A full two and a half weeks after the passing of Proposition 8 in California, protesters continue to gather in cities across America demanding their “rights” with signs reading things such as “Love not H8″ and equating their struggle to the genuine civil rights struggles blacks endured a generation ago. One can understand the desire of gays to “marry” because for them it means acceptance. It is a way for a society to recognize and celebrate their relationship and to call it the equal of man/woman marriage. Though they cleverly attempt to disguise this as a matter of rights, it is not about rights at all. Through the civil union statutes in California, gays are entitled to every right that heterosexual married couples enjoy such as hospital visitation, inheritance of property and possessions, tax incentives and employer related benefits.
So why the fuss over the word “marriage” if they already enjoy the same rights? The reasons for the fuss are legion. First, we can begin with an assumption that both sides would accept: that the government ought to “stay out of the bedroom” so to speak. With the Supreme Court’s striking down of the Texas anti-sodomy laws in 2003, government made the move towards staying out of the bedroom and made it legally permissible for two consenting adults of the same sex to engage in sexual activity. Opponents of Prop 8 arguing against its passing using the line of reasoning that government out to stay out of their affairs, unfortunately overlook the fact that the government issuing of marriage licenses is government stepping back “into the bedroom.” There is no good reason for governments to do this.
If general agreement can be reached that government generally ought to stay out of the private relationships between consenting adults, we can use that as a starting point to build the case for government intrusion in the form of one man, one woman marriage. The rather obvious reason governments reward the one man, one woman marriage is because it produces the next generation ensuring the very survival of the society (in the form of babies). This simply does not apply to gay couples. This is the case by design (or nature if you prefer) and there is no way around this fact. Test tubes still require the union of an egg/female and sperm/male.
Pro-creation alone, however, is not reason enough to promote and encourage traditional marriage on the part of government because sex is incentive enough for heterosexuals to reproduce. Polygamy meets the same end if this were the end. But what differentiates monogamous relationships from polygamous relationships is the added ingredient of stability in society. Both produce children, but thousands of years of human history has proven that the more children raised in one man, one woman households, the more stable society will be. Polygamy is ripe with problems such as rich men marrying up all the women and the resulting imbalance in the ratio of available men to women. When polygamy is widely practiced there is an explosion in the population of sexually frustrated men, not a desirable outcome considering the rise in violent crime associated with such a demographic. Polygamy has the additional problem of the degradation of women and the effective “fatherlessness” of children. For when it is possible for a man to marry as many women as he can afford and father dozens of children, he effectively becomes the uncle the children rarely see and society is stripped of the benefits of fathers. The state of our prison systems is reason enough to argue that fatherless homes should not be encouraged. Gay households by design would have children in either a fatherless or motherless home. This obviously happens by circumstance in real life, but the government ought not encourage it by public policy.
So the reason governments have looked upon the one man, one woman relationship and encouraged it through the benefits of marriage is because generally speaking this type of social construction is the base building block of society and has proven to offer the most benefit back to the government. Many have asked in support of “gay marriage,” “what does it matter to you?” I would respond that that is exactly the point. It does not matter to me, nor does it matter to governments. It provides no benefit to government and therefore does not receive the same privilege (though it does have the same rights). It provides no more benefit to a society than my brothers and I do by virtue of being brothers. Other than the three of us and our parents, no one really cares. Nor should they. We may individually benefit society through the work that we do or the charity we give, but our relationship does nothing.
In effect, marriage is not defined by governments, it is reflectively looked back upon by governments and recognized because of its obvious benefits and then recognized in the form of marriage. Gay couples simply do not provide the same benefit. This is no more hateful than saying I cannot marry my brother. Having laid out the case for one man, one woman marriage it is clear that the appeals to the civil rights struggles of black people or recalling that blacks could not previously marry whites is completely off base. Skin color is trivial. It means no more to marriage than the couple’s shoe size or eye color. It was wrong and has rightfully been rectified. To argue that the sex of the two in question is as irrelevant as skin color or shoe size completely misses the point of marriage in the eyes of government. Sex is the issue.
Lastly, words mean something in particular. To pick up a dictionary nowadays, you might see a denotative meaning of marriage that acknowledges the homosexual union. This is a new construction. If you pick up a dictionary older than a decade, that meaning is missing. When one argues that the Constitution doesn’t define marriage as one man, one woman he is misguided. It was inherent in the word marriage. To require such a delineation at the time of the Constitution’s writing would be akin to requiring “a legal relationship between one man, one woman shall be between one man, one woman.” The words of the Constitution mean exactly what they meant at the time of its writing, not by whatever shifting standards or definitions we wish to import today. Words have meaning. They are descriptors of particular things. Writings have meaning. These meanings are what the author intended. You cannot take these words I write and 20 years down the road, change a few key definitions and argue that I meant something entirely different. Marriage is one man, one woman because it is different than the union of two men or two women. Why call the gay union the same thing as the straight union? They are different. We call male siblings brothers and female ones sisters because they are different. Uncles and grandfathers are different, moms and dads are different, friends and cousins are different. We all love of our friends, cousins, brothers and sisters but we describe them differently by the words we use. The issue isn’t love (or hate). The issue is difference.
