All your arguments are made of fail

I have the following, all-purpose guide for why there is no - that's N.O. zip, nada, zero - argument to oppose same-sex marriage. Seriously, every argument fails, and I'll tell you why.

(Note: At one point, responding to an argument about revulsion for same-sex couples, I lapse into some examples of other forms of intimate interactions people might find gross. These are not listed for prurient reasons, but still a warning is necessary that there's a wee bit of detailed sexual description in this piece.)



All your arguments are made of fail.

Argument from tradition.

This is often one of two soft lines people take when they want to oppose same-sex marriage, but don't want to look like a complete douchebag. There are many traditions. In ancient Ur, it was tradition for a girl of 10 or 12 to be sent to the temple of Ishtar to have sex with a stranger. Slavery was a long-held tradition. We don't practice either anymore. This is because traditions change. We now think that a 12 year old girl should probably be playing with toys and stealing her mum's make up, rather than waiting in a temple for rough sex with a strange man. We now think that the grand tradition of stealing a man from Africa to pick cotton for nothing is barbaric and cruel.

Traditions always change and they change because of other factors than just the tradition itself. Our morals adapt. What was once normal becomes reviled and vice-versa. To use this argument, you need to say why this tradition is more important than others, why it needs to be preserved, meaning this is not an argument in and of itself, but rather a framing of other arguments, like...


Argument from same, but different.

This is the other perceived 'soft' line. It runs something like 'I'm not a homophobe, I reckon gays should be together, but why do THEY have to use OUR word, why can't THEY call it something else?'

They who? Your friends, mother, father, uncle, aunt, brother, sister, cousin, nephew? Why don't YOU call it something else? Fred and Frank got married on Saturday, while Shirley and Dave got hoobajoobed? This is actually two points that need to be addressed.

First, claiming ownership of a word, concept or institution along orientation lines is segregationalist. In the line above, swap out 'homophobe' for 'racist' and 'gays' for any ethnic group you care to name. That's right, you failed the Robert Anton Wilson 'Are you a Nazi?' test. RAW always decided to swap out a word for 'Jew' when listening to people denigrate any random demographic. If he thought they sounded like Nazis, he reasoned they probably weren't far off being Nazis.

Second, you need to identify what you mean by 'marriage'. We have one term in this country that reflects the fully legal union of a couple, with ramifications for tax and inheritance and so on. That term is 'marriage'. You can have a christian, buddhist, zoroastrian or star wars themed ceremony, but the only thing that makes it a legal marriage, is the signature with two witnesses. It is ridiculous to claim that we need two different terms before the law. This however leads us to a series of preconceptions of what marriage is for or about.

Argument from procreation.

This is where we start to get into the loony fringe. Some will tell you that marriage is for a man and woman to raise children. Oh really? What if you're unable to have children? What if you're too old? What if you don't want children? To claim this nullifies many existing marriages. The converse of course is, what about committed same-sex couples that want to raise children, whether from a previous relationship, IVF/donor sperm or adoption? Their goal is to raise children, wouldn't that make a same-sex couple wanting to raise children a more valid recipient of the right to marry than a heterosexual couple that don't want children? You can't have it both ways.

Argument from procreation, part II: the role of mother and father.

This is usually paired with the above argument. Let us consider for a moment that most marriages we can see around us are heterosexual ones. Now, look at the divorce rate, let's add in domestic violence, absent or abusive parents. We demonstrably do not care about families where the mother/father dynamic has broken down. Indeed, where a judge awards joint custody to a battered mother and horribly abusive father, we cry foul. Quite rightly so. If the role of both mother and father were equally integral, we wouldn't permit divorce, or the removal of children from their parents, even in abusive circumstances. The role of mother and father would be viewed as important beyond other concerns. Instead what the majority of the psych profession will say is quite clear - children need parental role models that love them and care for them. This could be one parent, two or four, and any mix of genders.

Argument from the slippery slope.

