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secular assertions against marriage equality

As any reader knows I spend quite a bit of time here making the case for full inclusion of homosexuals and others not only in society at large but in the church as well. I tend to focus on the theological and social cases for full legitimacy not only of same gender marriage, but of marriage equality in general. While most think that the assertions against marriage equality are wholly religious in nature, there are indeed non-religious assertions. If there were no non-religious assertions, the Defense of Marriage Act and all policies like it would have been stricken as unconstitutional a while ago. A few of these assertions have been brought to bear here under the comments for an unrelated post and so, I want to bring them out here in a more appropriate forum. My argument is that marriage laws that restrict gender are arbitrary and thus make no civic sense.

Legitimizing Same Gender Marriage Will Result in Population Decline

If a significant subset of a population does not reproduce children that population will thin. Basically people that do not reproduce will lead to a society's extinction. However, the suggestion that a non-reproductive, small sample that does not reproduce will lead to the entire population thinning out to the point of extinction seems absurd at best and maybe even a bit bizarre. It assumes an even distribution of reproductive cycles, lifecycles, and ratios between parents and children. Hear that octomom, John & Kate, and Duggar family? You are messing up the math (among other families)! Moreover, even if we accept this as true, to be fair we would have to sanction marriage only for the purpose of sexual reproduction. So no, this assertion does not make mathematical or civic sense. I guess we should all visit places like Canada and Denmark soon since they are apparently going to go off the grid some day. Man hockey is going to suck.

Legitimizing Same Gender Marriage Will Result in the Decline of Civilization

Name one civilization that has not persisted that has also legitimized homosexuality! Sure! But… what does it mean to persist? For how long? I need some help then. Name one civilization that has persisted forever as it began. I'll wait… tick tock tick tock…

Gosh darnit… no civilization has persisted forever. This assertion is as ambiguous as strange. Let's get more precise then…

Let's use the word "conquering empire" or "superpower." The USSR was a superpower and did not persist, but not because of the scourge of homosexuality (those pesky gays and their communist regimes). The conquering Nazis did not persist and they killed homosexuals! The Romans had a serious barbarian problem (guess all the barbarians were gay?). Conan, you go girl! What about Greece? Are we talking about Hellenic or Hellenistic Greek civilization? Was it really homosexuality that lead to the decline or diffusion through trade among many other factors like, I don't know, the Persian Wars? Silly me, it was the gymnasium with all that hot manhood on display. Guess I need to reinterpret all of those Greek tradgedies that illustrate pride as the fall of human civilization because they clearly meant homosexuality. Basically this entire assertion is as absurd as it is ignorant of history. This is a good strawman. "If I only had a brain…" Bathhouse anyone? ;-)

Legitimizing Same Gender Marriage Goes Against 5000 Years of Humanity

I miss them 1600's don't you? Everyone was white, people prayed all the time to baby Jesus, no one got into wars, religion was pure, you could have slaves legally, women were in the kitchen, and… ta da no gays! Well except for some of those Popes and kings. (Hey where's King James going with all those hot guys? Didn't he authorize a bible translation or something?) Like a big hot tub of pure white, manly freedom it was awesome! Right. If legitimizing marriage equality is a bit counter-cultural today, so does making slavery illegal and this thing called civil rights. Still trying to find the US emperor or king and his flock of men. No matter what you think of Mr. Obama, he's not the same thing as an emperor or king because they were not voted in by an electorate. So this is a painfully weak assertion.

Well, If We Legitimate Same Gender Marriage, Polygamy is Next!

Strap on your skis for this slippery slope! (Stop it, I said nothing of "strap-ons" ladies. How rude.) That's all it is. I should stick to my eight glasses of water a day. But I have to watch how much I drink after that lest I turn into a puddle. Wonder Twin Powers….Activate!

But let's say, cool… polygamy is next. So what? I am not convinced it's the best way to go, but still so what? Well then we will all be having orgies in church and invite the farm animals while slicing their necks open with a Rabbi to make some kosher lamb for the post orgy church potluck! And that is why this is a slippery slope. Fun, but painfully irrational.

