The Wake

The issue of a gay marriage ban is one charged with emotional rhetoric and heartfelt arguments from conservatives and liberals alike. For such issues, I suggest that we set sentiments aside and focus on details and realities. This is difficult because strong sentiments aren’t easily ignored. However, the best results are achieved when the debate is about outcomes and consequences rather than fairness and hurt feelings.

When I looked up the definition of marriage on dictionary.com, it read 1. a. “The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife.” The key here is that it is between and man and woman. Not a man and man, or woman and woman. This is not a trivial or a semantic difference. There are many reasons the union between a man and a woman in the institution of marriage has been the biggest cornerstone of American society. Perhaps most importantly, marriage provides a healthy, natural, and functional environment in which to raise children to be productive members of society.

Simply put, a homosexual couple lacks the ability to join to gametes to form a zygote. For this reason, people (and most animals) have evolved specific gender roles in raising children, beginning with conception. Once a child is born, these gender roles extend beyond basic biological necessities and into socializing. That is, boys need fathers to teach them how to be men in society and girls need mothers to teach them how to be women in society. Without proper role models children tend to grow up lost and unproductive.

No matter how hard a homosexual couple tries, they cannot create the same experience for their children that a heterosexual couple can. This is not at all an indictment on the dedication of same-sex couples who currently have children either through adoption or the use of surrogate parents, as they are without question as dedicated to their children as heterosexual parents. But no matter what their dedication level, there is no way to replicate having two parents of the opposite sex. As “unfair” as this may be, it would be irresponsible for the state to endorse same-sex marriage as a viable parenting alternative to heterosexual couples.

The institution of marriage between a man and a woman has worked for this country for more than 200 years. Changing this fundamental and established practice, which has been almost solely responsible for the creation of productive adults, is basically rolling the dice with our future. Experimenting with the building blocks of society for any reason is generally a bad idea, especially when it is in the arbitrary name of “fairness.”

Although there are compelling arguments on both sides that appeal to one’s emotional reasoning, I think it is important to look at all of the consequences that same-sex marriages would create. I ultimately think that allowing same-sex marriages could be justifiable on strictly emotional grounds, but such emotionally based rationale has little basis in fact, and undoubtedly makes for bad law.

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