The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage

The Liberal Case Against Gay Marriage
By Susan M. Shell

The issue of gay marriage brings to a head, like few other issues of our time, a central conflict between two moral positions that interact like seismic plates beneath the surface of contemporary American political life. It is commonly thought that the issue of gay marriage pits secular liberals against religious conservatives. While this understanding is accurate up to a point, it is also seriously misleading. The most stubborn and intransigent opponents in the conflict are both in their way sectarian.
The first position is more or less a traditional Christian one. That is, it accepts the idea of an authority higher than human choice that must remain within limits set by that authority. New understandings of these limits have arisen in recent years, allowing the individual pursuit of happiness more leeway and removing much of the shame and guilt that once kept traditional sexual norms in place. Nevertheless, its basic familial ideal remains intact: a monogamous, heterosexual, and devotional relationship directed toward the rearing of children. For most proponents of this view, gay marriage represents a direct assault on the grounding authority by which life at its most serious and intimate is lived.
The second position, which takes human freedom as its central and highest good, could be classified as “liberationist” or postmodern. Distrustful of traditional rules as intrinsically oppressive, it seeks the individual’s emancipation from all norms that might hamper the quest for spiritual and material autonomy. For the most radical liberationists, all universal norms are suspect, with the sole exception of something like a duty to “accept difference.” Among the more moderate proponents, this suspicion is replaced by an uneasiness with respect to “moral judgment” that approaches or imitates humility of a more traditional Christian sort, at least when applied to others. Thus, for the liberationist camp, gay marriage is either a celebration of the individual’s heroic struggle to find love and validation in a hostile world, or at the very least, it is no one else’s business.
The debate over gay marriage is currently polarized by these two sectarian forces. It would be politically beneficial to define a genuinely liberal approach that is fair to both. Such an approach would include them in the ongoing and generally fruitful compromise between revealed religion and the principles of individual rights and freedoms from which the United States has historically drawn strength. The point is not to abandon the position formulated by Locke and other liberal thinkers, but to reaffirm and enhance it in the face of new conditions and challenges. Such thinkers have generally viewed marriage as a contractual arrangement between two individuals for the sake of mutual advantage and the generation and rearing of children to the point where they can be self-reliant (in Locke’s thinking) and/or capable of exercising their individual rights in a responsible civic manner (according to Kant). How might such older liberal views be usefully adapted to the present?
The question is complicated by a common, relatively recent view that there is no one way to be a family — that all forms of family life are to celebrated equally as products of individual choice, at least so long as they make people happy. Conversely, it is said, intolerance and lack of respect for “difference” breed unhappiness. Liberals typically uphold the right of individuals to pursue their own understandings of happiness, so long as they do not encroach upon the rights of others. What, then, can weaken an apparently liberal presumption in favor of allowing people to define marriage however they choose, other than an illiberal deference toward a particular religious norm that has no right to political establishment? The answer lies in marriage itself, as it has been understood and practiced almost universally.
The essence of marriage, liberally construed
Though it is often assumed that no principled liberal case exists against gay marriage, this is incorrect. In a liberal democracy, private groups may hold their own views on the desirability or reprehensibility of homosexual relations. But it is not the business of the state either to endorse or forbid such practices publicly. Neither is it the business of the liberal democratic state to define marriage in a way that speaks to the special needs of a single sect. Liberalism proceeds by taking its fundamental bearings from certain basic human experiences about which sectarians can reasonably be expected to agree — for example, the general human aversion to violent death and the claims to which that aversion naturally gives rise. Thus the first step in defining a liberal approach to marriage is to find a way of understanding marriage that is similarly true to the human situation and at the same time relatively impartial with respect to present-day sectarian conflicts.
A suitable account of marriage might begin as follows: Most human societies have honored the notion that special responsibility for children lies with the biological parents. This has also been the view of almost all influential thinkers on the subject — including “liberal” ones. No known society treats the question of who may properly call a child his or her own as simply “up for grabs” or as a matter to be decided entirely politically as one might distribute land or wealth.
No known government, however brutal or tyrannical, has ever denied, in fact or principle, the fundamental claim of parents to their children. Denial of this claim always demands an excuse, such as parental incapacity, criminality, or “illegitimacy.” (Even the infamous slaughter of the innocents, or the Pharoanic decree that landed Moses in the bulrushes, rested on fear of a future crime.) No known state or society treats the act of bearing a child — as distinguished from clearing a field or sacrificing a goat — as an entirely indifferent one for purposes of establishing a moral, legal, or familial claim. A state can override this responsibility by a variety of economic, legal, and cultural factors, but it cannot altogether cease to recognize them. This is so not only because children would likely suffer if they did, but also because most parents, among others, would not stand for it.
Families are not infinitely malleable, as even champions of diversity must concede. This does not simply owe to considerations of size: A government that distributed children randomly, for example, could not be other than tyrannical. Even if it had the best interests of society in mind — say, the principle of equal opportunity, radically understood — a government that paid no regard to the claims of biological parenthood would be unacceptable to all but the most fanatical of egalitarian or communitarian zealots. Beyond its other functions—limiting female fertility, transmitting property, or providing companionship, for example—marriage is a way of honoring this central fact, which limits one’s ability to regard practices of marriage as either wholly dependent on belief in a particular divine revelation or as wholly “socially constructed.”
