I’m actually covering it today in a contemporary moral problems class, and I have the same reservations you have. We’re reading Jonathan Rauch’s “Who Needs Marriage”, but the usual course of this day in class leads to a meta-discussion of why a textbook selection on the ethics of sex inevitably covers just homosexuality, and not questions like what the boundaries of rape are, what the boundaries of cheating are (they usually have a vested interest in that one), etc., etc. I’m actually going to print out this little blog post and incorporate it into our meta-discussion.

I’m not sure that I agree with you about this; to say that all arguments in opposition of same-sex marriage and homosexual activity are deeply problematic I think is too strong. The problem is that many of the arguments—ones that I would consider good arguments—rest on premises that have been largely rejected by many academics over the course of the last century. Likewise, most college-educated Americans and Europeans have adopted an understanding of the concept of marriage that is really quite novel in Western History. It does follow from this new concept of marriage (“consent-based marriage,” to use Justice Alito’s phrase) that there is no reason to prevent homosexual couples from entering into it—but this is not to say that this new concept of marriage is right in the first place. It is the starting premises on which we disagree, and I find that many academics do just as poor of a job in examining the rational basis for these first principles as many undergraduates do.
Perhaps the best way to teach an issue like this is to show how our understanding of the concepts surrounding the issue have changed; after all, these changes have been historically interesting. The abolition of slavery took centuries; the curbing of racism is still an ongoing project. And yet the collective Western understanding of marriage and sexual ethics has completely reversed in the course of a few decades? I cannot help but treat such a sweeping change with philosophical suspicion before we herald it as the victory of enlightened thinking—it seems to be a great display of hubris to think that a certain tradition of marriage and sexual ethics that have existed for millennia have been sustained for so long with “zero plausible arguments” behind them.
But the point is this; it does not follow from the fact that many academics have rejected the starting premises upon which arguments against same-sex marriage and homosexual activity are built that such premises are unfounded or wrong (and I’m not talking about premises about the reality of divine commands, I mean certain premises concerning human nature and the nature of morality itself). To answer the questions raised above—perhaps a “history of ethics” class would be a more appropriate setting to deal with such an issue, a class which looked at the underlying presuppositions of a given moral tradition; I think many of our moral debates make little sense without such context, and it is unfair to our students to treat certain issues, the truth or falsity of which rests on the truth or falsity of that tradition’s first principles, as settled. Surely we have not established the truth of Utilitarianism, or Kantianism, or Natural Law Theory, or the presence or absence of natural teleology, etc.

I’ve only been teaching for a few years, so there’s no “still” for me, but I decided not to teach about same-sex marriage – and even took textbooks out of the running for including certain papers about it – for roughly the reasons suggested by this mystery instructor. In any given class, the odds are excellent that some of my students are LGBTQ+, and I don’t want to risk seeming to give credence to arguments that call for denying them their rights.

This may partly be a function of my teaching style – I try make the case for each argument as strongly as I can, and mostly leave the fault-finding to the students. While some classes readily spot the weaknesses in bad arguments, others don’t, and I don’t want to create an environment where students may be left thinking that I, or the institution of academic philosophy in general, may think it acceptable to deny them rights. (I suppose it may also depend on one’s student body. I would feel better about teaching this topic at the very queer-friendly SLAC I attended as an undergrad than I would at the midwestern state school I now teach at. The risk of exacerbating marginalization of students seems less in a place where LGBTQ+ are more accepted and where the students in general are more likely to see the faults in the arguments.)

I feel that there is a disanalogy between arguments on same-sex marriage and arguments on abortion, in that pro-life arguments for abortion do not generally rely on premises that explicitly undermine the rights of women. Implicitly, yeah, but The Main Arguments that show up in moral problems texts on the pro-life side are all about the fetus and its qualities; they don’t have premises that effectively say that women are worthless (they often ignore the woman entirely). By contrast, a significant portion of the papers against same-sex marriage that show up in these texts do rely on premises that amount to “homosexuality is bad.”

Maybe my classes would dig right in and find the problems with these arguments, but given that there is no shortage of other topics to discuss, I choose not to include this one.