This is Bob Katter and Rebecca Hagelin territory. You've heard it before and fumed - 'If we allow same-sex marriage, paedophiles will marry children, and there'll be people marrying animals, and we'll have to legalise polygamy!'

Whoa slow down cowpoke. There is so much wrong with this argument, it needs to be broken down into little pieces.

Why homosexuality and paedophilia are different things. Paedophilia is a behavioural disorder. It's true, you can look it up. There are paedophiles that have never acted on their disorder, and there are those that have and committed a crime called child rape. This is already two things - a behavioural disorder, and a criminal act that results from that compulsion, but not necessarily ONLY from that compulsion. Most paedophiles do not identify as gay. Most identify as heterosexual, and are known to the family of their victims already, like teachers, family and so on - there are no shady gangs of gay men, lurking in parks to kidnap and rape children. Saying that a gay man automatically wants to predate on little boys, makes as much sense as saying a heterosexual man automatically wants to predate on little girls. Orientation towards a gender does not come automatically gift-wrapped with a paedophiliac disorder.

The catch-all basket we call 'gay' includes male homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, being transgendered and intersex. There is a reasonable amount of science to indicate that homosexuality in men and women is biological. Bisexuality is possibly a mix of the biological and behavioural, transgender is a term that includes people who are medically gender re-oriented, whose sexual orientation could be likewise biological and/or behavioural and directed at the same or opposite sex as the one they are coming from or going to, and intersex is where you just have the shitty luck of being born with random bits of male and female characteristics. To call this melange of biology, behaviourism, and medical therapy as equal to paedophilia only demonstrates one thing - that you're an idiot, with little grasp of basic reasoning.

Homosexuality and paedophilia are NOT the same thing. In any event, even if you could prove homosexuality and paedophilia are the same, you would still need to prove why bi, lesbian, transgender and intersex people should be lumped in the same basket. Good luck with that.

It also raises a fundamental question as to why, having allowed same-sex marriage, we would throw away a whole body of law on the question of consent and the rape of children. A couple legally sharing their life equal to people running out and marrying kids away from their parents to rape them? What the fuck? I mean, what shit are you smoking cowboy?

Why homosexuality and bestiality are different things. Bestiality is where you f#ck or are f#cked by an animal. Now, ask yourself a question. When was the last time you had a good long chat with a sheep (and it spoke back intelligibly, I mean)? No? How about the last time you talked about the footy with a cow? No? Discussed Kafka with a penguin? Animals, you see, cannot communicate with us in such a way that we can understand what they mean, and thus legally gain consent for sex. I mean, let's leave out the fact for a minute that f#cking a sheep is just gross. That putative sheep cannot look at you longingly, light some candles and huskily whisper 'I want you IN me tonight.' F#cking an animal is a crime, because of the general concept of not being able to grant unequivocal consent. It is also a crime, because a lot of the time, it causes injury to the animal (people who have been fucked by horses on the other hand, enter a world of hurt).

Consent is, however, the main point. A person in a coma can't grant consent, a dead body can't grant consent, a sheep can't grant consent. Where consent cannot be granted, or reasonably inferred with a mind to the full ramifications of consent (such as in cases of children, intense mental handicap, or serious acquired brain injury) it is a crime, called rape. Rape and sex, I hope I don't have to explain, are different.

Adult men and women can grant consent. That's the difference - the capacity to give consent. And the ick factor of fucking an animal. Ew. Two people sharing their lives does not equal sticking your d!ck in a sheep. It just doesn't. Now get off the crackpipe.

Polygamy - a can of worms. When people speak of polygamy, they don't mean polygamy. They use the word, but mean a different thing. They mean polygyny. Polygyny means 'many women'. Polyandry means 'many men'. Polygamy would have to face the same test as any other relationship. This is where I will surprise people and say I don't actually think polygamy, if it was honestly defined and practiced, would be a bad thing. We should not allow forced marriages that are a feature of many existing polygamous marriages in the world, because you're in consent territory again. We should not allow only one type of polygamy, that of polygyny, as that is straightforward inequality. But before we start debating if Woman A can have Husband B and C and Wife D, let's just agree to get a same-sex couple married first and hash this out in a few generations huh? It's called baby steps.

