“The best interests of the children of the nation should always come first”
“The support and status that marriage entails is not a societal bonus for falling in love and agreeing to make a relationship lasting. That is not, of course, to say that love and romance are not an important part of marriage. But they are not the reason it has special status. If romance were the reason for supporting marriage, there would be no grounds for differentiating which relationships should be included and which should not. But that is not and never has been the nature of marriage.
. . . . What that amounts to is the kind of marriage that puts adults before children. That, in my opinion, is ultimately selfish, and far too high a price to pay simply for the token gesture of treating opposite-sex relationships and same-sex relationships identically. And it is a token gesture. Isn’t it common sense, after all, to treat different situations differently? To put it personally, I do not feel in the least bit discriminated against by the fact that I cannot marry someone of the same-sex. I understand and accept that there are good reasons for this.”
A gay Irish journalist and policy analyst comes out strongly against same-sex marriage.
Comments are closed.
I think the “it is OK to treat different things differently” card was also played by Cardinal George. This is a very concise version of it, and one with credibility because the source cannot be dismissed simply on the grounds of “hate.” I agree that this is the best argument for traditional marriage. It has nothing to do with the moral quality of homosexual acts. Whether one finds such acts permissible or not, I think most of us see no point legislating on the question.
The real question is whether we want an institution that does what marriage traditionally did. Once it has become an institution for committed lovers it loses much of its societal value. And, I hasten to add, this is not the fault of gays, gay-activists etc., but of mainstream society that has stripped marriage of its traditional value to the point where most people cannot see how homosexual and heterosexual committed relationships are, in some vital respects, two different kinds of things.
“Isn’t it common sense, after all, to treat different situations differently?”
Gay couples are suing for the repeal of what they consider to be unjust and arbitrary discrimination. If, however, their relationships are substantively different vis a vis the ostensive purpose of marriage, barring them from marrying is not arbitrary and arguably just.
Are straight and gay couples in ‘different situations’? I think the author fails to make that point.
1. Even if marriages that simply seek to recognize and reinforce romantic relationships are selfish, straight couples are nonetheless allowed to enter into them. As gay couples are also in romantic relationships, they are also in the same situation as the aforementioned straight couples. Barring them from acting ‘selfishly’ would be arbitrary.
2. The author recognizes that some gay couples do raise children. However, he then argues that such gay couples need not be allowed to marry because this is not the ‘tendency’ among gay couples, in general.
Yet such gay couples are in the same situation as most straight couples (raising children) but in a different situation from other gay couples (not raising children). If we treat different situations differently (and similar situations similarly), they should be afforded the same support and protections as the former, not the latter. Conversely some straight couples are in the same situation as most gay couples. If the purpose of marriage is to support and protect couples raising (or planning to raise) children, distinguishing marital rights on the basis of sexuality seems, at best, a poor proxy and proves ultimately arbitrary.
(Further, if the ‘tendency’ among gay couples were to change and they began raising children at rates similar to those of straight couples, would this editorial become an argument in favor of gay marriage?)
The “tendency” he speaks of is, I assume, the teleological one. Homosexual relationships, even ones involving mutual genital stimulation, do not “tend towards” child rearing in the way that heterosexual sexual unions do by the very nature of their biology. True marital acts are of the baby-making type of act (even if a baby doesn’t result in every case). Baby-making is the nature of the heterosexual act IN GENERAL, and heterosexual union is inseparable from it conceptually. And conceiving children tends towards raising them in human nature, even if in some situations children are raised by those other than biological parents.
Your arguments about “some gays being in that situation” are irrelevant to THIS argument. Two sisters may be raising a nephew (ala James and the Giant Peach, perhaps?) No one is proposing giving them marriage just because they can raise children. Single people can raise children too. But in all such situations, the child-raising is accidental. Something super-added to the relationship (for better or worse), not the very essence of the relationship.
If I marry a woman, that means exchanging the rights to our reproductive system. Accidentally, one or both of us may not be fertile. But I take her AS the mother of my [at least potential, at least imagined] children, and she takes me not just as lover, but specifically AS the [at least potential, at least imagined] father of her children, to the exclusion of all others so long as we both shall live.
