10 Years of Marriage Equality Support Series: Marriage Equality Is Just That

Maybe it is the fact that many marriage equality campaigns focus on the 'love=marriage' aspect, but there is considerable confusion over just what is marriage equality, and we need to address that. It is PURELY about equal opportunity that we have to address this problem. As a society we uphold equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. Everyone should have an equal opportunity before the law, but not everyone will get the same outcome and it's okay. Some people choose not to marry or cannot find the right partner, but that's okay - they have/had the opportunity to just like everyone else. Now we know that gay and lesbian people really cannot form a proper intimate relationship with the opposite sex, the basic requirement for a marriage not just on paper but in the spirit of the institution. Hence heterosexual only marriage laws effectively deny them any opportunity to enter the institution. That is inequality in opportunity. The fact that some heterosexual people who have had the equal opportunity still don't get married is besides the point. (And the fact that one of them is the Prime Minister of Australia and she is in love with a man is also besides the point.) It's really about equal opportunity rather than 'love'.

Now I want to address some people's weird idea that marriage equality is not 'equality' yet, or that it just serves as a slippery slope towards the destruction of marriage. Both views are two sides of the same coin in fact, and probably arise from the wrong belief that supporting marriage equality means that everyone in love should be able to get married. And I will address them in one go.

"But someone may want to marry their dog" - Civil marriage is part of the secular legal system. As the legal system is set up to deal with interactions between people, not other animals, it cannot and will not deal with anything like this. Animals are not legal persons and cannot enter into contracts for example. Hence nobody can marry their dog anymore than they can sign a contract with their dog or make a will in favour of their dog. Not now, not in 5000 years.

"But someone may want to marry their cousin" - Nobody is wired to be exclusively attracted to their cousin. Heterosexual men who want to marry their cousins for example are also attracted to other women, with whom they can have an intimate relationship with, with whom they can get married to and live a proper married life. They are not excluded from marriage simply because they cannot choose to marry their cousin, unlike gay and lesbian people, who are excluded from marriage because they cannot have an intimate relationship with the opposite sex. Furthermore, the ban on marrying your cousin should apply equally to heterosexual and homosexual people, in a further show of equality.

"But someone may want to marry three partners" - Marriage in the modern secular Western legal system can only accommodate two people. Otherwise there will be real inequality. For example, a monogamous married couple can get tax breaks applied to the 2 people concerned. If polygamous marriage were recognised, some people will get the same tax breaks applied to 3 or more people, which is clearly an unfair situation under our modern secular standards. Some religious states allow polygamous marriage and can make it work because the concept of fairness in their legal system is based on religious doctrines. But in a secular Western state this can never happen. Hence marriage equality REQUIRES the rejection of legally recognised polygamous 'marriages'. (In fact I think this should be a point actually made as part of citizenship education for new citizens so that they will not think it is ever possible for our laws to be amended to accommodate polygamous marriages.)
Polygamy, or polyamory as some modern Western practitioners of this idea like to call it, is also fundamentally a choice, unlike sexual orientation. I know of many married men who would otherwise like multiple sexual partners too, but chose the path of marital monogamy because they believe such an arrangement to be best for their family, and that family welfare should come before any personal sexual needs. I happen to completely agree with them here, and this I think is the spirit of marriage. Hence choosing 'polyamory' is clearly equivalent to rejecting marriage itself, and marriage will never be redefined to include something so opposite to what it is, like the definition of black cannot include white. The men that choose marriage despite their sexual appetite are also as a result able to fulfil the spirit of marriage, as whilst they would like more sexual partners, they can be properly intimate still when there is only one partner, as clearly everyone who can be intimate with more than one person can also be intimate with just one person, although it may not fulfil their sexual appetites adequately - but fulfilling sexual appetites is not what marriage is for anyway. Gay and lesbian people are also able to fulfil the spirit of marriage if they choose to, except the law is excluding them. They have not rejected marriage, the law has rejected them. As it currently stands, they can either have a proper intimate relationship with someone of the same sex but cannot enter marriage, or they can on paper 'marry' someone of the opposite sex but can never fulfil the spirit of the institution.

"Everyone is equal - to marry the opposite sex" - Let me make an analogy here. Imagine if an office job stated that you need to be over 5'9" to apply. There are no sex or racial requirements. Yet such an advertisement would likely be illegal, as the requirement to be 5'9" excludes most women, and also most men of certain races. Under Australian law, for example, this is called 'indirect discrimination'.

"Some heterosexual people cannot find the right partner either and never get married" - Let me make another analogy here. Imagine a job requiring a person be white and also have a master's degree. There are many white people without a master's degree and hence cannot apply, just like the black man with a master's degree. However, this would still constitute racial discrimination, and is clearly unacceptable. This is what 'equal opportunity' is all about.

As you can see, 1) marriage inequality is a REAL issue not a theoretical one dreamed up by activists and 2) to make things equal it ONLY requires the inclusion of same sex couples. It will NEVER require or encourage another agenda, not now, not ever. In fact, even interracial marriage was a separate issue - there was no 'inequality' there, just that it was inhumane and racist. Separate issues are argued on their separate merits, just like interracial marriage was won and marriage equality is being won right now. If somebody else wants to further change the definition of marriage, it will be up to them to argue their merits, and for the cases I listed above, they will clearly fail.
Sound changes to institutions based on good reasons will never automatically lead to unsound changes. After all, women have been able to vote for almost 100 years now, are children and animals also entitled to vote? The interracial marriage movement, whilst changing marriage law, NEVER led to the opening of the gates for polygamous marriage for example, because they are separate issues. The marriage equality movement also will NOT open the gates for them to come in and ride on our backs, not now, not ever.