You brought up a lot of points, so it’s going to take a while to break each of them down.

Starting with the legal stuff:

I think we’re in agreement in principle here. I even agree that in theory the “why” of a legal privilege is not relevant to whether it is discriminatory. However, in practice, it’s not how things work out. Why certain laws exist do indeed heavily affect whether that law is discriminatory in practice. Since discrimination is often about intent (did I not hire the Jewish guy because he was Jewish or because I “didn’t like his attitude?”), it’s very difficult to untangle them and the court rulings over the last 40 years heavily reflect this. If marriage really is about procreation, then it’s clearly not discriminatory. If it isn’t, then there’s a much more powerful argument that it is. So while I agree that “why” in theory isn’t relevant, in practice it is the only usable mechanism to determine whether something is indeed discriminatory.

That’s why I’ve laid it out in such detail.

Similarly along the lines of gays who adopt (or use other means to have children), there are plenty of people who have children who aren’t married. Marriage is about protecting the procreative relationship. We’ve got plenty of benefits for parents that are separate from marriage so that there are mechanisms to help those who are raising children outside of marriage. Again, going back to the legal arena, of course “seperate but equal” isn’t equal, but the point is that it is the procreative relationship that is being given privileges, not the raising of children. We encourage that separately because it is a separate thing.

On to the moral stuff:

I think where you and I part ways in this area is in “macro-morals” as opposed to “micro-morals”. We’re both completely on the same page regarding the value to society of people who raise children well, including gay people. We’re also on the same page that people should be allowed to do as they please, although I don’t see how disallowing gays to marry prevents them from living their lives as they wish, only in not getting the benefits society wishes to give married people.

So we’re on the same page freedom and children.

But the key statement/question that you make in my opinion is “Has there ever been a case of a heterosexual couple, upon learning that gays were being married, deciding that they no longer wanted any part of the institution of marriage?”

This is looking at the situation in an individual sense not a societal trend sense. While I completely agree that it would be a pretty darned rare case for a heterosexual couple to reject marriage because it is open to a group they wish it wasn’t, what I don’t agree with is that expanding marriage privileges beyond its intent won’t have the macro effect of discouraging marriage.

In fact, we can already see the trend occuring in Europe where fewer and fewer young people are getting married and fewer and fewer still are having children. The numbers have fallen beyond replacement levels and Europe faces a demographic disaster where a very small number of children will be caring for a very large number of old people a generation from now if the trends don’t reverse.

As a father of 3 (and likely more, God willing) who is the sole bread-winner for my family (which is a near requirement with more than 2 children as having a parent at home is critical), I know full well how many sacrifices it takes to get married and start a family. It’s critical that society encourage this. And it’s not just about raising children. It’s about the life-long commitment (as an aside, I completely agree that short marriages are more disasterous to marriage than gay marriage and “no-fault”-divorce is a blight on society, but that’s a topic for a different post.). It’s about a mindset of supporting one’s spouse and one’s family. Unless society puts special emphasis on this, fewer and fewer will be interested. Giving it special legal privileges is one of the keys ways that this is accomplished. Once those privileges are effectively available to everyone, they might as well be available to no one.

The tie between marriage and procreation is a very important one. It is the foundation upon which marriage came into being. Additionally, since procreation is the key criteria for the survival of a society, marriage, with the explicit tie to procreation, becomes a key aspect for the society to thrive. By society explicitely denying the link between marriage and procreation, and allowing gays to marriage explicitely does so, it will have a profound impact on the way people view marriage. While an individual may not say no to marriage because gays can marry, the number of couples who will be interested in marriage will decrease over time as marriage less and less is tied to procreation.

Because I think this topic is interesting, I’m going to respond to a couple of your responses. I don’t think either of us have much of a chance to convince the other, but I still find thinking about and defining our positions to be an interesting and potentially valuable exercise.