But marriage is not merely a matter of biology. That children can be “illegitimate” suggests that the biological facts of parenthood are not enough for social purposes. Disputes over fatherhood, for example, or variations in parental attachment to their children, make it reasonable for societies to supplement and sometimes override the natural bonds established by and through the processes of human generation. Marriage is, before all else, the practice by which human societies mark, modify, and occasionally mask these bonds. Like death, and the funereal rites that universally accompany it in one form or another, human generation has a significance that is more than arbitrary, if less than obvious. Marriage is the primary way societies interpret that significance, and it is doubtful whether any other custom could substitute for it adequately.
Whatever else it may accomplish, marriage acknowledges and secures the relation between a child and a particular set of parents. Whether monogamous or polygamous, permanent or temporary, marriage never fails to address this relation — at least potentially. It establishes a legal or quasi-legal relation of parenthood that draws on, even as it enhances and modifies, the primary human experience of generation and the claims and responsibilities to which it naturally gives rise. A husband is, until otherwise proven, the acknowledged father of his wife’s offspring, with recognized rights and duties that may vary from society to society but always exist in some form. And a wife is a woman who can expect a certain specified sort of help from her husband in the raising of her offspring. All other functions of marriage borrow from or build upon this one. Even marriage among those past child-rearing age or otherwise infertile draws on notions of partnership and mutual aid that has its primary roots in the experience of shared biological parenthood.
An inevitable question follows from this understanding of marriage: Can those who are not even potentially partners in reproduction, and who could never under any circumstances have been so, actually “marry”? It might seem that the answer is yes, especially given new reproductive technologies that allow some heterosexual couples to choose to be both sexually active and childless, and allow others to have children whose biological relation to themselves takes new and unfamiliar forms.
This presumption is strengthened by notions, mainly Protestant in origin, that marriage is less about generation than about companionship. It is also buttressed by a new openness to adoption by some, such as single adults and gay couples, whose fitness as parents would in the not-too-distant past have been strongly questioned. What is more, the increase in divorce, extramarital cohabitation, and “blended” siblings have widely contributed to the revision of customary definitions of the family. It is now argued by many that all forms of family life are to be celebrated as products of individual choice, at least so long as they make people happy. Encouraged by these new technological possibilities, such critics of traditional marriage believe their case is so self-evidently justified that the only possible objection could arise from a baseless, and ultimately unconstitutional, endorsement of a particular religious norm that has no rightful claim to political establishment.
New technologies, however, can bend traditional notions of the family only so far. The right to one’s own children, barring the circumstances discussed above, is perhaps the most basic individual right — so basic we hardly think of it. New reproductive technologies have not erased this fundamental claim, though in some cases they may have muddied it. The question of who inseminates or gives birth continues to be a pertinent matter. In any case in which it is overridden — a birth mother giving up parental rights or a man donating sperm, for example — it must be done by explicit contract. Perhaps, one day, corporations will come to “own” the DNA from which children are produced, entitling them to “licensing fees” (so that a child might “owe” its health or beauty to General Motors). Perhaps, in the not-too-distant future, faces will be patented, and particularly desirable genes will either be distributed universally or awarded to the highest parental bidder. What seems less likely is that the status of parenthood as such will simply disappear.
Generation and death
When considering the institution of marriage, a useful comparison exists between how society addresses the beginning and end of human life. Like death, our relation to which is shaped and challenged but not effaced by modern technologies, generation defines our human nature, both in obvious ways and in ways difficult to fathom fully. As long as this is so, there is a special place for marriage understood as it has always been understood. That is to say, there is a need for society to recognize that human generation and its claims are an irreducible feature of the human experience.
Like the rites and practices surrounding death, marriage invests a powerful, universally shared experience with the norms and purposes of a given society. Even when couples do not “marry,” as is increasingly becoming the case in parts of western Europe, they still form socially recognized partnerships that constitute a kind of marriage. If marriage in a formal sense is abolished, it will not disappear, but it will no longer perform this task so well.
A similar constraint applies to death. A society could abolish “funerals” as heretofore understood and simply call them “parties,” or allow individuals to define them as they wish. Were the “liberationist” exaltation of individual choice pushed to its logical conclusion, would not a public definition of “funeral” as a rite in honor of the dead appear just as invidious as a public definition of “marriage” as an enduring sexual partnership between a man and woman? If it is discriminatory to deny gay couples the right to “marry,” is it not equally unfair to deny living individuals the right to attend their own “funerals”? If it makes individuals happy, some would reply, what is the harm? Only that a society without the means of formally acknowledging, through marriage, the fact of generation, like one without the means of formally acknowledging, through funeral rites, the fact of death, seems impoverished in the most basic of human terms.
Like generation, death has a “public face” so obvious that we hardly think of it. The state issues death certificates and otherwise defines death legally. It recognizes funeral attendance as a legal excuse in certain contexts, such as jury duty. It also regulates the treatment of corpses, which may not merely be disposed of like any ordinary animal waste. Many states afford funeral corteges special privileges not enjoyed by ordinary motorists. Funeral parlors are strictly regulated, and there are limits on the purchase and destruction of cemeteries that do not apply to ordinary real estate. In short, there are a number of ways in which a liberal democratic government, as a matter of course, both acknowledges “death” and limits the funereal rites and practices of particular sects and individuals. I cannot call a party in my honor my “funeral” and expect the same public respect and deference afforded genuine rites for the dead. And it would be a grim society indeed that allowed people to treat the dead any old which way — as human lampshades, for example.
