What, and with which, and to whom, part 1

This week, I'm going to tackle the first half of an article that a friend of mine posted to Facebook quite some time ago. The article recaps ten arguments against gay marriage, and my intention is to deal with the first five in this installment, and then come back to the next five some time soon (i.e.: next week, if all goes according to plan). So, here goes.

#1: The first argument is that though marriage has evolved through time, all over the world it has been recognized as a union between one man and one woman for the purpose of raising children, which is the fundamental essence of marriage. The author claims that though it could change again, that is no reason to assume that it should.

The structure of this argument is as follows: marriage has been one way forever; therefore, it ought to remain that way. This is a fallacious argument. Nothing says that things ought to remain the way that they always have been. Adopting the same argument structure, I could conclude that there ought to be massive wealth disparities forever because there always have been up to now. So there's clearly a problem with this argument structure.

Secondly, there is a problem with the claim that marriage all over the world has recognized the fundamental essence of one man and one woman for the purpose of raising children. There are polygamous societies, which clearly don't fit that mold. There are also societies where children are raised by the community rather than by the immediate family alone (and in fact, our own society might learn a thing or two from that). Clearly, there are societies in which marriage has not been between one man and one woman, and where child rearing and marriage come apart.

It is false to claim that marriage has universally embraced this essence. And even if that were the case, that fact alone would not justify the claim that it ought not to change.

#2: Those supporting gay marriage claim that to exclude homosexual relationships from the recognition of marriage is unfair, that it treats people unequally. In response, the author argues that equality means treating similar things in a similar fashion, not treating different things equally. Any unmarried man is allowed to marry any unmarried woman, so we all have equal rights! Why are same-sex couples different? Because they cannot produce children, nor can they "ensure a child’s basic right to be raised by his mother and father" (which I'm not sure is a basic right, as the author presumes but does not justify). The author then concludes with the point that there are many benefits that come with marriage, and to allow homosexual couples access to these benefits would be an unfair favoring of homosexual over heterosexual relationships. That last point is entirely unclear to me, and the author doesn't do nearly enough to justify his claim. If two people are married and upon the death of one, the other receives the remaining pension, what does it matter whether the two are of the same or of different genders? How would it be an unfair advantage to leave that parameter unspecified?

The author's point here again relies on accepting the definition of "one man and one woman for the purpose of child rearing" as the essence of marriage, which he failed to support in his first point. Even if that is a big part of marriage, it certainly is far from its only feature. Love figures prominently in marriage, one would hope, as does the social stability of having a partner on whom one can rely, a confidant, etc. These are all important features of marriage (and if you want to know why so many of those fail these days, perhaps its because a man and a woman making a baby isn't all there is to marriage, as this author tries to convince us), and they can be just as easily true of homosexual as of heterosexual relationships. (Here is an interesting article on the benefits of a strong marital bond; recognize that these benefits seem equally applicable to gay as to straight marriage.)

As for raising children, adoption is certainly a reality in our world, so there's no reason that a homosexual relationship couldn't involve children. The author makes some toss-away claim about the fundamental right to be raised by one's own parents, but that's nowhere written in stone, and in many cases children are raised by aunts and uncles, grandparents, close friends, etc. Do we refuse marriage in those instances? Furthermore, as technology advances, the possibility of making a child that is the biological offspring of two same-sex parents becomes more and more of a reality, sidestepping the issue of raising "someone else's child."

#3: The author then moves on to address the claim that anyone may marry whomever he or she loves. In fact, the author claims, the government doesn't support marriage for the sake of love, but rather for the sake of children, and once again, because homosexual couples cannot raise children (which I again must press the author to consider more closely), the government should not sanction such marriages.

What the author again overlooks is that firmly entrenched within our society is the notion of a long-term, romantic, sexual relationship with a single partner. That notion also embraces the raising of a family, but the child-rearing aspect is not the only salient feature! Much of our sense of self and sense of worth is based on our relationships, and to have one's (arguably) most important relationship not be deemed worthy of public/official recognition is extremely damaging.

