Gay Marriage Is Immoral – Talking Points for Your Libertarian & Atheist Friends

Many of you have Libertarian or atheist friends and family who are pro-same sex “marriage.” They don’t care about God’s design for marriage being one man, one woman, for life. They don’t care that God is not pleased with homosexual behavior. They are starting to think that it’s OK for gay couples to marry. Libertarians in particular are prone to support same sex “marriage” due to the idea that it will increase freedom.

Try these talking points about the immorality of same sex marriage and the decrease in freedom that will result. Here’s how they start.

Same sex marriage will lead to a vast transfer of power from families to the government.

How?

Because it requires changing the legal code to remove the natural bonds of “mother” and “father” and replacing them with the artificial bonds of “Parent 1” and “Parent 2.” Our own Department of State tried to do this in 2011 with passport applications but conservative outcry was able to stop it. Canada replaced the term “natural parent” with “legal parent” after the legalization of same sex “marriage,” and France recently announced plans to remove “mother” and “father” from their legal code in order to accommodate same sex couples into the institution of marriage.

The Constitution talks about “unalienable rights” and the natural bond of a child with his own mother and father must certainly be among them.

It should be obvious to any reasonable person that replacing natural bonds with strictly legal (therefore artificial and subjective) bonds within the legal code will weaken the family structure. And we all know that weakened families lead to greater government intrusion and power. Just look at what happened with “no fault divorce.” Rather than being a way to limit government intrusion and increase freedom, it greatly increased the scope and power of the government. Anybody who has been in contested divorce or ugly custody dispute can attest to this. Moreover, people cannot participate effectively in the market if they’re overwhelmed with the legal disputes surrounding divorce, and they have fewer resources with which to do so.

We will see the same decay with the legalization of same sex “marriage,” because natural bonds within the legal code strengthen families, and artificial bonds will cause families to be weaker. Like with no fault divorce, because of the weakened family structure people will have less time and fewer resources to participate in the market.

What about adoption? It’s true that adoption assigns parental rights based on a legal bond, not a natural bond. Wouldn’t you agree that this is an accommodation in our legal code to help a child get the parents he needs? Adoption is a child centered institution, one that humanely makes an exception to the natural order, to accommodate the needs of children who do not have parents. Remember that adoption does not require our entire legal code to be altered the way same sex “marriage” does. Under this scenario, legal bonds are meant to be an exception to accommodate children in extraordinary circumstances. They are not meant to be the norm.

From this perspective, we can see two things clearly:

1. Same sex “marriage” implements the law of adoption for the entire society. Instead of the legal bonds of adoption being the exception in order to help children in need, legal bonds will be the norm for all families.

2. Same sex “marriage” is something quite different that natural marriage. No other changes to marriage have been nearly as sweeping to the legal code and to the family structure as same sex “marriage” will be. 

Changing the entire society to legal bonds will have unforeseeable consequences and I believe it’s fair to say that most of them will be harmful, especially for the weakest members of society – the young and the poor. Put another way: if we disregard the legal recognition of natural bonds, is it reasonable to expect the result to be good?

Do you think most people know these changes that must be made? Does putting the entire society on the track of legal bonds make the government stronger or weaker? Do you think same sex “marriage” accurately represents true Libertarianism?

Try these talking points on your Libertarian and atheist friends and see what they say.

Image: Auguste Delacroix; courtesy of Philippe Alès; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.