Same-Sex Marriage:
What's the Threat?
Does It Really Threaten Conventional Marriage?
A great deal of highly charged
rhetoric has been unleashed regarding the presumed evils of
same-sex marriage and the threat it ostensibly poses to
heterosexual marriage. The danger seems to be a
foregone conclusion. Yet, amid all the self-righteous
furor, some of us dare to wonder aloud, exactly what threat
does same-sex marriage—or any other unconventional personal
union, for that matter—pose to established conventions, and
exactly how is that threat manifested? Let's examine
some of the challenges typically raised.
The Christian
Bible defines marriage as a holy union between one man and
one woman.
There are certainly many Christians who agree, and
indeed, one-man-one-woman marriage has enjoyed a long
tradition in Christian culture. But can anyone cite a
biblical passage to the effect that any other form of
interpersonal union is forbidden? Some Christian sects
have adopted a policy of tolerating same-sex marriage.
A few (most notably the Unitarian-Universalist Church) have
gone even further, administering the sacrament of marriage
to same-sex couples who request it. Moreover, there
are many Americans (not to mention a majority of people in
other parts of the world) who are not Christians. There are
major and minor religions which endorse forms of marriage
other than the one-man-one-woman variety. Various
forms of polygamy are acceptable in Islam and Buddhism, as
well as in assorted communal, naturist, and spiritist sects.
Furthermore, the custom of keeping concubines has been acceptable, even in
Christianity, until fairly recently. So far, there is
no evidence that the institution of so-called conventional
marriage in any of these situations is in any greater
decline than among the population in general.
The only
justifiable purpose of marriage is to conceive, bear, and
rear children.
If this is so, then marriage should be permitted only
to those fertile couples who declare an intent to reproduce.
Marriage should be forbidden to any person who is physically
incapable of reproducing, and to any couples who choose not
to have children. Furthermore, any marriage which
endures beyond a couple's childbearing and child-rearing
years should be dissolved. This is where the reasoning
of the "natural purpose" of marriage inevitably takes us.
In reality, for most people there are many purposes of marriage—love,
companionship, and mutual support, for starters—regardless
of whether procreation is part of the mix—any one or any
combination of which is generally regarded as adequate
justification for interpersonal union. Those who
insist that reproduction is the be-all and end-all of
marriage are welcome to their view, but their practices
ought to be fully consistent with that view, and the
view should not be imposed upon those who believe otherwise.
The best
environment for children is in a family with two parents,
one of each sex.
This might be an ideal standard in a world of ideal
human beings. Unfortunately, many of us, including
conventionally married people, are nowhere near to any
generally accepted notion of ideal. Children are
clearly not well off in a home with heterosexual parents
if their relationship is dysfunctional, or if either or both
parents are abusive, or if they suffer from addictions that
render them ineffective or even destructive toward their
children. We might reasonably argue that desirable
characteristics for a child's home environment include love,
care, nurture, and instructive challenge. Such
positive environments can be found in non-conventional
families—including those with a single parent of either sex,
or with two parents of the same sex, or even with more than
two adults—as well as in conventional heterosexual unions.
If we seriously ask ourselves what is in the interest of
children, what matters most in their lives is not their
parents' anatomy and sexual orientation, but whether the environment the
parents supply is one that genuinely loves, cares, nurtures,
and challenges. These are the qualities that make a
real difference to children. There is no lifestyle
that either guarantees these qualities or has a monopoly on
them.
Homosexual marriage threatens the age-old institution of
heterosexual marriage.
Many people accept this as axiomatic. Indeed,
those who make this claim rarely attempt to explain it; no
information is offered about the nature of the danger and
the effects it produces. The implication is that anyone who does not
agree with the claim must be stupid. But if we are
not stupid, then we ought to know exactly what the danger
is. So what is it, exactly? What are its
effects, exactly? If there is a threat, then we
ought to know precisely what it is, so we can deal with it
effectively. Thus we ought to question the popular
assumption and demand a realistic answer. If those
making the claim cannot provide that answer, then we might
well assume that it is they, not we, who are stupid. It
turns out that the threat is vague and undefined. No
one seems to know exactly what terrible things are supposed to happen to conventional
marriage if same-sex marriage is allowed.