Once one grants that the link between marriage and generation may approach, in its universality and solemn significance, the link between funereal practices and death, the question of gay marriage appears in a new light. It is not that marriages are necessarily devoted to the having and rearing of children, nor that infertility need be an impediment to marriage (as is still the case for some religious groups). This country has never legally insisted that the existence of marriage depends upon “consummation” in a potentially procreative act. It is, rather, that marriage, in all the diversity of its forms, draws on a model of partnership rooted in human generation. But for that fact, marriages would be indistinguishable from partnerships of a variety of kinds. The peculiar intimacy, reciprocity, and relative permanence of marriage reflect a genealogy that is more than merely historical.
Seen in this light, the issue of gay marriage can be reduced to the following question: Is the desired union between homosexuals more like a marriage between infertile heterosexuals, unions that draw ultimate psychological and moral sustenance (at least symbolically) from the experience of human generation; or is it more like insistence on attending one’s own funeral — a funeral, one might say, existing in name only? This question is not easily answered. Progress can be made, however, by attending to the stated goals of most gay marriage advocates.
Beyond sectarian advocacy
Many proponents of gay marriage generally seek a combination of legal, economic, and medical privileges ordinarily associated with marriage, as well as recognition of a certain civil dignity that current arrangements are thought to deny gays. Some advocates also specifically seek an easier road when it comes to adopting children. Few if any supporters of gay marriage, however, demand as a matter of central concern that each gay partner be automatically recognized as the parent of any child generated by the other. More simply, proponents of gay marriage do not seek the “essence” of marriage, as described above, in its most general and basic sense.
For example, Jonathan Rauch, in his recent book Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, defines marriage as essentially a legally enforced, long-term relation of mutual aid and support between two sexual partners. Marriage, he says, “is putting one person ahead of all others.” According to Rauch, “if marriage means anything at all,” it is knowing “that there is someone out there for whom you are always first in line.” We can here leave aside how odd this definition will sound to any married couple with young children, partners whose first responsibility is not obviously spousal. The more crucial point to note is Rauch’s telling claim that marriage is primarily directed toward relieving adult anxiety — an “elemental fear,” as he calls it, that should catastrophe strike, “no one will be there for me” (original emphasis). This belief may well express Rauch’s personal needs and longings, but it has little to do with parenthood. Rauch views marriage as a response to the fears of adults that they might one day be abandoned, rather than to the fears of parents for their children, let alone the fears of children that they might actually be abandoned here and now. Not every proponent of gay marriage makes the same arguments as Rauch. Still, few centrally insist upon the automatic parental rights and duties intrinsic to marriage as it is almost universally experienced.
Keeping the goals that advocates emphasize in mind, one can reach a principled and liberal public policy toward gay marriage. Most, if not all, of the goals of the gay marriage movement could be satisfied in the absence of gay marriage. Many sorts of individuals, and not just gay couples, might be allowed to form “civil partnerships” dedicated to securing mutual support and other social advantages. If two unmarried, elderly sisters wished to form such a partnership, or two or more friends (regardless of sexual intimacy) wanted to provide mutually for one another “in sickness and in health,” society might furnish them a variety of ways of doing so — from enhanced civil contracts to expanded “defined benefit” insurance plans, to new ways of dealing with inheritance. (Though tempting, this is not the place to tackle the issue of polygamy — except to say that this practice might well be disallowed on policy and even more basic constitutional grounds without prejudice to other forms of civil union.) In short, gay couples and those who are not sexually intimate should be permitted to take legally supported vows of mutual loyalty and support. Such partnerships would differ from marriage in that only marriage automatically entails joint parental responsibility for any children generated by the woman, until and unless the paternity of another man is positively established.
As for the having and raising of children — this, too, can be provided for and supported short of marriage. If two siblings need not “marry” in order to adopt a child together, neither need two friends, whether or not they are sexually intimate. Civil unions might be formed in ways that especially address the needs of such children. The cases of gay men who inseminate a willing surrogate mother, or lesbians who naturally conceive and wish to designate their partner as the child’s other parent, can also be legally accommodated short of marriage, strictly understood, on the analogy of adoption by step-parents and/or other relatives. As in all cases of adoption (as opposed to natural parenthood, where the fitness of the parent is assumed until proven otherwise), the primary question is the welfare of the child, not the psychic needs and wants of its would-be parents.
What gays have a right to expect when seeking to adopt children is that their homosexual relationship as such not be held against them when the state weighs their claim to parental fitness. A liberal approach takes moral condemnation of homosexuality out of the public sphere. Individuals remain free, according to the dictates of their religion or conscience, to abhor gay relations. But they may not publicly impose that view on others. The civic dignity that gays may properly claim includes the right not to be held publicly hostage to sectarian views they do not share.
That liberal sword cuts both ways, however: American citizens should not have the sectarian beliefs of gay-marriage advocates imposed on them unwillingly. If proponents of gay marriage seek certain privileges of marriage, such as legal support for mutual aid and childbearing, there may well be no liberal reason to deny it to them. But if they also seek positive public celebration of homosexuality as such, then that desire must be disappointed. The requirement that homosexual attachments be publicly recognized as no different from, and equally necessary to society as, heterosexual attachments is a fundamentally illiberal demand. Gays cannot be guaranteed all of the experiences open to heterosexuals any more than tall people can be guaranteed all of the experiences open to short people. Least of all can gays be guaranteed all of the experiences that stem from the facts of human sexual reproduction and its accompanying penumbra of pleasures and cares. To insist otherwise is not only psychologically and culturally implausible; it imposes a sectarian moral view on fellow citizens who disagree and who may hold moral beliefs that are diametrically opposed to it.
