There Are Good Secular Reasons to Disallow Same-Sex Marriage

My thanks to HonestDiscussioner for suggesting this debate. It's hard to fit everything I want to say in this final response. I'm going to end with (1) a summary of my initial argument and (2) general replies to the latest criticisms brought forth by Con. If you have not read this entire debate, do not vote. I don't particularly care what side you vote for (though of course I strongly uge a vote for Pro), but I do care that you've carefully understood the arguments brought forth.The Secular Case Against SSM: SynopsisTo determine whether a marriage policy is just/unjust, we first need to know something about what marriage is. This is true even if marriage ultimately amounts to a social construction, since even that amounts to at least a provisional account of marriage. We can't get far in a debate regarding justice about x unless we have some knowledge of what x is.Marriage, I argued, should be thought of as a comprehensive union with a special link to children. This definition has two parts, each of which correspond to the private and public purposes of marriage. Marriage is a comprehensive union in that coitus joins together a man and his wife in a way that makes them an organic whole, viz. their parts coordinate toward a common end, one that finds its fulfillment in the creation of children: hence the special link to children. Not all marriages exemplify this norm, as infertile couples show, but all unions of man and wife are directed to this as a proper end.But why accept this account? Two reasons. First, the political argument: The state incentivizes marriage for a public reason. The conjugal conception of marriage provides this public reason, since marriage essentially concerns the welfare of third parties in virtue of its special link to children. Other relationships, such as friendships or homosexual unions, may have their own unique goods, but they are essentially private unions irrelevant to legal recognition and protection. Second, the metaphysical argument: the conjugal conception of marriage best accounts for our pre-theoretical intuitions regarding marriage. By this I mean that it carries cumulative explanatory superiority over other models in that it accounts for the unitive dimension of marriage and its status as a human good. This was explained in my R1 argument. There is thus no wonder why US courts (and the common law) have historically affirmed this understanding of marriage (see previous citations).Criticisms and Replies1. Bare assertion/begging the questionReply: Con insists that I have only asserted the conjugal position as true. This is charge is false. I was clear in providing (1) an exposition of my case and (2) an explanation as to why it should be preferred over other accounts. My argument does rely on certain assumptions, but nowhere did I take them for granted. Instead, I provided justifications aimed to demonstrate their reasonableness. The fact that Con has responded to some of these justifications means that this charge is specious. To those I now turn.2. SSM DOES promote a public interest!Reply: One of the points that I took great pains to emphasize was the relevance of kind-membership in determining which social institutions to recognize. This point is crucial when it comes to Con's argument that spreading marital norms to same-sex individuals would benefit the public good. Benefits do matter, but what matters more is whether they are suited for social structures in which they are said to inhere. In other words, same-sex marriage may be able to mimic some of the advantages of traditional marriages, but that doesn't justify treating them as equals if in fact they are different in kind. Companionships, for example, do mimic some of what goes in in marriage, but this similarity means little. Whatever superficial similarities there may be, it doesn't touch on the real issues at stake -- issues which are fundamentally metaphysical. Of course, Con notes that his own argument here depends on marriage between a social construction that can be molded to a wide range of purposes. So whether his argument succeeds will depend in part on whether marriage is in fact a social construction. 3. Marriage is a social construction Reply: If we want to get marriage right, we should pay serious attention to the metaphysical questions at stake. So suppose that marriage is socially constructed. This would seem to make marriage policy contingent on prevailing attitudes, which would -- at certain periods of time -- have meant denying interracial couples the right to marry. Con denies this consequence, saying that people have a core essence. This response confuses individuals with the relationships they enter into. A relationship supervenes on those who enter into it, so treating a relationship as a social construction is not the same as treating those who voluntarily enter into it as social constructions as well. Con therefore does not avoid the absurd implications of a constructionist understanding of marriage.At any rate, Con has given us no good reason to suppose that this is true. He does note the fact that some societies have (to a limited degree) treated marriage differently. But so what? The presence of disagreement doesn't imply that there's no right answer to what's being disagreed about. Moreover, looking at history isn't the only way we can settle disagreements. Philosophers ranging from Aristotle to John Rawls have noted that pure reason ("reflective equilibrium" for Rawls) is another way of knowing. History aids, but does not exhaust the paths to knowledge.4. The harm principle Reply: There are two things to note about this argument. First, I reject the principle wholesale. It relies on a very controversial framework of political philosophy (i.e. contemporary liberalism) that Con hasn't attempted to justify. I see no reason to simply grant him his assumptions here. Second, and more importantly, the principle begs the question. Let's suppose the arguments for conjugal marriage succeed and that marriage is indeed a comprehensive union ordered to children. In that case, those who promote same-sex marriage are promoting a false view of what marriage actually is. Promulgation of this view by the state would amount to false teaching, which is harmful to intellectual virtues. This may not be physical harm, but it is a species of harm nevertheless. The state should care about all types of harm -- not just physical harm -- since the well-being of citizens extends to their physical and intellectual lives.The point, then, is this: Before we can determine whether same-sex marriage is harmful, we first need to know something about what marriage is. And to know what marriage is, we need to know how people are constituted with respect to forming unions with each other. Here I fully agree with Con that we need to understand people. We differ only in the conclusions where this leads us to. The conjugal position provides a rich and powerful philosophical anthropology under which real bodily union is possible. I cannot say the same for his understanding of marriage.The harm question is a very interesting one, but it is secondary to the more basic metaphysical question. 5. Misc. Points A secular argument is simply one which relies on reasons accessible to all; that is, one does not have to be a member of a special private sect (such as a religion) to access them. This parallels Rawls' idea of "public reason." [1] All of the arguments I've given here pass this test. They don't require adherence to any exclusive belief system.I'm not sure why Con mentioned child care, since my arguments here are purely philosophical; they don't depend on statistics. But, see Marks [2] and Regnerus [3].At the risk of sounding cliche, the main problem in my opponent's arguments is that nearly all beg the question!THE RESOLUTION IS AFFIRMED.______NOTES1. See Rawls, Political Liberalism and Wolfe, Natural Law Liberalism2. http://tinyurl.com...3. http://tinyurl.com...