Where to draw the line on marriage?

by William B Kelley

The article by Asst Prof Tan Seow Hon in the Straits Times inspires me to some concern for legal philosophy students at the National University of Singapore.

Cloaked in language that's ostensibly reflective and understandably formal (but occasionally wrong -- "regretful" is not the same as "regrettable"), the article reads like a sophisticated reprise of standard, all-too-familiar attacks on same-sex marriage.

To begin with, Prof Tan tries to turn on its head the neutrality argument. That argument goes, very simply, like this: A government shouldn't impose its moral standards on citizens. When a government deems only certain combinations of citizens worthy of being married, then that government is imposing certain moral standards. Yet according to her, the neutrality argument is really asking for the government just to make a different positive moral judgment through extension of marriage to same-sex couples.

That makes as much sense as arguing that when someone stops beating you, he's doing you a favor. Ending discrimination isn't some new morality; it's a correction of a moral injustice.

Then, Prof Tan resurrects a view that often characterizes some religions' opposition to same-sex marriage: that men and women are biologically complementary so that only their physical union can lead to children (even if it doesn't, and even if they don't want it to). This complementarity, they say, is enough reason to deny marriage rights to same-sex couples.

Such a hoary claim ignores several well-known facts that show the difference between sexual reproduction and marriage: 

(1) Many long-married couples love each other but seldom or never have sexual relations, with or without contraceptive measures. 

(2) Though not having sexual relations may be a ground for one party to end a marriage, having such relations has never been a state requirement for authorizing the marriage. 

(3) Men and women can and do have children without any marriage whatever. 

(4) Many same-sex couples, without any help from their state and sometimes only hindrance, bring up healthy children even if the couples didn't conceive them in the same way as mixed-sex couples. In short, marriage means much more than reproductive sex, or sex at all, and there's no good reason to deny its advantages to same-sex couples.

Finally, Prof Tan can't resist a slippery-slope observation: If same-sex couples who love each other are given marriage rights, why shouldn't any two people of the same sex have the same rights even if they feel no such love, and why shouldn't groups of people have those rights as well?

With laments about where to draw the line, she suggests that maybe things should stay just where they are.

First, her position ignores the fact that marriage has been redefined many times before -- whether from polygamy to monogamy, or from interracial or interreligious restrictions to none, or from female subservience and property status to some degree of equality.

Second, drawing the line is fairly simple: Unless opposite-sex group marriages are allowed, equality would not call for same-sex ones to be.

And a same-sex marriage between persons who don't love each other wouldn't be anomalous; think about the history of opposite-sex marriages.

Lines should be drawn in such a way as to treat people equally. Is that so hard to grasp?  

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