This weekend I wrote a lengthy diary about a conversation I had last week over at HuffPo, where an opponent of same-sex marriage (what I call an "exclusivist," as in one who believes marriage should be exclusively for straight couples, a position I think is properly referred to as "exclusivity") suggested, among other things, that:
1. Having children is a service to the state, equivalent to serving in the military;
2. Since straight couples can produce children and gay couples can't, that makes straight couples "unique" and "special," therefore deserving of "special benefits," "special consideration" and "reward," in the form of exclusive access to "married" status;
3. In addition, since procreation is of vital interest to the state and to the nation, and straight couples "disproportionately" bear the burdens and costs of childbearing and child-rearing, we should "compensate" them for this service to the nation with exclusive access to "married" status.
I'll leave out for the moment what this sick, twisted person had to say about gay couples and homosexuality, since it's this whole "special consideration," "reward" and "compensation" thing that I want to follow up on here. Leave aside also this individual's complete and utter failure to explain any direct, objective correlation between exclusivity and procreation, and all the other obvious logical and practical contradictions inherent in his position. Were I to be generous, I'd say that he was advocating for marriage and thinking about the correlation between marriage and procreation, but whether there is a correlation between exclusivity and procreation is a separate question. I think most people reading here understand that there is no correlation between exclusivity and procreation. Exclusivity doesn't encourage procreation, nor would equality dissuade or impede it in any way.
There are two things that occurred to me after I finished writing the diary, two more reasons why this "special consideration" argument holds no water.
One was his repeated use of the word "special," and the idea that having the capacity to procreate makes a couple "unique." He actually said that; straight couples can have babies, and "that makes them unique." I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that over 90% of the population is "unique," let alone by virtue of an inherent human characteristic that practically everyone has. Leave aside the fact that every living person, gay or straight, has the capacity to procreate at some point in his or her life, with very, very few exceptions. The fact remains that more than 9 in 10 people are heterosexual, which at least suggests that over 9 in 10 couples are likely to be heterosexual. How the mere fact of their heterosexuality makes them "unique" and "special," and deserving of "special reward" from the government, I'll never understand.
The thing that really threw me for a loop, however, so much that I didn't even want to debate it with him, is the idea that straight couples deserve "compensation" for being the ones who bear most of the physical, medical, social and financial burdens of parenthood, let alone for doing so on behalf of the state. My first thought was that no one is required or obligated to have children, and a great many straight couples never do and thus never "earn" the "reward" that this person justified by comparing it to veterans' benefits. But I was thinking about this today and something else occurred to me.
If I'm a young heterosexual man or woman, just married or about to be married, and I have either had a child or am thinking about having a child, and am concerned about the physical, medical, social and financial burdens of child-bearing and child-rearing, how does exclusive access to marriage possibly help me? How does having exclusive access to marriage alleviate or ameliorate any of these burdens, particularly after I am already married? How does the fact that I had exclusive access to marriage before I was married, alleviate any of these burdens? How is that "compensation" for what I am about to go through and what I am about to take on? How does having had exclusive access to marriage at any point in my life, make me more willing or able to take it on?
[I suppose it would have been too much to ask this person to consider whether an appropriate reward/compensation for taking on the burdens of parenthood on behalf of the state might be something like, for instance, oh, I don't know, universal health care....]
Someone in the comment thread of the previous diary reported on a conversation she had with an exclusivist, whose reason for opposing same-sex marriage was that she "would not feel respected" if same-sex couples were allowed to marry. That's what my adversary was saying as well; We can't have same-sex marriage, because if we do straight couples won't feel respected, revered and appreciated for being straight, for being the nation's breeders.
As depressing as this is, it's good that we're having this conversation now, as a country, so we'll be prepared for whatever the Court decides next summer.