I think that Peterson overgeneralizes about gay men (and what about lesbians?), and he’s wrong about the impact of gay marriage on society on the object level. I’m also quite a fan of promiscuity, and I think it’s stupid to oppose a policy just because “neo-Marxists” support it.
Any political issue can be analyzed on the policy level or on the coalition level. Gay marriage seems like an example of an issue that has less to do with policy and more to do with coalitions. If gay marriage was about policy, people would not draw a meaningful distinction between marriage and a legally equivalent civil union. But in practice people draw a huge distinction.
That’s not to say Peterson’s analysis is correct. Gay marriage was first championed by gay conservative Andrew Sullivan, and in some ways it could be seen as a compromise position between the left and the right. As Sullivan put it in his 1989 essay:
Much of the gay leadership clings to notions of gay life as essentially outsider, anti-bourgeois, radical. Marriage, for them, is co-optation into straight society.
Note: In Sullivan’s essay, he makes policy-related points. I agree that as a policy wonk, Sullivan sees gay marriage as a policy issue. I’d argue most others don’t see it that way.
On a coalition level, I think there’s an alternate history where gay marriage catches on among conservatives first, and those on the left resist it on that basis. And this might even be the right strategic move for the left, from a coalition power perspective.
[Andrew Sullivan] was making conservative arguments for gay marriage recognition while much of the gay political establishment was focused in other areas like fighting workplace discrimination. He was writing about it all the way back in 1989.
Then a breakthrough in Hawaii, where the state supreme court ruled for marriage equality on gender equality grounds. No gay group had agreed to support the case, which was regarded at best as hopeless and at worst, a recipe for a massive backlash. A local straight attorney from the ACLU, Dan Foley, took it up instead, one of many straight men and women who helped make this happen. And when we won, and got our first fact on the ground, we indeed faced exactly that backlash and all the major gay rights groups refused to spend a dime on protecting the breakthrough … and we lost.
In fact, we lost and lost and lost again. Much of the gay left was deeply suspicious of this conservative-sounding reform; two thirds of the country were opposed; the religious right saw in the issue a unique opportunity for political leverage – and over time, they put state constitutional amendments against marriage equality on the ballot in countless states, and won every time. Our allies deserted us. The Clintons embraced the Defense of Marriage Act, and their Justice Department declared that DOMA was in no way unconstitutional the morning some of us were testifying against it on Capitol Hill. For his part, president George W. Bush subsequently went even further and embraced the Federal Marriage Amendment to permanently ensure second-class citizenship for gay people in America. Those were dark, dark days.
In August 1953, officials of the U.S Post Office delayed delivery of that month’s issue of ONE magazine, with the cover story “Homosexual Marriage?”, for three weeks while they tried to determine whether its contents were obscene.
and
In June 1971, members of the Gay Activists Alliance demanded marriage rights for same-sex couples at New York City’s Marriage License Bureau.
and
The next year [sc. 1973], the National Coalition of Gay Organizations called for the repeal of all statutes limiting marriage to different-sex couples and for extending the legal benefits of marriage to all cohabiting couples.
On Wikipedia’s timeline of same-sex marriage (which incidentally doesn’t mention Sullivan’s article) we find that in 1975 some same-sex marriage licences were actually issued in Colorado! (But they got blocked.)
Perhaps Sullivan was the first major conservative pundit to argue for same-sex marriage in the US, or something like that. Good for him! But he wasn’t the first person to champion it, not by a long way.
I acknowledge others were talking about it earlier, but I think “first major conservative pundit” is an understatement. Tyler Cowen called Sullivan the most influential public intellectual of the past 20 years, largely due to the influence he had on gay marriage.
Any political issue can be analyzed on the policy level or on the coalition level. Gay marriage seems like an example of an issue that has less to do with policy and more to do with coalitions. If gay marriage was about policy, people would not draw a meaningful distinction between marriage and a legally equivalent civil union. But in practice people draw a huge distinction.
That’s not to say Peterson’s analysis is correct. Gay marriage was first championed by gay conservative Andrew Sullivan, and in some ways it could be seen as a compromise position between the left and the right. As Sullivan put it in his 1989 essay:
Note: In Sullivan’s essay, he makes policy-related points. I agree that as a policy wonk, Sullivan sees gay marriage as a policy issue. I’d argue most others don’t see it that way.
On a coalition level, I think there’s an alternate history where gay marriage catches on among conservatives first, and those on the left resist it on that basis. And this might even be the right strategic move for the left, from a coalition power perspective.
In what sense was gay marriage “first championed by [...] Andrew Sullivan”?
Wikipedia describes Sullivan’s article as “the first major article in the United States advocating for gay people to be given the right to marry”.
Vox
Reason Magazine
Sullivan himself
The things you quote don’t claim he was first, they just say he was early (which, indeed, he was; I wasn’t disputing that).
It does indeed appear that Johann Hari says that in 1989 he wrote the “first major article” in the US arguing for same-sex marriage. But, for instance, in the Wikipedia article about the history of same-sex marriage in the US we find:
and
and
On Wikipedia’s timeline of same-sex marriage (which incidentally doesn’t mention Sullivan’s article) we find that in 1975 some same-sex marriage licences were actually issued in Colorado! (But they got blocked.)
Perhaps Sullivan was the first major conservative pundit to argue for same-sex marriage in the US, or something like that. Good for him! But he wasn’t the first person to champion it, not by a long way.
I acknowledge others were talking about it earlier, but I think “first major conservative pundit” is an understatement. Tyler Cowen called Sullivan the most influential public intellectual of the past 20 years, largely due to the influence he had on gay marriage.
Here’s Freedom to Marry’s history of the subject. Wolfson in 1983 is definitely earlier.