SSM AND PARENTING: Ben Bateman replies to Lucia Liljegren

Lucia Liljegren has commented on a thread that started with Gabriel Rosenberg's syllogism on SSM: Parents ought to be married. Gays are parents. Therefore gays ought to be married. I objected to the way he used the word "parents." My objection was confusing to him, so I attempted to clarify it. In his responses to me and Mary Catelli, he has started using the clearer term "adoptive parents," which I appreciate.

Lucia has proposed a revised version of the syllogism:

1 Parents who take on the legal responsibility to care and raise children ought to be married.

2 Some gays have taken on the legal responsibility to care for and raise children.

3 Therefore, some gays ought to be married.

In this much clearer revised form, I have two substantive objections to it:

First, it restricts gay marriage to those couples who have adopted the same child. That form of SSM would certainly be far less objectionable than what is being proposed, but I doubt that SSM supporters would agree with it. Mr. Rosenberg doesn't.

Second, the first premise is still ambiguous. It could mean either:

a) if two people jointly adopt a child and the law allows them to marry, then as a moral matter they should marry, or

b) the law should be changed to permit marriage among all those who jointly adopt the same child.

Option (a) is unobjectionable, but (b) produces some weird results. If marriage should be open to everyone who jointly adopts a child, then a single mother should be able to marry anyone who will help with the child's care and support: her sister, or her mother--or her brother! And if her sister, mother and brother are all willing to commit to raising the child, then the whole family should be able to marry as a group.

Encouraging people to commit to childraising isn't a bad idea. And perhaps there should be some legal recognition of a "joint committed childraiser" status. But that's not marriage.

Marriage is properly about procreation--the making of babies. A woman can't marry her sister or her mother because they can't produce a child together. She can't marry her brother because they shouldn't produce a child together. We limit marriage to two people because that's the minimum number our species needs to make a child. Marriage brings exclusivity: You can only marry one person at a time, and you're supposed to have sex only with that person. That way, the father can be confident that his wife's children are genetically his, and the mother can become pregnant knowing that she and her children will have his financial and emotional support during her pregnancy and while the children grow up.

But if we shift the point of marriage from procreation to childraising, then none of those features of marriage make any sense:

If the point of marriage is childraising, then we should prefer that single mothers marry their parents and siblings, as their genetic bond with the child may impel them to provide better care.

If the point of marriage is childraising, then we should encourage marriages of the largest groups possible. The more people who join in the marriage, the better collective job they'll do in caring and providing for the child.

If the point of marriage is childraising, then there is no reason for sexual fidelity. The child won't really care who is having sex with whom. And there is no reason to require one marriage at a time. Bill Gates could afford to adopt hundreds of children. If he chose to do that, why wouldn't he be entitled to marry the natural or adoptive parents of all those children?

Encouraging adults to commit the raising of children seems like a noble goal, and perhaps we should lobby our legislatures to better reward those who do it. But why call it marriage when it's so completely unlike what we've always understood marriage to be?
posted by Eve at 7:37 PM | link

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