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Response to Email about gay marriage

One of my readers sent in a long Email disagreeing with my take on gay marriage. Here is a partial quote:

While it is true that us humans are an adaptable bunch, and cultural customs can arise that are in opposition to our biological instincts, I'm afraid the reader is vastly exaggerating in order to make gay marriage seem like a sensible thing.

Cultures in which there exist weird practices such as group marriage and children not being raised by parents are the exception, and not the rule. Hindus in India, Buddhists in China, and Christians and Jews in the West all get married and raise children.

Having children, and raising children, is something that is obviously biologically programmed into us, otherwise we, as a race, would have died out. The forming of monogamous relationships is also something that is programmed into us. The social custom of marriage acknowledges what we want to instinctively do, but it also serves a greater purpose than that. It acts to prevent the either member of the married couple from straying, which would be detrimental to their children and to society as a whole. "Gay marriage", on the other hand, wouldn't serve any of these purposes at all.

This is not an argument, on my part, that sodomy should be made illegal. Although I do confess to having a hard time understanding why sodomy is a constitutionally protected right, but smoking marijuana isn't. After all, the disease transmitted through sodomy, AIDS, has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, while it's not clear that marijuana has killed anybody.

posted Thursday, December 11, 2003