ARE MIXED MARRIAGES IMMORAL AND DEVIANT? Ben responds

Maggie, I enjoy the irony of you being for orientation mixing and me being for separatism! But seriously, the question is mixing of what and separation of what. We should allow people to get married regardless of gender (mix), but not insist that gay people marry straight people (separate).

The anti-miscegenation laws did indeed uphold a racist regime. But on this issue it's not that different: denying certain people a fundamental institution packed with key social, moral, and financial goods, unless they agree to join it with people they don't have the relevant types of interest in. The key is "relevant": Not convenience, or shame, or mere benefit-seeking, or mere friendship, or like the wife who decides to cope when her husband comes out, or from the belief that avoiding same-sex symbols will inspire deadbeat dads to go back to their girlfriends (Eve). Coping after the fact (like the book you're reading) is way different from consciously designing things like that from the start.

So my objection to your gays-marrying-straights situation doesn't come from personal repulsion. It's a moral objection. Idiosyncratic decisions by this or that couple may be silly or wise, but at the institutional level it would be immoral. It would institutionalize misery. It would encourage extramarital sex. It wouldn't prevent all the other ad-hoc arrangements you're already against. And it bans happy, strong same-sex couples from getting in on everything that's good about marriage. It's even worse when it's justified by telling a class of people that genuine equality (not ersatz-equality like gays marrying straights) will bring ruin, and that they are ingrates anyway for not appreciating all they've been graciously given. Fine words and intentions don't change the fact that defining gay involvement in marriage in happiness-preventing terms, is immoral.

posted by maggie at 11:08 PM VOTE

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home