A Secular Case Against Gay Marriage?

New York Governor Dave Paterson made some curious remarks on the gay marriage issue yesterday. The gist of them, so far as I can understand it, was that (a) opponents of gay marriage are motivated by their religion, and (b) the present opposition is vitiated by failure to speak out against the hell on earth (“beaten and often brutalized”) that homosexual college students endured before … well, before some unspecified event that enlightened everyone and made it all stop. Gov. Paterson’s accession, perhaps.

It’s all pretty incoherent, but that’s our Gov. for you. It did get me thinking, though, in the secular-right context, of the non-religious conservative case against gay marriage. There certainly is one, composed of some the following elements, mixed in proportions according to personal taste.

(1) Anti-Minoritarianism. The majority has rights, too.

(2) The social recognition of committed heterosexual bonding has been a constant for thousands of years. No-one of a conservative inclination wants to mess lightly with that. Counter-arguments like “so was slavery” are unconvincing, as the occasional slights suffered by homosexual couples are microscopic by comparison with the injustice of human beings buying and selling other human beings. Gay marriage proponents make much of the cruelty and injustices of the past. I must say, though, being old enough to remember some of that past, I am unimpressed.  I was in college in the early 1960s. There were homosexual students, and nobody minded them. They seemed perfectly happy. Certainly they were not “beaten and brutalized”; and if they had been, I assume the ordinary laws of assault and battery would have come into play. I can recall even further back, known homosexual couples keeping house together in my provincial English home town in the 1950s. People made jokes about it, but nobody bothered them — though sodomy was illegal in England at the time! I don’t think private consensual acts should be illegal; but that aside, I don’t see much wrong with the mid-20th-century dispensation, based as it was on the great and splendid Anglo-Saxon principle of minding your own business.

(3) There really is a slippery slope here. Once marriage has been redefined to include homosexual pairings, what grounds will there be to oppose futher redefinition — to encompass people who want to marry their ponies, their sisters, or their soccer team? Are all private contractual relations for cohabitation to be rendered equal, or are some to be privileged over others, as has been customary in all times and places? If the latter, what is wrong with heterosexual pairing as the privileged status, sanctified as it is by custom and popular feeling?

(4) If you have a cognitively-challenged underclass, as every large nation has, you need some anchoring institutions for them to aspire to; and those institutions should have some continuity and stability. Heterosexual marriage is a key such institution. In a society in which nobody had an IQ below 120, homosexual marriage might be plausible. In the actual societies we have, other considerations kick in.

(5) Human nature exists, and has fixed characteristics. We are not infinitely malleable. Human society and human institutions need to “fit” human nature, or at least not go too brazenly against the grain of it. Homophobia seems to be a rooted condition in us. It has been present always and everywhere, if only minimally (and unfairly — there has always been a double standard here) in disdain for “the man who plays the part of a woman.” There has never, anywhere, at any level of civilization, been a society that approved egalitarian (i.e. same age, same status) homosexual bonding. This tells us something about human nature — something it might be wisest (and would certainly be conservative-est) to leave alone.

(6) There is a thinness in the arguments for gay marriage that leaves one thinking the proponents are not so much for something as against something. How many times have you heard that gay marriage is necessary so that gay people will not be hindered in visiting a hospitalized partner? But if hospitals have such rules — a thing I find hard to believe in this PC-whipped age — the rules can be changed, by legislation if necessary. What need to overturn a millennial institution for such trivial ends?

No thoughtful, humane person wishes any harm to homosexuals; and if harm is done, it can and should be punished under long-standing laws. Let people live and love as they want. Human nature is what it is, though, and no-one of a conservative outlook can take lightly an attempt to carry out a radical overhaul of a key human institution, in a direction pointed directly at widespread (though I think normally mild) human emotions of disdain and disgust.

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162 Responses to A Secular Case Against Gay Marriage?

  1. Jim C. says:

    Although I admire Mr. Derbyshire’s contribution here, the best secular argument against gay marriage I have seen is at (scroll down to July 29):

    http://www.gideonsblog.blogspot.com/2003_07_01_gideonsblog_archive.html#105952165206390107

  2. Carlo says:

    This discussion is being continued here:

    http://secularright.org/wordpress/?p=1963

  3. A-Bax says:

    So few conservatives here on the Secular Right….you’d think it was the Secular Left!

    Gay marriage is a bad joke – I’d be laughing if it wasn’t being imposed by fiat and supported so fervently by overly-emotional pseudo intellectuals.

  4. Michael says:

    No argument against ‘gay marriage’ either secular or religious would be complete without including its relationship to the raising of children. The nurturing of the next generation really is the essence of it.

