If I've asked it once I've asked it a hundred times: how does
marriage equality hurt heterosexuals?
Recently I posed the question yet again to Maggie Gallagher,
outgoing president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM),
as she visited my ethics class at Wayne State University via audio
conference.
I "get" that Gallagher wants children to have mothers and
fathers, and ideally, their own biological mothers and fathers.
What I've never quite gotten is why extending marriage to gays and
lesbians undermines that goal. One can be married without having
children, one can have children without being married; and (most
important) same-sex marriage is not about gay couples' snatching
children away from their loving heterosexual parents. No sane
person thinks otherwise.
Maggie Gallagher is a sane person. (Wrong, but sane.) For the
record, she is not worried that marriage equality would give gays
license to kidnap children. Nor does she oppose adoption by gay
individuals or couples, although she thinks heterosexual married
couples should be preferred. So what's the problem?
At the risk of oversimplifying, one could describe her
concern-which she graciously explained to my class-as The Message
Argument. The idea is this. The core reason society promotes
marriage is to bind mothers and fathers together for the long-term
welfare of their offspring. In doing so we send a message:
"Children need their mothers and fathers."
But on Gallagher's view, extending marriage to gays and lesbians
makes it virtually impossible to sustain that message. The central
premise of the marriage-equality movement is that Jack and Bob's
marriage is just as valid, qua marriage, as Jack and Jill's.
(That's the whole point of calling it "marriage equality.") And if
we make that equivalence, we cannot also say that children-some of
whom Jack and Bob may be raising-need their mothers and fathers.
Indeed, the latter claim would now seem offensive, even
bigoted.
So Gallagher's argument poses a dilemma: either maintain the
message that children need their mothers and fathers, and thus
oppose marriage equality; or else embrace marriage equality, and
thus relinquish the message. You can't have both.
Whatever else you want to say about this argument, it's not
crazy. It's about how to maintain a message that seems well
motivated, at least on the surface: children need their mothers and
fathers.
Elsewhere I've argued that the claim "Children need their
mothers and fathers" is ambiguous. On one reading it's obviously
false. On another, it's more plausible, but it doesn't support the
conclusion against marriage equality. For even if we were to grant
for the sake of argument that the "ideal" situation for children
is, on average, with their own biological mother and father, we
ought not to discourage-and deny marriage to-other arrangements:
stepfamilies, adoptive families, and same-sex households. It's a
non-sequitur.
But that (familiar and ongoing) argument is somewhat beside the
point. The Message Argument does not say that promoting children's
welfare logically entails denying marriage to gays and lesbians. It
says that, in practice, it is virtually impossible to maintain the
message "Children need their mothers and fathers" while also
promoting the message that "Gay families are just as good as
straight ones." And given a choice between the two messages,
Gallagher favors the former.
I think urging parents-especially fathers-to stick around for
their offspring is an admirable and important goal. It's also one
that has personal resonance for Gallagher, who has spoken candidly
of her experience as a young single mother left behind by her
child's father.
I also think that there are 1001 better ways to achieve this
goal than fighting marriage equality. The fact that NOM targets
gays and gays alone makes it hard to believe that we are merely
collateral damage in their battle to promote children's
welfare.
That said, I want to thank Gallagher for clarifying her
position. I want to assure her that I'll take The Message dilemma
seriously. I plan to grapple with it in future columns (and our
forthcoming book).
But I also want to pose for her a counter-dilemma, which I hope
she'll take equally seriously.
For it seems to me that, in practice, it is impossible to tell
gay couples and families that they are full-fledged members of our
society, deserving of equal respect and dignity, while also denying
them the legal and social status of marriage.
Yes, marriage sends messages, but "children need their mothers
and fathers" is scarcely the only one. Marriage sends the message
that it's good for people to have someone special to take care of
them, and vice-versa-to have and to hold, for better or worse, till
death do they part.
Marriage sends a message about the importance of forming family,
even when those families don't include children; about making the
transition from being a child in one's family of origin to being an
adult in one's family of choice.
Gallagher claims that she loves and respects gay people, and I
want to believe her. But how can she sustain that message while
also opposing marriage equality? How does her own preferred message
not tell gay families-not to mention stepfamilies, adoptive
families, and single-parent households-that "Your family isn't
real"?
Yes, marriage sends messages. So does its denial.