Gay Marriage Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America

by Rauch, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780805078152
• ISBN10: 0805078150
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-02-01
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks

Summary

"Thoughtful and convincingly argued . . . Rauch's impressive book is as enthusiastic an encomium to marriage as anyone, gay or straight, could write." -David J. Garrow, The Washington Post Book World In May 2004, gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, but it remains a divisive and contentious issue across America. As liberals and conservatives mobilize around this issue, no one has come forward with a more compelling, comprehensive, and readable case for gay marriage than Jonathan Rauch. In this book, he puts forward a clear and honest manifesto explaining why gay marriage is important-even crucial-to the health of marriage in America today, grounding his argument in commonsense, mainstream values and confronting social conservatives on their own turf. Marriage, he observes, is more than a bond between individuals; it also links them to the community at large. Excluding some people from the prospect of marriage not only is harmful to them but also is corrosive of the institution itself.Gay marriage, he shows, is a "win-win-win" for strengthening the bonds that tie us together and for remaining true to our national heritage of fairness and humaneness toward all.

Author Biography

Jonathan Rauch is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, a senior writer and columnist for National Journal, and a writer in residence at the Brookings Institution.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Imagination Gap	p. 1
What Is Marriage For?	p. 11
Accept No Substitutes	p. 29
How Gays Will Benefit	p. 55
How Straights Will Benefit	p. 72
How Marriage Will Benefit	p. 86
Married, Without Children	p. 104
Anything Goes	p. 123
Men Behaving Badly	p. 138
The Debt to Tradition	p. 159
Getting It Right	p. 172
A Golden Anniversary	p. 192
Index	p. 197
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

From Gay Marriage:

Gay marriage is at bottom not so much a civil rights issue as a civil responsibility issue. If the first "homosexual agenda" focused on gay rights—the right to have sex, the right to walk the streets in safety, the right to keep a job—the second focuses on gay responsibilities: marriage, military service, the rearing and mentoring of the young. If the rights agenda asked for protections, the responsibility agenda asks for obligations. Could that be why it arouses such fierce resistance? Oddly—I'd never have guessed—the responsibility agenda seems to meet stiffer resistance from much of straight America than the rights agenda ever did. At bottom hardly anyone wants to see homosexuals harassed, but treating them as grown-ups seems harder to accept.

America has taken mighty strides to end homosexual victimhood, a fact for which I will always be grateful. What remains is to close the gap between victimhood and adulthood.

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Excerpted from Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America by Jonathan Rauch
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.