Is same-sex marriage a practical consideration in this age of globalisation?

Globalisation is the growing interpenetration of states, markets, communications, and ideas across borders. This expansion of global markets has given rise to growing push for equal human rights for all around the world. International norms and institutions for the protection of human rights are more developed than at any previous point in history. The case for allowing gays to marry begins with equality, pure and simple. Why should one set of loving, consenting adults be denied a right that other such adults have and which, if exercised, will do no damage to anyone else? It is well established as a matter of law that the right to marry the person one loves is so central to liberty and happiness as to be a fundamental civil right. “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights” guaranteed by the U.S Constitution.

Furthermore, gay and lesbian people themselves have become a market. In British Columbia, for an example, the tourism industry is essential to the provincial economy. For the purposes of that industry, sexual orientation has become a commodity. Marriage license registries were kept open twenty-four hours a day over the 2003 Gay Pride weekend in order to attract American gay and lesbian tourists who could not get married at home. Tour groups in Vancouver and Toronto offered “wedding packages” for same-sex couples who wanted to board a bus or airplane to get married in Canada. These couples are targeted as the gay and lesbian “marriage market.” The consumers represent an estimated $450 billion in purchasing power annually in the United States and Forbes magazine has estimated that the size of the potential market for same-sex marriages in the United States to be $16.8 billion a year. Thus same-sex marriage is a practical consideration for not only is it the right of humans, it also spreads the growth of globalisation.

However, irregardless of time period – be it in the past, present or future – marriage is a common good, not a special interest. Every society needs a natural marriage, which is the bringing of men and women together to build a domestic life and create and raise the next generation. The same-sex family is not driven by the needs of children, but rather by the radical wishes of a small group of adults. No society needs homosexual coupling. In fact, too much of it would be harmful to society and that is why natural marriage and same-sex coupling cannot be considered socially equal. It is very different for a child to say, “I have two mums” than to say, “I have a Korean mother and a Hispanic father.” There are no negative child-development outcomes from being raised by interracial parents but there are thousands of social science studies showing negative outcomes for children who are denied their mothers and fathers.

An impressive wealth of published social science, psychological and medical studies shows that children living in fatherless families, on average, suffer dramatically in every important measure of well-being. These children suffer from much higher levels of physical and mental illness, educational failure, poverty, substance abuse, criminal behavior, loneliness, as well as physical and sexual abuse. Children living apart from both biological parents are eight times more likely to die of maltreatment than children living with their mother and father.

Moreover, there is no civil right to conduct a vast, untested social experiment on children as same-sex marriage will subject generations of children to the status of laboratory rats.

Today, same-sex relationships and homes are tolerated in society but this issue is not about mere tolerance. Instead it is about forcing everyone to fully accept these unnatural families; demanding a radical change to the understanding of family that husband/wife and mother/father are merely optional for the family and therefore, meaningless. Indeed, gay and lesbian people have a right to form meaningful relationships but they do not have a right to redefine marriage for all of us.