  5. Pepe says:

    It strikes me that each and every one of the arguments presented here could have been used to support the laws banning interracial marriage, and in fact they WERE used.

    So I would put forth a new challenge:
    Justify the banning of gay marraige without appealing to religion AND without putting forth arguments that were used in the past to justify banning interracial marriage. Until I see such a justification, I have to conclude that those wanting to ban gay marriage don’t have a leg to stand on.

    FWIW, I don’t favor legalizing gay marriage particularly (though I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it if it were legal), but I’ve never seen a rational argument against it (except for the argument that the state should recognize NO marriages, period, only civil unions, and those that want to call their civil union a marriage can simply declare themselves to be married or go to a non-government entity (a church, a captain on a ship, whatever) to get “married”).

  6. Soul Searcher says:

    Notice that the prolific Jason Malloy of GNXP has already made clear to Ron Gunhame of the Inductivist blog some of the heartening empirical statistics on gay promiscuity and its relation to gay marriage here, to which he has not yet responded.

    In particular, Jason finds in his analysis of the GSS data:
    “I have no idea if there is a faulty assumption somewhere in here, but at face value, this data shows the sexual behavior of homosexual males is actually nearly identical to straight white male sexual behavior. Most shockingly: gay males are just as likely to have one lifetime sexual partner as straight males!

    But in support of the counter-intuitive finding that gay males are just as monogamous as straight males, gay males are also equally likely to have 2-5 lifetime sexual partners. In fact the numbers are similar through the whole midrange, only becoming somewhat higher at the super-promiscuous tail.

    Promiscuity is more predicted by race, intelligence, and religion than sexual orientation.

    Jewish people and people with average and below average intelligence have more sexual partners than gay males.”

    Further,

    “[I]t also undercuts the opposite argument, as used in this post, that gays are more promiscuous so they shouldn’t be allowed to make a farce of marriage by taking meaningless, disingenuous vows of commitment.

    If these numbers are correct, gay men have little more inclination to sleep around than straight men on average, and just like straight people, the majority of gay people have only one or a small handful of sex partners in their lifetime.

    On the other hand gay males are still more promiscuous at the tail, and gay promiscuity is still more conducive to the spread of sexually transmitted disease than straight promiscuity. So the marginal benefit of gay marriage on society by its potential to effect this minority within the minority is still positive.

    Further, as the WSJ article indicates, a little tolerance that costs society nothing greatly improves and normalizes the lives of gay people themselves, by further eroding their assigned caste status. I’ve seen no compelling argument for why their interests don’t count, and why they don’t deserve equal human respect just because they are “handicapped”.

    If we were in Japan, the same people would be defending the poor treatment of the Burakumin, just because it’s “tradition”. When the only defense of prejudice is that the prejudiced majority deserve their traditions, then blind conformity has replaced reason and compassion.”

    There is such a thing as the gay lobby, and many of them do want to push acceptance of their alernative lifestyle against majoritarian social mores. However, I’m sure most will agree that fact shouldn’t bear at all on the strength of their case for equal civil rights. I’d also like to believe the Right is more capable than the oft-doctrinaire Left of updating their political positions when the social data comes in. For the limited number of gays who do want to credibly commit to the institution of marriage, there is little evidence that there are any discomfiting statistics that would compromise the principles many conservatives believe are fundamental to the reasoning behind state subsidization of the institution, such fostering a safe environment for the raising of children by encouraging limited promiscuity.

    The Left will continue to use this rather easy moral question as an ideological bludgeon in arguments targeting our youth, so the sooner gay marriage is acknowledge as protected, the better.

  7. William Malmstrom says:

    @Snippet
    Will no one say it?! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!

    It is conclusively proven that if gays are allowed to marry, Churches will be forced to marry cats to toasters!!

  8. Soul Searcher says:

    Even if one grants that there was an evolutionary purpose to the disgust many feel when contemplating homosexual intercourse, the case also needs to made exactly why that reasoning is overwhelmingly compelling in our modern environment, otherwise it is just another rehashing of the common naturalistic fallacy. I’d venture that disgust may have served to discourage heterosexual men from partaking in hedonistic sexual gratification amongst themselves rather than full-fledgedly pursuing opposite sex, but I’d also think modern society already requires more than that amount of self-control from its members. And I’m not sure whether it’s even clear that penetrative anal sex was the preferred method of sexual congress amongst homosexuals all throughout history.

  9. Pender says:

    Bradlaugh :

    Bradlaugh

    What I’m trying to explore here is whether there is a secular-right case against gay marriage.
    There certainly ought to be.

    Seems to me that you’re rather putting the cart before the horse. Why “ought” there be a secular conservative reason to oppose marriage equality? Because you don’t believe in marriage equality? Maybe in that case what should give is your beliefs, not the logic that contradicts them.