The deeper phenomenal differences between heterosexual and homosexual relations are hard to specify precisely. Still, these differences seem sufficiently clear to prohibit gay marriage without denying gays equal protection under the laws. Gay relations bear a less direct relation to the generative act in its full psychological and cultural complexity than relations between heterosexual partners, even when age, individual preference, or medical anomaly impede fertility. Gay relations have a plasticity of form, an independence from natural generation, for which they are sometimes praised, but which, in any case, also differentiates them from their heterosexual counterparts. No heterosexual couples have such freedom from the facts of generation, which they can limit and control in a variety of ways but can never altogether ignore. Intimate heterosexual partners realize that they might generate a child together, or might once have done so. This colors and shapes the nature of their union in ways that homosexual love can imitate, and possibly even transcend, but cannot share in fully.
A truly liberal solution
Such considerations, and others like them, suffice to sustain the “reasonableness” of a legal distinction between heterosexual marriage and forms of gay civil union that might perform many of marriage’s tasks. It is neither irrational nor necessarily offensive to deem gay unions significantly less like a generative heterosexual union than is a marriage between infertile heterosexual partners. Demanding otherwise would require one to abandon the principles of liberalism in favor of a sectarian, “liberationist” understanding of marriage. Conversely, an unwillingness to compromise on the issue of civil unions would require one to insist that liberalism take a backseat to a particular understanding of morality that society at large may not fully endorse. In both cases, liberalism must remain the primary concern, and sectarian wishes must conform to it, not the other way around.
Thus a liberal resolution to the issue of gay marriage, one that transcends sectarian advocacy with an eye to the broader public interest, would encompass at least four primary elements. First, a legally expanded definition of civil union (or partnership for mutual support and aid) should be advanced that includes, but is not limited to, gay couples. Such unions might provide some of the benefits now afforded married couples while withholding others. Second, gay individuals and couples should be allowed to adopt children without prejudice and with primary regard, as is generally the case, for the interests of the child. Third, marriage as such should be limited to heterosexual couples, given that a central role of marriage lies in the public recognition of certain responsibilities and claims arising from human generation. Finally, marriage is to be defined in terms of mutual parental responsibilities and claims that civil union does not similarly take for granted.
Such a liberal civic compromise is not without significant potential costs and complications. More important than the redrafting of tax laws or the calibration of some social policies, this resolution will undoubtedly leave many on both sides dissatisfied. On the one hand, many religious traditionalists will see in the absence of public strictures against homosexuality a threat to the very meaning of the family. This worry does not seem to be well founded. The natural mutual attraction of the sexes and the related desire to conceive and rear children has expressed itself over countless generations, and in all known societies, and it will continue to do so. If that desire is weakened in contemporary society, it is an exaggerated individualism, not gay relations as such, that should be blamed for it.
On the other hand, many who support gay marriage will deplore any solution they believe discriminates between homosexuals and heterosexuals. Such intransigence is neither politically reasonable nor just. Some who endorse gay marriage, including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, equate its prohibition with earlier strictures against interracial marriage. This analogy is entirely unfounded. Antimiscegenation laws acted in the face of, and against the facts of, human generation and the bonds they establish; laws instituting gay marriage seek to defy them. Private groups may hold their own views as to the desirability or reprehensibility of marriage between people of different races, ethnicities, and/or religions. But it is not the business of the state in a liberal democracy such as ours either to promote or forbid such practices publicly. (Given the historical experience of slavery, though, even private discrimination based on race may raise thorny public issues.) It is also inappropriate for a liberal democratic government to define marriage in a way that favors a single sect. Those who endorse the view that homosexual unions require public celebration of a sort expressed in rites of marriage represent a kind of sect whose views should be tolerated but not politically established. In a liberal society such as ours, some proposals should be off the table. Liberal rights must trump even the majority’s will.
Restriction of marriage to heterosexual couples gives reasonable recognition to the peculiar importance and solemnity of generation and a related complex of human experiences. It does not, in itself, constitute unjust discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The liberal case against gay marriage becomes even stronger if the category of civil union is expanded to permit gay couples and others to enjoy certain privileges from which they may in the past have been needlessly excluded. Unlike some more radical proposals, however, it would do so without doing needless violence to the peculiar character of marriage as it has heretofore been understood and practiced with good reason. That such privileges can be provided for outside of marriage is both a potential boon to gay couples and a sign that marriage in a strict sense is not in most cases what is essentially being sought.
There is a more serious objection that one might expect to hear: namely, that such a compromise on gay marriage, by giving expanded support to a variety of unconventional relationships, would weaken the status of marriage as a unique and rightly privileged domestic bond. While there may be some truth to this conservative charge, it is countered by the renewed emphasis to be brought about by articulating what sets marriage apart, irrespective of any particular religious understanding. Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims, more and less observant, differ in their understanding of marriage in sometimes crucial ways. An emphasis on what unites all Americans with regard to marriage might help stem the slide toward thinking that marriage can be anything we choose. It might help remind us that liberalism is not only about choice; it is also about acknowledging reasonable political and moral limits.
Copyright of The Public Interest, Issue #156 (Summer 2004), National Affairs, Inc.
Susan Shell is professor of political science at Boston College and author of The Embodiment of Reason (University of Chicago Press, 1995).

