Anti gay marriage arguments
by Jon Dykstra
(originally appeared in the April 2004 issue of Reformed Perspective and was the winner of the 2004 Word Guild award for Foremost Feature article)
When a Christian politician asked me to draft a brochure defending traditional Marriage I thought it would be an light task – something I could finish in a couple of hours.
Three weeks later I still wasn’t finished.
The problem was every time I create a good argument defending traditional Marriage I discovered that a gay marriage advocate had enter up with an even better rebuttal. My favorite Christian columnists weren’t doing any better. They were fixated on a mere handful of arguments, all of which initially seemed convincing, but ultimately none of them measured up. For example:
“Marriage has been this way for thousands of years, so why change it now?”
Slavery was also in vogue for millennia; does that intend it was right? In fact, slavery is still a firmly entrenched “tradition” in some parts of the earth and yet, despite this status, we know it is wrong. So tradition for tradition’s sake isn’t much of an argument.
“Gay ma There is a bill before the Australian Parliament to alter the current definition of marriage to allow same-sex couples to marry. The debate over queer marriage is about the function and purpose of the law in relation to marriage and not a discussion that goes to personal motivation and attitudes. We ought to deal fairly with every member of the human family and their needs, including people of homosexual orientation. In the same liveliness, ad hominem attacks on defenders of traditional marriage spiced by the leverage of pejoratives such a "homophobic" and "bigot" do not add to awareness of the issue. It is significant that everywhere the issue has been debated it begins on the issue of fairness and justice and with majority support but that soon changes when people realise that there are deeper issues involved. After their legislature experimented with same-sex marriage, the people of California voted against the revisionist principle of marriage. The main claim in favour of changing the law in this way is that the current rule unfairly singles out people who encounter same-sex attraction not allowing them to have the similar status as people who are married. This article claims that three common arguments against lgbtq+ marriage - the definitional, procreation, and slippery-slope arguments - are quite horrible, the worst of the lot. The definitional argument asserts that marriage just is the union of one man and one woman, and that the definition alone is a sufficient defense against claims for gay marriage. The procreation argument claims that marriage's central public purpose is to encourage procreation, and so the exclusion of same-sex couples is justified. The slippery-slope argument claims that the acceptance of same-sex marriage logically entails the acceptance of other public policy changes - notably the acceptance of polygamy - that would themselves be awful, independent of whether queer marriage is bad. While each argument has some appeal, and each has adherents both inside and outside the legal academy, each is badly flawed as a matter of logic, experience, politics, or some combination of the three. The article suggests that in the interest of focusing on the most important concerns about gay marriage, commentators should move on to other arguments against it that seem stronger and thus I am a gay man who, when arguing for gay marriage, has been called “lesser”, “unnatural”, “deviant” and “sinful”. In these arguments the love I have for my fiancé has been belittled as just “sex” or only “friendship”. I have been told my natural urges are a choice. I have been told I do not deserve identical rights. I have even been told I am going to hell. Furthermore, I have been told it is offensive to brand such remarks “bigoted”, and that I am the bully. I do not believe all opponents of gay marriage are hateful. Some have just not been exposed to the right arguments, and so I will show here that each anti-gay marriage argument ultimately serves to oppress or imply the lesser status of the minority of which I am a part. In rallying against the introduction of equal marriage, religious campaigners acquire frequently stressed that their objections are not driven by homophobia, and have deployed numerous arguments to demonstrate this. To the untrained ear these arguments sound like they may have grounding in reason, but on closer inspection reveal themselves as homophobic. What follows is a handy
Bad Arguments Against Gay Marriage
Abstract
31 arguments against gay marriage (and why they’re all wrong)