Sowell's arguments support gays

This column was originally printed in the News & Record on August 23, 2006

In January of last year, I wrote a piece in support of gay marriage. One reader responded by sending me a photocopy of another News & Record column, Straight Talk on Gay Marriage by Thomas Sowell, which presented the contrary view to mine.

This past Thursday, Sowell was at it again. (Gay marriage laws don’t discriminate, August 17, 2006) While I found the arguments in Sowell’s original article to be weak and narrow, these were surprisingly more convincing, though perhaps not quite in the way Sowell has hoped. In fact, were I to have ignored the headline and skimmed the article, I could have easily assumed Sowell was in support of gay marriage.

Sowell begins his argument by pointing out that “’the equal protection of the laws’ provided by the Constitution of the United States applies to people, not actions.”

Exactly! To use his examples, while action-based discrimination, such as allowing bikes but not cars on the highway, is acceptable, people-based discrimination, like disallowing couples to marry due to inborn traits, like skin color, is not.

Sowell goes on to say that “In the absence of the institution of marriage, the individuals could arrange their relationship whatever way they wanted to, making it temporary or permanent, and sharing their worldly belongings in whatever way they choose.”

Exactly! Just as not all heterosexual relationships are healthy (as evidenced by our 50% divorce rate), not all homosexual relationships will stand the test of time. Straight people, however, have the safety net of the legal system to ensure that belongings and monies are divided fairly. Meanwhile, there is no legal recourse for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people in the same situation.

Moreover, more and more GLBT couples are choosing to have children, negating Sowell’s argument that marriage is irrelevant to the GLBT community due to the lack of “inherent tendency to produce children.” Because same-sex people cannot share legal guardianship of children (as they could if gay marriage were legalized), the single legal guardian is at liberty to keep the children from the other parent should the relationship sour. Again, there is no legal recourse for the parent without guardianship, making our collective prejudices the dam stopping what are likely healthy parent/child relationships.

Of course, Sowell is arguing against the legalization of gay marriage and the remainder of his column reads accordingly, including the bogus yet perpetuated assumption that all people are naturally heterosexual and some choose to participate in homosexual relationships. This is the faulty premise upon which all homophobic arguments are based.

Homosexuality has been shown to exist all over the animal kingdom, most recently publicized in the long-term relationship between two male chinstrap penguins at New York’s Central Park Zoo. Moreover, a spate of recent studies strongly support a biological basis for homosexuality. According to the American Psychological Association website, “The reality is that homosexuality is not an illness. It does not require treatment and is not changeable.”

Though I could go on for pages about gay marriage, I’ll end with a fact and a thought.

Fact: Research presented in the book, Gay Marriage for Better or For Worse: What We've Learned from the Evidence shows that contrary to popular expectation, after gay unions were legalized in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, each country saw a significant increase in straight marriage and decrease in divorce.

Thought: Healthy, happy citizens make for healthy, happy nations. Isn’t that what we all want?