Marriage Equality, Or Am I Seriously Writing About This In 2013? - By Taylor Grin

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I’ve been involved in a discussion for about two hours now about gay marriage, and I’m really getting tired of making the same points over and over again. So, let me make this a (maybe, kinda?) friendly FAQ on why gay marriage should be legal.

Why should gays be allowed to marry?

Under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, there is a guarantee of equal protection under the law. States can’t deny rights to some which it grants to others.

But gays are free to marry whoever they want… as long as its a member of the opposite sex.

Let me put this statement in perspective: “But blacks can marry whoever they want, as long as it’s another black.” “A woman can marry whoever she wants, as long as her father approves.”

But marriage is for creating babies!

So infertile people can’t get married?

Ok, marriage is for people with the parts to make babies, whether or not they actually do.

David Hume covered this in 1740. arguing that you can’t derive an “ought” from an “is.” This is to say, you can’t argue that something should be a given way, just because it happens to be that way.

Let’s make this easier to understand. Survival of the Fittest dictates that the fittest will survive. A clean reading of this would lead some to conclude that we should kill the infirm or weak. Obviously we find this unethical. So, we find that which is the case, often shouldn’t ought to be the case.

This is also called the Naturalistic Fallacy.

If we banned gay marriage because gay people can’t have children, we’d have to ban infertile people from marriage.

You need two parents, one of each gender, to properly raise children.

Putting aside the issues of ambiguity in gender roles and the distinction between sex and gender, this point is strictly speaking wrong. Not “In my opinion wrong,” but factually wrong according to the APA:

“On the basis of a remarkably consistent body of research on lesbian and gay parents and their children, the American Psychological Association and other health, professional, and scientific organizations have concluded that there is no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental sexual orientation.” (emphasis mine.)

But marriage is a religious institution.

No, marriage is a social contract and a legal unification of two people for legal protection, power of attorney and management of estates. Some churches perform marriages, but the civil and legal rights afforded to married couples are granted and guaranteed by states, not churches.

But you can’t redefine marriage.

Marriage has had a definition constantly in flux. I encourage you to read the Wikipedia article on marriage to look at how it’s changed over the years.

If for some reason you don’t like Wikipedia, then check out this history at a German university website, which says basically the same thing, but is less easy to read.

The nuclear family that you’re familiar with is basically a white, suburban, American construct. You’ll find all sorts of successful family arrangements in different places, as far away as Brazil where children are raised among mothers, aunts and cousins, to the inner city where whole communities are involved in the upbringing of children.

But God says!/ America is a Christian country.

No, he doesn’t/ no it’s not.

The definition of marriage is not very clear from a Christian reading of the Bible. I think this video expresses that pretty well.

And America is not a Christian nation. There is the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . ..” but I find a more important point to be the Treaty of Tripoli.

The Treaty of Tripoli? What’s that?

The treaty of Tripoli ratified a peace between America and Tripoli after a short-lived war between the two nations. Every single member of Congress voted in favor of it, and one of the Founding Fathers, President John Adams, signed it. It contained the following statement:

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
(emphasis mine.)

So no, America is not a Christian Nation.

But the Declaration of Independence says there’s a Creator.

The Declaration of Independence is not a legally binding document. Under Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, Treaties are legally binding. And haven’t we gotten far from the topic of gay marriage?

But my priest will have to wed gay couples

No, (s)he won’t the second part of the establishment clause

But if we allow gay marriage, then next will be polygamy, incest or even bestiality!

No. What you’re using is called a slippery slope. It’s a logical fallacy where people say that because you’re doing one thing, a whole series of irrational events will follow. The same argument was used with interracial marriage.

Check out this example of an argument against interracial marriage from ‘Loving V. The State of Virginia, 1967:’

“It is clear from the most recent available evidence on the psycho-sociological aspect of this question that intermarried families are subjected to much greater pressures and problems then those of the intermarried and that the state’s prohibition of interracial marriage for this reason stands on the same footing as the prohibition of polygamous marriage, or incestuous marriage or the prescription of minimum ages at which people may marry and the prevention of the marriage of people who are mentally incompetent.”

But gay people make me feel icky

Guess what? Interracial couples made people feel pretty icky 50 years ago too. Giving women the right to vote, or treating black people equally made people feel pretty icky a not-so-long time ago.

Hell, just over 300 years ago, the idea that independent colonies should represent themselves made a lot of Europeans feel very icky. But we live in America, a land where people deserve equal treatment and the freedom to pursue their happiness.

The right of gay parents to make decisions about their children’s medical treatment in hospitals, or the right of gay couples to pass on their estate at death without vastly higher taxation does no harm to anyone else.

The religious are afraid that society will crumble, but society didn’t crumble when blacks and whites could marry, or when women got the right to vote.

Equal protection under the law means you’ll be safe too when a religion or philosophy you don’t agree with tries to infringe on your rights. Denying rights for religions has an insidious way of harming everyone in the long run.

Let me end with a quote I’m sure you’ve heard before. Denying rights to people is dangerous, because you never know if you’ll be the next “non-traditionalist” to have them denied.

"First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me."

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