First of all, in your rebuttal to my response, you stated “it is not a requirement that the reason a privilege is granted apply to all who are granted the privilege. There are plenty of legal privileges that had to find a simple way to determine eligibility and that eligibility is far more broad than the people being targeted for the privilege.” I would agree with this statement. However, to clarify my position, the criteria for extending a privilege can be just about anything — so long as it is not discriminatory. There doesn’t even have to be a ‘good’ reason, or any reason at all. The government may pass what laws it wishes (and the people are free to vote the government out of office for passing such frivolous laws). When writing a law that extends privileges, the criteria does not have to be exact, but its exactitude is not relevant when discussing whether or not it discriminates. If the criteria does, in fact, discriminate, the government will have to go back and create a new law that does not, and if the new criteria is less precise than before, then we’ll all have to live with that; a just society does not discriminate.

Secondly, you often speak of ‘the reason’ behind marriage laws, or ‘the purpose’ of the institution of marriage. Legally speaking, the intent behind and purpose of any particular law is irrelevant. They may be useful as powerful arguments regarding the wisdom of having such laws, but in deciding whether a particular law is constitutional or not, they have no place. The fact is, many different definitions of ‘the purpose’ of marriage can, and have been, concocted; legally speaking, all we have are the resulting laws, and those attempting to infer ‘purpose’ behind any particular written law will have a wide range of options to choose from.

(A small, off-topic example: why do we have jails? To punish wrongdoers? Or, as the name ‘Department of Corrections’ implies, to try and rehabilitate lawbreakers? A combination of both? Your answer will inform your concept of what jails *should* be, and what laws and regulations to pass in relation to them, but it has no effect on whether having jails is a legally permissible thing for the state to do.)

Finally, what about the case of gay couples that are having/raising children (through various non-traditional means)? By not allowing them to marry, are they not being discriminated against too? Whatever you may think of this situation morally, or the wisdom in having children raised by a single-sex couple, it does happen, and those couples seem especially entitled to the privileges commonly extended to married couples.

Anyway, that’s the extent of my legal arguments. However, since we’re now on your catholic blog, I thought I might share a couple thoughts on the subject regarding what sort of laws might be ‘wise’ or ‘moral’.

Personally, I think that what the government should be interested in promoting and protecting is stronger families. However they may occur (and the traditional nuclear family is but one permutation that “family” now occurs in), whole, healthy families will give strength to each of its members, especially to the children raised in such families. Society has a vested interest in promoting more healthy, well-adjusted individuals, and anything that can be done towards that end is, in my view, a good thing. But then, I’m sure that I don’t have to convince you, Ken, of the wisdom in or value of family.

The other thing I think government should be doing is leaving people alone. While promoting and encouraging behavior that benefits the rest of society is certainly the business of society at large, I have no interest in telling consenting adults what they should or shouldn’t be doing, so long as nobody else is harmed. This extends from sex and marriage laws to the use of recreational drugs. If two people want to get married, I couldn’t care less; good luck to them both. I also don’t feel that gay marriage somehow dilutes the institution of marriage (frivolous marriages and quick divorces do much more in that regard), nor do I feel that it somehow reduces the effectiveness of marriage’s ability to promote procreation. Has there ever been a case of a heterosexual couple, upon learning that gays were being married, deciding that they no longer wanted any part of the institution of marriage?

Your brother also brings up an interesting point about polygamy. It is very difficult to make an ‘adults who love each other should be allowed to be married’ argument without also tacitly permitting polygamy, and indeed I won’t attempt to. In theory, I have no moral issues with polygamy (as long as *all* parties are consenting), specifically the sort of loving family depicted in the HBO series ‘Big Love’. Of course, in practice polygamy has been associated with all sorts of awful crimes such as incest and child abuse, and it may be that polygamy is like communism in that it only works in theory.

