Secular Right: A Secular Case Against Gay Marriage?

Andrew Sullivan led me to a post on Secular Right by John Derbyshire attempting to lay out a a secular argument against gay marriage.  I was thinking of all these things I wanted to write in response, but was surprised to see that several people had already put many of my thoughts into words, so I recommend you browse their more thorough comments.  Meanwhile, here are the things that get me the most in Derbyshire’s arguments (bold words are my doing):  

There really is a slippery slope here. Once marriage has been redefined to include homosexual pairings, what grounds will there be to oppose futher redefinition — to encompass people who want to marry their ponies, their sisters, or their soccer team? Are all private contractual relations for cohabitation to be rendered equal, or are some to be privileged over others, as has been customary in all times and places? If the latter, what is wrong with heterosexual pairing as the privileged status, sanctified as it is by custom and popular feeling?

Seriously?  Ponies and sisters?  Are people still trying to legitimately use that argument?  Incest and marrying animals?  Really?  While Derbyshire alludes to having had gay folk in his neighborhood growing up and going to school with some, does he actually know any gay people?  Several SR readers made a good point: that a major flaw in Derbyshire’s argument is that he takes for granted the “always” nature of marriage, which is a social construct and has gone through both creation and dramatic changes during human civilization, and which still enjoys an abundance of different interpretations in various cultures around the world.  A Daily Dish reader said it perfectly: “I also love the casual assertion that ‘marriage is by nature the union of a man and woman,’ as if marriage is some sort of naturally occurring phenomenon like evaporation or mitosis.“

Homophobia seems to be a rooted condition in us. It has been present always and everywhere, if only minimally (and unfairly — there has always been a double standard here) in disdain for “the man who plays the part of a woman.”  There has never, anywhere, at any level of civilization, been a society that approved egalitarian (i.e. same age, same status) homosexual bonding. This tells us something about human nature — something it might be wisest (and would certainly be conservative-est) to leave alone.

I was raised in a town with a substantial openly gay population, we have gay family friends, I went to schools with openly gay and bisexual classmates and had classmates with gay parents, my parents are not homophobic.  There was never a time growing up where I wondered if homosexuality was weird or unnatural or simply a lifestyle choice, nor was there ever a time growing up where it made me uncomfortable.  I am wired not to be attracted to other women, but that doesn’t mean that I am wired to disapprove of or be disgusted by homosexuality.  He’s also taking a big leap with regard to what is normal in every culture.  It’s true that the more dominant cultures in the world seem to have similar views and the tendency to oppress homosexuals, but there are myriad small cultures all over the world that have differing views on gender, virginity, premarital sex, and sexuality in general.  

Also, so, what, that makes it okay?  Don’t we tout ourselves for being all highly evolved and intelligent and with a conscience?  Why should this be the time to decide to just let our “nature” take its course and deny our friends and family their deserved happiness?  And as astute commenter Joe said, Derbyshire mysteriously manages to ignore the fact that “homosexuality is also part of human nature, as well as many other species’ natures.”

If you have a cognitively-challenged underclass, as every large nation has, you need some anchoring institutions for them to aspire to; and those institutions should have some continuity and stability. Heterosexual marriage is a key such institution. In a society in which nobody had an IQ below 120, homosexual marriage might be plausible. In the actual societies we have, other considerations kick in.

Like several readers who commented on the post, I understand his words (although it took me a while because, what?) but don’t really see where he’s trying to go with this.  And he says that if we all had high IQs that we might have a society that’s totally cool with gay marriage, so (1) is he saying he has a low IQ?  (2) Doesn’t that kind of imply that gay people and gay-friendly people are smarter than everyone else and therefore SHOULD get married and raise babies to make the world a better place??  And anyway, as commenter Dave says, “can’t that institution just be ‘marriage’? What need is there to refine it to ‘heterosexual marriage’?”

Let people live and love as they want.

Right…  I’m sorry, how is this a valid argument against gay marriage?  Sometimes when I listen to these people I feel like I’m playing that game where one person has a phrase but they have it in different words and the other person knows what the real phrase is, and the person keeps saying the slightly different words that sound EXACTLY the same but they still don’t get it, and you’re just sitting there like, “YES.  DON’T YOU HEAR YOURSELF?  YOU’RE SAYING IT.  WHY DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF YOUR OWN MOUTH.”  (Please, if anyone, like Hayley, could remind me what the game is called, let me know because now it’s driving me crazy.)  (UPDATE: Thanks to my savior/friend Meg, who has told me that the game I’m talking about is Mad Gab.  You should all play it.  I’ve discovered that you can play it online here.)

Human nature is what it is, though, and no-one of a conservative outlook can take lightly an attempt to carry out a radical overhaul of a key human institution, in a direction pointed directly at widespread (though I think normally mild) human emotions of disdain and disgust.

Again, a little presumptuous with the whole ‘marriage has always been the same since forever’ thing.  As commenter Torrentprime pointed out, plenty of other past shifts in marriage in Western culture, like the shift from marriage for dowry or property or convenience to the choice of marriage for love, amounted to more sweeping changes to the practice as we know it than allowing same-sex couples to get married — nothing about the vow of commitment, fidelity, and love changes by allowing same-sex couples in on it.  Whether their arguments are secular or not, these odd assumptions keep coming from people like Miss California Carrie Prejean and her new sponsor, the National Organization for Marriage, who are “just here to protect marriage … who respect marriages and people who support it.”  The NOM campaign complains that their “freedom will be taken away.”  Gay marriage will, apparently, literally take away their freedom.  I’m not sure what they actually think gays want to do to marriage.  Because the ‘marriage is for babies’ argument obviously doesn’t hold.  People who “hold marriage dear to [their] heart”, like Miss California, should be happy that so many people want to celebrate love and family and commitment by getting married. They want to be able to BE MARRIED like the rest of us can BE MARRIED.