While much ink has already been spilt over this topic, I don't intend to add to the epic accounts here. I believe those who support traditional marriage have many and multiple good reasons. I think we (those who defend traditional marriage) have a hard time defending it in a short and succinct way because it is like trying to explain the exact mechanism of how the behavior of individual US banks and mortgage brokers led to the economic crash of the US economy a few years ago: it's complicated.
The harm of changing a public institution such as marriage has to do with changing a social ecosystem and social norms so it's hard to define and identify the exact mechanisms for change to explain the impact on the social system: It's complicated. But this is a certainty- changing the environment has an impact on all those who inhabit in the ecosystem. Not just those who are doing the change. I hope one thing that the recent financial collapse in the US has illustrated- that the actions of a few parties- no matter how far removed from our individual lives- can indeed dramatically affect the entire system and each of us in it very personally. To say it another way, to answer the common refrain, "How will gay marriage harm your heterosexual marriage?" Well. A lot.
For those looking for a more thorough or academic defense of traditional marriage, I would refer you to the accounts given by Ryan T Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute, Robert P George of Princeton University, or the LDS Church statement: The Divine Institution of Marriage. All of these groups have already done and excellent and robust job of this. I won't spend a lot of time adding resources, so for those who want more, those links are a good place to start.
With this space I wish to simply compile some fundamental points of my reasoning behind why I am so profoundly committed to strengthening the public institution of marriage between a man and a woman.
This first part will be mostly logical and explanatory of the public purposes of marriage. My next blog will include more of my personal experiences and feelings behind supporting traditional marriage.
First, some very important disclaimers.
The first important idea to address is that I do not oppose gay marriage because I hate gays, or because I think they are evil or wicked or I want to punish them. It really hurts me a lot when people assume this about my advocacy, and this has happened a lot lately. To support traditional marriage, you don't have to be against anyone.
It's always a little sad and uncomfortable for me when people a) assume I hate gay people or b) have no compassion for their lives or experiences. This is simply untrue- and I suspect it's untrue of many people that advocate for marriage. It's ironic because those very accusations (of hate or ignorance) seem very much like the embodiment of those very things.
QUITE to the contrary I have VERY close and intimate experiences with those in long term homosexual relationships and those who experience same-sex attraction, including those in my immediate family. I love these wonderful dear people very much and have no wish to harm them. They are some of my best friends and family members.
These friends and family members understand that my advocacy for marriage doesn't stem out of animus for gays, but out of a passion for the good that heterosexual marriage does for society. And for the most part they support me and are proud of my advocacy. That's right. My gay family members support and are proud of the advocacy I do for marriage. Because they understand that there can be more to supporting marriage than simply hating gays (shocker, I know) and they also understand that healthy families benefit everyone, including gays, because they also had a mother and a father.
I do not oppose basic human rights regarding hospitalization visits, fair housing and employment, etc. But I do oppose using marriage as a vehicle for gay rights. I agree and whole-heartedly act according to this statement of the LDS Church:
"The Church does not object to rights (already established in California) regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights, so long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the family or the constitutional rights of churches and their adherents to administer and practice their religion free from government interference."
"The Church has a single, undeviating standard of sexual morality: intimate relations are proper only between a husband and a wife united in the bonds of matrimony.
The Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage neither constitutes nor condones any kind of hostility towards homosexual men and women. Protecting marriage between a man and a woman does not affect Church members’ Christian obligations of love, kindness and humanity toward all people."
In fact, I would dare to say that most who advocate for traditional marriage feel similar as I do toward our gay brothers and sisters (I know there are exceptions but I know very very VERY few people who hate gay people. If you know some, I'd like to meet with them and have a conversation). Most traditional marriage advocates in reality have no animus toward gays. On the other hand, they have very vigorous feelings about the importance of marriage (or the harms that occur in its absence for children).
So, if you've come here looking for justification of why I hate gay people, why they don't deserve companionship and love, or why I want to enforce my world view on them, you've come to the wrong place.
