Awesome video series featuring John Corvino, author of Debating Same-Sex Marriage (Point/Counterpoint)
See also his related videos on YouTube:
Doesn’t legal same-sex marriage lead to polygamy or incest being made legal?
Is Gay Marriage a Threat to Traditional Marriage?
Is Gay Marriage a Threat to Religious Freedom?
There are many more to be explored (and shared!) via John Corvino’s YouTube channel, which is just awesome.
Personally, I really like his take on whether or not people who are against marriage equality are bigots (video below). Personally (and I’ve said this publicly), I think discriminating against any group of people based upon sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender or other things out of one’s control is bigotry. But I profoundly agree with Corvino that we need to be careful about demonizing our opponents.
“The best antitdote to moral blind spots is to educate people, not to shun them. And if we’re going to make progress, we need a better conversation.”
About Joanna Schroeder
But the Lindy West approach is so seductive…
While I have yet to read an argument in favour of same-sex marriage that I find at all persuasive (and I have – quite literally – read dozens of such arguments, some of them book length, from leading proponents), I applaud Corvino for putting the effort into having a reasonable and charitable debate on the subject. Unfortunately, this is a debate that typically founders on the notion – variously expressed on both sides – that opposition to same-sex marriage boils down to religion, although the strongest arguments against same-sex marriage don’t need to mention religion at all. Alongside this you have ahistorical essentialism or anachronism at work on both sides (Boswell’s work in favour of same-sex marriages in the past is a perfect example of this, something that has severely damaged his academic reputation, although his claims are frequently repeated in popular discussions: numerous arguments against same-sex marriage fall into the same error), with lots of overcooked social constructivism on the side of same-sex marriage.
There is also a widespread failure sufficiently to argue beyond the claim that we should recognize same-sex unions (which many of us would grant), to the claim that such unions should be recognized /as marriages/ (which many of us would resist), rather than sui generis forms of relationship, without the same connection to the bonds of blood, procreation (which, as Bertrand Russell observed, is the only reason why wider society should take sufficient interest in the relationship between two individuals sufficient consistently to devote an institutional form and its associated demands and privileges to it), parenthood, sexual dimorphism and union between the two halves of the human race (those who are neither male nor female being exceptions to the rule, rather than denials of it). These realities, though differently engaged, are almost invariably at the heart of all forms that marriage has taken over the years and across human cultures and societies. Same-sex relationships, though recognized by some societies in ritual and institutional forms, do not share the same characteristic engagement with these common human realities and have consequently typically been seen as opposed to or at least distinct from the marital form (for instance, in their inability to maintain the normal and ideal simplicity of the relationship between biological – genetic and gestational, social, and legal parenthood). While I think that there is a strong case to recognize same sex unions in some non-marital form, I think that there is an even stronger case /not/ to recognize them as marriage.
In the United States at least, marriage is ALREADY a civil, non-religious institution that is ALREADY unrelated to reproduction. Even without same-sex marriage, a union without religious sanction and without children is ALREADY perfectly normal, standard, and fully accepted in all areas of our society.
Same-sex marriage will have no effect on these points, which are the only objections ever raised–”It’s against God! Gays can’t have kids!” Neither of these points matter to marriage as it currently stands in America anyway.
I’m sure opponents of anti-miscegenation laws felt the same way, but I presume you will charge that is an unfair comparison. Interestingly enough, I have yet to read an argument opposed to same-sex marriage that I find at all persuasive. More so, I can find no compelling argument that says the default position of a society should be to restrict liberty for individuals until they are found worthy of having the same rights and responsibilities of their neighbors.
Not at all. Marriage has meant different things at different times in different cultures and societies. But that’s largely irrelevant, as historical practice has consistently failed to provide a guide for the moral behavior of society. One can make the same claims of slavery as you have made of marriage, and yet we nearly universally recognize slavery as abhorrent today where it had been condoned in the past.
What is the argument for denying same-sex partners the hundreds of rights, responsibilities, and privileges granted to other couples? What societal harm is averted, what moral good is achieved in forcing a partner to sell the home they shared with their now-deceased spouse? In preventing a partner from attending to them at their death bed? In denying them health benefits, survivor benefits, tax breaks, and the hundreds of other unrelated privileges that married people enjoy?
I’m still waiting for that argument…