thoughts out !oud

Biblically minded and ever-so-slightly irreverent

“It’s not fair: homosexuals can’t marry who they love”

Posted by Mathew | August 18, 2009 | View Comments

family on beachWithout a doubt, the most common objection to marriage remaining as the union between one man and one woman, for life, is that current marriage law “unfairly” discriminates against homosexuals who desire – and cannot help but desire – those of the same-sex (second to this is the claim that current marriage laws offer unequal protection / rights to homosexuals – that’s the subject of a different discussion).

Often, the objection is phrased in such terms as: “Heterosexuals are free to marry who they love, but homosexuals can’t – that’s unfair”, or “Banning same-sex marriage discriminates against homosexuals because it prevents them from marrying who they want”.

In almost all variances of this particular objection, the underlying premises are that: 1) homosexuals can’t help but be attracted to the members of the same-sex; 2) current marriage law has no basis for the restrictions that it imposes (that only members of the opposite sex can marry). It’s arbitrary, same-sex marriage advocates say, and discriminatory and without grounds – aside from (allegedly) prejudice and homophobia. And besides, they continue, gays can’t help being gay – therefore, why shouldn’t they be allowed to marry another gay, who they love?

Debates about same-sex marriage are no different on Twitter. And I’ve taken exception to this objection and have devised the following 8-point argument as to why marriage ought to remain, as the Australian Commonwealth Government describes it: a union between one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.

I hope it will prove useful and effective in the discussions you may have on the subject.

Why an 8-point defence of traditional marriage designed for Twitter?

If you’re a Twitter user, you will inherently know the limitations that communicating on Twitter has: for each Tweet, you have a maximum of only 140 characters in which to convey your ideas. Hence, these 8-points have been condensed to fit these limitations within Twitter. Depending on whom your exchanging the points with (as the length of people’s Twitter ID’s also count toward the character limit), you may need to further abbreviate/truncate some individual Tweets.

The 8-point* marriage defence against the you-should-be-free-to-marry-who-you-love objection, which claims that homosexuals can’t help but be attracted (that is, they are pre-disposed) to members of the same sex:

  1. My argument against ssm is summed in my following 8 tweets. I’ll number them so you’ll know you have them all. Starting now …
  2. By your analogy, if I have a predisposition for speeding, the road laws discriminate against me. Pt.1
  3. I should then canvas that speeding laws be abolished – we should have the right to drive as fast or as slow as we like. Pt.2
  4. But there are reasons why we have road laws & marriage: both protect something & both provide a social good. Pt.3
  5. We don’t allow just anyone to marry because marriage serves a specific purpose. Pt.4
  6. As a rule, a group & by nature marriages produce the next generation & prvde the most stable environ for raising kids Pt.5
  7. this is why it is a social good & has special protections & privileges that no other relationships within society do. Pt.6
  8. This is also why gays & straights alike shld protect marriage just the way it is bcoz both ppls benefit by it. Pt.7
  9. As both ppls have the same restrictions re: marriage there is no inequality of law & no good reason to change the law. Pt.8

*Well, technically it’s 9, including the preceding Tweet to announce that there’s 8 Tweets to follow.

Not a Twitter user?

No problem. You can use the same 8 points in their prose form, which is how I originally wrote them:

By your analogy, I could argue that since I have a pre-disposition for speeding, the road laws discriminate against me. I should then canvas that speeding laws be abolished – after all, we should have the right to drive as fast or slow as we like.

But there is a reason why we have road laws just as much as we have a reason why we have marriage: both protect something and both provide a social good.

We don’t allow just anyone to marry because marriage serves a specific purpose. As a rule, as a group and by nature, marriages produce the next generation and provide the most stable atmosphere for the raising of children – this is why it is a social good and why it has special protections and privileges that no other relationship within society does. This is also why both gays and straights alike should protect marriage just the way it is because both gays and straights benefit by it, as they are both part of the society in which marriage operates.

So if marriage as it is benefits both gays and straights, and both gays and straights have the same restrictions applied to them with regards to marriage, there is no inequality of law and no good reason to change the law.

I’d love to hear from you

If you use any of these points in actual discussion, I’d love to hear from and to hear how they were received. Likewise, if you’ve improved on any of them, I’m always open to feedback – just drop me a comment below or send me a Tweet – or both!

An Australian and concerned about the future of marriage?

As per my post last week, the Australian Greens Party have submitted the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009 to the Senate. This Bill seeks to alter the definition of marriage, from that defined within the Marriage Act 1961, to: “the union of two people, regardless of their sex, sexuality or gender identity, voluntarily entered into for life.”

