Anonymous Disputes, Homosexual Marriages

Published Tuesday, October 31, 2006 by Kevin Breathnach | E-mail this post

The Irish Independent online reads a bit like The Economist. That is not to say that it is a reasonable, respectable and rational publication. Oh no. It's just that online, the reader isn't made aware of the author of any particular piece. Disconcerting this, when you're in the habit of introducing blog posts by telling readers just who said what. In any case, someone writing in the Irish Independent has a piece on gay marriage and its position on the assorted political terrains of America. And it's a fairly poor piece, I must say.

From what I can make of the piece, the author opposes gay marriage, but is pleased that the issue reintroduces marriage as the 'golden ideal,' when forty years ago, it was scorned by those in favour of gay rights as some tool of government used to repress the bourgeous. A little like how the Da Vinci Code gaenerated all that publicity and interest in Opus Dei and the Catholic Church, I'm sure the author will agree.

Anyway, two fairly old arguments are made against gay marriage, neither of which are particularly valid or logical. The first argument touches on that ole' devil: financial equality.

If homosexuals are barred from marriage, they are second-class citizens. Gay activists use the analogy with black rights. "We want to move from the back of the bus," said one, invoking the image of the poor blacks who were once debarred from sitting in the front seats in public transport.

However, the analogy is not exactly compelling. Blacks were - and some still are - poor. Gays are often rich, and the "pink dollar" has considerable purchasing power. Gays are at the front ranks of the 'dinkies' - double income, no kids - and many are gifted and influential individuals in the arts, fashion, media and business. And behind the argument for the principle of "equality", there is the more fundamental issue of finance. Marriage confers considerable financial privileges in the United States, which civil unions and domestic partnerships don't quite match.

As deligent readers will have noticed, I condensed the sentences of this author into a paragraph, because blockquoting numerous single sentences looks like shit. However, for your convenience, I divided that giant paragraph I had formed into two. The division signifies the point at which the author's argument falls apart. And yes, it's also the start of the argument.

The argument in favour of gay marriage isn't that, because gays can't take advantage of the benefits marriage brings, gays are poor. To argue against that is therefore hilarious, whoever the author is. Indeed, the argument about gay marriage shouldn't necessarily rely on any practical argument. None. True, there are arguments to which, without a solid principle case, the lobby for gay marriage might refer with some justification. But no, the principle is sound. And so it's the argument of principle which should be considered "the more fundamental issue." The fundamental principle on which liberal democracy should be based is that of equal rights. We don't - or at least, we shouldn't - treat a group of people differently than how we treat anyone, only to justify it with an explanation that that particular group does alright anyway. Historically, Jewish communities did fairly well, financially at least, despite repressive laws in place; it does not follow that it was grand to force them out of Limerick or into Venetian ghettoes.

There are, naturally, many flaws contained within the above paragraph. For one, to compare the treatment of gay people with that of the Jews in history, is excessively immotive. So too is the comparison made by the gay lobby (if such exists so uniformly as to be addressed as such) and the treatment of blacks way back when. Such are failings: mine, a failing of historical reference; there's, a failing of temprement. Each comparison though hold some degree of validity. Mine was not made to suggest gays are persecuted so gravely; it intended instead to raise an analogous precedent. I'm sure, one day, a philosophy professor will teach me a word which would have made this entire paragraph redundant.

Tenuous too is the argument for equal rights, though I think the argument for gay marriage is stronger than the weight of this flaw: as it stands, gay people have the same rights as straight people. That is, a straight man, say, can marry a woman. Equally, the law allows a gay man to marry a woman. The case isn't such that, on 'coming out', as it is said, the law forbids the gay man the marriage rights he had as a straight man. Surely, then, equal rights already exists? On an entirely disinterested level, it is beyond me to find a argument to deflate this. All I can construe gives rise to further problems of consistency and precedent, which while vincible, are rather troublesome. That is, the government should accept that gay people exist. That while theoretically, their right to marry members of the opposite sex qualifies their rights as equal, the very nature of homosexuality makes it such that altered marriage rights as imperitive. Gay people are gay because they are attracted to their same sex; that is all that differentiates gay people from straight people.

The door, however, is left tenuously ajar by this argument. The precedent it sets is highlighted by whoever it was who penned the article in question, as an argument against gay marriage rights:

And American conservatives have another protest point against the "all-equality" argument: it could open the door to the equalising of polygamy. If gay persons have the right to marital equality, why not Mormons and those Muslims who claim the right to marry many wives?

The counter-argument to this, at least those I can contrive, lay near that hobby-horse of mine: that religion is something about which one has a choice. I can choose to convert to Islam, in the full knowledge that in this country, my wish to exploit the rights Islam hands me cannot be fulfilled. The laws of the state hold transcend the religious doctrine - I know this before I become a member of Islam. A gay person is born gay^[*]. That children are usually born into a religion is problematic as far as this is concerned. But the child is also born into the state. His parents may do so for him, but ceremonies and paperwork, for religion and state respectively, signify his entering into these, shall we say, contracts. He has the option to leave either at any stage. In spite of what some nutty priest or moralist may have told you, a gay person cannot change his sexual orientation.

^[*]I said a born person is born gay, and this is crucial to this constructed argument, if one is willing to dignify it with that term. Indeed, my entire support for gay marriage rests on my belief that homosexuality is innate. For more on that, try here. If science some day finds that homosexuality is not in fact innate, my ideas will have to be reassesed. For further reading on the issue, try here.

Whether we will ever know for sure is, aptly, not something I'm certain of. But if I had to guess, I'd say it was Mary Kenny.

Anonymous Disputes, Homosexual Marriages

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