The very real problem with the slippery slope argument is its scattershot nature. It conflates love, sex, rape, consent, biology, behaviouralism and crime all into one hazy ball of nonsense.

Argument from sulking.

This is not so much an argument, but more a grouping of childish outbursts. Because they aren't really arguments in any kind of sense of the word, they can be defeated in seconds, just by pointing out how stupid they are.

Those people get more rights than us! Have you ever had to dole out sweets to two kids, one of which was an obnoxious, greedy turd? You know, you've counted out the sweets exactly even, weighed them, ensured all were intact and unbroken, and the greedy turd still screams 'He got more than me!!!' That's who these people are. These are people who feel equal when they have more than someone else. Start talking about Indigenous Australians, they'll mouth off the same crap. Ask if they, too, want to be mostly illiterate or die at forty by something that can be easily cured, and they may change their minds. I wouldn't bet my life savings on it, however.

It's just disgusting! Disgusting I tell you! Disgusting! These people reject same-sex marriage because of the bedroom antics of GLBTI people. They seem to find the idea of oral and anal sex revolting. The idea that a man would put a d!ck in his mouth or up the old bum makes their gorge rise. The idea that a woman would orally or manually pleasure another woman also makes them vociferously sick (unless it's in a porno of course). Marriage is NOT what we do in the bedroom (or on the kitchen table, or in the back of a Volkswagen). What we do in the bedroom is NOT marriage. These things are different.

The same people who say 'Guys who f#ck guys in the arse are dirty!' probably have no problem with anal sex in other contexts, such as after their sheila has had three Bundy and Cokes. You probably wouldn't want to know that grandma takes her teeth out to give grandpa head either, or what two really fat people look like when doing the horizontal tango. So what if you don't like anal? Your boss' wife might have a black 12 inch rubber strap-on and your boss might love pegging. Is their marriage invalidated because you find that disgusting? Your revulsion to what people do to get their rocks off is not a legitimate objection to the desire of two people to cement their love for each other in the institution of marriage.

Argument from 'protect the children!'

Some critics will say that such public issues as same-sex marriage might give their sheltered little cherubs 'the wrong idea'. What wrong idea is that? These people have the notion that if little Janey hears about lesbians, she'll race out, get a Bieber hairdo, and be eating pussy and singing Indigo Girls songs before the week is through. Guess what, if Janey's gonna 'go gay', it's probably there already. Little Janey may already knows at some level that she prefers girls. She probably can't articulate it, but once she's old enough to recognise her feelings for what they are, she'll want to tell you. If you've spent most of your years telling Janey that gays are dirty and evil, well, I hope you're ready for the years of therapy she'll need to overcome the self-loathing she'll feel. Better hope that you don't come home and find her hanging from a beam in the garage.

Too much? Tough. You can't 'de-gay' people. It doesn't work. People are born with a predisposition to be gay. You can no more 'protect' your children from being gay, than you can 'protect' them from having green eyes. If your kids see a positive life, and positive options for gay people - like marriage as a realistic option - you know what? Maybe they'll grow up happier. Wouldn't you prefer your precious little angel to be happy, than miserable or dead?

And you know what? It's none of my damned business what you're supposed to tell your kids. You're a parent, that's YOUR job. But, as long as you're asking, I'd say maybe start with the truth, teach some tolerance and compassion, and see where you go from there.

Argument from 'shoving it down our throats'.

This argument is noxious as it seemingly has the pretense of tolerance, but is actually filled with a seething hatred. In this argument, someone will say 'Look, I don't care if gays want to get married, I just wish they'd stop shoving it down our throats!' See, the funny thing about inequality and injustice is, people talk about it. That's what they do. The person who makes this argument actually would rather never know that gay people exist, but see they do. Would you feel sympathy for someone who had said in the 80's 'Look I don't care if there's an end to apartheid, I just wish the kaffirs would stop going on about it!' No probably not. This is because it is a noxious thing to say.

