From M.I.T.'s The Tech publication:



THE SECULAR CASE AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE

Adam Kolasinksi

Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society, so there is no reason to grant them the costly benefits of marriage.

The Tech, Volume 124, Number 5
Tuesday, February 17, 2004

The debate over whether the state ought to recognize gay marriages has thus far focused on the issue as one of civil rights. Such a treatment is erroneous because state recognition of marriage is not a universal right. States regulate marriage in many ways besides denying men the right to marry men, and women the right to marry women. Roughly half of all states prohibit first cousins from marrying, and all prohibit marriage of closer blood relatives, even if the individuals being married are sterile. In all states, it is illegal to attempt to marry more than one person, or even to pass off more than one person as one's spouse. Some states restrict the marriage of people suffering from syphilis or other venereal diseases. Homosexuals, therefore, are not the only people to be denied the right to marry the person of their choosing.

I do not claim that all of these other types of couples restricted from marrying are equivalent to homosexual couples. I only bring them up to illustrate that marriage is heavily regulated, and for good reason. When a state recognizes a marriage, it bestows upon the couple certain benefits which are costly to both the state and other individuals. Collecting a deceased spouse's social security, claiming an extra tax exemption for a spouse, and having the right to be covered under a spouse's health insurance policy are just a few examples of the costly benefits associated with marriage. In a sense, a married couple receives a subsidy. Why? Because a marriage between to unrelated heterosexuals is likely to result in a family with children, and propagation of society is a compelling state interest. For this reason, states have, in varying degrees, restricted from marriage couples unlikely to produce children.

Granted, these restrictions are not absolute. A small minority of married couples are infertile. However, excluding sterile couples from marriage, in all but the most obvious cases such as those of blood relatives, would be costly. Few people who are sterile know it, and fertility tests are too expensive and burdensome to mandate. One might argue that the exclusion of blood relatives from marriage is only necessary to prevent the conception of genetically defective children, but blood relatives cannot marry even if they undergo sterilization. Some couples who marry plan not to have children, but without mind-reaching technology, excluding them is impossible. Elderly couples can marry, but such cases are so rare that it is simply not worth the effort to restrict them. The marriage laws, therefore, ensure, albeit imperfectly, that the vast majority of couples who do get the benefits of marriage are those who bear children.

Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society, so there is no reason for the state to grant them the costly benefits of marriage, unless they serve some other state interest. The burden of proof, therefore, is on the advocates of gay marriage to show what state interest these marriages serve. Thus far, this burden has not been met.

One may argue that lesbians are capable of procreating via artificial insemination, so the state does have an interest in recognizing lesbian marriages, but a lesbian's sexual relationship, committed or not, has no bearing on her ability to reproduce. Perhaps it may serve a state interest to recognize gay marriages to make it easier for gay couples to adopt. However, there is ample evidence (see, for example, David Popenoe's Life Without Father) that children need both a male and female parent for proper development. Unfortunately, small sample sizes and other methodological problems make it impossible to draw conclusions from studies that directly examine the effects of gay parenting. However, the empirically verified common wisdom about the importance of a mother and father in a child's development should give advocates of gay adoption pause. The differences between men and women extend beyond anatomy, so it is essential for a child to be nurtured by parents of both sexes if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of both sexes. Is it wise to have a scoial policy that encourages family arrangements that deny children such essentials? Gays are not necessarily bad parents, nor will they necessarily make their children gay, but they cannot provide a set of parents that includes both a male and a female.

Some have compared the prohibition of homosexual marriage to the prohibition of interracial marriage. This analogy fails because fertility does not depend on race, making race irrelevant to the state's interest in marriage. By contrast, homosexuality is highly relevant because it precludes procreation.

Some argue that homosexual marriages serve a state interest because they enable gays to live in committed relationships. However, there is nothing stopping homosexuals from living in such relationships today. Advocates of gay marriage claim gay couples need marriage in order to have hospital visitation and inheritance rights, but they can easily obtain these rights by writing a living will and having each partner designate the other as trustee and heir. There is nothing stopping gay couples from signing a joint lease or owning a house jointly, as many single straight people do with roommates. The only benefits of marriage from which homosexual couples are restricted are those that are costly to the state and society.

Some argue that the link between marriage and procreation is not as strong as it once was, and they are correct. Until recently, the primary purpose of marriage, in every society around the world, has been procreation. In the 20th century, Western societies have downplayed the procreative aspect of marriage, much to our detriment. As a result, the happiness of the parties to the marriage, rather than the good of the children or the social order, has become its primary end, with disastrous consequences. When married persons care more about themselves than their responsibilities to their children and society, they become more willing to abandon these responsibilities, leading to broken homes, a plummeting birthrate, and countless other social pathologies that have become rampant over the last 40 years. Homosexual marriage is not the cause for any of these pathologies, but it will exacerbate them, as the granting of marital benefits to a category of sexual relationships that are necessarily sterile can only widen the separation between marriage and procreation.

