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发帖数: 4346 | 1 The Arguments Against Gay Marriage
Well, of course there are a lot of reasons being offered these days for
opposing gay marriage, and they are usually variations on a few well-
established themes. Interestingly, the Supreme Court in Hawaii has heard
them all. And it found, after due deliberation, that they didn't hold water.
Here's a summary of the common reasons given:
1. Marriage is an institution between one man and one woman. Well, that's
the most often heard argument, one even codified in a recently passed U.S.
federal law. Yet it is easily the weakest. Who says who marriage is to be
defined by? The married? The marriable? Isn't that kind of like allowing a
banker to decide who is going to own the money in stored in his vaults? It
seems to me that if the straight community cannot show a compelling reason
to deny the institution of marriage to gay people, it shouldn't be denied.
And such simple, nebulous declarations are hardly a compelling reason. They'
re really more like an expression of prejudce than any kind of a real
argument. The concept of not denying people their rights unless you can show
a compelling reason to do so is the very basis of the American ideal of
human rights.
2. Marriage is for procreation. The proponents of that argument are really
hard pressed to explain why, if that's the case, that infertile couples are
allowed to marry. I, for one, would love to be there when the proponent of
such an argument is to explain to his post-menopausal mother or impotent
father that since they cannot procreate, they must now surrender their
wedding rings! That would be fun to watch! Again, such an argument fails to
persuade based on the marriages society does allow routinely, without even a
second thought.
3. Same-sex couples aren't the optimum environment in which to raise
children. That's an interesting one, in light of who society does allow to
get married and bring children into their marriage. Check it out: murderers,
convicted felons of all sorts, even known child molesters are all allowed
to freely marry and procreate, and do so every day, with hardly a second
thought by these same critics. So if children are truly the priority here,
why is this allowed? Why are the advocates of this argument not working to
prohibit the above categories of people from raising children?
The fact is that many gay couples raise children, adopted and occasionally
their own from failed attempts at heterosexual marriages. Lots and lots of
scientific studies have shown that the outcomes of the children raised in
the homes of gay and lesbian couples are just as good as those of straight
couples. The differences have been shown again and again to be insignificant
. Psychologists tell us that what makes the difference is the love of the
parents, not their gender. The studies are very clear about that. And gay
people are as capable of loving children as fully as anyone else.
4. Gay relationships are immoral and violate the sacred institution of
marriage. Says who? The Bible? Somehow, I always thought that freedom of
religion implied the right to freedom from religion as well. The Bible has
absolutely no standing in American law (and none other than the father of
the American democracy, Thomas Jefferson, very proudly took credit for that
fact), and because it doesn't, no one has the right to impose rules anyone
else simply because of something they percieve to be mandated by the Bible.
Not all world religions have a problem with homosexuality; many sects of
Buddhism, for example, celebrate gay relationships freely and would like to
have the authority to make them legal marriages. In that sense, their
religious freedom is being infringed. If one believes in religious freedom,
the recognition that opposition to gay marriage is based on religious
arguments is reason enough to discount this argument.
5. Marriages are for ensuring the continuation of the species. The
proponents of such an argument are going to have a really hard time
persuading me that the human species is in any real danger of dying out
through lack of procreation. If the ten percent of all the human race that
is gay were to suddenly refrain from procreation, I think it is safe to say
that the world would probably be better off. One of the world's most serious
problems is overpopulation and the increasing anarchy that is resulting
from it. Seems to me that gays would be doing the world a favor by not
bringing more hungry mouths into an already overburdened world. So why
encourage them? The vacuity of this argument is seen in the fact that those
who raise this objection never object to infertile couples marrying; indeed,
when their retired single parent, long past reproductive age, seeks to
marry, the usual reaction is how cute and sweet that is. That fact alone
shows how false this argument really is. Let's face it - marriage is about
love and commitment, and support for that commitment, not about procreation.
6. Same-sex marriage would threaten the institution of marriage. That one's
contradictory right on the face of it. Threaten marriage? By allowing people
to marry? That doesn't sound very logical to me. If you allow gay people to
marry each other, you no longer encourage them to marry people to whom they
feel little attraction, with whom they most often cannot relate sexually,
and thereby reduce the number of supposed heterosexual marriages that end up
in the divorce courts. If it is the institution of heterosexual marriage
that worries you, then consider that no one would require you or anyone else
to participate in a gay marriage. So you would have freedom of choice, of
choosing what kind of marriage to participate in -- something more than what
you have now. And speaking of divorce -- to argue that the institution of
marriage is worth preserving at the cost of requiring involuntary
participants to remain in it is a better argument for tightening divorce
laws than proscribing gay marriage.
