Gay activists reject the claim that legal recognition of same-sex marriage will accelerate the dissolution of marriage as an institution. On the contrary, two of the most prominent spokesmen for same-sex marriage, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch, have argued that its legalization will bolster the institution and help to tame a gay culture that is promiscuous and socially harmful. Same-sex marriage will not encourage social pathologies, they argue, but help to cure them.

Sullivan and Rauch have styled their argument as the “conservative” case for same-sex marriage. But does their argument for same-sex marriage really vindicate the basic social functions and virtues—child-rearing, personal responsibility, commitment, self-sacrifice—that traditional marriage, at least in its ideal form, has provided? One way to answer this question, which tothesource will address in a later article, is to examine the social scientific evidence regarding the effects of same-sex marriage on a society. Today I will assess the logic that legalizing same-sex marriage entails.

At this moment the legislatures of at least 38 states and the US Congress have passed legislation or amended their constitutions to ban same-sex marriages. Georgia is one state that is preparing to follow suit and amend its constitution. The Atlanta Journal Constitution recently editorialized against such a move. The paper’s editorial is representative of the standard case for same-sex marriage and, I suggest, it demonstrates the ultimate fallacy behind the entire “conservative” movement for same-sex marriage.

Below I’ve quoted an excerpt from the editorial, which Sullivan has posted approvingly on his website under the heading “Confronting Bigots”. I have altered one thing, however: where the word “gay” appeared in the original I replaced it with a pair of empty brackets in order to emphasize what this argument entails:

The very idea that [ ] people are trying to tear down marriage is nonsense; heterosexual people are doing quite fine on their own in that regard and hardly need the assistance of others. [ ] people have not caused the divorce rate to soar. [ ] people haven't caused the rise in single-parent families. To make [ ] people the scapegoat for the problems that plague modern marriage is absurd on its face.

In fact, to the degree that [ ] Americans wish to join in marriage, it ought to be seen as an endorsement of the institution, as a recognition that the civilizing merits and rich emotional rewards of marriage appeal not just to people of all cultures, races and ages, but to people of all sexual preference as well.

The interest of [ ] Americans in getting married is a celebration, a validation of marriage. It is not a threat.

Ten, 20, 30 years from now, we're going to have to go back into the Georgia Constitution to pull this hateful language out. And some of the very politicians who today will vote in favor of that language will no doubt be there when it is repealed, sheepishly trying to explain how it wasn't really about hate and discrimination, how back then they were just worried about protecting marriage and the family.

And you know what? Nobody will believe them. Nor should they.

As it stands, if this argument is valid and justifies same-sex marriage, clearly it must also justify bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery—and any other invidious association we could dream up. Simply insert “incestuous” in the brackets where “gay” once stood, and see how nicely the logic flows.

This revealing feature of the argument for same-sex marriage is not peculiar to the Journal Constitution’s editorial. A similar demonstration could be performed with every pro same-sex marriage argument I have seen. Take, as another example, Rauch’s article in the Atlantic Monthly from May 2002, “The Marrying Kind: Why social conservatives should support same-sex marriage”. Here’s a representative excerpt, and as before, with brackets in place of “gay(s)” and “homosexual(s)”:

Those who worry about the example [ ] would set by marrying should be much more worried about the example [ ] are already setting by not marrying. In getting this backward the advocates of (anything less than marriage) make a mistake that is both ironic and sad. At a time when marriage needs all the support and participation it can get, [ ] are pleading to move beyond cohabitation. [ ] want the licenses, the vows, the rings, the honeymoons, the anniversaries, the benefits, and, yes, the responsibilities and the routines. And who is telling us to just shack up instead? Self-styled friends of matrimony. Someday conservatives will look back and wonder why they undermined marriage in an effort to keep [ ] out.

As this passage from Rauch’s article confirms, once “marriage” no longer means a covenant between a man and a woman, anything goes—literally.

Does the argument’s permissive logic, revealed by the brackets demonstration with the Journal Constitution editorial and Rauch’s Atlantic Monthly article, sound the death knell of any plausible case for same-sex marriage? Someone will surely object that citizens and legislatures are not bound to follow cold logic to its absurd conclusions. A state could simply endorse same-sex marriage, and trust that reasonable people will not follow the implied course to its dangerous ends. This objection has something to it, but it is ultimately unconvincing. We should not underestimate the ability of a principle, once it is enshrined in law, accepted by a culture, and placed in individuals’ minds, to work itself out to its conclusions, whether this takes place in the present generation or a future one. If this does happen, social disapproval of destructive behavior that was once strong will fall away like so many unfounded taboos.

But there is another reason this objection doesn’t stand. For in every past and foreseeable instance where the legalization of same-sex marriage is a possibility, it has been propagated through judicial imposition and not by democratic will. As Justice Scalia remarked in his dissent from Lawrence, “One of the benefits of leaving regulation of this matter to the people rather than to the courts is that the people, unlike judges, need not carry things to their logical conclusion”; “if as the court asserts, the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none of the above-mentioned laws [against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality and obscenity] can survive rational-basis review.”

