Re-Thinking Homosexual Marriage in Rational and Ethical Fashion

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Table of Contents

Abstract
Introduction
Discussion of the Moral Issue
Conclusion
References

Abstract

This short essay considers the importance to foist homosexual marriage on American society as an unjust action on legal, moral/ethical, and spiritual grounds. We demonstrate that the way out of the hysterical debate is to consider soberly the basis for supporting the ordinary family as the basic unit of society and protector of the next generation.

Introduction

America has since birth protected dissent and the right of all to an untrammeled expression of opinion. In contemporary times, to hear the liberal press, California dissenters protesting the successful passage of Proposition 8, and Hollywood types tell it, gay marriage is a “right” and should be legalized in all states.

Discussion of the Moral Issue

The Moral Standard of Fashionable Thought

This paper delves into the issue of why the nation should accommodate the self-defensive opinion of a fringe, self-interested minority to grant civil and religious sanction to live-in relationships that afford society no benefit, at least of the kind that traditional marriage provides. Here, we argue that the exercise of illicit and, yes, perverted licentiousness does not protect those who practice it from moral condemnation and social scorn. In the same way, the right of consenting adolescents and adults to engage in premarital sex, adultery, incest, statutory rape, child assault, domestic violence, sadomasochistic acts, and child pornography all confront widespread disapproval.

It is fashionable for the more outspoken liberals in this pluralistic society to proclaim that the time has come to tolerate, legalize and even admire practices that only they have come to rationalize as acceptable just so they can reconcile acts that their consciences, embodying moral standards, do not condone. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was fashionable to dodge the Vietnam War draft and to smoke marijuana. From era to era, it is popular among their own peers for adolescents to smoke, engage in binge drinking and risk life and limb in drag racing and contests of “chicken”. In contemporary times, there is California condoning crystal methamphetamine addicts as little worse than misguided truants who should not be penalized with jail. Parents wash their hands of children in middle school, shrugging that boys and girls will experiment with sex no matter what their elders say. Inner-city African Americans cry “racial discrimination” for possession of even one gram of crystal meth, clearly not enough for a “hit”. Errant teenage and adult women are aghast at bans against employing public funds for elective abortion. After all, is not their (mental) health jeopardized by carrying to term the fruit of an intimate relationship that was either unwanted or unlikely to withstand the scrutiny of family and friends?

To perpetuate the sway of “politically correct,” fashionable thought, fringe liberals must expend enormous emotional energy reinforcing each other’s opinion, accusing their detractors of hate and discrimination, and when all else fails, unceasing propaganda that the American people will eventually see things their way.

The Myth of America Moving Towards a Consensus of Approval

In fact, there is no consensus in support of homosexual marriage. The highly-respected and long-standing series of NORC General Social Surveys found that many more Americans and a clear majority across the country oppose (59%) such marriages than favor (32%) them. Nearly half the time, survey participants base their stand on explicit moral and religious grounds. Other opinion surveys compiled by PollingReport.com (2009) reveal the extent of public opposition to homosexual marriage.

It is difficult, in any case, to see what civil rights of theirs homosexuals believe are violated by not having the civil and religious protection of marriage. The protections extended to men and women who marry, reinforced by the Defense of Marriage Act (Public Law No. 104-199, 110 Stat. 2419) of 1996, can be rationalized as safeguarding women who may not have the ability or financial capacity to rear natural offspring if abandoned by husbands (The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2009).

Against one loss in Arizona (51% to 49%), measures denying the legality of homosexual marriage passed in a total of seven states in 2006 voting: Colorado, Idaho, South Dakota, South Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin and Tennessee. That made for 27 states around the union that, like California, now boasted constitutional amendments defining marriage as, legally speaking, between one man and a woman (Anonymous, 2006).

In contrast, the tally of states where performing homosexual marriage is legal as 2009 has held steady at four: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, and Vermont. A fifth, New Hampshire, is set to allow homosexual marriages with the coming New Year unless those who succeeded in California’s voter initiative to enshrine in the state constitution the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman also succeed in that New England state.

