no....... The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage Adam Kolasinski The debate over whether the state ought to recognize gay marriages has thus far focused on the issue as one of civil rights. Such a treatment is erroneous because state recognition of marriage is not a universal right. States regulate marriage in many ways besides denying men the right to marry men, and women the right to marry women. Roughly half of all states prohibit first cousins from marrying, and all prohibit marriage of closer blood relatives, even if the individuals being married are sterile. In all states, it is illegal to attempt to marry more than one person, or even to pass off more than one person as one’s spouse. Some states restrict the marriage of people suffering from syphilis or other venereal diseases. Homosexuals, therefore, are not the only people to be denied the right to marry the person of their choosing. I do not claim that all of these other types of couples restricted from marrying are equivalent to homosexual couples. I only bring them up to illustrate that marriage is heavily regulated, and for good reason. When a state recognizes a marriage, it bestows upon the couple certain benefits which are costly to both the state and other individuals. Collecting a deceased spouse’s social security, claiming an extra tax exemption for a spouse, and having the right to be covered under a spouse’s health insurance policy are just a few examples of the costly benefits associated with marriage. In a sense, a married couple receives a subsidy. Why? Because a marriage between two unrelated heterosexuals is likely to result in a family with children, and propagation of society is a compelling state interest. For this reason, states have, in varying degrees, restricted from marriage couples unlikely to produce children. Granted, these restrictions are not absolute. A small minority of married couples are infertile. However, excluding sterile couples from marriage, in all but the most obvious cases such as those of blood relatives, would be costly. Few people who are sterile know it, and fertility tests are too expensive and burdensome to mandate. One might argue that the exclusion of blood relatives from marriage is only necessary to prevent the conception of genetically defective children, but blood relatives cannot marry even if they undergo sterilization. Some couples who marry plan not to have children, but without mind-reading technology, excluding them is impossible. Elderly couples can marry, but such cases are so rare that it is simply not worth the effort to restrict them. The marriage laws, therefore, ensure, albeit imperfectly, that the vast majority of couples who do get the benefits of marriage are those who bear children. Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society, so there is no reason for the state to grant them the costly benefits of marriage, unless they serve some other state interest. The burden of proof, therefore, is on the advocates of gay marriage to show what state interest these marriages serve. Thus far, this burden has not been met. One may argue that lesbians are capable of procreating via artificial insemination, so the state does have an interest in recognizing lesbian marriages, but a lesbian’s sexual relationship, committed or not, has no bearing on her ability to reproduce. Perhaps it may serve a state interest to recognize gay marriages to make it easier for gay couples to adopt. However, there is ample evidence (see, for example, David Popenoe’s Life Without Father) that children need both a male and female parent for proper development. Unfortunately, small sample sizes and other methodological problems make it impossible to draw conclusions from studies that directly examine the effects of gay parenting. However, the empirically verified common wisdom about the importance of a mother and father in a child’s development should give advocates of gay adoption pause. The differences between men and women extend beyond anatomy, so it is essential for a child to be nurtured by parents of both sexes if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of both sexes. Is it wise to have a social policy that encourages family arrangements that deny children such essentials? Gays are not necessarily bad parents, nor will they necessarily make their children gay, but they cannot provide a set of parents that includes both a male and a female. Some have compared the prohibition of homosexual marriage to the prohibition of interracial marriage. This analogy fails because fertility does not depend on race, making race irrelevant to the state’s interest in marriage. By contrast, homosexuality is highly relevant because it precludes procreation. Some argue that homosexual marriages serve a state interest because they enable gays to live in committed relationships. However, there is nothing stopping homosexuals from living in such relationships today. Advocates of gay marriage claim gay couples need marriage in order to have hospital visitation and inheritance rights, but they can easily obtain these rights by writing a living will and having each partner designate the other as trustee and heir. There is nothing stopping gay couples from signing a joint lease or owning a house jointly, as many