Gay marriage

Overview

Gay marriage (where "gay" refers to same-sex relationships of any gender; also called "same-sex marriage") is an issue because some people want to do it and some others find it distasteful and/or believe it to be immoral.

As with homosexuality, there do not appear to be any arguments against gay marriage which hold up under scrutiny. Those who seek to prevent gay marriage are waging a war on the family – and, with typical religious-right hypocrisy, use that same term to defend their actions.

Reference

• Campaigns Wikia

Related Articles

• Homosexuality
• Gay marriage is a reproductive issue, albeit in a backhanded sort of way
• Arguments against gay marriage include the completely irrelevant but apparently persuasive claim that being gay is a choice

News

• 2006-11-29 Sir Elton berates Australian PM: Elton John says "Up yours!" to John Howard for overturning a law allowing gay marriage
• 2006-10-25 N.J. high court opens door to gay marriage: ruled "that lawmakers must offer homosexuals either marriage or something like it, such as civil unions."
• 2006-05-18 Gay marriage ban advances to Senate floor by Bob Geiger at 9:56 AM
• 2006-04-26 A Real Live Brokeback Cowboy by Annie Anderson, In These Times: real-life example of how existing laws are harmful to gay people
• 2006-02-13 Civil partnerships likely to boost health of gay and lesbian people
• 2006-01-21 Maryland Judge throws out law banning gay marriages
• 2005-07-21 Canada becomes 4^th nation to allow same-sex marriage
  • 2005-06-28 Same-Sex Marriage Legislation Passed in Canada
• 2005-07-05 Church of Christ endorses same-sex marriage
• 2005-07-01 Spain legalizes same-sex marriage

Opinion

• 2007-07-28 Why Civil Unions Aren't Enough by Greta Christina
• 2006 Same-Sex Marriage and Slippery Slopes by Eugene Volokh HTML PDF
• 2004-05-19 Slippery Slop: 'The maddening "slippery slope" argument against gay marriage'

Positions

• The Family: A Proclamation to the World: the official opinion of the LDS
• Homosexual "Marriage" and Civilization: A cogent but factually-challenged anti-gay-marriage opinion by Orson Scott Card, author and LDS member

Points

Against

"gay marriage" is a contradiction in terms

This is an argument by definition. What gay people want from "marriage", aside from the feeling of being part of a family with their loved one, is the legal recognitions and protections for that family.

• One compromise position is to separate the two – tie the legal rights to a word other than "marriage", and apply that universally; the catch is that it must be universally recognized, the same as "marriage" is now; see #Solutions.
  • Some states (Vermont, California, and Connecticut) have tried this with "Civil Unions" and many proponents of gay marriage say that it is not enough, they want to redefine marriage. (See Why Civil Unions Aren't Enough for one explanation of this.)
  • Personally, I believe that the governments should remove the term "marriage" from all government regulations and stipulate those rights for all persons as a "Civil Union," leaving marriages to the religious institutions. Midian 16:33, 28 July 2006 (EDT) Again, this is essentially equivalent to the first proposal under #Solutions, below.

if we allow gay marriage, we allow anything and everything

This is a slippery slope circular argument – that is, it argues that gay marriage is bad because if we allow it, we might then allow something worse ("something worse" implying that gay marriage is bad, which implies the conclusion in its premise). The same rhetorical statement could be positively rephrased as: If we redefine marriage to include gay couples, then this opens the door for us to continue refining it so it serves everybody to the best possible extent.

Refinement: Redefining "marriage" to include same-sex couples opens the floodgates, giving rise to redefine any terms with which the vocal minority does not agree. e.g. Marriage can be redefined to be a union with any number of people (Heinlein's S-Marriage (or Line Marriage? See wikipedia:Group marriage.)). "Adult" can be redefined to anyone who can vocalize the word "no" (A commonly held belief in the MAA community is that children are capable of giving consent to sex). etc. What is "MAA"? Also, the claim about redefining "Adult" is a straw man; if true, it is an issue entirely separate from gay marriage. -W..

Again, this presumes that Line Marriages would be bad. The argument should never be about how popular an idea is, but regarding its relative merit. Line Marriages always seemed like a good idea to me, at least as one possible form of extended family. -W..

being gay is a choice

This is not only factually wrong, but completely irrelevant.