Just so there's no confusion, I do morally disagree with their behaviors as part of my religious understanding of sexual morality- just as I oppose premarital sex, cohabitation, and any other forms of sexual behavior outside the bonds of marriage. I believe this is the morality that Christ taught and I personally choose to live by this interpretation.
But I'm not in the business here of using the state to enforce my morality by compulsion upon gay people. I am in the business of defending marriage because of its PUBLIC purpose as the only relationship that legally ties a child to the mother and father that created it and will raise it. That is what marriage is to the state. Not a public registry of what relationships we think are worthy of love and benefits.
So for this portion of writing, let's explore the PUBLIC PURPOSES of Marriage:
The state and law are involved in marriage for the sake of protecting children and their right to be raised and nurtured by the two people that created them- which is the gold standard as far as children are concerned. (This is as close to an indisputable scientific fact as social science can get to an indisputable fact.) Obviously, there are other ways to raise a child. But the BEST way, is for a child to know and be known by the two human being who created him, who are in a lifelong, committed, monogamous relationship.
That is why the state rewards (read benefits) marriage in the first place- not because the government is trying to pat people on the back for falling in love. But because the individuals (ideally) have made the exclusive, long-term commitment to channel their sexual behavior into a monogamous relationship that very often produces, and to care for the children that relationship may form.
It doesn't particularly matter what you and I think about marriage or our private reasons for getting married as far as the law is concerned. There are many private reasons for getting married. But the law (and changing the law) about marriage is concerned about the PUBLIC purposes/impacts of sex and marriage, and why the state should be involved in marriage at all.
The public purpose of marriage is to permanently attach mothers and fathers to each other, and to the children they create.
Marriage is our society's vehicle for attaching the next generation to the best two people in the universe (ideally) to raise him/her: the biological parents who created the very genetic makeup the child is made of. De-linking sex from marriage, and marriage from childbearing is paving a path for social and emotional chaos for children born into any multitude of adult romantic relationships. This is why restricting sexuality to marriage in the first place is also important, but we've come so far from that, it makes it difficult to even mention that, yet chastity is also an intrinsic part of marriage- channeling creative powers into a relationship that has the ability to care for the life it could create.
This is why the state provides and issues benefits for married couples- because they are doing the very difficult and permanent work of raising the next generation.
From the above referenced document, The Divine Institution of Marriage:
"Regardless of whether marriages were performed as a religious rite or a civil ceremony, married couples in almost every culture have been granted special benefits aimed primarily at sustaining their relationship and promoting the environment in which children are reared. A husband and a wife do not receive these benefits to elevate them above any other two people who may share a residence or social tie, but rather in order to preserve, protect, and defend the all-important institutions of marriage and family."
Again, from The Divine Institution of Marriage: "It is true that some couples who marry will not have children, either by choice or because of infertility, but the special status of marriage is nonetheless closely linked to the inherent powers and responsibilities of procreation, and to the inherent differences between the genders. Co-habitation under any guise or title is not a sufficient reason for defining new forms of marriage."
"It is also true that some same-sex couples will obtain guardianship over children –through prior heterosexual relationships, through adoption in the states where this is permitted, or by artificial insemination. Despite that, the all-important question of public policy must be: what environment is best for the child and for the rising generation? Traditional marriage provides a solid and well-established social identity to children. It increases the likelihood that they will be able to form a clear gender identity, with sexuality closely linked to both love and procreation. By contrast, the legalization of same-sex marriage likely will erode the social identity, gender development, and moral character of children. Is it really wise for society to pursue such a radical experiment without taking into account its long-term consequences for children?"
Now I know that a married mother and father of every child is describing an ideal that is very different from our reality. But that's exactly why we have public policy around marriage - it is the gold standard and very best arrangement for children to be raised in. Man/woman sexuality and the resulting children that come from it is the very building block of civilization and society. Channeling that sexuality into a relationship that will raise the children it creates is fundamental to civilization. In the absence of this sexual norm, we have a whole slew of children to whom the state and all sorts of alternative arrangements become the parent- some of which work, some of which don't. What we do know is that kids need, want, flourish with two parents.
