The case against gay marriage

[Oxcoug]

1. Marriage is an institution intended to promote a healthy society through the foundation of stable homes which contribute to both (a) a sustainable birthrate and (b) the conversion of children into contributing members of society. While not all heterosexuals marry to have children - most do, and all that do take on the commitment and risk that the possibility of having children creates. Gay couples, by definition, do not.

2. The right of those married includes a protection of the definition and parameters of the institution they joined when they were married. Just as someone holding a Harvard degree has the right to object if Harvard decides to go commercial, do night school and cut BA requirements to 22 credits instead of 50, people who invested in the institution of marriage under a specific definition have the right to demand that the definition remain unchanged - or that if it must be changed that it be done so with overwhelming public approval.

I personally am not opposed to gay civil union. I even see the utilitarian argument that it is better for many children to be adopted into and raised by two responsible and caring gay parents than it for them to live out their first 18 years hopelessly in a filthy orphanage in Bucharest.

But the institution of marriage is and always has been to sanction a lifetime commitment bt a man and a woman with the prospect of procreation and all of its shared sacrifice. Those people have a right for that definition to remain as it was when they invested in the institution.