Arguments against Homosexual Marriage from reason and experience
Governments should define and establish marriage because no other institution can do that for an entire society
Only a civil government is able to define a standard of what constitutes a marriage for a whole nation or whole society. No churches or denominations could do this, because they only speak for their own members. No voluntary societies could do this, because they don’t include all the people in the society.
If no definition of marriage is given to an entire society, then chaos and much oppression of women and children will result. Stanley Kurtz of the Hudson Institute writes,
In setting up the institution of marriage, society offers special support and encouragement to the men and women who together make children. Because marriage is deeply implicated in the interests of children, it is a matter of public concern. Children are helpless. They depend upon adults. Over and above their parents, children depend upon society to create institutions that keep them from chaos. Children cannot articulate their needs. Children cannot vote. Yet children are society. They are us, and they are our future. That is why society has the right to give special support and encouragement to an institution that is necessary to the well being of children—even if that means special benefits for some, and not for others. The dependence intrinsic to human childhood is why unadulterated libertarianism can never work.
Without a governmentally established standard of what constitutes marriage, the result will be a proliferation of children born in relationships of incest and polygamy as well as in many temporary relationships without commitment, and many children born with no one having a legal obligation to care for them.
The consensus from nations all over the world from all of history is that the society as a whole, through its governing authorities, needs to define and regulate marriage for all its citizens. Aristotle said that the first duty of wise legislators is to define and regulate marriage. He wrote:
Since the legislator should begin by considering how the frames of the children whom he is rearing may be as good as possible, his first care will be about marriage—at what age should his citizens marry, and who are fit to marry?
Some people may argue that governments today no longer need to define marriage at all, but this is just saying that we can now hope to act contrary to the wisdom of the entire course of all societies in world history for all time. Such a prospect does not encourage optimism for success.
Maggie Gallagher says,
The purpose of marriage law is inherently normative, to create and to force others to recognize a certain kind of union: permanent, faithful, co-residential, and sexual couplings.
2. Government should encourage and reward marriage between one man and one woman because it gives benefits to society that no other relationship or institution can give
Because marriage provides society with unique and immensely valuable benefits, society has an interest in protecting and encouraging marriage. This was the fundamental question at stake in the Mormon polygamy controversy in the United States from about 1845 to 1895. Although Utah territory, which was dominated by Mormons, applied for statehood seven times, beginning in 1849, Congress did not permit it to become a state until 1896, after Utah finally agreed to insert a ban on polygamy in the state constitution. Thus Congress imposed on a state (as a condition of its becoming a state) a national standard for marriage that excluded polygamous relationships.
In responding to a challenge to this idea, the US Supreme Court in Murphy v. Ramsey (1885) said that “the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman” is “the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization.”
In brief, the history of marriage laws in the United States shows that society has a strong interest in protecting and encouraging marriage between one man and one woman because of the great benefits that this institution gives to society in multiple ways, benefits that no other relationship or institution can give.
These benefits can be summarized in several points:
a. Marriage provides a better environment for having babies than any other relationship or institution. Providing a good environment for having babies is important because all societies need babies in order to survive beyond the lifetimes of the adults now living.
When we compare the environment provided by marriage during the pregnancy and birth of a baby with the environment provided by a cohabiting couple with no legal commitment to marriage, or with the environment provided by a temporary sexual liaison with no ongoing relationship, or with the environment provided by a homosexual couple that lacks either a mother or a father, or with the environment provided by a single mother who bears a child through in vitro fertilization or surrogate motherhood, it is evident that the environment provided by a married couple provides for the baby far greater security and provides the baby with both a mother and a father who are committed to care and provide for it.
In addition, the environment is better for the mother, because marriage provides a far better guarantee that the baby’s father will not abandon her to care for the child alone. And the environment provided by marriage is better for the father because it provides a strong legal and societal expectation that he will stay around and act responsibly with regard to the responsibilities formally associated with fatherhood.
All of these benefits provide an argument that society should encourage and reward marriage between a man and a woman. All societies need babies to survive, and marriage is the best environment for having babies. Societies should encourage an institution that provides this best kind of environment for raising babies.
b. Married couples raise and nurture children far better than any other human relationship or institution. The benefits that a married couple brings to their children are numerous:
(1) Children who live with their own two married parents have significantly higher educational achievement.
(2) Children who live with their own two married parents are much more likely to enjoy a better economic standard in their adult lives and are much less likely to end up in poverty.
(3) Children who live with their own two married parents have much better physical health and emotional health.
(4) Children who live with their own two married parents are far less likely to commit crimes, are less likely to engage in alcohol and substance abuse,24 and are more likely to live according to higher standards of integrity and moral principles.
(5) Children who live with their own two married parents are less likely to experience physical abuse and are more likely to live in homes that provide support, protection, and stability for them.