I could never even imagine another man as “the mother of my children.” Like that. I could imagine him as a lover whom I happen to be raising some adopted kids with. But that’s very different.
Yes, marriage for heterosexuals opens the possibility of people who really are just seeking to recognize romantic relationships not truly open to life or based on the idea of a mutual exchange of the biological potentialities of parenthood (even if, accidentally speaking, those potentialities never actualize). But the abuse does not change the nature of the institution IN GENERAL.
Besides, if civil partnerships exist, what is being sought in “gay marriage” except a token WORD. One of the essential features of marriage, in my mind, legally at least, is the presumption of paternity of the husband for any children a woman might have until it is proven otherwise.
Would gays get this in marriage? If a lesbian got pregnant, would the other woman be presumed to be the father of the child? Does that even make sense? But if not, then in what sense is this “marriage” rather than “civil partnership.” Marriage involves, by nature, that presumption of paternity for any children who might come along (whether they ever do or not). Yet that makes no sense for same-sex couples. So how is “marriage” different than “civil partnership” for them except wanting a mere word as a token victory?
These are familiar arguments, and the fact that they are being repeated by a gay man does not make them any more convincing. I don’t see why same-sex marriage “is the kind of marriage that puts adults before children.” Many opposite-sex couples marry and don’t have children. Many opposite-sex couples have children and don’t marry. Many same-sex couples who marry will not have children, and there is no convincing evidence that the children of same-sex couples will fare less well than the children of opposite-sex parents. It was argued on Mirror of Justice that the data are not all in regarding children raised by opposite sex parents versus children raised by same-sex parents, and someone asked, “When the date is all in, what if the children of lesbian parents fare better than the children of gay male or heterosexual couples? Are you going to try to discourage everything other than lesbian marriage?”
Speaking of marriage and MOJ, there was a post the other day that read as follows: “A new study shows that, of American women with two or more children, 28% have children with multiple fathers — roughly the same percentage of American adults who have college degrees.” I read the study and some related articles, and found this: the “multiple-father type of family structure was more common among minority women, with 59 percent of African-American mothers, 35 percent of Hispanic mothers and 22 percent of white mothers reporting children with more than one father.”
Brett says above that “mainstream society that has stripped marriage of its traditional value to the point where most people cannot see how homosexual and heterosexual committed relationships are, in some vital respects, two different kinds of things.” Considering the divorce rate, the out-of-wedlock birth rate, the abortion rate, and the “multiple father” rate, if there is any value at all to opposing same-sex marriage, it seems to me it amounts to trying to bail out a sinking ship with a thimble.
Are you saying he argues ‘strongly’ in that he makes an impassioned argument or a persuasive one? If you mean the latter, I think you are mistaken, in that the argument relies on a number of beliefs that are not likely shared by people not already persuaded.
For example:
“[That is] far too high a price to pay…”
What is the price being paid? Even if purely romantic relationships are an inappropriate and selfish form of marriage, how do they detract form other marriage’s ability to support and protect child-rearing?
[In response to Pentimneto's comment, intended for me, below:]
Thanks for the clarification.
I agree that, as important as sympathy and love are, they should not motivate us to do things that are unwise. Arguments from emotion can be facile. Undoubtedly, many of the arguments in favor of gay marriage appeal to those sentiments but they are also many non-sentimental arguments. I tried to place my counter-arguments above are among those.
Similarly, tradition — no matter how old or widespread — should not be mandated at the ballot box.*
In what way does gay marriage ‘overturn’ tradition? This goes to my question about the ‘price paid’ above. Gay marriage advocates regard gay marriages as a continuation of the tradition of marriage. Obviously, others will disagree. There is not, and has never been, a single tradition that governs all of us, even if our traditions in part overlap. One group’s tradition (or the legal recognition thereof) does not overturn the other’s.
*(Not that either of us has actually attempted to mandate either sympathy or tradition. I’m just borrowing your turn-of-phrase.)
