There are two issues here: marriage as a right and marriage as a reflection of the wishes of the people.

If marriage is an inalienable right that is being denied to some people, then the gov't should be obligated to take immediate action to correct the situation. If the gov't fails in ensuring the rights of its citizens it fails as a gov't.

My own sense is that the "rights" argument is being put forward because it is so challenging to argue against. You have to take on the validity of the premise rather than the argument itself which is well beyond the capabilities of most people.

Add in the fact that most people seem to broadly over-generalize what counts as a right (eg. "happiness" rather than "pursuit of happiness") and most critics of gay marriage are left without an effective counter-argument while the supporters feel as if their case has been solidly made.

Of course the supporters largely, if not universally, agree that marriage is a "right." Not that many of them could explain why it is a right--they merely accept that it is.

From this view point opposition to gay marriage is every bit as evil as opposition to inter-racial marriage or opposition to segregated lunch counters.

That's why the supporters love to make these constitutional rights type of arguments--if you accept the premise of a right, they win.

All of that said, I do not view marriage, especially legal marriage, as a right. It is a tool for maintaining an orderly society. It serves a larger public good.

If gay marriage does serve a larger public good or it is simply the desire of most people to allow gays to get married, we have an entirely different argument.

I have heard some claims that a small majority of U.S. adults are in favor of gay marriage. If true this is an argument for legalization based on the will of the people.

I have yet to hear any "societal good" arguments. The gay marriage supporters are stuck on the notion of "civil rights" for the individual. I suspect that the absence of such arguments is a reflection of reality--the societal benefit of gay marriage is absent or trivial.

I am not arguing that marriage is a right. I am arguing that if you accept the premise that marriage is a right then constitutionally based arguments make sense.

As has already been pointed out, most people wouldn't recognize the constitution if it bit them on the butt. I would also add that activists using arguments based on constitutionality are fairly quick to dismiss such arguments on topics where they dislike the conclusion.

sup spock

even if marriage shouldn't be a legal right (I bet most heterosexuals would bristle if it was suggested that legal marriage be ended entirely!) I can't see any legitimate (or even non-religiously based) reason why anyone should think that heterosexual marriage was beneficial to society but gay marriage isn't.

Also if you're looking for arguments of that nature I would probably suggest stuff written by Andrew Sullivan

welcome back well-named! At the rate things are going (only 51% of American adults are now married) heterosexuals will all be single and gays will be the only ones married.

On the "societal good" argument, Bill O'Reilly, of all people, put one forth. He says it would be better to let gays marry and adopt children because children raised in gay homes are better off than children raised in orphanages. Interesting, to say the least.

Whoa! There is a world of difference between declaring that something is not a right and ending it entirely. All of us, straight or gay, should object if there were an end to heterosexual marriage.



I'm not sure if you are arguing that they would be equally good or equally useless.

Whichever the case, it depends on your view of the purpose of marriage. What do you see as the purpose of marriage?

And I agree with you that it isn't a right, and the wishes of the people argument has things to say on both sides.

I don't see how it could be a right. If that were the case, anyone who wanted to get married, but didn't have a fiance would be having his rights violated. Two people stranded on a desert island, with no access to a state or church to marry them would be having their rights violated (by whom?). This doesn't make sense to me. And even if marriage were a right of some kind, it's obviously not the case that you have the right to marry absolutely any person (or people) you want, at any time. Nobody denies that there are restrictions, the only disagreement is about exactly what the restrictions should be.

The wishes of the people argument goes farther. Certainly in a democracy, you'd think people would have the ability to legalize such a thing if they wanted to. They should also have the ability to pass an amendment prohibiting it, if that's what they want to do. So it should come down to which result the democratic system produces.

My only misgiving is that "marriage" is a religious ceremony that the state began administering at a time when everybody agreed about such things. If we're going to disagree about it now, it might be a violation of separation of church and state for the state to try to redefine the nature of a religious ceremony.

But civil unions aren't religious. In principle, the state has the right to do anything it wants with those. But for some reason, never explained, that isn't good enough. You remember the uproar in 2008 when California outlawed gay marriage. When that happened, the civil unions that they had previously legalized were STILL legal. But you'd never have known that from the way people reacted.

