While same-sex marriage is now legal, there seems to be an appetite to roll it back. As such, it is worth considering the previous fight in preparation for the future fight. Back when President Obama supported same-sex marriage he was criticized by some leaders in the black community. For example, Reverend William Owens, the president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors said that “by embracing gay marriage, President Obama is leading the country down an immoral path.”
Owens based his position on his view that same-sex marriage is “simply wrong” and that it was a mistake to consider same-sex marriage as a civil right. He also claimed that the Black Church must oppose it because “the Black Church has always been the conscience of America.” Because of this view, he called upon black pastors and Christians to stop supporting Obama. Owens seemed to claim that the President’s view was just to get the support (and money) of the “Hollywood folks.” This raised some interesting issues back then that will no doubt arise again.
Not surprisingly, those who support same-sex marriage often draw an analogy between the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the movement to secure rights for LGBT+ Americans. Supporters of same-sex marriage also compared same-sex marriage and mixed-race marriages to argue in favor of same-sex marriage rights. In the United States, it was not until the case of Loving v. Virginia in 1967 that laws against inter-racial marriages were deemed unconstitutional. Even now, some oppose mixed race marriage because they see it as immoral and unnatural. I still get the occasional paper arguing against mixed marriage in my college Ethics class.
On the face of it, mixed-marriage and same-sex marriages seem morally analogous. After all, in both cases people are denied the right to marry based on who they want to marry being the “wrong” sort of person: either the wrong race or the wrong sex. Those who favor allowing mixed-race marriages contend that race should not be a relevant factor in determining who one should be allowed to marry. In the case of those who favor same-sex marriage, it was contended that a person’s sex should not be a relevant factor in determining who one should be allowed to marry.
Given the similarity, it is tempting to think that those who supported the civil rights movements of the past and support (or at least tolerate) mixed-race marriage should also, based on consistency, support same-sex marriage.
However, this is not always the case and some people (such as Owens) who support civil rights oppose same-sex marriage. There is a reasonable question as to whether this difference is morally justified.
Owens, as noted above, takes the strategy of claiming that same-sex marriage is immoral and hence should not be supported. Given his remarks about civil rights, he presumably believed that the civil rights movement was morally good. As such, grounds are needed for distinguishing between the goodness of the civil rights movement and the alleged evil of same-sex marriage.
One stock approach is to use the religious argument against same-sex marriage. Among Christian thinkers, the basis for the religious objection is typically and famously found in Leviticus. Naturally, there must also be a mixing of norms (see my Moral Methods book) from the religious claim that homosexuality is an abomination to the moral claim that homosexuality (and thus same-sex marriage) is morally wrong. Since I argue about this general point at length in my book For Better or Worse Reasoning, I will focus on three specific points here.
The first is that basing the opposition to same sex-marriage on religious grounds runs into the problem that the same text used to attack same-sex marriage also contains passages that seem to support slavery and inequality, things inimical to the views of those who support the equality of the civil rights movement.
The second, which is a related point, is that if same-sex marriage is opposed on religious grounds, then consistency requires that other religious rules be followed. This is an instance of a general problem of using religion as the basis for ethics: when people use religion to justify or condemn one practice, they often selectively ignore parts of the text that condemn or justify other practices.
For example, consider the commandment that requires keeping the Sabbath. This, unlike the short line in Leviticus, is one of the ten major rules. However, this commandment is routinely and regularly ignored by the same people who oppose same-sex marriage, as are many other rules (such as those regarding usury and the stoning of disobedient children). If it is argued that these other rules should be ignored because of changing times or on some other grounds, the same sorts of reasons can be given for ignoring Leviticus and thus this religious foundation of the argument against same-sex marriage can be undercut. Of course, it could be argued that this interpretation of this part of Leviticus should be honored while other rules can be ignored as desired. The challenge is doing this selective ignoring in a principled manner rather than merely on the basis of prejudice and convenience.
A third point is that religious arguments were used in support of slavery, against the civil rights movement and against mixed-race marriages. As such, those who would use religious arguments against same-sex marriage while wanting to hold to civil rights will need to be careful to show that their religious arguments against same-sex marriage are legitimate while the religious based opposition to civil rights was mistaken and, of course, that the religious based support of civil rights was in the right. This could be done but the burden of proof would seem to rest on those who want to support civil rights while also opposing same-sex marriage.
Considering the above, the religious based approach does not seem to be a particularly viable means of condemning same-sex marriage if one wants to support other civil rights.
