Some years ago my parents added an extension onto their dining room. Workmen dug a large hole alongside the house and stacked in concrete blocks in a U shape, removing a few from the basement wall to form a crawl space, and topping it off with the new wooden frame. In other words, they tampered with the very foundation upon which our house is based! Why didn’t it all come crashing down? Because the change to the overall foundation was insignificant–it was more an adding-on than a tearing-down–and the builders understood the nature of the structure well enough so that no harm would result.
So when opponents of gay marriage warn that it will undermine society’s foundations, why don’t we get a more precise explanation of the nature of this structure and what the impact upon it will be? Because it’s a metaphor, that’s why. It is not a substantive concept but a symbolic one. We can talk about the importance of marriage as a social construct, especially as it relates to the raising of children. But some folks treat it as some sort of mystical firmament upon which everything is riding and which can be shattered by one small exception. No, marriage is robust because this is how most people want to live, without any prodding from the government or organized religion. It’s not like the military draft; it’s based on love, not coercion. If gay marriage were legalized, would people turn gay and abandon heterosexual marriages in droves? I don’t think so. The ban on gay marriage is having a substantive impact on real people’s lives, and yet we are poised to cement it with a constitutional amendment based on symbols, metaphors and archetypes.
If the ’rents had built the house extension directly onto the ground, it would indeed have been subject to being undermined and could sag or collapse. If we can’t get rid of homosexuals altogether, then extending the foundation to include 100% of the people can only strengthen the whole structure.
