Abstract
The global movement to provide domestic relationship status and benefits to same-sex couples has resulted in five different kinds of legal responses: (1) redefining marriage to include same-sex couples; (2) creation of marriage-equivalent civil union domestic relationships, with most or all of the legal incidents of marriage; (3) creation of a carefully customized domestic partner relationship providing access to some particular relational benefits; (4) allowing the private creation of legitimate same-sex relationships with private ordering of the relationships by the parties themselves (by contract, wills, etc.); and (5) total rejection of any legal recognition of same-sex relationships, usually by criminal prohibition. The polar extreme responses are inappropriate. This paper focuses on the flaws of legalizing same-sex marriage. Gender-integrating marriage is a very important pre-legal social institution, and positivist attempts to redefine marriage to include same-sex relations are conceptually flawed, like calling a tail a leg. Most nations today provide constitutional protection for marriage because it is widely considered to be a core, foundational social institution; and substantial protection of the dual-gender quality of marriage is manifest in many national constitutions. Efforts to “capture” the legal institution of marriage to promote the agenda of particular social movements have occurred before, but they have produced significant problems for marriage and for society. Legalization of same-sex marriage will transform the social understanding of what marriage is, what it means, and what is expected of married persons in ways that devalue and weaken the social institution of marriage.
Highlights
The Global Movement to Give Domestic Relationship Status Equal to Same-Sex UnionsThere is a global movement to legalise same-sex unions as a new form of legal domestic relationship
About a dozen other nations have created a new domestic relationship which confers a new legal adult intimate relational status on same-sex couples—and in some jurisdictions heterosexual couples—who properly register or otherwise enter such relationship, and allows them to enjoy all or most of the same legal rights, duties, incidents and benefits extended to married heterosexual couples
This paper focuses on opposite polar position of redefining legal marriage to treat same-sex relationships as marriages
Summary
The Global Movement to Give Domestic Relationship Status Equal to Same-Sex Unions. There is a global movement to legalise same-sex unions as a new form of legal domestic relationship. The same-sex marriage question boils down to whether a tail can be transformed into a leg by merely calling it a leg; whether calling same-sex unions ‘marriages’ will succeed in turning them into real marriages, with the enormously important social attributes associated with this term If it is not a mere legal-definition restriction that limits marriage to heterosexual unions, but the gender-integrating, complementary union of a man and a woman is a core, constitutive part of the very nature and reality of marriage, merely changing the label will not transform the reality. Rather, such attempted alchemy may irreparably harm society if marriage and family really (not just rhetorically) are essential, foundational institutions of society.[21]
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