A well written analysis. However, some of the more candid leaders of the "gay marriage" movement have already admitted that their true goal is the destruction of marriage and family as social institutions. The vast majority of gay men aren't the least bit interested in commitment anyway.

Harry - I don't know if you got this one yet, LibbyLibertarian (a troll who is not zotted, signed up today, and is promoting the "gay" agenda) is privately freepmailing me. Some freepers (ArGee in particular) is hitting the target, as usual.

Oops - I wrote to soon. LL bit the dust. Might have been a retread.

Thanks, mods.

This idiot is a troll. Troll, you are an idiot.

Back to the shadows from whence you came!

I just logged on this am, RAN over here to see what you were talking about and the mods already Zapped it for us.

This thread is a year old. The troll probably found it on a google search.

Bump!...still relevant.

Thank you for this article. It is amazing, and very useful. You see, I had to come up with (for an assignment) a 28th amendment to the US constitution, and I decided to, in mine, make gay marriage LEGAL. You read it right. LEGAL. I support gay rights, and this article gave me the fuel to stand against the thought that gay marriage is wrong. I could give you all the particulars of what is so god-awful about this. But that would take too much effort, and space. So, thanks for the article. I couldn't have supported my argument without good stuff like this.

My comment specifically pertains to proposition 8 in California, b/c I’ve been debating this forever it seems, so I’m using it as a knowledgeable example.

Firstly, The author (pretty much only) argues that the main purpose for state-sanctioned marriage benefits is because heterosexual couples produce children. If that’s the only reason, why even bother requiring people to get married to have those rights?? Why not just give those rights to people who reproduce together? The kids would still have a mother and a father, and since neither would be monogamously tied to the other, there would be an even greater chance that they’d reproduce with others too, creating even more citizens. Why even bother with marriage? It wasn’t even condoned by the church until the 1100’s and society got on fine before then. The author even agrees that marriage is a decaying institution. We might as well abolish it altogether.

