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How the dutch got to accept gay marriage, and what you can learn from it.
In the Netherlands gay marriage has been legalised since (2001), but the road to that point didn't involve some kind of culture war or liberal takeover where two sides where bitterly divided. Offcourse our situation is different, since we have a multi party system the christian parties are not always in power. At this point they are however and they won't undertake any action to ban gay marriage. The netherlands didn't get to this point by bluntly legalising this form of marriage and shuning people who have problems with it.
The First step was a registered partnership, which was already avaiable at the time to hetrosexuals who didn't feel like tying the knot, but wanted to be able to have thew fiscal and other advantages of marriage. in 1998 this was opened up to gay couples as well, providing them all expept one of the benefits of marriage. (for both gays and straights in such a partnership, children must be recognised seperatly by at least one of the parents.). Now the debate around gay marriage completly changed, the true biggots who where against any goverment aproval of any gay activity gave up, their goals where no longer the same as those of christians who had an very rigid and clasical view of marriage (and ones even opposed divorce...). So now the opposition was smaller the true biggots and homophobes left the debat, or became less active becaus their goals seemed unpobtainable. the christian opposition against the legalisation of true marriage remained but these christians distanced themselfs from other biggogst when it became apperent to them that they did not share their goal of protecting just the word marriage, but where opposed to anything gay.
this split the opposition to gay marriage in two and sepperated the true haters from christian who can't get over the word "marriage" as being thiers. At the same time the gay community was enboldened by their victory, and had most practical problems whith not being able to be lawfully married solved. This mean they could now continu the debate from a better possition, one in which their practical problems where solved and they clearly knew who could be reasoned with (i.e which fractions after a lot of reasoning accepted gay civil unions.)and which where just biggots.
Three years later (2001) the law allowed gays to officially get married, offcourse not many chyurches will allow this to happen between their walls but thats their right. .
So engaging Rick Warren and accepting civil unions isn't accepting defeat, it gives you a
better view of who in your opposition is open to debate and who is a biggot that cannot be reasoned with. At the same time the gay community will see most of its practical problems solved. Find out who in the christian coalition on the right is open for full civil unions those are the people one can engage in debate the others are clear biggots.
The First step was a registered partnership, which was already avaiable at the time to hetrosexuals who didn't feel like tying the knot, but wanted to be able to have thew fiscal and other advantages of marriage. in 1998 this was opened up to gay couples as well, providing them all expept one of the benefits of marriage. (for both gays and straights in such a partnership, children must be recognised seperatly by at least one of the parents.). Now the debate around gay marriage completly changed, the true biggots who where against any goverment aproval of any gay activity gave up, their goals where no longer the same as those of christians who had an very rigid and clasical view of marriage (and ones even opposed divorce...). So now the opposition was smaller the true biggots and homophobes left the debat, or became less active becaus their goals seemed unpobtainable. the christian opposition against the legalisation of true marriage remained but these christians distanced themselfs from other biggogst when it became apperent to them that they did not share their goal of protecting just the word marriage, but where opposed to anything gay.
this split the opposition to gay marriage in two and sepperated the true haters from christian who can't get over the word "marriage" as being thiers. At the same time the gay community was enboldened by their victory, and had most practical problems whith not being able to be lawfully married solved. This mean they could now continu the debate from a better possition, one in which their practical problems where solved and they clearly knew who could be reasoned with (i.e which fractions after a lot of reasoning accepted gay civil unions.)and which where just biggots.
Three years later (2001) the law allowed gays to officially get married, offcourse not many chyurches will allow this to happen between their walls but thats their right. .
So engaging Rick Warren and accepting civil unions isn't accepting defeat, it gives you a
better view of who in your opposition is open to debate and who is a biggot that cannot be reasoned with. At the same time the gay community will see most of its practical problems solved. Find out who in the christian coalition on the right is open for full civil unions those are the people one can engage in debate the others are clear biggots.
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Of course, there is no need to shun those opposed to gay marriage.
Please don't equate the legalization of gay marriage -even against their wishes- with shunning them.
A law legalizing gay marriage doesn't make them marry anyone they don't want. Doesn't infringe in any of their rights and doesn't shun them!!!
