How Does Gay Marriage Harm Traditional Marriage?

In this thread Apos says:

Indeed?

Time and again people make this contention but I’ve yet to see someone explain how allowing two adults to marry harms “the traditional family structure” or “traditional marriage”. How does one couple’s marriage harm another’s? Allowing me and swampbear to marry affects Polycarp’s marriage in what way?

I contend that my previous marriage to a woman and any hypothetical future marriage to a man are independant situations. MrVisible’s marriage is independant of President Bush’s. Saying that legally allowing his harms Bush’s is absurd and without merit.

If you believe the view holds merit, please explain, in excruciating detail, because I just don’t see it.

The emphasis in that phrase is on ‘tradition’, not ‘marriage’.

Which is the whole point.

It still doesn’t harm the traditional marriage, TVAA. A marriage is a marriage. It doesn’t change because other people marry. In fact, gay marriage strengthens the traditional idea of marriage. People are no longer “living in sin.” They’ve conformed to society’s opinion that a relationship should be more than hugs and kisses. It should be legal and binding. That’s what responsible people do, according to American tradition. It’s quite possibly the most ridiculous argument I’ve ever heard against ANYTHING, EVER. And it’s beyond me that so many Americans actually believe there is some sort of harm taking place.

“Dang those gays! They’re so promiscuous, always hopping from bed to bed!”

“But they want to settle down and get legally married.”

“What?! How dare they?!”

. . . Ya can’t win for losin’ . . .

Expand on this, please, TVAA. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been frustrated from time to time by your insistence on semantic precision – but this may be a point where that predilection may serve to bridge incomprehension. I look forward to your explanation.

In my experience, most of the people who oppose gay marriage do so because it clashes not with the modern meaning of ‘marriage’ (a social contract between two adults recognized by the government and granting rights and responsibilities to each which can be broken under a variety of circumstances), but because it directly opposes an older view (a recognition of heterosexual bonding intended to ensure that all children conceived will be cared for and that society continues).

It’s been a long time since a religious marriage ceremony was considered valid on its own. Churches are no longer the ultimate incarnation of society’s power, which is why secular marriage certificates are necessary but not the blessing of a religious institution.

The doctrine that marriages are sanctioned by divine will is fairly common throughout Christianity. It was once very important that marriages be preserved, and the best way to ensure that the contract is not breached is to teach that God Himself wrote the contract.

Those who oppose gay marriage are not willing to concede that their faiths’ doctrines are not actually what determine what modern marriage has become (which is why so many of them are also opposed to divorce IME).

In short, they cannot separate what marriage now is from what marriage was once used to do… and sanctioning homosexual relationships is indeed diametrically opposed to what marriage was once used to accomplish.

That’s why it can be said that these people favor “traditional marriage”: the emphasis is not on ‘marriage’, which has become something that homosexuals are logically just as entitled to as heterosexuals, but on ‘traditional’, in which marriage is inherently tied to specific religious and cultural principles.

I hope this clarifies my earlier statements.

They said the exact same things a hundred years ago when it was unthinkable that people of different races should be able to marry. I don’t see how they are any more accurate now.

Apos’ quote in the OP is prettty much self-explanitory. I don’t think that anyone can dispute that the “traditional family structure” consisted of Mom, Dad, and kids. Gay marriage allows other structures. It’s not so much that it’s a threat to any particular family (Ozzie and Harriet are safe), it’s the structure as part of society that gets chipped away.

I’m not clear on where I stand speciifcally on gay marriage, but I don’t see how someone can support it and NOT also support polygamy. Requiring marriage to be between only 2 people is just as arbitrary as resquiring that it be between 2 people of the opposite sex. Actually, polygamy has a lot more historical precident than gay marriage does, no?

They likewise said the same thing about divorces.

I have no problem chipping away at a structure that specifically and deliberately makes some of its members miserable, or denies them rights and obligations offered freely to other people, purely on the basis of who they want to marry. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

It’s broke.

Actually, I would dispute that; the “traditional” family involved several generations living together and all working on the raising of the kids, though which relatives in which generations were involved is somewhat variable. That “traditional” family included not just the parents, but the grandparents, often with primary childcare roles, as well as local aunts, uncles, and cousins of various ages. This modern “mobility” thing bollixed that up a while ago.

There are a fair number of cultures that have gay marriages; there are also a fair number of cultures that have polygamous (mostly polygynous, but also some polyandrous) marriage systems. I can’t speak to which is more numerous. I’d say polygyny has cultural precedent in the culture in which I live (but not polyandry or gay partnering), given that there is significant cultural influence from the Patriarchs of the Israelites and the rest of the Old Testament, but the OT is not the be-all and end-all of precedent.

There are plenty of people who perceive the legalisation of polygamy as another step on the slippery slope after the legalisation of gay marriage; they bring it up in hearings, and cite this horror as something that is so evil that it need not be explained. I suspect in part because of this, and in part because there’s a cultural definition of “valid relationship” as “exclusive or at least pretending to be”, a number of people who support gay marriage also oppose legalised polygamy.

(If this multiposts, I’m sorry; I’m getting time-outs.)

Precedent doesn’t lend legitimacy to a stupid practice. Pretty much no one is lobbying in favor of polygamy, I’d say: those who want it have probably given up on the legislate process since they think god says it’s OK, and it’s certainly done in spite of the law.
A key difference is that you can actually make the case that polygamy can be harmful to the people involved (the wives or children especially), which is probably the main argument against it. I can’t see how that can be applied to monogamous homosexual marriage.

