Society and Culture

Should Homosexuals Marry?

By Dweep Chanana ⋅ October 30, 2006 ⋅  Email this post ⋅ Post a comment

I returned today from a weekend in Paris to find this interesting question in my inbox, by way of Desicritics. The ensuing discussion on our mailing list, that consitutes the author’s circle, was both colorful and personal.

This question has been posed with increasing urgency in the United States, where socially liberal states and cities have repeatedly tried to legalize gay marriage. Conservative republicans, marking the other end of the spectrum, have threatened to amend the constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. India is still far behind in the debate. Sodomy is still a criminal offence and homosexuals regularly treated with disdain. Add to this the recent campaign by liberal ‘intellectuals’ to modify these laws and the question is urgent for India too.

If I had to summarize the discussion on Desicritics I’d say we were a bunch of mostly left-leaning social liberals, with a healthy sprinkling of skeptics that will challenge everything.

The Pro-Gay Marriage Camp

Within such a group, it is easy to see the case for gay marriage and such arguments generally fall into three categories.

First, gays are entitled to the same rights and privileges as everyone else. Marriage, being one of those, cannot rightly be denied to them (Desigirl said it much more succintly: “Why not? They have the same rights as anybody else, methinks”).

The second, and somewhat related argument, is that there is no case for the state to interfere in the free choices of consenting adults. As BangaloreGuy said:

Whether anyone should marry or not is a decision best left to the folks who are marrying - as long as they’re consenting adults, what business is it of anyone else to opine on their right to marry?

Finally, it was pointed out that marriage while important in and of itself also provides important legal rights to the partners. By denying gays the right to marry, one denies those rights.

The Challengers

As with all good groups, however, Desicritics has its doubting Thomases. Rahul Bhonsle, for instance, says:

Marriage is a ritual or an institution if you may allow for formal cohabitation of people of different sexes. The aim of the institution of marraige is orderly social conduct between the genders apart from other issues. This is a universally accepted institution unlike many other which are not inclusive. Homosexuals having marraige really does not fall into this paradigm. Homosexuals can instead live in without any necessity of a formal bond of marraige. In fact they should not feel the need for marraige as other issues such as inheritance etc can be organised through legal instruments which are prevalent.

Vikas Chowdhry, also playing the Devil’s advocate went even further:

But the argument that really stumps me is that if gays are allowed to marry, then why make polygamy illegal? Polyandry? After all, society does impose its moral values for a lot of other things on individuals, doesn’t it? So what makes gays special that an exception be made for them?

This must be anathema to the liberal because for them gay marriage is right simply because denying it is to deny a section of society their freedom. There is certainly a case for treating gays different from polygamists/polyandrists, because gays may not have a biological choice to be heterosexual. Besides, polyandry and polygamy may institutionalize power inequality among genders, rather than the opposite which is the intent of gay marriage.

Yet, the issue is not simply one of freedoms, but of something more fundamental - what is marriage?

A Question of Social Preferences

Both sides of the debate seem to presume that marriage is the natural state of existence. Conservatives, therefore, what to protect the instutition, while liberals want to extend its haloed status to include gay couples. That, however, may not be the case at all. At least in a modern state, marriage exists also to grant legal rights to both partners. It is increasinly more a social and legal contract.

Seen that way, those that object to a ban on gay marriage because it denies gays legal rights should be satisfied by other mechanisms, such as civil unions in the US. Similarly, one cannot object to such a ban on the basis that it infringes on an individual’s freedoms (the consenting adults argument). As pointed out, there are several instances in which laws place just such restrictions, polygamy to take one example. Finally, one objection that did not surface but has been made before, is that gay couples are a risk to a child’s growth. This, of course, presumes that a bisexual couple is better at raising children. Of course, given the lack of gay couples that have raised kids, there’s no evidence either way.

The only objection to such a ban, therefore, can be that it simply is not what we expect ‘marriage’ to be. The question, therefore, shouldn’t be ’should gays be allowed to marry’, but rather ’should we redefine marriage to include same-sex couples?’.

Laws relating to marriage, as with other laws, are societies attempt to institutionalize the majority opinion. The question of gay marriage, therefore, poses not an ethical/moral choice but a social preference choice. As our preferences change, so is our definition of ‘marriage’ likely to include or exclude ‘gay marriage’.