Gay Marriage

Many years ago, I made a 180° change in my opinion toward gay marriage. My Mormon upbringing taught me to oppose it, so naturally, I opposed it without really thinking through all of the complex issues very carefully.

After I left the Mormon Church, I was free to come up with my own opinions. Soon afterward, I heard that a childhood friend had committed suicide. He was Mormon and gay (which, at the time, was challenging to say the least). This hit me hard. I didn’t know he was gay. His sexuality didn’t matter to me now that he was gone.

I also had a gay mission companion (who I always suspected was gay). At the time, he struggled to get out of the house or even to get out of bed. He rarely said more than a few words to anyone in a day and was prone to frequent emotional outbursts. I can only imagine how difficult that was for him. I saw him years later, after he had accepted who he was. He was smiling freely – something I hadn’t seen before. That seemed like a healthier place to be.

Back then, the LDS church tried to be compassionate toward gay people but the fact is that many people, like my two friends, were miserable being gay and Mormon. I don’t blame the Mormon church for suffering. In general, I don’t like any philosophy that excuses life outcomes because of circumstances. That said, gay Mormons do have more difficult circumstances than I do. All the more so in the 80s and 90s.

Denying marriage to gay couples had the effect of keeping them on the fringes of society and contributed to their feelings of low self-worth. It has also kept life-long partners from rights granted to spouses (like hospital visitation). Those two facts are difficult to dispute and they carry a societal cost.

Witnessing the tangible suffering of my two friends changed my opinion. I wanted the suffering to stop, so it seemed like it was high time to tear down the fences that were causing the suffering of my gay friends.

At about the same time that my friend killed himself, there was a real shift in thinking about gay rights in the US. I think that the pro-gay marriage argument came down to three things:

• Fairness: If marriage is about two people who love each other, and want to bind their lives together, then why should we care if it’s a man and a woman, two men, or two women?
• Compassion: The fact that many gay people in the past lived their lives as pariahs, on the outskirts, and with terrible suffering is definitely a cost to society we should solve, if possible.
• Lack of harm: There couldn’t possibly be any harm to traditional marriage just because some others have a different type of marriage.

These arguments slowly became accepted even on the right-side of the political aisle (not so much because they supported it but because those three points were difficult to counter). No one really seemed to have a good case against it. So, the US Supreme Court wrote the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that made it illegal to exclude same-sex couples from marriage.

While support for gay marriage today has waned, it is still supported by just under 70% of American adults. Even the Mormon church has become a lot more friendly toward the idea of homosexuality (not accepting it as a practice but more accepting of the people).

I no longer support gay marriage. In fact, I would support banning it and writing that ban into the Constitution. Let me explain why by addressing each of the three pro-gay-marriage arguments listed above:

The fairness argument assumes that the purpose of marriage is to offer two people who love each other, the ability to bind their lives together legally. And why, the argument goes would we discriminate against certain groups who also love each other? However, the purpose of marriage is not actually to culminate romantic love. I heard this put perfectly the other day:

This bizarre notion that marriage was supposed to be the formalization of romantic love as opposed to a shared value system that is capable of building the next generation. That is a wrong idea. And it has been a mistake for the West to embrace that idea. Of course romance is a part of marriage. It’s an enormous part of marriage, but it is not the chiefly important part of marriage.”
— Ben Shapiro (“No, Divorce Isn’t Fine for the Kids” Episode 2107 12/18/24)

Marriage isn’t about love. Yes, of course, love must exist in any successful marriage but the reason marriage has existed for millennia is not to place a stamp of approval upon the love of two people. That’s what Disney and Hollywood and romance novels have told us for a long time because it makes for a fun story. But it’s not accurate.

No. Marriage is an evolutionary adaptation. And as such, it has provided a benefit to society that I don’t think can be replaced, or even tinkered with without serious consequences.

That benefit of marriage — its “chiefly important part” as Shapiro calls it — is the perpetuation of culture to the next generation. Of course, there are other benefits (both husbands and wives benefit immensely from marriage) but the primary purpose (and benefit to society) is children and the passing along of the society to those children.

