On the Virtues of Gay Marriage

We do not treat people equally because all are equal. We treat people equally because all are different. These differences make everyone so valuable. One cannot exactly know how a person thinks or what experiences he has had thus one will never predict what kind of contribution that person can make to society.

In order to allow a person the maximum scope within which he is able to exploit his knowledge, talents and ambitions, and thus contribute something, law treats everyone the same so everyone has a level playing field. Arbitrary rules which elevate some while dragging other down are avoided. Discrimination and privileges are frowned upon. However this does not mean in any way that one must automatically like other people. Not liking someone is subjective and arbitrary. It dictates how one treats others in private personal relationships but it should not prevent one from recognising a person’s contributions.

In modern society there are few areas of life where illiberal discrimination still exists. Slavery has been abolished, women have been set free and given the vote, and justice no longer recognises a colour of a man, at least not in Europe and not in theory in USA. Since enlightenment we have been free to think. But even though most battles have been won by liberalism the war is not over. Probably the last area where prejudice and lack of respect for freedom of men still exist is in sexual orientation. Gay marriage is an example of a much wider fight for freedom of people to love who they truly love and not be coerced to betray their real feelings. It is also a fight for those feelings to be tolerated and accepted as just as valid as feelings of other people. Many argue against gay marriage because they do not want this tolerance to be allowed. Liberty, as it turns out, has enemies of all political creeds. Lets examine of the main arguments against gay marriage and by extension against gay rights.

Marriage, in a strictly utilitarian sense, is the commitment of two people to a lasting relationship and a signal to the rest of the world, predominantly to the state, to treat the pair as a unit. This manifests itself mostly in taxation, housing rights and other administrative policies.

As it stands right now marriage mostly remains a privilege of the heterosexual. The majority discriminates against the minority of homosexuals in dictating that they are not allowed to be recognised as married. But this fails to recognise the possible contributions same sex couples can make to our society. This discrimination is also silly, entirely arbitrary and dangerous.

In order to avoid sounding religious and dogmatic some may argue along the utilitarian path and say that the original point of marriage was to provide more stable conditions in which to raise children. This pre-dates all religious thought by the virtue of happening at the dawn of humanity, before superstition and other cognitive side effects created the idea of God. The argument says that same sex couples are incapable of having children so there is no point in gay couples having marriages. It is true that same sex couples cannot reproduce. Same sex couples can however adopt (another topic of gay rights movement) and provide a loving and carrying home just as often as heterosexual couples, as proven by research. Does this not mean that providing same sex couples an opportunity to marry will result on average in even better home for their adopted children? Don’t gay marriages encourage same sex couples to adopt unwanted children and provide them with a loving home and thus benefiting society? It seems that from a utilitarian point of view same sex couples provide a net benefit, especially to orphans.

One must recognise that extending the definition of marriage to same sex couples does not in any way damage the marriage between heterosexual couples. How can it? homosexual couples are not going to climb through the window at night and steal heterosexual couples' marriage certificate. Does extending the definition of marriage result in heterosexual couples losing their love or affect their marriage? Obviously not. Imagine a situation in a heterosexual relationship where one partner, lets say the husband, tell his wife “honey, same sex marriage now is allowed, I don’t think I love you anymore. We have to split up.” Of course this is ridiculous. Discriminating against same sex couples on these grounds is not rational. It is a whim, a silly opinion, it is arbitrary.

Saying that we ought to have discrimination in one arbitrary area of life and have equality in all other areas of life may result in loss of all equality. If we can arbitrarily discriminate in one area of life, why not two areas? How about three? How about all of them? This is what arbitrariness is. The slippery slope to loss of equality before the law is thus established.

It seems to me that by following the liberal principle of equality before the law and thus extending definition of marriage to same sex couples will result in more equality before the law and a clear benefit to society. It will not result in anything catastrophic. How can recognising love and commitment between two people be a bad thing? One is perfectly entitled to dislike the gays, but why try to coerce them, or prevent them from doing good for the rest?

A question of Belief

I once spoke to a friend who was in TA with me. She was an atheist and declared herself to be such on the officer application form. During the interview she was asked how she could maintain religious soldiers’ morale and spiritual well. She could not answer this question.

This question is a perfectly reasonable question to ask. A soldier’s fighting spirit is one of the most important resources an army has. Most people on seeing the horrors of war will start to question their beliefs and in the process forget their training and orders.

