Mia voĉo (My voice)

Voting on Marriage

Half a dozen or so years ago, someone created a website in which he carried out a poll: "What is to be the language of the internet?" You could vote for English, Russian, Danish, French ... or Esperanto. The poll was in English (at that time the majority, not just -- as now -- the plurality language of the net), and English should have won, hands down. But, in fact, Esperanto was the winner? Why? Because Esperanto was, thanks to facility of learning and social neutrality, a better language than English for this venue? It is ... but that was not the reason. It won because somebody announced, in soc.culture.esperanto, the existence of the poll, and Esperanto speakers turned out en masse (an expression one doesn't usually associate with Esperanto speakers) to vote for their language.

Along the same lines, a year or so later the BBC held a poll to determine the future language of Europe. The poll was held in English, by an English institution, and should only have been seen by English speakers. English should have been the victor by at least 90%, and perhaps by as much as 99%. But an English planned-language proponent (not of Esperanto) mentioned the poll in a general planned-language list, an Esperanto speaker who will modestly remain nameless disseminated the message elsewhere, and by the time the poll was done, English had won by 67% to 33% -- a victory for English but, to some extent, a Pyrrhic one, given the margins it should have racked up. Worse, among accompanying comments that the BBC found suitable to post, the margins were reversed -- perhaps 30 to 40% for English, the rest against. And, of course, among the "against" comments all but half a dozen mentioned Esperanto as a preferable alternative to English. ⁽¹⁾

Some people never get the idea.

The American Family Association, apparently an organization devoted to fighting for family values, decided recently to hold a poll, aimed primarily at its supporters, to gather support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Choices open to participants were "I oppose legalization of homosexual marriage and 'civil unions'", "I favor legalization of homosexual marriage" and "I favor a 'civil union' with the full benefits of marriage except for the name". The results of the poll were apparently to be taken to Congress to show the overwhelming support of the American people for "traditional" marriage -- one man, one woman. This is a position that has lately been encouraged by President Bush, who recently reiterated his own support (though not as warm a support as some might wish) for such an amendment.

The AFA apparently does not yet understand the internet. There are no secrets; when you post a poll on-line, not only your supporters but also your opponents are, eventually, going to get into the act. "It just so happens," said organizational representative Buddy Smith, "that homosexual activist groups around the country got a hold of the poll -- it was forwarded to them -- and they decided to have a little fun, and turn their organizations around the country (onto) the poll to try to cause it to represent something other than what we wanted it to. And so far, they succeeded with that."

This, I think, is a pretty accurate description of what happened -- shorn, of course, of Smith's implied suggestion that "homosexual activist groups" are somehow less legitimate and more covert than the AFA. The "what we wanted it to", of course, suggests that the AFA originally thought that this would be a nice, comfortable little exercise in collecting the numbers from AFA supporters and presenting these to Congress as the legitimate will of the American people. What the AFA got was (as of this moment) somewhat less than 32% of those polled favoring their position and more than 68% favoring the legalization of homosexual marriage (the vast majority) or at least some sort of recognized 'civil union' applicable to gays. The total number of those polled, incidentally, is currently more than three quarters of a million; this is not an exercise in small numbers. ⁽²⁾

End result: AFA will not be going to Congress with its figures. They are, after all, too embarassing.

Enjoy a full description of this debacle at Wired News.

My own opinion on the matter? A constitutional amendment defining (and thus limiting) marriage is well within the scope of the constitution; we've had such "social engineering" amendments before. The best known one is, of course, the Volstead Amendment ("Prohibition"), and we all know where that led. But the constitution, and particularly the amendment section, seems to work best when it guarantees our rights, not when it attempts to limit them.

Marriage in this country comes in two forms, not necessarily exclusive of each other. There is the traditional social (religious) marriage, which sanctifies the union of individuals into a, presumably permanent, working collective, generally consisting of two people, blessed by a deity. This lies in the jurisdiction of the churches. If a particular church finds that its god will not sanctify any marriage consisting of other than a single male and a single female (and, eventually, children), it is not only that church's right but, perhaps, even its duty to refuse to go through the charade of "sanctifying" any other sort of marriage. If its members find that they disagree with their church on this particular point of doctrine, well, there are always other churches.

Civil marriage, on the other hand, is a way of defining such partnerships in terms of what benefits they will receive from the state and society at large, not from a deity. The government, then, has no business deciding the nature of people -- or, perhaps, as in a case now pending in Utah, even the number of people -- who can be joined in a civil marriage. ⁽³⁾

This isn't a story that's over with; like everything else in our society, things are in a state of flux. Stay tuned.

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⁽¹⁾ Of the half a dozen not mentioning Esperanto, there were two supporters of Interlingua and two or three individuals whose names I recognized as being active in the Esperanto movement.

⁽²⁾ Whether these figures are accurate or not, I don't know. It may well be, in its original confidence, that the AFA omitted to enable cookie checking or some similar means of ensuring that the same person didn't vote multiple times; after all, if AFA could count on 50,000 supporters voting against gay unions, it would certainly be nicer to turn in figures of 500,000 votes than of 50,000 votes.

⁽³⁾ On the question of numbers, I'm perhaps a bit more dubious. I can see no problems with the surviving spouse in a same-sex marriage getting the same benefits as the surviving spouse in a both-sex marriage; this is only fair. What do you do with a ten-person marriage? Give all surviving nine spouses equal benefits? Divide a single spouse's benefits between those nine spouses? What happens when, in the end, there's only one survivor? Tontine? Instant Bill Gates? In this case, there are problems to be addressed that have already been solved for a two-person marriage, even a gay one.

Posted by Don Harlow at January 24, 2004 10:31 AM