With the recent California Supreme Court decision regarding gay marriage thrusting the issue back into the spotlight, it’s understandable that many inside and outside of the Bloggernacle are taking sides.

For the record, I don’t support legalized gay marriage, although I also don’t support many of the common arguments made against gay marriage by opponents.  Those who oppose gay marriage inside and outside of the Church would be wise to recognize which arguments against legalized gay marriage are weak, irrelevant, or downright false, and not muddle their case by making things easier for the other side to refute.

Let’s look at what the arguments against gay marriage are NOT:

Homosexual behavior is sinful

Many opponents throw this statement out under the impression that it alone inherently proves their case about gay marriage—it does not.  Even if true, one can believe gambling, alcohol, tobacco, and pornography are sinful—even detrimental to society--without necessarily needing to support them being strictly illegal according to secular law.  It’s not a given that something being a sin in God’s eyes is best served secularly through legal action and enforcement, unless it can be shown that secular society--leaving religious principles to one side--has an inherent interest in doing so.

And, of course, the current debate isn’t actually a referendum on gay sex at all.  The quantity of same-sex couples and ‘immoral’ behavior likely will remain constant whether gay marriage is legal or not (the few laws that originally considered same-sex intercourse an illegal act of sodomy have virtually all been struck down by the Supreme Court already).  At stake is the tangential issue of whether two men (or women) can and should have their relationship recognized in some official capacity by the state—not the same thing.

A true discussion of gay marriage needs to separate the issue of governmental recognition of same-sex relationships with the morality of homosexual behavior, even if it is impossible to--no pun intended--divorce them completely.  Homosexual behavior between two men may very well be immoral, but those same two men getting a piece of paper from the state with their names on it does not necessarily have anything to do with 'morality'.  (Remember that the discussion is about the second, not the first.  Getting that piece of paper probably won’t excuse the sexual relationship in God’s eyes, ultimately, but it’s hard to argue how it inherently makes it worse, either…)  

Immoral behavior in God’s eyes is not an argument FOR gay marriage, obviously, but someone arguing against gay marriage needs to present a more robust argument than just ‘sin', as to why secular society (not religious society) needs to reject gay marriage as well.

Legalized gay marriage will "destroy families"

Often gay marriage opponents will directly state how gay marriage “hurts families”.  There’s a difference between families and “The Family”, however--one consists of living breathing human beings, and the other is just an abstract concept.  Gay marriage assists in redefining “The Family”, the abstract concept, for sure.   But that’s not (necessarily) the same as something that has practical negative consequences on actual (non-gay) families.  Many talk about supporting and defending “The Family” with only vague, unspoken implications about how actual families are affected, if at all.

That’s not going to be good enough.  As with the ‘sinfulness’ issue, someone opposed to gay marriage needs to go beyond abstract concepts, to explain why redefining “The Family” actually matters in a secular sense.  “The Family” can serve as an ideal in terms of eternal progression (more on this later), but I can’t think of a specific reason how legalized gay marriage in California actually made my marriage to “The Baroness” weaker over the last week, can you?

Are we presuming that legalized gay marriage will suddenly convince millions of men and women to drop their current opposite-sex spouses and immediately shack up with a same-sex one?  Has that happened in Massachusetts, or the other countries of the world that already have begun recognizing same-sex relationships?  (Or, more to the point, has it happened in California, considering they already had ‘domestic partner benefits’ long before last week’s decision, which had already created same-sex marriages in everything but name?)  If so, the specific data regarding this trend needs to be brought up.  If not, then this argument fails…  In any case, vague pronouncements about ‘defending the family’ are not going to be good enough, without some specifics behind it.

Being the bearer of bad news, it seems obvious that the men or women who were the type to abandon their spouse for a same-sex lover—and there are many of those—seem to have in large part already done so, even without the imminent prospect of legalized gay marriage enticing them to do so.  While this is not a decision to be applauded—we’ll get to them later as well—it is still fundamentally not an inherent argument against legalized gay marriage, since it’s clearly already happening without it.  To win the battle, the anti-gay-marriage side needs to move beyond abstract concepts into specific, real-world consequences if the case for secular rejection of legalized gay marriage is to be made.