This Bill ignores the ramifications that changing the definition of marriage will have upon families, upon future generations and upon our Australian society as a whole – that is, it weakens the express purpose of marriage between one man and one woman for the raising of children.

I strongly encourage you to submit a letter of rejection of the Bill to the Australian Senate – you will need to be quick as submissions close on Friday 28 August 2009. Use the letter in my last post as a template for writing your own and then either email or post in your submission.

Take a stand for marriage – for just the way it is; because marriage, as it is, benefits the development of our children which in turn benefits all within our entire society, whether they are gay or straight.

Some further reading re: the same-sex ‘marriage’ debate

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Comments

  • 1. My argument against ssm is summed in my following 8 tweets. I’ll number them so you’ll know you have them all. Starting now …
    2. By your analogy, if I have a predisposition for speeding, the road laws discriminate against me. Pt.1

    No. Road laws do not discriminate ont he grounds of gender. I have the same rights as a man as a woman has as a woman. In contrast, the 2004 definition of "marriage' says that while a woman may marry a particular man, I may not because I am a man. Likewise, where I may marry a particular woman, my female friend may not because she's a woman. What do we call it when someone is prevented from doing something by a law purely based on their gender? SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION.

    "People who want to speed" is not a recognised category of discrimination.
    3. I should then canvas that speeding laws be abolished – we should have the right to drive as fast or as slow as we like. Pt.2
    4. But there are reasons why we have road laws & marriage: both protect something & both provide a social good. Pt.3

    Letting people speed would cause destruction on the roads.
    Letting gay people marry would have no negative consequences whatsoever.
    5. We don’t allow just anyone to marry because marriage serves a specific purpose. Pt.4

    Yes we do. Any adult male is permitted to marry any adult female provided they consent. Infertility, religion, none of these other things are considered by the government. Nor should gender be.
    6. As a rule, a group & by nature marriages produce the next generation & prvde the most stable environ for raising kids Pt.5
    Absolute tosh. Many marriages do not involve children. Many parents are not married.

    7. this is why it is a social good & has special protections & privileges that no other relationships within society do. Pt.6
    8. This is also why gays & straights alike shld protect marriage just the way it is bcoz both ppls benefit by it. Pt.7
    Gays getting married protects marriage.

    9. As both ppls have the same restrictions re: marriage there is no inequality of law & no good reason to change the law. Pt.8
    Yes there is. See Response to point 1.
  • For ease of following the argument, I'll include your comments in quotation marks and in italics.

    "No. Road laws do not discriminate ont he grounds of gender. I have the same rights as a man as a woman has as a woman. In contrast, the 2004 definition of "marriage' says that while a woman may marry a particular man, I may not because I am a man. Likewise, where I may marry a particular woman, my female friend may not because she's a woman. What do we call it when someone is prevented from doing something by a law purely based on their gender? SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION." "People who want to speed" is not a recognised category of discrimination.

    The speeding analogy was not supposed to have anything to do with gender, but was put forward to simply illustrate that there are legitimate and lawful reasons for some discriminations.

    Society lawfully discriminates in many other situations; men aren’t permitted in female toilet blocks and vice versa, for instance.

    But the real gist of my analogy is that such lawful and legitimate discriminations have a good reason to exist: to protect or to provide a social good, for the betterment of all within the society.

    The additional point I make with my analogy is that the discrimination is equally applied to all people irrespective of their preferences – therefore, there is no issue of inequality of law.

    "Letting people speed would cause destruction on the roads. Letting gay people marry would have no negative consequences whatsoever. "

    This underscores the point of my analogy, that there are laws and regulations in place to protect the well-being of a society’s constituents. The analogy of my speeding example is that current marriage law serves a distinct purpose to uphold a social good to ensure the overall well-being of everyone within society – and that it does so in an equal fashion to all constituents.

    As regards to gay marriage not having any adverse affects, the picture tells a different story in the Netherlands.

    "Yes we do. Any adult male is permitted to marry any adult female provided they consent. Infertility, religion, none of these other things are considered by the government. Nor should gender be."

    What confuses me here is that you state that “just anyone” can get married and then contradict yourself by stating that only adults can marry. Further, no one is permitted to marry close relatives, their own children or their siblings, hence my statement.

    Gender is a key aspect to marriage due to the possibility of bearing children or of adopting children; marriage also has a positive influence (it encourages fidelity to one's spouse) to lower the rate of out-of-wedlock children (who statistically are not as well-off as those born within marriage – see Bill’s article in the resources I’ve listed above). Infertility and religion are totally irrelevant to the issue.