    When people as smart as John Derbyshire try to come up with secular arguments for something they believe and can do no better than the tortured effort above, it’s time for them to question their beliefs. (“Anti-minoritarianism”? Really? Would that justify banning Jewish people from marrying?) Conservatism does not absolutely oppose change, it simply scrutinizes it. And when that scrutiny is forced to admit to the absence of decent arguments, conservatism should embrace change. We’ve gone slowly. We’ve watched other countries and four American states adopt marriage equality. Nothing bad is happening. We’ve considered; now it’s time to act.

  10. biz marquis de sade says:

    @Ron Guhname:

    “It is possible that gay marriage might delay and decrease the percent of men getting married, and it’s connected to modern fatherhood.”

    This is probably empirically true.

    Certainly there are millions of gays and lesbians that have gotten married to an opposite sex spouse (usually due to family social pressure to do so) had children and eventually came to terms with the fact that they just can’t fake it any longer (life is too short, etc.) and get divorces and then go on to lead gay and lesbian lives with a same sex partner. Is this what you’re hoping to avoid, that gays won’t stay in sham marriages and won’t produce offspring for the motherland?

    I’m trying to determine what Ron’s gold standard for relationships is all about. It certainly isn’t raw birthrates. If fatherhood (AKA birth rates) is the gold standard of excellence than civilization itself has been moving in entirely the wrong direction. If you look at a ranked list of countries by fertility, all the poorest nations of the world come out on top and most developed near the bottom. Why? Children in the third world are a form of social security whereas in the first world Children they’re solidly a liability (if a very socially important and very meaningful liability).

    Plenty of straight people don’t actually want to have children, for all sorts of reasons. Given that the planet has a finite quantity of resources I can’t help but see this as a welcome development for our civilization.

  11. Chad says:

    Great article! Nothing more entertaining than the unique perspective of a white, middle-aged, suburban, straight man. I learned so much!

  12. tz says:

    What I don’t understand is why the government has ANY reason to define what is a a sacred institution. And contracts should apply uniformly (and divorce should be harder, not easier than bankruptcy). What about two gay siblings – would the gay marriage allowance apply or would the ban on incest?

    For things like health insurance and benefits, why should a man be able to put his gay lover on his plan, but not his sister or for that matter his child niece who might need it more?

    The random bits of what we call law which are really the whims of the legislature or judges cannot make anything legitimate, only legal. If anyone really wants small government, it should be too small, or too remote (at the opposite of the subsidiarity pole from the family) to bother with marriage.

    Instead it is a secular, state religion. It either sanctifies gay marriages or says they are profane. But sacred and profane are terms which ought not belong to the state, but “separation of church and state” never seems to mean the government should withdraw from anything, only the church.

  13. Mike says:

    Chad,

    Here’s a little help courtesy of a freshman logic course: The circumstantial ad hominem fallacy:

    1. Person A (Bradlaugh) makes claim X (gay marriage is a bad idea).
    2. Person B (Chad) makes an attack on A’s circumstances.
    3. Therefore X is false (and gay marriage is a good idea).

  14. TCG says:

    Excellent post. Nothing else needed to say.

  15. JohnB says:

    What gay marriage advocates want is one thing, and one thing only: they want the government, speaking for society as a whole, to acknowledge that homosexuality is every bit as normal and natural as heterosexuality. It’s all about the symbolism; everything else is rhetoric. That’s why gay activists are unwilling to accept legal compromises that would secure for gays the various benefits that keep getting mentioned — yet they would willing to see the government withdraw benefits from heterosexual couples, as long as homosexuals and heterosexuals both ended up being treated equally. So if I, as an atheist, believe that there is something wrong with homosexuality — not necessarily that it’s immoral, but simply that it is in some important way undesirable — then that gives me a non-religious reason to oppose gay marriage.

    Here is an experiment: find a heterosexual supporter of gay marriage who has, or plans to have, a family, and ask him if it would bother him if all of his children turned out to be gay. Even if he is a true believer there is a good chance he will have trouble choking out the politically correct answer, which is that of course it wouldn’t bother him. Not at all! No, not in the slightest!!! Because when it comes right down to what really matters, most people recognize that there is something wrong with homosexuality, even if, in our modern age, the language necessary to articulate this fact is not readily available. But if you can openly acknowledge that you think there is something wrong with homosexuality, then it follows that, while gays should not be persecuted, we shouldn’t be forced to celebrate their condition either.

  16. JohnB says:

    So I would put forth a new challenge:
    Justify the banning of gay marraige without appealing to religion AND without putting forth arguments that were used in the past to justify banning interracial marriage.

