Stumble it!Gay Marriage and the Collapse of Western Civilization
posted in Politics, Sexuality, Society by themaiden |Gay marriage is perhaps not so hot a topic as it has been recently, but the debate is still ongoing and likely will be for a number of years to come. I’ve published several articles on the subject now– one aimed at the Witherspoon Institute, another at Orson Scott Card, and another at our good president.
Now there is Peter Sprigg, Director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Marriage and Family Studies. Sprigg published an article, in The Other Journal, titled Why Limiting Marriage to One Man and One Woman Does not Impose a Single Religious Perspective. He drifts from his topic considerably and addresses a variety of tangential issues, such as the mixed support gay marriage has among homosexuals. He also spends a lot of energy explaining to “secular libertarians” why they should reject gay marriage, an argument partly revolving around the idea that homosexuals just want government handouts like tax breaks, and social security benefits for their partners, which of course makes them leeches upon society. Why heterosexual marriage does not also constitute leeching is not explained.
In the first of his few paragraphs on topic, Sprigg writes:
I would argue, however, that limiting marriage to unions of one man and one woman does not impose a religious viewpoint at all. One can easily infer that marriage should be heterosexual and monogamous from the facts of human reproduction alone, without any reference to the divine.
Why Limiting Marriage to One Man and One Woman Does not Impose a Single Religious Perspective
Now, lets step back a moment and ask, “If one can infer, and easily infer at that, that marriage should be heterosexual and monogamous from the facts of human reproduction alone, why has monogamy been the least common marital pattern throughout history? Why, is monogamy extremely rare in all of the animals, of which we are one?” The answer is that in most cases you get greater reproductive success– more babies– with polygyny than with monogamy. And to anticipate an objection, in the days before modern medicine, volume was an important factor in human reproduction. With infant mortality rates several times higher than today, more babies meant more success. Humans would not have depended upon volume the way, say, mice do, but nor would it work to gamble on fewer children over many children.
In other words, half of Sprigg’s case crashes headlong into a mountain of evidence to the contrary, right from the outset.
But what about the heterosexual component? Is it possible to infer from biology that marriage ought to be heterosexual? Of course, heterosexual sex is necessary for reproduction, which is without a doubt necessary for the survival of a society. If reproduction drops too low, the society quite literally dies out. But gauging reproductive success in terms of birth rates alone is misleading. It is really only half of the story. Reproduction is only successful, it is only adaptive, up until a population hits the carrying capacity of the environment. At that point, people start to suffer and to die. More mouths to feed only equals reproductive success when there is something to feed those mouths, so it can’t even be argued that healthy societies necessarily aim at high reproductive rates. In fact, some societies, in order to be healthy, need to curb reproductions, not encourage it. Too many people is bad for everyone. Humans seems to realize this when discussing the need to cull deer herds, or when talking about rat or pidgeon populations, but do not seem to realize it when talking about themselves.
Human cultures have dealt with the problem of population in a variety of ways, including infant exposure– the killing of unwanted infants. Most adaptations, though, involve such things as extended post-parturition periods, taboos which reduce opportunities for sex, institutions– such as high bride prices– which delay marriage, and even the physical segregation of males and females for parts of their reproductive lives. In essence, the more common addaptations involve tampering with marriage, with the relationship between men and women, and that is the point. If marriage, in its current form were so critical to human survival, we would not see these things in the anthropological literature. If the relationships between males and females were so sensitive, so delicate that it needed the careful coddling Young and Nathanson suggest, we would not see what we see in the literature.
I’m not arguing that we should legalize homosexual marriage in order to control population, though it can’t hurt. It is fairly obvious that our numbers are high enough to cause problems both for ourselves and for other organisms on the planet. Still, I am not arguing that this should be the intent. Practically speaking, I very much doubt that gay marriage will effect population growth at all, as I doubt that gay marriage laws would somehow convert vast numbers of heterosexuals to homosexuals.
Spriggs bases most of his argument– I’m tempted to say he co-opts it wholesale– from Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson, so it is to them I move now. They write:
Legalizing same sex marriage is a bad idea. It could change the definition of marriage and its functions beyond recognition.
They claim “that heterosexuality must indeed be deliberately fostered and nurtured by a distinctive, supportive culture” and “that the politically inconvenient fact is that society needs a specifically heterosexual contribution more than any homosexual counterpart. Therefore, the need to provide cultural support for heterosexuality is greater than for homosexuality.”
To make this point they argue that “much of what is accomplished in animals by nature… must be accomplished in humans by culture”, a point with which I agree. Culture is a “fundamental feature of human existence”. Without it we would not long survive. They are also correct that “Every society maintains institutions and norms — rules, customs, laws, symbols, rituals, incentives, rewards, etc. — that provide public support for relationships between men and women.” What is left out of their story is that these “relationships between men and women” have varied wildly from current societal norms. Something much like the “massive human experiment” which Young and Nathanson warn against has occurred numerous times throughout history and around the world. We have, in other words, meddled with things and survived. That meddling allows us to change with circumstances and adapt to new conditions. Young and Nathanson admit that culture “makes us more adaptable than other species”, and even seem to admire that in culture, yet they argue from a position that doesn’t seem to recognize that an adaptable system is a changing system, not one that is frozen.
