“Big Love”: The Natural Extension of “Gay Marriage”
I have some relatively libertarian leanings when it comes to some issues surrounding homosexuality. Unlike most of my evangelical friends, for instance, I supported–and do support–Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy toward the military. I don’t think that there ought to be laws forbidding private behavior (provided it is truly private), regardless of how I feel about the morality of such actions. Further, I don’t think it’s the state’s business who a person wants at his bedside when he’s dying, and I’d be in favor of legislation to provide certain “rights” when it comes to issues like that.
Where I draw a clear and uncompromising line, though, is “gay marriage”. There are a number of reasons this is so, and there are a number of arguments countered by its proponents on why we should allow such a redefinition of marriage. One of those arguments was made by Mike Farrell on O’Reilly a few nights back (and I paraphrase): “I don’t see how allowing ‘gay marriage’ affects my marriage one bit.” Well, Mike, think a little more deeply, because it certainly affects yours and every marriage in profound ways.
A case in point is this article by Maggie Gallagher detailing the already-slippery slope:
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How does redefining marriage to allow two people of the same sex to be legally wed to each other hurt my marriage (and remember, that’s the issue when it comes to “gay marriage”; it’s not about equal rights, because every person in this country has equal rights already when it comes to marriage…period.)? Simple, really; it redefines marriage in a way so as to make it something I didn’t sign up for. The argument is made that marriage “is about two people who love each other”, which is silly on its face, and it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out: I love my mother, my daughter, and my sister, all deeply, but I should not be allowed to marry any of them. Such a reductionist redefinition, accepted uncritically by so many, is what sets the stage for the shoddy arguments that the Mike Farrells of the world so blithely accept. I didn’t marry my wife understanding the very definition of marriage itself to be some great fill-in-the-blank to be silly-puttied into some other form later.
Further, as the above article demonstrates, it will lead–inevitably–to the eventual dissolution of marriage as we know it. Once we have radically redefined the very nature of marriage away from that which has been its definition everywhere since the beginning of time, (perhaps somewhere, sometime, there was a brief departure from this) then there is absolutely no logical stopping point: none. Polygamy is no more preposterous–and it has much more historical support–than “gay marriage”. To what could appeal be made–logically, ethically, morally–for the prohibition of polygamy, once we open the door to “gay marriage”? And after that, after we say, “well, it’s fine for a man to marry three women, or a woman to have five husbands”, then what logical, ethical, practical, or moral argument could be advanced against “group marriage”: four women and seven men, say? And then we come back to marriage–the real thing–and we ask, “what is its definition? What have we said when a man and a woman say, ‘we’re married’?” And the answer would be, “you’ve said nothing; whoopee; what’s the big deal?” For if marriage can be anything, then it is nothing. And the good folks at HBO are determined to push every envelope they can–so much for Hollywood and TV “reflecting” American society…
And those who do not see, in the push for “gay marriage”, that that is where things are surely headed, just aren’t looking nearly hard enough…
That’s why, Mr. Farrell, it greatly, greatly impacts your marriage for us to radically redefine the institution.
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11 Responses to ““Big Love”: The Natural Extension of “Gay Marriage””
Well said erudite one.
Vigilius ~ Mar 9, 2006 at 6:03 am
Bravo Byron! You hit the ball clear out of the complex on this one. You touched every base and scored a big one for the team. We married folk were on base, waiting for someone to ‘pick us up’ on the gay marriage issue. Thanks.
Mark Merritt ~ Mar 10, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Actually, the argument as you presented it isn’t that strong after all. Someone who argues for gay marriage based on the “two people who love each other” can easily meet your objection that there are further other conditions to be met for the “love” condition so that the connundrums you propose don’t really become an issue.
The second argument about redefining marriage leading to the dissolution of the same really isn’t as strong as you make it out to be. After all, the arguments of proponents of gay marriage and for that matter polygamous marriage are about providing the same legal and social rights, protections and privileges accorded marriage couples. In doing so, it doesn’t have to necessarily lead to the kind of slippery slopes that antagonists suggest it does.
Finally, and I think it is important to note that Christians who support gay marriage (or even polygamous ones) do not necessarily need to accept gay or polygamous lifestyles.
the bloke ~ Mar 15, 2006 at 11:29 pm
OK, I’ll bite, bloke; what “further other conditions” would those arguing for gay marriage cite that would “easily meet my objection”? I’m honestly curious, because the point I’m making in that regard is simply this: I’ve heard many say, “marriage is about two people who love each other; why can’t they get married”, and the only argument I’m making here is to say that marriage is categorically not merely about “two people who love each other”; marriage is far more complex than that oversimplified definition. If they’d have an argument against that point, then I’m all ears, but that is all I was saying in that regard. It may be that you missed what I was saying.