    Pepe:

    Historically, the institution of marriage in the Unites States was always been understood in exactly the same way as it was understood elsewhere in Western society: as a union between one man and one woman. It was always understood by all concerned that marriage between blacks and whites was possible, so if you wanted to avoid this you had to write laws explicitly forbidding it.

    And yet, oddly, those same evil white bigots never wrote a single law forbidding two people of the same sex from getting married to each other. Why? Because it never occurred to anyone that such a thing was possible! Because the institution of same sex marriage simply did not exist, and, historically, had never existed.

    That’s the difference. It’s one thing to deny access to an ancient and universal institution to which people would otherwise clearly be entitled. To deny access to an institution which has never existed, by refusing to bring that institution into existence, is something else entirely. The two situations just aren’t comparable.

  17. JohnB says:

    “…the institution of marriage in the Unites States was always been understood…”

    Gawd, spellcheckers have crippled my mind!

  18. Danilo says:

    JohnB: It’s just not true. Allowing gays equal rights is a question of democracy and equal protection. You can’t legislate people’s feelings toward minorities. The “legal compromise” that would give gays all the benefits of marriage but not the name, well the UK did it but knowing Americans they too disorganized and just too egalitarian and big-hearted to pull that one off. And marriage itself changes nothing in terms of social acceptance – it’s the presence of unafraid gay people that did that. Consider that the US since 1970 has been one of the most open societies for out gay people in the world. Even in the most conservative US states such as Texas or Mississippi where there is no debate on gay marriage, gays have been adopting children and forming out families for decades – something that would shock Scandinavian or Spanish people or others considered more “politically correct” on gay rights. Dallas, Texas is a popular city for lesbian moms with kids. South Africa on the other hand has full gay marriage rights. Hungary with its civil unions is far ahead of Texas legally. But that doesn’t mean that most South Africans or Hungarians accept gays as individuals or as couples more than Americans do – quite the reverse, in South Africa lesbians are often targeted for “corrective rape”. Ultimately it’s not about acceptance, it’s about American individualism. I (and most Americans) may not privately accept or endorse Islam as an acceptable practice, but I refuse to tell immigrant women how they should dress or what they should think because I am a citizen of a country with religious freedom. It’s like the torture debate – it’s not about how good or bad they are, it’s about our standards for who we are. Gays are hostages to majority straight power – you can either choose to do the honorable thing and treat us well or you can be cowards and destroy the lives of people who are not numerous enough or politically powerful enough to fight back.

    Your thought experiment is a canard. It is never easy for a parent when the child comes out – much less if they all did. As a gay person I would be very disappointed if any of my kids came out as gay and outraged if they all did. Why? For the same reasons as any parent. Because I want grandchildren (which are just EASIER to get if you are straight) and because I want them to have the easiest, most successful lives possible. It is objectively harder to have a successful life as a gay person than as a straight person. Part of that is dealing with a ton of prejudice and government intrusion into your life. That will pass. Another part of it is the unavoidable difficulty of being the 3-4% in a 96-97% hetero society, however generous it may be. It is never good to be small and weak and dependent on the goodwill of others. But that is the nature of things. Coming out is always a crisis for everyone in the family. The difference for an enlightened family is that we get through it by sharing our respective hopes and disappointmnents without rubbing salt in the wound and compounding the kid’s suffering. Living a successful life is making the most of what nature has given us – and getting equal rights for equal taxes, equal control over the rights and responsabilities of our relationships, equal pay for equal work.

  19. The essential nature of marriage has nothing to do with property but everything to do with breeding successive generations to pay the Ponzi Scheme that is Social Security.

    I mean, Good God, doesnt anyone see the benefit in benefits, IRS and otherwise, reserved for those that at least make an attempt at procreation and perpetuation of the human species?

  20. Marcus says:

    “There certainly is one, composed of some the following elements, mixed in proportions according to personal taste.”

    Illogic is like the spam in that Monty Python sketch — changing the proportions of the dish doesn’t address the fact that I don’t want any.

    Looking at the varieties of spam in more detail, we find:

    1. “Anti-Minoritarianism. The majority has rights, too.”

    The linked essay is a hodge-podge of “rights” claims, from the reasonable (the right not to have one’s money spent to accomodate people who can’t be bothered to learn English after coming to America) to the absurd (the “right” to not be offended). Alas for this argument, it rests squarely upon the latter, which is to say it rests on nonsense.

    2. The social recognition of committed heterosexual bonding has been a constant for thousands of years. No-one of a conservative inclination wants to mess lightly with that. Counter-arguments like “so was slavery” are unconvincing, as the occasional slights suffered by homosexual couples are microscopic by comparison with the injustice of human beings buying and selling other human beings.”

