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Gay Marriage Should Not Be Legal
Gay Marriage, 2012

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Gay Marriage Should Not Be Legal
Peter Sprigg is Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council, a non-profit organization that advocates for faith, family, and freedom in public policy and public opinion.

Supporters of gay marriage claim it will not hurt anyone, but there would be both immediate and long-term harms that would come from legalizing same sex marriage. Among the immediate effects would be taxpayer subsidies to homosexuals, including Social Security benefits, the teaching of homosexual values in public schools, and threats to religious liberty when churches and religious institutions are challenged not to discriminate against gays. Longer-term effects would include fewer people marrying, fewer sexually faithful relationships, more divorces, fewer children being raised by both a mother and a father, a falling birth rate, and demands for recognition of polygamy as a legitimate form of marriage.
Some advocates of same-sex "marriage" scoff at the idea that it could harm anyone. Here are ten ways in which society could be harmed by legalizing same-sex "marriage." Most of these effects would become evident only in the long run, but several would occur immediately.
One of the goals of homosexual activists is to take part in the biggest government entitlement program of all—Social Security.
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Taxpayers, Consumers, and Businesses Would Be Forced to Subsidize Homosexual Relationships
One of the key arguments often heard in support of homosexual civil "marriage" revolves around all the government "benefits" that homosexuals claim they are denied. Many of these "benefits" involve one thing—taxpayer money that homosexuals are eager to get their hands on. For example, one of the goals of homosexual activists is to take part in the biggest government entitlement program of all—Social Security. Homosexuals want their partners to be eligible for Social Security survivors benefits when one partner dies.
The fact that Social Security survivors benefits were intended to help stay-at-home mothers who did not have retirement benefits from a former employer has not kept homosexuals from demanding the benefit. Homosexual activists are also demanding that children raised by a homosexual couple be eligible for benefits when one of the partners dies—even if the deceased partner was not the child's biological or adoptive parent.
As another example, homosexuals who are employed by the government want to be able to name their homosexual partners as dependents in order to get the taxpayers to pay for health insurance for them. Never mind that most homosexual couples include two wage-earners, each of whom can obtain their own insurance. Never mind that "dependents" were, when the tax code was developed, assumed to be children and stay-at-home mothers. And never mind that homosexuals have higher rates of physical disease, mental illness, and substance abuse, leading to more medical claims and higher insurance premiums. No, all of these logical considerations must give way in the face of the demand for taxpayer subsidies of homosexual relationships.
But these costs would be imposed not only upon governments, but upon businesses and private organizations as well. Some organizations already offer "domestic partner" benefits to same-sex couples as a matter of choice. Social conservatives have discouraged such policies, but we have not attempted to forbid them by law.
Imagine, though, what the impact on employee benefit programs would be if homosexual "marriage" is legalized nationwide. Right now, marriage still provides a clear, bright line, both legally and socially, to distinguish those who receive dependent benefits and those who don't. But if homosexual couples are granted the full legal status of civil "marriage," then employers who do not want to grant benefits to homosexual partners—whether out of principle, or simply because of a prudent economic judgment—would undoubtedly be coerced by court orders to do so.
Another important and immediate result of same-sex "marriage" would be serious damage to religious liberty.
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Schools Would Teach That Homosexual Relationships Are Identical to Heterosexual Ones
The advocates of same-sex "marriage" argue that it will have little impact on anyone other than the couples who "marry." However, even the brief experience in Massachusetts, where same-sex "marriage" was imposed by the state's Supreme Judicial Court and began on May 17, 2004, has demonstrated that the impact of such a social revolution will extend much further—including into the public schools. In September 2004, National Public Radio reported, "Already, some gay and lesbian advocates are working on a new gay-friendly curriculum for kindergarten and up." They also featured an interview with Deb Allen, a lesbian who teaches eighth-grade sex education in Brookline, Mass. Allen now feels "emboldened" in teaching a "gay-friendly" curriculum, declaring, "If somebody wants to challenge me, I'll say, 'Give me a break. It's legal now.'" Her lessons include descriptions of homosexual sex given "thoroughly and explicitly with a chart." Allen reports she will ask her students, "Can a woman and a woman have vaginal intercourse, and they will all say no. And I'll say, 'Hold it. Of course, they can. They can use a sex toy. They could use'—and we talk—and we discuss that. So the answer there is yes."...
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Freedom of Conscience and Religious Liberty Would Be Threatened
Another important and immediate result of same-sex "marriage" would be serious damage to religious liberty.
Religious liberty means much more than liturgical rituals. It applies not only to formal houses of worship, but to para-church ministries, religious educational and social service organizations, and individual believers trying to live their lives in accordance with their faith not only at church, but at home, in their neighborhoods, and in the workplace. These, more than your pastor or parish priest, are the entities whose religious liberty is most threatened by same-sex "marriage."
