Gay marriage violates tradition.

Yes, most cultures have defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman for hundreds if
not thousands of years. But tradition is a mixed bag. It includes slavery and grotesque exploitation of
workers, or course, the denial of rights to women and the execution of those who committed thought
and property crimes. Traditionally, we treated illnesses with ineffective or dangerous mumbo jumbo,
cast aside the disabled and righteously persecuted those with differing religious views.

Integrating a society and expanding human rights has always shattered tradition, and we have
consistently been better off for it.
Gay couples can't produce children.
Marriage is a reflection of the biological necessity of a one-to-one heterosexual union for procreation,
true enough, and it provides a legal framework that strengthens that union for the benefit of all.
But that's not all marriage is, by any means, which is why the law generally allows prisoners to marry
even when they're likely never to be released, has no bar against elderly couples getting married,
imposes no fertility requirements on prospective marriage partners and considers long-term
childless marriages equal to others.
Further, lesbian couples often get pregnant (with outside help, admittedly, but many heterosexual
couples get outside help as well) and their families could benefit as well from the legal framework of
marriage.
Having a mom and a dad is better for children than having two moms or two dads.
I had an impassioned email argument on just this point last week with an old friend who otherwise
supports full equal rights for gays and lesbians.
"My intuitive sense and common sense tells me there are benefits to heterosexual two-parent
situations," he wrote (our entire exchange is published online at chicagotribune.com/zorn ). "Legions
of people with years of parenting wisdom think there is a difference between two dads or moms, and
one of each. The burden of proof is on those who want to set aside the widely accepted norm."
First, no, when it comes to denying a basic right to a class of people, the burden of proof falls on
those who rely on intuition and common sense which, I'm just sayin', happen to be the support
pillars of all forms of bigotry rather than evidence.
Benefits? Harms? Quantify them or stand down.
Making that case won't be easy. Studies show little developmental or social difference between
children raised by heterosexual parents and children raised by homosexual parents. In fact on 2010
study in the journal Pediatrics found that children of lesbians scored better in such areas as self
esteem, behavior and academic performance than children of straight parents.
Second, even if we concede for the sake of discussion that a stable, loving male-female couple is the
gold standard for parenting, it's otherwise offensive to deny those who fall short of the gold standard
the right to marry.
For instance, even if data-mining researchers could demonstrate a strong probability that certain
pairings would produce suboptimal parents --- couples without high school diplomas, say, or
couples with a 30-year gap in their ages or couples with three or more divorces between them -- we
would never think of denying such couples marriage licenses.

Legalizing same-sex marriage will put us on the slippery slope toward legalizing
polygamy.
The practical and philosophical arguments pro and con for multiple-partner marriages (hey, you
want to talk about tradition!) are largely distinct from the arguments pro and con about marriage
equality. Historians find, for instance, that it destabilizes a society when some men take many wives
and leave large numbers of other men without the opportunity to mate.
Same-sex marriage does not fundamentally alter the basic idea of two people agreeing to unite for
life and taking on the responsibilities and privileges of that agreement.
Proposals to legalize multiple-partner marriages, should they ever seriously arise in the legislatures
and the courts, would be considered separately from laws regarding single-partner marriages, just as
the law now considers alcohol separately from crack cocaine, and hasn't slid helplessly down the
slope to legalize them both.
Same-sex marriage trivializes and therefore weakens the institution of heterosexual
marriage.
I almost didn't include this argument on the list because it's faded so dramatically in recent years as
country after country, state after state has allowed gays and lesbians to marry with no measurable
detriment to straight marriage or conventional families

If anything, philosophically, the fervor with which same-sex couples demand to be granted the
dignity and respect of legal marriage underscores the value of marriage and ought to remind us
straight couples not to take it lightly or for granted.
Homosexual behavior is immoral and ought not be encouraged.
I will not debate the morality of various forms of private sexual conduct between consenting adults
and neither should our lawmakers.

To me, immoral conduct is that which harms others, period. To you or your religious tradition, it
may encompass much more, and that's fine. Advocates aren't asking you or your officiants to bless
gay marriage, celebrate it or even, in your heart, to like it. They're asking you to recognize the line
America tries to maintain between personal morality and the judgment of the law; between what's
your business and what's none of your business.
Homosexual conduct itself has been legal since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy
laws in 2003. And if anything, encouraging same-sex couples to commit to one another for life will
decrease promiscuous behavior among gay people, should that be of particular concern.
My funny way of showing respect
The correspondence between me and my old friend to which I alluded above ended genially, but it
generated yet another lengthy and heated debate in the comment thread that didn't end so well.
Toward the bottom, one of my long-time sparring partners on the blog said he was hurt and angry by
how warmly I'd objected to his views (I called them churlish and tedious).
"People like me have to accept an extraordinarily redefinition of marriage," he wrote, "and must
accept that we are not only tedious and churlish but quite possibly there lurks within us some sort of
unspeakable bigotry or indeed evil if we do not submit to this agenda in its entirety?"

He went on, "The gay rights movement has done an outstanding job of propaganda in comparing
itself to the civil rights movement. That comparison is a deep insult to the fight for black civil rights
in this country, unless you can point out a heterosexual segregated lunch counter or school, which
you can't."
My answer was not much of an olive branch :
Gay people have been treated horribly in our society and most other societies for, well, forever.
They have been marginalized, ostracized and abused, and unlike others who have suffered such fates,
many of them have not even been able to seek solace and take comfort with members of their own
families.
Heterosexuals-only lunch counters ? Are you joking? For most of history, every place gay people
went was presumptively heterosexuals only. Every school, every arena, every workplace.... and to
"integrate " them was to risk not just banishment, but assault.
I consider this a deep, deep moral wrong -- a stain on our culture, a shameful and very long chapter
in our history. And I truly think it's the least -- the very least -- we can do now to grant gay people
equal rights and opportunities; legal respect. Even those who find their private consenting sexual
behavior repellent to contemplate, offensive to the natural order and scripturally forbidden must, I
believe, find the common decency within to afford them these minimum rights. Particularly given
that such a concession comes at no cost to themselves
And I confess to but don't apologize for expressing this view with great vehemence and for exhibiting
so little patience with the idea that due to inchoate and unproven fears, religious dictates and
aesthetic concerns we ought to continue for one more day to treat gay people and gay couples as
second-class under the law.
I'm impatient only with those I respect and from whom I truly do expect better