    The argument about relative degrees is irrelevant. If accepted, it leads to all sorts of obviously preposterous results (e.g. you have no redress if your pocket is picked, because your slight is… what’s the word I want… ah, microscopic! compared to that of someone who lost their life savings to a con artist).

    The list goes on to the slippery-slope fallacy, the notion that we ought to embrace stupidity in order to accommodate the stupid (presumably, points 2 and 3 are so placed in order to provide sufficient padding between mutually exclusive points 1 and 4), etc. However, I already had a headache before I started reading this, and I don’t feel the need to aggravate it further.

  21. kipp says:

    @JohnB

    JohnB,

    I can’t really expect it of your are Derbyshire, but there are books written on the history of homosexual relationships that are well researched and lay out a rather eye-opening history concerning the history of same-sex coupling. It amazes me that someone as bookish as John Derbyshire has apparently never even considered that there might be some scholarship in this area worthy of his attention – especially when he would laugh an amateur math historian out of the room for making sweeping statements similar to “there’s never been a law against gay marriage because no one ever thought of it before” without actually knowing much about the history in this area.

    I imagine both you and he dismiss this research out-of-hand as the product of a homosexual agenda without even assessing it thoughtfully – but maybe you should explore it just a tiny bit before proclaiming that gay coupling (and even child-rearing) are recent inventions.

  22. kipp says:

    ugg – typos: “I can’t really expect it of you or Derbyshire”

  23. Danilo says:

    Traditionally marriage is the transfer of property (a woman) from a man (her father) to another man (her husband). In ancient societies like Greece only Greek men were citizens. Women, like slaves, were the property of citizens and were there to bear children as more workers for the field, and were an important source of sexual pleasure among many legal and acceptable sources of sexual pleasure for the citizen (male and female prostitutes, cortesans, his male and female slaves). Often a Greek or Roman had a wife for children, and a mistress for love. There was the non-egalitarian institution of pederasty but it wasn’t really a romantic relationship and both partners usually went on to marry women. On the other hand, there were adult male couples who lived together and who were at times “tolerated” like in your English village and at times celebrated, like Achilles+Patroclus. But there was no gay marriage movement because marriage was defined as a citizen owning non-citizen female property, there was no institution for an egalitarian relationship between two citizens. Relationships between two women were not considered legal or illegal because women were not citizens. It’s only really in the 20th century that women’s social status was elevated to that similar to men and marriage began to be considered a freely chosen, egalitarian relationship between two adult citizens, closer to the dynamic of the classical romantic gay couple anyway.

  24. PSUdain says:

    ‘Homophobia seems to be a rooted condition in us. It has been present always and everywhere, if only minimally (and unfairly — there has always been a double standard here) in disdain for “the man who plays the part of a woman.” There has never, anywhere, at any level of civilization, been a society that approved egalitarian (i.e. same age, same status) homosexual bonding. This tells us something about human nature — something it might be wisest (and would certainly be conservative-est) to leave alone.’

    This is patently untrue. One need look no further than our own continent to see couples composed of people who were what we would now classify as LGB or T. Many, if not most, native american tribes respected and revered their Two-Spirit people. (Two spirit is a modern term for this old societal institution; you can find a good starting point on Wikipedia.)

    But if you go out beyond that, many African tribes (pre-colonization) had a similar societal role for people who are called LGBT today. Again and again when we look outside of western tradition we can find it.

    Well, actually I should correct myself. We CAN find the same thing within western tradition. To quote some historical background from Daniel A. Helminiak’s book on the Bible and homosexuality,

    ‘A millennium ago, Western society was rather indifferent to homosexuality and even supportive of it. A gay subculture thrived. Clerics and nuns wrote love letters and poetry to one another. All of Europe delighted in the romance of Richard the Lion-Hearted of England and Philip, the king of France. Students at the newly founded Christian universities regularly debated the pros and cons of straight versus gay love. And no law codes in Europe (except in Visigoth Spain) included prohibitions of homosexual acts.

    ‘By the middle of the eleven hundreds, things began to change. Peter Cantor campaigned for condemnation of gay love affairs among the clergy. Contrary to all precedence, he restricted the term sodomy to refer to same-sex acts…’

    I think you get the picture. If you still need some more remedial work, have a look at the late Yale historian John Boswell’s book about gay people in western civilization, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century.

    I simply could not stand idly by while the historical record was not merely distorted by completely contradicted in what was supposed to be a ‘logical’ argument based on ‘fact’.

  25. Kamila says:

    @Stephen
    Well said, Stephen.