And it may be that you missed it as well regarding the second argument I was making, which is simply this: once we start down the slippery slope by sanctioning the abomination of “gay marriage”, there is no logical /ethical/moral stopping point. I’m not getting into issues about legal rights or anything like that; I’m simply asking “once you change the definition of marriage from one-man/one-woman” (which has loads and loads of moral, historical, and legal precedent) to “something else”, you’ve basically opened the door to all sorts of other arrangements. I’m not arguing here about rights/protections, etc.; as I said in my first paragraph, I have at least some level of sympathy for the extension of certain rights. You, on the other hand, say, “it doesn’t have to necessarily lead to the kind of slippery slopes that antagonists suggest it does”. You will need to explain why this is so, at what point we’d be able to “put on the brakes”, and by what rationale.
Candidly, I’m not sure what to make of your last paragraph, but feel free to articulate more. And thanks for posting.
Byron ~ Mar 16, 2006 at 10:29 am
Byron, I (surprisingly, no?) have to disagree here. I think marriage was redefined when money-grubbers were allowed to open “drive-thru” wedding chapels in Vegas. I can’t believe the things I heard from my mom’s divorce lawyer. Forgiving, at least in part, that the man is slicker than snot on a doorknob, he jokes constantly about the number of calls he gets from people who got married in Vegas and later wanted said marriages annulled. He told me about one where an 18-year-old girl was in Vegas with her friends to celebrate their high school graduation, and after getting higher than a kite in a hurricane she married a hobo at one of those 24-hour chapels.
I’m one of those that believes not everything is God’s will. I believe that He allows things to happen, not because He’s not in control, but because He wanted (in humanity) a companion that had a will of its own. There are things in my life that I can say were definitely God’s will, but there are also many things that I think “just happened.”
My point in that is thus: not every couple who gets married was meant to be together. I believe my parents were meant to be together but since my mother was always so angry and bitter, that changed. I believe that because God did not intend some people to be married, we should be far more careful about who we exchange vows with. But because marriage has become a joke–and yes, I believe with all my heart that to most people it is very much a joke–I don’t buy the “sanctity” line. There’s no sanctity in marriage anymore except among a very few people. Honesty no longer has a high place in our society. Everything else has suffered because of it.
But as for Gay marriage, because I believe God made me and others like me exactly the way we are, I believe also that He has one person out there for me and whether it will be acknowledged legally or not, when I find that person I will exchange vows and I will live and die by them. That is why at age 27 I am still celibate and not bitter about it in the least. Believe it or not, there are quite a few homosexuals who take that kind of love and committment very seriously. What I find sad to a degree is that I know more gay couples who have remained faithful than I do straight couples.
Mel ~ Mar 18, 2006 at 8:22 pm
Mel, it’s certainly hard to disagree with a lot of what you say; we’ve certainly made a mess of God’s design of marriage, and the examples you cite are certainly proof of that. I do think, at the same time, that your experience is probably coloring your perception a great deal; there are many, many folks who enjoy happy and fulfilling marriages, my parents, fortunately, being an excellent case in point (we’ll celebrate 50 with them in late December).
We’re all, to a significant degree, influenced by our experiences; you’ve known “more gay couples who have remained faithful than (you) do straight couples”; I know a whole, whole lot of straight couples that (assumedly, and I’m probably wrong here and there) have remained totally faithful. You can add, by the way, my wife and myself to your list…hey, you know me at least, sort of!
I certainly couldn’t disagree that many folks who get married shouldn’t. As a pastor, I am pretty choosy about who I marry; the truth is that there are many who think that getting married will “fix things”, or who confuse romance with love, or who look at marriage through rose-colored glasses, or…fill in the blank. But all of that being said, I don’t agree with your conclusion.
The main reason that this is so is that you are attaching marriage’s “sanctity” to what we have done with it (and I must protest that, even on that count, there are far more than “a very few people” who treat it as the sanctified thing it is). I don’t believe that that’s where we look to answer the question as to its nature; rather, I believe that marriage is ordained by God, and while we’ve done a good job of messing up so many things that God created, that doesn’t change His desire or His design. God brought man and woman together; He said that it was “good”. It’s still “good”, though so many fail to act accordingly.
