A Curious Little Blog

The most persuasive argument in favour of same-sex marriage is also the most specious:  why should we care what other people do?  It's persuasive because we have a libertarian culture (or a permissive one, depending on your point of view) and we are reluctant to condemn anyone for anything.  It is specious because this has never been about allowing people of the same sex to get married, and it is clearer all the time that this is not the goal. First of all, the recently-overturned DOMA did not prevent states from recognizing same-sex marriages; it merely defined marriage on a federal level as between two people of a different sex.  The Supreme Court made the bizarre ruling that the federal government has to yield to the states on the definition of marriage, even for purely federal purposes such as estate taxes.  It is a wrong decision because marriages have to be defined at the federal level in some way, and allowing the states to define them differently creat...

The current argument in favour of homosexual marriage is that, without it, the institution of marriage is discriminatory, just as laws against miscegenation were 50 years ago.  It is a violation of civil rights to keep homosexuals from enjoying the same benefits as heterosexual couples. One can make this case, but it has two serious problems, one ontological and one practical. First, the definition of marriage is and always has been a union of a man and a woman.  Some counter that marriage has previously been defined as the marriage of a man and woman of the same race, and since that definition was overturned, why not this one?  But marriage has only sometimes included laws restricting the race, religion, or class of the married couple; it has always and everywhere meant a union of a man and a woman. (In the case of polygamy, it is a man and a woman, and that man and another woman, etc.; in each case, one man and one woman celebrate a marriage ceremony.  One man...