Further, the author argues that a burden of proof is required to be met by gay marriage advocates that would demonstrate a compelling state interest. (and further goes to decide that one has not been met, however this view is erroneous). In the California voter information guide that you receive upon registering to vote (or get in the mail once you’ve registered, w/e) it specifically mentions the fiscal impact of prop 8 passing would be “revenue loss...in the several tens of millions of dollars.”

Since California is currently not only in a major budget crisis, but also in a dire economic pitfall, I would assume it is in the state’s interest to generate as much revenue as possible in these troubling times, and I would say that several tens of millions of dollars would definitely be something that the state would want.

Even further, it a generous assumption to place the gay population at 10% of the nation, a more accurate one based on census data places that figure more likely around 2-3%. The author agrees that marriage laws aren’t perfect and in fact guarantee rights for elderly and sterile couples. If the entire population of gay people in America (pop 300mill.) is less than 10 million people, and the entire gay population (if it’s an equivalent to the nation) of California is 1 million, how many of those people do you think could possibly want to get married in a given year?? Admittedly, when gay marriage is first available there will be a surge of couples wishing to get married, but eventually it will settle out to a plateau figure. That figure couldn’t possibly be much higher than the amount of sterile or elderly couples who wish to get married annually. So therefore, it wouldn’t be THAT much more of a burden to the state to allow gays to marry anyway. In fact, it would only be FAIR to treat them the same way as sterile or elderly couples because all three aren’t producing children, yet only two currently get the same rights as fertile, heterosexual couples, and that is illegal according to the US Constitution.

"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."

It's unclear exactly which rights we're talking about here, in particular, because we lack a definition of marriage. That's the issue at stake, of course, and we're not going to agree on what that definition is. However, Kolasinski is naive to assume his definition of marriage is independently or objectively true. If we define marriage as "a sexual and romantic partnership between two individuals who love each other that is recognized by the state to encourage and support the raising of children"--a definition that contains the essential 'children-clause' that's so important to social conservatives--it is clear that this is a civil right everyone should enjoy. Kolasinski's examples of relationships other than same-sex relationships that are not valid for marriage are, by his own admission, not equivalent to same-sex couplings. This is because in all the cases listed there are clear, documented negative consequences for children that would be conceived in those relationships. Children can and are conceived by same-sex parents without negative consequences. What about adoption--a wonderful and viable option for raising children? Two cousins or siblings could clearly raise an adopted child together. When this question is raised by an opponent of same-sex marriage, however, we have to question his/her motive; perhaps he or she should advocate for same-sex marriage and, when that is achieved, advocate for familial marriage as well. I will not join the familial marriage advocate on the front lines, however, for it is certainly to be an impossible legal proposition. There is simply no constituency for familial marriage. The same-sex marriage opponent who asks "Why not same-family marriage?" is clearly not interested in whether or not it is fair to deny marriage to same-family couples, and to ask that question is to depart from fair and reasonable debate.

"...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."

This is undeniably so. What Kolasinski now needs to show is that the marriages which are allowed by the state produce good(s) that offset these costs to the state and other individual.

"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."

Kolasinski must feel embarrassed, because he has forgotten that same-sex couples are just as likely to produce children! In vitro fertilization techniques and adoption both offer completely viable alternatives to heterosexual, vaginal intercourse for producing children.

"...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."

Kolasinski answers here a common argument put forth by same-sex marriage advocates: If marriage is only for producing children, why do we not deny it to sterile or elderly couples? Cost analysis, which is apparently the crux of Kolasinski's argument, is an innovative approach to the debate, to be sure. However, Kolasinski, overwhelmed by the debit of marriage, overlooks the credit of same-sex marriage. States that have allowed same-sex marriages have experienced an economic boom in wedding-related industries that is well-documented. Let's not forget that marriage licenses are paid for as well. If Kolasinski is truly prepared to debate the economics of same-sex marriage, he should do so line item by line item.

"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."

Here Kolasinski addresses the other demographic in legal marriages that fails the child-bearing test. What is so interesting about his argument, however, is his acknowledgement that marriage between elderly people is so rare. That's convenient, because marriage between same-sex partners is also extremely rare! After all, estimates of the proportion of homosexuals in the human population never exceed 10% at the most optimistic and are frequently closer to 2%; some say even less than 1% of the population is truly, exclusively homosexual. From Kolasinski's cost-analysis perspective, this is clearly just as inconsequential as the proportion of infertile and elderly couples.

"Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society...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."

Kolasinski makes this claim because, as has been apparent thus far, he is not aware of in vitro fertilization or adoption. In 2007 there 130,000 children waiting to be adopted in America, with 496,000 currently being cared for by state-approved foster families (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/afcars/trends.htm). Clearly, same-sex couples can provide for these children.

"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."