In conclusion, I certainly wish society could have more of the sort of civil discussion on difficult topics that we’ve been having. I wish I could say I was surprised that you received some hate mail for publishing your views, but I am not. Cogent argument is a precious commodity in our present political climate, and it is far to common to meet it with impassioned cries that bear little resemblance to reasoned thought. At least when we blog about sports, the outcomes are ultimately of little consequence; political disputes, on the other hand, are far too important to let devolve into muckraking shouting matches.

Fair enough. It is exactly the charge that is leveled against me and others, as you have done and others have done. Apparently to many it has that appearance.

But that doesn’t change that I don’t hate gays. So what you need to ask yourself is “Why is it that Ken is willing to subject himself to the societal appearance of hating a group that he does not in fact hate?”

I mean, if it really don’t hate them and it really is no big deal, why would I subject myself to the ridicule?

Maybe, just maybe, I’ve thought this through and am willing to take the ridicule for a good reason. Maybe, just maybe, I posted this on EMFMV originally knowing that I would take heat over it, but did it anyway because the subject is important. So what I want you to do is read the rest of this comment with an open mind. For a second, put down your pre-conceptions and the arguments you’ve heard before.

Here’s the big picture I see it:

Those in favor of gay marriage insist on framing the discussion around a line of reasoning that completely divorces marriage from its purpose (to protect the nuclear family and the procreative relationship). Before birth control came around nobody was able to deny that marriage and children were synonymous. If you didn’t want children, you didn’t get married. If you were married and didn’t have children, it was considered a heart-breaking letdown. People knew you were infertile and felt sorry for you.

Birth control has allowed many to forget these fundamentals, the fundamentals that make up the purpose of marriage.

However, while birth control has changed things in that many who participate in marriage choose not to engage in the fullness of marriage, it doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of marriage. (As a proof point through an aside, those who criticize the Catholic Church about their stand on birth control routinely argue that birth control does not fundamentally change the nature of the marital act.)

Yet when anyone brings up this fundamental aspect/nature of marriage, they get shouted down as if it’s a ridiculous statement. And the reason they do, is because it is the one argument that is disasterous to those who desire gay marriage to be a reality. Unfortunately, they’ve been successful in convincing both about 30-40% of the US population and apparently the California Supreme Court to deny this fundamental aspect/nature.

So I’ll repeat the point I made to ragnarok: Don’t underestimate the unique importance of the procreative relationship. It IS an important thing. It IS the reason that a man and a woman come together to form a life-long bond. It IS different than a gay romantic relationship. And it IS the reason that the statement “gay marriage” is fundamentally a non-sensical statement.

I wish every gay person happiness. I believe they deserve the right to legal protections for the relationships they have that include the ability to make medical decisions for one another, have inheritance privileges, and the many things that I believe two sisters or bothers who spend their lives together as a family (usually this is seen when they’re both widow(er)s/divorced). Yet all of those protections are available without granting them marriage or even civil unions as currently constructed in California.

What I don’t wish gay people to have is a privilege they don’t deserve, just as I don’t deserve the privilege of maternity leave when my wife has one of our children. A gay couple can no more be married (as properly defined as the procreative relationship between a man and a woman) than I can be a mother. I’m no more being denied my rights or being hated as a father for not getting maternity privileges granted by the state than a gay person is for not being able to marry a person of the same sex.

Marriage IS about children. There is no escaping this no matter how much certain people in our society want to.

Finally, I’d like to address one rebuttal point that I suspect is coming: “Why then doesn’t marriage legally require that you have children or desire them or something like that?” For this I return back to a statement I made back in comment #3 (the response to ragnarok). Legally speaking, it is important that the criteria for a legal privilege is simple, even if that means some get to take advantage of it that should not, in principle, be able to. I leave it to God to sort out those heterosexual couple who entered into a sexual relationship that was not indeed a marriage and were purposely avoiding children. Legally, it is acceptable that it be solely limited to heterosexual couples since it is a simple and traditional way to go about it and generally speaking, accomplishes the restriction desired. (As an example of that, it is becoming more and more common for couples to put off marriage, choosing instead to just co-habitate, until they decide they want to have children).

