Gay Marriage Vs "The Institution of Marriage"

Let me first start out with the obvious point of what business is it of anyone, what their neighbors do in their private lives? The law should be set up to prevent people from hurting others, not preventing liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, two invaluable ideals that were handed down to us by our founding fathers. The basis of our system of rights is the thought that no one’s rights are greater or less than anyone else’s. Therefore we do not possess the right to deny the same opportunities to the minority as we give to the majority. (As a side note, I am always fascinated that these recent republicans (since about Regan) seem to always be of the opinion that people need to be legislated but businesses shouldn’t be regulated. They say it would be anti-capitalist, as if capitalism is above reproach, but our rights are negotiable.) There are generally two reasons that people give to justify their anti-gay marriage stance: god is against it, and it would destroy the “institution of marriage” because it has always been between a man and a woman.

Both of these excuses are not only irrelevant, they are also inadequate to prove their argument. Lets star with god. God and religion (at least not the Judaic religions) did not invent marriage, it existed long before anyone ever heard of the Jewish bible, therefore they cannot lay claim to it. Here is another approach to the god argument: if you are going to use god as the source of your argument, you have to prove that he exists first! This form of argument (saying it is wrong because a specific person or organization says so) is known as the argument from authority, and it is a common and obvious fallacy. You are not automatically right just because you are stronger than your opponent (might doesn’t make right), you actually need to have the facts on your side to be right. The god says so argument provides no evidence, so it cannot be taken seriously.

Then you have the “institution of marriage” argument. This needs to be broken down into two sections , first, that it is saying that things must remain as they are (the appeal to tradition), and second, the analysis of this so-called “institution”. The argument that “marriage has always been between a man and a woman” is irrelevant. Just because marriage has been that way in the past doesn’t mean that it was right, or that it should be continued, that must be determined on the merits of the arguments for and against gay marriage. Everybody can be wrong; the difference is that logical people change their opinion when the facts dictate that they should. For example we used to accept slavery, now we don’t. Acceptable standards or actions can change.

How can they try to argue about the damage that would be done to the legitimacy of the “institution” of marriage, with a straight face? The divorce rate in America is about fifty percent, and it is very common for people to be married three or more times now, how many people like that do you know? So how is it that we hold marriage is high regard when we wish to discriminate, but think nothing of it when we no longer want to be hassled by it? Who is a worse representative of marriage, two gay people in their first and only marriage, or someone who is on their third spouse? Think about that for a second, that means three times they have gone through the big ordeal and sworn their love, loyalty, and devotion to someone, and went back on their word at least twice. Would you even believe them when they said it if you were their third spouse? They are completely hollow words by that point, and I for one would not marry someone in those circumstances.

I have one more point then before I finish with an example. That is the blatant disregard we have for the rights of our fellow citizens. Marriage is a LEGALLY binding agreement, which also means that it is recognized by the government. It is unconstitutional for the government to discriminate against any American citizen, therefore they should either not recognize anyone’s marriage, or they have to recognize them all. The government cannot pick and choose our spouses for us.

I will conclude with a perfect example of the hypocrisy in this country, which of course brought me unspeakable pleasure. A justice of the peace in Louisiana made news a while back because he refused to marry an interracial couple, because he did not approve of race mixing. Of course because he was discriminating against race he was immediately reprimanded, and there was talk of revoking his license. I don’t argue with that, he wouldn’t fulfill his responsibilities so I would accept that course of action. My issue is how are his actions different from gay discrimination? After all, interracial marriage was illegal until 1967, so the majority of our “tradition” says that it is immoral, right? This was a perfect example for people to re-evaluate their stance on all forms of marriage discrimination, and correct them at once. But because we are ignorant and incompetent we decided to just call this guy racist and sweep the topic under the rug.

Challenge: Can you name one legitimate argument against gay marriage, that couldn’t be made against straight and interracial marriage?

One might also add how the average gay couple makes and spends more money than two straight couples combined statistically. Sure I'll never understand why another man would like the smell of another mans ass in the morning, but then again I think "The Cure" sucks as a band and several million people disagree with me there too. This blue and green ball we live on still spins whether we repopulate or not, and in some cases is in desperate need of change and evolution. Sexual orientation has not only been proven to be a function of daily living but also a building block of our societies future. Several people have been presumed gay throughout our history yet history would never reveal. The bottom line is that entirely too much weight is placed on Sex period.

As much as I never thought I would say this, I completely agree with your entire argument, DevilsAdvocate. Well said!

PS. Everyone knows that the only people who are opposed to gay marriage are rednecks and bible-humpers...and well, their opinions do not matter anyway.

Challenge: Can you name one legitimate argument against gay marriage, that couldn’t be made against straight and interracial marriage?

I spent a good hour trying, but even when I was trying to make a joking point it was inaccurate. So I will just add a few things.

First off, the only reasonable argument I could think of was that they are unable to reproduce and therefore cannot have children of their own. However, this is not entirely true. They can always use a woman donor to have their child (which I never really understood since technically it is only half theirs, how do they choose which one of them gets that half?), and for a lesbian couple the opposite method. Besides this, they could also adopt. There are hundreds of thousands of kids that are capable of being adopted at this point. Many of these kids are flooding our treatment facilities and detention centers simply because they have no one who cares. These same kids grow up to flood our prisons and mental institutions. Allowing homosexual individuals to marry will create a hundreds of thousands of family environments and most of these families will probablu adopt at least a single child which will balance out our problems. This takes stress off the criminal system, the child care system, and the economy all in one solution.

Typically I will then hear the 'Children will grow up with problems in a gay family' argument. Although technically there is no way of proving this statement wrong, I do offer two counterpoints. For one, many children grow up with problems in a straight family. Besides, having gat parents does not automatically make the child gay.. Gay people have all originally come from straight families, and considering it is still illegal for a gay couple to be married, gay people still come from straight families. These children just want someone to care for them, they do not care who cares for them.

if you were going to ban gay marriage based off the fact that they cant reproduce a child together, then anyone who is infertile couldn't get married either. which would also apply to straight couples.