  26. sg says:

    Before there were DNA tests for paternity, marriage served the social purpose of connecting fathers and their support to their children. As an extension, wives also were supported. However that was secondary. Now that marriage is no longer necessary to legally obligate parents to support children, it has morphed into a contract between two individuals who do not need support from the other. A dual income couple really doesn’t need the protections originally established to help minor children. In the old days, children, sons, supported parents in old age. Now via socialized programs all children support all elders. The only real reason for gay marriage is to gain the surviving spouse benefit from social security and medicare. All other gains can be secured through contract laws. As for the silly hospital rules allowing spouses only, please, dear hospitals, change you policies. Any hospital administrator can do that with a pen.

  27. Danilo says:

    “The only real reason for gay marriage is to gain the surviving spouse benefit from social security and medicare.”

    Not true SG. First of all, there are hundreds of thousands of American kids being raised by same-sex couples TODAY so there are a lot of issues regarding custody and parental rights that I don’t know about because I don’t have kids. But among just childless couples probably the big three sub-issues are: inheritance, taxes, immigration rights. There is no way I can make a private contract with my partner that will sponsor him for US citizenship. There is no way I can make a private contract that will give us the taxes of a het couple. There is no way that we can write a contract that will stop me from paying HUGE inheritance taxes on my own house in the midst of grieving.

    And there are many, many other benefits.
    It’s a big lie that you can make up with contracts. The married status permeates our daily lives in insidious ways. And the US is too disorganized to create real equal federal civil unions and actually get them implemented as such

  28. sg says:

    I think Danilo is right that “married status permeates our daily lives in insidious ways” However, marriage means union. That union is the child. Marriage is to protect children not adults. It is not to protect them from taxes, or hassle or anything else. Marriage law is to protect children from abandonment. Marriage is a cultural artifact that many heterosexuals realized did not serve them, and therefore they just cohabit. Now that there are adequate laws that protect children, marriage is no longer necessary for either heterosexuals nor homosexuals, especially since a homosexual relationship produces no union (child).

  29. JohnC says:

    There seems little point dealing with Mr Derbyshire’s spectacularly weak arguments on gay marriage when the same person can also write (in 2003): “I described myself as “a mild, tolerant homophobe.” This means that I do not like homosexuality …”

    This blog is not a “conservative argument” about gay marriage, but a set of rationalisations for a pre-existing personal attitude of “disdain and disgust”, gratuitously projected onto the population at large, for good measure.

  30. Danilo says:

    Thanks for dodging all my points about benefits, SG.. so you are doing a monologue rather than a debate

  31. willybobo says:

    Shouldn’t the conservative position be that by default we don’t need a law that restricts individual choice unless there is a pragmatic reason for limiting it (such as harm to others)? I view the burden as resting squarely on those that want to proscribe same sex unions to create a compelling argument as to why the government has a pragmatic interest in limiting it. I don’t see any pragmatic reason in Bradlaugh’s argument, only some ideological ones based on principles that are, as many commenters point out, far from consensus governing philosophies historically (eg, when has ‘slippery slope avoidance’ ever been a widely agreed upon framework for governance in the US?).

  32. John G says:

    I think I’ve lurched into the solution to the vexing issue of same-sex “marriage.” Same-sex marriage is a four-sided triangle, i.e., it’s a contradiction in terms. Can’t we just call it arrangement-of-compatible-roommates-of-the-same-sex-whose-nexus-is-buggery or something like that, instead of marriage?

  33. Jon says:

    Stephen, Rob, Danillo and Paul are all right. Support marriage of same-sex and different-sex couples.

  34. PSUdain says:

    Another argument that I feel should be answered is that of “Children are better served by being raised by a mother and father.” Frankly, the best available data simply does not bear that out. To quote one of the authors of the study,

    The vast consensus of all the studies shows that children of same-sex parents do as well as children whose parents are heterosexual in every way. In some ways children of same-sex parents actually may have advantages over other family structures.

    So, can we cut it with the crap about LGBT people being less fit parents, now?

  35. Ron Guhname says:

    @ Soul Searcher

    At my blog, I show with GSS data that the mean for lifetime sexual partners for gay men is 2.6 times that of straight men.

    http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2009/05/mean-lifetime-sexual-partners-for-gay.html

  36. Steve Roth says:

    The bulk of your arguments seem to say that conservative choices are better because they are more conservative. While those choices may in fact be better, the circularity of the logic deployed here does little to demonstrate that.