The government isn’t saying they have to get married in your church.

St. Peter won’t suddenly stop allowing Californian’s into heaven.

Your marriage isn’t suddenly diluted is it?

So to quote the great Bill Murray “What’s the big f*****g deal?”

What is it about homosexuals suddenly being granted the privilege our state had previously arbitrarily only given to straight people?

Why do you want to deny them the happiness that you and Wendy share? Because marriage should be a happy joyous occasion that ALL should have the right to partake in.

Marriage is an event, marriage is a commitment, marriage MEANS something to everyone. Marriage is important to all of us on many levels. It’s an institution, it’s something we should all look forward to and not drunkly rush into it ala Britney Spears. Arbitrarily denying homosexuals that is wrong.

So go ahead and block me from commenting on your blog Ken.

You just have to ask yourself how does one argue that gay people don’t deserve the same privileges in life that straight people do, and not appear to hate them?

How can someone be against gay marriage and not hate them? The same way people can be against big SUV’s without hating people who drive them. The same way people can be against tax breaks for homeowners, without hating homeowners. Nobody is arguing that gay people should be jailed for having homosexual sex or co-habitating with a person of the same sex. We’re arguing about whether gay people deserve the PRIVILEGE (did you read the post at all?) of legal marriage.

People can be against a certain activity but be tolerant of those who participate in it. They just don’t want to see that activity ENDORSED by the government and given privileges.

To add in a Christian bent, I’m commanded by God to both be opposed to sin but also to ‘love my enemy’. It’s not appropriate for a Christian to hate anyone, even those who have done far worse than the evil or immoral sex, people like murderers and brutal dictators who starve their people.

To top it off, the reason that your question is particularly ridiculous is because you know me well enough to know that I don’t hate gay people. You’ve seen me interact with the many friends our family has that are gay and know that I don’t act with hatred towards them. Unlike those who just know my work as a blogger who wouldn’t know better, you do.

Stop acting like an idiot.

There really shouldn’t be anything evil about polygamy or homosexuals getting married. They’re just two (or three or four) adults deciding to commit to each other with or without raising children.

Because let’s be honest, our society rewards people who get married, and looks down on people who don’t. So everyone should have the right to get married to the person of their choice.

Here’s the question for you Ken:
How does one argue that they’re against homosexuals getting married and at the same time not hate gay people?

In fact, as I see it, gay marriage is a greater evil than polygamy (as is separate from incest or underage marriage, which all too frequently accompany polygamy with those who practice it). So as far as I’m concerned you’ve said I consider cocaine a gateway drug to pot, not the other way around. It’s much more hard to make a non-religious argument against polygamy than gay marriage.

But yes, the point of marriage is to build up and protect the procreative relationship and that’s why gays should be excluded and also why it is completely legally acceptable to exclude gays as their relationship can not be procreative.

But the more I’ve thought about it, what is really wrong with polygamy?

I mean sure, the FLDS people have a lot of sexual abuse and intermarriage, and a lot of us find it creepy.

But in theory, there shouldn’t really be anything wrong with polygamy, adults consenting to co-habitat with each other. And raise a really big family. It’s like communism, good in concept, bad in earlier editions. Is communism really to blame for the fall of the soviet union or Chinese human rights violations, or is it the people involved? Same question for polygamy.

Isn’t the point of marriage as Ken defines it to procreate? Because that’s the only real difference between homosexual and heterosexual couples. In theory, those polygamists have got us all beat, because they do a LOT more procreating than the rest of us (not named that weird Arkansas family with like 18 kids). Therefor, one could argue that since they’re better at procreation, they’re better at marriage, and therefor only polygamist marriage should be acceptable because they’ve clearly figured out the best arrangement.

That is until the environmentalists decide to protest because of all the waste associated with such a large family… damn hippies…