This isn’t a very romantic idea, but it’s true. Marriage as an institution was never intended to be about you and your fulfillment. It’s about the coming together of both spouses to accomplish a goal that’s much bigger than either of them: raising successful new people. That’s the real benefit to society and it’s the reason it has continued for generations. We must defend it.

To the extent that we don’t, we will see society fray. People will be more depressed and angry, living more self-interested, empty and unfulfilling lives and native populations will decline (as is currently the case in most Western Countries).

People thrive in families. We thrive when we work for something greater than ourselves.

(Side note: one of the reasons that the Left prefers importing people through immigration rather than making more people through families is that they don’t want to perpetuate Western culture. They want to tear down Western society and build something completely different in its place.)

Here are a few examples of how misconceptions in modern society are undermining marriage and putting a strain on the West as a whole:

• Attack: Marriage is about your own feelings of love and your own fulfillment.
  Result: Why would two people ever stay together when they’re not feeling fulfilled? Why wouldn’t they just focus on themselves instead of their spouse, get divorced when things go bad, and seek happiness elsewhere? (Even though happiness was actually at the end of the hard road they left behind.)
• Attack: Career is the highest life satisfaction for a woman.
  Result: Why would a woman ever sacrifice career and prioritize children? (Note: this lie is not as frequently told to men because it’s not as alluring to them. They are told different lies.)
• Attack: A man is sexist for wanting to lead a family and find a wife who wants to stay home and take care of the kids.
  Result: Why would a man leave his parents’ basement, get a job and take risks in order to create a family? Why would he lead at all if that means he’s being oppressive? Why wouldn’t he just immerse himself in video games and let the women do all of the leading?
• Attack: Marriage was created by the patriarchy to oppress women.
  Result: Why would a woman or a man ever get married if the institution itself perpetuates “a system of oppression”?

We accepted gay marriage upon the premise of fairness: that it’s not fair to distinguish one type of love between another type of love. Love is love, as they say. Just a few weeks ago there was news that the Supreme Court would not hear a challenge to gay marriage. Here was one response to this decision:

“Today, love won again.”

— Kelley Robinson (Human Rights Campaign)

Miss Robinson confirms the lie that must be believed in order for gay marriage to be adopted – that marriage is primarily about love. But it isn’t. It’s about kids. And gay marriage is not about kids.

I’m not saying that kids can’t be raised in a gay household. (We know families that currently have two moms.) I’m saying that the reason we accepted gay marriage as legitimate had nothing to do with kids. We never even considered kids or the impact that we would have upon them when we changed the institution preserved for the raising of the next generation.

There’s another rebuttal to the “fairness” argument: if we’re to allow two men and two women to get married, why not three women and one man? Or two men and four women? I’m sure people could imagine weirder things that are just as “fair.” Where does it stop? And can you imagine that our society could get away without any standards and remain intact?

I’m guessing that the vast majority of voting Americans agrees with the opinion that gay marriage does no harm to “straight” marriage. Joe Rogan is definitely on that side of the aisle. Here’s how he explains it:

“I just don’t see how a gay marriage in any way damages a straight marriage. I don’t see it at all. It doesn’t make any sense to me. … I don’t think gay people and gay people getting married in any way, shape or form changes a bond that you have with your wife. It’s just called marriage. It’s a human invented thing. If we decide that gay people can get married too, I just don’t see how it damages anything. I don’t think it tears down the definition of marriage in any way. It just opens up the possibility that people who are gay won’t be discriminated against.”

He’s partially right about gay marriage not impacting “straight” marriage. My marriage isn’t necessarily impacted by others’ misconceptions about marriage in general. But I don’t think that the impact is zero simply because it’s difficult to keep cultural memes from changing your own thinking.

That said, the change in definition will damage marriage for some people.

Mom and I know of at least two marriages that ended in divorce where the spouse initiating the split gave the explanation: “I needed to be true to myself.” Now, that phrase could explain a lot of things: annoyance, lack of physical attraction, even infidelity — so I don’t really know what went on in those situations — but the fact remains that a lot more people will become unmarried if they believe that marriage is about what they receive rather than what they give to a greater goal.

