Monday, November 21, 2005

Thoughts on Same-Sex Marriage

This post on Gideon's Blog (Noah Millman) about same-sex marriage reminded me of some columns about same-sex marriage from a year or so back.

David Frum argued that same-sex marriage was a bad idea because it would lead to quasi-marriage partnerships that weakened the division between "married" and "single" and thus weaken marriage as it would not have any special status.

Jonathan Rauch and Andrew Sullivan here and here argued that that is why full marriage rights were necessary, because that would preserve the "special status" of marriage.

What they did not seem to realize is that by opening marriage to same-sex couples, one is inherently turning marriage into marriage-lite. Such a shift in what marriage would go a long way to diluting marraige as a social institution.

Of course, a lot of the leftists actually want to bring down civilization, so that may not bother a lot of the people pushing same-sex marriage.

But for most people who support same-sex marriage, I think the yare simply being naive as to the consequences.

That is all.

No comments: