Gay Marriage: The Arguments and the Motives Part 3

Hey everyone, we are halfway through this weeks discussion of the Arguments Against Gay Marriage. Please enjoy part 3. . ..

The real reasons people oppose gay marriage

So far, we've examined the reasons everyone give for opposing gay marriage. Let's examine now the real reasons people oppose it, even fear it:

1. Just not comfortable with the idea.

The fact the people aren't comfortable with the idea stems primarily from the fact that for many years, society has promoted the idea that a marriage between members of the same sex is ludicrous, mainly because of the objections raised above. But if those objections don't make sense, neither does the idea that gay marriage is necessarily ludicrous. Societies have long recognized that allowing civil rights to certain groups may offend some, and at times, even the majority. But that is why constitutional government was established -- to ensure that powerless, unpopular minorities are still protected from the tyranny of the majority.

2. It offends everything religion stands for.

Whose religion? Many mainstream Christian denominations, to be sure, and definitely most branches of Islam and Orthodox Judaism, but outside those, most religions are unopposed to gay marriage, and many actually favor it. When the Mormon church arrogantly claimed to represent all religions in the Baehr vs. Lewin trial in Hawaii, the principal Buddhist sect in that state made it very clear that the Mormon church didn't represent them, and made it very clear that they support the right of gay couples to marry. That particular Buddhist sect claims many more members in Hawaii than does the Mormon church. In a society that claims to offer religious freedom, the use of the power of the state to enforce private religious sensibilities is an affront to all who would claim the right to worship according to the dictates of their own conscience.

3. Marriage is a sacred institution and gay marriage violates that sanctity.

This is, of course, related to the motive above. But it is really subtly different. It's based on the assumption that the state has the responsibility to "sanctify" marriages - a fundamentally religious idea. Here we're dealing with people trying to enforce their religious doctrines on someone else, but by doing it through weakening the separation of church and state, by undermining the Bill of Rights. Not that there's anything new about this, of course. But the attempt itself runs against the grain of everything the First Amendment stands for - one does not truly have freedom of religion if one does not have the right to freedom from religion as well. It would seem to me that anyone who feels that the sanctity of their marriage is threatened by a gay couple down the street having the right to marry, is mighty insecure about their religion anyway.

Even if one accepts the presumption of the United States as a bible-believing, Christian nation as an acceptable legal doctrine, as many conservative Christians insist, and the bible should be the basis for the sacred institution of marriage, perhaps those Christians should get out their bibles and actually read them for a change. Including all the inconvenient passages that not only permit but can even require polygamy, involuntary marriage and the like.

How about Deuteronomy 25:5-10, for example: "When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage and performing the duty of a husband's brother to her, and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. But if the man has no desire to marry his brother's widow, then his brother's widow shall go up to the elders at the gate and say 'My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband's brother to me. Then the elders of his town shall summon him and speak to him. If he persists, saying 'I have no desire to marry her,' then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, pull his sandal from his foot, spit in his face, and declare 'This is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house. Throughout Israel his family will be known as 'the house of him whose sandal was pulled off.'"

If the Bible is sacred and inviolate when it comes to the institution of marriage, then the above passage and all the other inconvenient ones require reverence too, do they not? If the Christian is going to say, well, that's old, quaint and should no longer be expected to apply, well, then, that's exactly the point! The institution of marriage as it is practiced in the real world is a culturally defined institution, not biblically defined, as a reading of the above quotation should make quite clear, and it is high time we recognize and face up to the cold reality that cultural values have changed since the bible was written, and the institution of marriage has changed along with it. Gay marriage is simply part of that evolutionary process of social progress.

4. Gay sex is unnatural.

This argument, often encoded in the very name of sodomy statutes, betrays a considerable ignorance of behavior in the animal kingdom. The fact is that among the approximately 1500 animal species whose behavior has been extensively studied, homosexual behavior in animals has been described in at least 450 of those species. It runs the gamut, too, ranging from occasional displays of affection to life-long pair bonding including sex and even adopting and raising orphans, going so far as the rejection by force of potential heterosexual partners. The reality is that it is so common that it begs for an explanation, and sociobiologists have proposed a wide variety of explanations to account for it. The fact that it is so common also means that it has evolutionary significance, which applies as much to humans as it does to other animal species.