single straight people do with roommates. The only benefits of marriage from which homosexual couples are restricted are those that are costly to the state and society. Some argue that the link between marriage and procreation is not as strong as it once was, and they are correct. Until recently, the primary purpose of marriage, in every society around the world, has been procreation. In the 20th century, Western societies have downplayed the procreative aspect of marriage, much to our detriment. As a result, the happiness of the parties to the marriage, rather than the good of the children or the social order, has become its primary end, with disastrous consequences. When married persons care more about themselves than their responsibilities to their children and society, they become more willing to abandon these responsibilities, leading to broken homes, a plummeting birthrate, and countless other social pathologies that have become rampant over the last 40 years. Homosexual marriage is not the cause for any of these pathologies, but it will exacerbate them, as the granting of marital benefits to a category of sexual relationships that are necessarily sterile can only widen the separation between marriage and procreation. The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage. If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis can it deny marital recognition to a group of two men and three women, for example, or a sterile brother and sister who claim to love each other? Homosexual activists protest that they only want all couples treated equally. But why is sexual love between two people more worthy of state sanction than love between three, or five? When the purpose of marriage is procreation, the answer is obvious. If sexual love becomes the primary purpose, the restriction of marriage to couples loses its logical basis, leading to marital chaos. Adam Kolasinski is a doctoral student in financial economics. http://tech.mit.edu/V124/N5/kolasinski.5c.html
a bunch of homophobes in a church doesn't make it a religious issue either. But opponents of both measures claimed religion as the rationale to prevent it.
One can pull at least a couple scriptures that directly speaks against homo relations. Your interpretation could differ. In no form or fashion can you find scriptures that speak against black vs white, and on the contrary, you find scriptures that speak the opposite.
So according to Adam Kolasinski, sterile people, either from menopause, self-inflicted, genetic, or other reasons, are not worthy of marriage since they can't procreate? What about fertile, heterosexual couples who make the choice to not have kids? Are they worthy of the exalted title of married? And why has nobody answered my question about atheists, agnostics, polytheists, and the like?
Bingo! What it comes down to is that some people (apparently more than enough) don't want to see other people happy simply because they disagree with their lifestyle. It's either rooted in prejudice or in religious belief, neither of which should be part of legislation.
Yes but people still use scripture, rather direct or indirect, as a means of justifying their beliefs.
I have to laugh at these people who are so concerned about “the sanctity of marriage” when half of them are DIVORCED. Which does more to damage the sanctity of marriage? A gay couple getting married and living happily ever after or a straight couple getting married, having 2 children, having an affair and then divorcing 5 years later? Hypocrites.
I have a question to Basso and others who support this argument that Obama's success in California in some way led to the passage of Prop. 8. If McCain had carried California do you believe Prop 8 wouldn't have passed?
Word. And I'd add that the law that just passed in Arkansas prohibiting non-married couples from serving as foster parents is a true abomination. I think about the lesbian couple in the foster parent classes that my wife and I attended. In Arkansas they would not be there and fewer kids could be placed into loving homes. Awesome.
It is major hypocrisy. From a religious view, marriages performed in courthouses and those done by people who never mention a word of God in their ceremonies...those should all be equally opposed, but people don't complain like crazy until it gets to the gay marriage. It's messed up that people want to legislate sin and it's usually the sin of others. Deal with divorce amongst yourselves first, and then the countless other sins. I too subscribe to the idea that government should just make everything Civil Unions. People can talk about themselves as having a Christian marriage or a Hindu marriage, or a non-religious civil (union) marriage. There should be equality here.
I voted against the measure and as I stated a page or two back, it not only prohibits gay couples from fostering or adopting but ANY unmarried persons from doing this. Its passing is a travesty.
Yes, it's much better to let a kid waste away in the system than put him in a loving home with a couple of queers....
not quite the right question. it's the obama candidacy itself, and the efforts to turn out the black vote that doomed prop 8. had hillary been the democratic candidate, no doubt black turnout would have been smaller, and prop 8 would have failed.
