10 Years of Marriage Equality Support Series: Marriage, Procreation and Same Sex Marriages: Part 2

Regarding the argument over marriage, procreation and same sex marriages, I sometimes cannot help but wonder if the people arguing on this basis against same sex marriages are really angry at something else, and are unfortunately taking their anger out on marriage equality. In what I believe to be an unfortunate development, many people in society have really decided that marriage shouldn't be about procreation and family but should be about only love. This, however, started out in heterosexual society and has nothing to do with marriage equality.
A common theme around opposition to same sex marriages state that it is a redefinition of marriage, and the last time that happened was with no fault divorce, which has brought on the consequence of broken families. From this line or argument, it is not hard to infer that at least some of the opposition to marriage equality is based on a fear that marriage will be further taken to be not about procreation and family. However, one can support marriage equality in the same way they support infertile couples being able to enter into marriage, without taking away from the belief that marriage is about procreation, unless one is an ideological purist, which most of us are not and should not be in relation to social matters. I, for example, am principally opposed to the idea of unilateral divorce. I personally am only not opposed to unilateral no fault divorce as law now because I respect the majority opinion on this. I see unilateral divorce as undermining the family, and I am not going to apologize for this. No fault divorce is applied across the spectrum, and represents a core change in the meaning of marriage, perhaps the most radical change ever. Marriage equality, on the other hand, is about extending some decency and equality to a minority group, and does not represent a core change to marriage as I outlined previously in Part 1.
There is indeed a case to be made for re-opening the discussion of divorce. It won't be popular, and it sure is not one of my priorities to help it along at the moment, but there are indeed merits to re-opening this discussion. There is surely widespread discomfort with the consequences of no fault divorce, and I believe only a frank discussion will solve the problem. But blaming everything wrong with no fault divorce on 'gay marriage' is the coward's way out. It is unfortunately too often cowards who hate the consequences of no fault divorce on society yet would not discuss that in fear of backlash, who have used 'gay marriage' as a surrogate thing to attack instead. We must not give credit to these cowards, cowards who do not even dare to challenge what they really believe is wrong but instead use an oppressed minority as a scapegoat.

10 Years of Marriage Equality Support Series: Marriage, Procreation and Same Sex Marriages: Part 1

Some people have argued that, as marriage was clearly designed for procreation, same sex couples just do not belong in marriage. They also say that allowing same sex couples to marry will mean that marriage is redefined to be about the emotional needs of adults.
I agree that marriage was clearly designed for procreation and it isn't just about love. Therefore, I do not support the idea of 'freedom to marry', I only support 'marriage equality'. There is no absolute freedom to marry just anybody you like, and there should not be. But including same sex couples in marriage is not about this. Marriage is a specific institution, and it should be kept that way.
The core of marriage is about procreation, it is the reason marriage exists. However we do allow infertile couples to get married. Anti equality advocates argue that this is because they still 'resemble' the arrangement for procreation, a wishy-washy argument that may also apply to at least some gay couples, e.g. butch-femme couples, and may be even applied to all gay couples since all of them are in conjugal relationships. I would rather argue that we let infertile couples marry because we are a decent society, and do not wish to exclude infertile people from marriage, so we have decided that infertile couples who otherwise live in a marriage like commitment are allowed to be married, even when they cannot procreate. We have made this decision as a society because the cost of maintaining absolute purity regarding marriage and its roots in procreation are not worth the discriminatory outcome that would taint our society so badly. The same case can be clearly made too regarding same sex couples.
More importantly, including infertile couples in marriage has not affected the central idea that marriage is for procreation, making the 'cost' of such inclusion only technical, and the case for excluding them only palatable to ideological purists, and not to the majority of the population where practical outcomes matter most. This is because infertile couples are a minority, and extending inclusiveness to them does not affect the central idea of marriage. To believe that by including gay people, comprising 2% of the population, in marriage is going to change what marriage is, is a ridiculous proposition. To uphold ideological purity now is even more ridiculous, when it has already been lost by including infertile couples. Excluding a whole class of people from an important institution in society because of a characteristic they were born with clearly taints the conscience of our society, and is clearly not worth it when the benefits are only to maintain some ideological purity, that has already been lost anyway.
A related argument against same sex marriages is that heterosexual marriages are 'complementary' whilst homosexual relationships are not. However, it is the same argument as the one above, just without spelling out the specifics. I cannot see where all heterosexual marriages are complementary and gay relationships are not, except in the field of procreation. Again, in the field of procreation, infertile couples can be said to be not strictly 'complementary' in function again, at least in some cases (e.g. where there is no womb for creating offspring in the woman). Again, to insist that this 'complementary' idea be an absolute requirement of marriage in every case is just another form of ideological purity over practical outcomes, and pertaining to an ideological purity that has already been lost anyway.