    "Absolute tosh. Many marriages do not involve children. Many parents are not married."

    It’s clear you’ve ignored the clause “as a rule, a group & by nature” – I’m talking about whole concepts or what is typical, not examples for the exception, which are irrelevant to the same-sex marriage debate.

    "Gays getting married protects marriage."

    I doubt you would have any proof for this statement; in any event, the article I linked to regarding the status of marriage in the Netherlands would make me - as it should you - to question this.

    "Yes there is [re: my statement: As both ppls have the same restrictions re: marriage there is no inequality of law & no good reason to change the law]. See Response to point 1."

    Which I refuted.

    For you reference, you may also wish to consider the arguments and responses that were made in the comments section of my previous article, There’s no inequality for the Greens’s Marriage Equality Amendment Bill to address

    Given I believe most of the ground has already been covered in both this article and my other, I will be closing comments on this article as well.
  • A further point to be made on your question #2, Ryft, is nicely tackled by Maggie Gallagher. In her article, What Marriage Is For, she writes:

    "We impose no fertility tests for marriage: Infertile and older couples marry, and not every fertile couple chooses procreation. But every marriage between a man and a woman is capable of giving any child they create or adopt a mother and a father. Every marriage between a man and a woman discourages either from creating fatherless children outside the marriage vow. In this sense, neither older married couples nor childless husbands and wives publicly challenge or dilute the core meaning of marriage. Even when a man marries an older woman and they do not adopt, his marriage helps protect children. How? His marriage means, if he keeps his vows, that he will not produce out-of-wedlock children."

    (Emphasis mine.)

    It is definitely to the benefit of the state that there are fewer children born out of wedlock; more specifically, that there are fewer single-parent households. Such households are typically impoverished - requiring state-funded support or gifts of charity.
  • These are good questions, Ryft. Thanks. The article as it was designed, given its brevity, naturally lends itself to additional questioning - I never intended the above to be a be-all and end-all on the matter.

    1. I don't believe discrimination is necessarily a bad thing. There can be good reason why we discriminate; car insurers (admittedly this is not the best example I can think of at the present but it should help you see what I'm getting at) discriminate as a matter of policy and with good reason: young male drivers are statistically a high-risk group, hence they pay higher premiums than do females of the same age.

    My underlying premise is that the "discrimination" against gays from marrying has good reason: to protect the social good.

    2. Fertility is not a prerequisite for marriage: the State does not require such tests before issuing licenses. If you will, the State is in the gambling business: sooner or later, married couples, as a rule, as a group and by nature, create babies.

    Sometimes the State will "lose" out on the bet (ie. infertile couples or couples who choose not to have children). Yet, infertile, married couples can always adopt.

    3. When I say marriage creates the most stable environment for children I of course explicitly mean heterosexual marriage. All children benefit from being reared by both their father and their mother; both bring something unique to the table in the rearing of their children.

    Bill Muehlenberg's article that I linked to at the bottom of my above article details research that concludes kids are best with their married, biological parents. Second to this are kids who are raised by married heterosexuals, where perhaps neither are their biological parent (ie. they're adopted) - but the research is clear: there's something unique about the marriage bond between the sexes that no other type of relationship provides for the rearing of children. (Heterosexual cohabitation, statistically speaking, produces results similar to single parent households.) It is clear that married, same-sex parenting would not produce the same results as married, heterosexual parenting.

    So why would we intentionally design households which deny children access to a father and mother when studies conclusively show this is the best environment for them?

    There are more questions to be asked, to be sure. I like your idea of a follow-up post and may do that in the near future in order to expound on some of these arguments.
  • Objections that your article (or a follow-up one) needs to address:

    1. If a government defines marriage in heterosexual terms, then the government discriminates against homosexuals. (This argument works only for governments who guarantee its people equal rights under the law.)

    2. If your argument for excluding same-sex marriage is based upon the idea that marriage is about procreation, then do you also think infertile heterosexual couples should be prevented from marrying?

    3. If marriage provides the most stable atmosphere for raising children, then should same-sex couples who have children be permitted to marry? (They have children the same way infertile couples do, e.g., adoption, another important value to society.)
  • Do try to read the whole article and take the analogy I offer in the proper context.

    The first sentence of your response actually proves the point that I move on to make: that there is good reason why marriage law is the way that it is - it protects the welfare of children, which protects the welfare, longevity and prosperity of society, in which both gays and straights mutually benefit.

    Feel free to post a rejoinder to any of the other points I make in the above argument.
  • richiecraze
    Speeding is dangerous and can hurt or kill people.

    Hardly a compelling argument. You've really not thought this through, have you?
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