Further, my original post was limited to making several points about where allowing “gay marriage” was logically headed; though of course I don’t believe in the concept, my point wasn’t to list all of the reasons I believe it’s a problem, but merely to address the “slippery slope” that seems inevitable: there’s no “stopping point” if “gay marriage” is allowed; polygamy will naturally and inevitably follow, as will “group marriage”. It’ll be a question of “when”, but not “if”, for each of these—and who knows what else.
Byron ~ Mar 19, 2006 at 2:09 pm
I don’t think it’s right that everyone has the same marriage rights. Even leaving aside children (who for good reasons need parental permission and so on) and marrieds vs. singles (the former have to get divorced or annulled before they can remarry), men and women don’t have the same rights as each other. Men can’t marry menm and women can’t marry women. You’re right that gays and straights have the same rights. Gay men and straight men both have a right to marry women and not men, and gay women and straight women both have a right to marry men and not women. But there is an issue of some people not having the same rights as others. The gay marriage activists are misstating things, but their conclusion in this general form is correct. If we have an obligation to give men and women the same rights as each other, then gay marriage must be a right if straight marriage is. Of course, we don’t want to say any of this if we want there to be girls’ soccer teams or men’s and women’s bathrooms, since that’s not giving equal rights to both sexes.
There is one response to the slippery slope argument that you shouild be aware of. The economic issues aren’t the same for gay marriage and polygamous marriage. Gay marriage provides benefits to one partner. Polygamous marriage has more. This is an important issue if marriage entails economic benefits (as our laws currently have it). If somehow we undid all that, and we kept marriage and the civil union sort of benefits completely separate, then this response wouldn’t be fair. But as things stand, we have civil unions that just provide benefits and marriage that provides benefits plus the name ‘marriage’. If we removed all benefits from marriage and required people to get civil unions from the government but the name ‘marriage’ only from certain sorts of social organizations but with no legal impact, then this argument could easily be sidestepped. That’s in fact what I’d like to see happen, and then there will be no chance of the government telling churches who they can and can’t declare married. But I don’t think it’s very likely that this sort of situation would come about before gay marriage takes effect. That means the economic benefits of marriage will provide the exact difference between gay marriage and polygamous marriage that’s necessary to show that the arguments for gay marriage are consistent with opposing polygamous marriage for economic reasons.
Since the Bloke hasn’t returned, I’ll fill in the details. The standard liberal view of sexual morality is that there are no moral issues related to sex itself. Barring other considerations that might make any act immoral, there’s nothing about sex itself that would make it immoral. If it’s without consent, then it’s immoral, but that’s true of most things without consent. So rape is out. If it’s causing harm to another who hasn’t consented to that harm, then it’s also wrong.
Incest that might lead to reproduction thus gets ruled out because of the effects on potential children. Since animals can’t consent, bestiality is wrong. But masturbation can never be wrong on this view, unless (1) it causes harm to yourself and (2) it’s wrong to harm yourself (different moral theories give different answers to the second issue). Adultery is wrong (assuming it’s wrong to break promises, which most people would agree with).
Prostitution is wrong only if it harms someone in a way the person hasn’t consented to or if it takes advantage of the prostitute’s desperate situation (which wouldn’t be true of all prostitution in principle but just many cases). If polygamy inherently causes harm, then that would be out too, though some would say that it depends on the circumstances. What this allows for is that gay sex can be wrong if it can be shown to be harmful in principle (and therefore not because of things like AIDS), but very few people with this general view of sex will think gay sex is inherently harmful. It does leave a space for such a view, though.
The most intriguing thing about this view is that it allows incest in the case of an adult brother and sister whose reproductive potential has been completely eliminated. If you want to argue that brother-sister sex is inherently harmful, you’re probnably going to have to make a similar argument as the argument that gay sex is inherently harmful. I don’t think someone can easily maintain that incest is always wrong while saying gay sex is generally ok. That really does seem to me to be an interesting result
Jeremy Pierce ~ Mar 19, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Jeremy, you’ve fairly well confunded me; I’m not sure exactly what you were trying to say, but what little I did understand I disagree with. Gay sex is not the only way to get AIDS or other STD’s, and that alone does not make it harmful. Anyone, gay or straight, who flippantly has sex with whomever they want at any given moment exposes themselves to harm. It’s not just a gay thing.
