SSM: Framing the Debate

Thanks Rob for posting Prof. Miller's testimony on SSM.  I offer another excerpt, which I think frames the SSM debate clearly and fairly.  In addition to its contribution to this particular debate, it serves as a model for civil dialogue over hotly contested issues. 

On the one hand, people who believe that marriage ought to be reserved to unions of one man and one woman tend to think that the biological connection between heterosexual sexual activity and procreation is morally significant; that heterosexual relationships, because they tend naturally to produce children, are morally different from homosexual ones, which do not; that, everything else being equal, children are best raised in families with their biological mother and biological father; that the state, because it looks to the common good of society not just in the present but as an intergenerational project, has a vital interest in the procreation of children and their rearing and education; that the state thus has a moral obligation to provide legal status and regularity to heterosexual relationships of the kind that tend to produce children—that is to say, to marriages; and that other kinds of relationships, whether sexual or otherwise, are morally different and, although deserving of respect and many kinds of legal protection, are not in all relevant respects like marriages and so ought not legally be treated as marriages.

On the other hand, people who believe that the state should recognize same-sex marriages tend to believe that human sexuality functions primarily in the building of intimate personal relationships between the sexual partners and that its connection to procreation in the heterosexual case is not morally significant; that since gay men and lesbians undeniably fall in love, form relationships and have families, it follows that for all morally significant purposes, homosexual relationships are equivalent to heterosexual ones; that respect for the dignity of human persons demands that the state recognize this fact and not treat heterosexual relationships better than homosexual ones; that doing otherwise amounts to devaluing the intimate relationships of gay men and lesbians and brands them as second-class citizens; that the state has a legitimate interest in promoting stable, loving homosexual relationships just as it has a legitimate interest in promoting stable, loving heterosexual ones; and that the undeniable fact that gay men and lesbians have children, whether adopted or otherwise, means that such children deserve to have married parents just like the children of heterosexual couples.