Discussing things like same-sex marriage can be beneficial insofar as it gets us thinking about marriage more generally. For a long time it was assumed that a union between one man and one woman is necessary for marriage. But not anymore. That raises an important question: what is, if anything, necessary for marriage? Two and only two people? No close family relations? Sex? As Prof. Frey mentioned above, Elizabeth Brake’s work challenges us to think through each of these things in a principled way, especially since we (vaguely) assume that the state has no right to legislate a comprehensive morality concerning the most personal and intimate relationships of its citizens (which raises another question: why should the state care about the marriages of its citizens?) I say this in light of experiencing good class discussion about these topics just this semester; I really thought it was going to be a waste of time, and it wasn’t.

Justin, your comments are well-taken. So to make my concern more precise: take something like the inherent fecundity of heterosexual intercourse (I’m sure you’re familiar with such claims; they frequent the arguments you critique). The question is whether or not this plays some role in our normative or other philosophical considerations concerning marriage and sexual ethics. The real disagreement (in my experience) is not whether such claims are true or false (many seem to be truisms), but whether they are relevant to our discussions about sexual ethics and marriage in the first place.
Anyways, thanks for your feedback and keep up the good work with the site.

What with it now being virtually impossible for students to openly oppose gay marriage, even where I live (suburban Dallas), I do think the instructor has to help the “anti” side articulate something half way coherent. The best I can do is offer the “anti” minority the idea that same-sex marriage will tend to normalize the ways that same-sex couples reproduce, when they wish to reproduce–i.e. with donor gametes and/or a gestational surrogate. Those methods are used by heterosexual couples too, but they are clearly regarded as second best in that context. In the context of same sex marriage, those methods become standard, par for the course. The “anti” argument then has to say something about why this is such a serious problem that same sex marriage shouldn’t be legal. I don’t think this is a good argument in the end, but I think it’s at least better than any of the following: simplistic appeals to naturalness, emotional reactions of disgust, the idea that gay marriages harm other marriages, the idea that marriage is just for procreation, the idea that same sex marriage opens the door to polygamy, and the ol’ “next thing they’ll be marrying their pets” argument. If there’s no argument against gay marriage worth thinking about for more than 3 minutes, then I do think the topic stops being worth teaching.

“But these things shift.”

Actually, I still teach abortion precisely because it seems like that is an issue where, frankly, things haven’t shifted. Take a look at this Gallup study on historical trends in abortion stances (Gallup Study on Abortion) . Very little movement in the last 40 years.

Contrast that with the historical trends on gay and lesbian rights (Gallup Study on Gay/Lesbian Rights) . Here we see a huge uptick in support in the last 15 years.

So although it is correct that “these things shift” when applied to Gay/Lesbian rights, it seems wrong to say that about abortion (assuming these Gallup trends are even close to accurate). Rather, abortion has seemed to be pretty intractable in a way that it doesn’t seem Gay/Lesbian rights has been.

This just seems a relevant disanalogy to me, one that might justify teaching abortion over Gay/Lesbian rights.

I teach the debate under the banner of the ethics of assimilation – and so with respect to gay marriage the question becomes whether there is any value in gay assimilation. Currently my anti-assimilation go to text is still Michael Warner (a chapter from The Trouble with Normal). I considered switching to Claudia Card, but I still like the Warner, even though it is very dated by now (he refers to gay marriage becoming legal as very unlikely).

Part of my reason for not teaching the “traditional” debate is because I like every text I assign to correlate with a potential paper topic, such that students can take up and defend the perspective of the author if they choose. I would never want to provide a platform for someone to argue in a paper that gay marriage is morally wrong, so I can’t assign any texts to that effect either, even if I only critique them.

When I teach “Contemporary Moral Problems” type classes, I think it’s important to cover issues that are either ongoing controversies with tremendous staying power (abortion, capital punishment, gun control) or relatively recent controversies (SSM, drug war, surveillance state, GMO crops). Both sorts are _contemporary_ moral problems, as opposed to the way that no one actually advocates racial superiority or women’s suffrage. I would not teach those two in that kind of class.

