For a long time, many opponents
of same-sex marriage relied on a non-argument to defend their
position: Asked why they opposed letting gays marry, one of most
common responses was something to the effect of “I believe that
marriage is between one man and one woman.” The problem was that
this didn’t tell you why the legal definition of marriage
should be limited to one man and one woman. It was not really an
argument at all; it was a restatement of the original position.
The lack of an argument didn’t matter verymuch when the public
was also overwhelmingly against same-sex marriage. But as public
support has shifted, and legal challenges to the marriage status
quo have worked their way through the court system, a handful of
same-sex marriage opponents have attempted to actually defend their
opposition. They still don’t have much of a case.
To the extent that they have an argument, the one they have
settled on is that marriage is fundamentally about bearing and
raising children. As Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who chairs
the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for
the Promotion and Defense of Marriage,
told USA Today last week, “To legalize marriage
between two people of the same sex would enshrine in the law the
principle that mothers and fathers are interchangeable or
irrelevant, and that marriage is essentially an institution about
adults, not children.”
That is a strained argument given how many marriages are already
essentially, even fundamentally, “about adults” rather than
children. Marriage requires two adults; it does not require any
children, or even any desire or plans for children. We do not
prohibit infertile couples from marrying, nor do we outlaw
marriages between senior citizens who are unlikely to produce or
raise offspring. Young, fertile couples are not required by the
state to have children; even if a couple publicly states its
intention not to reproduce, they are still just as eligible to
marry as if they intended to outbreed the Duggars.
Cordileone recognizes that there are exceptions, but says that
we should note that “when a man and woman cannot have children
together, that’s an accident of circumstances, the exception to the
rule.” Yet cannot is not the same as do not. Not
all childless married couples are childless by accident; many make
the joint decision not to reproduce, or even to disable their own
reproductive capabilities—and yet they, unlike gays, are still
allowed to marry.
Even ignoring that, however, Cordileone’s argument doesn’t hold
up. He seems to think that infertile married couples are the
exception that proves the need for a one man/one woman rule; to me
they are the exception that proves the opposite-sex rule isn’t
necessary. If an infertile male-female couple should be entitled to
a legal recognition of a marriage that can, without adoption, only
be “about adults,” then the impossibility of bearing children is
not a very good reason to prohibit legally recognizing the
marriages of same-sex couples in the same situation.
And what’s to say that prohibiting gay marriage would stave off
the rise of a more adult-centric view of marriage anyway? As
New York Times
columnist Ross Douthat pointed out over the weekend, attitudes
about marriage are already rapidly changing. Americans, he writes,
“are less likely to ;see
children as important to marriage ;and less likely to see
marriage as important to childbearing (the generation gap on gay
marriage shows up on unwed parenting as well) than even in the very
recent past.” ;
And for that, Douthat suggests, we can probably blame gay
marriage.
Carefully noting that
correlation is not causation, he nonetheless strongly implies that
the shift was partially caused by the rise of gay-marriage as a
cause and the many proponents of same-sex unions who dismissed the
“procreative understanding” understanding of marriage.
But if there is a causal relationship here, it may well be that
it is actually the reverse—that evolving attitudes about marriage
as we already know it helped pave the way for acceptance of
marriage between same-sex couples. Americans began to experiment
with a looser, freer marriage culture—one that emphasized
individual adult happiness over traditional social rules and
expectations, and one that coincided with couples (even religious
couples) having fewer children—decades before gay marriage entered
the popular discussion. It seems just as likely, then, that
newfound attitudes about gay marriage are the byproduct of changes
in attitudes about straight marriage than the other way around.
There’s a larger question here as well, which is: So what? If
Americans continue their shift to a more adult-centric view of
marriage, and allow gays to marry in the process, would that really
be so bad? Tellingly, Douthat does not detail the specific harms
that might come as a result of such a shift—except to note the
presence of the shift itself. Instead, he writes that “a more
honest, less triumphalist case for gay marriage would be willing to
concede that, yes, there might be some social costs to redefining
marriage. It would simply argue that those costs are too diffuse
and hard to quantify to outweigh the immediate benefits of
recognizing gay couples’ love and commitment.”
I would not say that there will necessarily ;be social
“costs” to legally recognizing same sex marriages, but I agree
there will probably be an array of social changes and ripple
effects, some obvious but most relatively subtle. It’s also likely
that we won’t successfully predict all of these changes in advance.
But that is not a reason to fear specifically fear same-sex
marriage; it’s just a generalized fear of ;unknown social
change.
It’s no surprise that same-sex marriage opponents often
defended their position by restating their original position:
Fundamentally, much of the argument against gay marriage comes down
to the idea that if we allow marriage to change, then marriage will
be different than it is now. Well, yes, but that’s the point.
; ; … Read More
