A lot of times the gay marriage discussion gets bogged down in arguments steeped in emotion. Someone share a link to a blog of a friend of theirs which in my opinion put forward one of the best cases for gay marriage. The writer of the blog is a young trinidadian woman.
http://the-secular-humanist.blogspot.com/Gay Marriage
I encourage you to research the individual propositions within this entry yourself. In your research, please be aware of the bias of your source material (e.g. religious sites versus sceptic's sites versus material meant for pure scientific/philosophical knowledge).
This is a bit of a deviation from the framework, but there has been so much debate about gay marriage in the media in the past few weeks, what with President Obama weighing in and all, that I just couldn't help but pick it up.
I am pro-gay marriage. Not that my opinion matters. That topic wouldn't even be broached as a legal issue in my home country of Trinidad & Tobago within this century and perhaps the next. But I think that my opinion, placed in the context of a country that is supposed to champion the idea of the separation of church and state, is quite important. Now a lot of countries don't really pretend that their legal frameworks are free of the constrictions of the dominant religion (or the religion of the dominant, as the case may be), but some countries do. The United States of America is one of them, but to say that US law is completely devoid of religious tenets is foolhardy.
But let me leave that off for a bit and explain my opinion.
I am not pro-gay. I am not anti-gay. I am gay neutral. I don't care if you're gay. Unless you're effeminate. Effeminate people annoy me. Even overly-effeminate women. But I digress. So technically, in that sense, I am not pro-gay marriage. I don't care who you want to get married to. But I do think that gays should have the right to get married like anyone else.
People need to keep in mind that marriage is an insitution of two parts – a legal institution and a religious institution. Therefore, to deny someone the right to marriage is to deny them both their civil rights and freedom of religion.
Let's start off with marriage as a legal institution. See, people forget about that part. They think the word, "marriage" and they start thinking about churches and priests and "before God", but they forget that marriage is also a contract. Not just any contract, either. It is a contract that your government recognises, and then immediately grants the signing parties particular rights. These rights include:
Property rights – in the case of divorce as well as in the case of death of either party
Custody rights – of children and other dependents
Other authorities – such as the right to make medical and financial decisions in the case of the incapacitation of either party
Tax benefits – in some countries
So when you get married, you're not just telling the government:
"I love this person and if I'm not having sex with them already, I'm gonna be starting real soon."
You are also telling the government:
"I trust this person, and hereby bestow upon them the right to my estate when I die, the right to my children/dependents, the right to pull the plug should I go into a coma, and the right to write off particular expenses in their tax returns."
To deny homosexuals the right to marry is to therefore deny them the right to tell the government who they trust enough to make the above-mentioned decisions. Even if you believe gay marriage to be sinful, how can a man telling the government that he trusts this other man to do those things for him to be sinful? Or woman for a woman? It's not. It is purely a legal issue. It has nothing to do with religion.
Now, there are two ways to address this.
The first way is to tell a gay couple:
"Look, you can't get married. But you can go to a lawyer and draw up a legally binding agreement that would bestow upon each other all of the property, custodial and medical rights that a married couple has. Tough sheit on the tax, by the way."
That certainly solves a lot of the legal problems right there, except that it's unfair. A heterosexual couple simply has to get married to automatically get these rights. A homosexual couple is relegated to a lawyer's office and all of the headache and legal fees that come with it. And of course, if the government decides to change their laws, married couples are automatically provided the benefits (or losses) of such a change, whereas the gay couple would have to return to the lawyer once again. Of course, practically speaking, the gay couple may simply draw up a document that speaks to all of these rights, but draft the agreement in a manner that they are comfortable with and not necessarily one that is reflective of the laws followed by heterosexual couples. Still, the need to draft such a document at all, is a reflection of that statement "separate but equal".
And that brings me to civil unions. Civil unions solve the legal problem, though in the manner "separate but equal", with all its discriminatory implications. But let's put aside the rhetoric and emotions of that for now. Civil unions aren't enough. Why? Because of the second institution of marriage – the religious institution.
At first glance, there may seem to be no case for gay marriage on religious grounds. God doesn't like gays. He destroyed a couple of cities for it. And so on and so forth. So it's clear. Homosexuality is a sin. But so is apostasy. And so is paganism. But those are legal. Why are sins legal? Because of the separation of church and state. Sinful and illegal are not meant to be equal terms.