Marriage is about procreation

There are a number of obvious counter-arguments here, most prominently that there are many examples of opposite-sex marriage where due to age or physical condition procreation is not possible.  Current governmental (and Church) recognition of marriage does not differentiate between whether couples have--or able to have—children.  (Should they?)  If so, then the argument that same-sex couples ‘aren’t able to have kids’ is inherently weak as a reason for rejecting legalized gay marriage.

If we have a man and woman in their 70’s who want to get married (despite having no realistic potential for procreation) is there a compelling secular motive for denying them the same privileges of marriage as younger couples?  If not, then the same argument can be made for gays as well, and the ‘can’t procreate’ argument is not going to hold much water.

“Won’t someone PLEASE think of the children?”

(Wait, I thought gay couples couldn’t have children?)

Actually, according to recent estimates, there are over one million kids being raised by gay parents in the U.S. today.  If one considers being raised in a ‘gay household’ to be a Bad Thing, then this is probably something to be concerned about. 

Except…considering the fundamental biological obstacles to child-bearing in the first place, and the fact that most states don’t currently allow gay adoptions, one might ask, then, where all those kids are coming from?

The answer (if it’s not obvious):  there is, in fact, a small percentage (5%) of kids that are adopted and/or come from ‘foster home’ situations, but the vast majority (95%) of kids being raised by gay parents today are the biological children of one of the gay partners, sired from their previous heterosexual relationships.

That stat alone has some serious implications about the ‘hard-wired theory’ (yes, we’ll get to that later, too), but most obviously requires us to paint the ‘what about the effect of gay marriage on children?’ question in a different light.

If most ‘gay households’--single parents, or couples--are raising one partner’s biological children, then what impact does the legality of gay marriage actually have on those children?  They’re still going be raised by the same parent, regardless, whether or not the state gives that parent a marriage license with a new same-sex partner’s name on it…

Even if we consider having a male-female household to be the ideal environment for child-raising, that still doesn’t answer the question of why gay marriage needs to be illegal—since that doesn’t have any obvious effects on those children’s current living arrangements now.  (There are only a limited number of situations where kids would be taken from their biological parent and given to someone else—and ‘being gay’ is not one of them.)

Does growing up in a gay household make a child more likely to experiment with same-sex behavior when they grow up?  That’s certainly a possibility, but there really isn’t enough conclusive data to know for sure, especially given the genetic link those kids have with their parents to begin with, likely clouding the data.  (From a common sense standpoint, it’s not obvious how a girl living in a family with two men who like other men is going to automatically grow up to…like women?) 

Someone opposed to gay marriage who wants to use children’s well-being as an argument against gay marriage has a higher burden of proof:  is there data to support any negative effects of being raised in a gay household?  And—more importantly—are any such negative effects even relevant if the legality of gay marriage has virtually no impact on the environment on which those kids are raised, anyway?

(As an example, here’s an older article arguing against gay marriage from Meridian Magazine—and some previous discussion from me--which makes this same mistake:  since when do children get to ‘shop around’ for parents?   If children more or less are stuck with the parents they are born with, then how does it matter to them whether gay marriage is legal or not?)

There are good arguments against gay marriage, along with many weak and incomplete ones.  It is in the best interests of everyone regardless of which side one supports, to keep the discussion free of heated and prejudicial rhetoric, as well as unfounded--or irrelevant--points that are easily refuted by the other side.

The most important point to remember is that this is not a religious discussion.  The debate is NOT about how God feels about homosexual behavior, and NOT about whether temples should start accepting same-sex sealings.  (Any questions about the status of gay marriages within the Church should have obvious answers…)  The debate is about whether secular society outside of the Church should grant secular benefits and recognition to gay couples, and as such any opposition to legalized gay marriage needs to focus on the consequences in secular society.

Many official and unofficial Church opposition to gay marriage is sincere, but very non-specific in its descriptions.  Why, specifically, should Church members be concerned about redefining “The Family”?  How, specifically, does legalized gay marriage negatively impact Church member families and the mission of the Church?  If the rhetorical battle is to be won, the 'no gay marriage' side is going to have to do better in explaining their side of the argument...  

Next: The wrong arguments FOR gay marriage