7. We shouldn't alter heterosexual marriage, which is a traditional
institution that goes back to the dawn of time. This is morally the weakest
argument. Slavery was also a traditional institution, based on traditions
that went back to the very beginnings of human history. But by the 19th
century, humankind had realized the evils of that institution, and abolished
its legal status. So what happened to tradition?
In the first place, no one is proposing the alteration of heterosexual
marriage at all. Heterosexuals may still marry (and divorce) at will -
entirely unaffected by the institution of gay marriage. No change there -
not even one whit.
Then there is the issue of divorce. If we are supposed to worship the
traditional status and nature of marriage, why do we freely allow divorce,
which has only been legal in most states for just a few decades? To suggest
to most of the ardent supporters of this argument that they should not only
be married, but will get only one shot at getting it right, and a mistake
will and must permanently ruin their life, will sound onerous. But how less
onerous is the notion that one will have to marry someone one cannot love
and to whom one cannot relate, if one is to enjoy the benefits of marriage?
Clearly, this hypocrisy - on the one hand, asserting the importance of the
traditional nature of marriage, while allowing its destruction through the
thoroughly modern concept of divorce with hardly a second thought -
demonstrates very clearly that this really isn't about traditional
definitions at all, it's about using this argument as a cover for another,
less acceptable motivation. Why not recognize the hypocrisy - that there is
no sound moral ground on which to support the notion of worshipfully
traditional heterosexual marriage while freely allowing its destruction
through divorce? Wouldn't it just be better to recognize that the concept of
marriage is not as rigidly traditional and fixed as claimed?
8. Same-sex marriage is an untried social experiment. The American critics
of same-sex marriage betray their provincialism with this argument. The fact
is that a form of gay marriage has been legal in Denmark since 1989 (full
marriage rights except for adoption rights and church weddings, and a
proposal now exists in the Danish parliament to allow both of those rights
as well), and most of the rest of Scandinavia from not long after. Full
marriage rights have existed in many Dutch cities for several years, and it
was recently made legal nationwide, including the word "marriage" to
describe it. In other words, we have a long-running "experiment" to examine
for its results -- which have uniformly been positive. Opposition to the
Danish law was led by the clergy (much the same as in the States). A survey
conducted at the time revealed that 72 percent of Danish clergy were opposed
to the law. It was passed anyway, and the change in the attitude of the
clergy there has been dramatic -- a survey conducted in 1995 indicated that
89 percent of the Danish clergy now admit that the law is a good one and has
had many beneficial effects, including a reduction in suicide, a reduction
in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and in promiscuity and
infidelity among gays. Far from leading to the "destruction of Western
civilization" as some critics (including the Mormon and Catholic churches
among others) have warned, the result of the "experiment" has actually been
civilizing and strengthening, not just to the institution of marriage, but
to society as a whole. So perhaps we should accept the fact that someone
else has already done the "experiment" and accept the results as positive.
The fact that many churches are not willing to accept this evidence says
more about the churches than it does about gay marriage.
9. Same-sex marriage would start us down a "slippery slope" towards
legalized incest, bestial marriage, polygamy and all manner of other
horrible consequences. A classic example of the reductio ad absurdum fallacy
, it is calculated to instill fear in the mind of anyone hearing the
argument. It is, of course, absolutely without any merit based on experience
. If the argument were true, wouldn't that have already happened in
countries where forms of legalized gay marriage already exist? Wouldn't they
have 'slid' towards legalized incest and bestial marriage? The reality is
that a form of gay marriage has been legal in Scandinavian countries for
many years, and no such legalization has happened, nor has there been a
clamor for it. It's a classic scare tactic - making the end scenario so
scary and so horrible that the first step should never be taken. Such are
the tactics of the fear and hatemongers.
If concern over the "slippery slope" were the real motive behind this
argument, the advocate of this line of reasoning would be equally vocal
about the fact that today, even as you read this, convicted murderers, child
molesters, known pedophiles, drug pushers, pimps, black market gun dealers,
etc., are quite free to marry, and are doing so every day. Where's the
outrage? Of course there isn't any, and that lack of outrage betrays their
real motives. This is an anti-gay issue and not a pro marriage or child
protection issue.
10. Granting gays the right to marry is a "special" right. Since ninety
percent of the population already have the right to marry the informed,
consenting adult of their choice, and would even consider that right a
fundamental, constitutionally protected right, since when does extending it
to the rest constitute a "special" right to that remaining ten percent? As
Justice Kennedy observed in his opinion overturning Colorado's infamous
Amendment 2 (Roemer vs. Evans), many gay and lesbian Americans are, under
current law, denied civil rights protections that others either don't need
or assume that everyone else along with themselves, already have. The
problem with all that special rights talk is that it proceeds from that very
assumption, that because of all the civil rights laws in this country that
everyone is already equal, so therefore any rights gay people are being
granted must therefore be special. That is most assuredly not the case,
especially regarding marriage and all the legal protections that go along
with it.