All you have to do is pass the law. As an example of how it happened in Spain, a country that didn't ever have a divorce law until 1981 and legalized abortion in 1985.
Yes, there were protests by the usuals, but all that was needed was to pass the law; that is: enough votes in Parliament.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Spain
Now, if they only passed a law taking away from the Catholic Church the many privileges afforded to them in matters of Education... Maybe then we could become truly a non-confessional country as the Constitution states.
December 20, 2008 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. TheraP votes for the socialists in Spain - even though he's not exactly "for" gay marriage (unless it's women marrying). I work hard in my own household to try and convince my longtime spouse that all people should have this right. It's ironic that his country has gay marriage while mine does not - given our respective positions.
Nevertheless, this shows that someone will continue to vote for his preferred party, even when they pass legislation he's not thrilled with. Plus, he'd be fine with our two gay (Spanish) nephews marrying - should they find a spouse. (Life is full of contradictions.)
I like the ideas in this post. Change has to come incrementally. And we need patience. I know that's hard. But it's really the only way.
December 20, 2008 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good post. It shows the theory of the Overton Window (good explanation of this on Wikipedia) at work. I think, as you do, that this speaks to the tactical approach that should be used here to work towards gay marriage.
December 20, 2008 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think this is a logical solution. The term "marriage" is the biggest sticking point here, I believe.
Make all unions civil, the majority of the problem is solved. Churches can do what they want w/ religious marriage certificates, just as Jason has proposed here many times.
Good post, thank you for passing along the information! Rec'd.
December 20, 2008 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed.
December 20, 2008 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Even if you "legally" make all unions "civil" - I'm betting everyone will still call it marriage!
And that's the point here. Do one thing with the law. But our language will still prevail....
:)
December 20, 2008 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
having lived in both countries, i don't think what works in the netherlands would ever work in the US. consensus, pragmatism, and a sense of social justice are pretty much built into dutch society; not so in the US. that is why in the US progressive defense of human rights often comes through the courts instead of from building consensus among the population.
December 20, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
While that is true at the moment, it is also why progressive ideas tend to have difficulty in the wild. Litigation is not a way to change minds, in fact, it often produces an emotional counterreaction. Moving the definition of middle is not going to be easy. It's going to take election of people at the local and state levels who are willing and able to push the policy discussions and lead, not follow, as most elected officials are prone to do. (The classic "out of touch" slam is a lie - elected officials are usually far too reflective of the existing prejudices of their constituents, and seldom willing to even consider pushing an envelope. they'd rather open one, as Gov. Spellcheck seems to illustrate quite nicely.)
December 20, 2008 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
You see pir_anha consensus, social justice and pragmatism might seem built into dutch society but these concepts have been under very heavy strain for the last few years.
Consensus and pragmatism in the late 90's is what has lead the dutch to not deal with our problems we experience with imigration and minorities (both problems caused by bigotry and problems with upward social mobility and intergration into society of minorities.). In those years a social-democratic and liberal (that is right wing in our country...) party ruled and could not formulate a consensus opinion about minority policies and like pragmatist do in such a sitiuation, they agreed to disagree and ignored the problem. This meant that everybody who even tried to talk about these problems was being called a bigot, no matter how nuanced their critique of policy was...
This lead to a swining to the right in the following elections. The left screamed racism every time a politician called attention to minorities doing bad in school or failing to get a job. So these liberal politicians (thats rightwing in the netherlands) where being equated with Neo-Nazi's even though in the US they would be considered socialist or liberal (pro-choice, anti-gun, smaller military, etc etc...).
so make no mistake, in the netherlands we are very capable of culture war like politics... Hell our culture war has kind started all over again (after being "won" by the left after the 60's). Whille left thinking dominated dutch politics after the 70's the biggest party was always the cristian party, so they had to lead in a coalition either with liberal's or socialists, this is what forced pragmatism and consensus politics into the dutch parliament.
I know from a US perspective these issue's such as gay marriage seem "all or nothing" issue's. Either you are moraly right (pro) or your a biggot (against). But the thing with this wholle new Obama pragmatism is that it won't work that way on some issue's. Key to making this way of thinking is placing yourself into the oppositions mind. So lets try!
