Is This Really The Argument For Gay Marriage?

Here I want to summarize what I've been hearing concerning the gay marriage question, in the hopes that I can leave the subject for awhile. There are some loose ends to tie up because I hear many responses both to my arguments, and to the arguments of others, that are wholly inadequate.

1. We say, "It's not natural." They say, "But it can be seen in animals."

What on earth can the gay marriage advocate mean by this response? Do they mean that anything produced by nature is natural? Is a man who runs repeatedly into a wall until he dies living in accord with nature? Is a pedophile expressing natural sexuality?

Two things can be said here. One, when chimpanzees express homosexual behavior, surely it is reasonable to suggest that evolution cannot "see" such behavior, and in that sense it is not in the chimpanzees evolutionary interests to continue to behave in that way.

But secondly, even though animals may demonstrate homosexual behavior (although the burden of proof is on the side of the advocate of homosexuality to demonstrate that sodomy is practiced among other mammals) they also demonstrate a lot of other kinds of troubling behavior. Some animals eat their young. Many males abandon their young. Other males maintain harems. Should they do these things? Such a question is totally unanswerable, because we have no glimpse at the consciousness of animals. As far as we know, the law of the jungle is purely a matter of survival, and so I can't help but be puzzled by this appeal to animals as ethical models. Is it at least possible that natural design for human beings is fundamentally different than natural design for chimpanzees?

2. We say, "Gays cannot reproduce." They say, "But neither can infertile couples."

I've said a lot on this question, particularly in this blog post: http://monomaniacy.blogspot.com/2013/04/but-what-about-infertile-couples.html

But here is a brief summation: To compare infertile couples to gay couples is like comparing a paraplegic to a person who elects to use his legs as a pin cushion. One is an example of merely broken nature; the other an example of a choice to break nature.

3. We say, "It is best to have husband and wife raise a child." They say, "Gay couples do just as fine a job of parenting as heterosexuals."

Denis Prager has asked a question concerning adoption that I think is useful here: When it comes to placing a child in a home, is there any reason to prefer a husband and wife over two men or two women, all things being equal? Most of us instinctively approve of the idea that a man and a woman in the home are better than single parent homes, for example. Of course a single mother can raise a lovely child, but does that mean there is no ideal here? Is it optimal for society to have more single parent homes?

The gay marriage advocate must conclude that the gay couple and the heterosexual couple are both equally capable candidates to raise children, and there is nothing in the one that would cause us to prefer it over the other. I suppose one should merely flip a coin. In other words, children really don't need a man in the home. And it is equally acceptable to have no woman in the home either. It is a kind of hidden sexism. Children don't require intimate exposure to one sex in order to "turn out just fine."

4. We say, "There are real and even substantial differences between men and women." They say, "Anything a husband can give a wife can give, and anything a wife can give a husband can give. More than that, anything a father can give a mother can give, and anything a mother can give a father can give."

Douglas Wilson rather poetically articulates the Christian understanding of marriage at creation. God breaks things apart so that he can bring them back together in a higher unity. But this higher unity presupposes real difference. When husband and wife bring their fundamental differences together to form "one flesh," their love making is life producing. This real difference brought into unity multiplies the difference and thus presents an even deeper opportunity for unity--namely, the family.

The gay marriage camp seems to favor an egalitarian view of human sexuality, which would essentially say that maleness and femaleness are artificial human contrivances. We make up such concepts. We want to raise our children in a state of pristine neutrality, free to choose the sex with which they desire to identify. It diminishes the freedom of a child to merely assign gender identity because of something like genetalia, and it also diminishes his or her (its) freedom to assign religious, moral, nationalistic, party or personality strictures as well. Perhaps the child will desire to express both sexes, to be the first ever male president (or priest) who changes his sexuality and then changes it back again to lead the way in the new sexual freedom.

5. We say, "If society wants to reward a particular understanding of marriage, then so be it." They say, "Opponents of gay marriage are guilty of civil injustice and hate crimes."

Can the denial of marriage rights be equated to something like the denial of voting rights? Is it true that denying someone rewards is tantamount to a punishing them? There is a stunning degree of political hyperbole and political hypochondria in our day. In fact, I think I will soon seek legal counsel because so many people bully Christians. We live in a Christophobic culture! And surely I can find someone to sue for it.

The fact is that the state may want to take an interest in encouraging a certain understanding of normative sexual relations and marriage and family, since a great deal of stability in society is forged by stable families. Gays and straight alike think polygamy is not acceptable. Are we to think that fundamentalist Mormon's, for example, are living a life deprived of civil liberties currently? What gives us the right to deprive them of so essential a right?

6. We say, "Marriage is older than American civil law, and is more important and foundational than America." They say, "America can do whatever it wants with marriage."

Here we run into what I have called the "epistemological problem" of gay marriage. If we are not to define marriage the way it has been defined for all these millennia, then who will supply the definition, and on whose authority? Typically we are given the positive law/postmodernist/relativistic option. Society merely assigns meaning to the word. But of course if this is true, then it is perfectly fair for someone to ask why its definition cannot be something other than the group determines it should be. Why not polygamy? Why not incest? Why not no marriage at all (Huxley)? Why not father and adult son (as Jeffrey Lyons suggested)?

Note this is not a slippery slope fallacy. No thinking person is saying that such radical versions of marriage will occur. The point is that the same logic employed to argue for gay marriage can broadly be used to argue for the various iterations I've suggested.

7. We say, "Gay marriage is clearly condemned by the Bible." They say, "Not so fast."

Liberal theology abounds in our day. One of the common suggestions is that Paul nowhere condemns "homosexuality," but only "abusive" homosexuality.

For one thing, the interpretive method of many of these people is questionable, to say the least. They sort of begin with the assumption that if a text is old, then it must not be communicating a timeless truth that is in any way discernible from our present vantage point. They want to suggest that only pagan manifestations of homosexuality, such as in temple prostitution and pedophilia, are excluded in the Bible. Paul simply apparently didn't know anything about generic Christ loving homosexuality. But of course on that interpretive scheme, perhaps Paul didn't know anything about Christ loving adultery either. Perhaps he meant only to condemn patriarchal and abusive forms of adultery.

Perhaps the best piece I've seen that exposes the interpretive problems here is a satire by Peter Speckhard: http://firstthings.com/blogs/evangel/2009/12/temple-prostitution-a-modest-proposal/

8. We say, "You shouldn't arbitrarily redefine marriage." They say, "But it was redefined when they legalized interracial marriage."

The curious thing here is that interracial marriage had nothing to do with a redefinition of marriage. The prior racist conception had to do with the worthiness of one race engaging in marriage with another race. What we mean minimally by marriage is "one man and one women joined before God in committed lifelong monogamy." The problem with the ban on interracial marriage wasn't the man and woman part, but the human part. In other words, certain races were deemed less than fully human, and as such should not marry with those considered fully human. When interracial marriage bans were lifted, it wasn't an expansion of the definition of marriage, but an expansion of the definition of humanity! To say that lifting interracial marriage bans constituted a change in the definition of marriage is like saying that allowing blacks the vote was a change in the "one man, one vote" principle. The principle didn't change, but those considered "men" did change.

To use interracial marriage against opponents of gay marriage is a simple category mistake.