Just a Gwai Lo - fun within prescribed limits

KFX: “As far as I am concerned all the gay couples around the world campaign to be allowed to perform a legal ceremony of marriage, the ones who have a sense of love and committment between them......they're already married. For all intents an purposes they fulfill the most important part of a marriage. What they are campaigning for is legal recognition of the fact, and as such I fully support them.”

The following is the text of a comment I wrote to that article, though the links have been added.

I'm with Jonathan Rauch, who wrote an excellent book on marriage (and not just gay marriage, but marriage in general), and he argued that marriage has more to do with creating a home and family as well as making a commitment to the community than it does with two people making a commitment to each other. People (not just a man and a woman, but adults of all sexual orientations) who get married are saying to the community "I promise to be the first person at this other person's side when they are in a crisis and I also promise that I will be faithful to them at all times". Sometimes people break promises, and the second promise is especially easy to break. There are social punishments for people who break them. How many people do you know that have slept with someone other than their spouse who have a good reputation in the community because of it?

Rauch in his book argues that marriage has been history's most successful tamer of wild young men, so he argues that social conservatives should really see gay marriage (especially marriage of two gay males) as a social positive: here are two men who have decided that they want to once and for all not fit the stereotype of the male who cruises for sex. Hello! Conservatives! What better institution than marriage is there for people (straight and not straight) who fit that stereotype? Basically he's arguing that to save the institution of marriage, you have to let gay people do it.

James Moore, Canadian Member of Parliament for Port Moody — Westwood — Port Coquitlam, in a remarkable—for an MP, not for him, evidently—email to his constituents: “believe in equality under the law for all Canadians for civil marriages, which in a perfect world would be termed civil unions. And I also believe strongly in the separation of church and state in order to protect the rights of religious institutions and people of faith from having to embrace or perform same-sex marriages if they choose not to.”

Port Moody and Port Coquitlam are suburbs of Vancouver, British Columbia, which may help understand why he focuses on B.C. in his email. Moore opposes use of the term marriage for the legal union between two homosexual adults, but argues that civil unions cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. It's not a compromise I'm fully comfortable with, but Moore is proof that the Conservative Party at least has some room for diversity of opinion on the subject of gays and lesbians. There is a strong-enough conservative argument (as I outlined above) for gay marriage and a strong enough argument that civil unions (a "marriage-lite" solution) is not good enough. Increasing the amount of types of marriage only serves to weaken the institution, as does the exclusion of gays.