Inspired by a speech given by New York State Senator Diane Savino in 2009 -- or more accurately, the comments following the speech -- in favor of allowing for same-sex marriages in New York state (which failed in the state senate that day), I'm reiterating some of the more pervasive red herrings in the gay marriage debate in order to have fun arguing against them.
1. "The right for gays to marry is contingent on proving that being homosexual is a biological imperative, not a choice."
Well, as a straight person I've never had to prove that my heterosexuality is a biological imperative, and I gained the right to marry as soon as I turned 18 -- when I was an idiot, and should probably not have been allowed to even think about marriage.
Next idiotic point, please.
2. "The government should stay out of marriage, which is a religious institution and not a political one."
Alright, fair enough. If that's your argument, I'm willing to allow you to define marriage as "only religious" if you're willing to forgo all the legal benefits accrued to you by your marriage.
To deny yourself these legal benefits, you pretty much have to not get legally married. Go ahead and marry each other in churches of your choice -- just don't file the paperwork, and don't expect death benefits, or to be called on in emergencies as next of kin to make life-altering decisions for your partner, or the tax exemptions, or the ability to get a loan in both your names. If your marriage breaks up, don't expect any compensation. If you choose to have kids, don't expect your partner to have to care for them as much as you do; nor should you expect to have equal access to them if your partner wants to have custody.
If you're willing to think of marriage as solely religious after that, I'm fine with your argument. But in that case, the legal trappings of marriage should be extended to gay people as well, since they actually have nothing to do with religious marriage, anyway.
If you're thinking this is unfair and that you need those benefits, then you're already on the side of the same-sex marriage proponents. You need a new protest sign.
3. "It needs to be proven first that gay marriage would be of benefit to society before we change the law."
This is ridiculous. How could we possibly expect gay people to prove that their marriages would benefit society if all we're doing is performing stupid thought experiments about what might possibly happen if we let them get married? Let people get married! Then see if there are benefits.
Or, you know, don't, because hetero marriages don't have follow-up appointments or requirements of beneficiality. No heterosexual couple I know has ever been interviewed by a govt. (or even religious) agent, asking what benefits they've provided society as a result of their commitment. It's even more absurd to imagine that their commitment would be dissolved if they hadn't had enough of a beneficial impact on society.
4. "Societies throughout time have always had the heterosexual family as their basic structural unit."
This person has been watching too much TV, and coming from me, that's saying a lot.
If, on the other hand, they cracked an anthro textbook every now and then, they would see that societies have all manner of bases and kin relationships, with very few "rules" in common. (One is, for instance, that men always try to control or dominate women. Another is the taboo against incest.) Some societies have had elaborate homosexual relationships built into their structure; some have had children remain with birth family members throughout life (only impregnating, or being impregnated by, outsiders -- but raising children together with siblings).
Read Foucault's History of Sexuality and watch less Two and a Half Men.
5. "If gays are allowed to marry, God will destroy our country/bring wrath on us/no longer have America as his [sic] favorite."
I doubt that will be the straw that broke the camel's back. I mean, have you seen Two and a Half Men?
6. "The slippery slope!"
What slippery slope? Is the fear that we'll begin "tolerating" things that are harmful to ourselves and others? What things, exactly?
I've heard polygamy (based usually on strict gender roles that don't allow women many rights -- so, conservative), incest (which we all agree causes birth defects in the long term even with personal consent, and in nuclear families is often abuse perpetrated by the father, which we agree has a terrible impact on children), bestiality (really? These are the same people who refuse to believe we might be related to monkeys, but having a relationship with another human is going to lead automatically to sex with a barnyard animal?? I thought that human/non-human line was hard and fast for non-evolutionists), and other polyamorous relationships.
Well, guess what. Those things exist, with or without gay marriage. With the exception of polyamorous relationships -- which either have a negotiated relationship with marriage (i.e., the "open marriage"), or nothing to do with marriage -- I think we all agree there are major problems with the relationships some are afraid we might "slip into."
I think if you're worried that allowing two other people to marry each other will make your children want to have sex with a cow, you might have other things to worry about.
7. "It threatens marriage."
I'm not sure how this is supposed to work, except as a hodge-podge of slippery slope arguments and repressed homosexual leanings. Are droves of previously straight men and women suddenly going to realize they'd have married gay if they had had the option before?
Is it that children might grow up thinking about whether they're gay or straight, because that might lead some of them to believe they're gay?
