Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
I have been asked to comment on the thoughtful observations of Paul A. Rahe who asks quite simply why it is in my normative defense of gay marriage, I have not addressed that critical question of the public interest that every society has in its own perpetuation through procreation. It would be idle to insist that this long-term view of social preservation does rate as a strong public interest, even for those, like myself, who take libertarian positions on matters of marriage. Of course the next generation matters. The hard question is to figure out the relationship that gay marriage has to this undeniable social interest.
The first point to note is that gay couples cannot reproduce. But that is true whether they enter into civil unions or into gay marriages. Either way they can only have children through adoption or various techniques like surrogacy or artificial insemination, which while vital in individual cases are not likely to push the overall birth rates upward by any measurable degree. So on this point, at least, the only strategies that could work are those which seek to either induce, or worse, coerce gay individuals to enter into ordinary heterosexual marriages, which raises far more problems than it solves.
Mr. Rahe does not, however, draw this inference, but concludes that the need for procreation means that the state should offer legal reinforcement of marriage by “subsidization” of the traditional marriage. But on this point, two observations come immediately to mind. First, the subsidy in question could be extended to all couples gay or straight. Second, there is the far harder question of whether the subsidy should be extended to those women who bear children out of wedlock, which has become an ever larger fraction of the population. There is an equally great problem of children raised in homes broken by divorce, which bodes ill for the children of these marriages.
To my mind, these huge problems should be tackled head on. The first line of social offense is to try to persuade young men and women that a durable marriage really improves the prospects of their offspring. This huge social problem bears little relationship to the gay marriage issue. And if there were a connection, my guess is that it could run equally well in the opposite direction. If gay couples can commit to marriage and take on the burden of raising children, which they do with real success, then surely you can do so as well. The obstacles to having children for a heterosexual couple are a lot lower than those for gay and lesbian couples.
So of course the state has a legitimate interest in marriage because of offspring. But nothing about the legalization of gay marriage changes those issues, so long as we insist that all the rules on abuse and neglect apply to all couples as they do. In terms of the overall social concern, the fragile status of the nuclear family is a pressing issue. We should all be better off if that were the focus on our inquiry, which will only happen when gay marriage becomes legal, which could easily happen in New York this coming week.
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Jul '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
Let me see if I get this procreation argument: If Richard and Paul get married in Michigan, Sally and David will decide not to have babies in Alabama? Yeah, that makes sense...
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
My thought too.
Please raise your hand if your sexual desire rises and falls based upon what government does.
I'm certain that even if the government declared sex and procreation to be illegal, we'd all still do it anyway.
May '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
Richard and Kenneth, you agree that the gay marriage laws change the definition of marriage, right? You recognize that the definition of marriage will change from "one man and one woman" to "two adults." The idea of marriage, which has existed in nearly every known human society, was to tie men to their children and the mothers of their children. That is the public purpose of marriage. Adults having companionship and love and mutual care in old age is also important, but that's not the public purpose of marriage. Please recognize that the definition of a fundamental social institution will change. Do you think that will have no impact on the ability of societies to get men to commit to the mothers of their children?
Edited on Jun 19, 2011 at 9:39pmDec '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
You have hit the nail on the head and yet failed to drive it home. The very social good of marriage may or may not be specifically undermined by admitting gay marriage into society. However, the philosophical/political ideology that is driving toward gay marriage is the same one that undermined traditional marriage in the first place and helped create many of the social ills we have today. When the state first intertwined itself with marriage and provided special recognition it was not necessarily a bad thing. It may have supplemented the other social institutions that upheld marriage as a vital social institution. That changed when the ideologies that undermined marriage removed the stigmas associated with out of wedlock births and divorce. Those of that bent also used the state as a bludgeon to remove many of the legal barriers to divorce. Undermining the very definition of marriage is simply the next step on that progression. Marriage will become nothing more than a contract between individuals (how many remains to be seen) ratified by the state rather than a unique institution within society that provides the specific social good of procreation. Will the good still be provided? Who knows?
