Is Gay Marriage Detrimental To The Sanctity Of Marriage Critical Thinking Examples

Before you are some basic arguments against gay marriage: The first is that it defies what is believed to be an ancient tradition that has always been that of the union of a man and a woman. That definition is very basic and the general idea is if this rule which was supposedly created by god there will be negative consequences. What really is the peril of altering the definition of marriage, will god get angry?
Seemingly god created gay people so why should he be mad when they try to attain the same standards of living as straight people. Surely the definition of marriage isn’t as simple as one man and one woman, it should be about two people that love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together.
Lifelong heterosexual monogamy is natural; gay relationships are not. Homosexual relationships are not natural in terms of they have no function in relation to procreation, they can’t have kids but that doesn’t make their relationships any less valid.
For example we don’t necessarily boil all the relationships we ever have down to something as simple as the process of making more humans. Relationships are about enjoying the company of the people you are with and sharing your life with someone you love and respect and that is of course possible between two gay men or women.
Homosexuality is natural by definition of the word ‘natural’ as it does occur in nature, there are gay animals and it has been proven by scientists there is a ‘gay gene’ it is not a lifestyle choice it is to do with the individuals genetic makeup. It does make sense that the religious community would refuse to things in this light as religion at its core is about overcoming our natures and not succumbing to them.
It’s only natural that they would see homosexuality as something that could be overcome through struggle but this is just not the case, you can’t fight your genetic structure, it would be like a fish trying to become a bird, it’s just not possible and in some cases it can be psychologically damaging for someone to ‘pray away the gay’ as some churches explain is possible.
The nuclear family is the universal, time-tested path to forming families and raising children. The nuclear family as it is commonly known was believed until the 1970’s families were fairly standard and consisted of homemaker mother and a breadwinner father. This idea is a of course false. This was a myth created in the 1950’s as the economy allowed for a single income family to flourish. The truth is our society’s family structure is as diverse as the people that comprise it.
It actually impossible in our economic crisis for a normal family to survive on a single income so this idea of a bread winner and a home maker is a complete fallacy purely in economical terms.
There are no studies that show that this idea of family is the best environment for children to grow up in, there is no set definition for a perfect family. The fact is there are a lot of children without parents or homes that can benefit from having loving parents of any sexual orientation. (Bailey 2012)
These ideas have been losing ground and losing arguments for a very long time now as gay marriage as a cause has moved from the realm of eccentric fantasy to a very strong civil rights movement roughly half the country is now in favor of. When California’s Judge Vaughn Walker ruled in favor of gay marriage, stating that defining marriage as the union of two heterosexuals, a male and a female is unconstitutional and unjust. Then we start to realize that these arguments against gay marriage have been losing because they’re plainly wrong. (Douthat 2010)
In his article on gay marriage in the New York Times Ross Douthat begins by attacking the idea of “traditional marriage” because it is not universal. Polygamy is a constant in cultures old and new all over the world it’s only our culture that emphasizes monogamy.
This idea that heterosexual monogamy is natural is obviously just opinion based, it can’t be a categorical fact that monogamy is what god wants or what is natural because there are so many people around the world that don’t conform to that standard. It’s often more likely that a whole neighborhood raises a child in some cultures than two parents.
Lifelong heterosexual monogamy is not natural if the definition of ‘natural’ is “congruent with our biological instincts,” in fact it is arguably the most unnatural arrangement of a relationship that exists. (Douthat 2010)
Simply in terms of Darwinism it is in direct conflict with the principles of the male impulse towards promiscuity, (i.e. to mate with as many partners as possible to increase the likelihood of carrying on their genetic material) and the females interest in mating with the ‘best’ mate available and obviously this is why there is so much polygamy in history.
Douthat asks what are the opponents of gay marriage really defending because it’s obvious it’s not a universal tradition or in fact a biological imperative. It’s just one person’s specific vision of marriage, trying to establish a sexual ideal.
It’s basically a way of trying to control people having sex by making it seem harder to do so. It’s nothing to do with love and union it’s about someone trying to fit their ideas into society like a square peg in a round hole.
