Fallacy Check

While leaving my house on my way to work today, one of my neighbors crossed the street in front of me with her dogs. Lucy is a middle-aged lesbian woman who lives with her partner, who is roughly the same age. They own their house together, and have lived in our neighborhood for at least as long as Lisa and I have.

She owns about five little dogs -- a couple of pugs, a pom, a chihuahua or two -- and she carries one of them in a baby carrier that hangs from her shoulders in front of her chest, and pushes another in a little stroller. The thought crossed my mind that these were her children; in fact, they were as much her children as Max and Elijah are to Lisa and me.

I don't know if Lucy and her partner are married, but what would be the big deal if they were? I've admittedly been ambivalent on the subject. Initially I didn't agree with it, but I've come around to the other side. The biggest contributing factor for me has been that those who strongly supported the passage of Proposition 8 last year were solidly in the Republican, conservative, Christian camp. My readers know how I feel about them, so I won't go into it. But I have heard their chief argument, and it's essentially biblical. In the Old Testament, God urges mankind to "be fruitful and multiply." So, the basic premise in their argument is that marriage is sacred; its main purpose is to serve as the foundation for the creation of future generations. Forget about the other main argument, that it was a patriarchal construct for men to control women and gain their property, although it could be argued that this also has strong ties to the church.

As I see it, there are so many children born to single parents, so many children who are given up for adoption, and so many cases of child abuse at the hands of parents, that I can't see the husband/wife family unit as the sole means for child-rearing anymore. So, removing child-rearing from the argument, shouldn't marriage simply become the expression of love, and the manifestation of a lifetime commitment, between two people, regardless of gender?

Some people would maintain that gays shouldn't be allowed to marry because they produce no children. Well, of course they do, in all sorts of inventive ways. But so what? There are plenty of married couples who never have children, intentionally or otherwise. Are their marriages illegitimate because they produced no offspring? Or is the argument about the potential for child-rearing that makes one-man/one-woman the only acceptable kind of marriage? Some couples could adopt, they say. What if they don't want to? What if they just want to be together and believe that a marriage is the best way to do it? What if they just want the financial benefits of marriage, or just the legal protections it provides surviving spouses?

The more I think about it, the more fallacious the argument against same-sex marriage becomes. In this world, where human beings are endowed with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, where people are free to express themselves fully, there is no reason to prohibit same-sex couples from marrying each other.