Volume 4, Issue 1 - Single-Sex Marriage

Proposals to amend the Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriages were recently actively discussed in the U.S. Senate and are likely to receive attention in the House before the year’s end. This article situates arguments for these proposals within the history of attempts to amend the Constitution related to marriage by providing the first detailed, synthetic analysis of such previously proposed amendments. This examination reveals 133 previously proposed amendments to the Constitution relating to marriage, consisting primarily of proposals to prohibit interracial marriage, proposals to prohibit polygamy, and proposals to empower Congress to make uniform laws concerning marriage and divorce. By tracing the arguments made in support of these amendments, this article reveals a strong resonance between prior attempts to constitutionalize aspects of the institution of marriage and current proposed amendments. The article also argues that, in hindsight, the previously proposed amendments were not necessary because state and federal legislatures and courts were able to address problems relating to marriage without amending the Constitution and without destabilizing the delicate balance of power between states and the federal government. Against this background, the article concludes that current proposals to amend the Constitution are similarly neither necessary nor wise.

This essay asks a seemingly simple question: Can it ever be ethical to take a benefit that is invidiously denied others? Posed in such stark terms, the question seems to admit only one answer: “no.” But many, many heterosexuals voluntarily accept the benefits of marriage that are invidiously denied to their gay friends and family. This essay is an attempt to reconcile this conflict. The reconciliation we propose avoids total renunciation. Instead, we suggest a theory of limited disgorgement, a pragmatic formula to determine how much privileged people should give up if they decide to accept benefits invidiously denied to others.

This Essay criticizes the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment as inconsistent with the principle of federalism. It argues that after recent Supreme Court decisions on the rights of gays, it is likely that federal and state laws discriminating against the recognition of same-sex marriages are likely to be found unconstitutional. It then argues that a constitutional amendment defining marriage is inconsistent with the purposes behind our federal system of government, and that a more preferable approach would preserve to each state the ability to define marriage for itself.

The proponents of same-sex marriage have long argued that committed lesbian and gay couples should have the same legal options as committed straight couples, including marriage. Same-sex marriage opponents have shifted from one argument to another in an effort to find one that can appeal to the increasing number of Americans open to equal rights for gay people. Since the 1990s, opponents have argued that allowing same-sex marriage would undermine the institution of marriage. In recent publications, Hoover Institute scholar Stanley Kurtz has expanded this argument and provided evidence to support it. He argues that Scandinavian "registered partnerships", which provide same-sex couples with almost all the same rights and responsibilities as marriage, are "both an effect and a reinforcing cause of this Scandinavian trend toward unmarried parenthood." According to Kurtz, "Once marriage is separated from the idea of parenthood, there seems little reason to deny marriage, or marriage-like partnerships, to same-sex couples. By the same token, once marriage (or a status close to marriage) has been redefined to include same-sex couples, the symbolic separation between marriage and parenthood is confirmed, locked-in, and reinforced."Eskridge, Spedale, and Ytterberg dissent from Kurtz's speculative causal link between registered partnerships and what he calls the "end" of marriage in Scandinavia. To begin with, the authors question Kurtz's logic. Family law throughout much of the West has, arguably, undermined marriage as an institution by making it easier to exit and by providing civil alternatives with some of the benefits and few of the obligations. But expanding the eligibility of marriage, or a parallel institution, to same-sex couples who want to take on the civil obligations as well as the benefits of marriage does not logically undermine the institution of marriage. More important, the evidence from Scandinavia refutes rather than supports Kurtz's logic. Long-range trends in marriage rates, divorce rates, and nonmarital births either have been unaffected by the advent of same-sex partnerships or have moved in a direction that suggests that the institution of marriage is strengthening. Finally, the authors focus on the security of children in Scandinavia and find none of the ill effects posited by Kurtz. In a concluding section, Eskridge, Spedale, and Ytterberg raise normative questions relevant to the ongoing search for arguments to deny gay people civil equality. The big loser in such a campaign is marriage. By scapegoating gay marriage (or partnerships) as the "cause" of marriage's decline, pseudo-conservatives tend to reinforce the actual causes of the decline - the options straight couples are utilizing, such as no-fault divorce and cohabitation rights.

In the Republic, Plato describes a stage in social decay called “formlessness,” where all sorts of differences are accepted and none is preferred. No one need hold office or obey. People are impatient with all the ties that ought to bind them. Plato's formess city displays three deplorable features. One is the denigration of law and custom. A second is ethical skepticism or nihilism. A third is the repudiation of duty. These features also characterize the divorce culture and the same-sex marriage movement. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights reflects a philosophy quite the reverse of Plato’s formless city. Its philosophy of the family respects custom, embraces objectivism, and recognizes duty.