Why I Am Against Gay Marriage

Lets start off with some history of the non-religious reasons marriage is in government in the first place.

Because the union of man and woman tends to produce offspring, and human offspring require a high level of nurture for a long period of time, and a stable household with a father and mother provides for that need better than other arrangements. Children raised in this way tend, on average, to be better cared for, and thus tend to be physically and emotionally healthier. They tend to be more productive and better educated than children raised in other ways. Furthemore, they are less likely to become dependents of the state, or delinquents and criminals, etc.

Society thus has, and has always had, a vested interest in supporting the stable union of man and woman in a way that it does not have, and has never had, a vested interest in other domestic arrangements. And that is what marriage as a basic human social phonemonon IS, and has always been. That is what the word refers to.

With that in mind…

The legal benefits and responsibilities of marriage are predicated on the historical socio-anthropological basis for marriage as a civil institution relating to the procreation and adequate nurturing and rearing of children.

Susan Shell, professor of political science at Boston College, explains it this way(the whole article is great btw),

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.

Same-sex unions are inherently unable to produce children. I would say that society has no stake in supporting the stability of such arrangements and would be opposed to offering any privileges to same-sex living arrangements that happen to be conjugal over other living arrangements that happen not to be conjugal, such as two siblings of same or mixed gender living together, a parent and child, platonic roommates, etc

So to summarize, without bringing religion into this, marriage is primarily involved in government only in so far as the governments interest lies in its future citizens. Since it’s a scientific fact that only the union of man and women can inherently produce children, only that union is unique in the eyes of the government. The union of homosexual partners does not have this inherent quality, therefore does not serve the same purpose in the government’s perspective.

Let me address some common objections to this…

Gay Couples Raise Children As Well.

To that I would answer there might be a child being raised within the context of any other domestic arrangements as well, i.e., two siblings of same or mixed gender living together, a parent and child, platonic roommates, or brother and sister. We certainly aren’t going to stipulate the actual presence or absence of a child as the basis for whether or not to grant marital privileges and rights. So I see no conceivable reason to privilege gay couples above other domestic arrangements.

In addition, it is still an open debate whether or not gay couples make good parents.

People Marry For All Sorts Of Reasons, Not Necessarily To Procreate.

To that I would answer that the larger point is that if the union of man and woman were not where babies come from, and if babies didn’t require such intensive nurture for such a long period of time, marriage would not exist, either as a socio-anthropological category or as a religious institution.

In specific cases there may be, for one reason or another, no actual possibility of offspring, or very little possibility of offspring, or no intention of producing offspring, etc., but it is not society’s job to make such distinctions or to inquire into the likelihood, ability, and interest of this man and this woman in reproduction.

This is completely different from the case of two individuals of the same sex, which is inherently not where babies come from.

How Does Gay Marriage Undermine Traditional Marriage By Being Included In The Marriage Act?

To that I would respond that traditional marriage would be undermined because society supports marriage as an investment, with a cost. By privileging married couples in certain legal and financial ways in order to support their stable union and potentially benefit any offspring that may result, society makes an investment in us as a couple, with the understanding that we are participating in an institution that exists for the good of society through the engendering and long-term nurture of children.

By definition, two gay men down the street cannot participate in the reality of that institution. However, it is true that society can privilege them in the same way as it does us.

However, this benefit to them will come at an additional cost to society, and by substantially expanding the pool of living arrangements considered as “marriage,” society will have fewer resources to benefit each family individually.

Secondly, “marriages” in the gay community, because they are inherently unable to produce children, will never offer society the same benefits and return on the social investment as true marriages of men and women.

Sociologically, too, civil acceptance of gay unions probably has deleterious consequences for marriage and family. Legal recognition of gay “marriage” further erodes the connection between marriage and child-rearing, thus creating less impetus for heterosexual couples to marry simply because they want to live together and possibly to procreate. This will lead to children being raised by couples who never bothered to marry, which will lead to more separations and more harm to the children.

I feel that that the case I have presented is in itself sufficient to deny gay marriage. However, I’d like to offer up other arguments that I think add to the case against gay marriage. They are not necessary, but I consider them worth mentioning.

