In Defense of Gay Marriage

The recent decision of New Jersey's Supreme Court to legalize gay marriage (or at least provide a form of same-sex union with marriage rights) has once again opened the debate on the right of homosexuals to marry. The religious right, the main group opposed to homosexual marriage, has repeatedly espoused the potential damaging effects of allowing same-sex unions. Evangelicals claim that altering the nature of the family unit will damage American society.

What the anti-gay marriage proponents fail to realize is that equal marriage is not an idle issue; it is a matter of civil rights. The right to love who you wish in an environment of equal recognition is as basic as the right to free speech or the right to vote. When such basic rights are denied on the grounds of race, religion or ethnicity, we call it discrimination. When rights are denied on the grounds of sexuality, much of our country finds it acceptable.

We must as a society begin to realize that denying basic rights is unacceptable. It is irrelevant what the discrimination is based on. Treatment of blacks in the segregation era differs from modern treatment of homosexuals only by a matter of degree.

To examine the religious right's claim that homosexual marriage will tear up the family unit, one must only look to the debates over miscegenation - the right of blacks to marry whites. The major claim of those who opposed it was that it would damage the family unit. The repeal of miscegenation laws did not lead to the downfall of society. Anti-miscegenation proponents argued that miscegenation would lead to a slippery slope. They claimed bestiality and polygamy would soon be legalized if we allowed blacks and whites to marry. Not surprisingly, those opposed to gay marriage make the same claim. But gay marriage will not lead to such practices any more than miscegenation did.

There is another argument that states that children in homosexual unions will not grow up to be well-adjusted and functioning members of society. Studies show otherwise. Take, for example, the summary by the American Psychological Association of multiple studies, which stated: "The results of existing research comparing gay and lesbian parents to heterosexual parents and children of gay or lesbian parents to children of heterosexual parents are quite uniform: common stereotypes are not supported by the data." NPR did a report in May of 2004, in which they interviewed a pediatrician who is familiar with the relevant studies. Her conclusion: "Those studies found no difference in parent-child relationships, in self-esteem, psychiatric or emotional status or problem behaviors. The findings are quite monotonous. There just were no differences [between children of straight and gay couples]."

Opponents of gay marriage say that the purpose of marriage is the production of children, which gay couples would not serve. Those opponents can't explain why it's legal for elderly or sterile couples to marry when they would not produce children.

Opponents of gay marriage say that homosexuality is "unnatural." This is meaningless. The "natural" relation between men and women, if we go back to our basic instincts, requires the male to rape the female and declare her his mate without her consent. Given this fact, no reasonable person is in favor of "natural" marriage.

Opponents of gay marriage say that homosexual marriage will demean the value of traditional marriage. They cannot explain why two men or two women getting married would make them love their own spouses any less. Much more threatening to marriage is divorce, but you rarely if ever see the religious right protesting outside a lawyer's office. Surprisingly, divorce rates are higher among Christians than among atheists and agnostics, and highest in the Bible Belt. By ignoring a legitimate threat to marriage while protesting same-sex unions, the religious right betrays its true motivation - homophobia.

Even the most basic of appeals to logic shows that any of the multiple arguments offered by the movement against gay marriage are flawed. The leaders of the religious right are at best incapable of simple logic and at worst intentionally deceptive.

The United States has long prided itself on its rapidly changing record on civil rights. Blacks attained a state of near equality after only a few decades of agitation. If we wish to continue to be proud of our civil rights record, we must recognize marriage equality for the basic right that it is.