5. Making love to another man betrays everything that is masculine.

Well, I've known plenty of very masculine gay men in my day, who, if you suggested was a limp-wristed fairy, would likely rip your head off and hand it to you. There was a long-honored tradition of gay relationships among the tough and macho cowboys of the Old West, and many diaries exist detailing their relationships. Plenty of masculine, respected movies stars are gay. Indeed, Rock Hudson was considered the very archetype of a masculine man. Came as quite a shock to a lot of macho-men to find out he was gay! So what's wrong with all these kinds of men expressing love for each other? Why is that so wrong? A society that devalues love devalues that upon which civilized society itself is based. Should any form of that love for one another be discouraged?


6. The thought of gay sex is repulsive.

Well, it will come as some surprise to a lot of heterosexuals to find out that, to a lot of gays, the thought of heterosexual sex is repulsive! But does that mean the discomfort of some gays to heterosexual couples should be a reason to deny heterosexuals the right to marry? I don't think so, even though the thought of a man kissing a woman is rather repulsive to many homosexuals! Well then, why should it work the other way? Besides, the same sexual practices that gays engage in are often engaged in by heterosexual couples anyway. Prompting the ever-popular gay T-shirt: "SO-DO-MY -- SO DO MY neighbors, SO DO MY friends."

7. They might recruit.

The core cause of this fear is the result of the fact that most virulent, even violent homophobes are themselves repressed sexually, often with same sex attractions. One of the recent studies done at the University of Georgia among convicted killers of gay men has shown that the overwhelmingly large percentage of them exhibit sexual arousal when shown scenes of gay sex. The fear, then, for the homophobe is that he himself might be gay, and might be forced to face that fact. The homophobia is as internalized as it is externalized - bash the queer and you don't have to worry about being aroused by him.

The fear of recruitment is baseless because it is based on a false premise - that gay people recruit. We don't. We don't recruit because we know from our own experience that sexual orientation is inborn, and can't be changed to any significant degree. Indeed, the attempts by psychologists, counselors and religious therapy and support groups to change sexual orientation have all uniformly met with failure - the studies that have been done of these therapies have never shown any significant results, and usually create psychological damage in the process, which is why they are uniformly condemned by mental health professional associations. So the notion that someone can be changed from straight to gay is quite unlikely. Yet there remains that deep, dark fear that somehow, someone might be.

8. Gay marriage would undermine sodomy laws.

Many conservative religionists privately oppose gay marriage in part because it would undermine the legal basis for sodomy laws, which, even though they have been deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, are still dreamed of by those who would seek to legalize discrimination against gays. It would be hard to justify, before a court, allowing a couple to marry and then legally bar them from having sexual relations.

9. Gay marriage would legitimize homosexuality.

This presumes that homosexuality is anything other than simply a normal variation of human development. The reality is that every mental health association has recognized that homosexuality is a perfectly normal variation on how humans develop, and there is now a substantial body of evidence from science that there are sound reasons why it has evolved, and why it is not selected against in evolutionary pressure. It is not perverted, it does not degrade human culture, it is not a threat to humankind in any way. All those stereotypes, long cultivated by homophobes, have been disproven both by experience and by scientific research, but that does not prevent the homophobe from holding to them dearly. And allowing state sanction in the form of marriage, threatens the stereotype by undermining the justification for it.

At the end of the day, the opposition to gay marriage stems ultimately from a deep-seated homophobia in American culture, born almost entirely out of religious prejudice. While many Americans do not realize that that homophobia exists to the extent that it does, it is a very real part of every gay person's life, just like racism is a very real part of every black person's life. It is there, it is pervasive, and it has far more serious consequences for American society than most Americans realize, not just for gay people, but for society in general.

Stay tune for Part 4 tomorrow.

MJ