To the extent that these courses deal with moral “problems” perhaps it doesn’t make sense to cover a topic that no longer qualifies as a controversy to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, I can see why a conservative religious philosopher might want to teach same-sex marriage as a moral problem in the same way that an economic liberal might want to teach economic inequality as a moral problem, viz., to draw attention to the fact that it is a problem (in the sense of being immoral, not in the sense of being a controversy). If same sex marriage is neither seriously controversial nor morally problematic, then perhaps time is better spent on other issues.

Carlos, I’m fairly sure that Justin has read all those arguments, else I doubt he would have written the post in the way he did.

I don’t teach this (1) because it isn’t safe for me: (a) Antigay students will take it out on the student evaluations; (b) the faculty in my department includes anti-gay members (no I wouldn’t say that if it were merely a matter of opposition to marriage equality–I think that’s a heterosexist position, but it takes more than that to make one anti-gay); (c) It is increasingly the habit of the discriminatory to use student evaluations and otherwise unreliable and ambiguous feedback (or such as can be made to appear ambiguous) about teaching to try and stop promotions of faculty where such a case cannot be made on the basis of research. Every lbgt person reading this blog should be wary of such possibilities.
If this were a topic with substantive arguments on ‘the other side’–arguments that, for instance, were at least serious enough to not deserve the ridicule Richard Posner so rightly directed towards them in his 7th Circuit opinion, then I might take the risk anyway. If there were such arguments, I might encourage straight folks to do so. There are no such arguments. We signal in our choice controversies we teach what arguments are to be taken as serious contenders for our allegiance. Even if I were straight, and safe, I would no more teach the arguments ‘against’ marriage equality than I would teach young-earth theories. Less likely, because real people with real lives immediately at stake (the non-straight students in our classes) when one takes seriously that which does not deserve to be taken seriously in this arena.

Carlos, are you asking for a knock-down argument, or for an argument in which all of the central terminology is well-understood (e.g., not metaphysically loaded) and all of the central claims are too (e.g., can be illustrated with obviously apt examples), or something elsewhere? And why ask for this, when the issue is whether there are any good arguments against recognizing same-sex marriage, rather than whether there are any good arguments in favor or whether there are any good arguments against the good arguments in favor?

Carlos Flores, there is quite a large literature there (particularly if we include the best arguments against those particular authors’ positions that you cite), so it’s difficult to know where to begin. But, if you are unfamiliar with arguments in favor of same-sex marriage beyond “love is love”, I would suggest starting with some of the basics, like John Corvino’s work on this topic.

One thing worth considering is that when we teach ethics, we shouldn’t be presenting issues in a simplistic pro/con sort of way, as if we were in a courtroom and all that mattered was the final verdict. Rather, the best ethics classes are ones that expand students’ minds, help them think more deeply and critically about issues, and recognize that when reasonable people disagree about a conclusion, there are still many things they might learn from each other. This shows students that we can do better than the polarizing and reductionistic ways that issues are “debated” in popular media. For all that we may disagree with the conclusions of arguments like George, Girgis, and Anderson on same-sex marriage, they appeal to ideals and values that are deeply rooted in our culture and which demand serious consideration, either as things we need to modify or abandon (and thus reconsider the other beliefs held on their basis), or as things we need to reconcile with this new commitment to marriage equality. This is the kind of deeper discussion that one can’t have if the question is simply “do you or don’t support same-sex marriage”, and supposing that we can stop talking about these things if that latter question is largely settled neglects that deeper discussion that needs to be had. And by the same token, I would hope that far from being offensive to GLBT students, it actually engages as an equal participant in that deeper re-thinking, rather than condescendingly suggesting that this is something that heterosexuals (and/or conservatives, religious believers, etc.) have to figure out amongst themselves in private.
In short, GGA and company do a thoughtful job of showing that there are tensions that arise when we have such a massive and rapid shift of opinion on an issue that has been rather consistent for pretty much all human history, and that demands a deeper, inclusive conversation about what that means. If I were in an ethics teacher in the period after the Civil War, you can bet I would continue to teach the issue of the ethics of slavery, including pro-slavery arguments, because I wouldn’t simply want people to oppose slavery, I would want them to do so in an informed way, understanding what they are opposing and why, especially while the issue was still fresh, latent values and assumptions of the kind that made slavery possible remained common, people wrestled with the question of how to re-think social and racial relations in light of these changes, etc. Indeed, when I teach this issue and present the challenges of people like GGA, the “yes-no” question regarding same-sex marriage is actually not really all that prevalent in the class discussions; the deeper questions are the ones that end up taking center stage.

