In Defense of Marriage: Responses

posted at 12:05 am on May 14, 2009 by Doctor Zero
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In response to some of the points raised in the comments to the “In Defense of Marriage” essay I posted on Monday:

Aggression and Defense: It should be emphasized that the same-sex marriage movement is aggressively seeking to re-define an existing institution. The people who believe marriage is defined as “men marrying women” were there first. We are defending a centuries-old tradition. This doesn’t automatically mean the tradition is worth defending, but it does mean those wishing to re-define marriage are the party which should demonstrate it is necessary and desirable, because they’re the ones who want to change things. Many of the arguments against traditional marriage proceed as if we all just climbed from the wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815, and we’re trying to write up the rules of our island civilization from scratch, before the Smoke Monster shows up.

It is often said that we are not discussing whether or not gay men and women can be married, because they can get married now, provided they marry someone of the opposite sex. A man and woman seeking a marriage license will not be asked if they’re secretly gay, and sent packing if either of them answers “yes.” This is not a trivial point. We are not talking about denying a civil right to a group of people, which is where glib analogies to the black civil-rights movement fall short. We are talking about changing the definition of marriage, as it is both customarily and legally understood. Changing the definition of an institution inevitably changes the institution. To use another institution as an example, the Boy Scouts stop being the Boy Scouts if you force them to admit girls. Again, this doesn’t logically settle the argument about whether re-defining marriage is a good idea – sometimes institutions do need to be changed – but let’s be honest about the magnitude of the change we’re discussing.

Is traditional marriage good for society? Some advocates of same-sex marriage wonder if it’s worth frustrating the desires of gay Americans to preserve a dusty old tradition. I believe both reasoning and evidence support the conclusion that traditional marriage has great value to society. Putting things in the most practical and unemotional terms, a nation must have an average birth rate of 2.1 or better to avoid population decline, and the only way to get past that 2.1 limit is to have a sizable number of families with three or more children. A male same-sex marriage cannot produce its own children at all, and while female same-sex marriages could bear children through artificial insemination, it seems very unlikely that they would produce enough of the large families we need.

Once the children are born, stable marriages provide the best environment for raising the children to be lawful and productive citizens. The evidence for this is overwhelming. Directorblue has an excellent post in the Green Room, entitled “The Racists,” that lays out some of the sobering statistical evidence for the negative effects broken families have on children. You can be as dispassionate as a computer, and still see that society has a vested interest in promoting large, stable families. Raising such a family is extremely difficult and expensive, so it’s in the best interests of society to encourage and honor those who make the necessary sacrifices. This is one reason I disagree with the notion that we could settle the marriage debate by abolishing marriage altogether. (Respect for the feelings of the large majority of people that take marriage seriously is another.)

Marriage is just a word: Many of those in favor of allowing same-sex marriage is to ask why permitting it would have any negative effect on traditional marriage. The answer is that words have meaning, and concepts have power. Some things are defined by their exclusivity. A Congressional Medal of Honor is just a hunk of metal hanging on the end of a ribbon, but not everybody can have one. Awarding such a medal does not transform the recipient into a hero – they receive the medal because they are heroes. Our nation needs a considerable number of people to make the difficult sacrifices necessary to serve in the military, and only the people who make those sacrifices are allowed to call themselves “soldiers.” We reward those people with respect and deference – not as much as we should, in my opinion. Why do we show any special deference or appreciation to people who win Nobel Peace Prizes, or Academy Awards, if they’re just pieces of paper or little golden statues?

Every society has methods of expressing special respect and gratitude for particular achievements. If we can agree that traditional marriage is valuable to society, and should be encouraged, why should we be eager to remove the special status afforded those marriages by re-defining them as one of many possible configurations for a humdrum legal partnership? Why should a huge majority – even in the generally liberal state of California – be forced to rewrite the meaning of words and ideas like “marriage,” “husband,” and “wife,” which have been a basic part of their culture for generations, in order to accomodate a tiny minority? And why is that minority so desperately, even fanatically, dedicated to achieving that revision of meaning, to the point where they openly threaten to destroy the lives of people like the Prop 8 supporters or Carrie Prejean, if marriage is just a silly old word that nobody should be getting all worked up about?