A second common way to argue against same-sex marriage is an appeal to tradition. What is claimed to be traditional marriage is good and right because it is alleged to be traditional. One problem is that appealing to tradition is a fallacy. Another problem with this, at least for those who oppose same-sex marriage while favoring civil rights is that the civil rights movement was opposed on the grounds of tradition and it involved a break with the traditions of racism and unequal rights. As such, appealing to tradition not a very viable option for those who want to oppose same-sex marriage while also supporting civil rights. The same sort of problem arises with appealing to common practice and appealing to belief. There are also logical fallacies and both were employed to argue against civil rights. As such, these do not seem to be viable ways to argue against same-sex marriage while also supporting civil rights.
Naturally, these approaches are not the only avenues to arguing that same-sex marriage is morally wrong. However, these other arguments also certainly seem to fail, as I argue in my For Better or Worse Reasoning. Unlike some opponents of same-sex marriage, those who support civil rights face the added burden of reconciling their arguments against same-sex marriage with their support of civil rights. For example, if someone argues in favor of civil rights based on the principle of equality, they would need to argue why this principle applies to civil rights but does not apply to same-sex marriage. This might be doable but the burden of proof rests on those who wish to support civil rights but also wish to oppose same-sex marriage.
Another possible approach is to argue that there is a relevant difference between the past civil rights movement and same-sex marriage. One plausible way to do this is to note that civil rights should be seen as relating to race while same-sex marriage is (obviously) a matter of sexual orientation. One stock argument is that race is not a matter of choice and hence discrimination against people based on race is wrong. Since the traditional civil rights focus on race, supporting these civil rights would thus seem right. In contrast, it could be argued that sexual orientation is a matter of choice and hence a person could choose to be straight and thus be able to marry someone of the opposite sex. In contrast, a person cannot decide to not be black and hence it makes sense to have civil rights extended to people regardless of race. In contrast, there is no such obligation to people who “choose” to be gay. There is also the point that while people cannot, in general, easily hide their race in America, they can hide their sexual orientation. Hence, features that cannot be hidden should be protected, while those that can need not be protected.
One obvious objection to this approach is arguing that being gay is no more a matter of choice than is being black or being born a woman. As such, the choice argument would not hold. Another obvious objection is that the mere fact that a person can conceal something about themselves hardly seems to justify not extending rights to them. Just because, for example, some black people can “pass” for white does not entail that they are not entitled to equal civil rights. Likewise, the fact that a gay person can pass as straight does not mean that they do not need their rights protected.
Another approach is to argue that while being of a certain race or sex (male or female) is not immoral, being gay is. If true, this claim would provide the needed relevant difference to allow a person to support civil rights while still opposing same-sex marriage.
One obvious concern with this approach is that those who oppose civil rights for minorities or women would argue that minorities or women are inferior to, for example, white men and are not entitled to the same rights. In the case of same-sex marriage, the idea is that people who are gay are morally inferior to straight people and thus not entitled to the same rights, most especially marriage rights. As such, those who support minorities or women having civil rights while opposing the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples need to show that there is a difference between homosexuals and other people that warrants the difference in treatment.
In the case of people who otherwise supported civil rights, such as Owens, the burden of proof would appear to be on them to show that while certain people should have full civil rights other people should be denied the right to marry.
There is, of course, also the issue of whether marriage rights should be denied to people who are immoral. Other civil rights do not seem to require being moral. As I have argued in Better or Worse Reasoning, there is not a general moral requirement for marriage, So, for example, a serial killer could always legally marry a murderer, if they are different sexes. As such, there seems to be no general grounds for denying marriage rights to same-sex couples, even if it is assumed that being gay in and of itself makes a person morally evil.
It could be argued that marriage rights are, in fact, denied to people who are immoral (or who want to engage in immoral activities). Pedophiles are rightfully denied the right to marry underage children (although what counts as underage varies by state) , people who are fond of animals are denied the right to marry animals, close relatives are denied the right to marry, necrophiliacs are denied the right to marry corpses and so on. However, this point can easily be countered, and I do so in my For Better or Worse Reasoning. After all, there are good moral arguments against marrying children, corpses and animals, mainly based on the obvious notion that they cannot provide consent. The same arguments do not, however, hold against same-sex couples.
On the face of it, it is difficult for a person to consistently support civil rights while at the same time opposing same-sex marriage rights. While clearly not impossible, the burden of proof rests on those who wish to defend civil rights for themselves while not extending those rights to others they regard as immoral or inferior. As this is being written, same-sex marriage is still legal in the United States, but no battle for rights is ever over.
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