Angry in the Great White North

The question was raised why it was that many believed that homosexuals should not be married, assuming they are willing to see marriage as obligations and not as another right to enjoy.

That's a fair question, and it deserves an answer.

The first part of the answer is that a homosexual couple can have no true obligation in a marriage relationship. When a heterosexual couple are married, the are obliged to remain in a monogamous relationship. Tied to that obligation are the biological consequences of failing to meet that obligation. Those consequences are pregnancies from relationships outside of the marriage bond, and the resulting personal and social fallout.

Indeed, it is the guarantee of the paternity of children, a guarantee that is derived from the monogamous relationships, that is the root of marriage contract.

A homosexual couple cannot have children. I'm ignoring technological assistance, since it is simply another contract, in which the necessary biological support is provided by a third person of the appropriate gender (even if it is just the necessary cells). Effectively, a new "marriage" is created for the time it takes to make a child, and then it is dissolved. Adoption follows the same principle.

The fact is that the marriage in question, between the homosexual individuals, cannot produce children. As such, there can be no true obligation for fidelity, other than some artificially imposed rule. In a heterosexual marriage, ignoring the obligation of fidelity has consequences, even if there is a mutual agreement to ignore the obligation. That is not true with homosexuals.

If homosexuals do not need to be monogamous, then a homosexual "marriage" is just a mimicry of heterosexual marriage. The marriage mimics the form of heterosexual marriage but without the underlying function. In fact, there is no logical reason for the mimicking the marriage form (limiting sexual partners as a strategy to avoid disease works for both homosexuals and heterosexuals, and in any case, is not the reason for marriage, which is built around procreation and not sexual health).

If there is no logical reason, then the homosexual marriage is illogical. It imposes limitations on the behaviour of the homosexual partners that have no grounding in biology. That can and does lead to frustration, especially among homosexual men, where research shows most continue to have multiple partners regardless of whether they are in committed relationships.

As it is, a homosexual marriage is an absurd imitation of a heterosexual marriage, not because homosexuals do not deserve to have some sort of socially recognized relationship, but because the function and form of marriage is not designed for the biological realities of homosexual relationships.

As unfortunate as it sounds, the best word for this is "aping". Homosexual marriage apes heterosexual marriage, since the dictionary defines to ape as "to mimic slavishly but often with an absurd result".

I don't think most homosexuals want their relationships perceived in such a way.

Homosexuals should design their own institution, suited to their realities, both social and biological. The problem with taking marriage and adopting it is that to avoid the absurdity of homosexuals following all the rules of heterosexual marriage, marriage must shed those obligations. Marriage without those obligations might make more sense for homosexuals, but it guts the meaning of marriage for heterosexuals, and will result in exactly the problems for heterosexuals that the more restrictive form of the institution was originally designed to prevent.

The alternative is to have marriage mean something different for homosexuals and heterosexuals. Homosexual couples have obligations when married that are suited to them, while heterosexuals have a different (and more restrictive) set of obligations, these differences recognizing the biological realities of the two situations.

But this solution is also problematic. Marriage becomes a word for two very different types of relationships, and this debate has been framed by many as a rebellion against having a separate but equivalent (though not identical) institution for homosexuals. If we decide that marriage should mean something different for homosexuals, then why not give it a different label to avoid confusion?

Seems reasonable and logical. But reason and logic seem to be in short supply in this debate.