Lets place ourselfs in the mind of a person against gay-marriage, lets say his name is joe the evengelical christian. Nou our joe lives in a small town and doesn't know any gays (he probably does but those gays don't tell joe...). Much like a gay frien of mine find hetero sexual sex sickening (when imagening participating in it...) Joe's vivid imagination of gay sex makes him sick (based on the time he exidentally entered a gay porn site when his wife was out of town for a week and he was lookin' for some nice straight internet porn.). Joe just can't get his head around the thought of two grown men doing that stuff volutarally... So Joe associates being gay with thing he wants nothing to do with at al! So like his pastor tells him to he opposes gay marriage. Now if their where to be civil unions, and gay people would have the same legal rights as married couples, Joe would see that the world around him didn't change. Joe discovers he is still himself, Joe discovers that thinking about having gay sex still doesn't appeal to him and Joe discovers that allowing Gays rights didn't change anything for him. This leads Joe to lose intrest in activly opposing gay rights since allowing them right didn't change his world in the least bit! This gives poeple who at this point think giving gays equal rights will not change their world into a pace they can't have their trusted and tried place in.
To me personally giving gays equall rights is the only moral thing to do. Any solutiuon that doesn't give them full equal rights is a wrong one, that being said i don't give a fuck whether its called marriage or a civil union. The first and formemost thing is the equallity under the law. I also have a strong prefarence for calling it marriage for every couple gay or straight, but giving it a different name for a period will give people who think the whole thing will change their world time to discover it didn't change their world!
December 20, 2008 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very nice comment. I think your insights into homophobia are quite right. A big problem is that humans seem to have a built-in aversion to any form of sex other than what arouses them personally. So when people use this feeling as a basis for their value system, which is a pretty natural thing to do, it means that sexual minorities get persecuted. It takes a lot of moral education to get people past this.
December 20, 2008 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that the shortest route to gay marriage is not calling al marriages civil union's. I know calling gay "marriages" civil unions and straight marriages just marriages ism not full equallity. but taking the term marriage away from evangelicals will give the rightwing a way to mobilize a lot of people who are persuadable by our side if we keep the term marriage, its not accepting less then full eqaully as an end solution its just the first step! And it will take so much away from the arguments used by the right that it will totally shift the debate.
But i know accepting less then full equallity is betrayal in the eyes of much of the left... And morally they are right, i'm just saying the pragmatist route is the shortest route to full equallity...
December 20, 2008 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do I hear that to give people access to their Civil Rights we need to have consensus first??
It'd be a nice thing. But what we need is laws that ensure the Civil Rights for all. No need to have all like these laws.
I don't see the need, for example, to reach a consensus before legalizing bi-racial marriage (or gay marriage.)
Another thing is needing to convince enough people, and having enough votes, to pass the law and having to wait until such time comes.
But consensus? No. Basic Civil Rights are non-negotiable.
December 20, 2008 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
In theory, yes. In the real world, taking human nature into account is rather useful. The real lasting change comes not from litigation, not from legislation, rather, it comes from the individual, and leading people will take them farther than dragging them ever will.
And marginalizing those who believe in denying rights to others, rather than those whose rights are currently infringed, will inevitably diminish both their number and their impact. That is the real goal. Make them the outliers.
December 20, 2008 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right, but you don't make these deniers the outliers by inviting them to give the invocation at a presidential inauguration. Obama is failing us on this count. Surely he could have found a pastor who believes in equal rights to perform this function.
December 20, 2008 6:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is an interesting comment by a gay ex-soldier about the politics of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" here on a TPM Election Central thread. Though he's not at all talking about gay marriage or Warren, I think there are some interesting analogies there to your point.
Also, miesjhel, your comment above @ 1:05pm regarding the netherlands we are very capable of culture war like politics really won me over as to you being someone I'd like to put on my "following" list. It is refreshing to see someone from across the pond correcting the mulitude of liberal misconceptions that I see in the liberal blogosphere about "what it's like over there." Amero-centrism as to information is one of the big problems with the big popular liberal blogs in my opinion--makes for poor analysis and consequently poor prescriptions for the U.S.A. itself. It's ironic because for liberals to do that is kind of imperialist in a way.
December 21, 2008 12:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for a different perspective. Rec'd
December 21, 2008 4:20 AM | Reply | Permalink