There’s a Reason Gay Marriage Is Winning, While Abortion Rights Are Losing

[niyad]

There’s a Reason Gay Marriage Is Winning, While Abortion Rights Are Losing

Are these two “culture wars” issues really that similar?



Why are reproductive rights losing while gay rights are winning? Indiana’s attempt to enshrine opposition to gay marriage under the guise of religious freedom provoked an immediate nationwide backlash. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has allowed religious employers to refuse insurance coverage for birth control—not abortion, birth control—to female employees; new laws are forcing abortion clinics to close; and absurd, even medically dangerous restrictions are heaping up in state after state. Except when the media highlight a particularly crazy claim by a Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock, where’s the national outrage? Most Americans are pro-choice, more or less; only a small minority want to see abortion banned. When you consider, moreover, that one in three women will have had at least one abortion by the time she reaches menopause, and most of those women had parents, partners, friends—someone—who helped them obtain it, the sluggish response to the onslaught of restrictive laws must include many people who have themselves benefited from safe and legal abortion.

The media present marriage equality and reproductive rights as “culture war” issues, as if they somehow went together. But perhaps they’re not as similar as we think. Some distinctions:
§ Marriage equality is about love, romance, commitment, settling down, starting a family. People love love! But marriage equality is also about tying love to family values, expanding a conservative institution that has already lost most of its coercive social power and become optional for millions. (Marriage equality thus follows Pollitt’s law: Outsiders get access when something becomes less valued, which is why women can be art historians and African-Americans win poetry prizes.) Far from posing a threat to marriage, as religious opponents claim, permitting gays to marry gives the institution a much-needed update, even as it presents LGBT people as no threat to the status quo: Instead of promiscuous child molesters and lonely gym teachers, gays and lesbians are your neighbors who buy Pottery Barn furniture and like to barbecue.

Reproductive rights, by contrast, is about sex—sexual freedom, the opposite of marriage—in all its messy, feckless glory. It replaces the image of women as chaste, self-sacrificing mothers dependent on men with that of women as independent, sexual, and maybe not so self-sacrificing. It doesn’t matter that contraception is indispensable to modern life, that abortion antedates the sexual revolution by thousands of years, that plenty of women who have abortions are married, or that most (60 percent) who have abortions are already mothers. Birth control and abortion allow women—and, to a lesser extent, men—to have sex without punishment, a.k.a. responsibility. And our puritanical culture replies: You should pay for that pleasure, you slut.

§ Same-sex marriage is something men want. Lesbian couples account for the majority of same-sex marriages, but even the vernacular “gay marriage” types it as a male concern. That makes it of interest to everyone, because everything male is of general interest. Though many of the groundbreaking activists and lawyers who have fought for same-sex marriage are lesbians, gay men have a great deal of social and economic power, and they have used it, brilliantly, to mainstream the cause. ********Reproductive rights are inescapably about women. Pervasive misogyny means not only that those rights are stigmatized—along with the women who exercise them—but that men don’t see them as all that important, while women have limited social power to promote them. And that power is easily endangered by too close an identification with all but the most anodyne version of feminism. There are no female CEOs pouring millions into reproductive rights or threatening to relocate their businesses when a state guts access to abortion. And with few exceptions, A-list celebs steer clear.*****

. . . .

http://www.thenation.com/article/205049/theres-reason-gay-marriage-winning-while-abortion-rights-are-losing

[markpkessinger]

1. The article is right, BUT there is still more to it . . .

. . . There really are folks out there (a sister of mine and her husband are among them), who have no problem with LGBT people, married or not married. They really don't dwell on what other people do in their bedrooms, nor do they care. But they deeply and genuinely consider abortion to be murder. And since they have become grandparents themselves, that belief seems to have become more resolute than ever. I don't agree with that view, nor, I suspect, do most of us on DU, but it <b><i>is</i></b> a conscientiously held belief by many people in this country. That's an uncomfortable reality for those of us on the left, and I"m not sure if there is any way to bridge that divide, but it is the divide nonetheless.

[niyad]

2. . . . .

[malthaussen]

3. First I ever heard of Pollitt's Law, but I've been saying the same thing...

... in my gloomier and more pessimistic moments, I think most of the "progress" made during my lifetime, including the end of the Vietnam war, Miranda v Arizona, and Roe v Wade, has been the result of the ruling class setting their eyes on new objectives. Probably Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, too, but that was a couple years before I was born.

I'm pretty convinced that hatred of women outweighs every other prejudice available, including racism and hatred of homosexuals. Not only do many men want to control women, there are a not-inconsiderable number of women who want to lord it (lady it?) over their sisters as well. Definitely an authoritarian smell to it, with large doses of schadenfreude.

-- Mal

[niyad]

4. sadly, you are absolutely correct.

[qwlauren35]

5. I don't think men hate women.

It's the determination to subjugate them that is overwhelming and possibly instinctive. And part of subjugation is rape, which is why it's a worldwide problem that cuts across race, class and culture.

Every move women make to better themselves and gain some independence is fought tooth and nail by men, unless they can see something in it for them. I think some men have seen that it is possible to let women work without losing the role of head of household. So now we see more women working, but rarely at well-paying jobs.

And so, birth control. The ultimate in woman taking control of their bodies, becomes unacceptable to men.

As for abortion being murder, this is just another example of subjugating women. When a baby's life is more important than a woman's life. And now, we step back from abortion to birth control. You can see where this is going.

So, it's two-fold. Men want to subjugate women, and men want to control women's sexuality.

It's sick.

[malthaussen]

6. I guess it depends on your definition of "hate."

When an individual wants to control someone so badly they will beat, imprison, or kill to do it, what should it be called? Of course you can argue that most cases of abuse have more to do with the abuser than the victim, who is almost incidental, and that indifference is the opposite of love, not hatred. However, men also despise women because they claim not to like the way they think, talk, or act when they are not servicing the male's desires (whatever they may be). More indifference? At what point does compulsive dislike/avoidance segue into hatred?

-- Mal

[qwlauren35]

7. I guess I'm talking about men in power

Who don't physically harm women. Like the average congressman or senator. Or a supervisor or manager or CEO who isn't willing to make policies that take women's life issues into account. They don't HATE women. But they want control over them, and they often don't like being on par with them in any aspect.