The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage. If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis cant it deny marital recognition to a group of two men and three women, for example, or a sterile brother and sister who claim to love each other? Homosexual activists protest that they only want all couples treated equally. But why is sexual love between two people more worthy of state sanction that love between three, or five? When the purpose of marriage is procreation, the answer is obvious. If sexual love becomes the primary purpose, the restriction of marriage to couples loses its logical basis, leading to marital chaos.

Adam Kolasinski is a doctoral student in financial economics.

This interview would have been 30 secs long if she simply said Palin made a mistake. In fact none of these idiots would have jobs if people just admitted their mistakes. Can you imagine her stating it was a mistake and watching all the pundits completely lockup. All us married men know the quickest way to move on is to admit wrongdoing (even though we know we're right).

hey guys....by the taliban, you mean the same kind of 19 guys(who later turned out to be only 6) who sneaked thru the security in the airports on 9/11, security that was in he hand of jeb bush´s firm, in all the airports they went thru. you meant those geniuses who spent most of their lives feedin on goatmilk. is that what you mean by the taliban? those guys were clever, to attack a city in the u.s at the same day, the only day of the year(THE WHOLE FUCKING YEAR)the air-force doing practice.....wake up, the game is rigged, and you look silly...........

prior to 9/11...in the year 2001, 66 times planes dissapeared from radar, or contact was lost.in 66 cases out of 66, fighter jets were sent up there to locate those planes, on 9/11, 0! not a single plane. WHAT ON EARTH DOES IT TAKE YOU FOOLS TO START TO ASK QUESTIONS? i believe dick cheney,whose first child is born 9 months and 2 days after congress passed laws that married men without children could be sent to vietnam, smiling thru the the windows of the cock-pit just before it hit the tower, is still not convincing for you. may god, that imagenary old man, up ther, have mercy on your souls, for being so easily manipulated....amen, as they said in egypt(1500 yrs before jesus,when praised their god, amen, or was his name ame rai? nevertheless,wake up.)

if he f.e had any knowlegde of the attacks before hand, he would not have use it to prevent the attacks, lets put it that way. watch this one

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Fifth-Estate-Dick-Cheney

if that doesnt convince you then night need some medication. my favorite part is about how he escaped being drafted for vietnam. school,school,school,married, and then ends up makin his wife pregnant almost the same day congress agrees that married men without children can be drafted....dont even think this man has any love for other humans, not one act in his entire life has indicated that he does.

The 2 articles were interesting, but were a sweeping collection of cultural observations and interrelating/referring them, rather than analysis (as others noted).

It also completely ignores the point that that SYM etc are not accurate descriptions of ALL males. Also, that cultural identification/belonging/peer-group/peer-pressure etc are not the same as buying into it hook line and sinker.

it also doesn't address the implicit idea that it is appropriate for a single male to act as though he were a married man. staying at home with his non existent wife, not seeing his friends, and not socializing/spending the cash he's acquiring on the wife and child he doesn't have.

it starts to address the idea that some of the "married men are grown up men and mature" idea, as having in truth been a myth (even if a hidden and diluted form of current behavior) but doesn't follow through, to provide a proper analysis of exactly what the married man has, in his maturity, which is attractive (possibly to society rather than women, although this is not made clear) which the SYM lacks. Except one reference to the idea of "suppressed libido". And i think that is the key.

Let me first just say that the difference between "religion" and "cult religion" is just time. There is no source given for these "Mormon Facts" and since most of the people in my family are Mormons I know enough about them to recognize that some of that stuff don't add up.

The funny thing is that Mormons believe just about all of the same silly things that Christians believe. It's only the quirks that make them different that are pointed out as being "odd" and "strange" when the truth is ALL of it is odd and strange.

(1) 5 years ago the leader of the Mormon Church listed the 3 greatest threats to their church: feminism, homosexuality, and science.

I'd like to see that quote. I wouldn't be surprised if they said something like that about homosexuality. Maybe feminism if it's a quote from 30-40 years ago...I'd be surprised if they said something like that as recent as 5 years ago. The thing about science doesn't sound right either. Mormons believe in the Bible but also believe that there is no such thing as an existing Bible that is 100% word for word of the original writings. So they don't really sweat the details much when science disagrees with it like other religions do.

(2) Mormon’s use their children to perform faux baptisms for the dead, sometimes 24 hours a day.

This is partially true. They use people age 14 and up so of the 14-17 year olds they are "teenage children". While I guess it is "possible" that they could perform these "24 hours a day" it's not with the same people. They are there to perform the service for about 4 hours and they do that only about once a year.

(3) Church members who point out contradictions between scientific findings and church teachings are excommunicated.

Could be true...but what religion isn't going to kick someone out that comes to teach it's members that they are wrong?

(4) A Mormon family must dress entirely in white, from underwear to outer clothes and shoes, to attend Temple on Sunday.

This one is way off. Mormon families don't "attend Temple on Sunday". They go to "church" on Sunday and the males wear suit and tie of any color and the females wear dresses of any color. Now they do "dress entirely in white, from underwear to outer clothes and shoes" when they are in the Temple but that is something they can do any day and generally only single or married men and married women are allowed in the Temple. Not just any member of the church.

(5) Mormons are not allowed to share details about their religion to non-members.

They aren't allowed to share specific details about the Temple...anything else about the religion is not off limits.