Agitation by homosexuals to be granted equal rights to marriage first made itself felt in the post-Vietnam era. By the mid-1990s, the backlash became so great that Congress passed the “Defense of Marriage Act of 1996”. Unless repealed, this law forbids the federal government from granting the civil rights and protections of marriage to any couple except one man and one woman.

The Religious and Spiritual Imperative

Religious beliefs are an undeniable basis of personal and community ethics. Sullivan-Blum (2003) employs empirical qualitative research to demonstrate that the debate about homosexual marriage (to encompass gays, lesbians, bisexuals and those who have undergone sex change) will continue to throw mainline Christian denominations into debate bordering on schism. Like Obama when asked his opinion on the ethics of abortion, the author decides nothing but opts to acknowledge that both sides have their merits. Homosexual marriage, Sullivan-Blum contends, is a way for sexual outsiders to reconcile their sexual practices with spirituality. Their more numerous and morally upright opponents can only admit with chagrin that for the debate to be taking place at all is testimony to the eroded value of scriptural revelation and “how far the Church has strayed from its mission.” This is to be expected, given that Protestant churches are themselves the product of schism and there is therefore no single authority like the Catholic Pope to affirm such issues of human conduct as “abortion is wrong” or that the complementarity of men and women in marriage is nothing more or less than natural law (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2003).

The Plunge into Moral Relativism

Torcello (2006) argues for the continuing strength of moral pluralism when applied to ethical analysis of such hotly-debated contemporary issues as homosexual marriage and bioethics. This despite the deadly slide towards total moral relativism that Alastair MacIntyre implicitly accepted when he theorized that moral pluralism is the inevitable end-result of the Enlightenment. To avoid relativism, the author takes heart from the distinction between the domains of rationality and reason drawn by Stephen Toulmin and John Rawls.

Those who oppose civil, moral and religious taboos against every fringe element of society can take heart from Waller’s discussion of contemporary moral realism (chapter 11) as a terse and elegant hypothesis to explain observed phenomena. In this case, the phenomenon is of individuals disclosing they are not inclined to love and marry as all of mainstream humanity does. Waller suggests that moral facts can be based on an “emerging consensus”. More likely, however, it is the extreme permissiveness of American society that explains tolerance of homosexual relationships, those who plead the insanity defense for heinous crimes, adolescent sex and abortion, teenage binge drinking and drunk-driving deaths, and men leaving pregnant women to fend for themselves as single mothers. So, moral realism is not necessarily an objective or desirable standard the same way that Gallagher (2004) maintains that homosexual “partnerships” cannot enjoy the same protections of interracial marriage and are certainly a far cry from the loving security of male-female marriage, imperfect as it often is.

Conclusion

Fashionable importuning to be allowed the legal trappings of marriage benefits solely homosexuals but not society at large. After all, homosexual “partners” desire solely the consent of the community at large for an illicit “love” that will never have natural offspring, a union that cannot rear children in proper gender roles, or secure them against the breakup of the family.

Few are the permissive states that sanction such marriage. Rather than an emerging consensus, one finds steadfast legal, civic and community resistance to the idea that homosexuals can validly marry. At the end of the day, only a complete slide into moral relativism can permit the “mainstreaming” of homosexual marriage.

References

Anonymous (2006). Gay marriage ban: Who wins? Religious conservatives. The Christian Century, 123 (24) pg. 14.

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2003). Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons. Web.

Gallagher, M. (2004). Marriage matters: Why? Web.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (2009). Surveys part 2: Gay marriage. Web.

PollingReport.com (2009). Law and civil rights: Same-sex marriage, gay rights. Web.

Sullivan-Blum, C. R., Ph.D. (2003). “The two shall become one flesh”: The same-sex marriage debate in mainline Christianity. (Doctoral dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton).

Torcello, L. G., Ph.D. (2006). After MacIntyre: Rawls, Engelhardt and the limits of reason in a morally pluralistic society. (Doctoral dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo).

Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider Ethics (2nd ed.). In (E. Stano, Ed.). New York: Pearson Longman.

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