Some might be unmoved by our arguments because, as they see it, we treat homosexually oriented people as if they were invisible, leaving them no real opportunity for fulfillment. After all, they might say, human beings need meaningful companionship, which involves sex and public recognition. This objection is rooted in a misunderstanding not only of the nature of marriage, but also of the value of deep friendship.
Our view about marriage, like most people's views about any moral or political issue, is motivated precisely by our concern for the good of all individuals and communities - that is, for the common good. We have offered reasons for thinking that this good is served, not harmed, by traditional marriage laws; and harmed, not served, by abolishing them in favor of the revisionist understanding.
But to see a few of the problems with this objection, consider some of its hidden assumptions:
Some of these assumptions are radically new in the history of ideas, and themselves depend on further significant, often uncritically accepted assumptions. More to the point, though, all four are either dubious or irrelevant to this debate.
Because bodies are integral parts of the personal reality of human beings,110 only coitus can truly unite persons organically and, thus, maritally.111 Hence, although the state can grant members of any household certain legal incidents, and should not prevent any from making certain private legal arrangements,112 it cannot give same-sex unions what is truly distinctive of marriage - i.e., it cannot make them actually comprehensive, oriented by nature to children, or bound by the moral norms specific to marriage.113 At most the state can call such unions marital, but this would not - because, in moral truth, it cannot - make them so; and it would, to society's detriment, obscure people's understanding about what truly marital unions do involve. In this sense, it is not the state that keeps marriage from certain people, but their circumstances that unfortunately keep certain people from marriage (or at least make marrying much harder). This is so, not only for those with exclusively homosexual attractions, but also for people who cannot marry because of, for example, prior and pressing family obligations incompatible with marriage's comprehensiveness and orientation to children, inability to find a mate, or any other cause. Those who face such difficulties should in no way be marginalized or otherwise mistreated, and they deserve our support in the face of what are often considerable burdens. But none of this establishes the first mistaken assumption, that fulfillment is impossible without regular outlets for sexual release - an idea that devalues many people's way of life. What we wish for people unable to marry because of a lack of any attraction to a member of the opposite sex is the same as what we wish for people who cannot marry for any other reason: rich and fulfilling lives. In the splendor of human variety, these can take infinitely many forms. In any of them, energy that would otherwise go into marriage is channeled toward ennobling endeavors: deeper devotion to family or nation, service, adventure, art, or a thousand other things.
But most relevantly, this energy could be harnessed for deep friendship.114 Belief in the second hidden assumption, that meaningful intimacy is not possible without sex, may impoverish the friendships in which single people could find fulfillment - by making emotional, psychological, and dispositional intimacy seem inappropriate in nonsexual friendships. We must not conflate depth of friendship with the presence of sex. Doing so may stymie the connection between friends who feel that they must distance themselves from the possibility or appearance of a sexual relationship where none is wanted.115 By encouraging the myth that there can be no intimacy without romance, we deny people the wonder of knowing another as what Aristotle so aptly called a second self.116
The third assumption is baffling (but not rare) to find in this context. Even granting the second point, legal recognition has nothing to do with whether homosexual acts should be banned or whether anyone should be prevented from living with anyone else. This debate is not about anyone's private behavior. Instead, public recognition of certain relationships and the social effects of such recognition are at stake. Some have described the push for gay marriage as an effort to legalize or even to decriminalize such unions. But you can only de-criminalize or legalize what has been banned, and these unions are not banned. (By contrast, bigamy really is banned; it is a crime.) Rather, same-sex unions are simply not recognized as marriages or granted the benefits that we predicate on marriage. Indeed, recognizing same-sex unions would limit freedom in an important sense: it would require everyone else to treat such unions as if they were marriages, which citizens and private institutions are free to do or not under traditional marriage laws.
The fourth assumption draws an arbitrary distinction between homosexual and other sexual desires that do not call for the state's specific attention and sanction. It often leads people to suppose that traditional morality unfairly singles out people who experience same-sex attractions. Far from it. In everyone, traditional morality sees foremost a person of dignity whose welfare makes demands on every other being that can hear and answer them. In everyone, it sees some desires that cannot be integrated with the comprehensive union of marriage. In everyone, it sees the radical freedom to make choices that transcend those inclinations, heredity, and hormones; enabling men and women to become authors of their own character.
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D. Isn't It Only Natural?
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