Why Conservatives Don't Understand Marriage

By Jill Filipovic

February 4, 2013  |  The traditionalists who oppose same-sex marriage [3] rights are losing the war, and they know it.

A few have a new strategy: instead of fear-mongering about gay marriage, they'll target single mothers and low-income women. Although they'll roundly trumpet marriage's social importance, they're simply moral scolds – uncomfortable with gender [4] equality [5] and dedicated to the values that cause higher rates of divorce, unwanted pregnancy, and poverty. They're calling it a "Call for a New Conversation on Marriage [6]", but they've just dressed the same regressive arguments in new, gay-marriage-approving clothes.

At the heart of this call lies a hostility toward women and a reductive view of family and economics. Their "appeal" doesn't actually say much; it claims that marriage is an economic savior mysteriously dying off, and it implicitly blames single moms for the demise of the middle-class marital unit.