Can't we see that as a nation we are and have been suffering from the effects of institutionalizing sexual diversity for generations? No fault divorce, cohabitation without marriage, single parenting, etc. My peers already are among the generation that suffered through the effects of social experimentation with sexual norms in the sexual revolution. In my generation, over half of my peers suffered through the divorce revolution, witnessing the breakdown of their parents marriage- which social science shows is one of the most difficult experiences for a child to endure. The African American community is (and has been for awhile) a post-marriage society now- where 84% of children are born to single mothers. Many have written about the effects of fatherlessness on America and among the black community. Marriage matters- to civilizations, communities, and especially to children. It mattered when we were being raised. Why would we think it doesn't matter when we are marrying?
Marriage in Public Policy is not about defining who we think deserves love.
Defining marriage according only to the capricious and changing sexual urges of adults, rather than what is best for children, turns the very purpose of marriage on it's head. It separates marriage from sex, and sex from babies. And this is why I say that gay marriage is another step in our society unraveling. If un-defining and disconnecting sex from reproduction, and reproduction from marriage, offspring isn't unraveling the building blocks of society, I don't know what is.
Now, again, I know these are ideals we are talking about and there are many wonderful instances of adoption, or when a mother or father is absent and friends or the community steps in to play the role of parent, or necessary divorce, or even when married individuals don't have children. But the point is, the state cares about the one relationship that has the possibility of producing children, and caring for them permanently- that is the most fundamental job of any civilization that thrives. All other arrangements are, generally speaking, exceptions and in many cases tragedies that we are compensating for as a society. Not the ideal we are aiming for.
If we tear down the ideal and public purpose of marriage to soothe and make feel better those who are not in it, we begin to lose the entire possibility of anyone ever having it. And that is the bargain we are making with same sex marriage, along with all the other concessions we've made with marriage (the sexual revolution and sex outside of marriage, no-fault divorce, promiscuity, etc) : raising to the ideal a situation that is not, and rewarding it with benefits for which it doesn't even qualify (having a mother and father that create a child). Gay marriage is one more indication that in the last 60 years we have rapidly lost sight of the fundamental and public purpose of marriage: raising children.
Adults can do what they want and may in their romantic relationship without needing legal validation or redefining parenthood. But when you change marriage, you change gender, you change parenthood- all at the expense of children. This should not be done with gay marriage, especially not at the expense of tax-payers subsidizing romantic relationship that serve no essential public purpose.
So to sum up: To me, gay marriage is two separate issues: gay rights and the definition of marriage.
The impact of something like changing the definition of marriage is hard to explain because it's complicated and it's part of the fundamental social system we all live in.
Academically speaking, I know a lot about marriage. I'm not an expert on homosexuality. Other than I have close family members who are gay and have been for a long time. I love them and they love me. I've seen their struggles and know their sadness. My advocacy is not about hurting them or anyone. Rather it stems out of the desire to give every individual the greatest opportunity to be born into a home with a loving mother and father, including gays. Parents matter. To be deprived of a relationship with a biological mother and father is one of the greatest tragedies in life, but we cope with with alternate arrangements (adoption, single parenting, remarriage, etc) the best we can. Elevating any such relationship to the ideal in the law or as a replacement for parents for a child as a default would, in my book, be nigh unto abuse or neglect.
Marriage exists in the law because it serves the public purpose of raising children. The state doesn't define marriage because it's interested in validating our individual private ideas of what a worthy relationship is. The state cares about marriage because it gets done the essential and fundamental work of any thriving society: raising and ensuring the well being of the next generation. Anything outside of this is (or should be) superfluous to a conversation about marriage is and how the law defines it.
(There are also other very compelling and important reasons to oppose same-sex marriage which include the infringement on religious liberty, individual liberty, the reverse discrimination of Christians that is now happening for believing that homosexuality is wrong, and the federalist issues or states rights to define marriage vs. the broad over-reach of the federal government. But these will have to be developed at another time.)
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