Love, or lack therof

For all that the controversy over marriage between two people of the same sex is nominally about the “sanctity of the institution of marriage,” the reactions of its opponents bears a striking similarity to the mentality of a child - accumulating as much as possible, as exclusively as possible, to the extent that even the possessions of others merit confiscation. For some reason, people seem to see life as a zero-sum game. That is, there is a fixed amount of happiness, wealth, civil liberties, etc. And conceding some modicum of any of the above to anyone else means there is less to be had. Underneath the attempts at high rhetoric lies the basic desire to keep as many as possible from enjoying the privileges of the few. Having participated in this debate as a more or less unbiased party - while I would not be directly affected one way or the other, many of my friends and even some of my family would - on many occasions, I have yet to hear a single logical argument against gay marriage. In general, arguments against gay marriage fall into one of four categories: tradition; negative influence on children; negative influence on marriage; and finally, religious belief.

One popular argument against gay marriage is that marriage has always been defined as the union of a man with a woman. Unfortunately, this is utter bunk. The idea that marriage as an institution has remained the same since the dawn of time is just false. To observe even very recent history: women are no longer considered dangerously abnormal for wishing to be something other than stay-at-home mothers, and miscegenation, or interracial marriage, is no longer against the law or even uncommon. However, if tradition is to be the watchword, how about the commonplace tradition of adult males in ancient Greece to take a boy lover? Or the Boston Marriages of the 19th and 20th centuries, which involved the cohabitation and sometimes romantic involvement of two independent women? Where do you think the word lesbian even comes from? The island of Lesbos in ancient Greece, home of Sappho and her lyric romantic poetry to men and women alike. For that matter, what about the tradition of punishing theft by cutting off a hand; one which is still practiced in many countries? The point is two-fold: tradition does not back-up love as exclusively male-female, and times change - the traditions of yesterday are not necessarily right for today.

Just as common as the call to hold fast to the principles of the past (but only the ones that suit them) is the emotional plea: “But think of the children!” Arguments in this vein can be divided into three categories: bearing children, raising straight or gay children, and influencing the impressionable children of others. The first of these can be immediately stricken down. Claims that heterosexual marriages are valid due to the fact that they produce children are just ridiculous. The elderly, the infertile, and even those who just don’t want children are all free to enjoy the benefits of marriage. Besides, with more than six and half billion people in the world, the last thing we need is for every couple to produce more children. Unfortunately for its proponents, the claim that children raised by gay couples will uniformly be gay is also ridiculous on the face of it. Why in the world would gay couples raise only gay children when the reverse can clearly not be said of straight couples? In addition, this argument is imbedded with a disdain and disgust for homosexuality that is, frankly, offensive. Even if it were true, so what? Sperm donors and artificial insemination mean that even our survival as a species is not threatened, should it come to that. As for the associated argument that children need both male and female role models, it’s not like single parents are restricted from raising children, and role models need not be parents alone. Finally, and just as offensive, is the fear that the implicit approval by society of homosexuality will somehow lead children in general astray. Aside from the same strain of superiority inherent in the argument concerning the upbringing of children with gay parents, the fact remains that as parents, the users of this argument have to take responsibility for raising their children. If they don’t want their children to be affected by homosexuality, they should talk to them about it. Drug use is actually dangerous and more ubiquitous, and yet still many children manage to survive to adulthood, due in large part to their parents. But this may be irrelevant, because emerging research shows, as the gay and lesbian community has long professed, that homosexuality may be more a matter of genetics than of choice, in any case.

If anything, the argument that gay marriage would “tarnish the institution of marriage” is the most offensive and least powerful. One need only look to the 40-50% projected divorce rate for current marriages and such farces as the 55-hour marriage of Brittany Spears to see that the institution of marriage is not exactly unblemished to begin with. This is irrelevant, however, because the legalization of gay marriage will, if anything, help the institution of marriage. If straight couples with nothing barring marriage get divorced at such a high rate, surely the addition of couples whose love has persevered in spite of years of persecution both legal and social can only help the numbers. There are claims that this will open the door to polygamy and bestiality. Well, before interracial marriage was legal, and even for some time after, people viewed that as a form of bestiality, as they considered black people to be subhuman. As the opponents of gay marriage can still use the same "argument" forty years later, I think it’s safe to say that, just as interracial marriage did not lead to bestiality, neither will gay marriage.

The final and most slippery argument that opponents of gay marriage pull out is that gay marriage is against their religion. Well, considering that there are religious authorities in almost every organized religion that condone gay marriage, even this argument doesn’t look good. But even if it is merely against the personal beliefs of the debaters, and not that of their religion as a whole, the point remains that they are not being forced to do anything here. They need not marry someone of their own sex if they do not wish to. And when it comes down to it, it really doesn’t matter what they believe, because America is not, in fact, a theocracy. Freedom of religion means that whether you believe in Scientology, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, one of the thousands of sects of Christianity, or even Satanism, you are free to live in America and practice your religion.

In short, the controversy over gay marriage is both superficial and superfluous.