MARRIAGE AND GENDER: Sam Schulman responds to Mike Pignatello

I don't argue myself that gay marriage will harm children--I say I tend to credit the arguments of those who think so, and note that the harm that they project is as much from the damage SSM will do to marriage as would actual families with gay parents (which of course have existed for eons).

Children might be substantially better off in conventional marriages than SSM (as they are in two-parent marriages rather than divorced households) but we must recognize that the APA will never release any data that might show such a thing, were it to be measurable.

Monogamy and stability are not fundamental to marriage--although marriage tends to increase the level of both qualities--but the connection of the two sexes is. (I don't care if the sexes are regarded as "opposite" or some other term.) Same-sex tension may well be beneficial--but I'm not recommending preserving marriage because it is beneficial or it is the sole path to "beneficialness" (indeed, many marriages are enormously destructive).

I say that marriage is about women, that marriage is the opposite of incest, and that we as a species cannot maintain the incest taboo without marriage as a unique institution, defined, in all its variations, as involving a connection between men and women that transcends (but may include) sexual intercourse and the making of children. All other relationships are not marriage.
posted by Eve at 11:43 AM VOTE

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