- Is there a shortage of marriage licenses, such that a
gay marriage would deprive a straight couple of the right
to wed?
No, we seem able to print and process all the marriage licenses
we need.
- Would same-sex marriage lessen respect for
heterosexual marriage?
A similar claim has been made against interracial
marriage, yet there seems no loss of esteem for the
institution that can be attributed to intermarriage of
people of different skin colors.
- Would the availability of gay marriage somehow cause
straight couples to divorce?
It is hard to imagine how. There is no reason
whatever to suppose that "A same-sex couple moved in next
door" leads to "I want a divorce."
- Would the availability of gay marriage cause
homosexuals who have married heterosexually (for whatever
reason) to divorce and take same-sex partners instead?
Here we might be forced to concede at least a fair chance. But we must also
ask how many such marriages actually exist, and whether
they are healthy relationships in any case. The
first answer is probably "Very few," and the second
"Probably not." In other words, banning gay marriage
would not save anything worth saving.
There are many causes of the dissolution of conventional
marriage—infidelity, personal abuse, addiction,
irresponsibility, poverty, and death of a spouse, to name a
few. But (to my knowledge) no one has ever listed
"homosexual marriage" as grounds for divorce, and there come
to mind no circumstances under which it might be so used.*
What Other Threat Could
There Be?
Even though there appears to be no rational
basis for supposing that allowing same-sex marriage somehow
threatens conventional heterosexual marriage, many people
nonetheless sense a threat, even though they cannot define
it or determine its effect specifically. Let us
concede, then, that same-sex marriage might actually present
some sort of threat, and speculate about what it
actually threatens and how.
Since most objections to
same-sex marriage seem to be religiously based, it is
plausible that what is actually threatened by such an
innovation might be religion itself. Religions are
duty bound to promote and enforce their own standards, at
least within their own ranks. But most mainstream
religions today accept that they cannot dictate the morals
of society at large, since society comprises a diversity of
beliefs whose standards sometimes conflict. Still, for
society to condone or even endorse a lifestyle that a
religion condemns might be seen by that religion's hierarchy
and adherents as a kind of threat, specifically an
undermining of its authority.
In addition, some religions, especially their
fundamentalist fringes, are oriented less toward promoting
virtue among their own and more toward raging against
the vices of others. Indeed, external threats of vice
constitute the main reason for many of these militant sects
to exist; for without an enemy, there is no threat, no justification for an
army. Ironically, threats are these sects' reason for being,
the fuel that stokes their fires, the attraction that
generates the pledges and fills the collection plates.
If there are not enough real threats, or if the threats
do not seem threatening enough, then the leaders of these
groups can be relied upon to invent whatever threats are
needed to justify their existence. In contrast to
mainstream religions, moreover, these sects typically do not
acknowledge a boundary between themselves and society at
large. Be they Christian, Muslim, Jew, or Hindu, they presume themselves to be
Heaven's chosen, and
their beliefs and causes to be universal. Given an
opportunity, they're eager to enlist the civil government
in their crusades (despite that they'd be outraged if a
sect with different views were to attempt the same thing).
To be sure, there are also non-religious arguments.
But again, the "threats" they raise typically concern something
other than conventional marriage. For
example, one is a twist on the "it's all about children"
theme. Gay marriage, the argument goes, increases
competition for adoptable children, and thus increases the
time heterosexual couples must wait to acquire adoptable
children. Now, this isn't a threat to marriage
itself, for it would be an odd marriage indeed formed solely for the purpose of adopting children, and
to be terminated if no children were available for
adoption. But in fact, this shortage of adoptable
children is fictitious. Granted, there's a shortage, but only
of the most popular sort of children: attractive, healthy,
well-mannered, Caucasian infants. Children who don't
fit all these criteria are in abundant supply. Thus it's not really
all about the children after all, but rather about the
preferences of couples who want to adopt—but only if the
children are not too old, not too dark, not too ugly, not
too much of an inconvenience with respect to health or
attitude. So it appears that whether increased
competition constitutes a "threat" or a "blessing" is
relative, and depends on one's viewpoint. If you're on
the demand side of the market, an adult looking for a kid,
then the additional wait time might frustrate you to the
point of relaxing your criteria a bit. But if you're
on the supply side, a kid in need of a home, then increased
demand is a good thing, because it obviously increases your
chances of being adopted by someone—whether
straight, gay, or single—and the flap about a "threat" seems
pretty hollow and selfish.