No gain was ever made in equality by being very quiet about it, and silently willing it to happen. You have to ask yourself 'Do I really care about injustice? or am I making a pretense of it so people don't think I'm a bigoted douchebag?'

You really want to stop hearing about it? Let it happen, then it won't be an issue anymore. Ta-da!

Argument from the dimunition of heterosexual marriage.

This one is an important one as it is often thrown out into the public discourse without any kind of justification or reasoning attached. The argument runs something like this 'If gays can get married it will invalidate straight marriages!' Most people reply with a simple reply of 'Oh that's just crap!' But here's WHY it is crap. You don't lose something if someone else gets something. That's it. Simple huh? Think of it this way. If I receive a nice block of bitter 80% cocoa dark chocolate, does the chocolate police come round and steal your milky bar? No, they don't. If Fred and Steve got married today, would you go home to your loving wife and say 'Well that's it Cynthia. Pack your bags and get out, the marriage is over!' Of course not, unless you'd finally had enough of her stealing all your dark chocolate. Even then, that's nothing to do with Fred and Steve, it's your issue and yours alone.

If you lay in the marriage bed all night, fuming about all the things Fred and Steve are doing right NOW in their marital bed, I would put it to you that maybe you should leave Cynthia and find a good man.

In fact, same-sex marriage would actually strengthen the cause of heterosexual marriage and I'll tell you why. Without the condemnation of homosexuality, and the option for gays and lesbians to be married, lots of people desperately trying to convince themselves they're straight might not enter into loveless heterosexual marriages. They would be free to follow their hearts and enter into loving homosexual marriages instead. More marriages lasting with happiness and love. Isn't that nice?

Argument from the sanctity of marriage.

We always hear about the sanctity of marriage from people who claim that homosexuality is somehow not as 'good' or 'pure' as heterosexuality. The heterosexual marriage is a thing of integrity, honesty and decency. Does that sanctity extend to straight couples who cheat, split up acrimoniously, throw swinger's parties or get married for residential visas? Probably not. Stop pretending the institution is perfect and flawless, and let others get on with their lives. If you're claiming that the marriage of a heterosexual couple, who argue and cheat on each other all the time is still somehow 'better' than a same sex couple's ordinary relationship, then you have to prove why lies, violence or the use of the institution purely for purposes of convenience has a sanctity, that a loving couple cannot provide.

Argument from trendiness.

Some people like to throw out the line, that all this same-sex marriage brouhaha is just a fashionable trend, and that the straight people who support same-sex marriage are just being fashionably progressive. Now I have a few problems with this argument, quite removed from the basic fact that it's a load of arse.

Why is it fashionable to be progressive, but not to be conservative? I'm serious. Why is it when someone champions a progressive cause, they're labelled as being 'trendy', but when they champion a conservative cause that's just showing 'common sense'? It should be obvious that causes aren't necessarily trendy. I'm more than happy to concede that there might be people who only get into causes because all their friends do, but it's not my problem if someone doesn't think about what they do. Neither does it diminish the cause itself. The merits of the cause itself are not dependent on the attitudes of the people who purport to support it. Let's also point out that this is a dismissive tactic more than an argument. You don't have to prove how or why a cause is trendy, just dismiss it for accusing it of being so.

Why shouldn't you support a cause that doesn't affect you? Again, a serious question. If you are unaffected by a good cause, you come off better supporting it than rejecting it. Supporting it shows compassion, while rejection displays a serious callousness and/or selfishness. That and, rather than being an argument, the argument from trendiness is simply another tactic. Rather than a tactic of diminution, this element is a tactic of division. It says 'You supporters shouldn't be here, just leave the issue alone with the people it affects and us - the people who are likewise unaffected by it, but want to oppose it'. Seriously? Um, no, I'll stay here if it's all the same to you.

