I was listening to the Michael Medved show the other day and he had some guest on the show talking about gay marriage. Medved was making the argument that the gay marriage ban is legitimate because the only reason the state endorses marriages is to encourage procreation. Since that's not a possibility in gay marriages, the state gains no advantage by endorsing them or providing benefits to them. To the objection that gays can adopt, Medved said that every child has a right to both a mother and a father, and ideally to its biological mother and father. Thus the state gains some kind of benefit from heterosexual procreation that it does not gain from homosexual adoption.
I have several objections to this line of argument, which I will simply list for your reading pleasure.
1) The state does not actually provide tax breaks to all married couples. In fact, married people with similar incomes actually pay more in taxes when filing jointly than they would if they filed separately as single people. So it's not like the government is taking a major financial loss by allowing gays to marry. Nor is it providing them a major economic incentive to do so.
2) It has not been demonstrated to my satisfaction that the reason the state recognizes and endorses marriages is to encourage the procreation of children. I suspect this is merely an after-the-fact rationalization. In my opinion, the state recognizes marriages out of sheer legal necessity and historical and cultural momentum. Encouragement to procreate is offered in the form of tax deductions for dependent children, not in the form of marriage rights.
3) The state does not stand in the way of marriages where the couple has no desire or ability to produce children. It does not, for example, prevent a woman without a uterus from obtaining a marriage license. If it really gained some meaningful benefit from preventing unproductive marriages, gays would not be the only ones so prevented.
4) It may be true that the ideal is for a child to be raised by its own mother and father. However, orphans exist. If they grow up with no parents at all, as mere wards of the state, there is a higher likelihood that they will be unproductive and problematic citizens than if they are raised in a stable home environment where they are loved. It is for this reason that we allow single parents to adopt, even though that is less than ideal. A gay couple is arguably in a better situation to care for an adopted child than a single parent is. There is still only one parental gender represented, but there are at least the combined wisdom, time, and resources of two parents contributing to the child's upbringing. Frankly, a couple that procreates is doing less for the state than a couple that adopts. The procreating couple offers the state a boon, but the adopting couple both offers a boon and also averts a possible disaster. It both produces a productive citizen and prevents the production of a counterproductive one. Thus, in my opinion, the government should actually provide extra incentives to couples that adopt.
5) Another benefit that arguably accrues to the government from allowing gays to marry is simple happiness, health, and stability. Gays in happy relationships are more likely to be economically productive. Gays in stable relationships are less likely to engage in destructive sexual promiscuity. Gays in church- and state- sanctioned relationships are less likely to act to subvert churches and the state. In short, gay marriages offer a possible route for mainstreaming a loud and often self-destructive minority.
In short, the argument that the state has an interest in crushing gay marriage holds water like a sieve. The state actually has a great deal to gain from recognizing and endorsing gay marriages as it does for heterosexual ones. I beg the people of our country to stop using the government to enforce their religious values. We left the medieval fusion of church and state behind for good reason: it was bad for both the church and the state. The use of the government for religious ends only turns the "good news" of the Christian gospel into frightening and oppressive news. This country was founded as a pluralistic republic, and I for one pray that it will forever stay that way.
5 comments:
Of course, number six on your list could be concerned with the fallacy that the citizens exist for the benefit of the state, instead of the state supporting and protecting the citizens. How strange to hear a conservative talk about the interests of the government.
On that note, why is the state involved in a religious sacrament? Are there state baptisms that confer status?
Hey Nyal, you make an excellent point. I suspect that if you really pressed a conservative, s/he would still say that the state exists to serve the people. But in this age of Islamic terror and the TV show 24, there's a lot of rhetoric coming from conservatives about the need for strong government. They increasingly seem to talk about the state as if it's an end in itself. Perhaps it is because of their concern to protect the American majority from external threats that they have lost sight of the need to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority.
As for why the state is involved in a religious sacrament, that's a good question. In the Medieval and Early Modern periods, church and state were fused in such a way that marriages and baptisms were state functions as much as religious sacraments. Baptismal records, for example, essentially served as a census of all births so that the government could keep track of its citizens. In the United States baptism was disestablished and the state found non-religious ways to gather the same data. Perhaps because it seemed not to be sect-specific, however, marriage remained established. Not until the rise of Mormonism did we really have a strong religious minority that had a different view of marriage and the family than the majority Western tradition. At that point we should have disestablished marriage. Instead we simply retrenched monogamy in our legal system and invaded Utah.
Kinda going from a different direction than 1 and 2...most of the legal benefits relating to marriage have nothing to do with children...as you already note, there can be a "marriage penalty" kind of tax for certain couples, but I would argue too that since the vast majority of benefits don't even pertain to children, your point 2 is particularly strong. Even taking children out of the equation (which, as you point out, is flawed, due to the fact that we *do* have orphanages that are still open, with kids who could go to a good home), marriage has quite a few benefits that gay marriage opponents need to account for.
Thanks, Andrew. Nothing to add; you're right on!
You have a point there about the state using religious values to run it's laws by. Aren't they supposed to be separate? Yet most of the people who oppose gay marriage are religious folks, who think it's a big sin to be gay at all let alone a married one with children. I believe in the religion called "Live and let Live" also I believe in reincarnation because for God to let a perfectly good soul burn in Hell when it can repent there in hell just as easily as on earth.. well that's a real sin!
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