I decided three years ago that Same-Sex Marriage was a topic that I could no longer in good conscience teach. I decided this for the following reasons:
1. “Marriage” here is referring to a legal recognition of status under the law, for legal purposes.
2. The question “should Bobby and Jim be permitted to legally marry?” is one that requires a legal justification. I would imagine folks have legal objections to such an arrangement. ,Some of those legal arguments arise from a set of beliefs about particular moral issues that lead to them supposing that “Gay Marriage” is morally wrong in a way that has meaningful legal implications, and thus it must be outlawed.
3. I do not teach courses in law (nor would I want to). But if it’s the case that the legal question becomes viable, at times, because of a moral concern, perhaps I ought t consider the moral question(s). What are those questions? Why would Gay Marriage be “wrong”?
4. Because: Gay People, by virtue of their “gayness,” pose a threat to society, because Gay People (they’re, like, super different ya know), are uniquely and all individually harmful to: children, schools, my dog, etc. , or because gayness is, just, um…., bad. Which gets us to the heart of the “moral” issue: gayness is morally bad.
5. I cannot think of any non-religiously motivated argument that can in ANY philosophically coherent way (to a 21st century philosopher of any major Western tradition), justify the claim that “gayness” is morally bad.
6. I can think of the absolute horror of sitting in a room of 20 – 200 other students, all of whom are debating whether you, a gay individual, are morally “bad” in virtue of your “gayness”. Are you, seriously, going to suggest that your intellectual “curiosity” and objective desire for “rigour” and “unbiased investigation” has the moral right to subject any individual to that kind of disrespectful denigration? To be clear, I am claiming that teaching Same-Sex Marriage in an applied ethics or contemporary moral problems class implies that gayness is immoral. I do not pull wings off of insects for the sake of intellectual curiosity, and I do not license the demeaning, humiliating, or disrespecting of students who identify as gay.
7. Further, teaching gay marriage as a topic of controversy in a philosophy class, as others have noted, encourages the belief that it is an open question whether gayness is, itself, immoral. This IS akin and analogous to asking whether being black makes you less human, or whether women are really worth as much as men.
That’s why I don’t teach Same-Sex Marriage in my Ethics class.

I’m not sure what “requires a legal justification” here means, but if, as Rachel suggests, it means that it would be wrong or unreasonable for a legislative body to just permit it on it’s own, then there is certainly no justification for that position in US law or, as far as I can tell, any legal system. What could the basis for that claim even be? Nothing in US law. Maybe the claim means something else, but it’s too obscurely put to know. (I’d tried to post a comment on this post before that, oddly, didn’t show up, suggesting that there may still be good reason to teach this topic, but I’ll leave that aside.)

7 is missing the point of Contemporary Moral Problems type classes. Is abortion immoral? Is capital punishment immoral? Is euthanasia immoral? That these are controversial does not imply that showing students how to argue about them implies one position or the other.

I’m not aware of anyone whose arguments against same-sex marriage would be read in a philosophy class who maintains that “gayness” is immoral in a way analogous to saying that being female or black is immoral. Most no doubt personally believe that homosexual sex is immoral, but would want to distinguish between an activity one chooses to do and a disposition, orientation, or however you want to categorize the “gayness” you are talking about, which most now agree isn’t a choice. But that’s all beside the point, because George, et. al., explicitly deny your claim that opposing same-sex marriage entails any judgment one way or other on the morality of homosexual activity, and that it rests on an argument that marriage has always had a certain essential structure and that same-sex couples cannot by definition be married. In principle one could certainly agree with that argument about the essential structure and definition of marriage but find nothing immoral about homosexual activity, as was almost certainly the case with the ancient Greeks, for instance. Those who find such arguments compelling would regard your claims as both straw man and ad hominem arguments, reinforcing their conviction that the opposition to same-sex marriage has rational superiority. At any rate, prominent advocates for same-sex marriage like Corvino and Koppelman, at least, respect those arguments and take them seriously, which I highly doubt they would do if they thought the arguments were ultimately just about the “morality of gayness”.

