilizing society in the material sense by encouraging just (therefore sound in the investment sense) house-holding relationships between two otherwise unrelated parties. We build our house-holds, our neighbors build theirs. We sanction government to preside over this orderly arrangement, our neighbors sanction government for the same reason. Presto! There is now a society, end of story.
Baby steps Maggie, I know this is overwhelming with all that holy trinity bullshit obscuring your addled mind in it’s false teaching, but just think of it like this: One party, another party, the local judge. We’ve elevated learned people to positions of prominence in society before, hon, and we’ll do it again! You’re just some weird growth-spurt inspired anomaly, Mark me on that lady…
Jeff K.
Marriage does absolutely nothing to make sure children are raised by both parents. Mine were married, and they split when I was three. On the other hand, my cousin’s parents were never married, and they’ve been together twenty years. That fraud Gallagher wouldn’t know how to make an argument if it were tattooed verbatim on her retinas.
Carsen Tyler
She should ask the girl I went to high school with, she and her sister always lived in fear that their parents will get separated because civil unions and state allowed marriage equality doesn’t give citizenship like civil marriage does. At my job, I work with a family with eight kids and they are being raised by their aunt and her girlfriend, they have been more a parents to those kids then the actual birth parents…who keep on having kids and sending them off to the aunt’s when the start posing a problem. But since the girlfriend is here on a student visa, she can get in to a lot of trouble if she doesn’t go back, so she keeps on taking classes in order to stay here and she’s been doing that for nine years. That’s 11 kids I know who are hurt because of a lack of marriage equality, and I am willing to bet there are a lot more out there.
Franky
No need to dignify this garbage with a response, but the previous commenters have done so wonderfully. And, since 2/3s of the voters on the economist poll said yes to same sex marriage (and a major amount of the 1/3 that didn’t are openly NOM supporters ie. crazy freaks), I think most of them also realize just how stupid Maggie and all anti-marriage for same-sex couples foes truly are, and that their arguments lack any sort of common sense.
TJ Parker
Oh, Maggie: get a neck.
David
Can’t wait until she finally pops…. and it looks like she’s getting close.
David
She looks like the misshapen dough wad that pops out of popnfresh biscuits when you bang the tube on the edge of your kitchen counter,
redball
“The Muppets: Miss Piggy Does Politics”
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Maggot: We know that your are known to peruse the Queerty threads when your vile reprehensive face and actions are posted………….How about your explain your own marriage???
You know, the one where your husband travels the world with a male companion to bridge tournaments? How come you are never photographed with your husband? How come he seems to want absolutley nothing to do with your hate crusade?
And your absolute babble about how oh so very wonderfull it is for a kid to be raised by only a mother and father is absolute bullshit. Hundreds of kids are vitrual zombies because of the absolute horrendous job their “loving parents” did at “raising” them. Having two parents who are a man and a woman does not guarantee the child will be nutruted and raided with love and caring. Having two parents regardless of their gender who actually love and devote the time to raise the kid will guarantee a happy outcome……………..
Daez
Here is your answer…
SHUT UP YOU BIGOTED BITCH! Your stupid ass fails to realize with that comment that there PLENTY of healthy and well adjusted children that come from a family with two mommies or two daddies. It fails to realize that two mommies and two daddies often do a better job of raising children that they actually wanted to have than some some straight couple that didn’t really want kids but had them anyways because it was the thing to do.
Seriously, Maggie must just be mad that she doesn’t have anything to call her own, so she misdirects that anger. Maybe if the cow lost 300 pounds and took one ounce of her energy that she uses on hate to use it on her own life she would actually be happy by now.
robert in NYC
Donald, No. 5. Civil marriage is NOT a religious institution and is different from religious marriage which is more to do about procreation. Civil Unions for one group of people, us, isn’t practical because they’re not the universal gold standard as marriage is. In addition, they are not that portable once you leave the U.S. A handful of EU countries would recognize them but not all and as for the rest of the world, not going to happen. There are ten countries now offering same-sex marriage, a number that will continue to grow, rather than civil unions. If you don’t want to marry, fine, but many of us do. Both civil unions and civil marriage should be interchangeable for both orientations. As for government involvement in marriage, that’s not going to change since each of the states issues a marriage license and a certficate which convey more than two thousand rights at both state and federal levels. How would married couples acquire those rights without government involvement?
