It’s a radical change even from your own definition, which includes “and commit to do so monogamously.” As has been understood for decades, the homosexual (at least gay male) definition of monogamy does not entail sexual exclusivity. That this fact is dismissed or swept under the rug is not surprising since it would make the cause of SSM even more difficult to achieve. But it’s been well established and used to be the justifying reason why gays weren’t interested in marriage.

If this is an important component of your definition then you need to ask what happens when the majority of gay men refuse to include this in their own definition of “marriage.”

Despite the fact that I disagree with Joe wholeheartedly on this issue, I respect him a great deal and consider Joe to be an opponent of marriage equality who is worth engaging insofar as doing so generally leaves me feeling like I’ve learned a bit more and understand the topic at hand a bit better. As mentioned, I’ve seen Joe make the above argument on numerous different occasions and I don’t doubt that he has data to back up his assertions (Joe, in my experience, is a responsible writer in that way). But, I must admit, I myself have never sought out such data, so last night I decided to do so.

What I found has some bearing, I believe, on the veracity of Joe’s argument.

As noted by Karen Shrock in the Scientific American’s 60 Second Science blog, a group of psychologists from the Alliant International University in San Francisco presented a study they had coordinated on rates of monogamy amongst heterosexual couples and same-sex couples, comparing results from 1975 and 2000 at the American Psychological Association’s 2009 Convention.  Summarizing the study (a copy of which I have been unable to locate to date), Shrock notes,

The overall result was unambiguous—monogamy rates have skyrocketed. But the groups still show dramatic differences in how often they cheat or have sex outside of their primary relationship. Around 82 percent of gay men reported extra-partnership sex in 1975, whereas 59 percent did in 2000—a significant decrease, but still that later rate is more than four times higher than comparable rates found among straight men (14.7), straight women (13.5) and lesbians (8.2). Those groups’ rates are down from percentages in the mid-twenties in 1975.

On the face of it, that finding generally supports Joe’s point: gay males are a great deal more likely to engage in sexually non-exclusive relationships. That points remains true both historically, in terms of the 1975 numbers, and more recently, in terms of the 2000 numbers. However, what the numbers also show is that there is a substantial downward trend in attitudes towards extra-marital/extra-partnership encounters and while the rates for such encounters remain higher amongst gay males as compared to other groups, the rates for gay males have declined in a comparable fashion to the declines noted for the other groups, at least as far as this study reveals.

What I think it is also fair to suggest from those numbers, though, is that gay males aren’t fighting against the downward trend in attitudes about infidelity, though they have more ground to make up and so their decreases leave them disparate in terms of the attitudes demonstrated by the other groups. Of course, one might suggest, as the authors of the study did, that gay males are simply reacting to the same kinds of health risks that most other groups are in terms infidelity (HIV and other STDs). In short, the decrease is broadly cultural, but not particularly cultural to gay males and do not represent a normative shift in that particular culture.

And that would probably be true, but there was another snippet that also caught my eye,

And the percentage of couples who are decidedly closed to sex outside the relationship—they discussed extra-partnership sex and decided that “under no circumstances is it alright”—just about doubled in every group (from around 43 percent in 1975 to around 80 percent in 2000) except in gay men, among whom it more than tripled (13 to 44 percent).

What those numbers tell me is that there has been a shift in the recorded attitudes of gay males on the specific topic of extra-marital/extra-partnership sexual encounters that has occurred at a rate that surpasses what these psychologists recorded for all other groups, which, I think, may well indicate a normative change on this particular topic in the specific culture of gay males.

Now, at the end of the day, I’m not purporting to have proven anything conclusively and will likely continue looking into the issue to find more numbers and more data to cross reference the linked/quoted against. But if my intuitions are right and these numbers are accurate (and I have no reason to believe that they are not), then I think this phenomenon represents a rhetorically significant chink in the armor of Joe’s argument and I would be curious to hear what Joe’s response would be.

Related posts...

• Eve Tushnet Profiled in the NYT
• Same-Sex Marriage and Divorce, By the Numbers
• Same Sex Marriage, the Courts, and Religious Liberty: How Much of a Conflict?

This lack of reflection about how foundational views mesh is one of the most significant failings of the modern right. During the Cold War-era people who held incompatible views—such as libertarianism and social conservatism—embraced a limited form of “fusionism” in order to provide a united front against a common enemy—communism. Today, the common enemy is liberalism and the fusionism occurs not between disparate groups but within an individual. People who would laugh at the absurdity of a “Christian Muslim” seem not to recognize the similar incongruity between being a follower of Christ and an acolyte of Ayn Rand.

Related posts...

• Hayek on Health Insurance
• The conservative disposition
• An unsettled dogma

Check out the audio after the jump.

Comments on the discussion are, as always, welcomed and encouraged.

Related posts...

• Race and homeownership, continued
• A Conservative Cult?
• Jonah Goldberg is making sense