Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts

April 30, 2015

Questioning same-sex marriage

Photo credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution Newspaper
APOLOGIA
By Hendrik van der Breggen
The Carillon, April 30, 2015

Questioning same-sex marriage

Same-sex marriage has had legal status in Canada for a decade and is (at time of writing) being debated in the U.S. supreme court. My question is this: Is granting legal status to same-sex marriage wise?

It seems to me that further thought is needed.

Granting legal status to same-sex marriage is not merely a personal matter between those of the same sex who wish to wed. It is, rather, a public policy matter that affects others in multiple ways.

For example, granting legal status to same-sex marriage changes the public's understanding of the minimal requirement of marriage from (a) the union of a man and woman who can (at least in principle) reproduce sexually via their union and nurture their biological children to (b) a union of two adults regardless of their sexual noncomplementarity, requiring new reproductive methods and new family structures.

According to political philosopher Ryan T. Anderson, co-author of What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (2012), this change centers marriage on "consenting adult romance" instead of what's best for children. How? By emphasizing adult wants so much so that men and women, mothers and fathers, are made interchangeable when they're not.

Significantly, Anderson argues, reliable studies from the social sciences strongly suggest parenting by married biological parents—i.e., biological mother and biological father—is ideal for the well-being of children.

But same-sex marriage (along with divorce and single parenting) takes society another step away from this ideal.

Also, McGill University ethicist Margaret Somerville points out that same-sex marriage abolishes the child's biologically-based moral right to know and be raised by both biological parents.

Significantly, according to Robert Oscar Lopez, president of the International Children's Rights Institute, there are many adults who were raised by gay/ lesbian parents now expressing discontent and concern over same-sex marriage. Lopez and others defend this thesis in Lopez's recent book Jephthah's Daughters: Innocent Casualties in the War for Family 'Equality' (2015).

Moreover, according to Somerville, same-sex marriage may normalize In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and thereby exacerbate IVF's problems. IVF creates leftover frozen human embryos, i.e., human beings; often requires "selective termination," i.e., abortion of unwanted implantations/ fetuses; exploits women as surrogates and egg suppliers; plus threatens to turn children into commodities.

Also, same-sex marriage is conceptually wed to a non-fallacious slippery slope. According to Anderson, once we redefine marriage broadly as committed adult intimacy instead of the union of a heterosexual couple, why not accept a "throuple" (rhymes with "couple" but involves three or more)?

The rationale for "couple" derives from the one-man-one-woman sexual union requirement—but this requirement has been abandoned. So why stop at two? Why not polyamorous (see here, too) or polygamous relationships?

If loving commitment is a sufficient condition for marriage, and if one man and one woman are no longer a necessary condition, then if you love X, you should be able to marry X. But X is a placeholder.

Finally, religious liberty is affected. For deeply held religious/ moral reasons many citizens believe same-sex sexual relations are wrong.

But with same-sex marriage enshrined in law, public institutions must embrace same-sex marriage as a good that's equivalent to heterosexual marriage. As a result, many public school children are taught what their parents believe is immoral. Is this fair?

Problems also result for businesses and private schools that disapprove of same-sex marriage, as wedding florists, bakers, photographers, and Trinity Western University Law School will attest.

Is same-sex marriage wise? Are we being foolish in not thinking this matter through carefully (as some of our grandparents were foolish in not thinking through, say, Canadian Indian residential schools)?

Surely, there are enough reasons at least to question the wisdom of same-sex marriage and thus encourage careful, truth-seeking thought on the matter.

Surely too—whether we end up favouring same-sex marriage or not—we can do this while showing respect to those with whom we disagree.

(Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, teaches philosophy at Providence University College. The views in this column do not always reflect the views of Providence.)

For further thought: 
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