Same-sex marriages not an equal rights issue, should be banned

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Posted: 2/26/04

02/26/04 - To the Cigar,

Recently, the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts gave the state legislature "guidance" as to what would fulfill court requirements regarding the issue of same-sex relationships: marriage and nothing less.

Last week, the mayor of San Francisco ordered his county clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, in direct violation of California law (Proposition 22). Since that time, over 2,600 same-sex couples have married. The events of the last few weeks and months have sent numerous states scrambling to establish or shore up laws affirming marriage as comprising one man and one woman.

Why does this matter? I'd wager that few on this campus care one way or another about whether gays can marry. After all, it doesn't affect them directly, so why not live and let live? Isn't this a matter of personal freedom and equal rights?

Proponents of same-sex marriage insist their quest for marriage is the same as the fight to abolish laws prohibiting interracial marriage during the Civil Rights era. But here's where the analogy of interracial and same-sex marriage breaks down: there are no fundamental differences between black, white, Asian or Latino males. Skin color is superficial and (to me, anyway) irrelevant as to who someone wants to marry. But the differences between a man and a woman (irrespective of race)? Those are relevant. Males and females are certainly equal, but they clearly are not identical, nor are the types of relationships in which they engage.

This reality is crucial to our understanding of marriage and families. Most of us did not grow up in an ideal family. We wished that Dad had made it to more baseball games, that Mom could have been home to see us after school and that Mom and Dad got along better. These things didn't always happen, but then marriage is not simply an institution, it is also an ideal.

Failings in marriage represent our weaknesses. Even though no family measures up to the ideal (though some come beautifully close), it is always best that children have daily input from both genders in a stable relationship. There are aspects of being a young boy or girl that your mom or dad simply cannot understand. They never went through it. They can't relate to it. They simply cannot know because they do not have first-hand experience at being what you are. But a marriage of a man and a woman brings together two people that, combined, can relate to their children through shared experiences.

The gay community, in attempting to argue equality with heterosexual marriage, fails to realize that their relationship is unmistakably different from those of heterosexuals. It's time to face facts. Two men or two women living together relate to each other in radically different ways than a man and a woman. Each sex brings fundamentally different perspectives, experiences and capabilities to a relationship. When two women live together, the unique perspective that males have is simply not available. No amount of "masculinity" in one or both members of a lesbian couple equates with that of an actual male.

If the definition of marriage is to be so radically altered, as the gay community argues it should, then we as a society require rigorous justification for that change, as well as an understanding of what the new boundaries will be. If the reasoning for allowing same-sex marriage is "because I love them and they love me" coupled with "it isn't fair otherwise" then this is shoddy reasoning indeed. How can this protect our society from truly egregious behavior such as incest and molestation (where minors could be pressured to affirm consent) without appealing to something entirely arbitrary? What's to stop a 42-year-old man from "marrying" his 15-year-old boyfriend?

The fact is that any distinction concerning the definition of marriage must include some hard line distinguishing marriage from other, different relationships. Such a line has existed for millennia, embodying an inescapable truth about humanity: men and women are different and their union in marriage is both precious and unique. Let's keep it that way.

Marcus Ross
Member, Students for the Awareness of Conservatism