  37. Danilo says:

    Also when you talk about “revulsion towards homosexual acts” you are imposing an Anglo-Saxon vision of homosexuality. Not all cultures live homosexuality in the same way. Here in the Mediterranean until they adopted the English word “gay” they didn’t classify people as “gay” and straight” like in English. Rather there was a word for boy or man who would allow himself to be penetrated by another man – this is “ricchione” in southern Italian or “zamel” in Maghreb Arabic. He is seen as morally weak and easily to manipulate or use. In some regions there is a separate word for an active homosexual man, sometimes he was just called “man”. This is a very old distinction. In ancient Greece a man who was the receptive partner in sex could lose his citizenship because, like a woman, he was lacking in the virtues of citizenship. There was no revulsion at all in Mediterranean cultures toward the “active” partner. Even now when my Arab friends come out their families, they want to know if they are the “active” partner – therefore not “gay”, i.e. they are just “men” with zamels. The modern “gay couple” is now also present in Mediterranean countries (they use the English word “gay”) and is seen as more egalitarian, in the Anglo-saxon model. But you can’t generalize this “revulsion” to all heterosexual people in all societies.

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  39. Jay says:

    I don’t think people are opposed to gay couples getting marital benefits; they’re concerned about the far-reaching implications of redefining marriage. This is why people seem to be much more supportive of civil unions/domestic partnerships than gay marriage. Truth is, there is absolutely no overriding premise why we should allow “gay marriage”, even if we agree same-sex couples should have some of the benefits of marriage.

    I don’t look at state-administered, taxpayer-funded benefits as inalienable rights. I think the state is right to regulate these, and saying they should relax one component of their regulation (because irrespective of what anyone says, there are more limitations on marriage than just gender), should be based on more than “well, if they get lollipops, we want one too”.

    The truth is, I’d rather give benefits to a man with a wife and three kids than a gay couple with three cats. I know there’s some overlap, and I can deal with the occasional over-inclusiveness as a technicality, but I don’t think that’s a reason to enshrine it into law.

  40. Carlo says:

    @Jay: “Truth is, there is absolutely no overriding premise why we should allow “gay marriage”, even if we agree same-sex couples should have some of the benefits of marriage.”

    I disagree. There is such an overriding premise, namely that people should be treated equally under the law. As it stands, LGBT people cannot participate in one of society’s most sacred and important institutions, or have their partnerships and families recognized by the government. As things stand, this tells us that we’re second-class citizens, and we will always be so until SSM is legalized. Or to put it in your words, if they get lollipops, then absolutely YES we should get lollipops too. Unless, of course, there’s a compelling governmental purpose for giving only straight couples the lollipops, but if there is one I’ve yet to hear it.

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  42. jcva6387 says:

    The only reason gays want marriage rights is for the same reason they’ve always wanted special class status and protections – to legislate acceptance, but more tellingly, make themselves feel more “normal”. Sounds simplistic on the face of it, but if you look at how everything has cascaded from the first organizations for gay rights, you can see that never is the initial goal enough, even after it’s earned. First, it was simply “stay out of our bedrooms and leave us alone”. We don’t want anything else. Then came “Remove homosexuality from the list of mental abberations”. We’re all normal. Then it was “You can’t not hire or rent to me because I’m gay”. Your personal disdain is irrelevent. Then came “I should be allowed in an organization or group opposed to the gay lifestyle – i.e. Boy Scouts. You’re taking government money – I should be allowed. Then came legislation that gave protected class status and now anything remotely derogatory (unless said by gays themselves) was considered hate speech or homophobia. Next was property and legal protections similar to common law, in the form of civil unions. We just want wills, insurance, consent rights, children, etc. And now, finally, they want to break down thousands of years of human sociological (not even necessarily religious) norms, and force humanity to accept them as “married”.

    There is only ONE secular argument that matters, and cannot be refuted no matter what baloney or pseudo-science is called upon – man and woman, whether created or evolved, are made in all ways physically (and in most ways emotionally) for each other, and are complimentary in a way that homosexuals can never be. Any other sexual or intimacy-driven proclivity is an aberation, whether it’s mental, genetic, or simply a choice. That does not, in any way shape or form, discount the fact that many heterosexuals practice sexual forms similar to homosexuals. The difference is that they do this in spite of their heterosexual nature, and not because of it. Their emotional and physical attraction to their spouse or lover is still within the context of heterosexuality, even if their sexual act is not.

    The only reason this has gone as far as it has is not because more people accept it, but rather most people do not spend their time in constant conflict or activism, and it’s only by the goodness of these people (or their ambivalence) that homosexuals have gotten the rights they have. Even 50 years ago, their cases would have been lost in any court in the land.

  43. Ronan says:

    Two years ago, five San Diego fire fighters were forced to march in a gay pride parade by their butch looking lesbian supervisor-under threat of firing if they did not comply with this “divine edict” These five white fireman were subject to vile sexual harrasment during the course of the parade. Eventually they sued and won. The court left opened the issue whether the fireman’s free speech rights were violated. The City of San Diego serioulsy thought about challenging the verdict.

