Tuesday, June 08, 2004
The one sided issue
I haven't heard a single good argument against legalizing same-sex marriage. Let be more specific: I haven't heard an argument that is simultaneous not repellant, moronic, incoherent, irrelevant, or trivial. My interest here is not personal (I'm happily heterosexual); rather, I'm simply frustrated by the fact that this important issue appears to be a non-debate, and would prefer opponents of gay marriage either admit that, better explain their arguments, or find better points to make. To this end, I've compiled here a short catalog of anti-gay-marriage arguments, and treat them as seriously as they deserve to be treated.
But first, let me sketch a very short defense of gay marriage, to put my criticism in context. I espouse the Rawlsian notion of justice as fairness in pursuing life goals, and further suppose that a fair organization of society is what rational beings would agree to subject themselves to under conditions of ignorance about their particular plans and place in that society ("the initial position"). I stipulate that marriage (permanent, legally recognized bonding) to a loved one for the purposes of companionship, sharing of life's burdens, and/or raising children is a central life goal of many people, and one that any reasonable being in the initial position would recognize as worthy. Furthermore, a being ignorant of whether they would be born gay (or develop homosexual preferences in a marriage partner) would rationally prefer institutions which insured against exclusion from marriage on such grounds.*
This abstract Rawlsian argument needs a real world instantiation, and finds an admirable one in the US Constitution, which seeks to protect the rights of minorities to pursue their own lives, especially when their needs for these protections are great and the propensity for the majority to exercise low-benefit tyranny over these minorities is strong. Moreover, the Constitution was written in fairly general terms, in order to adapt to new social questions as they arise, while applying a consistently pro-minority and pro-liberty regime. Hence, it what follows, I will often refer to Constitutionally defined notions of justice.
I suspect it would be easy to construct similar arguments in any other liberal framework (nb: I mean liberal in the broad sense that encompasses virtually the entire American political tradition, not in the liberal/conservative sense. Theocrats, fascists, monarchists, and perhaps communists might have principled disagreements, but I will not speculate on them).
So how weak are the counter-arguments?
God opposes gay marriage.
I suppose this is internally consistent (though I disagree that any being like the Christian deity would hold this view). But it is massively irrelevant: state marriage is a secular institution, and constitutionally must remain so. It is very good that it is secular; the religious tolerance America was founded on has helped us avoid violent religious conflict, senseless religious oppression, and, according to one novel argument, is a key to America's flourishing religious culture. If you want to discriminate against gays, do so through your church---have that debate in the private sphere, and leave the state out of it.
Gay marriage counters human tradition.
G.K. Chesterton called tradition the democracy of the dead. Tradition serves neither justice nor the democracy of the living. If an institution has little positive or negative effect on society, but has traditional significance, by all means, preserve it; it's harmless. But many "traditional" institutions, like slavery and the subjection of women, have little positive to recommend them, and do great harm. When "tradition" is raised as a cry to save an embattled institution, it is a sure sign that it should be abolished.
Homosexual sex is "unnatural".
Appeals to naturalism are difficult to take seriously in a world of rapid technological and cultural change. What is the "nature" its advocates appeal to? That of the 19th century? The middle ages? The time of Jesus? Of Homer? Of Gilgamesh? etc. The standard is incoherent, inconsistently applied, and of dubious significance. But that doesn't matter here: there are plenty of instances of homosexual sex in nature. It appears likely homosexuality in humans has at least partially a genetic basis; in which case it is as "natural" as any other human behavior.
Recognizing gay marriages will lead to an increase in taxes, since these couples will be eligible for state benefits.
This argument is raised in tax-hating Texas. It is honest, at least. But partially beside the point: legislatures can always lower benefits to married couples to maintain constant overall spending. What this argument really acknowledges is that currently, the is a net transfer of wealth from gays to straights through discriminatory laws based on heterosexual-only marriage. On the grounds of justice and equal application of the law, this is really an argument for gay marriage.
Gay marriage will open a slippery slope to marrying any N objects, living or dead.
This is perhaps the dumbest slippery slope argument I have ever heard. Slippery slopes are weak arguments to begin with; they lack a mechanism, and merely extrapolate a trend outside of the data. In reality, each policy decision is its own debate, connected to others certainly, but not predetermined (else we wouldn't even be having this debate; it too would be part of some other policy's "slope"). Perhaps someday some crackpot judge will hold that gay marriage sets a precedent for nonconsensual marriage, or incest, or bestial marriages. Let us call this simply Horror X, and posit that the vast majority of society opposes Horror X for specific reasons (including, perhaps, genetic disadvantages of incest, or a rejection of nonconsensual sex as repugnant, or of bestiality as animal cruelty---not to mention a misapplication of the concept of a legal person). Whatever the reasons---and public revulsion to the bottom of the slope is key to the critique, so there must be a basis for that revulsion---they will be specific to Horror X, the Horror will be rejected through public condemnation, appeal, or legislation, and the whole thing will be over in two newscycles. The slippery slope doesn't exist in this case.
