Too Brief Answers to Marriage Questions: Part 4

Is the legal prohibition of same-sex “marriage” analogous or equivalent to bans on interracial marriage?

The basis for the comparison of homosexual “marriage” to interracial marriage is based on the fallacious comparison of homosexuality to race. Race is, of course, a lousy analogue for homosexuality. Race is 100 percent heritable, in all cases immutable, and has no inherent connection to subjective feelings, desires, or volitional acts. Homosexuality, in contrast, is not 100 percent heritable, is in some cases fluid, and is constituted centrally by subjective feelings, sexual desire, and volitional sexual acts.

Here are some differences that the Left refuses to acknowledge:

• Bans on interracial marriage were wrong because they introduced a criterion wholly irrelevant to the nature and purpose of marriage, which is a sexually complementary relationship naturally ordered to reproduction and childrearing.
  
  
• Bans on interracial marriage were wrong because they were based on a flawed understanding of human nature. The erroneous assumption was that white men and black men were by nature different. Bans on homosexual marriage are based on the true belief that men and women are fundamentally different—a fact that homosexual men and women openly acknowledge when they express a preference for persons of the same sex.
  
  
• Bans on interracial marriage were wrong because they discriminated based solely on who someone was, whereas bans on homosexual “marriage” make distinctions among behaviors—which all laws do. A black man who wants to marry a white woman is seeking to do the same action that a white man who wants to marry a white woman seeks to do. But, if a man wants to marry a man, he is seeking to do an entirely different action from that which a man who wants to marry a woman seeks to do. A law that prohibits homosexual marriage is legitimate because it is based not on who the person is but rather on what he seeks to do.

Read more in this series:  Part 1        Part 2        Part 3       Part 5

For more help on questions related to homosexuality, I encourage readers to visit the Public Discourse website.

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–>  September 14th – IFI’s 3rd Annual Fun. Run. Walk in Joliet 
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–> October 4th — IFI’s Fall Banquet with Dr. Benjamin Carson in Northlake 
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–> October 23rd — IFI’s Defend Marriage Lobby Day in Springfield  
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