Position Paper: Gay Marriage

I am not against gay marriage.  And I don't care if it's called marriage or civil union or something else.  I'll call it gay marriage here because most of the people I know call it that.

Religious basis

The Old Testament calls out any sexual activity outside of marriage as worthy of stoning.  So is disobedience to parents, blasphemy, and sabbath-breaking.  So the OT is not a good compass to guide us in punishments for certain behaviors.  Whether something is considered "good or not", maybe.  What to do about it?  Not so much.

The New Testament does not have anything to say about homosexuality.  Maybe those parts were taken out over time, maybe the subject was such a given at the time that it was ignored.  Maybe it's not worth special mention.  Sexual sin does get a few mentions.  In what I think is the best example of what do about sexual sin, Jesus simply told the woman to "go and sin no more".  So it is not clear from the Bible that homosexual activity is any worse than heterosexual activity.

  

The Book of Mormon has nothing to say on the subject of homosexuality, either.  Nor does the Doctrine and Covenants as far as I know.  So there is little classical scripture to base such opinions on.  There is a fundamental document, though, called "The Articles of Faith" that lays out the basic tenets of Mormonism.  Joseph Smith wrote these 13 short paragraphs to explain what Mormons believe.  Here's the 11th:

"We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."

The decision to marry or not and whether and what kind of sexual activity to engage in is a moral matter for individuals to decide.  If the church a person belongs to, or doesn't belong to, accepts gay marriage, then that's part of their belief system, and it's not my right to abridge that freedom of conscience.  I may not agree with their decision, but I don't have the right to stop them from making it.  Much like those I love who listen to country music.  Same thing ;)

Social Basis

With the moral/religious conundrum resolved, the next question is: what is best for society as a whole?  Is gay marriage good or bad for society?  If bad, how bad?  Is it bad enough to put other issues on hold?  Or is it worthy enough of focus to devote time and money to seeing it stopped?

As a father of little kids, my first thoughts on societal changes are always about how they may play out 20-30 years from now.  That's my first societal lens.

The single largest determinant for adult poverty and adult incercaration is growing up in a home without 2 parents.  A different study calls out the fact that homosexual couples were just as good at rearing children in that sense as heterosexual couples were.  So the single most important key for reducing incarceration (and most likely crime as well) is to encourage 2-parent families.  

One can always argue that some homosexual couples will be bad parents.  Certainly.  One can just as surely argue that there are heterosexual couples who will be bad parents.  Most of us know some of them.  Other data show that kids who grow up in "turbulent" households, where 2 people may be there, but who those people are changes, fare no better than kids in single-parent homes.

So - what is the bigger problem?  The 46 out of 1000 unmarried women who give birth each year?  Or homosexuals getting married?  My answer is obvious: I'd much rather be a child born to a single mother and adopted by a loving homosexual couple than live with the more probable negative outcome that growing up under a single parent brings.

I know that this part of the argument may infuriate single parents.  Single parents have a spectacularly hard decades-long task.  Holding down a job that pays the bills and raising kids at the same time is a tremendously difficult balancing act.  It is such a difficult balancing act that many single parents can't succeed at it.  The odds are stacked against them.

It's a Matter of Time

I'm no constitutional scholar.  Given that various state Supreme Courts have ruled that their state constitutions prohibit barring homosexual marriages, it seems just a matter of time before the Supreme Court rules the same way.  Either that, or our current conservative Supreme Court will hand the matter down to the states to decide. 

In such an event, states will battle back and forth on the issue for years.  Eventually, the Supremes will have to deal with it to settle it.  They had to step in to deal with segregation, sexual harassment, and equal pay for equal work.  The matter of "I got married in California, but Montana won't recognize it" is really a federal issue and should be decided at that level.  Whether the message is "Any marriage recognized in any state in the union must be recognized by any state in the union" or whether it gets more explicit than that is not very important in my view.  

Possible Negative Outcomes

I don't think there will be many that are measurable.  Most people already know openly gay people.  Many of us know homosexual people in a committed, long-term relationship.  There are a few such couples at my kids' elementary school.  

Whether the law says it or not, Heather may have 2 mommies.  Are my kids supposed to think Heather is bad because of that?  That she's weird, or not worthy of friendship?  If the school curriculum includes discussion of divorced parents, single parents, parents who are dating, then there is no logically consistent argument to exclude discussion of homosexual couples as well.  

The Truly Conservative Hypocrisy-free Argument

If people are truly concerned about the spread of immoral acts and seek to enshrine those values in law, they must start with the most prevalent immoral acts.  The next ballot initiative should not start with a small minority, but should instead provide penalties in law for non-married sex between heterosexuals.  Ignoring this particular thing turns a blind eye to those people we all know who are not married but are sexually active, every bit as guilty in a Biblical sense as any homosexual.

Wasn't there something in the Bible about a mote and beam?  Somewhere?