Issues of benefits are not keys to marriage
Flawed reasoning on same-sex unions
Issues of benefits and even love aren’t the keys to why cultures allow a man and woman to marry.
Jordan Lorence, senior counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Article from the Philadelphia Enquirer, February 17 2006
The debates and lawsuits on same-sex “marriage,” such as those in New Jersey and Nebraska this week, frequently dwell on the wrong things. To get clarity on this issue, we need to clear away the clutter of misdirected arguments:
Marriage is not a benefits system for “loving” couples. Historically, world cultures have defined marriage as a man and a woman long before adding any tax breaks, benefits, or legal privileges. Those “incidents of marriage” came much later. Today, in most cases, unmarried people can obtain the same benefits. Anyone can write a will leaving his assets to a friend or can sign a legal document permitting another to make medical decisions for him in an emergency. It is true that unmarried people, whether single or in a same-sex relationship, cannot pass on some benefits, like Social Security, when they die. Where “benefit inequities” exist, lawmakers should take each issue separately and solve the problem for everyone, not just a narrow category of couples.
The marriage debate is not about governmental recognition of a couple’s “love” for each other. Of course, marriages succeed when people love each other, but the government has never required “love” in order to obtain a marriage license. The government requires that the man and the woman be adults who have the mental capacity to consent, not be married to someone else, not be near relatives, etc. If the government was in the business of certifying the authenticity of close, emotional relationships, it would license friendships, too, but it does not.
A marriage license is not a governmental permit to procreate, but there is a real societal interest here. When men and women interact, they inevitably produce children. Societies must deal with that hard fact. And they do so by encouraging parents to get married to each other to raise their own children.
If a society simply allows everyone to do whatever he or she wants when it comes to sex, children, and commitment, the collective experience of world cultures is that it will result in irresponsible men, exploited women, and neglected and undisciplined children. This anarchy erodes, if not destroys, a society over time. Therefore, world cultures since the dawn of time have encouraged men and women to marry so that their children will be raised in the best social environment possible, one consisting of their mother and their father.
Society has no strong interest in encouraging the nurturing of children in a social structure that by design lacks a father or a mother. Who is not necessary to raise a child, the father or the mother?
Certainly some children have succeeded after being raised in nontraditional settings. But societies can favor marriage in their laws and public policy because, in general, it is the best way to raise the children inevitably created by men and women living together.
Advocates of same-sex “marriage” are not foundationally for marriage as a common good for all people. They see marriage as one choice among many that individuals can choose, so any governmental limitations denying them access must be abolished. But that means society cannot have a common definition of marriage. A society has no principled basis to say “yes” to the emotional plea of a same-sex couple desiring legal recognition but “no” to polygamists or others seeking the same thing.
Same-sex “marriage” is not inevitable. In 2004, the California Supreme Court unanimously ordered San Francisco to stop issuing renegade marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Nineteen states have passed state constitutional amendments defining marriage, with more states set to do the same. Massachusetts voters have collected enough signatures to propose a state constitutional amendment defining marriage.
The more the current debate deepens Americans’ understanding of marriage, the more they choose to support the consensus of world cultures that marriage consists of one man and one woman.
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