Marriage hold up as a lifelong commitment of fidelity between two beings that have completely different sexual imperatives, this basically involves a mutual surrender of their natural sexual self interest. This in religious terms is admirable, to negate your natural feeling for a structure imposed by an unseen force. (Douthat 2010)
This we’re lead to believe creates a stronger bond between children and their parents because they’re in constant contact with them as they try to establish this unnatural ideal. Marriage is basically a way of telling people how to have a relationship, it sets up rules and regulations and taboos to regulate sexual relationships.
Douthat explains that this does not necessarily devalue other relationships or that the only way to raise children properly is this one fixed way. What he says is these arguments claim that heterosexual monogamy can offer something better that makes it worthy of protection and praise. It’s a fulfillment of this idea of normalcy that is truly an illusion, something to be aspired but can never be reached.
This of course is just the western interpretation, which come from Judeo-Christian ideologies surrounding creation. This is then backed up by the idea of romantic love which is in a way a Christian invention as before then love wasn’t a virtue in Aristotle’s virtue ethics. It was created as a sort of Magoffin or vehicle for greater meaning.
Douthat makes a good point that this ideal was what people strived for but recently the approach is more accommodating. The rates of divorce and remarriage is skyrocketing, people are having more out of wedlock births and teenage pregnancies than ever before and serial monogamy in which someone has a series of long term partners.
This idea that gay marriage in some way damages marriage is way off the mark clearly. If there are ever was a concept of marriage it was dead and buried a long time ago. The sanctity of marriage is not something worth protecting because it doesn’t exist.
Gay marriage critics who argue that it can somehow lead to polygamy aren’t really getting it. We already have polygamy, just in today’s world we space it out. Ideas of polygamy are interpreted in terms of what used to be a Mormon household where the man of the family had many wives at once. (Douthat 2010)
Today one man can have dozens of wives one after the other because the legal definition of marriage is like that of buying a car. If you don’t like you’re marriage anymore you can just throw it away and get another.
Douthat is sort of arguing that because divorce is so easy today marriage essentially has no value, what was meant to be a lifelong commitment is now as temporary as renting an apartment and that is what is destroying the sanctity of marriage not gay people.
The devaluing of marriage isn’t necessarily a bad thing because in utilitarian theory it conforms to making the most people happy. The amount of people happily married outweighs the amounts that are unhappily married because of the relative ease of divorce increasing the overall happiness of a society.
If these new ideals destroy the old ideas of marriage, gay marriage will not become acceptable as well as a moral imperative. Gay people often have longer commitments than that of straight people going through phases of serial monogamy. (Douthat 2010)
Marriage today is just an optional celebration of romantic love, this has no real relationship with the creation of children, other than that’s what couples do. Marriage and children aren’t connected, one can exist without the other in many cases, so gay people not being able to have children is not a good enough reason to deny them the same rights as straight people to celebrate their love for each other.
Society and the law has no business deciding whether or not straight love is more valid than gay love by delegating whether or not gay people can get married. Just like marriage is only loosely connected to children, love is only loosely connected to the idea of a man and a woman. (Douthat 2010)
There is no one on earth than can equate and compare the love of a man and a woman to that of a gay couple, since there is no metric way of measuring love so by that reasoning you have to accept that a gay couple can indeed love each other as much if not more than a straight one and thus deserve the same rights to marriage.
On the other hand Douthat explains that we accept the rights to gay marriage we have to give up one of the great western ideas of civilization that is the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as something that is special and worth fighting to preserve. Although protecting it involves public acknowledgement homosexual union and heterosexual union are different.
Obviously emotionally they’re the same but with different outcomes i.e. having children and the necessity to continue the human race.
For example if we were to use homosexuality as a maxim as in applying it to the whole world we might die out as a species unless we used cloning. Still this does not take away from the fact that gay marriage does have meaning and worth and should be respected and they have the right to be treated in the same way as a straight couple.
Based on Judge Walker’s ideas which is that any distinction between gay relationships and straight relationships is bigoted and un-American, I don’t there’s much room for a world in which heterosexual relationships will ever be the standard for which to strive and hopefully this will decrease discrimination towards gay couples.
Bailey, S. J. Ph.D., CFLE Understanding the Challenges and Strengths of Diverse Families (Lecture). Montana State University
Broadie, Sarah. Rowe, Christopher. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics Translation
Douthat, R. (2010) The Marriage Ideal
Mill, J.S. On Liberty in focus, edited by Gray, J & Smith, G.W (2003)
Murray, M. Kujundzic, N. (2005) Critical Reflection