Tradition shouldn’t need to be maintained at the ballot box. But what are norms in society should probably not be overturned there, either.
As for gay marriage as a continuation of tradition, can you explain? Dan Savage, on the radio interview, criticized lesbians who get married in poofy wedding gowns, suggesting that gay marriage should *not* attempt to ape what’s thought of as traditional marriage.
Well, I’m sure we can agree that there’s more to marital tradition than poofy wedding gowns! And, insofar as Savage was criticizing lesbians, its clear that some gay couples do partake of that particular tradition anyway. Again, there has never been a single tradition that governs all of us.
As far as continuation of tradition, I don’t mean anything more than the obvious really. In marrying, gay couples are: getting licenses; having ceremonies; exchanging rings, vows; forming a partnership, a household, a family. All in the same fashion as their forebears. That forms a continuum of tradition, even if it diverges from other traditions that share a common source. Indeed, it is precisely because they value that tradition, that gay couples want to partake in it. ‘Tradition’ as such, is not abandoned, and the diverging traditions of others are not negated or overturned.
The question then becomes, does one tradition have an exclusive claim to legitimacy and legal sanction? Or is the legitimacy of these different marital traditions something to which the law should remain agnostic, treating them equally, in terms of the dispensations and obligations of civil marriage?
As for norms, I doubt very much that they could be changed at the ballot box. In fact, if a majority of people vote in favor of something new, it seems that the norm must already have changed.
Lastly…
The authors claims that :
“A wealth of research demonstrates the marriage of a man and a woman provides children with the best life outcomes…”
He immediately amplifies that:
“…children raised in marriages that stay together do best across a whole range of measures.”
Enduring marriages are indeed best for children, as much research shows. However, the author described as best specifically marriages between ‘a man and a woman’ . There is no research — let alone a wealth of research — that demonstrates this. Given that this is the single point of the author’s claim salient to the question of gay marriage, the claim is disingenuous.
“This is certainly not to cast aspersions on other families, but it does underscore the importance of marriage as an institution.”
Claiming that marriages between a man and a women are best certainly casts aspersions on other marriages, for the purposes child-rearing — that is, (according to the author) for the purpose of marriage.
In this light, I must confess that Monsignor Pope’s recent comments struck me as misplaced. His contention that Catholic support of same-sex marriage is the result of silence on the part of the Church must strike homosexual Catholics, who must surely feel that they get more than their share of attention, as odd. I think it is not the the Church has been silent, though some pastors certainly have been, but rather that in its quite frequent forays into this question, the Church’s suggestion that gay persons must be treated with respect seems much too pro forma to people who hear themselves described as intrinsically disordered.
We have crossed our lines of communication. We stand for same-sex marriage because marriage is not about consensual sexual relations or even life-long commitment, but about privileging a place for children.
If the Church were to conclude that same-sex acts were permissible in certain circumstances and that a homosexual orientation has nothing disordered about it, it’s stance on same-sex marriage would remain the same. But how many people hearing us in the public sphere would know that?
Hazemyth, I meant that he makes an impassioned argument, though it happens to be one with which I agree. On the other hand, I’ve not found the arguments I’ve heard in favor of gay marriage convincing, because, though they appeal to the emotions of sympathy and love, and appear to be in favor of compassion and kindness, those emotions are simply not enough, in my opinion, to overturn millennia of human tradition across all cultures. Sympathy and love should not be mandated at the ballot box.
I heard an interview with the gay sex columnist Dan Savage and his partner/husband on NPR, and, in spite of the fact that he made an impassioned argument in favor of gay marriage, the argument was based on nothing but his own feelings. He did bring up the point that he could visit his “husband” in the hospital, but the fact is that most states have laws that would allow any designated health-care proxy to do the same.
Actually, emotional arguments are often the most convincing part of reasonable argument (one might think of emotions as the knowledge stored up in dopamine neurons, and it’s an analytically-based knowledge that is built by making mistakes). The Platonic view of emotions as the wild horses of the soul is rather undone by modern neurological science. Emotion-free reasoning is characteristic of Vulcans and psychopaths.