Jul '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
Why on earth would it change the life decisions of heterosexual couples? You really think that, en masse, heterosexual couples around the land will look at each other and say, "Gee, this marriage thing seems to have been devalued, so let's call the whole thing off"?
That's silly.
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
Kenneth
Why on earth would it change the life decisions of heterosexual couples? You really think that, en masse, heterosexual couples around the land will look at each other and say, "Gee, this marriage thing seems to have been devalued, so let's call the whole thing off"?
That's silly. · Jun 19 at 9:39pm
Kenneth is right. Katherine do you think that men commit to the mother of their children because government tells them to?
Dec '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
Katherine: The idea of marriage, which has existed in nearly every known human society, was to tie men to their children and the mothers of their children. That is the public purpose of marriage. · Jun 19 at 9:31pm
Edited on Jun 19 at 09:37 pm
Fantastic summation of the public purpose (and social good) of marriage. I like to analogize marriage as a well tended garden. It is productive and bears beneficial fruit. The other option is the dandelion which spreads its seed haphazardly as the wind takes it, produces no positive benefit, and often times attempts to choke out the good. The teaching of diligence concerning the garden is, however, the responsibility of society rather than government. Government should merely be the weed killer.
Oct '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
I agree with Katherine.
A lot of people like to opine on what impact gay marriages will have on traditional marriage but I think we get it backwards. Gay marriage doesn't cause the erosion traditional marriage but is the consequence of the erosion of traditional marriage. In fact, I would say that homosexuality is the consequence of the erosion of heterosexuality. From the ideal of monogamous, marital heterosexual relationships we can only descend and homosexuality is just one manifestation. I think history has a few examples that bear this out.
Also, what about the need for a mother and father figure in the home? Gay couples can't provide this. And it's not the same problem as a normal family in which one parent dies because that is an exception in heterosexual relationships whereas it's an inherent flaw in gay couples.
Dec '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
Tommy De Seno
Kenneth
Why on earth would it change the life decisions of heterosexual couples? You really think that, en masse, heterosexual couples around the land will look at each other and say, "Gee, this marriage thing seems to have been devalued, so let's call the whole thing off"?
That's silly. · Jun 19 at 9:39pm
Kenneth is right. Katherine do you think that men commit to the mother of their children because government tells them to? · Jun 19 at 9:42pm
They do it because society tells them to. In this day and age, sadly, government seems intent on telling society what to think. It's how the left has instilled all of its agenda against the better sense of the majority.
Aug '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
With all due respect, you sound like someone who's spent his whole life studying law, and has come to think that human culture is supposed to conform to rational legalisms and technicalities, full of two-dollar words and complex deductions.
Marriage predates most law and most civilization. Since the dawn of history, it has been perfectly obvious that there was something special, even magical, about sex and procreation, that the mating of the two sexes was one of the central stories of life (along with things like mortality, making war, social hierarchy, worshipping the unseen, etc.), and that this mating was something that needed both regulation and protection in order to have a functioning civilization.
I don't like to be told by all the right-thinking people at this late date that this has all been a grotesque blunder, a mere expression of reactionary prejudice, just because we're unwilling to redefine marriage so that homosexuals can enjoy the fantasy that what they do is no different in any meaningful way from what heterosexuals do. It takes a profound blindness, a willful suppression of normal instinct, to be that inured to the ageless meaning of marriage.
Mar '11
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
I don't think gay couples want to marry so as to procreate and continue society. Rather, they want to have the same "status" as heterosexual couples - even though, biologically, they can't.
Katherine - I don't think couples nowadays get married because of what society says or expects - they do it in order to make a commitment, a symbol of their love, or maybe because of peer-pressure, or tradition. I dunno.
Having said that, I'd prefer civil unions for gay couples. But if they really want to get married, I don't have a strong objection.
And, having said that, I think of Mark Steyn's demographic arguments about the collapse of secular western civilization - gay marriage is maybe one aspect of that?
Edited on Jun 19, 2011 at 9:51pmRe: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
I think people are conflating government force with social norms.