Gay marriage harms children
This is a matter for research, and for counterfactuals at that, since there is not yet gay marriage. This is potentially a real argument against gay marriage, but it is an unlikely one. Replace "gays" with group Y (which might be blacks, or people under 30, or people with below average IQs). Would a scientific finding that children raised by married couples of group Y do worse than average children justify banning group Y from marriage---or from raising children? (Bear in mind that if the question is whether to allow marriage, and the counter argument rests on childrearing, the implicitily advocated policy is a ban on childrearing altogether; if not, then one must show children of married couples of group Y do worse than children of unmarried couples of group Y, which is a priori very unlikely). I think phrased in general, ethical terms, most of us would agree that it would be a grave injustice to prevent people from realizing a key life goal (marriage and childrearing) for such crude utilitarian calculations. Put a different way, the gap in child happiness would have to be vast to justify restricting the institution of marriage. Indeed, I doubt any gap small enough to require serious social science to uncover would be too small to justify such a move. (Another question is what counts as a "harm". One imagines some critics mean that children may grow up gay, and hence be "harmed". That is a repugnant argument.)
Gay marriage undermines heterosexual marriage
An unusual argument, which at first I took for the non sequitur it ultimately is. But what people who make this argument refer to is something truly bizarre: the notion that marriage is primarily a social sanction for restraining male promiscuity which succeeds only to the extent that it is respected by heterosexual men. If including gays in the marriage institution tarnishes it in the eyes of heterosexual men, they will feel no compunction in cheating on their wives. I find this hard to believe as an empirical model of marriage and fidelity. I also find it hard to believe including gays in marriage would have such effects on heterosexual men's views or behavior. Finally, I see no reason alternative, primarily religious institutions could not take up the slack, if such a slack existed. Finally, were I to accept this argument, I would see the problem not as gays, but unfaithful straight men. Why should gays pay the price for their failings? Moreover, wouldn't gay marriage, on the same basis, reduce gay infidelity?
Gay marriage undermines the societal commitment to procreate
I don't think this is true. Gays nowadays tend to avoid heterosexual marriages, unlike in the past, so I don't think there will be noticeable effects on the fertility rate. But if there were, great: another tool to fight overpopulation, and one that makes people happier to boot, by allowing them to live as they wish to live. Seriously, the urge to procreate is awfully strong (fertility clinic, anyone?) It existed long before language, laws, or marriage, and is unlikely to vanish when marriage changes.
Court-ordered gay marriage is undemocratic
Yes, it is. So was court-ordered desegregation, so is the free speech protection of the Constitution ("Congress"---the people's representatives---"shall pass no law..."), so is anything else the Constitution forbids representatives from doing. The reason is simple, and well-known to most users of this argument: minority rights and civil liberties need protection from the majority, whose passions, to invoke Madison, may threaten those liberties. The genius of the Constitution is its effort to balance liberty and democracy. What critics are really saying is that gays don't deserve protection, either because they are not "really" a minority (e.g., they choose to be gay, and somehow that disqualifies them), or because marriage, for some reason, should be controlled completely by simple majority rule. The first argument is offensive: whether gays choose to be gays or not, they deserve the protections any other minority or majority group, popular or unpopular, enjoys (people choose to be Democrats and Baptists; would it be right for the state to discriminate against them?). The second argument is difficult to take seriously, since I doubt even the people who make it would like to follow it to its logical conclusions.
God will punish the nation for allowing gay marriage
A silly argument, but then aren't most of these? The best answer I can give, in all seriousness, is the following link.
Gay marriage will make more people gay
Uh, no. And even if it did, so what?
****
Anyone have any arguments I've missed? When every argument is unpersuasive, they can be a bit hard to remember. Suffice it to say, I doubt I've ever heard a public debate that was so one sided.
Postscript: Some conservatives can see the writing on the wall (gay marriage is inevitable), and say they might as well accept it. They pretty much admit what I'm saying here: the arguments against gay marriage are either weak, or appeals to an ethic whose time has passed.
