Now we can back to the real business at hand: stigmatizing women

Getting back to the real business at hand

by digby

So, the allegedly liberal, “pro-fatherhood”, anti- marriage equality David Blankenhorn has decided that gay marriage is a-ok now. In fact, he now wants to recruit gay people to his first principle: stigmatizing single mothers and slut-shaming women:

Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that marrying before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation? Can we discuss whether both gays and straight people should think twice before denying children born through artificial reproductive technology the right to know and be known by their biological parents?

Will this strategy work? I don’t know. But I hope to find out.

Let’s hope it doesn’t.

Since marriage is essentially a conservative institution originally designed to protect property rights and keep women in their proper place, I always figured that at least a few members of the right wing would ultimately wake up and realize that gay marriage could be used to their advantage. Blankenhorn is nicely providing that opening.

Here’s Corey Robin once more on that subject:

Historically, the conservative has sought to forestall the march of democracy in both the public and the private spheres, on the assumption that advances in the one necessarily spur advances in the other. Still, the more profound and prophetic stance on the right has been to cede the field of the public, if he must, but stand fast in the private. Allow men and women to become democratic citizens of the state; make sure they remain feudal subjects in the family, the factory, and the field.

And nobody should be all that surprised about this coming from him. He’s always thought that the real problem is the selfish women who insist they know how to raise kids. He was only worried about gay marriage making that situation worse. Now he can get back to the real business at hand.

I’m doubtful that he’ll be able to find many married gay couples to buy into that, however. Like most of the rest of us married people they’ll almost certainly be happy to be able to make families and have society acknowledge their commitment in the traditional way, but I’d be shocked to see more than a handful become conservative marriage fetishists and insist that everyone adhere to a restrictive definition of sanctioned relationships. They spent way too much time on the other side of that equation to be so easily co-opted.