Furthermore, the social benefits of a romantic partnership, as in the pension example I mentioned above, are certainly values that the government has an interest in endorsing. Social services these days are strongly overburdened because children are no longer looking after their aging parents as they once did. Imagine how much worse the situation would get if aging spouses didn't look after one another. Part of looking after one another means sharing social benefits such as insurance and pensions, which are often linked to marriage. The government therefore has an interest in supporting as many such successful partnerships as they can find!

#4: Some same-sex marriage advocates say that whether they are allowed to marry or not is irrelevant to heterosexual couples, to which the author replies that to expand the definition of marriage would weaken the institution itself. Marriage is already about as diluted as American beer, so any further weakening would just break the darn thing, as people wouldn't take it seriously anymore.

Secondly, the author draws on an example from Toronto where a couple's desires for their child's education were overruled in the name of an education about tolerance. Thirdly, he believes that it threatens religious freedom.

The second and third issues are ones that I gather probably pull more weight with Americans than they will up north. Canadians don't get scared as easily by the prospect of having their children learn things that they don't agree with. Learning doesn't mean accepting, as many a parent probably already knows, and therefore to have tolerance included in the curriculum doesn't necessarily bring about tolerance. (Too bad, I know.) Furthermore, the religious freedom issue is not a hot-button topic up here the way it is for them southern folk. We certainly take it seriously, but when discussing the legal, not religious, definition of marriage, I think that most Canadians don't take it to be an assault on Christian values.

The first point, about the broadened definition weakening the institution, is actually one that deserves further inspection. It's true that opening up membership to an exclusive club can make it lose its cachet. But how much would the scope be widened, and what would be the principle according to which some are allowed and others not? I'll explore this issue more in #5.

#5: The author claims that if we break from the "one man one woman, for the purpose of making babies" definition, then we lose traction on where to draw the line. It's a slippery slope argument, which the author claims is not merely hypothetical: in some places where same-sex marriage is allowed, polygamous groups have sued for recognition as well. "When sexual love replaces children as the primary purpose of marriage, restricting it to just two people no longer makes sense." (First off, I'd like to point out the little jab at "sexual love," which presumably is being derided by comparison to "real" love. My spidey sense just tingles at that one.)

Once again, the author is begging the question. He assumes that polygamous relationships are not acceptable without offering any proof. According to his definition of marriage, of course it's not. But it's specifically that definition that's at issue here! It appeals to people's gut reaction against polygamy to motivate the fear of the slippery slope. One could just as easily flip the argument on its head and ask what, if anything, is wrong with polygamy. The point here is not to begin with assumptions about which marriages are acceptable and which aren't, and on that basis to formulate rules to justify one's position. Rather, one is supposed to be inspecting one's notions of marriage itself, and that includes inspecting our intuitions: what do we think about polygamy? And are those intuitions justified? Perhaps the proper response here is not to say that allowing same-sex marriage would also allow polygamy, and that's not acceptable. Perhaps the proper response is to say that we should also be examining our intuitions, trying to figure out why it is that up to now, most of us have taken it for granted that polygamy is wrong.

If we are open to reflect on that issue (and I'm not saying here that we must or even necessarily should allow polygamy), then we realise that the author is just trying to scare us out of considering the issue of same-sex marriage. What we should be doing is reflecting on the basis of marriage, not being scared out of doing so. Getting back to point #4, the issue of diluting marriage cannot be properly assessed until we find a new equilibrium point: what would the new basis of marriage be? Until that question is answered, the issue of how much marriage is diluted by its redefinition cannot be addressed. The scope of marriage can be widened by just weakening the rules, and there dilution might become a reasonable concern. But the scope can also be widened by adopting a different set of rules, one that valorises parts of marriage that we've already discussed here (e.g.: social stability) and that need not entail a weakening of the institution.





Anyway, that's all for me for this week. Until next time. Looking forward to some nice, heated debate on these cold winter days... though there are no such things in southern Ontario, apparently.

PS: The title is a reference to an amazing limerick about a whore from Khartoum. Totally worth checking out.