Refutation: Legalization of Homosexual Marriage

Essay: Legalization of Homosexual Marriage

As I said in an earlier post, one of my friends is against homosexuality. She’s also against the government legalizing homosexual marriage and she wrote an essay for school last year about this. When I sent her my previous post, she sent me her essay to look at.

First she makes the argument that God doesn’t like homosexual marriages:

First and foremost, gay marriage should not be legitimized because it is not condoned by God. In a revelation given to Moses in the book of Leviticus, God explicitly says, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22). Speaking through a modern-day prophet, President Gordon B. Hinckley, God has reaffirmed this position: “The family is ordained of God. Marriage between a man and a woman is essential to His plan” (The Family: A Proclamation to the World). I believe this because President Hinckley is a modern-day prophet, and that this is coming directly from God.

I would think God would have better things to do than care about what sex humans want to have unions with. I always find it funny that people try to use, “This is what God thinks, so that’s what we must do” to justify their beliefs. For virtually every issue religious people attempt to use their god to justify their position. Although my friend attempts to use God and his prophets to justify her position, many religious proponents of homosexual marriage say that God loves everyone and that homosexuals are equal and thus they should be able to have marriages. It’s worth noting that homosexual marriages in themselves do not necessitate homosexuals having sex, or “lying with mankind as with womankind.” Homosexuals will have sex, regardless of whether or not they are considered married by their government. To my knowledge, homosexual marriages are not once condemned in the Book of Mormon or the New or Old Testaments. Even if they were, as I said before, people try to use their religion to try to justify things such as not allowing homosexual marriage without the need to appeal to reason. It’s a wonder that religious people think God gave them reason—which has led to the greatest of human achievements—only for them to ignore it on a whim.

Her next argument is that, along with God and God’s prophets, most people are against homosexual marriage:

This nation, being “One nation, under God,” is largely religious, and a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Organization in February of 2006 found:

“[D]espite the constant barrage of propaganda, the American people oppose gay marriage by 56% to 28%–better than a 2-to-1 margin. Forty percent feel so strongly that they would vote against a candidate that favored homosexual marriage, even if they agreed with him on virtually every other issue. (The Family in the Media’s Myopic Eye)”

It’s clear that the media has its agenda, and the American people have a separate one. I am not in the minority in my beliefs. Despite what the media would have us believe, the majority of the American people do not want gay marriage. In summary, God, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and most of society do not condone gay marriage, despite what the media would have us believe.

This is just an argument from popularity. Why should what the majority of the “American people” want matter if what they want is unfair? If the majority decided they wanted slavery, does that mean we should go back to such a system? Of course not. Homosexual marriage is no different in this respect. What the majority believes should have virtually zero value in the government’s decisions in regard to allowing homosexual marriage if what the majority believes is irrational and unfair.

She then argues that denying homosexuals the right to marry isn’t discriminatory because homosexuality isn’t genetic:

It has been argued that the issue is a matter of civil rights, and as such, is an issue of discrimination of a minority. This is not so. Discrimination is failure to treat people equally because of a bias on characteristics such as race, religion, sex, gender, national origin, and disability. It is not discrimination because there is no hard evidence that homosexuality is genetic. Twins studies conducted by J. Michael Bailey showed a 20% likelihood of the identical twin being gay compared with 2-4% of males in the general population. (Homosexuality is Not Hardwired). A similar study of 71 pairs of female identical twins yielded approximately the same proportion of co-twins who classified themselves as gay. The twins have the exact same genetics, the same childhood experiences, the same environment, and yet only 20% of the co-twins classify themselves as gay. Thus we can see that sexual orientation is genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA, and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.

Ignoring the definition of discrimination and the fact that she acknowledges there is a known genetic basis for homosexuality in the same paragraph, if what’s genetic determines whether or not something is discriminatory, how can discrimination based on religion or natural origin possibly be considered discriminatory?

Her next argument makes very little sense and purports that homosexuality will weaken the “institution of marriage” because there is a high divorce rate among homosexuals, not very many homosexuals in some countries that allow homosexual marriage are getting married, and there is some violence between homosexual couples. I don’t see how any of that is relevant to whether or not it should be legalized, except possibly the last one. Ironically, the only U.S. state to allow homosexual marriage, Massachusetts, has the lowest divorce rate and the most conservative states, such as Texas, tend to have the highest divorce rates in the country. For more on divorce rates, Boston.com has an article entitled Walking the walk on family values by William V. D’Antonio. As for the domestic violence argument, Paula Beebe writes in her article, Domestic violence among homosexuals an increasingly prevalent problem, “According to Thomas Turner, program adviser for the Women’s Center in partnership with the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Center , the reasons for abuse in gay and lesbian relationships are very similar to those in heterosexual relationships. Among these are financial pressure and stress, role fulfillment stress and simple bad tempers.” It follows then that those people in relationships with more stress will have a greater chance of violence. It’s likely that homosexuals, in today’s society, will be under much more stress than heterosexual couples. It’s also important to realize that statistics on domestic violence are likely unreliable and underreported for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. However, I doubt that if homosexual couples had very little domestic violence in relation to heterosexual couples that my friend would come to the conclusion heterosexual marriage should be outlawed.

The final argument she makes against the legalization of homosexual marriage is that we should Think of the Children and not legalize it because heterosexual couples make the ideal circumstances for raising children. This one is easily refuted by the fact that single parents are allowed to have children and so are homosexual couples. I’d imagine that a married homosexual couple would only provide a more stable environment for a child to be raised in, if anything.

These are the conclusions she drew from her essay:

In conclusion, gay marriage should not be legalized because it has been clearly stated by God that it is not right. There is no genetic basis for discrimination, and therefore, no claim for a civil rights issue. The legitimization of gay marriage threatens the institution of marriage because, as shown in Scandinavia, marriage becomes a tribial thing to hop in and out of. Children will not get the care and nurturing that they need if homosexual relationships are legalized, and children of the increasing number of broken homes are suffering as a result.

God has not “clearly stated” that homosexual marriage should not be legalized. As I said earlier, I don’t think there is any mention in either the New or Old Testaments or the Book of Mormon saying anything about homosexual marriages, much less whether or not they should be recognized by the government (as opposed to the Church of the Latter-Day Saints). Also, the arguments that there isn’t a genetic basis for homosexuality, that it will threaten the institution of marriage, and that it will hurt children are untrue or simply irrelevant, as I have shown above.