Homosexuality, Gay Marriage, and the Common Good

1. Homosexuality, Gay Marriage, and the Common Good Introduction to Moral Issues

2. Undermining Marriage and A Radical Change • (Pakaluk) Homosexuality and Gay Marriage undermines the family and society • Marriage is the founding of a family, but legitimizing gay marriage would shift the idea of marriage into a definition of a long term erotic friendship. • The change does not extend marriage, but alters its nature. • The change is radical.

3. Limiting Religious Freedom • Proponents of Gay Rights legislation argue that the changes they favor would leave everything else in place • …while simply increasing the freedoms and benefits enjoyed by homosexuals. • However the proposed changes would imply the use of coercive power of the state , brought to bear against citizens who are not homosexual, precisely insofar as they act in support of marriage and the family as these are traditionally conceived. • A Christian landlord who lets a room be rented in a small apartment building will no longer be allowed to refuse, because he or she believes it will be used as a place for “sin”.

4. The Common Good • In a modern liberal state, it is typically left to religion to refresh and reinvigorate the shared beliefs most necessary to the state’s existence, and rightly so, the government for its part has aimed, generally, not to place itself at odds with the promotion or encouragement of these beliefs. • People who are religious need to be able to express their beliefs and judgments of character based on their own religion. • If homosexual acts are not morally wrong, then, obviously, it is not the case that sexual activity ought to be confined to marriage. • Undermining the role of sexual activity and family building would hurt the common good. • This fundamental shift of the goal of marriage would “enshrine the sexual revolution in law.”

5. Objective Reality of Marriage • Laws recognizing gay marriage imply the falsity of the view that marriage has an objective reality prior to the state. • If the bond of husband and wife is not by nature, than neither is the government of those who share in that bond over any children that might result • Laws recognizing gay marriage imply that parents have no objective and natural authority, prior to that of the state… • To accept gay “marriage” is to endorse the position that the belief in the family as having its own nature prior to the state is a mere whim or preference, springing from a religious viewpoint…perhaps which the state is not bound to honor

6. Parents would have no authority over their children • In a society in which changes to marriage have been implemented, children will be raised directly by the state. • Homosexual couples will see child raising as a fundamental right, and be able to change laws to take away children from heterosexual couples. • That biological parents have some special claim over their children will be seen as some kind of mysterious superstition… • Which can in any case be easily trumped by the state’s concern for what it would regard as the well-being and proper education of citizens.

7. Incompatible Gay Marriage • Why is it not absurd to hold that gay rights laws undermine society and the family? • Because they imply beliefs which are incompatible with the common pursuit of goods which one wishes to obtain in marriage and family life. • They remove a common good, a correct shared belief about the nature and good (man and woman were meant to be in a union and raise a family) • And they substitute that with something that can only be implemented through coercion of the state (gay marriage and adoption will have to be enforced.)