What Is Government's Role?
Does this mean that our civil law must ban everything to
which any religion objects? No. Islam forbids
pictorial representations of the prophet Muhammad; but our
civil government does not ban such depictions, recognizing
that most people in our country are not Muslims.
Judaism forbids consumption of pork and shellfish; but our
government does not ban these from supermarkets, recognizing
that most people in our country are not Jews. The
Roman Catholic Church objects to artificial birth control,
but our government does not ban it, recognizing that the
majority of people in our country are not Roman Catholics.
It is not the role of civil law to enforce the precepts and
taboos of minority sects.
Very well. Does it mean that civil law must enforce
ideas to which a majority religion subscribes? No.
The majority religion in the United States is (at least for
the present) Christianity, yet our civil law allows people
of other faiths to espouse their own beliefs, to observe
their own holy days, to perform rites that Christians
consider sacrilegious, and even to criticize Christianity.
In other words, the civil law grants to each minority
religion the same general rights that the majority religion
enjoys. (It must, or else it violates the
"non-establishment" clause of the Bill of Rights, by
favoring one religion over others.) Yet in America, Christianity
thrives despite the freedom of people to choose other
religions (or no religion), so having other options available does not
appear
to be a real threat. Still, the availability of other options does promote
discussion, and discussion sometimes raises questions that
religious authorities are not prepared to answer
forthrightly. And perhaps this is what they really
fear. Yet it is not our government's responsibility to
defend any religion, even the religion of the majority.
Any religion worth believing ought to be able to defend its
own beliefs and practices to those who voluntarily subscribe
to it. In a pluralistic society, no religion has a
right to enlist government in an effort to impose its
beliefs upon those who choose other religions, or no
religion at all.
What does this have to do with same-sex marriage?
It's very simple: Marriage is traditionally a religious issue.
Therefore, let government step aside; let each religion
define marriage according to its own tenets; and let each
person freely choose the belief system that best
suits his or her needs and worldview. Christian
couples can lock themselves into monogamous heterosexual
marriages. A Universalist can marry any consenting
adult of either sex. A Muslim man may acquire up to four wives. A Tibetan Buddhist
woman can be a wife to a man and all of his brothers.
Those with no religious convictions about marriage may form
contractual personal unions with whomever they wish, on a
basis of love or shared interest rather than reproduction.
There being no real threat to anyone or anything, the sole
legitimate role of any government truly committed to the
liberty of individuals and families is to provide the
non-discriminatory legal
backing for such contracts, whether religious or secular, to
ensure that all adults consensually engaged in functionally
similar arrangements—regardless of ethnicity, creed, or
sexual orientation—enjoy the same rights and are bound by
the same responsibilities with respect to society.
Of course, this would depend on government's behaving
more or less rationally. But inasmuch as same-sex
marriage serves as a handy emotional smoke-screen issue for
politicians who would rather not talk about...
- wholesale government corruption,
- misdirected wars,
- skyrocketing debt,
- illegal immigration,
- rising poverty and eroding consumer buying power,
- systemic dependence on imported oil,
- incompetent disaster relief,
- lack of funding for public education and emergency
relief,
- disregard of safety, health, and environmental
concerns,
- and general inability or unwillingness to confront
reality and deal with facts,
...we should not expect rational behavior from those
politicians as long as the current crop is in power.
They need all the scapegoats they can find, in order to
hoodwink voters into reelecting them. So, for the
rest of us, the question would seem to be: Do we let them
sucker us yet again with the same old con game? Or can
we manage to stay focused on the real issues next election?
=SAJ=
FOOTNOTE
*Although I have neither heard of, nor
been able to discern, any specific real dangers of same-sex
marriage, I grant that my ignorance of such is not enough to
conclude that there is no danger. I therefore appeal
to anyone who knows of such a danger to explain it to me.
You can do this either privately via "Contact Tangents," or
offer it for public discussion in "The Mailbag." Both
of these are available from the
FEEDBACK menu at the top of the main page of this web
site. If you convince me, with credible evidence and
sound reason, that same-sex marriage presents a real threat,
I'll revise this article accordingly.
