GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

1. The “Salt Lake City Plan” is the best way out of the gay-marriage morass. It allows individuals to designate any one person with whom he or she has a mutual commitment to receive benefits. The pair could be a mother and an adult son, two straight male roommates, or lesbian lovers. Because lots of conservatives can support such a system, this plan could provide aid to same-sex and other non-married couples now, at federal, state and local levels. All it leaves out is the ego boost of same-sex couples being told they’re exactly equal – which is little sacrifice, because they’re not.

2. One of the reasons for man-woman marriage is that whenever possible children need both mothers and fathers. That doesn’t mean gays can’t be good parents; they can. A lesbian can be a terrific mother, for example, but she cannot be a good father. Laws restricting gays from adopting should be repealed, but so should laws preventing adoption agencies from taking into account whether a family has both a mother and a father.

3. One reason gay marriage is not a good idea is that gay people, by and large, do not understand marriage the same way straight people do. There is extreme tolerance of open relationships of various sorts, a kind of agreed-upon infidelity. I am not saying that all gay people cheat, or no straight people cheat. I am saying that most gay and lesbian people think “arrangements” can be completely compatible with marriage, and very few straight people agree with them. Thus, gay marriage will change the nature of marriage.

4. The gay community, which once addressed all kinds of issues affecting its members, has become a big PR campaign emphasizing issues, like marriage, that make us look good and seem “just like you.” But gays and lesbians aren’t “just like” straights in every way, and we have special needs that involve LGBT suffering that should be addressed by LGBT organizations and the government. These include lesbian alcoholism, syphilis among gay and bisexual men, and prison rape among gay and bisexual men and especially transgender women. 

5. We need laws guaranteeing that despite whichever protections for gays and lesbians and institutions for same-sex partners exist, they do not trample on the rights of people to perform their jobs, run their businesses, and raise their children consistently with their beliefs about what marriage is and what the ideal way to raise a child is.

6. Democracy is central to our governmental system. Some people, like me, believe same-sex relations and gay marriage are immoral. Some of those, like me, have also identified cogent civic reasons to oppose same-sex marriage that inform their First Amendment expression and their vote. But nobody has to answer to anyone for why they support or oppose anything when it comes to their votes and First Amendment rights. It is not “imposing one’s religion” to support laws that are consistent with one’s values; that’s what both sides do.

7. Despite what they often say, gays and lesbians are not focused on benefits or rights, or else they would not have spent $40 million on a symbolic and semantic change in California which already granted all the rights of marriage to same-sex couples. This battle is primarily about gay and lesbian self-esteem, which is understandably damaged because of many decades of straight hegemony. But no child should have to suffer, or traditionally religious person be forced to violate her conscience, in order to soothe a gay person’s feelings.