• Religious freedom

Given the strong emotional element of this issue, and the ignorance of the public at large, there is a strong likelihood that those opposed to gay marriage will be seen as bigots or something on the order of ‘racist’. Therefore, granting marriage to gays only increases that belief and may eventually start to threaten religious freedom.

Mary Ann Glendon, Professor of Law At Harvard University, writes,

Religious freedom, too, is at stake. As much as one may wish to live and let live, the experience in other countries reveals that once these arrangements become law, there will be no live-and-let-live policy for those who differ. Gay-marriage proponents use the language of openness, tolerance and diversity, yet one foreseeable effect of their success will be to usher in an era of intolerance and discrimination the likes of which we have rarely seen before. Every person and every religion that disagrees will be labeled as bigoted and openly discriminated against. The ax will fall most heavily on religious persons and groups that don’t go along. Religious institutions will be hit with lawsuits if they refuse to compromise their principles.

• Cost

Mary Ann Glendon, Professor of Law At Harvard University, writes,

The Canadian government, which is considering same-sex marriage legislation, has just realized that retroactive social-security survivor benefits alone would cost its taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

• Negative effects on society, and more importantly, children

There is significant amount of evidence that suggests granting gay marriage will further blur the line between marriage and non-marriage, thereby increasing out-of-wedlock births. Which is a less than ideal living environment for children.

Stanley Kurtz, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes,

Today, marriage is in trouble in the Netherlands. In the mid-1990s, out-of-wedlock births, already rising, began a steeper increase, nearly doubling to 31 percent of births in 2003. These were the very years when the debate over the legal recognition of gay relationships came to the fore in the Netherlands, culminating in the legalization of full same-sex marriage in 2000. The conjunction is no coincidence.

A careful look at the decade-long campaign for same-sex marriage in the Netherlands shows that one of its principal themes was the effort to dislodge the conviction that parenthood and marriage are intrinsically linked. Even as proponents of gay marriage argued vigorously–and ultimately successfully–that marriage should be just one of many relationship options, fewer Dutch parents were choosing marriage over cohabitation. No longer a marked exception on the European scene, the Dutch are now traveling down the Scandinavian path.

Before we get into a long discussion of the merits of the above case I want to point out that it is not necessary to prove conclusively the negative effects on society, my point here is to show that there is atleast a risk involved.

Often at this stage in the discussion someone will bring up the economic consequences of two homosexuals who are not allowed to marry. What about hospital visitations, what about insurance rights, what about inheritence rights?

To that I would respond that I am not against civil unions per se, but against civil unions that are specific to homosexuals. There are many forms of unions that would also need these same benefits, and any civil union plan should include them as well. Widowed sisters living together and looking after each other, or an unmarried adult son taking care of his elderly father, may have the need for domestic partner benefits such as hospital visitation privileges and insurance rights as well.

Robert P. George, Professor Of Law at Princeton University, explains it this way,

It is important to protect the substance of marriage, but a sound amendment need not, however, forbid states from enacting certain forms of domestic partnership. It need only ensure that laws do not treat nonmarital sexual relationships as if they were marital by making such relationships the basis for allocating benefits. An amendment protecting the substance of marriage would ensure that neither the federal government nor the states may predicate benefits, privileges, rights or immunities on the existence, recognition or presumption of nonmarital sexual relationships.

In other words, domestic partnerships, if states elect to have them, should be nondiscriminatory and inclusive. They should be available to people based on needs, not on sex. The law certainly should not discriminate in favor of those unmarried people who are in sexual relationships over those with the same needs who, though committed to caring for each other, are not sexual partners. Widowed sisters living together and looking after each other, or an unmarried adult son taking care of his elderly father, may have the need for domestic partner benefits such as hospital visitation privileges and insurance rights.

A constitutionally sound domestic partnership law would not discriminate against such people by excluding them from eligibility simply because their relationships are not sexual–just as a nondiscriminatory and inclusive law would not undermine marriage by treating unmarried sexual partners as if they were married.