    This is the slippery slope that American society will-already is-going down. Expect to gt worse. A police state will be set up to force heterosexuals to particiapte in the homosexaul cultural sphere. Keep your kids out of school for gay day and you be preosecuted for hate speech.

    Over the long term homosexuals may regret that they ever agitated for gay marriage.

  44. Ronan says:

    What is the probability that there will be a slippery slope if homosexaul marriage is legalized? Homosexauls claim that there will be no slippery slope. They are being very dishonest about this. The five San Diego firemen who sued the City of San Diego were pilloried in the homosexaul media as being cowards and sissies for not enjoying their day off at the gay pride parade. The probability of a slippery slope is at least 50 percent-a lower bound I might add. This is very strong evidence of what homosexuals have in store for the majority heterosexual population right after homosexual marrige is passed in every state.

    Look no further than England if you want to get a glimpse of a future where gay marriage is legalized. A charity worker a Christian charity epressed his opposition to homosexual marrige to a co-worker. His co-worker rated him out ….to the police!!! The police paid him a visit. He was dam near put in jail. In Ireland, a famous American rock star-I think it was someone from Metallica-for making fun of homosexuals.

    The legalization of homosexual marriage will require a police state to maintain its “acceptance” among the general heterosexual population.

    Something to think about:publicly advocating polygamy can be a reason to deny a foreigner an opportuntiy to emigrate to America. Larger point:Enthusiasts for legalized homosexual marriage state without argumentation that discrimination is always wrong when they make the case for legalized homosexual marriage. But generally, enthusiast for the legalization of homosexual marriage do not beleive in this unargued for principle like the rest of the general population of America. I have yet to come across anywhere in print or on the internet any homosexual defending the rights of polygamists. This fact,by the way, punctures a big hole in the Nussbaum argument that “disgust” should play no role in informing legal theory and real world legislation.

  45. Hannon says:

    #2 Dave wrote

    “…committing the fallacy of appealing to tradition.”

    Could this be a universal and unqualified appeal to disregard tradition for its own sake? Are you suggesting there is no valid case to be made for an appeal to tradition, pertaining to this subject or any other? One must assume then that you advocate relativisim in its place. Your subsequent comments appear to clearly substantiate such an interpretation.

    If you and your cohorts cannot reconcile traditionalism, conservatism and secularism (the last being most nebulous) then “Secular Right” will continue to be a confusing misnomer.

    “In general, people tend to go with the flow.” The “flow” does not lead to higher civilization or societal advancement. Unresisted, uncontested flow tends downhill… right down the drain.

  46. neil says:

    @Snippet

    When ponies and soccer teams can sign marriage contracts, the reference to marrying them will become legitimate. Argument from tradition is a fallacy, and sighting a long tradition of heterosexual marriage is simply sighting a long tradition of bigotry against gays. You have no argument here.

  47. nobody says:

    Mark_ottowa writes:
    “I don’t get it. We’ve had gay marriage in Canada for 4 years. One fundamentalist Mormon religious cult is attempting to use it to defend their practise of polygamy but that case is expected to fail.”

    Bigotry against Mormons is acceptable. Write back when Moslem men demand their right to four wives, because I wager there won’t be any court resistance.

    “Polygamy is a voluntary social arrangement (and one that in the Mormons’ case leads to the abuse of women) but sexual orientation is innate and unchangeable, according to mainstream science.”

    Some olyamorists argue that their sexual arrangements are innate. I wager incestophiles would say the same. Likewise pedophiles…once you claim that any one sexual practise is innate, you can’t exclude any other…it would be discriminatory, bigoted, hate, etc. according to a simple extension of the current thinking.

    The same arguments being used here to support homosexual marriage can be applied to incestous marriage, polymarriage, lowering the age of consent, and so forth.

  48. nobody says:

    @Neil:
    “When ponies and soccer teams can sign marriage contracts, the reference to marrying them will become legitimate. ”

    The fact that ponies and footy teams cannot sign marriage contracts simply shows how deep ponyphobia and footballphobia are in our society. Only when any entity can marry any other entity or collection of entities and have that marriage be fully recognized by every other entity in society will we be truly free…

  49. Brandon says:

    Excellent article! I would avoid, however, the term ‘homophobia’. We shouldn’t even acknowledge the existence of such constructed terms as we then go down another slippery slope where every natural inclination becomes a categorized psychological condition.

  50. Brandon says:

    Have we reached the limits of reason? Is marriage something that needs to be rationalized? Instinct is dead. Where is our Nietzsche?

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