the arguments against same-sex marriage are all extremely gay, part 2

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

Photo by Kyle Bushnell on Unsplash

People always ask me, “Amos, why are you such an amazing ally? How are you so brave?” I’ve tossed and turned under my rainbow sheets in search of an answer to that question, and the truth is, it’s probably because I know exactly what it’s like to be a gay person in modern society.

Less than a year ago, true story, I wore my classic all-pink get-up into town. The town happened to be in West Berkshire, which, if you’re not from England, is easily the roughest part of the UK.

Not minutes after I’d stepped outside, an adolescent boy yelled, “Are you gay?” in my direction. I said I wasn’t, implausibly, and carried on walking. The boy and his freinds proceeded to yell things in my direction, but I couldn’t hear; my headphones were back on, probably playing one of my favourite podcasts, like Queer as Fact or Movies That Made Us Gay.

As their voices faded into the background, a technicolour arc of light, refracted in the mist, struck me in the pineal gland. Suddenly I saw, as if I’d lived the lived experiences of 1,000 gay lives — I felt with the LGBTQ+ community in ways I’d never felt, like I knew exactly what they were all going through, only better. No longer was I “Ally on Instagram, silent IRL”. I was Sneaky_Icelandic_Carrot_Vibes_500 on Instagram, and defender of equal marriage IRL, on Substack.

A few months ago, I published “the arguments against same-sex marriage are all extremely gay, part 1”. In it, I responded to the intellectual machinations of Robert P. George, Sherif Girgis, and Ryan Anderson, some of same sex marriage’s sharpest critics.

Alas, a part 1 implies a part 2, and so I’m bound to keep going through the book. In this post, which promises nothing but the best of everything and none of the worst of anything, I’ll examine three of the four consequentialist arguments of What is Marriage, colon, Man and Woman, colon, A Defense. The thrust of these arguments is that same-sex marriage legalization is not a harmless policy move; legalising will, in expectation, harm the institution of friendship, harm people’s understanding of heterosexual marriage, and set back the cause of religious freedom. (Whether same-sex marriage is bad for children is the subject of the next instalment.)