Lest anyone think that such bizarre and horrendous practices could not take root in our culture, consider the recent New York Times Magazine cover story “The Girls Next Door” (January 25, 2004). The article profiled the fate of some 50,000-100,000 young women and children who are currently fettered as sex slaves in the United States. Furthermore, a polygamist named Tom Green cited Lawrence just last month in appealing his conviction under Utah’s 113-year-old polygamy ban. The institution of polygamy may be a school for child rape, incest, physical abuse, sexual abuse, child marriage, and welfare fraud, but if we follow the logic of the case for same-sex marriage in general—there is no principled reason why it could be forbidden. In Lawrence the Supreme Court proclaimed “autonomy of the self ... [in] certain intimate conduct”. If in any matter involving “certain intimate conduct”, an individual self is autonomous—literally, a law unto itself—then no state or local community can even begin to ensure the most modest protections for those who are the result of “certain intimate conduct”, children.

The question that remains is whether citizens and their representatives—of whatever political allegiance—can transcend old ideological camps and muster the resolve to preserve traditional marriage, the first and foremost of their common goods.

After Canada’s highest court in Ontario imposed same-sex marriage on the province, the New York Times reported that surprisingly few same-sex couples took advantage of their newfound liberty to marry. Why? The Times (“Now Free to Marry, Canada’s Gays Say, ‘Do I?” August, 31, 2003) offers a quotation from an article entitled, “Straddling the bathhouse and the chapel.” In that article, published in a Toronto gay magazine called Fab, University of Toronto sociologist Rinaldo Walcott urges gays not to marry lest they lose their subversive identity:

I can already hear folks saying things like: ‘Why are bathhouses needed? Straights don’t have them,’ … Will queers now have to live with the heterosexual forms of guilt associated with something called cheating?

"Same Sex Registered Partnership"

Denmark was the first country in the world to legally embrace the gay marriage experiment.
“Yet evidence is in. Marriage is dying in Scandinavia, which has had marriage-like same-sex registered partnerships for over a decade.”

"Data from European demographers and statistical bureaus show that a majority of children in Sweden and Norway are now born out of wedlock, as are 60 percent of first-born children in Denmark. In socially liberal districts of Norway, where the idea of same-sex registered partnerships is widely accepted, marriage itself has almost entirely disappeared.”

“The problem with this system is that unmarried parents break up at two to three times the rate of married parents. So as Scandinavians separated the ideas of marriage and parenthood, family dissolution rates rose -- placing first-born children at particular risk. The growing Scandinavian separation of marriage and parenthood made it difficult to deny marriage to same-sex couples. Yet the creation of registered partnerships has only locked in and reinforced the separation between the ideas of marriage and parenthood, thereby accelerating marital decline.”

Stanley Kurtz

"The Civil Solidarity Pact"

France sidestepped religious sensibilities surrounding the issue of “gay marriage” by employing a euphemism. They created the “civil solidarity pact” granting legal status for homosexual couples. Those who enter into a pact can file joint tax returns and enjoy the employment and inheritance rights accorded to spouses.

This super convenient, high benefit, low demand legal arrangement only requires the couple to appear before a court clerk and sign on the dotted line. The pact can be ended nearly as easily when either partner simply provides 3 months notice in writing.
The pact was created to satisfy demand for gay marriage but soon the government was obliged to extend the same options to heterosexual couples in order to avoid political opposition.

“After two years of haggling, the benefits of the pacts have been extended to cohabiting heterosexual couples, to widowed sisters living together, even to priests and their housekeepers. The French have crafted a grand new alternative to marriage, one that offers almost all of marriage's legal benefits and imposes many fewer of its legal obligations. Given French society's already growing distaste for the institution of marriage (about a million French heterosexual couples live together unwed), there is every reason to expect the new pact gradually to crowd out and replace marriage.”

David Frum

UNITARIANS AND POLYAMORY AND SUCH:
From the Religion News Service

Some 4,700 people attended this year's Unitarian Universalist Association's annual convention in Long Beach, Calif. Gay marriage was strongly endorsed by representatives of the 225,000- member, Boston-based religious organization. Delegates also flocked to two workshops on polyamory, the controversial notion it is morally acceptable to have multiple love partners.

"Say yes to the transforming power of love," said Doug Walters of Portland, Ore., one of four polyamorists leading the workshops. "Is it safe to be openly supportive of polyamory in your congregation?"

METHODISTS AND MARRIAGE:
From the Weekly Standard

"ONE OF AMERICA'S largest Protestant denominations voted in May to prohibit the solemnization of same-sex unions in its churches, to withhold ordination from practicing homosexuals, to ban church funding for "gay" causes, to require celibacy for its single clergy, and to endorse civil laws that define marriage as uniting a man and a woman. And it wasn't the Southern Baptists."

Proposed Federal Marriage Amendment

"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union between a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups"

Senator Gordon Smith (D) Oregon, supporter of gay rights, argues for a Federal Marriage Amendment on Senate Floor

"For the record, let me express to my gay and lesbian friends, I don't mean to disappoint you, but I can't be true to you if I am false to my basic beliefs. I believe that marriage, as we have known and practiced it in this country for hundreds of years now, is something that should be preserved.

New structures can be created, new legal rights conferred, without taking down this word that represents an ideal -- not about adults but including children. I mean to hurt no one's feelings in my position. I intend to be your champion on many issues in the future, if you want me. But on this one, I have to be able to get up in the morning and look in the mirror and be true to myself."

"I say to you, there probably isn't a more important issue to discuss than the legal structure that binds men and women together for the creation and the rearing and nurturing of future generations of Americans. I make no apology for my vote for this process, for an amendment that defines marriage, because that is where it is headed, because the courts will compel it."

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