Marriage between a man and a woman (or between a man and women) has been the norm for every culture in human history that has lasted more than a brief time. Even cultures that freely accepted bisexuality, such as the ancient Greeks and Romans, reserved marriage for heterosexual relationships only.
Why?
First, because no culture can escape the hard biological fact that the human race must continue, and it cannot continue without heterosexual coupling. Male on male and female on female sexuality will never produce children.
It's true that scientific intervention may produce children without coitus, but even scientific intervention requires heterosexual cooperation. And without constant scientific intervention or proselytizing, a homosexual society will die out in one generation.
Second, because what we know from research, and what the ancients knew from experience, is that children do best when they are raised by both genders.
Children do not normally die or become serial killers, and most do not even become homosexual, when they are raised by same-gender couples. Still, all else being equal, it is best for human development that children be raised by two people of different genders. The evidence, both scientific and anecdotal, is overwhelmingly in favor of children’s need for bi-gender parents.
Finally, societal support of heterosexual marriage is necessary at least because heterosexual relationships are so difficult, especially when conception, pregnancy, and child-rearing are part of the mix.
For this reason, most cultures have created a variety of benefits (including ritual benefits, such as weddings, and biological benefits such as granting the right for sexual expression) to encourage and sustain heterosexual marriages.
Why not just support everyone's right to marry whomever they want?
First, because the philosophy of doing so is unsustainable. There must be a limit to the philosophy, and whenever the limit is invoked, the philosophy self-destructs.
In the Proposition 8 debate, one idea is that all consenting adults should be allowed to marry whomever they want of whichever gender they want. That idea, however, includes limitations based on consent and age, while lifting only the limitation on gender; this, however, immediately limits the idea that everyone should be able to marry whomever they want.
If the only criterion for marriage is that people marry whom they want, the first, most logical step after same-gender marriage would be to allow polygamy, including same-gender polygamy. While heterosexual polygyny has its supporters (it, at least, produces children and has been practiced by respected individuals such as Abraham and Israel), hetero- or homosexual polyandry, or homosexual polygyny certainly could not be denied.
Given the philosophy that we should marry whomever we want, then why should incestuous marriage be forbidden among consenting adults? (The Romans allowed it.)
Clearly the philosophy doesn’t work past the immediate application; therefore, it annihilates itself.
Second, because marriage is not just between two people, it is a contract with all of humanity, including those as yet unborn.
In many cultures, the long-term consequences of marriage are so valued that the short-term needs of young couples are completely subjugated in favor of the community’s overall needs. In America, we have elevated love to an essential in marriage, but in many cultures it’s only something you may hope to grow into.
Ideally, marriage is born of mutual respect, affection, love, and interests; but lacking the ideal, marriage is still the best way to further the species. To reduce marriage to the mere wish-fulfillment of two people in love is to focus inward only, and to ignore the consequences on both society and posterity.
No comments:
Post a Comment