Reflections on Gay Marriage

I am frequently asked about my opinion on "gay marriage". In truth I have none, for in truth "gay marriage" does not exist; the premises on which the debate surrounding "gay marriage" is built are entirely false.

As is often the case, one needs look no further for evidence of the left’s stupidity on the matter than the words of Hilary Clinton:

[Homosexuals] are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage. That's why I support marriage for lesbian and gay couples. I support it personally and as a matter of policy and law.

This is the primary problem with the left’s arguments for allowing ‘gay marriage’: it takes for granted that marriage is some kind of right. What's interesting is that even if it were strictly a social right, under our current legal system it is arguable that gays are not actually discriminated against, as there is no law barring them from entering a normal (i.e. real), heterosexual marriage (having to write such a ridiculous tautology is painful). But the reality is that marriage is not a right of citizenship, and we need to stop talking about it as if it were.Marriage is a social institution, a hypertrophic outgrowth of a bio-evolutionary necessity (concerned primarily with the creation and protection of children) that by the time humans first recorded their own history had already reached the level of sacrament. Marriage not only predates every single state and government in the West, but it even predates the Christian religion in Europe, many of our modern words and customs surrounding marriage being rooted in pre-Christian Germanic society.

Even a cursory consideration of the definition of and traditions surrounding marriage reveals that ‘gay marriage’ simply doesn’t exist. And even if government were to declare it so, a ‘gay marriage’ would never be truly equal to a proper marriage, nothing more than a pale mockery. Dowry, bride, bridegroom, consummation, ‘man and wife’, and of course children, children who bear in their blood the history of their ancestors, and will transmit that history to their descendants. Historically, even in cultures where homosexuality was permitted, if not actively encouraged, marriage was very much something that occurred only between man and woman. The entire institution is predicated on the fact that it is between a man and a woman who will, in theory, produce children.

True love doesn’t come into it. Romantic love is effectively the invention of medieval French court singers, and became popular precisely because the institution of marriage had nothing to do with it. As it is clear that a person, homosexual or otherwise, is inherently incapable of entering a true marriage with someone of the same sex, so it becomes clear that calls for "legalizing gay marriage" are not calls for equal application of the law or equal civil rights, as one cannot legalize something that never existed nor was prohibited in the first place, but rather the demand that government forcibly alter the definition of one of the oldest – if not the oldest – social institutions on the planet.

To have the state, through fiat, start dismantling one of the core social institutions of our civilization, and alter the definitions of words which convey ideas older than the languages we speak them in simply because some members of an already vocal minority with hurt feelings are particularly good at throwing tantrums is entirely unreasonable.

Now, here is where I break with many other advocates of traditional marriage. They’ll tell you that if we allow "gay marriage" it will damage the institution of marriage itself. This is ridiculous, for if the institution of marriage weren’t already damaged significantly we wouldn’t be having a debate about whether or not homosexuals could participate in it in the first place. The only reason most people in society don’t find the very notion of "gay marriage" comical is because society as a whole no longer values nor fully understands the institution of marriage itself.

Our welfare laws encourage family breakdown, we do nothing to stem the epidemic of single motherhood, significant proportions of our communities advocate pre-natal infanticide, and promiscuity is the norm among young people. These and other disastrous results of radical feminism and the sexual revolution have already moved to separate the idea of families and child-rearing from marriage in many people’s minds.

The reality is that using federal law to uphold the traditional definition of marriage is, at present, practically pointless. Reaffirming what we traditionalists know to be true isn’t going to do anything to change the opinions of the vast numbers of heterosexuals who don’t really care about marriage anymore. And given the current social climate and widespread acceptance of homosexuals, advocating federal laws to protect the definition of marriage just appears vindictive and petty – as petty and vindictive as trying to use federal law to change the definition of marriage.

The truth is that a government sans an established church, such as the one in the United States, should not be in the business of defining marriage at all. The best situation at present would be for every couple, gay or straight, to get a civil union, and those heterosexual couples who wish to be truly married under the eyes of God would be completely free to find a church willing to do so.

Adapted from a piece originally published in The Commentator, 21 March, 2013