Nah, it's Still Homophobic

So, I got an interesting comment on the last post. Chris puts forth an argument that s/he read elsewhere, and asks for my opinion on it (which I find flattering. Chris is now my favorite reader).

My post had been to the effect that if you try the "I'm not homophobic, but same-sex marriage threatens the very institution of marriage by diluting it," argument, then I'm prepared to call you a homophobe for assuming that gays and lesbians are somehow incapable of having a "real" marriage (i.e., one which would not dilute the institution of marriage).

But Christ posted an argument (that s/he does not necessarily endorse) that basically boils down to this:

Marriage is primarily about having and raising children. SSM "dilutes" marriage because it shifts the focus of marriage towards the love/devotion aspect and away from children.

By refocusing what marriage is about, we lose some of the emphasis on marriage as a commitment to the well-being of children in favor of emphasis on the commitment to each other.

50 years ago we had marriage in order to help people raise children. 50 years from now, will the purpose of marriage be redefined to simply help two people express their love?

So, is this argument anti-SSM without being homophobic?

No.

First off, I think the argument makes a couple of big assumptions.* One of the assumptions is summarized in the "50 Years" part. Marriage has changed in a lot of ways in the past 50 years. To the "help raise children" part of marriage in 1956, you could add "so that a woman can be financially supported by a man, which is necessary for her to avoid either starving or being considered less than respectable." By that reasoning you could say that all the work that has been done to fight gender discrimination in the workplace has been diluting marriage, not to mention the laws that gave women ownership of their own property, the right to take a job without their husband's permission, redress to the law when beaten or raped by her husband, etc., etc.. I don't think many of us would accept a return to that definition of marriage, yet few would argue that letting a woman charge her husband with rape dilutes or "threatens" their marriage. Marriage has been evolving forever, but no one complained much about it until the GOP decided to turn LGBT folk into the electoral boogeymen (excuse me--I think they prefer "people of boogey").

The other assumption is that gays and lesbians won't raise children. In fact, child-rearing is one of the main reasons that people are fighting for same-sex marriage. I go to bed each night secure in the knowledge that if my wife dies, her creepy father won't be able to challenge me for custody because I'm a "legal stranger" to my children. My friend Mary does not have that luxury.

A quick peek at the census tells me that one-third of lesbian households and one-fifth of gay households include children. Married couples come in at just under half.

So, we see that child-raising rates, while lower among gays and lesbians, are quite substantial. Then there's the question, of course, of how many more would have kids if they knew they were legally protected. With fully revised marriage, custody, adoption, and foster-care laws, we could easily see lesbians at a rate equal to heterosexual married couples, with gay men not far behind.

But what really shows that this argument is yet another rationalization for homophobia is the blind eye that's being turned to heterosexual marriages that don't intend to produce children. Do they dilute marriage? Even if one honestly answer "yes," I doubt that they would advocate stripping those people of the rights and obligations conferred on them by the legal agreement to marry. I would buy the argument reproduced above a lot more if the same people who are pushing to ban same-sex marriage were also pushing for a requirement that all heterosexual couples sign a pledge of intention to have children before they could be married.

Here's the crux: hetero couples not having children are a non-issue. Lesbian/Gay couples not having children are held out to be a threat to human society itself.

What does that tell us...?

[NB--I've responded to the gut-level, "this is why I personally oppose SSM" argument, not the legal "this is why it's legal to exclude certain people from a basic human right" argument. The argument Chris mentions has no credibility at all from a legal standpoint. What I'm trying to do here is show that the argument is inherently homophobic--not that it has no legal, societal, or moral justification (which, of course, it doesn't)]


* Actually, a bunch, which you can see if you read the original comment. But I'm just going to take on two main ones here.