The "Debate" On Gay Marriage, Part Two

The first part of this discussion can be found here.

Fundamentally, the core question about gay marriage is not about marriage--it's about gays. Defenders of a Constitutional Amendment, including the President, often try to make a distinction between tolerance of gay "behavior" and acceptance of gay marriage. "Do what you want," this logic goes, "but only outside of marriage." Thankfully, there are those who go out of their way to make it perfectly clear that the agenda here is not to save marriage, but rather to harm gays. I wish that all of the vocal opponents of gay marriage would wear their bigotry on their sleeve a little bit more. Then they'd be exposed as the bigoted, backward-thinking religious totalitarians that they are.

So, really, the third and fourth arguments against gay marriage, mentioned yesterday, pretty much boil down to this:

Gays are evil.

I'm not going to spend any time arguing about this. The so-called "studies" that conclude that gays are more likely to be pedophiles or rapists or atheists or communists or whatever have been so thoroughly debunked by sound social and hard science that I don't want to bother. We'll just operate from here on under the radical assumption that gays are normal people.

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Maggie Gallagher made this a three-day project. I was going to write about the politics of the gay marriage issue, attack the Democrats for being utterly spineless, and wrap it up. But I'll put that off until tomorrow because I found an article on the National Review website that sums up a lot of what these extremists are all about. It bore inclusion.

Maggie Gallagher is the President of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy. She's a bigshot in the conservative "pro-family" (Read: anti-gay) movement. Her article, "Why Marriage Matters," can be found below, with my comments interspersed.


Poor, poor, bigoted, stupid Maggie Gallagher. She doesn't seem to understand how effectively she's making the case for gay marriage here. I'll explain more in a minute. To be clear, I don't disagree that children from homes in which parents are happily married are more likely to be better off. Of course, there are plenty of kids from homes in which parents are happily married who are crazy, repressed, violent, in jail, or....gay. But we'll leave that for now, and just agree.




Martha had an excellent point (which you can read if you read the comments from yesterday's post) regarding the historical context of marriage. To suggest that marriage has always been a happy bringing together of men and women is hopelessly naive. And, frankly, the historical argument that "it's always been heterosexual" is unpersuasive and irrelevant. Times change. Lots of terrible things have plenty of historical precedent. The question is not "How has it always been?" The question is "How should it be now?


Here we go. I'm sure that Maggie Gallagher is going to finally shed some light on this.


Affirming the ideal? What? Marriage is about affirming a relationship. You may want that to be affirmed in God's name or not, with family or not, but fundamentally, it's about affirming a relationship between two people.

But I digress. That's not relevant to the discussion of gay marriage. Let's say that she's right about that. Why can't gays affirm the ideal?

As for the bizarre leap to children in this argument, we'll get to that in a second, since the claim that number 1 and number 2 are different reasons is, in itself, a lie.


Let's say that marriage is only about the well-being of children. Does this mean that those who are infertile or past child-bearing age can't marry?

Besides that, the heart of the matter is here. If a case could be made that gays would make good parents for adopted children, then the entire premise of her argument absolutely collapses.

Her argument for why they wouldn't--as you'll see below--is that children need a mother and a father. OK. Let's concede that. I've already said that all the things Maggie mentions in the first paragraph of this atrociously argued piece can be true. But there is a matter to consider:

Any children adopted by gay parents don't have an involved mother and father anyway.

If gays were ripping children out of the arms of two loving parents, then that would be one thing. But they aren't, see? If two men decide to adopt a child together, that kid they're adopting is going from zero parents to two.

And why can't gays create a good family environment? There's an assumption that they can't be good parents. Why?

Of course, Maggie is also making the slippery-slope argument here--that once we "send the message" that gay marriage is OK, other marriages will become moot. Why? She doesn't know. Can't explain. There's no connection between those two things.

Think these "reasons" are bad? It gets worse. Look at this:


"It's just wrong?" Potent logic there. May as well have said what she's really thinking, which is that "Gays are just icky."


Let me digress for a minute.

I'm not a knee-jerk liberal. I can respect a conservative position I disagree with if there are actually arguments for it and just a difference of opinion. For instance, I'll be avoiding the discussion of abortion, because I understand and--since becoming a parent--even sympathize with the opponents of choice, though I remain staunchly pro-choice.

Is this article what passes for good argument on the other side of this issue?

Scarily, yes. I didn't pick this out so I could summarily dismantle the claims made in an attempt to make myself look like Mr. Smart Guy. I picked it because it's absolutely typical of the other side of the debate, and the arguments are made by one of the louder voices.

So it's pretty impressive that "We don't like them Massachusetts judges" passes for an answer to the question "Why oppose gay marriage?" Hello, non-sequitur.

I discussed society's "values" yesterday. I said enough about that, then. I will only comment additionally that the Massachusetts judges are, factually speaking, only ruling about Massachusetts.


Argument based on the assumption that including gays creates an unhealthy marriage culture. But no defense of that assumption. Why?

Cannot a fine argument be made that creating a legally binding relationship between two gay men would help to remedy some of the main "problems" isolated by Maggie, et. al.? Promiscuity, lack of commitment, etcetera? Or is that too much of a mind-blowing concept for these clowns to imagine?

If medical proxies aren't working, let's fix that problem. If people need health care, let's get them health care. Don't rewrite marriage laws in order to satisfy a small fraction of adults who have personal needs and problems.

Why not? Hello? Argument? Why not rewrite the laws?

Not to mention that Gallagher's crew are the ones wanting to rewrite the laws. They want to codify discrimination.



No. Marriage is NOT about giving children the ideal. PARENTING is about giving children the ideal. Why can't same-sex couples provide that? Nothing here.

And this still doesn't speak to the question of how giving children who have no parents two fathers (or mothers) hurts them. How?


Wow. This is the sort of argumentation I'd expect from my daughter. But she's three.

Marriage is about "bringing two sexes together"? I thought marriage was about giving children the ideal.

Let me poll my married readers. Any one of you mention the importance of "bringing two sexes together" in your wedding ceremonies? Marriage is about the people in the marriage.

And, again, this whole parenting thing is a strawman. See above.



Jesus H. Christ can we cut with the "ask me about marriage, I'll babble about protecting children routine," at least until we can offer any argument at all as to why gay marriage threatens children? Saying "marriage is good for kids" is not a very good argument as to why gay marriage is BAD for kids.


So if a 75-year old man marries a 75-year old woman, their marriage is STILL only about children? Apples and oranges indeed. Marriage is more than that.


The message of same-sex marriage is that kids don't need fathers? I'm sorry? I thought the message was "Consenting adults can marry whomever they want to marry." No mention of children in any laws that I see.

Maggie Gallagher is like Reverend Lovejoy's wife on the Simpson's. "But what about the children?" she cries, hysterically, whether the situation calls for it or not.

And this, people, is as good as they've got.

Tomorrow: Politics





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