A Christian is legally allowed to renounce their Christian faith (apostasy), convert to Hinduism (paganism) and get married to another Hindu. Why then can't a man marry another man? Because it is against God? So is Hinduism. So is Islam. So is Judaism. So is Buddhism. So is Mormonism (to a lot of Christians). So is Scientology (to almost anyone). But because people are free to believe whatever mumbo jumbo they want to believe, the government allows them to practice their religion however they see fit, once it does not break secular laws.
People believe a lot of absurd things. There are people out there who believe that:
Some guy named Xenu was the dictator of the “Galactic Confederacy” who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth in a spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs (Scientologists)
Some guy named Joseph Smith was directed to some golden plates in 19th century New York by an angel, translated the plates from “reformed Egyptian” to American English using a seer stone, birthing the Book of Mormon (Mormonism)
Cows should be revered rather than consumed (Hindus)
God wants them to strip the skin off of their newborn baby's penis (Jews)
Their child is better dead than alive with a blood transfusion (Jehovah's witnesses)
Women should be covered from head to toe save narrow slits for their eyes in order to detract sexual attention from themselves (Muslims)
One can attend church in the nude (a church at a nudist colony in Ivor, Virginia)
Yes, these are all recognised religions, folks. All of these people are allowed to believe what they want and practise their religion. But if two dudes believe in the same Christian God that you do, except that they think that God is okay with their gaydom, how is that any more absurd than any of the beliefs listed above? And why can't they practise their absurd religion like everyone else? Freedom of religion. Plain and simple. I understand that people believe that gay marriage is against God. And they are free to believe that, once they understand that it is against their god, and not the gays' god. Just like the Mormons' Jesus visited the Americas after his resurrection but most other Christians' Jesus did not. Very similar Jesuses but not the same. And so for the gays, very similar gods, but not the same. And no one should impose their god on the entire population, no matter how similar these gods may be to others, unless they want a theistic state.
Now, some people then go on to say, sarcastically, mind you:
“Well, why stop at the gays? Why not legalise polygamy? Let men marry animals, while you're at it!”
Well, yes and... no.
Let's start with polygamy. When people say this word, it immediately conjures up images of a single man with multiple wives (often hooded wives because they're Muslim, or in large, ugly dresses because they're holed up in a farm in the middle of nowhere, USA). But this could also mean a single woman with multiple men, or multiple men and women. Now, there are many societal and cultural reasons that has allowed and continues to allow polygamy as it is usually practiced around the world. This often has something to do with allowing women to gain some benefits – through marriage – that would have been otherwise extremely difficult to gain in a society that does not really grant equal rights to women. I am not getting too much into that – you can research it yourself.
As for practical reasons why polygamy does (or should) remain illegal. I imagine it can create an underclass for men. Minding wives is an expensive business – or so I hear – so the men with the most wives are likely to be rich, leaving the poor men to be single and more likely to become societal degenerates. This is far less likely to happen in the modern world with women capable of fending for themselves, of course. And speaking of independent women, let's not forget all of the misogynist overtones associated with polygamy that said independent women are unlikely to tolerate.
Apart from that though, there is no real reason to frown upon polygamy except for the statutory nightmare it would be to determine the property, custodial and medical decision-making rights of a dead man's 5 wives. So I'm okay with polygamy really. I surely couldn't do it, but kudos for those who can. And kudos to the government who can untangle that legislative web.
Bestiality by marriage though is absolutely absurd. A marriage is a legal contract. A legal contract can be drawn up only between two or more consenting parties of sound mind. Children cannot be parties to most contracts because they are not considered to be old enough to fully understand the implications of a legally binding resolution. Insane people cannot be parties to contracts because they too are not able to fully understand contractual obligations – but not because of their age, but because they don't have a sound connection to reality. Similarly – and it is absurd that I must say this – animals cannot be a party to a contract. And do I really need to say why?
If a man wants to firetruck a goat, by all means, let him go ahead and firetruck it. He should face no legal consequences (although this is certainly not the case in many countries, including mine) unless there is some risk of goat-to-man sexually transmitted diseases. But the law cannot (not “does not” or “should not”) legally recongise such a relationship.
So, please. Please, people. Stop using YOUR god as a reason to deny the gays their rights. They have a right to be miserable and boring like everyone else is.