Kolasinski is in fact aware of alternative reproductive techniques. Here, he means to say that the sexual activity of a lesbian has nothing to do with bearing a child and he's right, but marriage, in Kolasinski's opinion, has nothing to do unfruitful sexual activity. Does Kolasinski believe marriage has only to do with the act of procreation? What are all the legal protections for, then, as none of them apply to the act of fornication. Sharing social security benefits, avoiding estate taxes, joint tax return filing--none of those have anything to do with fornication for procreation's sake. It is clear that while marriage may involve procreation, the act itself does not define marriage because the true beneficiaries of the legal protections, apparently, are the children thus conceived.

"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."

It is a shame Kolasinski does not provide more examples, as that might make it more clear how "ample" the evidence is. I, myself, have not had the opportunity to read any credible evidence that single-parent families are detrimental to child-development. David Popenoe's book, which I haven't yet read, from objective summaries and reviews sounds like it deals with exactly the same material as its predecessor, David Blankenhorn's "Fatherless America"--assuming both books have a sound, empirical basis for their argument, what, if anything, do they say about a same-sex partnership between two men raising a child? What do they say about two lesbians raising a female child (they refer to the social implications of "male violence" as a consequence of fatherless families)? I hope to read these books to better understand where Kolasinski is coming from, but it seems that two gay men raising a male child would be excellent father figures--twice the father figure a single, heterosexual man could be in a traditional marriage! It also seems that young girls pose no threat to society even if they are raised in a single-parent family. I recall that a lot of criticism of these kinds of books stems from the fact they baselessly paint males as brutish barbarians who have to be dominated into submission.

Furthermore, there is credible evidence that same-sex parents are just as fit to raise children as heterosexual parents: .

"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 clear that children couldn't reap the same alleged benefit from aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, and family friends? We are enriched by encountering many different people in our lives and we are enriched by their very differences. However, "essential" this benefit is, it is unsubstantiated by Kolasinski.

However, let's assume it is essential and apply his argument to a related issue. It's clear that children are going to grow up in a society made up not only of both sexes but also multiple sexualities. Therefore, if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of multiple sexualities, it is essential for them to be exposed to people of different sexualities being treated equally and fairly. How better to achieve this than to expose children to same-sex families? Currently, they do exist as civil partnerships. What lessons are children learning if the parents of other children are considered inferior or not as valuable? What lessons are children learning if their own parents are considered as such?

"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."

The comparison stems from the fact that early 20th-century whites thought that mixing the races had negative biological and developmental consequences for the children. Some modern heterosexuals believe that same-sex parents will foster negative biological and developmental consequences for the children. Kolasinski himself just advanced his belief that same-sex parents have negative developmental consequences for their children. What is inherently dissimilar about these attitudes? Let's not forget that the state's interest is cold comfort to minorities. Less than a century ago the state thought it was in its best interest to separate the races. Who is deciding what is in the state's best interest?

"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."

Kolasinski is a smart, rational man and I've decided that if he and other heterosexuals are willing to settle for a civil union, so am I. If he's right (though I doubt he is) he and other heterosexual couples won't feel dehumanized, devalued, and defamed by society's lower expectations of them. After all, there is nothing stopping heterosexuals from living in civil unions today. Does Kolasinski believe there is no correlation between the wider acceptance of homosexuality and the decline of the culture of anonymous sexual encounters in the gay community? Here's some hard evidence: Same-sex spouses in the United States are twice as likely to be raising children -- more than 31% of spouses are raising children as opposed to 17% of unmarried partners. This comes from a study of U.S. Census Bureau data: .

"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."

Again, if Kolasinski is content to carry around a mountain of legal documents to prove his relationship with his partner, so am I. The reality is that heterosexual couples are rarely questioned and thus rarely forced to produce these documents. The genteel normality of heterosexual couples is above dispute in our culture, so no one questions the concerned or grieving spouse of an opposite-sex partner. There are countless anecdotes Kolasinski probably hasn't read of same-sex spouses spending hours having to prove their legal rights to each successive interloper in a hospital or in a school and countless more anecdotes of heterosexual couples being granted immediate and undisputed access to their partner or children.

"There is nothing stopping gay couples from signing a joint lease or owning a house jointly, as many single straight people do with roommates."

Is Kolasinski as naive as many parents with gay children who refer to their son or daughter's most treasured and beloved partner as simply a "roommate." Maybe Kolasinski, with his unemotional accounting of the cost-effectiveness of marriage, doesn't care about what people call his partner or his relationship to her(?) but I dare presume that most people would be offended.

"The only benefits of marriage from which homosexual couples are restricted are those that are costly to the state and society."

So Kolasinski is aware of the 1,049 rights of marriage that are denied to same-sex couples even in states that allow it by the Defense of Marriage Act? Man, that is cold.

"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."