(6) Children who live with their own two married parents are more likely to establish stable families in the next generation.
c. Marriage provides a guarantee of life long companionship and care far better than any other human relationship or institution.
d. Marriage leads to a higher economic standard and diminished likelihood of ending up in poverty for men and women.
e. Marriage provides women with protection against domestic violence and abandonment far better than any other human relationship or institution.
f. Marriage encourages men to socially beneficial pursuits far better than any other human relationship or institution.
g. Men and women in general have an innate instinct that values sexual faithfulness in intimate relationships, and marriage provides a societal encouragement of such faithfulness far better than any other relationship or institution.
h. Marriage provides greater protection against sexually transmitted diseases than any other relationship or institution.
i. The biological design of men’s and women’s bodies argues that sexual intimacy is designed to be enjoyed between only one man and one woman.
For all of these reasons, marriage is the basic building block of any stable society, and it is essential to the continuation of a healthy, stable society. All of these reasons argue that it is right that governments encourage and reward marriage between one man and one woman. This institution gives immeasurable benefits to a society that no other relationship or institution can provide. Therefore society has a high interest in protecting and encouraging marriage through its laws.
But if the benefits that the laws now give to married couples are also given to other arrangements (such as polygamous marriages or same-sex marriages, or heterosexual relationships that lack the long-term commitment of marriage), then to that degree, marriage is not given these special benefits. To that degree, marriage between one man and one woman is not encouraged by the government more than these other relationships. To that degree, then, government no longer gives special incentives encouraging men and women to marry. And to that degree, society will begin to lose the benefits gained from giving special advantages to the relationship of marriage between one man and one woman.
Moreover, if the benefits that society now gives to marriage are also given to same-sex couples, then society is encouraging the harmful consequences to children and to men and women that are the opposite of these benefits that come from same-sex monogamous marriage. Rather than doing “good” for the nation, such changes in the laws will do harm for the nation. This is the opposite of what God intends government to do.
The damaging consequences of homosexual conduct are rarely mentioned in the mainstream press. However, Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist who is a graduate of MIT, Harvard, and the University of Texas and has lectured at both Yale and Harvard, reports some of the medical harm that is typically associated with male homosexual practice:
• A twenty-five to thirty-year decrease in life expectancy
• Chronic, potentially fatal, liver disease—infectious hepatitis
• Inevitably fatal immune disease including associated cancers
• Frequently fatal rectal cancer
• Multiple bowel and other infectious diseases
• A much higher than usual incidence of suicide
What is the reason for these medical conditions? Satinover explains that many are due to the common homosexual practice of anal intercourse:
… we are designed with a nearly impenetrable barrier between the bloodstream and the extraordinarily toxic and infectious contents of the bowel. Anal intercourse creates a breach in this barrier for the receptive partner, whether or not the insertive partner is wearing a condom. As a result, homosexual men are disproportionately vulnerable to a host of serious and sometimes fatal infections caused by the entry of feces into the bloodstream. These include hepatitis B and the cluster of otherwise rare conditions … known as the “Gay Bowel Syndrome.”
Satinover also points out a significant contrast in the sexual behaviors of heterosexual and homosexual persons. Among heterosexuals, sexual faithfulness was relatively high: “90 percent of heterosexual women and more than 75 percent of heterosexual men have never engaged in extramarital sex.” But among homosexual men the picture is far different:
A 1981 study revealed that only 2 percent of homosexuals were monogamous or semi-monogamous—generously defined as ten or fewer lifetime partners.… A 1978 study found that 43 percent of male homosexuals estimated having sex with five hundred or more different partners.… Seventy-nine percent said that more than half of these partners were strangers.
Such patterns of behavior need to be taken into account when voters decide whether to give societal encouragement and legal benefits to same-sex relationships.
One additional argument in favor of laws defining marriage as one man and one woman is that laws in any society also have a “teaching” function. The kinds of relationships that are approved by the law are more likely to be approved of and followed by the society as a whole. People will reason, “This is according to the law, therefore it must be right.” Thus laws that limit marriage to one man and one woman will tend to encourage the society to think that this is the kind of marriage that is right and that should be supported by them and by others.
For all of the foregoing reasons, therefore, I differ with the viewpoint of Jim Wallis. In God’s Politics he argues that different views on same-sex “marriage” should be allowed within churches. He says,
The controversies over gay marriage and the ordination of gay bishops, and so on, should not be seen as “faith breakers.” The church is going to have to learn to stay together and talk about these things until we find some resolutions together.… One could also argue that gay civil marriage is necessary under “equal protection.” One could also argue for church blessings of gay unions. I think all those are strong points, even if the churches are unlikely to change their whole theology and sacrament of marriage itself.
Wallis also speaks of “encouraging healthy, monogamous, and stable same-sex relationships—which religious conservatives should be careful not to pit themselves against, regardless of how such relationships are ultimately defined.” Wallis thus fails to uphold and defend the Bible’s teaching on marriage for either the laws of society or the policies adopted by churches.
The Manhattan Declaration (which I gladly signed) stands in clear contrast to Jim Wallis’s statements. This document, released November 20, 2009, declares:
Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not … bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Casesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.
Grudem, W. A. (2010). Politics according to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture (222–227). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