Susan Shell, professor of political science at Boston College, writes,

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. 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. (emphasis added)

So to summarize, I see several negative reasons to legalize gay marriage and see no positive reason given for allowing gay marriage, short of the religious. Reasons I have heard often emphasize the love homosexuals have for each other, or the life long commitments they all would like to make to each other, each of which I don’t doubt to be true. But from the governments perspective, these are no reasons at all. The government shouldn’t be in the business of handing out certificates of love orr certificates of life-long commitment. A Mormon for example, could argue for his ability to marry several different wives for the very same reason the gay marriage proponents do, yet I am against legalized polygamy as well. Which brings up the obvious question, if gay marriage is allowed, why not polygamy? It seems to me that polygamists have a stronger case to marry than homosexuals, since polygamists can produce children. I see no reason to allow gay marriage while denying the same to polygamists.

So in other words, the costs of legalizing gay marriage overwhelming outweight the benefits.

*For a more detailed critique of gay marriage based on liberal principles, read this well written article.

**For the record, I took bits and pieces of my argument from several sources and where I found the argument presented better than I could have, I used their wording sometimes verbatum. So I am in no way claiming that this is my argument against gay marriage. It is only the argument presented by others that I found most convincing.

To everybody else, I just want to note that there has been a change in plans. I had originally suggested to make our next topic about economics, and than move into vouchers and the like. But upon further thought, and because I am crunched for time (going to Mexico for Christmas etc), I have decided to move to a topic much more clear cut(IMHO): gay marriage . Talks about economics, vouchers, and the like are much more ‘gray’ than talks about gay marriage (or abortion for that matter), therefore they will take a significant more amount of time to discuss. So I’d rather put them off until I come back from Mexico. Plus, while on vacation I plan on reading some books that I have been meaning to get to for some time now, giving me the ability to more accurately and fairly present my side of the political aisle.

As far as gay marriage goes, for those of you that did not read my introduction, I am against gay marriage and against (gay) civil unions. I expect to learn a lot and can almost guarantee a good discussion on the topic. I plan (depending on how time-consuming the abortion discussion continues to be) to start it up this weekend.

Oh, one more thing, I am getting swamped with work and school, so if my responses are significantly delayed, please understand.

Good night everyone.

He said this during his bid for President in 2000,

“You see, people wonder why it is Alan, everywhere he goes, he always brings up this issue of abortion and I never go anywhere without mentioning it. Why? Because abortion is to our time what slavery was to the 19th Century, and if anyone of conscience went anywhere in the 19th Century and did not confront the American people with the evil of slavery, then they were not doing what statesmanship required.

Slavery was what discarded and rejected and denied the fundamental principle of right and justice in America, and what was done in the name of slavery then is done for the sake of abortion now. And the paradigm of it is quite clear. What is it that is the argument made in favor of abortion? You can see it in Roe versus Wade and everything else. It’s a privacy argument, and privacy based on what? Well, this is the woman’s body and she has the right to decide what goes on with it. You start from that. And this child, this babe, this fetus in the womb, what is it? Well, it’s a part of her body utterly dependent on her body, not viable apart from her body. She has, therefore, absolute power over this being, and given that absolute power she has the absolute right to dispose of it according to her will.

We don’t recognize what that’s saying? What that’s saying is that power makes for right. Might makes for right. If I have you in my power, I may dispose of you and your life according to my will. And if that argument is now accepted, and we have embraced it as a fundamental principle of law, then we have rejected the right principle. For if our right, our most basic and conditional right, the right to life itself comes to us not from God but from our mother’s choice, then there is no human right that transcends in its claim, human choice and human power.

Abortion is the paradigm, the ultimate paradigm of despotism, tyranny, oppression, slavery, holocaust. And I see this all the time.

I was down in South Carolina not long ago. I was down in South Carolina not long ago and a young lady comes up to me after I had given a talk just like this, and she says “I was listening to your speech and I want to know how come you can prefer the rights of potential persons to those of actual persons.” I’ll never forget that moment because she was the very paradigm–if you want to think of some little slip of the thing that projected the very wonderful wholesome air of American womanhood. And she was speaking to me in what; in the chilling language of holocaust and atrocity. And she didn’t even know what she was doing. I looked at her and I said, “You know, I have a 17-year-old son. How old are you?” And she said, “Nineteen.” And I said, “You know, you make a very rash assumption in what you ask me there.” She looked me quizzically, and I said, “Because given my experience with my 17-year-old son, I have to tell you there are many days on which I am not entirely sure that people of your age are actual persons at all.” And then to drive the point home even further, I looked at her and I said, “I hope you don’t think that I will hear those words and forget that 120, 130 odd years ago Frederick Douglass had to go in front of audiences with a speech entitled “That the Negro is a Man.” To prove that he and others like me were actual persons.”

