I see no reason to expect that homosexual couples will have (even!) the same emphasis on and belief in sexual exclusivity that married couples do today. In the post above “Question in Three Acts,” I’ll talk briefly (more on this tomorrow) about why that matters for heterosexual couples. For the moment I’ll just wonder whether gay activists really think marriage–an institution developed emphatically without homosexual couples in mind–is an appropriate model for homosexual relationships, or whether something more like friendship or blood-brotherhood (maybe?) would be more like what they’re looking for.

I find it interesting that both Andrew Sullivan and David Morrison have written a lot on the importance of friendship and the need to recover a strong sense of what it means to be a friend.

I obviously far prefer Morrison’s take, but I think the confluence of interest suggests a) a real lack in our society that b) is more likely to be discerned by people with same-sex attractions, precisely because friendship offers a model for loving relationships that is not marriage. Renewing an understanding of friendship might also help us see the flaws in the claim that barring same-sex couples from marriage is “denying them love.”

So that might be a positive project to work on, along with the more obvious positive project of renewing marriage in society at large (which desperately needs this renewal!) and the negative project of withstanding same-sex marriage.

LATER TODAY, after I’ve had more coffee (slaver! growl!): all marriage all the time. A passel o’ same-sex marriage stuff. Some people may be thinking, “Yay!” Many more are thinking, “Well, guess I don’t need to check in with her until Thursday.” But this is my blog, you just live in it, so same-sex marriage it is.

Previous posts on this subject: long thing about cohabitation and marriage; shorter postscript on implications for same-sex marriage; an I.O.U. which I hope to finally pay… tomorrow.

WOW. Richard Brookhiser pens a rambling essay that wanders up to the same-sex marriage debate but doesn’t quite wade into the melee. But then at the very end he drops this little bomb:

“The great question, which none of the three positions can convincingly address, is: Are we bodies, and if so, what effect does that have? Emerson wrote about ‘the iron wire on which the beads are strung.’ He thought the iron wire that controlled our destinies was temperament. Is there also a dash of biology in the alloy? Do our bodies give us options, and limit options? Are we discarnate souls, or dying animals? And should the law care?”

I leave this with you for now; will write on it myself Monday. Link via the Marriage Debate blog, which you all should bookmark!

GRATUITOUS: So a commenter at CalPundit’s site (following Kevin Drum’s quite courteous linkage of the Marriage Debate blog) writes, “What gets me about people like Maggie Gallagher and Eve Tushnet is their intellectual and moral conceit that their opposition to gay marriage has nothing to do with animus towards homosexuality or gay people.”

I fear I’m about to be catty, but I can’t help replying, “M’dear, even my ex-girlfriends don’t think I hate gay people!”

Kiss Kiss,

Eve

(PS: I know I’ve been shanking on this issue–on Monday I should have a couple short, tart posts posing questions about why marriage is honored in our society. I’ll also give my position on civil unions, and try to put together the “mechanism” post I promised on how same-sex marriage will degrade expectations of marital sexual fidelity. But for the moment, all you get is cattiness.)

MARRIAGEDEBATE.COM: Maggie Gallagher has started a new blog dedicated to the same-sex marriage argument(s). Gallagher opposes same-sex marriage, but she’s gotten some of its most cogent defenders to contribute to the site, and right now the content is about 50/50 pro-con. This is going to be the resource for people seeking respectful, passionate, insightful commentary on the cultural, moral, and legal questions surrounding same-sex marriage. Full disclosure: I’m doing some work for the site and may be writing for it. But you should check it out anyway!

Seriously, the site already is feisty, fair-minded, and provocative, and it should become even more so as the posts pile up. Right now the contributors are wrapping up a debate about same-sex marriage’s effects on children and families, and are about to start debating Stanley Kurtz’s claim that polygamy is the virtually-inevitable next step. Further debate topics will follow in the weeks to come.

“WHAT MARRIAGE IS FOR.”

PURPLE TOUPEE AND GOLD LAME/AFTER THE HAIR HAS GONE AWAY…: Tom Sylvester on same-sex marriage and the last days of disco.