Young and Nathanson warn that if culture “were somehow removed, the result would not be a functioning organism, whether human or non-human. Apart from any other handicap, there would be the inability to reproduce successfully. Why? Because mating, which is largely governed by a biological drive, isn’t synonymous with the complex behaviours required by family life within a larger human society.”
Again, they are correct. If culture were removed, humans would suffer immensely and would very likely not survive beyond a few generations. We are that dependent upon it. But lets be careful to realize that we are not talking about the removal of culture. We are talking about gay marriage. We are talking about an alteration of culture not about its dissolution. Though Young and Nathanson certainly want to equate the two, I see no real reason to believe that such an equation is justified. To say that it is, is somewhat like saying that converting a monarchy to a republic is the ‘removal’ of culture. It may perhaps be a large change, but it is nothing like a removal of culture.
Young and Nathanson are also correct that mating “isn’t synonymous with the complex behaviours required by family life within a larger human society”. Unfortunately, those complex behaviors need be nowhere near as rigidly guarded as they imagine. Successful human societies have been built along other lines than ours. Our lines, though most tend to believe otherwise, are at most a century old. Pass much deeper in time than that and institutions like family and marriage start to look very strange to modern eyes.
To help make their point, Young and Nathanson provide a description of the functions of marriage which they believe must be conserved in order to maintain a healthy society. Altering marriage to include homosexual unions would, they suggest, undermine these very sensitive functions and we’d all suffer. But they leave out the part of the story that I have been trying to illuminate. These very sensitive functions have numerous incarnations. They’ve been modified a thousand times throughout history.
Note that Young and Nathanson already support granting virtually every right, freedom and tolerance to homosexuals. They are arguing that this one change in one segment of culture– allowing gay marriage– will trigger tragic results. It would make more sense to argue against homosexuality in general. Surely tolerance of homosexuality is, by orders of magnitude, a greater cultural change than gay marriage, which is in many ways, and by there own admissions — “gay relationships… are already supported by most of the economic and legal benefits given to common-law couples and should be supported by all of them”–, only a token gesture?
In effect, they contradict themselves. If it is true that a “society needs a specifically heterosexual contribution more than any homosexual counterpart” and therefore should “provide cultural support for heterosexuality”, then it makes no sense to support homosexuality in virtually all of its aspects.
On the subject of marriage, first, the claim is made that society, through the institution of heterosexual marriage, must encourage baby-making. The world is in no short supply of people who want to make babies, and suggesting that gay marriage will change this is not reasonable. Homosexuals are reproducing even today, through creative means. It is foolish to suggest that the rest of humanity– the great heterosexual majority– will stop reproducing if homosexuals start getting married. This is, in effect, making the claim that heterosexuals will stop being heterosexuals if society allows gay marriage. Heterosexuals, frankly, do not need to be coddled. Sex is one of the few things that we do actually still have hard wired into us.
Secondly, Young and Nathanson argue that society should “provide an appropriate setting for children growing to maturity”. Of course this is true, but it is only half of the story, if that. “Appropriate” has not remained unchanged for two generations in the whole of human history. The concept is, and history proves it, extremely mutable. Claiming that we can’t change things because we’ll change the ‘appropriate’ way to raise a kid, is having one’s head in the sand. Every generations changes the “appropriate” way to raise a child. “Appropriate” setting morph constantly. Young and Nathanson provide no solid evidence as to why western society’s– really a subset of western society’s– child rearing mythology is particularly sacrosanct. In fact, the evidence contradicts that position.
Third, heterosexual marriage ensures the co-operation of men and women and ensures the bond between men and children. Again, Young and Nathanson neglect parts of the story. There are numerous forms that this cooperation and bonding can take and still produce a functioning society. A case in point is the infamous Sparta, where males were seperated from their families at seven to be raised by the state and where even married men rarely spent time in the company of women. Yet Sparta functioned. Sparta may not be a society we wish to emulate, but its social structure was far more radically different from ours than would be a society that legalized gay marriage. Why then the paranoia?
I honestly don’t know. The “massive human experiment” Young and Nathanson fear is no greater, no worse, no more risky than a hundreds of other alterations humans have made to social structures throughout history. The fear is unwarranted. They also seem convinced that homosexual wedlock would undercut heterosexuality, a position I do not find remotely tenable. Surely the bulk of the 6 billion worldwide is not secretly gay and held in heterosexuality by the instution of marriage, by culture? That proposition is quite strickingly absurb, and it is not derivable from “the facts of human reproduction alone” as Sprigg words it. The proposition stubbornly contradicts those facts.
Why then the paranoia? I have no idea.
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