Responding to The Stuffed Tiger
Stuffed Tiger (”ST”), thanks for your responses. I’ve enjoyed reading them.
Routinely, same-sex marriage supporters confuse the sphere of interests that the introduction of same-sex marriage presents. ST, one of your gripes with my viewpoint is that I label the fight for gay/lesbian marriage as a “special rights” fight instead of a “human rights” fight. This is problematic, in your view, because it could produce in a slippery-slope fashion a dehumanization of homosexuals. Moreover, how can I possibly deny a lesbian marital rights who is in love with another woman and raising a child together?
There is an enormous difference between societal interests and individual interests when contemplating the legalization of same-sex marriage. Individual interests are those mentioned by the woman in New York who laments she cannot be married because she is lesbian. Personally, she is hurt. However, is preventing her individual harm (by granting her a marriage license) more valuable to society than the societal harm caused by legalizing same-sex marriage? The answer is a resounding NO. Societies, throughout the history of the world, from Aristotle to today have nurtured and sustained heterosexual marriage as the foundation of their society. The United States is the beacon to the world in part because of its ability to nuture a robust, productive, and patriotic citizenry by encouraging marital coupling and subsequent rearing of children. That lesbians and gays feel bad or even ostracized is irrelevant. It is the societal or public interest that justifies government support of traditional marriage, not the individual or personalized feelings of love that draw a couple together.
Also, traditional marriage is the “glue” of society because that union not only produces children but rears the children as well. A male-female parent environment is the optimal setting for a stable rearing of offspring. Each parent teaches the child about their roles in society, each sex uniquely contributing to the child’s development. Same-sex couples cannot replicate this uniqueness because they are missing the male or female counterpart. Admittedly, there some couples are infertile and cannot reproduce or some couples marry in the older years when conception is either impracticable or impossible. But this tiny minority of marriages that fall into this category do not outweigh the vast majority of marriages that do successfully procreate and bear the burden of raising the next generation.
ST, you also gripe about the divorce rate and out-of-wedlock births as undermining my argument that marriage is the glue of society. First, to divorce. The divorce rate in United States and other nations is pathetic (and also overemphasizes those who are divorced multitudinous times). Primarily, this is due to no-fault divorce. This leads to increased societal instability which marriage is designed to foster and protect. Our divorce laws need revision. But that does not mean we should introduce an untested, less valuable form of “marriage” into society to further weaken and hamper the institution. Moreover, marriage laws exist to provide an incentive for co-habitating couples to marry precisely because of the instability inherent in those types of relationships (i.e., either the male or female can walk out without any consequence).
Lynn Wardle, Professor of law at Brigham Young University, highlights the unique contributions and benefits that heterosexual marriage brings to society:
1. Safe sexual relations
2. Responsible procreation
3. Optimal child rearing
4. Healthy human development
5. Protecting those who undertake the most vulnerable family roles for the benefit of society, especially wives and mothers
6. Securing the stability and intergrity of the basic unit of society
7. Fostering civic virtue, democracy, and social order
8. Facilitating interjurisdictional compatability.
See Lynn Wardle, “Multiple and Replenish”; Considering Same-Sex Marriage in Light of State Interests in Marital Procreation, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 24: 771, 779-780.
These are the many of the reasons why traditional marriage is the glue of society. Relationships, simply, are not that glue. There are many types of relationships (co-worker, friend, acquaintance, lover) but only one has the potential of creating and raising offspring that sustain a nation’s vitality. That is heterosexual marriage.
July 3rd, 2005 at 7:27 pm
Thank you for backing up your belief that traditional marriage is the glue of society. You have successfully provided reasons why traditional marriage is valuable. However, you have not defended your argument that same-sex marriage conflicts with the public interest or the public good. In what way does granting same-sex couples marital rights undermine the importance and/or effectiveness of heteroxexual marriage? The polls say people don’t want it, but polls change. So please, explain why same-sex marriage is a threat.
~TST
July 4th, 2005 at 12:15 pm
TST, I did argue why same-sex marriage is not in the public’s or society’s best interest. Namely, traditional marriage promotes stability in the familial relationship that children are born into and subsquently are reared and nurtured. By changing this dynamic, same-sex marriage would not only throw the definition of “marriage” into chaos but destroy the social institution that our Nation has decided to promote for our social ordering. Moreover, same-sex marriage would open the floodgates for other types of couplings (polygamous, polyarmorous, mother/daughter, father/son, etc.) that are excluded from marriage precisely because they do provide or cannot replicate the stable, family environment for child rearing that heterosexual marriage provides.