Last week I mentioned that I wanted to comment on Maggie Gallagher’s piece on the marriage debate for it angered me greatly when I read it (of course reading this ultra-conservative approach will always anger me so I don’t know why I do it). Of course, there’s a whole blog related to the topic at marriagedebate.com.

Apparently, losing the marriage argument ‘means losing the idea that children need mothers and fathers’. How? Why does the fact that you allow same-sex couples to marry suddenly mean heterosexual couples won’t form unions and families (married or not) and somehow deprive children of their parents?

And how do you get to “The consequences of our current retreat from marriage is not a flourishing libertarian social order, but a gigantic expansion of state power and a vast increase in social disorder and human suffering”?

There is a huge misunderstanding here. Why is it always assumed that, by allowing same-sex couples to form recognised partnerships, that everybody else will stop. It’s not as if all the straight people in the world are suddenly going to decide not to marry because another group of people can. Why would they? If Maggie’s quoted ‘marriage recovery’ exists then it is from a change in the way people relate to each other and not because gay couples can not marry. It’s not a choice of one or the other for gay couples. They will not form heterosexual marriages because they can’t have a legally binding partnership of their own. They will simply continue to suffer.

I believe I have a reasonably wide circle of friends both gay and straight. Of all the gay couples I know many have been together for a very long time. By allowing those couples to marry we do not stop children from having mothers and fathers nor suddenly see an expansion of state power.

So, why are traditional marriage supporters so afraid?

On this day…

• 2002: Nearly The End of July