See, why do people forget this? They speak this cold-blooded language to people like myself as if we’re too stupid to remember that the day before yesterday we were not considered actual persons. And that if today we deny the principle on which we stood in order to demand respect for our humanity, if we deny it to those human beings in the womb, it will be denied once again to us and to others. Because then it just becomes a matter of who you can get on your side to draw the line between humanity and nonhumanity, personhood and nonpersonhood, and then the majority can oppress and the powerful can abuse. And those who end up on the wrong side have nothing.”

¹ I realize that Alan Keyes is closely associated with the religious wing of the Republican party. However, even though he himself may be associated with that side, I take his quote to stand alone for its arguments, and is not meant to be seen as a religious argument against abortion. Since I strongly believe that abortion is not a religious issue.

I’d like to start off with a little bit (don’t want to bore you too much) about myself, so you know where I am coming from. I say this both, to give you a sense of what motivates me, but to also stress the fact that I am going to be defending and explaining my reasons to be conservative. They may not be the same as Newt Gingrich’s reasons, for example, and are most likely not John Ashcroft’s reasons either. Nonetheless, we all have arrived at roughly the same conclusions. Yet I can only speak for myself.

I grew up in Compton, California, living there all of my teenage years, until the age of 22. I grew up with my mother and younger sister, and had some random contact with my father(they are divorced). I come from an immigrant family, being the first of my family to be born in the United States. All of my family comes from Mexico, and because of this, I speak Spanish fluently(so please forgive my bad grammar ). I entered college at 18 to study engineering. Throughout my studies I became close friends with a fellow student who had already received his bachelors degree in Philosophy. He decided to go back to school to get his degree in engineering as well. Throughout our friendship, he introduced me to the field of Philosophy. This was the starting point on my road to the conservative philosophy. To make a long story short, after dabbling in Philosophy, I moved on to other topics of interest, eventually arriving at politics/economics and, more recently, history.

I began to ask myself what seperates one political party from another. The more I studied the differences, the more I realized I agreed more with the conservative philosophy than the liberal one. I think I had an advantage in this, since I grew up completely unbiased. My family is not very political, although they do(used to ) generally vote democrat. So I was able to study politics without anyone moving me in one direction or the other. What’s ironic about all of this is that now that I know enough politics to get me in trouble, I have had the opportunity to go back and talk to my old college friend, and discuss the issues at a much higher level than before. It turns out that he is a rock solid liberal, and no matter how many long conversations we had, I was not able to convince him to vote for George W. Bush this year.

As for what makes me a conservative as opposed to liberal. There are many things that all add up to one conclusion. But I would say the heart of my conservatism lies in three things. Abortion, Vouchers, and Capitalism. These are my core issues that keep me in the conservative ideology. I have others, but I wouldn’t classify those as essential. For example, my non-core issues are, I was for the Iraq war, I am against gay marriage, I am a foreign policy hawk, I am a ‘strict constitutionalist’, I dislike the elitism of liberals, I dislike the race baiting of liberals, I dislike their cultural relativism and I dislike their general anti-Christian views. On some of these beliefs I may hold strong views on, some of them I don’t. Some of these beliefs I may know how to defend decently well, others are only stereotypes I have developed over time. However, they all have one thing in common, they are non-core to me. We can discuss each of these if you like, but please note that I do rest most of my beliefs on my three core issues.

Let me say a quick word on areas where I disagree with the conservative philosophy. Although I don’t believe the Republican Party is anti-immigration, I do consider myself to be much more on the left with regard to immigration than some of my conservative allies. I say the more Mexicans the better, for example. I admit it, I am biased. I also have a problem, although I have not completely made up my mind on it, with capital punishment. Oh yeah, and I am also against constitutionalizing a ban on gay marriage. That’s all I can think of now.

One more thing I’d like to say before I conclude this intro about myself. Although I do have very strong beliefs on these issues, I am not one to have a litmus test on my friends. There are much more important things in life than politics, and I do realize that one can sincerely disagree with me, yet be a very intelligent warm-hearted person.

Again, thanks for the warm welcome and I hope to learn a lot from this blog.