divkid
ive literally spent hours turning this question over, marshalling my admittedly limited intellectual skills in order to refute her negation of the social utility of anything other than the traditional aspect marriage she adduces.
i cant do it .
i think she’s right. which clearly doesn’t *make* her right — didn’t you see my limited skills disclaimer?
my take on *her* reasoning goes thus: the prime utility of marriage exists in protecting men from women. being fallen creatures they are instinctually inconstant potential 5th columnists (jason’s ears prick up) who would lure some poor unsuspecting dupe into immiserating himself while leaching away his resources into nurturing the fruit of another mans gonads unwittingly consigning himself to genetic oblivion…where it not for the protection afforded by …
…wedding cake. the THE MIRACLE PRODUCT. it has miraculous powers bestowed because its blessed by the angels; OUR LADY mixes up the bowl herself. so say goodbye cuckoo baby misery. and no more unhappy home life hell…not with wedding cake… plus also comes with the stable home-life assurance that it eliminates the danger of your children becoming sexual deviants…thats guaranteed!
yes some of you heathens might niggle that it allocates marriages differential degrees of authenticity. and that those unable, undesiring of , or past the age of child bearing are consigned to the very outer circle. and whilst it is difficult to say why their position is at essence different from same sex marriages (because love and companionship don’t cut it); the spirit hasn’t sent down the explanation yet. but he will!…till then. its just different coz it is,ok! oh and it’s disgusting!
———
convinced me.
… that state sponsored marriage is nothing but MARRIAGE AS A PARENTAL ELECTRONIC TAG. a cynical method of biological control. historically heteros don’t trust each over. that was its design brief, its teleology. do they thank us for trying to improve it ,humanise it?
let me state for the record: I HOPE WE GET GAY MARRIAGE. apart from anything else it will piss these people off.
give us all the right to marriage . and once were all equal . lets ban it .
really the state has no business in regulating or promoting any aspect of how people exercise their intimate relationships or their reproduction.
in those far off enlightened future days, should you feel the whim to celebrate your relationship to another, or devote yourself to a kitchen utensil before your household gods, that will be entirely your own business. just don’t send me an effin wedding list!
the crustybastard
Wow. Hidden within that inarticulate statement is Maggie Gallagher’s confession of her failure as a mother, and the invalidity of her own marriage.
“…can you at least acknowledge…marriage’s central public role…to protect children by increasing the likelihood that they will be born to and raised by their own mother and father?”
As usual, Gallagher’s reasoning is extravagantly faulty, but here it does illuminate her pathology. Maggie is claiming that children without a biological link to both parents exist in greater peril than others. Of course this is not merely groundless, but insulting to adoptive parents.
Here’s the thing: Maggie’s own husband isn’t biologically related to at least one of her two children. Ergo, Maggie admits to imperiling her own child.
Moreover, Maggie accidentally makes the case that, since her husband isn’t the biological father of her son, her own marriage and family is inherently “flawed” in the same way same-sex marriages and families are.
Ultimately, Maggie’s “Daddy gets married for the babies” argument is pathetic evidence of her compulsive need to pick the emotional scabs of her failure to get the first man who impregnated her to put a ring on it.
If she weren’t so destructive in her own self-pity, I might actually pity her.
Skulander
Maggies says this: ” Gay marriage will make it virtually impossible to renew marriage’s central public role, which is not to celebrate private romantic love—hardly any business of government—but to protect children by increasing the likelihood that they will be born to and raised by their own mother and father. Gay marriage makes it impossible to articulate this as a goal of marriage, much less to realise it in real children’s lives.”
Again this is false. Gay marriage will not renew marriage’s central public role because committed, loving gays and lesbians intend to abide by the same principles on which the institution of marriage was founded on (That is, if it was ever that monolithic institution Maggie claims it is… but whatever, even granting her some stability in the institution of marriage.)
There is also no rights for children to a mom and a dad. NOM would like them to have this fundamental right, but it simply doesn’t exist. Children need a loving, stable family which gays and lesbians are fully able to provide.
