The Secular Case against Gay Marriage (Adam Kolasinksi )

"The Secular Case against Gay Marriage" is a short article written by Adam Kolasinksi, a doctoral student in financial economics. The article attempts to argue that:

"Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society, so there is no reason to grant them the costly benefits of marriage."

Since religious and faith based arguments against legal recognition of same sex marriage are invalid, the article attempts to give secular reasoning. The article is used by anti-equality activists with little knowledge of the subject, as it lacks credibility.

Breakdown of the article
The first paragraph makes two key claims: The first claim fails because the United States Supreme Court has ruled on no less that 14 occasions that Marriage is a fundamental right. The second claim we will go into in more detail further on, but the fact that homosexuals are not singled out is not reason enough to deny them marriage equality. For each class of people denied the right to marry, there must be rational basis for doing so. The classes specified in the article each have a rational basis for restricting their marriages.
 * 1) The claim that "state recognition of marriage is not a universal right."
 * 2) Homosexuals "are not the only people to be denied the right to marry the person of their choosing."

The second paragraph outlines the costs to the state involved in marriage as a reason for marriage being regulated by the state, and argues that these marriages should be restricted to couples "likely to produce children". At this point, the article fails to explain why homosexual couples are exempt from this classification even though same sex couples can and do have children through IVF, adoption and sometimes already have children from previous relationships.

Moving on, the next paragraph attempts to answer the inevitable question in the reader's mind: If children are so important to the institution of marriage, why do we allow marriage to other groups of people who are unable to have children? In the case of infertile couples, the author uses the point that fertility tests for every couple wishing to marry would be expensive and too much of a burden. However, he states that marriages between elderly couples are "so rare that it is simply not worth the effort to restrict them." without giving any statistics. On the contrary, around 10% of all marriages in the UK in 2007 were by people aged over 50. 10% of the cost to the state of these marriages is hardly a marginal figure.

The next paragraph is fairly short and really adds nothing to the discussion, serving only to 'remind' the reader that "homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society" and saying that "the burden of proof is on the advocates of gay marriage to show what state interest these marriages serve", while claiming that so far this burden has not been met. Bearing in mind this article was written in 2004, it is likely that the author was simply ignorant of the fact that homosexual couples can and do raise children.

The following paragraph talks about IVF and adoption, and the author tries to disregard adoption as a possible reason to allow same-sex marriage, using the theory that "children need both a male and female parent for proper development". Other than giving insufficient evidence to back up this theory (evidence shows that children of homosexual parents do at least as well as children of heterosexual parents), he fails to address the fact that a ban on homosexual marriage will not stop homosexual parenting. In fact, allowing same-sex marriage will serve to strengthen homosexual families and benefit the children of same-sex couples. A married homosexual couple will obviously provide a better upbringing for a child than no parents at all, or even an unmarried couple or single parent. A ban on same-sex marriage will not magically provide a mother and father for children who do not already have them.

Paragraph 6 addresses the comparison between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. The author assumes that the analogy fails because "fertility does not depend on race" while "homosexuality is highly relevant because it precludes procreation". Failing again to address the fact that homosexual couples can and do have children, the point of the analogy from the view of pro-equality advocates is that both classes of people have been, for a time, unjustly prevented from getting married.

At this point, the article begins to focus on how marriage would benefit homosexual couples and therefore why it is required. The author suggests ways in which homosexual couples can gain some of the thousands of benefits of marriage in other ways, for example writing up a living will. This is insufficient; it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the marital benefits that homosexual couples are missing out on and would benefit from were same-sex marriage to be legal, and tries to pass off the lack of same-sex marriage as an insignificant inconvenience that can easily be solved by other means. However, even with the existence of living wills, contracts, and the plethora of other hoops that homosexual people have to jump through to gain even a small portion of the benefits of marriage, they still face problems. Homosexual couples have been refused hospital visitation rights even when the legal paperwork was in place for them to do so. The author gives no reason as to why homosexual couples should be forced to undertake these costly and legally complicated tasks to have their relationship legally recognised, when there is already an existing legal framework that they can enter into - marriage.

The penultimate passage is simple scaremongering. The author outlines the problems faced by today's society, linking the problems with "separation between marriage and procreation" but failing to give any evidence whatsoever of this link. He goes so far as to make a direct contradiction; "Homosexual marriage is not the cause for any of these pathologies, but it will exacerbate them". Again, since no evidence is given, we can safely put this passage down to scaremongering and the author's own biased opinion.

Finally, the author breaks down into some of the most ridiculous arguments in the homosexual equality debate, comparing same-sex marriage to polygamy and incest - two entirely different subjects each with their own set of arguments for and against them. We only have to look into places where same-sex marriage is already legal to see that these assumptions completely lack in merit. If it were the case that same-sex marriage would lead to "marital chaos", surely we would be observing this in countries like the Netherlands, where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2001, nearly a decade ago.

Conclusion
We can see that the author has attempted to give non-religious reasoning behind a ban on same-sex marriage, but has consistantly failed to add any real sustinance to his argument. He makes some very far-reaching claims, yet consistently fails to back them up with statistics and fact.

Overall, this is an article based on nothing more than the oppinion of the author and adds nothing to the debate into same-sex marriage. The article only serves to instill fear surrounding the subject into the mind of the reader, which is not a constructive debate tactic. This article lacks merit, and can be safely cast aside.