Sexism

REACTION ON SAME SEX MARRIAGE

When we learned to live on bases other than hunting and gathering, these arrangements came with us and they have not—at least until now—faced an existential challenge.  Contemporary empirical studies like the one by Hill and Walker continue to deepen the picture of how fundamental sexual complementarity, pair bonding based on it, and the links created by marriage have been to human flourishing.  Perhaps we have reached a point of social organization where we can discard these principles like an old set of training wheels and discover a giddy new freedom to arrange ourselves in unprecedented ways

The gay marriage debate, dominated by “civil rights” argument and rhetorical condensations such as “marriage equality,” has been reduced for many people to an intransigent stand-off of only two parties: those who advocate for gay marriage as a civil right vs. those who have religious objections.  Are there no secular arguments against gay marriage worth considering?

The debate over gay marriage ought to be considered one of the central social issues of our time, and indeed for many Americans—left and right—it is. It deals with a question of basic social relations within and between generations and I find it perfectly sensible that advocates and critics of gay marriage should both see it as a matter of urgent concern. The perspective that seems less sensible to me is the one which dismisses the controversy as a bore or nuisance: the idea that when it comes to marriage, all we are talking about are private choices that are no one’s business other than the parties directly involved. That’s an atomistic view of society. Marriage, whatever else it is, is a social institution. People marry because it means something beyond a private choice, and we have good reason to concern ourselves with that broader meaning.

Here is how someone advocating for same sex marriage would reason out, where is the evidence that homosexual married couples cannot raise...