In any event, it patently isn't trendy to support a controversial cause, as fools seem to want to call you an air-headed trendoid and attack your beliefs. I can't imagine many other trendy things that newspapers and websites would devote a lot of ink and bandwidth to attack.

Argument from nature's model.

Many arguments used against homosexuality generally are trotted out in the case against same-sex marriage. These arguments not only demonstrate that the case against same-sex marriage has no basis, but also that people still have no idea what homosexuality is, for the most part.

The argument from nature tells us that homosexuality is a man-made aberration, not seen elsewhere in the natural world. Thus, because animals do not practice homosexual acts, we should not show tolerance in our man-made institutions. There is a lot wrong with this that, again warrants the argument being broken down into small pieces.

Homosexuality does not occur in nature. Um, yeah it does. In many different species. Different primates, swans, dolphins, these and many others indulge in recreational homosexual play. In order to claim a mandate from nature, you need to at least do your research and prove, exhaustively, that no single instance of no known species EVER engages in homosexual acts. If you start now, you might be finished by oh, never.

Cherry-picking a mandate from nature. If you are to say that the animal kingdom is the ultimate arbiter of what we should allow in our own society, then stop reading this, and smash your computer to pieces with a cudgel. Take all of your clothes off, and stop using toilet paper. You see, although we are animals, we are very peculiar ones, with a much greater capacity for abstract thought. In all other respects, we do very little to cleave ourselves to the rule of nature. If you want to deny gay rights, because of what you perceive from nature, well stop being a hypocrite and throw your iPod away.

You do realise your own argument defeats your own argument, yeah? As I touched on just above, we do not necessarily give a rat's ass what nature thinks in pretty much every other aspect of human civilisation. Even by making this claim, you are invoking a complex raft of questions of why we should keep other aspects of our civilisation that are not necessarily found in nature, like television, clothing, corrective glasses, Big Macs, Coca-Cola, cars, airplanes, tampons, condoms, Spawn action figures, Adam Sandler movies, assault rifles, inter-continental ballistic missiles, satellites, space shuttles, radio telescopes, the pill, aspirin, Nike running shoes, internet pornography, computers in general, newspaper opinion columns, insurance, penis enlargement drugs and religion. The only sound, justifiable way this argument could be made is if it was made by a person, hunched in a cave, tearing raw flesh off an animal, caked in dirt and shit, who used absolutely NOTHING from human civilisation that did not have an almost exact analog in nature.

Argument from the will of (a) God.

Lastly we get to the argument that is usually the foundation of most of the others, but also the easiest to defeat. This argument claims 'The Bible/Quran/Talmud/God/Odin/Emperor Palpatine forbids homosexuality, so it's wrong, and gays can't get married because God/Allah/Maitresse Erzuli/Inana gave that institution to men and women ONLY!'

This argument prohibits an action, based on either the condemnation of the organisation's adherents or the exclusivity of the institution itself. It relies on supernatural authority for that condemnation.

God gave marriage to men and women. The great thing about this argument is it can be defeated within the bounds of its own logic (which is scarce, to be sure). If marriage is a Christian institution, does this mean agnostics can be defacto but not married, because they're just not certain enough? What about muslims and buddhists? Does this mean atheists can't get married at all? What about the fact that ceremonial unions go back to pre-Judao-Christian times? Were those people in ancient history not married because Jesus hadn't been born yet?

All religions revere marriage as the same thing - a union between an adult man and an adult woman. Let's take this hazy feel-good 'all religions are a cozy part of man's drive to spirituality' approach and say that all spiritual faiths revere marriage in the same way. Really? Including the polygamous Mormons? Including the Islamic 6 to 9 belief (marry her at 6, but don't screw her til she's 9)? Including Christian Reconstructionists who believe that women should marry their rapists? Well, at least all religious people accept that gays shouldn't get married right? Well, no. Progressive Christians the world over campaign for same-sex marriage. Who's right? The believer who cites Jesus' love and tolerance and says yes, or the believer who cites God's hatred and bigotry and says no?