Some of these threats to religious liberty can arise from "nondiscrimination" laws based on sexual orientation, even without same-sex "marriage." But when homosexual "marriage" becomes legal, then laws which once applied to homosexuals only as individuals then apply to homosexual couples as well. So, for example, when Catholic Charities in Boston insisted that they would stay true to principle and refuse to place children for adoption with same-sex couples, they were told by the state that they could no longer do adoptions at all.
In other cases, a variety of benefits or opportunities that the state makes available to religious nonprofits could be withheld based on the organization's refusal to treat same-sex couples and "marriages" the same as opposite-sex marriages. Organizations might be denied government grants or aid otherwise available to faith-based groups; they might be denied access to public facilities for events; and they might even have their tax-exempt status removed. That is what happened to the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association in New Jersey when they refused to rent facilities for a lesbian "civil union" ceremony.
Religious educational institutions are particularly at risk, because in some cases they may allow students who are not believers to attend and even have staff who are not adherents of their religion, but still desire to maintain certain religiously-informed norms and standards of behavior. Yet a Lutheran school in California has been sued for expelling two girls who were in a lesbian relationship. Yeshiva University, a Jewish school in New York City, was forced to allow same-sex "domestic partners" in married-student housing. Religious clubs on secular campuses may be denied recognition if they oppose homosexual conduct—this happened to the Christian Legal Society at the University of California's Hastings School of Law.
Professionals would face lawsuits or even a denial of licensing if they refuse to treat homosexual relationships the same as heterosexual ones. A California fertility doctor was sued for declining to artificially inseminate a lesbian woman. And the online dating service eHarmony succumbed to the pressure of a lawsuit and agreed to provide services for same-sex couples as well.
Individual believers who disapprove of homosexual relationships may be the most vulnerable of all, facing a choice at work between forfeiting their freedom of speech and being fired.
Religious liberty is one of the deepest American values. We must not sacrifice it on the altar of political correctness that homosexual "marriage" would create.
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Fewer People Would Marry
Even where legal recognition and marital rights and benefits are available to same-sex couples (whether through same-sex civil "marriages," "civil unions," or "domestic partnerships"), relatively few same-sex couples even bother to seek such recognition or claim such benefits.
The most simple way to document this is by comparing the number of same-sex couples who have sought such legal recognition in a given state with the number of "same-sex unmarried-partner households" in the most recent U.S. Census.
When a relatively small percentage of same-sex couples—even among those already living together as partners—even bother to seek legal recognition of their relationships, while an overwhelming majority of heterosexual couples who live together are legally married, it suggests that homosexuals are far more likely than heterosexuals to reject the institution of marriage or its legal equivalent.
In California, same-sex "marriage" was only legal for a few months, from the time that the California Supreme Court ruled in May of 2008 until the voters adopted Proposition 8 in November of the same year. Press reports have indicated that about 18,000 same-sex couples got "married" in California—less than 20% of the total identified by the Census. By contrast, 91% of opposite-sex couples who lived together in California were married. In other words, only 9% of heterosexual couples in California have rejected the institution of marriage, while over 80% of the homosexual couples rejected "marriage" when it was offered to them in 2008....
Couples who could marry, but choose instead to cohabit without the benefit of marriage, harm the institution of marriage by setting an example for other couples, making non-marital cohabitation seem more acceptable as well. If same-sex "marriage" were legalized, the evidence suggests that the percentage of homosexual couples who would choose cohabitation over "marriage" would be much larger than the current percentage of heterosexual couples who choose cohabitation over marriage. It is likely that the poor example set by homosexual couples would, over time, lead to lower marriage rates among heterosexuals as well.
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Fewer People Would Remain Monogamous and Sexually Faithful
One value that remains remarkably strong, even among people who have multiple sexual partners before marriage, is the belief that marriage itself is a sexually exclusive relationship. Among married heterosexuals, having sexual relations with anyone other than one's spouse is still considered a grave breach of trust and a violation of the marriage covenant by the vast majority of people.
Yet the same cannot be said of homosexuals—particularly of homosexual men. Numerous studies of homosexual relationships, including "partnered" relationships, covering a span of decades, have shown that sex with multiple partners is tolerated and often expected, even when one has a "long-term" partner. Perhaps the most startling of these studies was published in the journal AIDS. In the context of studying HIV risk behavior among young homosexual men in the Netherlands, the researchers found that homosexual men who were in partnered relationships had an average of eight sexual partners per year outside of the primary relationship. This is an astonishing contrast to the typical behavior of married heterosexuals, among whom 75% of the men and 85% of the women report never having had extra-marital sex even once during the entire duration of their marriage....
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Fewer People Would Remain Married for a Lifetime
Lawrence Kurdek, a homosexual psychologist from Ohio's Wright State University, who has done extensive research on the nature of homosexual relationships, has correctly stated, "Perhaps the most important 'bottom-line' question about gay and lesbian couples is whether their relationships last." After extensive research, he determined that "it is safe to conclude that gay and lesbian couples dissolve their relationships more frequently than heterosexual couples, especially heterosexual couples with children."
