WorKIng ArrAngEMEnT
by Justin E. h. Smith
Whether to denounce it as a step down the path to unspeakable decadence or to ex-
alt it as self-evidently right and just, everyone in
public life today has a position on gay marriage.
All the presidential candidates in the current
electoral cycle have been asked about it, and all
have had responses carefully packaged to ingra-
tiate themselves with their constituencies. If the
past few years may serve as a guide, it is likely
that in the coming elections the subtle middle
will be thoroughly excluded, as candidates and
voters alike flock to one of two opposite poles:
either holding that “marriage is between a man
and a woman,” or, on the contrary, that every-
one has an equal right to marriage. These are
thought-arresting platitudes; they are not artic-
ulate positions, nor even the rudiments of argu-
ments for such positions. The greatest problem
with both is their brash confidence in the moral
abhorrence or necessity of gay marriage, absent
any historical or critical interest in the nature of
marriage itself.
Justin E. H. Smith is an associate professor of philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal. He
is editor-at-large for Cabinet Magazine and is currently working on a new translation of Rainer
Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies.