On reflection my answer will avoid the prickly issue of theism versus atheism. I would tell the soldier that God does not come into consideration. The British Army’s goal is to safeguard UK and do things for the greater good. The army does not carry out God’s will but the will of the British people which are represented by the government. That is the reason why we fight. Those are good enough reasons to fight irrespective of God’s existence or will.

Holy Ethics

Many claim that even if God did not exist, religion still teaches us morals. Some would say that the proof of existence of God and his wisdom is that he gave us the meanings of right and wrong. One way or the other this is a misunderstanding of the history of man.

Start from evolution being a proved scientific fact. Palaeontology, cell biology, geology all say that beyond reasonable doubt, evolution was the process by which life has come to be the way it is today. Before we evolved into what we are now, we existed as apes. At this stage we exhibited what may be said to be ethics. We protected the young, cared for the old and injured, helped each other and disliked and punished anyone who did not. To modern man these actions would undoubtedly seem virtuous.

Were these in any way morals? I think for it to be called such, these actions would have to, at least sometimes, go against individual's true self interest, to be selfless. So did these actions go against anyone's true self interest? Not really. These actions helped the individual to interact with others and ultimately served the individual. For example, man’s evolutionary grandparents protected the young because 'workers' and hunters were needed for the group. The group served the individual, for example sharing of the kills and provision of care if the individual was injured. So the young were protected for the good of the group which in turn was for the good of the individual. So these actions are based on selfish reciprocity. These actions were a function of evolution, adaptations to working in a group. Through varies evolutionary methods of mutation and sexual selection nature taught apes to work in a social group. This tribal behaviour gave the apes a greater chance of survival. In order to take full advantage of the group apes learned to be ‘moral’.

Fast forward to the dawn of modern man. Without questioning the very existence of God, everyone would agree that at that point in time the rational fear of the dark, snakes and the like, devolved into irrational phobias and superstition. This lead to the very early pagan religions. It would seem obvious to say the mentioned biologically controlled ‘ethics’ got mixed up in sun worshiping and the early debates about the nature of existence.

Fast forward again to the modern, more sophisticated religions. By studying the history of these religions one can see that vast quantities of material for the Holy Scriptures were borrowed from earlier times. Man’s understanding and thinking grew in complexity and simple truths became clouded in layer upon layer of abstraction, ignorance and the politics and power games of the rich and powerful. For example, questioning the authority of establishment of varies religions was deemed a sin and immoral.

Many would say that actually God himself was writing texts through people’s hands. He is the one who gave us rules and laws and morals through Holy Scriptures. It may be true that he was working through people in some way but these Holy Scriptures did not give us our morals. The idea that morals came about only through Scriptures is very convenient for the religions. It gave them the licence to make up their own ethics, their own right and wrong. The establishment used this authority to grab more power and guarantee itself long term survival. However, the idea that morals come from holy texts ignores the facts.

One cannot argue with that fact that the modern morals of man existed before they were “outlined by God”. If one does argue this point, one implies that modern morals did not exist before God wrote them down. We have already seen that this is not true. Morals existed before even writing itself did, because without them early society would not have functioned, humanity would not have survived. Look for example at the Ten Commandments. Is it really true to say that murder was exceptable, that property rights did not exist and perjury was unpunished? Of course not. The ancient Egyptians were doing just fine with their almost identical laws as was the proto-Persian as well as every other early civilisation.

It is true that modern law is based partly on religious rules. In UK at least some very early laws were based on the Bible and other church writings and opinions. But the Bible itself is based on earlier biological necessities of living in a group. I think it very important to wrestle back ethics from the authority of the religious types. The pious have all too often bent and twisted ideas of right and wrong into something very ugly. Torture during the Spanish Inquisition and flying aeroplanes into skyscrapers being some examples.

This leads one to the conclusion that there is no absolute right and wrong. All of ethics become relative. This does not mean that one is allowed to do whatever one wants. Man lives within society. This form of living is far more beneficial to an individual than living outside of society. There must be rules governing the behaviour of men to safeguard freedom of one from another’s force. One is thus free to experiment, explore, create and then trade or give away fruits’ of one’s labour. This allows everyone to benefit from individuals while also protecting them. Thus law is artificial in the sense that it not created by God but it is not arbitrary in its prescription of ethics since they come from the necessities of a functioning society. The development of ethics and law must be based solely on reason.

Ethics come from responsibility to others which is ultimately based on self interest developed by evolution. The Bible simply copied this reality and injected it with a requirement for slavish and unquestioning devotion to the clergy which was used to control the peasantry and enrich the church.