People are not robots. They aren’t emotionless social units that can be given a new set of behavioral directives on command. They respond to rituals, symbols, and traditions. They need these things to relate to one another. Those who criticize the defenders of traditional marriage often speak of them as if they were defective computers, in need of a reboot and the latest set of Progressive Attitude v5.0 patches.

Much of the power behind words and concepts comes from the authority of the common culture, and the government that (regrettably) exerts a powerful control over it. If you doubt this, consider a certain six letter word for African-Americans that begins with “N”, and which is routinely used by black entertainers, but absolutely forbidden to whites. While you’re at it, consider the history of the term “African-American.” Words have power, and they shape culture. A hundred years ago, “African-American” meant someone who emigrated to America from Africa. A hundred years before that, it would have been a nonsensical phrase, which would have honestly confused anyone from either America or Africa.

Americans share a common culture, and it requires some core concepts to function. A culture with no shared values is like a language that consists of random sounds. One of the more absurd suggestions to appear in the comments to my original post was the childish taunt that people who don’t like the idea of legalized gay marriage affecting school curricula should pull their kids out of class and home-school them. Sure, as long as we get to take all the tax money we fork over for those useless public schools with us. If the political class was ever foolish enough to seriously make that offer to Americans, the miserable, tottering public school system would collapse into rubble in the wake of the stampede fleeing from it. Of course, in order to complete that exodus, we would have to destroy the most powerful opponent of both school choice and gay marriage in the world, Barack Hussein Obama.

We don’t really want to fragment the nation into little cultural enclaves, any more than it already is. It won’t be permitted by the legal system anyway. Will the states that refuse to vote in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage be allowed to deny the validity of gay marriages performed in the other states? Will the answer to that question be different if the number of states that legalize gay marriage increases to 20, 25, or 30? The purpose of the gay marriage movement is not to win the “right” for people of the same sex to declare they are married, because they can do that now. The purpose is not to remove legal obstacles placed in the way of same-sex partnerships, because most of the legal benefits desired by same-sex couples are already available to them, or could be obtained with legal adjustments far less drastic than re-defining marriage. The purpose is to force people who believe in the traditional definition of marriage to submit to a different set of beliefs, imposed with the force of law. This is not being presented as a polite request, or a calm and deliberate attempt at reasoned persuasion.

Marriage and tax breaks: The legal benefits most uniquely associated with marriage are its tax advantages. I don’t think the primary opposition to granting tax advantages to same-sex civil unions would come from conservatives – we think everyone’s taxes are too high anyway. Taking away the benefits afforded to marriage, while leaving the rest of the bloated tax system in place, would make the desirable goals of stable marriages a little more difficult for struggling couples to achieve. If you want to eliminate the tax benefits of marriage by eliminating the income tax entirely, sign me up.

Marriage and religion: I didn’t advance any form of religious argument in favor of marriage in my original post, but the comments were still peppered with people insisting the only reason to support traditional marriage is religious fanaticism. Of course, the people saying this are usually just trying to avoid all other arguments by pulling out a favorite straw man to beat. The idea that opposition to same-sex marriage is invalid, because many of the opponents are people of faith, is bigotry. It’s a bigotry the proponents of same-sex marriage slip into frequently enough to wonder if it’s one of their primary motivations. Did anyone in the gay-marriage movement offer Carrie Prejean the respect for her sincere beliefs, and gracious manners, she favored them with?

Insisting that opposition to an idea can only be evidence of stupidity and hatred imposes the tyranny of false choices. Telling free people their only options are to support the re-definition of marriage, or be denounced as imbecilic close-minded hate-mongers, is not offering them a “choice”… and if they accept those terms, they aren’t free people. Praising the marriage of men and women as an especially valuable and honored institution is not an insult to men and women who don’t get married, for whatever reason… any more than honoring those who join the military denigrates civilians. The insults seem to be coming from the same-sex marriage advocates, anyway. If you sneeringly dismiss someone’s revered traditions as no better than slavery, don’t be surprised when they fight back.

