The Heart of the Marriage Neutering Issue

David Whiting of the Orange County Register wrote a piece on neutering marriage and that prompted some letters from readers which the paper was willing to print.

Russ Neal of Huntington Beach:

Legalizing same-sex marriage means that people objecting to this transgression will be compelled to treat it as legitimate.

This is at the heart of the issue. It isn't just that someone who objects to homosexual behavior will be forced to endorse it. We will all, whether we have a moral objection to homosexual behavior or not, be forced to treat brideless and groomless pairings and marriage identically. State marriage licenses are issued on our behalf. The marriage neutering advocates don't want us to even have a word that notes there is a difference. It would be official government policy that there is not. Public schools (and many other schools, if not all) would be prevented from teaching that marriage is different from this pseudomarriage, and homosexuality advocates would be unrestrained in pushing their worldview in the schools as official curriculum. Parents would have no ability to opt their child out. Adoption agencies would not be able to give preference to placing children with a home that is inclusive of both sexes. No government agency, nothing associated with a government program or funding, would be allowed to make a distinction, unless of course it was to somehow provide a targeted advantage to same-sex couples. Soon after, no business, private employer, or private property owner would be allowed to make any distinction.

If California's constitutional amendment (Proposition 8) was allowed to stand, and California's domestic partnership and other laws were kept in place, same-sex couples would retain their treatment as spouses by the state government and everyone else, including businesses, could treat them as spouses. They're free to draw up legal paperwork, have ceremonies, change names, exchange rings, live together, share a life, and call themselves married. But the rest of us would not be forced to ignore the inherent difference between marriage and pseudomarriage.