Something else I've been pondering about the slow, inexorable, highly entertaining death of marriage exclusivity in America.
The most coherent -- which is to say, the least incoherent -- argument for exclusivity is that this institution/concept/"definition" of marriage has been the same, static, unchanged, unvaried, unmodified, unmoved, firm, constant, immutable, steadfast, like the Rock of Gibraltar, throughout all time and across all cultures in all corners of the world, since the very beginnings of civilization many thousands of years ago. Accordingly we need to be very, very cautious about "changing" it, and wait until enough people are ready for it that it will just naturally come about on its own, by popular demand. Or not.
Now, of course, everyone knows that the Rock-of-Gibraltar argument is bunk, even Justice Antonin Scalia who pressed hard on it during oral arguments earlier this week. Yet Scalia, and Justices Kennedy and Roberts, nonetheless characterized same-sex marriage as something so new, so untested, so different from everything that everyone has ever known, thought or believed about the institution of marriage until very, very recently, that it couldn't possibly be something that America should even be considering, let alone doing, right now.
But it got me thinking: What about American exceptionalism?
Lay aside for the moment the fact that the Netherlands, as Justice Scalia pointed out, permitted and embraced same-sex marriage in 2001. The implication behind Scalia's and Kennedy's questions was clearly intended to be that if the United States embraces gay marriage as a fundamental right of citizenship, it will be the first and only country and the first and only society in the history of civilization ever to do so.
Assuming that's true, what I'm wondering is, so what? Aren't we supposed to be exceptional, the greatest nation in the history of the world, the leader and the gold standard for freedom and liberty around the globe? Wouldn't it be perfectly in line with American exceptionalism, and with America being an exceptional nation, to be the first in the world to embrace this "new" freedom for its citizens? To break down one of the last barriers to true liberty and equality, one of the last anachronistic prejudices, that still exists in the world?
The language above is rather florid, I admit, but so is the very notion and language of American exceptionalism. In all other respects we are, and must strive to be, different and better than all other nations and all of world history, but on this one single issue, we must strictly hew and adhere to a single firm, unwavering and stolid "tradition." America has redefined freedom, liberty, equality, justice, progress, innovation, achievement and prosperity for all the world, but we cannot, we must not, we dare not, redefine marriage for ourselves.
When I was a teacher, I had the privilege of working summers at a very fine sleepaway camp. Through a series of events I won't detail here I ended up running the theatre program at the camp (I'm a musician but don't really have a background in musical theatre), and one of the things I always tried to do was choose shows to put on that were somewhat offbeat and interesting, as opposed to the standard, usual, obvious titles that every school and every camp puts on every year. (You can probably guess what those titles are; generally speaking, and to put it mildly, I am not fond of them.)
This would occasionally cause a bit of a conflict with the camp directors, who -- lovely, wonderful people though they are -- would insist on one of those aforementioned standard school/camp titles. Sometimes they'd reject a title I'd chosen by saying, simply, "No other camps are doing that show." To which I'd usually reply, "Good!" That was the whole idea. I wanted the kids at our camp to see, and the kids in my program to have a chance to perform, shows they wouldn't get to see or perform at school or at any other camp.
The point here is that in that context I had the same thought, and would tell the directors the same thing: We're always talking about how proud we are of this camp, how exceptional it is, because of all the things we have that no other camp has, and the things we do that no other camp does. And rightly so. But why is it that in this one discrete area, this one program among the many that we offer, we must conform and limit ourselves to what we think everyone else is doing? We want all of our programs to be exceptional, except this one, which must be as ordinary as possible?
I wanted our theatre program to be exceptional. And it was, in part because I won most of those arguments. Indeed, all but one.
The lawyers for the petitioners were wise, I think, not to go down this road before the Court; American exceptionalism is not, after all, a legal or constitutional doctrine. I haven't seen, heard or read anyone make a pro-equality argument based on American exceptionalism, and of course I haven't heard a peep from exclusivists about how exclusivity is in line with American exceptionalism, or their particular understanding thereof. To me, blindly, mindlessly hewing to "tradition," or to the "traditional" "definition" of something, without reexamining that "tradition" and asking if it still has any place in the modern world -- let alone whether it's in line with the American "traditions" of liberty, equality, social progress, and justice for all -- seems antithetical to the notion of American exceptionalism. It would be, I must say, a distinctly and wholly ordinary thing to do.
Nevertheless, equality is coming. And when it does, America will not only be exceptional, it will be FABULOUS.