Society would be placing its highest stamp of official government approval on the deliberate creation of permanently motherless and fatherless households.
Once again, abundant research has borne out this point. Older studies came to similar conclusions. In one study of 156 male couples, for instance, only seven had been together for longer than five years....
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Fewer Children Would Be Raised by a Married Mother and Father
The greatest tragedy resulting from the legalization of homosexual "marriage" would not be its effect on adults, but its effect on children. For the first time in history, society would be placing its highest stamp of official government approval on the deliberate creation of permanently motherless or fatherless households for children.
There simply cannot be any serious debate, based on the mass of scholarly literature available to us, about the ideal family form for children. It consists of a mother and father who are committed to one another in marriage. Children raised by their married mother and father experience lower rates of many social pathologies, including: * premarital childbearing; * illicit drug use; * arrest; * health, emotional, or behavioral problems; * poverty; * or school failure or expulsion.
These benefits are then passed on to future generations as well, because children raised by their married mother and father are themselves less likely to cohabit or to divorce as adults.
In a perfect world, every child would have that kind of household provided by his or her own loving and capable biological parents (and every husband and wife who wanted children would be able to conceive them together). Of course, we do not live in a perfect world.
But the parent who says, "I'm gay," is telling his or her child that he or she has no intention of providing a parent of both sexes for that child. And a homosexual who "marries" someone of the same sex is declaring that this deprivation is to be permanent—and with the blessing of the state....
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More Children Would Grow Up Fatherless
This harm is closely related to the previous one, but worth noting separately. As more children, grow up without a married mother and father, they will be deprived of the tangible and intangible benefits and security that come from that family structure. However, most of those who live with only one biological parent will live with their mothers. In the general population, 79% of single-parent households are headed by the mother, compared to only 10% which are headed by the father. Among homosexual couples, as identified in the 2000 census, 34% of lesbian couples have children living at home, while only 22% of male couples were raising children. The encouragement of homosexual relationships that is intrinsic in the legalization of same-sex "marriage" would thus result in an increase in the number of children who suffer a specific set of negative consequences that are clearly associated with fatherlessness.
Homosexual activists say that having both a mother and a father simply does not matter—it is having two loving parents that counts. But social science research simply does not support this claim. Dr. Kyle Pruett of Yale Medical School, for example, has demonstrated in his book Fatherneed that fathers contribute to parenting in ways that mothers do not. Pruett declares, "From deep within their biological and psychological being, children need to connect to fathers ... to live life whole."...
Extending the benefits and status of "marriage" to couples who are intrinsically incapable of natural procreation would dramatically change the social meaning of the institution.
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Birth Rates Would Fall
One of the most fundamental tasks of any society is to reproduce itself. That is why virtually every human society up until the present day has given a privileged social status to male-female sexual relationships—the only type capable of resulting in natural procreation. This privileged social status is what we call "marriage."
Extending the benefits and status of "marriage" to couples who are intrinsically incapable of natural procreation (i.e., two men or two women) would dramatically change the social meaning of the institution. It would become impossible to argue that "marriage" is about encouraging the formation of life-long, potentially procreative (i.e., opposite-sex) relationships. The likely long-term result would be that fewer such relationships would be formed, fewer such couples would choose to procreate, and fewer babies would be born....
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Demands for Legalization of Polygamy Would Grow
If the natural sexual complementarity of male and female and the theoretical procreative capacity of an opposite-sex union are to be discarded as principles central to the definition of marriage, then what is left? According to the arguments of the homosexual "marriage" advocates, only love and companionship are truly necessary elements of marriage.
But if that is the case, then why should other relationships that provide love, companionship, and a lifelong commitment not also be recognized as "marriages"—including relationships between adults and children, or between blood relatives, or between three or more adults? And if it violates the equal protection of the laws to deny homosexuals their first choice of marital partner, why would it not do the same to deny pedophiles, polygamists, or the incestuous the right to marry the person (or persons) of their choice?
Of these, the road to polygamy seems the best-paved—and it is the most difficult for homosexual "marriage" advocates to deny. If, as they claim, it is arbitrary and unjust to limit the gender of one's marital partner, it is hard to explain why it would not be equally arbitrary and unjust to limit the number of marital partners.
There are also two other reasons why same-sex "marriage" advocates have trouble refuting warnings of a slippery slope toward polygamy. The first is that there is far more precedent cross-culturally for polygamy as an accepted marital structure than there is for homosexual "marriage." The second is that there is a genuine movement for polygamy or "polyamory" in some circles....
Make no mistake about it—if same-sex "marriage" is not stopped now, we will have the exact same debate about "plural" marriages only one generation from now.