Marriage as traditionally defined reinforces the norms of monogamy and fidelity. Not because, you know, we're all Christian and share these values. Rather, these are cooked into the model because of (among other things) procreation. Where the basis of marriage is no longer built around procreation but just two people (but why two?) having a contract that may or may not have to do with sex and certainly may not have to do with intercourse, why in the world would monogamy and fidelity be social norms anymore?
It's not about the government, per se, but if we remove the basis for the norms we've had, we'll also change the norms. It would be illogical to expect people who have no ability to procreate to have the same norms about monogamy. There are certainly other issues related to this, but that's just one key norm that will definitely change.
May '11
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
Professor Epstein wrote, "But that is true whether they enter into civil unions or into gay marriages."
Yes, that is true, and is why we shouldn't have "civil unions" either.
Marriage exists to protect children. That is the state's interest in marriage, to ensure that children are taken care of and that parents are also protected in the care of children.
That it isn't fool proof is no reason to say the state has no interest in trying.
Our species is not homosexual. We are heterosexual. It is just and fitting that if people wish to be, or are by some freak of nature tend to be, homosexual that we should have no business saying they shouldn't. But it doesn't follow that we should celebrate or reward it, either.
Nov '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
Kenneth
Why on earth would it change the life decisions of heterosexual couples? You really think that, en masse, heterosexual couples around the land will look at each other and say, "Gee, this marriage thing seems to have been devalued, so let's call the whole thing off"?
That's silly. · Jun 19 at 9:39pm
I never thought I'd see the day when Kenneth--the man who cries bloody murder about the illegitimacy rate in the US--refers to such a notion as "silly."
If the institution of marriage is not about preserving the family unit defined by a man, a woman, and their children, then what on earth could it possibly be about?
May '11
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
And bereket has it right. This seeming obsession our culture has for homosexuality recently is not the disease, it's the symptom of a culture of nihilism.
Edited on Jun 19, 2011 at 9:56pmMar '11
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
Skyler:
Our species is not homosexual. We are heterosexual. It is just and fitting that if people wish to be, or are by some freak of nature tend to be, homosexual that we should have no business saying they shouldn't.
I hope Andrew Sullivan doesn't read Ricochet ;-)
Oct '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
And what about polygamy? I'd love to hear all the excuses for why "it's different." There's no argument for gay marriage that you can't make for bigamy/polygamy.
Jul '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
Jan-Michael Rives
Kenneth
Why on earth would it change the life decisions of heterosexual couples? You really think that, en masse, heterosexual couples around the land will look at each other and say, "Gee, this marriage thing seems to have been devalued, so let's call the whole thing off"?
That's silly. · Jun 19 at 9:39pm
I never thought I'd see the day when Kenneth--the man who cries bloody murder about the illegitimacy rate in the US--refers to such a notion as "silly."
If the institution of marriage is not about preserving the family unit defined by a man, a woman, and their children, then what on earth could it possibly be about? · Jun 19 at 9:51pm
Listen, marriage has been devalued by no-fault divorce laws, by social acceptance of the saintliness of single mothers and by a culture of shacking up. And yet it endures. Compared to all of the above, the idea that heterosexual couples are going to abandon marriage and child rearing is, yes, silly.
It may surprise you, but very, very few people sit around asking, "What is the purpose of marriage?" They just do it.
Edited on Jun 19, 2011 at 10:05pmJul '10
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
OK, here's a defense of polygamy: certain communities where illegitimacy runs over 70 percent would arguably be better off if the norm were one committed father with three wives instead of one single mother of three children by different runaway baby daddies.
Re: Gay Marriage and Procreation: Do They Work at Cross Purposes?
Kenneth
OK, here's a defense of polygamy: certain communities where illegitimacy runs over 70 percent would arguably be better off if the norm were one committed father with three wives instead of one single mother of three children by different runaway baby daddies. · Jun 19 at 10:08pm
Don't tell Grover Cleveland, but inclusion of polygamy is a less radical change to marriage than same-sex marriage. Obviously.
But can you think of any possible unintended consequences here? Think about government benefits. Think about insurance benefits.Think about discrimination laws and how they might affect religious non-profits or other groups.