Gays against Same-Sex Marriage

Not all same-sex attracted persons support same-sex "marriage." Far from it! We've already blogged about the position of the philosopher Lee Harris. Reproduced below are the closing paragraphs from "What Homosexuals Want," an insightful article by Eve Tushnet, a same-sex attracted Catholic woman struggling, like all of us, to live a Christian life.

"At this point, the most common question that arises is, "So what? Okay, maybe marriage didn’t develop in response to same-sex couples, but c’mon – how can Bob and Jim getting married really affect your marriage?" There are three basic reasons to think same-sex marriage will damage, perhaps fatally, the institution of marriage – maybe not in this generation, but in the one that grows up with same-sex marriage as the norm.

The first reason is simple: This is America. This nation is built on the idea that even minorities can shape the culture they enter. Racial and ethnic minorities have already done so; no honest author could write a history of American culture without noting how much of it began as black culture, Jewish culture, and Irish culture. And from TV shows like "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" to subtler infusions of "camp" humor, homosexual culture is already affecting the majority culture.

The second reason is that homosexual activists are merely picking up on a trend begun by and for opposite-sex couples. Same-sex marriage is just the next step in the divorce culture. The belief that marriage is merely the way that our culture expresses its approval of atomistic adults’ sexual and romantic partnerships isn’t new – it’s the same "me generation" worldview that produced "fatherless America."

And finally, unlike easy divorce, same-sex marriage would change the fundamental ideal of marriage. Even the most ardent defenders of divorce today view it as a necessary evil, a response to the tragedy of marriage failure. Same-sex marriage by contrast, would say that the ideal marriage is gender neutral – not a way for boys to become men by marrying and pledging to care for women. It would say that the ideal marriage includes children only when they have been specially planned and chosen – children would become optional extras rather than the natural fruit and symbol of the spouses union. It would say that the ideal family need not include a father – a message that is especially pernicious in a country where one-third of births in 2000 were to unwed mothers. And it would say (because who can imagine that most homosexual couples would wed?) that marriage itself is optional, not the norm – that marriage is for heroes, and since you and I aren’t heroic, we must not be called to marry. Any one of these changes would be destructive. Put together, they are a recipe for disaster, a recipe for revisiting and surpassing the harm done to families by the "sexual revolution."

Marriage has taken a beating. Americans cohabit, we divorce, we remarry, we split our resources between several sets of children. But we still have hope that we may recover the true meaning of marriage, because we still know the ideal: the lifelong, fruitful union that makes boys into husbands and fathers, and reconciles the "opposite sexes" to one another. Same-sex marriage would mean losing that ideal and losing our best hope for marriage renewal."