Finally Maggie: speaking of children… Perhaps you could start by seriously caring about them? How about stopping your fully-fledged attack on gay and lesbian families, children, and relationships? How about making sure every kid can go to school safely? NOM, what have you done to counter the considerable violence done to children? Nothing, of course. Even worse: you deny it completely. NOM of course only “pretends” to care about kids: NOM only cares about those living in a straight family, and who don’t “look” gay: otherwise, you’re out of luck.
B
No. 15 · anonymous wrote, “I really don’t understand why these people won’t just make the consistent argument that people who can’t have children shouldn’t have sex (including infertile and menopausal couples).”
Oh, there’s a very simple explanation for that: marketing. Telling people who can’t or can no longer have children that they shouldn’t have sex would go over like a lead balloon. They want to get supporters. not alienate prospective ones.
Skulander
No. 15 wrote: “I really don’t understand why these people won’t just make the consistent argument that people who can’t have children shouldn’t have sex (including infertile and menopausal couples).”
And perhaps he/she could start by explaining WHY they shouldn’t have sex? What kind of statement is that?
It’s a typical stragety, really: those opposing gay marriage or gay rights simply say things without backing them up, without even the beginning of an argument.
Maggie Gallagher
Thank-you for this post, which I view as a sincere attempt to grapple with–across great and profound moral disagreement–my central concern.
If the poster, or any of the commenters, want in a serious way to continue this discussion privately, please feel free to email me at [email protected]
adman
@Maggie Gallagher: @Maggie Gallagher: But Maggie, you’re forgetting that there is nothing about you that is “profoundly moral”, You just think there is. That’s the real problem that we have to deal with here. You’re a moral and ethical dwarf. However, we are a cohort know for our free opinions, so thankfully we’ll come up with some tips to help you to cease maruading throught the lives of others and to do something productive instead. Like being on the World’s Biggest Loser! Your kids will benefit, and you’ll be renewed, believe me. Good brain work starts with nutrition, after all. You’re welcome.
Skulander
Maggie: why has it always have to be private? Why do you censor your blog? If your “truths” re so universal and so widely shared by the American population, what are you afraid of? Oh, I forgot: fear is what you live and breathe. You DON’T want a proper, open debate because you know you will lose.
jasun mark
And in the end, we all know that Maggie Gallagher isn’t much different than Fred Phelps.
At first, I thought she was just one of those professional sociopaths. Someone whose job is to campaign against or for something that they don’t really “care” about that much. Her arguments make little sense and she changes her reasons so much that it’s clear she’s just trying to keep her high-paying job of campaigning against gay marriage.
But then in the days that followed the Maine vote… Maggie got a bit too high on her own success. She released a video where she was gleefully gloating about how they’d won the vote. With a big smile on her face, she told how gay people had tried to appeal to people’s sense of decency and lost. She really enjoyed how much pain she had caused.
Then she showed up at a gay marriage rally just after the vote. She stood there with a HUGE smile on her face, basking in the pain and anger and hurt she’d caused. That’s when it became clear what a truly evil person she is.
No, she doesn’t picket funerals shouting “god hates fags.” But she’s clearly just as addicted to hate as Fred Phelps and his clan.
robert in NYC
No. 49, Jasum Mark, and the thing is this vile hypocrite was knocked up before she married her husband who wasn’t the father of her child and there she is espousing the sanctity of marriage. She dismisses that dark side of her past. I had several heated email exchanges with her some months ago. The woman is devoid of humanity. I also asked her would she enjoy it if her own children grew up gay and were discriminated again, bullied or even killes. She refused to respond to that question so my conclusion was that her silence would give consent to it. She’s probably a sociopath and that’s quite common on the far right of the GOP, just look at the Michele Bachman’s, Anne Coulter’s, Sarah Palin’s of this world. She’s way up there with them. Pure evil incarnate! Oh and she has an appalling command of English and spelling too. I wished I’d kept those emails she sent.
Nate
@Fitz:
Your awesome, I totally agree
Jerryball
So her quest is to allow every child to grow up under a mother and a father? Then why did she have a bastard child out of wedlock, then raise him as a single mother, no father in sight? Hypocrisy, thy name is Maggie Gallagher.