Justin, just to clarify, why do you say that “my religious authorities say X is true, therefore X is true” is not (never?) a good argument? Let’s assume we’re only talking ethics…obviously that would be a very good argument if X was a claim about what one’s religion thinks. And of course one can get perfectly good testimonial knowledge about many things from religious authorities–many religious authorities teach classes on mathematics, and biology, etc. Anyway, I assume you meant the claim to be restricted to ethics, or to claims that only religious authorities say is true, or something like that.

In any case, the badness of that argument follows (given some not implausible auxiliary premises) if there are no religious bodies that can speak with true authority about ethics. And that may well be true! But to assume that is to assume (near enough) that there are no true religions. Which, again, might be true. But I wasn’t sure whether you meant your criticism of the “my religious authorities say X is true, therefore X is true” argument to rely on that premise. If not, I’d be interested in knowing what your criticism is.

No, no, definitely responsive! Thanks. Still, I don’t think I’m convinced. I agree that the religious authorities are not *making* the ethical claims true, but that’s a different matter isn’t it? The question is whether the testimony of a religious authority is a good reason to believe something. (Good arguments just have to provide good reasons to believe their conclusions, right?) Compare: “climate scientists say that the earth is dangerously warming due to avoidable human activity, therefore the earth is dangerously warming due to avoidable human activity”. That seems like a perfectly good argument. (Maybe I should have picked a less controversial one even–I mean, most of what we know we know by testimony.) Consider the following argument:

1. Hinduism is true. (Yes, I know I’m ignoring all sorts of subtitles, but…)
2. If Hinduism is true, then some Hindu authorities know that it is wrong to eat beef.
3. Therefore, some Hindu authorities (the Xs) know that it is wrong to eat beef.
4. Some such authorities tell Hindu “laity” (the Ys) that it is wrong to eat beef.
5. Some Ys (the YYs) recognize that some of the Xs (the XXs) are (true) authorities.
6. If an expert (true authority) about P-stuff who knows that P testifies that P is true, and the recipient of that testimony recognizes that the expert is an expert about P-stuff, then the recipient gains knowledge that P.
7. Therefore, the YYs know, on the basis of the testimony of the XXs, that it is wrong to eat beef.

Depending on your views about rational disagreement you might think that (2) or (5) is false, and depending on your views about testimony you might think (6) is false. But lots of philosophers accept claims like (2), (5), and (6), so I think the only reason to dismiss this argument would be if you thought (1) was (“dismissably”) false. Arguments of the above form (I mean, subbing out ‘Hinduism’ etc. with other claims) are the best arguments I could give for most of the things I believe. And I think they’re good arguments! In some cases–global warming and evolution are examples, I guess–there is a decent amount of controversy. But I still think I can know about global warming and evolution on the basis of expert testimony. Likewise, I suppose, if there is a true religion then adherents of that religion can know all sorts of stuff on the basis of expert testimony, despite the controversy. What do you think?

Justin,

There’s no need to be snarky. Let’s get to the bottomline from a (“a”, one not ALL) student’s (not students’) concern:

Since you say I would not have to agree with you, could I argue against same-sex marriage in your class and receive an “A”?

If so, and especially since you have already asserted there are no arguments you accept as plausible, specifically in what concrete terms how?

I’m 44 years old, retired military, with multiple deployments all around the world. While I generally try not use my biography as any sort of source to authority to speak on things I don’t (or even feel I do) know about, I am not a kid and I would expect to be treated by (generic) you in your classes as a mature, thinking, adult.