Is Marriage Equality Rhetoric Strengthening Social Conservatism?

Blogging at The Nation, Emily Douglas asks "Would Gay Voters Really Fall for a Pro-Marriage Equality GOP?" She points out,

Pro–marriage equality messages can veer dangerously close to implying that marriage is the only, or best, way for people to show commitment or protect their families. When people argue that same-sex marriage is necessary to access survivor benefits, private health insurance and housing, they are making a claim about fairness under the law. But they aren’t challenging the biggest assumptions about those laws: that private households, rather than an expanded welfare state, should be the main vehicle for guaranteeing a minimum level of security.

It's interesting to compare and contrast this with right-wing talking head Jonah Goldberg's op-ed about how "[t]he family, rightly understood, is an autonomous source of meaning in our lives and the chief place where we sacrifice for, and cooperate with, others. It is also the foundation for local communities and social engagement." I'm assuming that for Goldberg, "rightly understood" excludes same-sex couples; but let's filter that out for the moment, along with the bizarre ranting about "European-style" governance that has become standard issue in the GOP, and consider the heart of it: if you're not a family man or woman, if you're not raising kids, you're scum, you're useless, you're life is without meaning. And so if you fall on hard times and your family can't take care of you, that fact shows that you're not useful to society anyway.

According to Goldberg, "As social scientist Charles Murray likes to say, unmarried men rarely volunteer to coach kids' soccer teams." As an unmarried man who "coaches" kids's karate classes (I do get paid a few bucks to do so these days, but I was effectively a volunteer for many years), I find that particularity interesting. I wonder what would happen if I tried to volunteer to coach a rec league soccer team?

The "Volunteer" page at the Catonsville Rec and Parks website starts with the headline, "ATTENTION PARENTS – VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!", and then says "Have you been frustrated when you looked for a specific program your child might enjoy, only to find what we either don’t offer the program, or it has shut down because no one is available to run the program?" I ask you, is that exclusively parent-directed message welcoming for child-free folks who might want to help coach kids? Perhaps part of the reason that single men don't volunteer to work with kids is because we don't encourage them, don't ask them? Hell, I'll bet if a single guy did volunteer to coach a soccer team he'd face suspicions of being a pedophile.

Does the push for marriage equality strengthen this sort of anti-single and anti-childfree thinking? Douglas doesn't think so, and points out that only six percent of gay voters said that marriage equality was their top concern; in an August poll, it was behind the economy, jobs and unemployment, and healthcare.

But I'm less sanguine, and think we need to make more of an issue about moving beyond marriage and about valuing the contributions that all of us, parents and child-free, married and single, make to our communities.