What exactly is at stake in allowing others to enter into the institution, except that more of us will be institutionalized, overall? (And isn't that the point of conservativism, that we'll all be "normal"?)
8. "It threatens the family."
This is what's at stake, actually -- the nuclear family as the basic unit of production in capitalism. We have gender roles not because we're born that way -- into a 1950s sitcom -- but because those are the roles assigned to us in modern capitalism. Men go out and work, producing labor for the GDP, and women stay home to spend money and raise the next generation of workers.
When two men love each other, what are they supposed to do in this system? It's CRAZY! They can do anything they WANT TO DO! And that's not what society is FOR...society is for working, and raising a family, and spending the appropriate amount of money on newer and more faddish stuff, so that newer and more faddish stuff needs to be continually produced, so that there's work to be done.
The bottom line to this scary statement of threat to the family is that "family" and "family values" are conceived of as work- and role-related, rather than fun- and freedom-related.
The confusing part is that in asking to be let into the structure of marriage (and possibly children), gay marriage advocates are showing that they would like to be a part of that capitalist structure, too. Asking to be allowed to be married is one of the most conservative things that people in the position of the freedom of marginality (you know, minus the hate crimes and discrimination, if those could be subtracted) can possibly do.
9. "It's just not natural."
Well, neither is NASCAR, but you're allowed to have that.
Setting aside the arguments previously mentioned, of course, that some societies practiced homosexual behaviors, and that what we might characterize as homosexual behavior has been documented in the animal world as well. And also setting aside that any family unit created by capitalism -- which in turn was set in motion by the Industrial Revolution (read: machines) -- cannot really be considered "natural."
10. "It's not normal."
Yeah, that's partly because we're refusing to allow it. If we allowed it, it would be normal. That's how laws and norms work. This is a circular argument.
I think the underlying fear here is actually that it might become normal if we allow it -- so not that we should disallow anything "not normal," but the realization that anything we allow will eventually become fine. It's an argument for restricting normality to exactly what it's defined as now. Think about how that would have worked out for America (or how it did work out) during the Civil Rights movement.
Race and sexuality may not be the same, but the comparison is apt in that the attitudes of conservatives is the same in each case: to conserve. But wanting preserve the current norm or trying to return some lost past norm (like, say, attempting to relate all of modern life directly back to the U.S. Constitution) is not an argument. It's nostalgia, and a dangerous kind that ignores all the experiences of minorities who didn't have such awesome "golden years" with those norms (like, say, the slaves, who were cut out of the recent constitution reading in Congress -- so as not to remind us of how far we've come since then).
This protest should be better expressed "but then it will become normal!" which is the real fear of those saying it.
11. "It's part of the gay agenda."
To...what?
Are gays going to take over the world? Usher in the apocalypse? Raise more gay children? (To what negative effect?) Convert you? Worship their great master Satan and call down demons to plague you? What exactly are gay people going to do to ruin everything?
No one can explain exactly what the gays will ruin by marrying each other, which is why that's not the point of "the gay agenda" argument. It's actually a pretty genius straw man, propping up a bunch of conservative beliefs.
Most likely, if you're saying this, you're white and conservative and probably live near a lot of people who agree with you. If you're a religious fundamentalist, you probably also go to church to hear other people say things like this and to agree with them. If you're all of these things, you probably believe you're being persecuted as a "true Christian" in "America today." Part of the way you're being persecuted is that people keep pointing out your positions of privilege and asking you to define exactly how you're being persecuted, which you can only do in vague spiritual terms that refer to strict interpretations of certain passages of Scripture, most of which you're not actually prepared to defend. People who don't go to your church don't seem to believe you.
In which case, if they gays get to marry, you win.
Then when their Satan-worshiping, child-sexuality-warping, apocalypse-ushering, plague-bringing ways begin to show through (in marriage, for some reason, more than any other institution), you'll not only be able to say "I told you so" -- you may actually be right when you claim to be persecuted.
You'll still be white and conservative, and most likely male and a Protestant, but at least then you'll be able to prove that same-sex couples were out to get you all along.
Or, alternatively, you'll find no change at all in your social power, in which case you can stick to the vague spiritual terms and literal Scripture interpretations and continue to mutter foreboding things about ushering in the end times, until the apocalypse comes or you die, probably peacefully at an old age.
The idea of a gay agenda is a win-win for you headshakers who believe in the decline of society.
Congratulations on thinking it up.
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