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WillowOne's Positions

Gay Marriage

My Positions

  1. Gay marriage should be legal, and it is. I would like it to remain so.
  2. Marriage, as far as the state is concerned, is a civil contract conferring a bundle of legal rights and obligations: next-of-kin status, inheritance, taxation, immigration, parental responsibility. There is no reason grounded in any of these for the state to care about the sex of the parties.
  3. Religious organisations should be free to decline to conduct same-sex weddings, and equally free to conduct them. The state's definition of marriage does not oblige any church to change its own. In either case, religious institutions should not receive public funding (see Hard Secularism).

Notes

  1. The arguments against same-sex marriage were, in retrospect, remarkably weak. That marriage has "always" been between a man and a woman is an Appeal to Tradition (and false: polygamy has been far more common historically than monogamy). That it would undermine heterosexual marriage was a prediction that has not come true in any jurisdiction, and no mechanism was ever offered for how it might. That it would lead to the legalisation of polygamy, incest, or bestiality was a Slippery Slope whose steps were never explained. That marriage is "for" procreation would disqualify the infertile and the elderly. What remained, once these were stripped away, was religious objection and distaste, neither of which is a basis for law in a secular society (see Hard Secularism).
  2. Same-sex marriage has been legal in England and Wales since 2014 (Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013), in Scotland since 2014, and in Northern Ireland since 2020. The Netherlands was first, in 2001. As of 2025 it is legal in around 38 countries.
  3. The question is one of equal treatment by the state, which is the same principle that underlies my support for Colourblind social policy. The state should not distinguish between its citizens on the basis of a characteristic that is irrelevant to the matter at hand, and the sex of one's spouse is irrelevant to whether one can inherit their pension.

Personal Context

  • I have gay friends who are married.
  • I am a heterosexual man.

Also see