Nanugu
28d ago
There is a difference between infertile, opposite sex couples marrying and same sex couples doing so. Opposite sex marriage reinforces the norm that you should marry someone of the opposite sex and encourages conformity to traditional morals, same sex erodes those norms and morals. That's why atheistic communist regimes were ok with infertile marriages but not homosexual.
Conformity to traditional morals is supported by perfectly secular reasoning: our society is astonishingly good by historical standards, tinker with its fundamental institutions at your peril.
More specifically to marriage: even infertile hetero marriages encourage property ownership, reduce crime, and generally put couples on the normal, successful path. Homo relationships only achieve some of that same benefit but also erode the desirable pro-fertility, norm that everyone gets married to a member of the opposite sex. More controversially, the visible difference of homo marriages also weaken societal conformity in general.
The progressive is probably tempted to say that this is just a thin secular veneer over what is at core a Christian sentiment. This is flatly contradicted by the fact that Buddhist, Confucian, and Communist societies held essentially the same position (no legal/social recognition of same sex marriage, full recognition of infertile marriage). I think even ancient Rome and Athens, despite being open to same sex dalliances, also allowed infertile but not same sex couples to marry.
Edit: I bring this up mainly to counter the notion that the prohibition on homosexual marriage was not the result of a particular metaphysic, but the widespread consensus of major human societies regardless of their religious beliefs. This supports the upthread assertion that overturning that prohibition was the imposition of a new moral framework with it, not the neutral stripping away of an old one.
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