The case for same-sex marriage, as
articulated in a new book that debates the issue, still refuses to
recognize that civil society needs real marriage, as it has always
existed, to preserve itself.
Why do the advocates of same-sex marriage want
what they want? And why do defenders of traditional marriage, as uniting
men with women to form families, resist such a change? One cannot do
better for achieving clarity on such questions than by reading Debating Same-Sex Marriage,
co-authored by John Corvino and Maggie Gallagher. Corvino, who teaches
philosophy at Wayne State University in Michigan, and Gallagher, a
co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage, have achieved
something of real value in this book, confronting one another with (in
general) an admirable degree of civility. Given the space to build
arguments for their own views, and to respond to each other at length,
Corvino and Gallagher provide what are probably the best and the most
complete arguments on either side of this momentous debate.
And this is why Debating Same-Sex Marriage so admirably exposes the weakness of the case in its favor.
Gallagher sums up the aims of the two sides this way:
For gay marriage advocates, the ultimate
end is equality: the recognition of gay unions as marriages in all fifty
states and ultimately around the world as part of the process of
creating a world in which sexual orientation is treated like race.
For opponents of gay marriage, stopping
gay marriage is not victory, it is only a necessary step to the ultimate
victory: the strengthening of a culture of marriage that successfully
connects sex, love, children, and mothers and fathers.
Corvino no doubt agrees with Gallagher’s characterization of his
side’s argument. What he gives no credence is her account of her own
side. Indeed, he signally fails even to grasp the kinds of arguments
Gallagher makes, and then concludes, from his own failure, that her
arguments must be incoherent. But the shoe is on the other foot.
The trouble for Corvino begins with the tissue-thin brevity of the
positive case he makes for “marriage equality,” as he calls it. In a
mere eight pages or so—constituting just a tenth of his opening “case
for same-sex marriage”—Corvino tells us that marriage, more than any
other arrangement or institution in which two people can take part,
“promotes mutual lifelong caregiving.” This, he would have us believe,
is the core, the irreducible purpose of marriage, its true raison d’être.
Some homosexual couples really want to enter into such an arrangement,
and to have it called “marriage” under the law with all the attendant
rights and recognition that accompany the label. For Corvino, their
desire for this recognized arrangement supplies them with a presumptive
right to it, in the name of equality. And so for the remainder of his
main statement, and his reply to Gallagher’s statement, Corvino devotes
all his space to attempted rebuttals of the opposing view.
That is, he proceeds as though the common understanding of marriage
advanced by every known civilization must justify itself before the
tribunal of a wholly new and unproven understanding. And this sets the
pattern: Corvino alternates between ineffectual logic-chopping that
evades the real issues regarding the nature and purpose of marriage, and
making the argumentum ad misericordiam, the appeal to our
sympathy for gay and lesbian couples. If only we understood how
important it is to this or that couple to be able to marry, we would
drop our objections. We would understand that “to deny marriage to a
group of people” who want it very badly is to tell them that “you are
less than a full citizen.”
But as Gallagher shows, the reason marriage exists in the first place
is not to satisfy the longings of any two (or more) persons for social
recognition of their desire to care for one another for the long haul,
or to make anyone feel better about his place in society. The reason
marriage exists is because (in the briefest version of her argument),
“sex makes babies, society needs babies, children need mothers and
fathers.” These are, she rightly notes, social problems for which
marriage is the institutional solution. Our private relationships are
generally none of the state’s proper business. But society’s manifest
need to regulate procreation and the responsibility for children
elevates marriage—and the legitimate family relations that flow from
it—from the plane of private law to the plane of public law. As the
family of mother, father, and children is more basic and natural
than the state, so marriage, as the relationship that founds the
family, needs and deserves all the status the state can bestow upon it.
What problem, by contrast, does same-sex marriage solve? No two
persons of the same sex can, without the aid of others, generate
children. Again, the best Corvino can offer is that “it’s good for
people to have a special someone” and that “commitment matters.” True
enough. But these are not, even remotely, social problems requiring an
institutional solution. Marriage, for same-sex couples, is a solution in
search of a problem.
Yet it is more than that, for, as Gallagher also demonstrates,
same-sex marriage promises to create all sorts of new problems, and to
exacerbate others we already know. Marriage in the modern age is a
wounded institution, and the advent of same-sex marriage would injure it
further. We already have trouble remembering that marriage is about
procreation—and that procreation ought to take place within marriage.