Marriage is still a religious institution. I touched on this point earlier. Your marriage ceremony might mean any number of things to you. You might have a full-blown Catholic wedding mass, you might dress as a Stormtrooper and Leia as Jabba's Slave Girl, but the ceremony is irrelevant in terms of the law. It is the legal contract of marriage that is recognised, not the rites and rituals of the ceremony. Our entire canon of jurisprudence was not handed down by God, or Allah, or the great prophet Zarquon, it has developed over time from myriad sources, yes, even including but not limited to religion. Our law protects all citizens and should be accessible equally by all citizens, and to restrict it from some citizens for their religious belief, lack thereof, or condemnation by another's, is barbaric and unjust. The shoe could just as easily be on the other foot. How'd you like that? Marriage, as it is recognised by our country's government, is a legal institution. Your ceremony may or may not be religious. The contract and the ceremony are two different things.

The Bible is very clear on homosexuality! You ever done any Bible scholarship? Well, no me either, but I did read a book once from a very good, highly-qualified Biblical scholar. You know what he said? There ARE no original copies of the texts that made up the Bible left. They've been mistranslated thousands of times. The original intent and wording is lost forever. Did you know that the earliest known fragments of the Bible suggest that Mary wasn't a virgin? Virgin birth is a myth that accreted around the texts later. Did you know that the word translated as 'gay' or 'homosexual' in the Bible actually more clearly translates to 'younger man who dresses as a woman for the purpose of soliciting sexual favours from an older man'? The only clear thing that comes from the Bible is the wilful bigotry and intentional mistranslation of those who use it to spread hatred.

God's will is clear though! Let's just point out something painfully obvious. You have no evidence that any god exists or would intend anything even if you could prove it. Expecting everyone to accept your delusion and conform their lives to it is nothing short of incredibly cruel and selfish. You do not know any more than I do what your God actually wants, if your god even exists. There are very few reasons to believe any God, let alone yours, is real, and many more to believe the whole thing is hokum. Basing legislation and social policy on something that has no evidence, and may in fact be completely fictitious is nothing short of idiotic. If you hear the voice of God, then you either suffer from some disorder like schizophrenia, or actually have an ethereal, non-corporeal omniscient deity in your head. I know which answer Occam's razor would favour. But even if you do manage to somehow convince people that you hear God, how do YOU know it's God? What if Odin, Loki and Thor like to sit around on weekends, having a lend of humans and projecting their voices into human minds? What if you're actually hearing the Devil, and this campaign of hatred is exactly what he wants to sow dissent in the human race?

The onus is not on me to disprove your religion anyway. YOU are the one who posits that it's real, so YOU must provide the evidence. What's that? You left it at home? In your other jacket pocket? I thought so. Even if you do manage to convince someone that your religion's beliefs are all founded in reality, well great. It's still no reason anyone else has to share that belief.

Come at me bro.

There may be many more arguments. They may be fusions of the ones I've shown, or half-twists on them, but the logic cannot be disputed. In any given instance where you have two people, you simply cannot make an arbitrary decision to deny rights to one of those people, when they have not done anything concretely real that would warrant the removal of those rights. History is replete with similar injustices that we have overcome. Indigenous Australians are no longer classed as 'native fauna', women have enjoyed the right to vote and own property for a long time, we do not deny membership of organisations to Jews (except for maybe the Melbourne Club, but they're all rich bastards anyway). We are all simply people. In years to come, if we do not destroy ourselves, or enter a new dark age of fearful superstition, we will look back at the Bob Katters, the Barnaby Joyces and the Rebecca Hagelins, and compare them to defenders of slavery or child prostitution, heartless bigots whose only goal was to make innocent people suffer.

Think I'm wrong? Show me your moves pendejo.