That's Not What the Bible Says

Crap! I did it. This is the entire foundation for this bizarre set of assertions. They have no evidence other than feisty rhetoric. No matter what lipstick you want to put on this pig, it's still tasty over a barbeque! None of it's right, none of it is really constitutional, and it's high time we learned what fairness was by legitimating same gender relationships under marriage laws…

Better…

Get rid of "marriage" in all civil documents, replace it with "civil union" for every one, change the tax code to reflect this, and let religious authorities decide if they accept or reject this or that civil union. Problem solved. We can then be constitutional again! Yeah America!

Related posts:

  1. stop talking about "gay marriage"
  2. confronting the slippery slope against homosexuality
  3. us religion: post-secular, more secular, post-christian?
  4. gay marriage = religious freedom
  5. why proposition 8 is harmful

  • jayjonson
    Great post and comments.
  • Of course, I prefer what you've written under the "Better..." heading (but you knew that already). "Best..." would include abolishing that pesky tax code altogether, along with "legal" definitions of private relationships.

    Two comments.

    Point the first: let's look at some numbers. LGBT advocates rarely claim to have more than 10% representation in America; more conservative estimates place them somewhere closer to 1-3%. Even if none of this 1-10% of the population ever reproduced or adopted, this would have minimal impact on the population over time, being perhaps equivalent, numerically, to the number of monogamous hetero couples who fail to reproduce. Similarly, if the earth opened up and swallowed every single one of them tomorrow, the marginal impact of the simultaneous removal of every single LGBT person in America would have scant effect on the population growth. This is because national reproduction rates are estimated in aggregate, across the entire population, usually broken down by demographics which do not include sexual orientation. In other words, not only is the population impact of LGBT families minimal, it's already been accounted for in the roughly 2.7 births-per-woman average in the US. (Higher for hispanics and blacks, lower for asians and whites) Population growth vis-a-vis immigration (whether legal or illegal) has more of an impact, both in sheer numbers and socio-politically.

    Point the second: Drew is right in saying that no society, no culture, lasts forever unchanged. Contrary to the claims of conservatives and neocons everywhere, America has no special dispensation or mandate from God in this regard; far from it: the very structure of the American polity virtually guarantees that it cannot and will not persist in any given form. But same-sex marriage, public lewdness, and bars being open on Sunday are not what will ultimately bring down the US and the West, just as they were not what brought down Babylonian, Persian, Greek or Roman cultures, Nazi Germany, or the USSR. To the contrary, what destroyed each and every of these cultures/countries was (to one extent or another, in varying mixtures) central planning, government price controls, debauching of the currency (inflationary monetary policy) and military over-extension. Sound familiar?
  • Oops... when I said, "Similarly, if the earth opened up and swallowed every single one of them tomorrow, the marginal impact of the simultaneous removal of every single LGBT person in America would have scant effect on the population growth," I meant that phrasing to go into the previous statement. That sentence should have read, "Similarly, even if every relatively monogamous LGBT couple adopted every orphan, foundling, and abandoned child tomorrow, it would have no effect on population growth." The way it's written, I simply restated the previous sentence. (That'll teach me to edit on-the-fly, especially at work) :)
  • mojojules
    I think a lot is fear. If that is "normal" and ok then what is "wrong"? What is the score card? I'm sure those who dealt with slavery,civil rights,interracial marriages becoming legal went through the same. It's fear of not having power and in some way what all this says about them, in other words, they have to deal with reality. Thus, dealing with their own speck and plank. It is more fun and safe when there is someone below you in the power pyrimiad.

    Good stuff!
  • And the best secular arguments for gay marriage?

    1. Governments get increased tax revenue from married couples filing jointly. (All that supposed LGBT disposable income, you know.)

    2. Increased number of stable two-parent homes available to adopt children.

    3. The states with the lowest heterosexual divorce rates are also the states that have legalized gay marriage. Correlation doesn't equal causation, of course. But perhaps people in those states just take marriage more seriously overall.

    4. Stable families mean stable homes & more stable neighborhoods. Their go your property values! Up, up, up! (The downside here is that keeping up with Messrs Smith-Jones's premier landscaping is going to be tough.)

    Oh, and ...

    5. Equal rights.
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