*Incorporating religious beliefs in the original position is more problematic, and would involving weighing the p(religious opposition to gay marriage)*(Psychic cost of gay marriage to religous people) against two terms, p(gay and desiring marriage)*(benefits of marriage) + p(belief in moral imperative to permit gay marriage)*(psychic benefit of gay marriage). Although I do not want to ignore this problem (as most reader of Rawls seem to do), I think in this case the latter terms clearly outweigh the former.
But first, let me sketch a very short defense of gay marriage, to put my criticism in context. I espouse the Rawlsian notion of justice as fairness in pursuing life goals, and further suppose that a fair organization of society is what rational beings would agree to subject themselves to under conditions of ignorance about their particular plans and place in that society ("the initial position"). I stipulate that marriage (permanent, legally recognized bonding) to a loved one for the purposes of companionship, sharing of life's burdens, and/or raising children is a central life goal of many people, and one that any reasonable being in the initial position would recognize as worthy. Furthermore, a being ignorant of whether they would be born gay (or develop homosexual preferences in a marriage partner) would rationally prefer institutions which insured against exclusion from marriage on such grounds.*
This abstract Rawlsian argument needs a real world instantiation, and finds an admirable one in the US Constitution, which seeks to protect the rights of minorities to pursue their own lives, especially when their needs for these protections are great and the propensity for the majority to exercise low-benefit tyranny over these minorities is strong. Moreover, the Constitution was written in fairly general terms, in order to adapt to new social questions as they arise, while applying a consistently pro-minority and pro-liberty regime. Hence, it what follows, I will often refer to Constitutionally defined notions of justice.
I suspect it would be easy to construct similar arguments in any other liberal framework (nb: I mean liberal in the broad sense that encompasses virtually the entire American political tradition, not in the liberal/conservative sense. Theocrats, fascists, monarchists, and perhaps communists might have principled disagreements, but I will not speculate on them).
So how weak are the counter-arguments?
God opposes gay marriage.
I suppose this is internally consistent (though I disagree that any being like the Christian deity would hold this view). But it is massively irrelevant: state marriage is a secular institution, and constitutionally must remain so. It is very good that it is secular; the religious tolerance America was founded on has helped us avoid violent religious conflict, senseless religious oppression, and, according to one novel argument, is a key to America's flourishing religious culture. If you want to discriminate against gays, do so through your church---have that debate in the private sphere, and leave the state out of it.
Gay marriage counters human tradition.
G.K. Chesterton called tradition the democracy of the dead. Tradition serves neither justice nor the democracy of the living. If an institution has little positive or negative effect on society, but has traditional significance, by all means, preserve it; it's harmless. But many "traditional" institutions, like slavery and the subjection of women, have little positive to recommend them, and do great harm. When "tradition" is raised as a cry to save an embattled institution, it is a sure sign that it should be abolished.
Homosexual sex is "unnatural".
Appeals to naturalism are difficult to take seriously in a world of rapid technological and cultural change. What is the "nature" its advocates appeal to? That of the 19th century? The middle ages? The time of Jesus? Of Homer? Of Gilgamesh? etc. The standard is incoherent, inconsistently applied, and of dubious significance. But that doesn't matter here: there are plenty of instances of homosexual sex in nature. It appears likely homosexuality in humans has at least partially a genetic basis; in which case it is as "natural" as any other human behavior.
Recognizing gay marriages will lead to an increase in taxes, since these couples will be eligible for state benefits.
This argument is raised in tax-hating Texas. It is honest, at least. But partially beside the point: legislatures can always lower benefits to married couples to maintain constant overall spending. What this argument really acknowledges is that currently, the is a net transfer of wealth from gays to straights through discriminatory laws based on heterosexual-only marriage. On the grounds of justice and equal application of the law, this is really an argument for gay marriage.
Gay marriage will open a slippery slope to marrying any N objects, living or dead.
This is perhaps the dumbest slippery slope argument I have ever heard. Slippery slopes are weak arguments to begin with; they lack a mechanism, and merely extrapolate a trend outside of the data. In reality, each policy decision is its own debate, connected to others certainly, but not predetermined (else we wouldn't even be having this debate; it too would be part of some other policy's "slope"). Perhaps someday some crackpot judge will hold that gay marriage sets a precedent for nonconsensual marriage, or incest, or bestial marriages. Let us call this simply Horror X, and posit that the vast majority of society opposes Horror X for specific reasons (including, perhaps, genetic disadvantages of incest, or a rejection of nonconsensual sex as repugnant, or of bestiality as animal cruelty---not to mention a misapplication of the concept of a legal person). Whatever the reasons---and public revulsion to the bottom of the slope is key to the critique, so there must be a basis for that revulsion---they will be specific to Horror X, the Horror will be rejected through public condemnation, appeal, or legislation, and the whole thing will be over in two newscycles. The slippery slope doesn't exist in this case.
