Lies, Damn Lies

Gay marriage

I've been inspired by full metal attourney's post to talk about gay marriage. It's something that I am broadly for. I think there are two arguments here. Arguments about homosexuals being married under the law, with all the benefits that entails, i.e. civil unions and arguments about homosexuals being married under God, i.e MARRIED. I'm going to argue against these arguments first, then try and present arguments as to why homosexual marriage is a good thing.

So, lets deal with arguments against civil unions. These are generally rather weak, but I'll go through them

1-Gay people should not be allowed to adopt children, as this could harm them, or possibly mean they are more likely to be homoexual.

This is an argument sometimes made. First of all there is little evidence to show that having homosexual parents has a serious effect on a childs mental health or sexuality, remember that all adopting parents are STRONGLY vetted, and only those who would not damage a child's mental health are allowed. Secondly, its actually immaterial to the civil unions argument- a single gay person can adopt a child anyway, so its a totally seperate issue.

2-Gay civil unions would lead to unions of polygamous, incestual, or even bestial couples

Hmm. We can immediately discount bestial relationships as these are clearly non consensual. As for incestual relationships, these are usually deeply traumatic and possibly non consenual, so we can probably discount these. Polygamy is interesting. However, and this is important- an argument that gay marriage would mean that polygamy could happen is surely an argument FOR polygamy. If we ignore the "the bible says it's wrong" arguments, and are unable to come up with a rational reason why polygamy is worse than gay relationships then perhaps polygamy should be allowed: at least for civil unions anyway. I know this might be a slightly unpleasent idea for some of you, but if your opposition to an idea is based on only irrational prejudices, perhaps you should rethink it.

I can't think of any other reasons to block gay civil unions in a nation which is not overtly religious- if we decide that homosexuality is something we want to be legal, then they are surely entitled to the same rights as us.


Now marriage is a little different. Becuase marriage is a word held to be very important by many people, as something a little more. Not only a legal bond, but a religious bond. So it makes sense that gay people should not be married when marriage is a concept by people who do not even agree that homosexality is moral.

Only there is a flaw in this argument. The relgious types also surely should not approve of anyone getting married... who is, say, an atheist. Or an agnostic. Or just does not go to church every week. Why not? Their trangressions, if anything, are surely worse than that of homosexuals who might well believe in God and practice religon frequently. So yes, stop homosexuals calling themselves marrried... but do the same with everyone else who isn't strictly religious.

I wonder how much popular support you'd get for that.

I apologise that this post is a little less logically laid out than I'd hope. I hope you can present some stronger arguments against homosexual marriage- I really haven't been convinced by those I have found.

posted by Mr K @ 5:10 pm