10 Years of Marriage Equality Support Series: Why Marriage Equality Concludes a Movement

Marriage equality is the civil rights issue of our generation. And not just that - it is likely the LAST major equal rights movement. Gender equality has been achieved, in my opinion. There may be a lot of racism out there, but at least the laws of modern Western nations are not actively racist (like segragation in the US or the White Australia Policy). People are also no longer discriminated in law based on their religion. In recent years gay and lesbian rights have advanced, to the point where marriage equality is the only missing thing in many Western nations.

It is in this background that I have come to the conclusion that marriage equality isn't just the end of the struggle for gay legal rights, but a perfect end to the whole equal rights movement. Marriage equality may be much less challenging and impact a smaller population than some of the previous waves, but it will be our generation that will have finally achieved the equal rights dream. It will be for this that we will be remembered.

Of course, the eradication of cultural racism and homophobia, as well as general social justice and civil rights issues remain things that we need to continue to fight for in the long term. Whilst homophobia eradication seems quite successful in parts of Europe, racism appears much more deep rooted unfortunately. But that's a separate issue.

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.

10 Years of Marriage Equality Support Series: People Against Gay Equality, Don't Fear Marriage Equality

It is understandable that those people who are against gay equality are against marriage equality. However, that is stupid.

Marriage equality has been said to 'fracture' gay communities. I believe some degree of this will happen. The gay identity will never be the same again, meanwhile, marriage will always be almost overwhelmingly (97%+) straight. Since majority rules, and 2% of people don't usually get a say in defining any culture, marriage will be culturally constructed in a straight way as it always has been. Gay couples living under marriage will be a like a racial minority living in a country that doesn't even want to speak of multiculturalism. There will never be any special accommodation for gay couples even when they actually need it, because identical treatment is all a minority can usually demand - and sometimes they even get inferior treatment (e.g. some places where gay marriage is legal gay IVF is banned). Meanwhile, those gay couples not living under marriage will be seen as unstable. This is because they will have no other legally and socially recognised bond to resort to. They will likely become a voiceless underclass.

I personally support marriage equality for various reasons, but I do not think it will bring 'gay equality'. Marriage equality will come at a price, but it is a price to the gay community, and I think they accept it, so I am happy to support marriage equality. For the straight community, marriage has always, and will always, be theirs either way, because of demographics. They have nothing to fear.

10 Years of Marriage Equality Support Series: Understanding the Implications

Ten years ago, I could not say I was totally on board with gay equality as much as I can say that now. However, this year (March specifically) marks the 10th anniversary of me actively supporting marriage equality (then simply called same-sex marriage rights). My initial support of marriage equality came from a perspective of social libertarianism, inspired by the implications of the post-911 policies of conservative administration. At that time I was angered by the decision of Blair and Howard to enter the war on Iraq, even though a clear majority of their nations simply do not agree. 'Not in my name, not with my taxes' was a standard protest slogan.

Ten years later, marriage equality has long become a number one priority for me at the ballot box and elsewhere. At this time I am now angered by politicians including some here in Australia to block equality, even though a clear majority of their nations simply do not agree. 'Not in my name, not with my taxes' seems to apply equally well now.

A constant theme that we see is that we should not give too much power to governments on social matters. To let them regulate what society should and should not do, what values our nations should have etc. is simply dangerous.