Marriage isn’t worth defending because it’s imperfect: There’s no doubt the institution of marriage has suffered over the last forty years. This is a worthy topic for an entirely different discussion. In the context of the same-sex marriage debate, I have to doubt the wisdom of further weakening such an important institution by radically rewriting its basic terms, when loosening the requirements for terminating marriage has already done so much damage to it. The shaky condition of marriage in 2009 is cause for improving it, not discarding it. As to the idea that stricter divorce laws would trap women in abusive relationships: I hope the reader can forgive me for being brutally honest and a bit emotional here, but I deeply believe in the value of marriage as a vow between a man and a woman, and someone who abuses his wife or children is no longer a man.

Same-sex marriage would serve the same social purpose as traditional marriage: I already mentioned that same-sex marriage is unlikely to fill the same reproductive needs as the traditional variety, and of course male same-sex marriages can’t reproduce at all. Would relaxing the definition of marriage to include homosexual unions reduce the number of people who choose to enter traditional marriages? I don’t think that concern can be as casually dismissed as some of the commenters in my original post did. Getting married is a tremendous commitment for everyone involved, and given the general slant toward women in divorce proceedings, it’s currently an even greater risk for the man – who is most commonly the one who initiates the marriage through a proposal. Raising a family with lots of children is an immense sacrifice for both parents. If these unions have inherent value to society, as I argued above, doesn’t society help to create them by granting special status and appreciation – not to mention financial benefits, under our complex socially-engineered tax code? Wouldn’t taking those benefits away, or granting them to people who don’t meet the traditional requirements for marriage, reduce the incentive for people to make that commitment? Same-sex marriage between homosexuals would only be one result of re-defining marriage – it would become equally legal, and sanctioned by society, for a couple of heterosexual best buddies to enter a non-sexual “marriage” as well. I don’t think it’s a stretch to suppose that would cut into the number of men who make the effort to grow out of their perpetual adolescence and marry a woman.

How significant would the reduction in traditional marriage be? I don’t think we have enough data to compute this scientifically, based on the handful of states that have legalized same-sex marriage thus far, but when you’re contemplating millions of couples across the country, a small percentage translates to a lot of people. Given the awful failure of most of the other social engineering experiments we’ve been subjected to in the past century, a lot of us would rather not be volunteered for this one. How many advocates of same-sex marriage are willing to wait a few years, to accumulate data from the states which have legalized it so far, before forging ahead?

Same-sex marriage would not lead to polygamy: Oh, yes it would. Inevitably. The other slippery-slope arguments are far-fetched, but not this one. The polygamists wouldn’t even need to spend decades building pop-culture credibility. A few court cases, a lucky spin of the Supreme Court Wheel of Fortune, and they’re all set. If the sex of the participants in a marriage can be ruled irrelevant, how could the number of participants be eternally fixed at precisely two? If everyone involved meets the criteria for informed consent, how can you rewrite part A of the marriage concept, but steadfastly maintain part B is forever off-limits to revision? There probably aren’t that many people interested in entering polygamous marriages at the moment, even compared to the small portion of the population that wishes to enter same-sex marriages… but they are out there, they will sue, and they will win. Polygamy is a Very Bad Thing for any culture – it’s the anti-matter version of marriage. Its most notable effect on society is to increase the number of sexually frustrated lower-class young men. That’s something we most certainly do not need.

Where do the marriage wars go from here? My crystal ball is no better than anyone else’s, but I strongly doubt the state-by-state approach will go much further for same-sex marriage advocates. The requirement for other states to honor those arrangements will breed resentment and energize those who are strongly opposed to them, and let’s be honest: there are a lot of those people, and many of them are no more interested in being reasonable than the people who tried to stomp their jackboots on Carrie Prejean’s neck. Eventually there will be no more talk of treating marriage as a “federalism” issue, any more than we are allowed to settle the abortion debate via federalism. In the end, my guess is that some form of civil union arrangement for same-sex partners, and probably multiple partners, will be arrived at. I can only guess at how rocky the road to that destination will be.

Thanks for your patience and consideration in reading all of this. I know this is not an easy subject to discuss, and if I thought the answers were easy, I wouldn’t have spent the time writing two very long posts to set forth my viewpoint. If you are someone who passionately wishes to enter a same-sex marriage, I appreciate your position, and respect your sincerity as much as I hope you respect mine. I am not a “homophobe,” or a religious fanatic. With that in mind, if you don’t think I’ve done an adequate job of making the case for marriage, by all means grab a bucket of Hot Air pixels and blast away. I’m very interested in what you have to say.

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