An Unhappy Union: A
Response by Jack Burden
Human Life International's series of articles on the contitutionality of same-sex marriage was a grave disservice to their readers. Arete's Jack Burden criticizes the conservative series.
May 8th, 2002
Human Life International
Attn:
Letters to the Editor
4 Family Life,
Front Royal, VA
22630
Dear Editor:
I was recently disappointed by your
publications of Jameson Taylor's 3-Part series discussing the
unconstitutionality of homosexual marriage. "An Unhappy Union" was a grave
disservice to your readers. The article was illogical and poorly
documented. It neglected to explain philosophical and theological
arguments properly. Most seriously, the article demonstrated a lack of
research concerning constitutional precedent. I hope that none of your
readers will consider it an accurate and legitimate basis for prohibiting
the legal bond between two loving and mutually committed persons.
I am
a practicing Catholic at a Catholic undergraduate university. I attend
Mass on a weekly basis and attended a Catholic high school and grade
school before my college career. As a junior student of Political Science,
I have taken just one full year of Constitutional Law. The articles I read
in November, December, and January immediately jumped out at me as being
poor arguments against gay marriage. My intention in this response is to
correct Mr. Taylor's logical fallacies and present an argument for the
constitutionality of homosexual marriage. I shall follow Mr. Taylor's line
of argument, correcting him where he goes astray.
Jameson
Taylor begins his argument by defining certain terms that he deems
relevant to his case. These definitions, however, cannot be found in any
dictionary that I consulted. Mr. Taylor's definition of "homophobe" has
more to do with how Mr. Taylor chooses to view the Gay Rights movement,
than the actual definition of the word. The "definition" of marriage is
not a definitional at all! The author merely states that marriage has
"something to do with sex."
Next Mr. Taylor gives us
some dubious statistics about public opinion of homosexuals and homosexual
marriage. We are all aware that statistics are not a valid means of
determining justice. Thankfully, Mr. Taylor doesn't rest his case on the
prejudices and tyranny of the majority. The author then connects love to
marriage, marriage to sex, and sex to procreation. This is an important
point in his argument and will come into play later. Unfortunately for the
author, this chain may not be so "integrally connected" as he would lead
us to believe.
First, love ideally leads to marriage. This link in the
chain seems strong at first glance. Mr. Taylor, apparently, has been lucky
enough to be born into a family and an era where his marriage was not
arranged during junior high school. Where does the love to marriage link
occur in these cases? Or consider, "Romeo and Juliet." These two
star-crossed lovers were not allowed by their family to marry one another.
Homosexual couples are facing the same problem as Romeo and Juliet. Rather
than father forbidding their union however, Big Brother prohibits it. The
government has forbidden homosexuals from being married. Often times, as
in the case of homosexuals, two people that are in love may not be allowed
to marry due to external circumstances.
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