And one might wonder if there’s any actual harm in changing that structure. Some seem to feel that if gay men and women can get married and are afforded the same legal legitimacy, it somehow makes straight marriage LESS legitimate.

Marley23, are you under the impression that the only people who have multiple full partnership relationships do so for religious reasons?

It ain’t so.

The more I think about the quoted statement, the more I find it could makes sense. I, for one, am not opposed to the institution of marriage being legally extened to same sex couples. In fact, I find it downright silly that people oppose it. Why one earth should anyone care about someone else’s marriage in which they have no vested interest?

For some reason, though, I, historically, have (inactively) opposed polygamy. If I apply my reason for supporting same sex marriages, why do I (inactively) oppose polygamy?
JuanitaTech, off to ponder…

Stupid? Great argument. You haven’t been to Utah lately if you think no one wants legal polygamy. And I’m not saying I support polygamy. I’m just saying gays who fight for gay marriage, but wouldn’t support consentual polygamy appear to me to be hypocritcal. I say to them: clearly you acknowledge the right of the gov’t to place restricitons on marriage. Don’t be surprised if those restrictions apply to you. And besides, I’ve never seen a poll that shows even close to a majority of Americans in favor same sex marriages.

I usually look at the libertarian angle for these things, and would tend to leave it up to the states. But we don’t live in a libertarian society, so it I would not expect to see gay marriages common in my lifetime.

How does one (inactively) oppose polygamy? Not marry a second spouse? Not tell married friends about a third person who’d be just perfect for them?

I don’t belong to any anti-polygomy organizations nor do I donate money or time to any such organizations. I don’t picket funerals of polygamists. I don’t distribute anti-polygamy leaflets and, as far as I know, I’ve never visited www.godhatespolygamists.com.

They’re two entirely separate issues, legally speaking. Modifying the language addressing marriage in federal law to include same-sex couples is a straightforward procedure, and won’t include polygamous marriages, even by inference.

I happen to think that there’s nothing wrong with polygamous relationships, but it’s not my fight. If polygamists want to organize and get politically active and go through decades of hell to get the laws changed to accommodate them, then I encourage them to do so. I’ll even support them by voting for candidates who support them. But that’s a separate fight; that’s not what GLBT people are fighting for.

Telling gay people that they need to support the rights of polygamists to marry as a consequence of fighting for their right to marry makes just as much sense as telling interracial couples back in the sixties that they were being hypocritical for not including the rights of gays to marry in their fight for the right to interracial marriage. Just because you can’t free all people from opressive, discriminatory laws in one fell swoop doesn’t mean you shouldn’t fight to free yourself from them.

Trying to burden the gay marriage movement with the yoke of marriage rights for polygamists is a cute tactic, but it’s remarkably disingenuous. Of course I acknowledge the government’s right to place restrictions on marriage; I am fighting against a specific set of restrictions that I believe are unjust and discriminatory. I believe that other restrictions are just and fair and necessary. But no-one has offered any proof, any evidence that prohibitions against gay marriage serve to prevent any harm, or do any good for society. Therefore, I specifically oppose them.

Polygamy is a red herring in this discussion. In other words, take it elsewhere.

I want to know the mechanism by which Marriage is harmed by allowing two homosexual, consenting adults marry.

In what way is the structure “chipped”? Are straights suddenly no longer married in the same way they were before? Are they no longer allowed to get married? The “structure” of a Straight Marriage hasn’t changed at all by allowing a Gay Marriage. If Ozzie and Harriet are safe, then there was no damage done.

The mechanism by which marriage is harmed is the paving of the way towards state-recognized polygamy as an unintentional (or intentional, depending on who you speak with) side effect of state-recognized homosexual unions. An inherent and vital part of marriage is monogamy. Without it, marriage is pretty much meaningless from a social angle.

In that vein, I’ve heard that homosexuals tend to be less monogamous than heterosexuals, though I can’t vouch for the validity of such claims. If it is true, it could potentially be more ammo against gay marriages, in that it could weaken the idea of monogamy is an important aspect of the marriage contract.

One thing that must be understood, though, is that marriage is not a “right”, it’s a privalege. The freedom to choose who you spend your life with, who you choose to love - that’s a right. But getting the state to officially endorse your choice is not, any more than driving on public roads is a right, or getting a tax break for having children is a right. The state has a vested interest in promoting marriage as a social contract, and thus it should seek to do so in such a way that the idea behind that contract is preserved. If a case can be made that gay marriage does not diminish the social benefits of the marriage contract, then gays should be granted the privalege of being able to marry. If such a case can’t be made, then marriage should remain a strictly heterosexual arrangement.

All that being said, my opinion is that homosexual marriage won’t harm the notion of marriage, although polygamous marriage will. Since I recognize that a slippery-slope argument could be made in this case, I would support homosexual marriage as along as it was tied to legislation explicitly defining marriage as a union between 2 people.
Jeff

don’t you people know that homosexual marriage is a ‘gateway’ marriage?

before you know it, people will be marrying their pets, and that opens the way to insurance scam! i mean, if i marry my guinae pig, given their average lifespan, i’m clearly in it for the money, right?

besides, i find nothing attractive about men. how do i know that my wife isn’t just faking interest to uphold tradition? if they legalize gay marriage, she might run off and find herself a hot horny lesbian to marry!

sigh

anyway, i can’t see how gay people can harm the ‘institution of marriage’ more than straight folks have already done. and i’m really disturbed at the catch-22 that Eve describes…i know too many people that buy into it.