Originally posted by Woodencross: I can't believe you make me out to be the idiot, when you promote a lifestyle that is damaging to everybody.
And how, pray-tell, is it damaging to EVERYBODY? I can't wait to hear the answer to this one.
There are many different issues and arguments that can be raised in the debate over so-called "same-sex marriage"--far too many to deal with here. So let me get right to what I think is the key question that must be answered.
The debate over whether homosexual couples should be allowed to legally "marry" is not about rights, equality, or discrimination, despite the often heated rhetoric to that effect. Still less is it about the allocation of an entitlement package of legal rights and financial benefits. Instead, this is a question of definition--how do we define the social institution we call marriage? To answer that we must ask, What is the public purpose of marriage?
Please note that I said the public purpose of marriage. The private purposes for which people enter into marriage may be as diverse as the people themselves. Homosexual activists sometimes argue that they want to marry for the same reasons heterosexuals do--out of a desire for love and companionship.
But I ask you--are interpersonal love and companionship really the business of government? Would we even tolerate the government issuing licenses and regulating entry and exit into relationships whose only or even principal purpose is emotional attachment? I submit to you that the answer is no.
So what is the public interest in marriage? Why is marriage a public, civil institution, rather than a purely private one? The answer, I would argue, is that marriage is a public institution because it brings together men and women for the purpose of reproducing the human race and keeping a mother and father together to cooperate in raising to maturity the children they produce. The public interest in such behavior is great, because thousands of years of human experience and a vast body of contemporary social science research both demonstrate that married husbands and wives, and the children they conceive and raise, are happier, healthier, and more prosperous than people in any other living situation.
Now, I know exactly what some of you will say. You will argue that reproduction cannot be the purpose of marriage, because opposite-sex couples that are elderly, infertile, or simply don't plan to have children are still permitted to marry. In fact, I would suggest that the actual, tangible public interest in childless marriages is not as great as the public interest in marriages that produce children.
However, to exclude non-reproducing heterosexual couples from marriage would require an invasion of privacy or the drawing of arbitrary and inexact lines. Instead, we simply define the structure of marriage as being open to the entire class of couples that are even theoretically capable of natural reproduction--namely, opposite-sex ones--and we exclude an entire class of couples that are intrinsically infertile--namely, same-sex ones.
I know you will say to this that some homosexuals do reproduce (with help, of course), and some homosexual couples do raise children. But let me suggest, as an analogy, another area in which the law places limits on the exercise of a fundamental right--voting. We have a minimum voting age because we presume that adults are wiser and better informed that children. The mere fact that some adults are actually foolish and ill-informed, while some children may be wiser and better informed, does not make the existence of a minimum voting age arbitrary or discriminatory. Distinguishing between opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples with regard to marriage on the basis of general differences is equally logical.
In fact, I would suggest that the argument in favor of same-sex marriage can only be logically sustained if one argues that there is no difference between men and women--that is, if one argues not merely that men and women are equal in value and dignity, a proposition I'm sure we all agree with, but that males are females are identical, and thus can serve as entirely interchangeable parts in the structure of marriage. This contention is biologically absurd, and "same-sex marriage" is thus an oxymoron.
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This material was borrowed from author Peter Sprigg, he put it about as good as I could have, so why retype it.