[ A note to the person who commented "you are wrong what is wrong whit gay marriage?": This section presents arguments against gay marriage so that they can be refuted. -W.. ]

In Favor

The essential argument in favor of gay marriage is "why the hell not?". It's kind of hard to write a cogent paragraph summarizing why it should be allowed, for much the same reason that it's difficult to write an argument for why people should be allowed to hold hands in the living room as well as in the dining room, or why houses should be allowed to be painted off-white instead of light grey.

In lieu of a definitive argument, then, here is a relevant quote:

Erin Lindsay writes (Venus Envy news for 2006-07-27) (with some reformatting and emphasis):

This morning, the Washington States Supreme Court handed down their decision that homosexuals didn't deserve the right to marry. Their basic reasoning, like most every opponent's, is that being gay is a choice, so it's not something you need special consideration for. I'm not going to break off into a tirade about whether or not gay is in-born or learned, and whether its a choice or something you're just given without your consultation, but if it were up to these same sorts of people, being black would probably be considered a lifestyle choice, too. The line that really stuck it to me was in mentioning that gays weren't being discriminated against, because they're free to marry people of the opposite sex any time they want. Dear lord, if ANYTHING would cause damage to straight marriage, it would be forcing gays to do it. The primary justification for the judicial discrimination was that gay couples couldn't procreate (well... gay male couples, anyway; as near as I can tell, there's no such thing as lesbians), so in years to come, expect to see a lot of court decisions from Washington state outlawing marriage between the elderly, sterile couples, and heterosexuals who don't want children. Luckily, thanks to extremely close-minded birth-certificate modification laws that prevent a transsexual from being re-assigned as her new gender, I can still legally marry the woman I love. I guess two wrongs can make a right.

Inquiries

• What arguments can be leveled against gay marriage that cannot be leveled against interracial marriage? (see wikipedia:Loving v. Virginia; apparently, at the time of that decision, more people were against interracial marriage than are now against gay marriage – not that this proves anything, but it shows how opinion can change given a few decades)

Solutions

• Remove "marriage" from goverment governance.
  1. Remove references to "marriage" from all govermental documents, and replace it with "civil union" or "civil partnership", allowing any two or more persons to enter into such an arrangement for legal implications.
  2. Remove benefits and detriments from "civil unions" other than those pertaining to legal entities (e.g. health decisions, death benefits, etc.)
     • Prevent any legal enforcement of benefits for "marriages", if this isn't already taken care of by removing any legal meaning for the term
     • Allow individuals in a "civil union" to sue for benefits given to those in a "marriage" (thus discouraging gay-hostile companies from trying to weasel out of proving CU benefits while providing those same benefits to heterosexual couples)
  3. Leave "marriage" and the rules regarding such up to the religions of those who engage in such ceremonies.
  • A similar solution is suggested by Rob Howard in this posting (6:33 PM).
  • TruthMapping: The USA government should not be involved in marriage (discussion)

• Educate the populace on the distinction between civil marriage and religious marriage so that they stop thinking of "marriage" as a term that is synonymous with their religious ceremony.
  1. This may not help as the most vocally against "redefining marriage" tend to not understand that people of all religions and atheists also get married, not just people of their religion or religious people in general.

Slogans

Pro

• "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get one!" – popular bumper sticker

Con

• "MARRIAGE = [ male restroom icon ] + [ female restroom icon ]
  • So... gay marriage is okay as long as one spouse wears a dress?
    • "Nah, it basically means Marriage is the joining of a Man and a Woman, not a Man and a Man, or a Woman and a Woman (Or, ummm, one wearing a dress). That, and once Same-Sex marriages occur, Sexual Segregation follows, then comes the floodgates of "Why can't I marry my Cat?" or "Why can't I marry my computer? It's shiny!" and, of course, Homosexuality IS NOT purely genetic, the scientists who looked for the "Gay Gene" say they have no conclusive evidence of it being genetic yet, but many say it IS highly influenced by experiences, sorta like, Trauma for a soldier after a war, or a Phobia of spiders."

Notes

Countries supporting gay marriage: Canada, Spain, Norway, South Africa...