I've never been able to get a straight answer from anyone as to why civil unions aren't good enough, and it has to be called "marriage", or it's no good. I think the reason is that since people disagree about the ethics of the issue, people want the government to step in and legislate morality in their favor. If that's the case, I don't think the state should be taking sides that way.

Of course other people oppose both gay marriage and gay civil unions. To those I have to say tough luck. You have no guarantee of success. This is a democracy, you can try to oppose it, others can try to legalize it, and the only thing to do is let the process play out and see where it goes.

There's no requirement to demonstrate that something serves a public good before you can legalize it, is there?

I don't really think it's that hard to conceive of a right in terms where this isn't the case. It's like arguing that the right to free speech doesn't exist because there are actually social norms that keep people from saying certain kinds of things. If there were (hypothetically) a constitutional right to marriage it would just mean that the state was constitutionally prevented from making laws that said people couldn't get married. You would have a right not to be prevented by the state, not a "right to have a spouse"



no



Neither really, but the legal institution of marriage does exist for heterosexuals, and my point is that I can't conceive of a non-religiously-based argument that heterosexual marriage is worthy of recognition by the state but homosexual marriage isn't. Marriage is supposed to be good for the stability of society, families are supposed to be also. Obviously the fact that marriage is originally a religious sacrament colors its history, but marriage as sanctioned by the state is something else, and it's not impossible to think of the social benefits of marriage apart from religion. And in doing so, I can't see any reason why homosexual marriage is any different. It wouldn't be unreasonable to say that gay marriage is the most pro-family policy change that could be made today.

Civil Union v Marriage: My understanding is that "marriage" conveys a level of societal approval of the relationship that is not conveyed by "civil union." For the most vocal activists gay relationships have to be treated EXACTLY the same as straight relationships. Having equal privileges (civil union) is, to them, not equality--they need society to not only legally recognize their relationship in all the ways we recognize straight relationships (e.g., health care benefits, hospital decisions) but elevate it to the same status as a relationship capable of biologically producing children.

Civil Marriage v religious marriage. The churches can and should do whatever pleases them. The state sanctioning of gay relationships is, for me, the only topic on the table.

Sadly, no.

The vast majority of laws are passed with the intent of effecting a positive change on society, and that is as it should be. We should neither prohibit nor encourage actions through legal means unless there is good reason to do so at the societal level.

20-30 years ago overly extensive sodomy laws were used as examples of gov't nosing in where it does not belong.

Laws should only be enacted when there is a compelling societal interest in the outcome.

In the current discussion the gay community is trying to make the issue one of civil rights because that is a compelling societal interest. If there is some form of systematic discrimination going on that harms some group it is reasonable for the gov't to consider some form of intervention that does not create a greater harm.

Absent a civil rights claim the gay marriage folks have not provided any reason for gov't to act.

I oppose any expansion of the legal codes that does not serve some interest of the community.

I know of gay couples in my community and all of them are nice people. I literally don't care that they are gay because it is none of my business what they do in private as long as it does not threaten the health or welfare of others in the community.

But I see absolutely no benefit for the community or society at large to publicly and legally recognize those relationships.

Even if you accept marriage as a right, society places limits on those rights (e.g., freedom of speech). Society currently limits who you can be married to...what is the State/societal interest in changing those limits?

That's my take on it too. And I can certainly sympathize with the desire. My only problems with it are a) the church/state angle of it again (I'm not sure that the First Amendment allows the government to redefine a religious ceremony), and b) I'm not sure if the government should be taking sides in a societal dispute. The government should grant equal rights to everyone, yes. But in the case of a societal issue, where some people believe a behavior is wrong, and others believe it isn't, I'm not sure if the government should jump in, take sides, and say "these people are right, these other people are wrong". I'd prefer that they limit their involvement to simply practicing equality themselves, without telling people what to think.

Frankly, if this is going to be an issue, I'd be okay if the government got out of the marriage business altogether, and conducted civil unions only (straight and gay, if that's what the voters of a state choose), leaving the religious "marriage" to the churches, where it probably belongs at this point, and maybe always did.

You said that all of us should object if there was an end to heterosexual marriage. I'm not suggesting ending it entirely, only taking it out of the government's hands. We no longer have a large enough consensus on religious matters for the government to oversee a religious institution.