Hi All,
I had wanted to get all of my cards on the table prior to entering into dialogue on the subject, so I'll try to reply to Chairboy's excellent point in a following post.
Here I do want to discuss the pragmatic or practical arguments against gay marriage, because while I do not believe they have nearly as much weight as the theological arguments (especially for me) they are compelling in their own right. I should begin by giving a hat tip to Dr. Timothy Dailey, who compiled much of the following evidence from the CDC and other secular medical and psychological sources.
Marriage implies a monogamous relationship for life, yet the homosexual lifestyle is normally exceedingly non-monogamous
Webster's (1913) includes in it's definition of marriage: "the legal union of a man and a woman for life." I want to leave aside the "man and a woman" part for the moment because that is obviously the point in question, and concentrate on "for life."
In The Male Couple, authors David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison reported that in a study of a hundred-fifty-six males in homosexual relationships lasting from one to thirty-seven years, Only seven couples have a totally exclusive sexual relationship, and these men all have been together for less than five years.
Stated another way, all couples with a relationship lasting more than five years have incorporated some provision for outside sexual activity in their relationships.
In Male and Female Homosexuality, Saghir and Robins found that the average male homosexual live-in relationship lasts between two and three years.
Other studies have tended to produce the same figures regarding the short terms of these relationships, and the general committment to promiscuity inherent in the lifestyle, for instance in his study of male homosexuality in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, M. Pollak found that "few homosexual relationships last longer than two years, with many men reporting hundreds of lifetime partners."
Both of these factors are so generally accepted within the gay community so there has been a corresponding drive not only to redefine the participants in a marriage, but also the parameters of a marriage so that it is no longer defined as life-long or exclusive.
But once we have done that, in what way is this any longer "a marriage"? A temporary, non-monogamous, cohabitation by two persons of the same sex ceases to have any relationship to the traditional definition of marriage and becomes merely an expedient to gain the legal status and attendant political benefits that come from the married state. i.e. insurance, inheritance, parental rights, and ultimately the perception of absolute equality with heterosexual married couples, all without the attendant social constraints.
Additionally, there are other factors that make the idea of conferring marriage benefits on homosexuals, problematic.
For instance, homosexual relationships tend to be more prone to domestic violence than heterosexual ones, for instance, in the book Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them: Battered Gay Men and Domestic Violence, Island and Letellier report that "the incidence of domestic violence among gay men is nearly double that in the heterosexual population." This evidence tends to be confirmed by police in a major cities who report a higher incidence of domestic assault and even murder within the homosexual community than without it.
There are a number of other factors that would seem to argue against creating the category of gay marriage with its attendant rights to adoption etc. including a dramatically reduced lifespan (43 amongst homosexual males according to the CDC), a much higher incidence of suicide (at least 6 times) and depression. As one ex-gay man working with a ministry in Philadelphia put it to me, "There's nothing "gay" about the gay lifestyle. Manic would be a better definition." This is a subjective assessment but it tends to confirm my own experiences counseling.
There are other lifestyle factors that could be called upon, but that should be enough to at least raise the question of whether this is a wise decision from even a pragmatic point of view, not the least of which is the legal slippery slope. Once we have so radically redefined marriage, what legal impediment could there be to further redefinition as to number of participants, or even their age and potentially even species? This may seem absurd to many, but at one time in Western History, the very idea of gay marriage was more than just absurd, it was unimaginable.
- SEAGOON