11. Churches would be forced to marry gay people against their will. This
one has absolutely no basis in law whatever, existing or proposed. There are
many marriages to which many churches object, such as interracial marriage,
interfaith marriage, the marriage of divorcees, etc., and yet no state law
of which I am aware requires any church to marry any couple when that church
objects to performance of that particular marriage. The right granted by
the state to a church to perform marriages is a right, not a requirement,
and to pretend that it would be a requirement in the case of gays, but not
in the above examples, is disingenuous on the face of it.
12. If gay marriage is legalized, homosexuality would be promoted in the
public schools. Gay marriage is already legal in several states and many
foreign countries, including Canada, but can anyone point to an example of
homosexuality being promoted in the public schools? No. Because it hasn't
happened in any significant way. What is being objected to is tolerance of
gays, not genuine promotion of homosexuality. And if tolerance itself is not
acceptable, what is the absence of tolerance? It is bigotry. If we do not
promote tolerance in the public schools, we are accepting that bigotry has a
place there. Is this really what we want?
13. Gay marriage and its associated promotion of homosexuality would
undermine western civilization. Homosexuality is as old as civilization
itself, and has always been a part of civilization, including this one -
indeed, cross-cultural studies indicate that the percentage of homosexuals
in a population is independent of culture. So even if promotion of
homosexuality were to occur, it wouldn't change anything - people aren't gay
because they were "recruited," they're gay because they were born that way,
as the population statistics across cultures makes clear. As for gay
marriage itself undermining western civilization, it is hard to see how the
promotion of love, commitment, sharing and commonality of values and goals
isn't going to strengthen civilization a lot sooner than it is going to
undermine it. Gay marriage has been legal, in various forms, in parts of
Europe for more than twenty years, and in Canada and many states in the
United States for some time now, but can anyone point to any credible
evidence that gay marriage itself is leading to the crumbling of western
civilization? If they can, it certainly hasn't been presented to me.
14. If gay people really want to get married, all they have to do is to
become straight and marry someone of the opposite sex. There are several
problems with this argument, the first of which is that it presumes that
sexual orientation is a choice. This lie is promoted so endlessly by bigoted
religious leaders that it has become accepted as fact by society as a whole
, and it was advanced, beginning in the 1980's, for the purpose of
discrediting the gay rights movement. But the reality is that a half century
of social research on this subject, consisting of thousands of studies,
beginning with the Kinsey and Minnesota Twin studies of the 1950's and
continuing to the present, has shown conclusively - beyond any reasonable
doubt - that among males, sexual orientation is only very slightly flexible,
and among females, it is only modestly more so. That homosexuality is
congenital, inborn, and has a strong genetic component. In other words, if
you're gay, you're gay and there is little that you do about it, regardless
of the endless propaganda to the contrary.
Another problem with this argument is that it presumes that heterosexuality,
if it were a choice, is self-evidently a more desireable and/or morally
superior choice to make. This is a qualitative argument with whom many gay
people - and many thinking straight people as well, both religious and
secular - would take issue.
A third problem is that this argument presumes that someone else has the
right to veto your presumed choice sexual orientation on the basis that they
are not comfortable with the choice you have made. It is difficult for me
to see how any religionist or anti-gay bigot, however sincere and well-
meaning, has the right to arrogate to himself that veto power. Or, frankly,
why a homosexual should be forced to go out of his way to make bigots
comfortable with their bigotry.
A fourth, legalistic problem with this argument is that it presumes that if
the choice of sexual orientation can be made, the voluntary nature of that
choice removes any and all right to the protection of the law for the choice
which has been made. But I would point out that the First Amendment to the
United States constitution protects, by constitutional fiat itself, a purely
voluntary choice - that of religion. So if it is acceptable to argue that
unpopular sexual minorities have no right to equal protection of the law
because they can avoid disadvantage or persecution by voluntarily changing
the choice they have presumably made, then it is equally true that the First
Amendment should not include protection for choice in religion, because no
rational person could argue that religious belief is itself not a choice. In
other words, this is like arguing that you should not expect legal
protection from being persecuted because you are a Mormon or a Catholic; the
solution to such disadvantage or persecution is simple: just become a
Southern Baptist or whatever. I have never, ever seen a religious opponent
of homosexuality who is asserting that homosexuality is a choice, advance
that last point with regards to religion - a fact which very glaringly
demonstrates the clearly bigoted character of this argument. |
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