Kolasinski, like many social conservatives from a truly religious background, seems to think there is something wrong with spouses being happy. The "social order" he hopes to preserve is nothing more than a euphemism for the (heteronormative) "status quo". Otherwise, it would have been less telling to drop the conspicuous article "the" and refer to his alleged hope for a more peaceful society as "social order".

"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."

Here's the rub, at last: homosexuals are to blame for badly-behaved heterosexuals. Regardless of same-sex parents ability to raise healthy, socially-conscious children, marriage is just too tenuous in this day and age to risk giving them a chance with. Heterosexuals have abused their privilege and now it is homosexuals that will pay for it.

Kolasinski further shows in this argument that he believes marriage is about the act of procreation itself rather than act of raising children. I've never met a man so fixated on his wedding night.

"If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis cant 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?"

I'm surprised these rhetorical questions are being asked. The state can deny marital recognition to anyone the majority deems fit. Where is the polygamy lobby, however? Where is the incest lobby? Why conclude this otherwise penetrating article with a flimsy slippery slope argument?

"Homosexual activists protest that they only want all couples treated equally."

Is Kolasinski aware that "homosexual activists" was a term coined by Anita Bryant, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and other clearly religious, anti-gay demagogues that I am sure no intelligent and socially-conscious person would want to be associated with? Does he mean simply "activists that happen to be homosexual?" At any rate, I don't have the stomach to continue analysis of what I had hoped was an objective argument against same-sex marriage.

For the record, let me say that I am a centrist, with *slight* liberal leanings. If it matters, I also hold degrees in economics and sociology, although they are only BAs.

I strongly support gay marriage, but I will readily admit that the arguments here are legitimate. With absolutely no disrespect meant, I would like to attempt a counterargument here:

Firstly, I would address the argument that gay couples do not contribute to the propogation of the species in the way that heterosexual ones do. Although this may have some validity, the article glosses over a necessary follow-up point. If you are restricting the rights and permissions of marriage (ie tax benefits, etc) to couples that aren’t propogating our society, then you are stating that the *reason* for that restriction is based on the child-bearing nature of marriage. If you truly believe that, then you must necessarily follow that logic with the following: marriages that do not exist for the purpose of propogating our society (i.e. producing or adopting children) should not reap the legal benefits of marriage. I confess that it makes sense, from at least some perspectives. The fact is that if child-rearing is the reason for these benefits, then those benefits should be withheld from ALL non-child-bearing couples; if you only restrict gay couples from reaping said benefits, you are not applying the standard universally.

Secondly, I would like to make the following point: This is the first time I have actually heard this argument, and I had to do quite a bit of google searching to find it. This argument is rarely introduced in the national debate on this issue. I cannot produce any official research to back this up, but I don’t believe this is a commonly made argument, or at least not nearly as commonly made as the religious perspective. For this reason, and the reason listed above, I posit the following: it is not the will of the American people that child-rearing potential should be the qualifying factor for marriage benefits. Although I grant the “nobody makes this argument” point may be innaccurate, I would contend that since you’re arguing to restrict another person’s freedom, the burden of proof to the contrary lies on you.

As one final note, I’d like to touch briefly on the “will of the American People” bit up there. In general, I believe the will of the people is how the country should be run, but there are many exceptions to that. For example, in many states during the 1800’s, it was the “will of the people” that black people not be considered full citizens. Although that is a wholly separate issue from homosexual marriage, it illustrates the fact that democracy sometimes boils down to two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. When many people vote to restrict the rights of a few, sometimes many people are wrong.

The entire problem stems from state interference in a religious matter.

This can be rectified by removing all legal benefit of marriage, on the one hand. No disparate impact, no issue with equal treatment under the law.

On the other hand, civil involvement in the act of marriage, which is at its core a religious ceremony, a religious commitment and a religious institution, is fundamentally outside acceptable limits set by our Constitution.

This argues for civic disengagement from the entire process, not just a removal of legal benefit.

It strikes me that this is merely regarded as a vanguard for advancing homosexuality in the culture. Very few lesbians, let alone gay men, actually favor a lifelong legal obligation to one person. The gates haven’t exactly been stormed in those few states recognizing such a civic union.

So, there’s that weakness in the whole kerfluffle.

Another problem is the very clear intent of forcing churches to perform same sex marriages. This itself is fundamentally outside the limits set by our Constitution as well. The end game is forced acceptance of behavior regarded as immoral and against any number of religions, thereby gaining state control over religion.

That’s the problem, and that’s why it’s so thoroughly controverted and resisted. Gays and lesbians can be “married” in any number of so-called “churches” in every state, right now. The Metropolitan Community Church is one of them.

It’s ultimately not about their own freedoms, it’s about forcing acceptance and limiting the freedoms of others.