No such thing as moral neutrality with “same-sex marriage”

A Stand to Reason blog post titled Same-sex Marriage Isn’t – Can’t Be – Morally Neutral made a lot of good points.  I encourage you to read it all, including the comments section.  Here are some snippets from the post and the comments:

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse points to instances of discrimination against a moral and religious point of view – objection to same-sex marriage.  Legalizing same-sex marriage isn’t neutral, it legitimizes governmental intrusion into private decisions to force citizens to abandon their own moral convictions.  Moral neutrality is a myth.  Legalizing same-sex marriage isn’t merely “tolerant,” it’s a moral point of view of it’s own, and placing it in law makes demands on other citizens and society.

The underlying pattern is unmistakable. Legalizing same-sex “marriage” has brought in its wake state regulation of other parts of society. The problem is sometimes presented as an issue of religious freedom, and so, in part, it is. But the issue runs deeper than religious freedom.

McGill University professor Douglas Farrow argues in his book A Nation of Bastards that redefining marriage allows the government to colonize all of civil society.

If same-sex couples can marry each other, they should be allowed to adopt. Anyone who says otherwise is acting against the policy of the state. If same-sex couples can have civil unions, then denying them the use of any facility they want for their ceremony amounts to unlawful discrimination. When the state says that same sex couples are equivalent to opposite-sex couples, school curriculum will inevitably have to support this claim.

Marriage between men and women is a pre-political, naturally emerging social institution. Men and women come together to create children, independently of any government. The duty of caring for those children exists even without a government or any political order….

Precisely because same-sex unions are not the same as opposite-sex marriage, the state must intervene to make people believe (or at least make them act as if they believe) that the two types of unions are equivalent….

Advocates of same-sex “marriage” insist that theirs is a modest reform: a mere expansion of marriage to include people currently excluded. But the price of same-sex “marriage” is a reduction in tolerance for everyone else, and an expansion of the power of the state.

Comments

How do I handle this discusion when a nay sayer brings up infertile couples, and people who are beyond child bearing years?

—

I think it’s helpful to ask what is their actual argument.

It seems like the person is responding to the argument that the state supports marriage because it is best for the rearing of children.

Their response is to ask, “What about infertile couples, etc?”

But, what is their actual argument?

It appears to be: If an institution generally helps achieve a desired benefit, it is only worth supporting that institution if it always achieves that desired benefit.

Maybe that’s not their argument, but it seems like the most likely candidate.

Given that assumption, I know of no reason why that argument should be considered valid. I can think of several reasons why one would want to support institutions that generally achieve a beneficial outcome, even in cases when they don’t achieve that outcome.

As just one example, infertile opposite-sex marriages can serve as examples and encouragements to other couple who do have children.

I think it’s more likely that the person actually doubts the validity of the argument that opposite-sex marriage is the best environment for rearing children.

—

Society cannot survive without heterosexual sex as it is responsible for producing 100% of the next generation. The nature of the relationship within which such (heterosexual) sex occurs largely determines the degree of societal blessing or burden with which society will have to deal regarding the rearing of said next generation.

Society blesses the joining together of one man and one woman in a “til death do we part” union because it wants its children produced within such an arrangement and because it wants the couple who did the producing to do the rearing as a general rule. Children who are produced and reared within this arrangement, all other things being equal, will minimize the burden to society that the rearing of the next generation entails and maximize the blessing that the next generation brings.

Society, therefore (or at least a society which is still capable of discerning what is in its own best interest), should consider marriage the only relationship within which sexual behavior (of the kind that can produce the next generation) ought to be condoned, encouraged or expressed.

Why not homosexual marriage? Because homosexual sex produces 0% of the next generation. Society need not feel any compulsion to bless a sexual relationship of a nature which, by nature, has no capacity to bless society with continued existence (or in any other way for that matter).

But why marry infertile couples (or those who are fertile but choose not to reproduce)? In the later case, fertile couples often produce children despite their intention not to, and society wants those children reared within the optimal circumstance. Society’s best interests are as follows: If you’re engaged in the kind of sex that can produce children, you should be married. In the case of the former (infertile couples), as a practical matter, how did they discover their infertility? Most will not until after marriage, in which case the issue is moot. But for the few who know of their infertility before marriage, society can and ought to honor them for the example they set despite their infertility. It is heterosexuality which produces children, and we ought to honor all who practice heterosexual sex in a manner and context which promotes the health of society.

—

How to respond to the infertile couples argument?

How about:

“Every husband and wife can give every child they make (or adopt) a mother and a father. No same-sex couple can do that.

It’s apples and oranges.

—

The question of infertility is a red herring argument. Primarily because because no matter fertile a same sex couple might be, having children in a sexual union is impossible. The argument is not about inferility or age.

Is there a purpose for human sexuality? Is there a purpose for the lungs? Is there a purpose for the stomach? and so on. If so, how then are these to be used? Should we conculde that because some people chose to use their lungs to get high, that that must be for them the purpose of the lungs? And so then the government has to force all others to agree to this (lungs are for getting high) even though we all know this is false and damaging?
Is that how society should run?

Also see Same Sex Unions for an overview of the subject.