Chatting on Chait

Jonathan Chait, senior editor of The New Republic, writes as though all opposition to marriage neutering boils down to a dislike of homosexual behavior, the way someone might dislike a flavor of ice cream, likely because that person hasn't tried it enough times or been around someone enjoying it enough times.

You believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman? Okay! But why?

This is like asking why we believe the sun rises in the east.

In a liberal society, consenting adults are presumed to be able to do as they like, and it is incumbent upon opponents of any such freedom to demonstrate some wider harm.

If they want to impose some new restriction, yes. Defending bride-groom marriage licensing is not imposing a new restriction. Rather, it is the people who are pushing to neuter marriage licensing that have the burden of convincing us that the change would be more beneficial than harmful. I'm pretty sure it is illegal for me to build and operate a nuclear reactor in my backyard, even though I've never harmed anyone by doing so. There is zero evidence that I would hurt anyone. So I guess all I have to do is ask, and I should be allowed?

[More is below the fold if you care to read it.]

Expanding a right to a new group deprives the rest of us of our right to deny that right to others.

There is no right to a state-issued license, and state-issued marriage licenses are already available to both men and women, regardless of their sexual orientation. So, no group is being deprived of right.

If making a right less exclusive devalues it, then any extension of rights is an imposition upon those who were not previously excluded--i.e., women's suffrage makes voting less special for men.

Well, yes, it did. A any man's vote had less importance because more potential voters were added. However, this is not the same thing. Women were not allowed to vote because of their sex. Voting has a purpose. It does something. If a group of people said, "We want to vote on the same ballot, but we don't want to actually have to mark or punch anything," then voting would cease to have meaning. Someone saying "I am a voter" wouldn't mean nearly as much as it did. Marrige is more serious, though.

Another objection holds that gay marriage would weaken the link between marriage and child-rearing, therefore encouraging out-of-wedlock births. If true, this would at least provide some weight on the scale against gay marriage. But it suffers from two massive flaws. First, it's hard to imagine how the tiny gay minority's behavior can materially influence the way the vast majority of heterosexuals view marriage.

They have already influenced a significant percentage's view of marriage. Marriage would be neutered for all - not just a small portion of society. The official state position would be that marriage is not about children. If marriage is not about children, then why should anyone feel obligated to raise children within marriage?

Second, if you think about it, the causality gay-marriage opponents imagine is running the wrong way. Suppose we had a social epidemic of young adults who moved back into their parents' houses and watched television all day rather than finding a job. You might want to strengthen the link between adulthood and work. You'd be concerned about anything that weakened this link by letting adults not work--say, early retirement. But you wouldn't be concerned about the social signals sent by teenagers finding summer jobs. That would be weakening the link between adulthood and work, but not in the harmful way.

So homosexual people are like teenagers and heterosexuals are like adults? The analogy is mixed up. It only works of same-sex pairings can naturally produce children (work) just like male-female pairings.

The link between childrearing and marriage has already been weakened to be sure, but the state officially removing the link between the two would bring even more harm.

Likewise, marriage proponents might worry about anything that expands childbearing to the non-married, but they have no reason to fear expanding marriage to the non-childbearing. This is why approximately zero people in the history of the human race have ever expressed concern about allowing old or otherwise infertile heterosexuals to marry, even though they account for a far larger percentage of marriages than gays ever could.

Sorry, you're not getting away with this one. No same-sex pairing alone has ever produced children. Both-sex pairings are the only kind that can produce children alone, even if not all such pairings can or do.

The most striking thing about anti-gay-marriage arguments is that they dwell exclusively on how heterosexuals would be affected.

Wrong. We often refer to how children would be affected, and some children grow up to be adults who... identify as homosexual. Also, weakened marriage would be bad for society in general, and homosexual people are part of society, aren't they?

If you place zero weight upon the preferences of gays, then all you have to do is suggest a possible harm, however remote, associated with gay marriage.

If we're placing weight upon "preferences", then how about the preferences of voters?

The same sensibility was on stark display in a recent National Review editorial. Dismissing the argument that marriage might foster more stable gay relationships, the magazine's editors replied curtly, "[T]hese do not strike us as important governmental goals." There's a word for social policy that disregards the welfare of one class of citizens: discrimination.

There are other things that might help homosexual people, or other "classes" of citizens, that we don't enshrine in law – because we have freedom. The homosexual person is free to participate in marriage or not.

As people face up to the fact that opposing gay marriage means disregarding the happiness of the people most directly (or even solely) affected by it, most of us come around.

It would make me happy to have certain degrees from UCLA, but I'm not attracted to taking more tests or doing the course work. Does that obligate the people of California to give me those degrees – so that I can be "happy"?

I remember when domestic partnerships were going to make these very same people happy. Now, they are talked about like an insult.

Unfortunately for Chait, it is those arguing for what would amount to the largest social policy change ever to convince the people that such a change will be more beneficial than harmful. Those of us defending marriage are not obligated to demonstrate that the change would be harmful. Even if we assume that we have no way of knowing what the long-term societal benefits or harms would be, the default is to maintain the bride-groom licensing requirement. Does anyone really believe, if 25 years down the line, illegitimacy was up and stats on marriage (lasting until death, being happy, improving the life of the participants - including children - in some demonstrable or measurable way) were down, and fewer people per capita were bothering to get married – that marriage neutering proponents would say, "Hey! You were right! Let’s revert back to bride-groom marriage licensing." ? Heck no. Likely they would argue tooth and nail that the rise in the negatives and decrease in the positives were purely coincidental to marriage neutering.

Doesn't anyone remember when a man was under pressure - by his own conscience, by his peers, by society, and even by law - to marry a woman he impregnated? If we take the premise of the marriage neutering proponents that we ought to consider (and license) as marriage same-sex pairings because their love for each other is just as valid, then we make it about how they feel about each other and their relationship. If marriage is primarily about how two adults feels about each other and their relationship, then a man's response to any pressure about marrying a woman he impregnated can rightly be, "I don’t want to marry her. I’d rather not have those legal or social obligations." He can say that now, and could always have said it. But we would not longer be justified in telling him to do it for the sake of the child, as we will have agreed that marriage is not about children.

Sadly, this is already happening all of the time today when it comes to divorce. An adult's feelings are more important than a child's needs.