Contra Gay "Marriage"

I promised the anonymous commenter to my Prediction post that I would have the basic argument against gay "marriage" here within the week. Here are several:

First, let me say that in a secular pluralistic society such as that in the U.S., people should be free to make their own arrangements about how to live, so long as it isn't harming or endangering children.

The question at issue, then, is whether anything obligates society to extend the formal recognition and approval of marriage to relationships other than the traditional one-man/one-woman relationship.

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1. Every human culture in history has held that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Heterosexual monogamous lifetime union is not an American convention, nor an invention of Christianity, nor an idea of mine. Neither the Pope, nor the government of any nation, has the authority to re-define marriage. It doesn't belong to them, they didn't create it.

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2. If people can now say that it is not the union of one man and one woman, they must then say what marriage is.

Any definition of marriage will necessary exclude contradicting definitions. If you say it's the union of any two people, I'm sure I could find some poly group of people to ask why you don't want to let people marry whomever they want.

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3. If people have an alternative definition of marriage to advance, they must explain what gives them the authority to make their definition of marriage supercede the traditional definition. A person who wishes to include same-sex couples in the definition of marriage must explain why his authority to make this change is superior to my authority to resist the change, and also superior to the Mormons' authority to include plural marriages (or someone else's authority to include incestuous marriages, or marriages to children, or what have you).

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4. If marriage can be anything, then it will be nothing. If opponents of the traditional definition wish to say that any relationship with any number of people can be a marriage, then the concept of marriage has lost all meaning and purpose.

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5. The purpose of traditional marriage is essentially to engender and raise children. There are incidental and inherent rewards for the parents involved as well, to help provide incentives to them to engage in this endeavor. Both science and experience teach us that the male/female two-parent family is by far the best format for raising happy, healthy children to be good citizens. A new generation of good citizens is obviously a necessity for any society, and therefore human societies have traditionally offered recognition and support for couples who commit to take on the burdens and make the sacrifices involved.

It is incidental to the institution of marriage that some couples cannot or choose not to have children, or break up due to death of one or both partners, or do a poor job of raising the children despite of the advantages of the two-parent family.

A couple who marry may raise two or three or even seven or eight children. The children of that marriage may continue to marry and raise children, providing, as the years go by, increasing numbers of new citizens to vote, serve, and pay taxes.

By contrast, a committed gay relationship has as its essential purpose the fulfillment and enjoyment of the people involved in it. This is not in itself harmful to society, and should be tolerable in a free society. But it is no greater benefit to society than if the relationship does not occur. Such a relationship exists for the benefit of those in the relationship, and not for the benefit of society at large (and often in spite of the disapproval of society at large). Therefore, society gains nothing from extending formal recognition and support to that relationship.

It is incidental to the nature of homosexual relationships that some of them adopt children, have children from previous relationships or have children by other extraordinary (that is, not-ordinary) means, and may successfully raise those children to be contributing members of society.

The essence of heterosexual marriage is to benefit society. The essence of homosexual relationships is to benefit only the people in the relationship. Therefore, society has no obligation to extend the benefits, recognition, or societal approval of marriage to homosexual relationships.

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6. The founding fathers didn't define marriage in the Constitution because they never imagined that anyone would ever want to re-define it. No culture in the world has ever defined marriage as anything other than the union of one man and one woman. For most of the history of Christian Europe, it was the permanent union of one man and one woman.

Last summer, an attempt to add this traditional definition to the Constitution was voted down by people who said that the issue should be left to the states. In 1787, it was too fundamental to be in the Constitution. In 2004, it wasn't fundamental enough.

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7. I have yet to see an explanation intended to persuade me to any other point of view, based on why it's good for my society to support homosexual relationships by extending the approval of marriage to them.

Most arguments I've seen are based on erroneous claims of equal "rights", as though marriage was a right. Anyone who was ever turned down for marriage by someone they loved, or was left by a husband or wife they loved, can tell you that marriage is not a right.

Beyond these, I've only seen assertions of what someone wants, with no explanation of why they should have it.

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8. There are some (such as Mayor Daley of Chicago) who have argued that homosexual "marriage", contrary to the claims of some defenders of traditional marriage, will not harm the institution of marriage, as that institution is already greatly harmed by divorce and other problems.

In reply to this, I can only sadly agree, and call for reforms of divorce laws to better protect the enforceability of the marriage covenant, to better provide for wives, children, and husbands.

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9. And finally, the religious argument (which none of the above were): homosexual conduct is sinful, and a healthy society does not encourage or endorse it as being morally equivalent with heterosexual relationships.

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The comments link is right down there. No name-calling, please.