This blog was started as a place where ideas, that do not get that much attention yet can or potentially can explain and clarify and predict how the world has, does and will function, will receive more exposure than they currently do.
This particular idea and entry was not originally a product of my own mine. In fact, before proceeding, I will disclose that most of this entry owes its existence to Dr. Michael Huemer of The University of Colorado. This man of mild manners and radical ideas, explained, in far grander language than I am, that people often times choose their political positions based on the image it will create for that person.
In a good number of cases, when someone's own interest is at stake, then self interest can trump vanity. In the case of many political questions, the issue at hand does not or is not expected to affect the voter, who can than choose his stance based on the figure he hopes to strike. In addition, on a great deal of issue, voters are unaware of how a potential law will actually affect their quality of life, so they do not know how to vote based on self interest so they choose vanity once again.
A prime example of a political issue becoming less about its actual affects and more of a proxy and an avatar of one's overall world view and perceived image is gay marriage. The vast majority of people are heterosexual so this will not directly affect their ability to get a full, State sanctioned marriage. There are some heterosexual people who do feel empathy towards gays and there are some who feel a great deal of antipathy towards gays, or at least toward lifestyles that deviate from the Judeo-Christian ideal of a nuclear family. Despite real concerns over or empathy and support for homosexuals and homosexuality, almost everyone is aware that with ot without legal marriages attitudes towards morality, lifestyles and family structure will not change drastically. Society evolves in one way or another and the edicts of courts or State legislatures will not change hearts and minds, at least not drastically nor quickly.
So for most participants in the Gay Marriage debate are people who have very little stake in its outcome. Nonetheless, it is, in many quarters, a lightening rod of controversy and emotion and bitterness. One can understand why gay people would be so emotional and upset at anti-gay marriage laws and be delighted and thrilled when pro-marriage equality laws are passed. Much of the emotion on this issue has been owned by straight people, those who are for and those who are against gay marriage.
It is this blogger's opinion that insecurity drives the most emotionally laden pleas in support of in and in opposition to the practice. The insecurities that would drive someone to emphatic opposition to Gay marriage and to homosexuality in general are quite obvious. What is of great interest is the type of insecurity that drives a straight person to be emphatically pro gay marriage.
America has always been a country with a schizophrenic attitude towards intellectualism. At times ideas will be completely dismissed as "mere theory," the college student (let alone his professor) can be delegitmized as out of touch with the "real world" and Americans romanticize the manual labor that clearly does not require a great deal of "book learning." At the same time, the intellectual is celebrated. The thinker is a hero, the thinker brings about progress. The public intellectuals that we do embrace can become celebrities in their own right as well as playing the role of opinion shapers and even consensus builders. With the election of a former law school professor as President and the unpopularity of the last President who embodied the spirit of anti-intellectualism, being a thinker is currently in the ascendancy.
The surge of pro gay marriage sentiment has to owe at least a modest share of its success to intellectualism currently becoming more popular than it was few years ago. The reason for this is because being pro-gay marriage is a seen by many as the indicator and "litmus test" of one's cultural allegiance. If one is pro-gay marriage and emphatically so at that, than one is aligned culturally and politically with "Blue America," with New England, with Hollywood, with the Ivy league, with reason. Or so goes the thinking of the straight college student, the straight student who is the first in his family to be in college, the straight first generation student who is from a working class town in the South or the Midwest or somewhere far from ivy covered walls, Whole Foods shops and salt water.
This also applies to minorities, especially those who are first generation students. Many minorities are from the big city and while geographically close to the Hollywood Walk of Fame or Harvard Yard, grew up worlds apart from those spaces and what they represent. To be a first generation college student, regardless of skin color is generally a very real and material step away from the world of working class social conservatism. Future affluence is not enough for many. The world needs to know now that this particular student is very different from the Ghetto or the Town from whence this student or young professional came. The boy who has grown into an educated man, has already materially separated himself from his impecunious upbringing and in many cases has moved to the big city or the good side of the tracks and has physically separated himself from his working class childhood. That is not enough though, the world needs to know that he has arrived, that he is enlightened and smart and cosmopolitan and is a free and critical thinker.
This spectre of a blue collar, traditional and almost always religious past is what makes heterosexuals, with no real stake in the gay marriage debate, become so angry, so hateful and so dismissive of anyone who dissents from the correct bourgeois line, the uniform code of conduct that is meant to mark how intellectual and creative one is. Combine that with the spectre of a fear of being gay, deep down, on the part of the anti-gay marriage contingent and this issue, with virtually no material consequences for most of the participants in this debate, is becoming an increasingly intense and explosive issue.
Having been educated in the field of economics, we are taught that economic pressure does not always mean money. Money is one of many goods that one seeks to maximize, satisfying ones own vanity, social acceptance, affirmation of ones masculinity, affirmation of one's climb in social status and feeling like one is advancing an extremely just cause are all goods, they are all things that people will always want more and more of if it cost them nothing to get more. All of those valuable but intangible social goods also have their corresponding bads. Unpopularity, the appearance of being part of the wrong social group and fear of being something your family and faith have taught you to loath are all bads which one will try to avoid as much as possible.
With all of these facts taken into consideration and the fact that this debate has so little to do with gay people getting marriage licenses and almost everything to do with identity, real or perceived. It would not be surprising if one a radical, on either side of the issue, were to commit an act of terrorism or someone other highly visible violent crime.
Human beings are greedy creatures and when we are not fighting over money and other tangible, material objects, far too many of us fight for intangible social goods. It is said that a rich man, one who is materially wealthy, has less of a chance to get into heaven than does a camel of passing through the eye of a needle. Even what I have seen in the gay marriage debate, those who are poor intangible social goods have an even smaller chance of having a rational discussion about gay marriage than does an elephant of passing through that same needle's eye. Blatant self flattery and basing political decisions on the image one hopes to strike is something that has been allowed to pass as genuine conviction for far too long.
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