First a disclaimer: this blog has been careful not to discuss certain topics in the past, namely work, politics, and (to a lesser extent) our private lives. Public posting about any of those topics tends to lead to professional or personal disaster - or both. This is why, by and large, we stick to posting about information of general interest or news that directly relates to our hobbies and preferred methods of recreation.

However, I was so dumbfounded after reading an essay about gay marriage by Orson Scott Card, an author of literature I enjoy and whose intellectual and political views I typically agree with, that I have to make an exception. Read more to see my (long) response to Card’s arguments.

Mr. Card’s argument is comprised of four parts:

1) the creation of new law via the judicial branch violates the United States Constitution’s separation of power, 2) the state’s interest in marriage is in encouraging the creation of family units, 3) the idea of marrying for love is relatively new, and 4) the redefinition of marriage - especially in a context that’s not meant to support human reproduction - is not only dangerous, but it is the first step on a slippery slope to destroying both the value of language and Western civilization as we know it.

I don’t dispute the first point; Mr. Card is absolutely correct that laws should be created or re-written via the legislature if same-sex partners are to be given the ability to marry each other. Effectively creating a new law through an impossible-to-justify interpretation of an existing law and then inflicting that on the rest of the country due to the U.S. Constitution’s “full faith and credit” clause is irresponsible at best. This merely addresses how the issue came to be debated, however, and is not an argument for or against the concept of gay marriage, so I won’t waste any more virtual ink on it.

Mr. Card’s major premise - that the state’s interest in marriage is to promote reproduction and that “civilization is rooted in reproductive security” - simply doesn’t make sense. Mr. Card wisely (but narrowly) avoids arguing that the state’s interest should be based upon Judeo-Christian sensibilities. Clearly we all recognize the value of church/state separation. I firmly believe that any religion should bar gay marriages if it chooses to, even if I believe that the theological basis for such a ban would be tenuous at best. Even the Aramaic to English by way of Hebrew and/or Latin version of Leviticus 18:22 (which, given that pedigree, is somewhat suspect) can be interpreted as “there’s nothing wrong with being gay as long as you’re celibate” in the strictest reading. (A reading that takes into account a more historical context could also see this as particularly aimed at discouraging the use of male prostitutes in rituals performed by competing religious cults at the time as opposed to a decree against all homosexual activity in general, but that’s beyond our scope here.) Then again, Proverbs 6:26 implies that hiring a prostitute for a loaf of bread is a preferred alternative to having sex with a married woman, so maybe our sensibilities as a civilization have evolved a bit since Biblical times.

Since religion is out of the picture, we have to think solely about the state’s interest. If you believe that the state’s only interest in marriage is reproduction (as Mr. Card does), then it logically follows that you think that the state’s extension of marriage to all heterosexual couples, regardless of their ability or intention to reproduce, is overly-broad. That, in the technical parlance, is stupid. The state’s modern interest in marriage is community-building and providing a reason to abide by the social contract, specifically to allow for the orderly development of a stable tax base with which the state can support its communities. If Mr. Card wants to suggest that this view of marriage was not the intention of the framers, then I won’t argue - I’ll merely respond with a “so what?” Establishing roots to the community and growing the tax base has been the motivation behind almost all marriage law established in the 20th century (if not before), and it is a very myopic to believe that all such roots are grown from parenthood. What is amazing about the failure of Mr. Card’s logic is that if you accept either interpretation of the state’s interest in marriage (mine or his), it exposes his suggestion that gays and lesbians should get married to people of the opposite sex if they want to exercise their right to marry as laughable.

Even if childrearing is necessary to participate constructively in society (which is a position that I find highly offensive), then I refuse to accept that gay parents are less capable than their straight counterparts, regardless of Mr. Card’s instinct. I understand that although some stereotypes about genders/gender roles got to be stereotypes because they’re true, that doesn’t make learning them (if they are even worth learning) in a household with a same-sex couple impossible - example is a powerful form of education, but it is not the only way. I agree with Mr. Card’s belief that a lack of two-parent families contributes to child misdevelopment, but think that’s more due to time and attention and diversity of praise (i.e. getting self-esteem boosts from two authority figures is better than one), not because a child needs both a man and a woman as role model.

Mr. Card’s argument that divorce is also ruining society, while a simple aside and irrelevant to the discussion at hand, is an interesting one. I tend to agree, but not for the same reasons. Mr. Card’s assertion is that divorce happens when people marry for love and pleasure and suggests that if people married to have children then it wouldn’t happen. To use another technical term, this is bullshit. I married for love and I may or may not ever have any kids, and I am quite certain that I won’t get divorced. I am sure everyone reading this essay can think of many examples of people who married with the express purpose of child-rearing in mind and ended up either getting a divorce or suffering through an abusive relationship “for the kids”.

Mr. Card seems to imply that people who married for love and not to have a family are somehow “wrong”. The promotion of this concept that “marriage without children is pointless” is what bothered and failed to resonate with me about Bean and Petra’s relationship in his Shadow series, too. Is Mr. Card’s implication that heterosexual people who can’t or don’t reproduce are more likely to feel disconnected from society, unpatriotic, and less willing to abide by its rules? Common sense and a wealth of personal experience demand that I reject that contention out-of-hand.

I also find myself uninterested in standing on tradition when it comes to Mr. Card’s history lesson regarding what marriage was supposed to mean in previous generations. To put it bluntly, who gives a damn? Some notable exceptions aside, the rule of law is not meant to enforce historical standards or even the status quo, it’s meant to enforce the rules and methods that we all agree to use in order to structure how we live together. To my way of thinking, that’s an argument to include different lifestyles, not exclude them. I agree with Mr. Card that inclusion is only valuable if there is something that’s being excluded, but I would contend that there’s plenty that’s still being excluded when defining civil marriage as the legal recognition of (and conferring of certain rights upon) a union between two adults - polygamy, bestiality, child exploitation, etc. are all solidly and thankfully in the “excluded” category.

Mr. Card paints a fairly hysterical (and, sadly, believable) picture of overcompensation by the politically correct “cultural elite” to show that anything that bucks the dominant paradigm - heterosexual white men - is better than anything that conforms to it. I accept that that some degree of this would be an unfortunate side-effect of legalizing gay marriage, but I can not go so far as to say that it would lead to “institutionalizing the absence of heterosexual role models” (as Mr. Card does). The loss of precision in language that Mr. Card decries is also regrettable, but again, the redefinition of marriage to mean “the union of two people” instead of “the union of one man and one woman” is hardly comparable to his description of the bastardization of the word “family”.

Finally, his hypothetical scenario breaks down for me at the insistance that homosexuality can be learned or imprinted through abuse, that it is not genetically/chemically based, and that the cultural elite’s “endorsement” of homosexuality will cause more people to choose to learn it. I don’t have enough information to blindly accept any viewpoint on the development of sexuality in humans, but I would be very surprised if there were not at least some genetic predisposition involved in order to facilitate the flow of hormones and other biochemicals necessary for arousal in either heterosexual or homosexual situations. I also can’t bring myself to believe the far-fetched scenario that adolescents (even troubled, confused ones) will make any lasting choices about their sexuality based on what the NEA or MPAA says is “cool”. Where has Mr. Card’s trust in the judgement and intellect of children, as displayed in Ender’s Game, disappeared to?

I am firmly in favor of extending marriage rights and status to gays and lesbians, even if it is for the “conservative” reasons of promoting additional stability and participation within our communities. Anything less offends my sense of justice.