Byron, I do agree there are people in this world who still revere marriage as a sacred institution. But Marriage as we know it today is more legal than anything else; it is the legal aspects we want. If my significant other needed me then there’s not a force on this planet that could keep me from being by her side. And if I were to be called home before her, I would want to know that she’d be taken care of. Did you know that it is still legal to discriminate in most states against gays and lesbians like me in employment, housing and services? Here in Arizona, I’ve lost three jobs after the employers found out I was a lesbian. That’s not equal rights.
I can understand your perspective; five years ago, I would have thought it unconscionable to believe gay marriage was okay. It took an epiphany for me to realize how wrong I was.
Mel ~ Mar 21, 2006 at 12:31 am
Jeremy,
I like that comment. I think you are absolutely correct that a clear distinction must be drawn between marriage in a Christian sense; and marriage in a societal sense (whatever names people want to hang on it).
I actually applauded the minister in whatever state who stopped performing legal marriages because of the law against gay marriage. Kind of the reverse of my opinion, but he was making a clear distinction between his view of the religious and the secular.
Of course the economic aspects of marriage cannot drive the spiritual ones. For instance, what if Christian churches married whom they chose with whatever spiritual contract they couple wrote up. What if they simply ignored the marriage license from the state - and couples could persue that if they wished (the minister could sign it if they had it). Gay couples have established legal documents for years guarding child, property, inheritance etc issues. Why can’t “straights”?
You are right. The secular/church team-up on marriage has not been broken yet - but in many states it will get bent.
jchfleetguy ~ Mar 21, 2006 at 11:08 am
Well, Mel, don’t count on me having that epiphany…
Seriously, I think you’ve touched on a key issue in this whole discussion. I didn’t get married because of anything to do with legal rights; I got married because I loved (love: present tense!) my wife, and was willing to make a lifelong commitment to her. The legal rights are great, of course, but I didn’t have those in mind at all when I got married. Of course, we didn’t have to think of those things 23 years ago.
Now…as I said at the beginning of this post, I have certain libertarian leanings which separate me in some ways from some of my “Religious Right” friends. I don’t think that it’s the state’s business, for instance, who gets to be at a person’s bedside when they’re dying. But my challenge would be that a.) marriage wasn’t instituted by God as primarily a “legal institution”, to grant “legal rights”; b.) most married people—well, okay, I’m guessing a little bit here—but certainly myself and many, many married folks don’t do it for the rights; c.) if rights are the concern, then pursue the rights without changing millennia of recorded history (and plenty of other things) in order to alter the very basic meaning of marriage.
I maintain that we all have equal rights before the law when it comes to marriage; every American may marry any other eligible American. What the gay lobby (sorry if that term offends; tell me the right term and I’ll happily switch) wants to fundamentally alter the terms of marriage itself, and utterly redefine it…and as I point out, once that’s done, the slope is very slippery—again, the point of the post in the first place, and one that no one yet has countered, by the way.
If, on the other hand, it is certain legal rights/protections that are desired, then make the case for those in some other “wrapper” than marriage, and on at least some, maybe many, of them, you’ll find an ally in me; as I said, “don’t ask, don’t tell” strikes a reasonable balance which allows people the right to serve in the military irrespective of sexuality, without at the same time harming military preparedness, as some fear that open homosexuality would (and I really don’t want to get into that one way or the other, except to say that when it comes to the military, whose job it is to defend our country, I’ll go a long way to make sure that military preparedness is paramount).
So…I won’t sign off on your contention that “marriage today…is more legal than anything else”, because I have never, ever seen it that way, and my opinion is that most married folks don’t.
Maybe the whole housing issue is one for another time; you won’t like my conclusions, but you won’t find my reasoning offensive, I promise…
Now, to other posts, I don’t really grasp what Jeremy was driving at either; maybe some clarification?
To Fleetguy, I haven’t read of any other pastor taking the stand you describe regarding performing legal marriages in a state that allows “gay marriage”, but that is my stance exactly (maybe you read it here, many months ago?). I will marry any couple (that meets my relatively strict criterion); I will not sign any legal documents recognizing such in any state which legalizes “gay marriage”, meaning Massachusetts at this point, but any and all others in the future. Ironically, I have done exactly one wedding in Massachusetts, and it was about a week after their new law went into effect! I did it because I agreed to do the wedding many months before the law went into effect; if I were asked today, I’d make it clear to the couple that I’d perform a wedding, but if they wanted it to be legal, they’d have to arrange for that in some other way, because I will not be the instrument of any state that so alters the meaning of marriage. Some folks won’t understand that, but that’s my principled position. Effectively, then, what you suggest is exactly what I’d do: treat the two as separate completely.
Byron ~ Mar 21, 2006 at 9:37 pm