What’s happening is that, as people are more and more exposed to actual gay folk in their families and close circles of friends, the analytical processes of emotions are evolving to account for the experiential observations that flow from this exposure. That is changing how people are reasoning about gay folk and their needs. To the extent that church-folk continue to talk about The Gays as as concept instead of with gay folk, the church folk are basically absenting themselves from conversation (and I know there are plenty of church folk who would view that as a great and good thing, but it’s actually not a typically Catholic approach).
FWIW, Liam, I have friends who are gay-married. I even attended a gay wedding ceremony between American friends, which took place in Canada, before my reversion to the RC Church. But is marriage really, as you put it, a “need” for “gay folk”?
For some, indeed it is, much as it would be for infertile or post-fertile opposite-gender couples who seek to be married at law. The legal effects of marriage not entirely duplicated via private contract (indeed, there are states that purport to vitiate such contracts, btw). I will not tire you with anecdotes about how this is so, as I suspect it will be of no matter to you. You appear to have your conclusion the way Proper Bostonian matrons once had their hats.
Indeed. It’s less a question of ‘sympathy’ than ‘empathy’, which allows straight people to better identify with gay people and dispels much of the illusory sense of difference between them. though, not always, clearly.
I am still not clear where the “best interests of the children” come into the argument that there should not be same-sex marriage. It is one thing to say that “natural” marriage is all about two opposite-sex partners who join together in a permanent union involving penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI), and another thing to say civil same-sex marriage should not be allowed because “the best interests of the children of the nation should always come first.”
There are a lot of reforms that would have to be introduced involving heterosexual marriage and heterosexual behavior in order for “the best interests of the children of the nation” would actually come first. Where is the evidence that same-sex marriage is bad for children? And assuming there is any (which I don’t), is it worse than, say, a 50% divorce rate? We know that divorce is not in the best interests of children, but we now have no-fault divorce in all 50 states.
Thales,
God at work?
LINCOLN AND KENNEDY
• Both presidents were shot in the head.
• Both presidents were shot in presence of their wives.
• Both presidents were shot on a Friday.
• Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Ford car, a Lincoln limousine.
• Both Oswald and Booth were killed before they could be put on trial.
• Lincoln and Kennedy each have 7 letters.
• John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald each have 15 letters and 3 words.
In anything halfway complex, you are going to find similarities. I think it is a real stretch to claim that God planned events so that Adam and Eve ate forbidden fruit from a tree and Jesus was crucified on a “tree.” The Gospels are, of course, filled with allusions to passages and events in Hebrew scripture. Anyone who looks at them even as uninspired literature can see that.
But I wouldn’t see it either as planned or coincidence that there are five books of Moses and five loaves. The woman at the well had five husbands. Is everything in the Bible with the number five in it mystically connected?
This is not to deny that God could put layer upon layer of meaning in a text if he wanted to. But the meanings have to be discernible to the careful reader. If they have to be taken on faith, that means God put hidden meanings in scripture and divinely revealed them to, say, St. Anthony, and we must take them on faith.
David, I think you mean this comment to be posted to Henry Karlson’s post about the loaves and fishes. I can’t move it there, so I’m posting it here so you can resubmit it to the post you want.
Thanks. I’m so embarrassed!
The odd thing about the argument, I will admit, though I am inclined to agree…is that the same argument could be applied to sex itself.
You can take the statement, “The support and status that marriage entails is not a societal bonus for falling in love and agreeing to make a relationship lasting. That is not, of course, to say that love and romance are not an important part of marriage. But they are not the reason it has special status. If romance were the reason for supporting marriage, there would be no grounds for differentiating which relationships should be included and which should not. But that is not and never has been the nature of marriage,” and say the same thing about sex.
I agree with that, but would he? If he’s making this argument about marriage, it could likewise be used to say that sex is not necessary for homosexual love, given that sexual pleasure by nature is of the sort that is intrinsically connected with mating.
Again, I buy that argument, but would he? Obviously, marriage has LEGAL implications mere private consensual sex acts do not. But his argument against gay marriage in the civil law, is equally valid as an argument against gay sex in the moral law.