Last Monday, February 16, Jonathan Katz, executive coordinator of a gay and lesbian studies program at Yale University, appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, with Neal Conan. Katz expressed the hope that gay marriage could change the meaning of marriage for everyone. Here’s a quote:
I’m also perhaps Pollyannaish enough to believe that we may, in fact, help move the state perspective on marriage by virtue of our inclusion towards a much broader, much more capacious view. I’m thinking even of the fact of monogamy, which is both one of the pillars of heterosexual marriage and perhaps its key source of trauma. Could it be that the inclusion of lesbian and gay same-sex marriage may, in fact, sort of de-center the notion of monogamy and allow the prospect that marriage need not be an exclusive sexual relationship among people? I think it’s possible….I would never five years ago have defined myself as an advocate of marriage. In fact, the very institution smacked of precisely that which I lived my life in opposition to. But because it has cohered as perhaps the litmus test of civil rights now, because it carries real social benefits, and because I think it perhaps furthers the uncoupling of the state and the church in this country, which I thought was promised in our Constitution, then I’m all for it.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We’re going to see a great deal more of this sort of talk once gay marriages get established. In cutting edge articles and films–and eventually, television shows–we’re going to see stories on how gay marriages are redefining the meaning of marriage for everyone. Gay marriage is going to be used by the cultural left to further its ends. You can bet on it.