{"id":2344,"date":"2011-05-17T09:17:20","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T14:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/?p=2344"},"modified":"2011-05-17T09:17:20","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T14:17:20","slug":"the-wrong-reasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2011\/05\/17\/the-wrong-reasons\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wrong Reasons"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Protest<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

In a recent op-ed<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em>, sociologist Jaye Cee Whitehead shared her thoughts on economic arguments for gay marriage.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0a letter to the New York State Legislature last month, top business executives endorsed same-sex marriage on the ground that \u201cattracting talent is key to our state\u2019s economic future.\u201d The signers \u2014 among them the banker Lloyd C. Blankfein, the financier Ronald O. Perelman, the real estate developer Jerry I. Speyer and the publisher Mortimer B. Zuckerman \u2014 declared that legalizing gay unions would \u201chelp maintain our competitive advantage in attracting the best and brightest people the world has to offer.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This letter is one of many examples of promoting marriage equality as good for business.<\/p>\n

States and cities are, as the New York executives pointed out, competing to attract talent in a globally competitive labor market. The wedding industry benefits, of course, when more couples are allowed to marry. And marriage equality is associated with revenue gains from sales taxes and license fees. Backers of gay marriage speak openly of the gains from \u201cmarriage tourism\u201d in states that have legalized same-sex marriage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So why shouldn\u2019t gays and lesbians have equality and bolster the economy at the same time?\u00a0 In Whitehead\u2019s eyes,<\/p>\n

. . . supporting marriage on economic grounds dehumanizes same-sex couples by conflating civil rights with economic perks. Americans should be offended when the value of gays and lesbians is reduced to their buying power as consumers or their human and creative capital as workers. . .Worse yet, this narrative neglects the most economically vulnerable gay and lesbian couples and plays into the inaccurate stereotype of same-sex couples (particularly male couples) as being mostly well-educated and affluent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, many proponents of same-sex marriage often point out that legalizing same-sex marriage may reduce spending on welfare programs.\u00a0 But, Whitehead explains why these and other economic arguments are problematic.<\/p>\n

Supporters of same-sex marriage ought to acknowledge that marriage is not just a natural expression of human intimacy or a declaration of personal commitment; it is a form of governance. The vast expansion of the government over the past century has embedded marriage into all areas where the state and the individual intersect, from tax obligations to disability benefits to health care decisions to family law. As with any other structure of governance in a democratic society, we ought to think about its participants as citizens rather than consumers.<\/p>\n

So if you support same-sex marriage, do so not because it brings in tax revenue and tourism dollars and prevents people from becoming a burden on the state, but because you value gay men and lesbians as citizens who deserve equal access to the rights and responsibilities of marriage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, sociologist Jaye Cee Whitehead shared her thoughts on economic arguments for gay marriage. In\u00a0a letter to the New York State Legislature last month, top business executives endorsed same-sex marriage on the ground that \u201cattracting talent is key to our state\u2019s economic future.\u201d The signers \u2014 among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[36,320,176],"class_list":["post-2344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-economics","tag-marriage","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2344"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2348,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344\/revisions\/2348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}