Same-sex marriage would make remembering this harder. We already have
trouble honoring fidelity, exclusivity, and permanence in marriage;
same-sex marriage would make this harder too. We already have trouble
articulating why our society rejects polygamy, or even incest; same-sex
marriage would render us speechless. We already have trouble recalling
that marriage unites men and women so that children have both mothers
and fathers, preferably the ones nature gave them; same-sex marriage
means actively rejecting this idea. And this rejection begins with the
necessity of telling ourselves a lie about what marriage is, a falsehood
that is wrong in itself and that has terrible fallout.
To all of Gallagher’s deep reflections on the nature of fundamental
human relationships, Corvino can only reply with shallow recourse to
mere conventionalism. Marriage, he argues, is an evolving social
institution, which has picked up new baggage and shed old baggage over
the centuries. It is simply a name we give to our most highly prized
relationships of mutual care and commitment. Therefore, if we decide to
include same-sex unions among such relationships, all we are doing is
changing the “established usage” of the word. Marriage is, for Corvino,
like other entirely conventional institutions with meanings that utterly
“depend on shared understanding across a community,” like “corporation”
or “baseball.” In a world in which the word “mother” has as much
connection to nature as the phrase “designated hitter,” the purblind
philosopher is king. As Gallagher writes, “an institution with deep
roots in human nature and human necessity becomes contingent and
arbitrary, a product of will and politics, as the rational connections
between its component parts are severed.”
There is much more coverage of the controversy over marriage in this
book than a brief review can recapitulate, including a discussion of the
social science on same-sex parenting that has been overtaken by the
recent research of sociologist Mark Regnerus and the New Family
Structures Study (about which, see recent Public Discourse articles here and here). But there is one respect in which Corvino’s contribution to Debating Same-Sex Marriage is truly hair-raising. When Gallagher argues that one of the essential meanings
of same-sex marriage is that it will result in the privatization and
stigmatization of beliefs about marriage that have prevailed in every
age and culture, and the active suppression of such beliefs in the
public square, Corvino concedes that this is so. He replies,
with an honesty that is both commendable and chilling: “Whichever side
prevails in this debate, the other’s views will be marginalized. There’s
no getting around that.”
In other words, Corvino does indeed look forward to a future in which
those who believe men can only marry women and women can only marry men
will be treated as bigots, just as racists are treated today. In this
future, already working itself out in states and countries with same-sex
marriage (and even some that so far have only same-sex civil unions),
these bigots will be denied advancement in their professions; their
rights to conduct private businesses according to their view of the
reality of marriage will be regulated out of existence; their children
will be inculcated with a view of marriage that is anathema to them; and
in general they can look forward to being told they are in the grip of
an “irrational hatred” they must relinquish as an obsolete social
pathology. The fact that considered moral views, and not animosity, are
at the root of their beliefs, will matter not at all. The fact that, for
most people believing what human civilizations have always believed
about marriage, this belief is intimately bound up with religious faith
and vouchsafed to them by revelation itself, will avail them nothing.
A future in which same-sex marriage is enshrined in the law is a
future without meaningful religious liberty, freedom of speech, or
economic freedom for millions of Americans. Yes, they can “privatize”
their view, and go about their business incognito, as it were. But that
is a surrender of their freedom, not a preservation of it. As Gallagher
astutely notes:
Using the power of law and culture to
suppress alternative conceptions of marriage and sex (because gay people
find these ideas hurtful and insulting to the newly internalized
equality norm) is not a bug in the gay marriage system, it’s a feature.
It’s part of, if not the main point.
Corvino is right. One side or the other will have its view
“marginalized.” Until just a few years ago, the notion that persons of
the same sex could marry one another was the very definition of a
“marginal” view. Practically no one took it seriously, even among gays
and lesbians (who do not universally embrace it even now). The case in
its favor is so undeniably weak, as Corvino’s contributions to this book
demonstrate, that the progress the same-sex marriage “movement” has
made is an amazing tale of the incantatory power of the word “equality.”
When the incantation fades, and sense returns to those who have been
bewitched by it, the idea of same-sex marriage will once again retreat
to the margins of society. That will be a victory of justice over
tyranny. The only question is, will we resist the disastrous error of an
experiment with a lie, or will we try to live the lie and then have to
recover from it? Human societies have experimented with lies before. It
is better to avoid them in the first place.
