the arguments against same-sex marriage are all extremely gay, part 1

Contra Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George on "What Is Marriage?"

Heyyo! :) If you want to support me—a lowly, lowly student dressed in sackcloth and ashes, tears in my eyes, etc.—consider upgrading your subscription and growing Awol’s Army! I’ll make it well worth your while (wink wink). Now, on with the show…

---

As an empathetic and equity-minded ally (6,10” btw), I’m a big believer in equal marriage.

Unfortunately, I’m also a philosophy student, so I’m supposed to do this thing where I look at the best arguments from the smartest people who disagree with me, consider them charitably, and see if I can come up with any reasoned and non-screechy objections (#WakandaForever).

I’ve recently been doing this with the pre-2015 arguments against same-sex marriage, and my provisional conclusion, not having read all the books I plan to read yet, is that they’re not very good. That said, they’re not totally braindead, and are certainly less so than most of my fellow liberals and leftists assume.

We begin this series with What is Marriage?, colon, Man and Woman, colon, A Defense, the fun group project of three eminent thinkers: Sherif Gergis — a Notre Dame lawyer who clerked for Samuel Alito — Ryan T. Anderson — who they banned from the Amazon best-seller list — and Robert P. George — Princeton philosopher and best friend of Cornel West. (Unfortunately, the only acronym of their names with a vowel in it is “GAG”, so I’ll refer to them as “The Trio” from here on out.)

My goal is to offer a measured-yet-entertaining critique of What Is Marriage?, which will span multiple blog posts. I will also engage other critics of same-sex marriage — some of them from within the LGBTQ community — in my quest for giving the One Man, One Woman crowd a fair hearing.

In this first instalment, I’ll consider the ‘nature’ of marriage — whether marriage is a comprehensive union between one man and one woman, whether this question matters, whether marriage is a ‘basic good’ in the way the Trio claim, and whether this gives even a prima facie reason to wall same-sex couples off from the institution of ‘marriage’.

Though I’ll probably make some instalments free, most will lie behind a paywall. (To clarify: none of them will “lie” since they shall all be telling the truth, but they’ll “lie behind a paywall” in the figurative sense of assuming a horizontal resting position on a flat surface behind a paywall, minus the horizontal resting position and the flat surface.)

[Scandalous picture below the fold.]