AN ARGUMENT AGAINST SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
P1. Same-sex marriage involves state sponsorship of homosexual intercourse
P2. State sponsorship of homosexual intercourse enshrines in law that sex is not about children
C. Therefore same-sex marriage enshrines in law that sex is not about children
CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARY
While not all marriages are sexual, they are presumed to be so. Same-sex marriage therefore presumes that the relationships between two married men or two married women are sexual. By sponsoring homosexual intercourse the state enshrines in law that sex is inherently about the relationship between adults and not inherently anything to do with procreation or children. This reduces procreation and children to a non-essential aspect of sex, which
- reduces social pressure to abstain from sex outside of marriage
- reduces social pressure to be held accountable for any unintended procreation
- questions whether consent to sex is also consent to parenthood
Maggie Gallagher adds:
Unlike heterosexual couples, who are presumed to consent to co-parenting by having marital sex, spouses in same-sex marriages will be able to impose parental obligations on their spouse without any expression of consent on their part at all. Either that, or the “presumption of parentage” in the law will now be contestable, not because the spouse is not the biological parent, but because the spouse did not consent to the child. Can these new grounds for contesting parenthood be limited only to same-sex couples? Or will all men (thanks to the new presumption of parentage) have a new legal standing to reject the obligations of fatherhood on the grounds they only consented to sex and not to parenthood?
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/217155445.pdf