They will then be less happy. More importantly: children will suffer (as will countless future generations) because kids have their best chance in an intact home with both mother and father.

Of course children can be raised in a gay household. (Some 18% of gay households do, compared to 85% for heterosexual marriages.) The question is should we allow gay couples to raise children? Now, you have to be careful where you ask that question. It’s likely to get some people so upset that it might get you expelled from some schools, fired from some jobs, or killed (e.g. Charlie Kirk).

Some of the most reliable and common sense statistics out there about raising children indicate that they have their best chance in an intact home with both mother and father. Gay marriage robs a child of one or the other (or both).

A common rebuttal is that all a child needs is love in order to come up well. Why, then, should it matter who that love comes from?

There’s definitely some truth to that, as well. JD Vance lived with his mother who was a drug addict. Luckily he was raised by his crass-but-caring grandmother. JD endured a horrific upbringing (like too many kids today) but he ended up okay because of the love and guidance of one person, who wasn’t a parent at all. He endured, went to Yale Law School, built a successful career, and now has a beautiful family, and is the Vice President of the United States.

JD essentially had neither of his parents and was successful. But he is the exception that proves the rule.

Mom and I have some personal experience to support this. We have been surprised how challenging (and rewarding) raising children is. We frequently do not feel like we’re doing a very good job. But there are many examples where I have noticed something that Mom did to parent you that was completely different from my instincts as a man, but was exactly what you needed. Mom has said the same about me and my more-stern parenting. Children have the best chance when they have the nurture of their mother and the firm guidance of their father. They sometimes do NOT need pity, but instead need someone to tell them (and show them) to pull themselves up and rise to the occasion. At other times, they need someone who will show compassion, to scratch their back, make them a treat, and just be a listening ear.

Kids need both. They are less likely to get both from a gay marriage.

(Some will argue that all of these traits are found in both men and women. That’s true! But of course, on average certain traits are much more common in men while others are much more common in women. So, in general, the best thing for kids is to be raised by both parents in an intact home.)

You might have noticed that I skipped the 2nd reason: compassion. I skipped it because I don’t think there’s a good reason to show anything but kindness to gay people. Just because you think that marriage should only be allowed between one man and one woman, doesn’t mean that we can’t show kindness and love for our gay family, friends, and neighbors.

That said, denying marriage to gay couples is likely to make many of them feel ostracized. That’s not a positive result. We shouldn’t return to the same type of stigma of the 80s and 90s.

I’m not certain I have the solution, but I do think that we should be friendly and accepting of gay people. You have friends and family who are gay. You don’t need to be mean to them or condemn them in order to do and support what’s best for the next generation. In other words, you can support your gay friends and family without supporting gay marriage.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to start flying the rainbow flag any time soon (because I don’t think that we need to flaunt gay culture in order to be kind to them). I just think that we should be kind and compassionate but that we need to keep marriage between one man and one woman and that we need to reemphasize the true purpose of marriage.

Marriage is the perfect place to apply Chesterton’s Fence. In other words, I shouldn’t have been so eager to tear the marriage fence down just because I noticed real suffering. Instead, I should have understood that there’s a downside and an upside to every fence. I should have taken the time to also understand why marriage exists, and why it’s stuck around for thousands of years, and what benefit it has provided to society before jumping on the change marriage bandwagon. Only then would I have had enough information to make an informed judgement about the fence: taking all of the positives and the negatives into account, considering the damage that might be done by removing it.

I have so much sympathy for our gay family, friends, and neighbors. We need to love them and be kind to them. But we don’t need to tear down possibly the most important institution in Western society in order to do it.

I’m afraid that the damage to marriage has been done and might never be undone. If so, I think that society will continue to decay and someday completely unravel. But this doesn’t mean that your marriage must be built upon the lies of the last century. Joe Rogan was partially right about that much. Damage will be done in aggregate which will make it more difficult for you to have the right vision and to find a spouse who is aligned — but it’s not impossible. There are plenty of people around us who have the same understanding. This should be a non-negotiable for anyone you date.