Gay marriage harms children
This is a matter for research, and for counterfactuals at that, since there is not yet gay marriage. This is potentially a real argument against gay marriage, but it is an unlikely one. Replace "gays" with group Y (which might be blacks, or people under 30, or people with below average IQs). Would a scientific finding that children raised by married couples of group Y do worse than average children justify banning group Y from marriage---or from raising children? (Bear in mind that if the question is whether to allow marriage, and the counter argument rests on childrearing, the implicitily advocated policy is a ban on childrearing altogether; if not, then one must show children of married couples of group Y do worse than children of unmarried couples of group Y, which is a priori very unlikely). I think phrased in general, ethical terms, most of us would agree that it would be a grave injustice to prevent people from realizing a key life goal (marriage and childrearing) for such crude utilitarian calculations. Put a different way, the gap in child happiness would have to be vast to justify restricting the institution of marriage. Indeed, I doubt any gap small enough to require serious social science to uncover would be too small to justify such a move. (Another question is what counts as a "harm". One imagines some critics mean that children may grow up gay, and hence be "harmed". That is a repugnant argument.)
Gay marriage undermines heterosexual marriage
An unusual argument, which at first I took for the non sequitur it ultimately is. But what people who make this argument refer to is something truly bizarre: the notion that marriage is primarily a social sanction for restraining male promiscuity which succeeds only to the extent that it is respected by heterosexual men. If including gays in the marriage institution tarnishes it in the eyes of heterosexual men, they will feel no compunction in cheating on their wives. I find this hard to believe as an empirical model of marriage and fidelity. I also find it hard to believe including gays in marriage would have such effects on heterosexual men's views or behavior. Finally, I see no reason alternative, primarily religious institutions could not take up the slack, if such a slack existed. Finally, were I to accept this argument, I would see the problem not as gays, but unfaithful straight men. Why should gays pay the price for their failings? Moreover, wouldn't gay marriage, on the same basis, reduce gay infidelity?
Gay marriage undermines the societal commitment to procreate
I don't think this is true. Gays nowadays tend to avoid heterosexual marriages, unlike in the past, so I don't think there will be noticeable effects on the fertility rate. But if there were, great: another tool to fight overpopulation, and one that makes people happier to boot, by allowing them to live as they wish to live. Seriously, the urge to procreate is awfully strong (fertility clinic, anyone?) It existed long before language, laws, or marriage, and is unlikely to vanish when marriage changes.
Court-ordered gay marriage is undemocratic
Yes, it is. So was court-ordered desegregation, so is the free speech protection of the Constitution ("Congress"---the people's representatives---"shall pass no law..."), so is anything else the Constitution forbids representatives from doing. The reason is simple, and well-known to most users of this argument: minority rights and civil liberties need protection from the majority, whose passions, to invoke Madison, may threaten those liberties. The genius of the Constitution is its effort to balance liberty and democracy. What critics are really saying is that gays don't deserve protection, either because they are not "really" a minority (e.g., they choose to be gay, and somehow that disqualifies them), or because marriage, for some reason, should be controlled completely by simple majority rule. The first argument is offensive: whether gays choose to be gays or not, they deserve the protections any other minority or majority group, popular or unpopular, enjoys (people choose to be Democrats and Baptists; would it be right for the state to discriminate against them?). The second argument is difficult to take seriously, since I doubt even the people who make it would like to follow it to its logical conclusions.
God will punish the nation for allowing gay marriage
A silly argument, but then aren't most of these? The best answer I can give, in all seriousness, is the following link.
Gay marriage will make more people gay
Uh, no. And even if it did, so what?
****
Anyone have any arguments I've missed? When every argument is unpersuasive, they can be a bit hard to remember. Suffice it to say, I doubt I've ever heard a public debate that was so one sided.
Postscript: Some conservatives can see the writing on the wall (gay marriage is inevitable), and say they might as well accept it. They pretty much admit what I'm saying here: the arguments against gay marriage are either weak, or appeals to an ethic whose time has passed.
*Incorporating religious beliefs in the original position is more problematic, and would involving weighing the p(religious opposition to gay marriage)*(Psychic cost of gay marriage to religous people) against two terms, p(gay and desiring marriage)*(benefits of marriage) + p(belief in moral imperative to permit gay marriage)*(psychic benefit of gay marriage). Although I do not want to ignore this problem (as most reader of Rawls seem to do), I think in this case the latter terms clearly outweigh the former.
