The Power of Analogies

A teacher of mine used to argue that all analogies are faulty. Analogies always reduce the difference between two terms and cheapen at least one in the process. Analogies erase history. In the LGBT world we have learned from experience that to compare, for instance, the Civil Rights struggle directly with the human rights struggle of LGBT folks is a recipe for disaster. Issues around “passing,” around the different forms of economic and political disenfranchisement in each community are minimized by analogies. While LGBT activists can speak to learning from the work of the Civil Rights movement this is much different than making a direct comparison.

That said, analogies are made all the time and politically speaking they are extremely effective. When people hostile to marriage equality compare marriage between a woman and a woman to say marriage between a woman and her cat, I for one am left dumbfounded without knowing where and how to begin to address the faulty comparison. I want to scream, "that's insane." Not exactly an effective rhetorical response!

So when I read the piece on marriage by Geoffrey R. Stone in the Chicago Tribune I was happy to see his proposal of another paradigm, of “choosing wisely among competing analogies.” He doesn’t argue that analogies are perfect but instead gives us a way to challenge the validity of the controlling analogy. This seems to me to be a useful strategy for starting a conversation that moves beyond using language to score political points and easy rhetorical "gotchas." Here is an excerpt from the piece:

So is Mollie's marrying Andrea more like Mark's marrying Alice or John's marrying his cat? The very asking of this question might be taken as insulting (indeed, very insulting) to Mollie and Andrea. That is precisely the point.

Changing the controlling analogy entails risk. Recognizing that discrimination against women is "like" discrimination against African-Americans opens the door to new and sometimes disturbing questions. What about discrimination against the disabled? The elderly? Gays and lesbians? Similarly, a decision to allow Mollie and Andrea to legally marry might raise unsettling questions about polygamy and Discrimination against women was "natural." . . . But such questions are inevitable and healthy in a robust, ever-questioning, ever-evolving society. They are a fundamental and cherished part of our American history and culture. If we did not ask such questions, we would still burn witches, buy slaves and deny women the vote.

In the end, we must rely on our deepest moral intuitions, our commitment to individual dignity, our belief that all persons "are created equal" and our common sense to draw the "right" lines for our generation.