Gay Marriage: Why Not?

The first gay couples to tie the knot in the UK have now done so and as far as I can tell the Earth is still turning and the price of eggs has not gone up.  For the record, legislatively, I view gay marriage as an equality issue and I remain unconvinced by various arguments made against its introduction.  I do not think that religious groups have a monopoly on defining marriage or that a society does not have the right to change the way in which it views marriage.  I do not believe that marriage, by definition refers only to relationships that might give rise to the birth and nurture of children (out the window go older couples and those who either cannot have children or who choose not to) and I do not believe that society will suffer harm if a few thousand gay or lesbian couples marry each year.

At the same time, it is a mistake to conclude that everyone who opposes gay marriage is homophobic.  Some may, be but many are not.  It is possible to believe (rightly or wrongly) that something is harmful or even immoral and yet not be remotely bigoted.  I might be tee-total (which I am not) on the grounds of health, religion or personal preference, but that does not necessarily mean that I am alcophobic!

Few social changes have occurred within my lifetime that compare with the changes in attitudes with regard to sexuality.  Some headlines this week in the UK trumpeted that 20% of people invited to a gay marriage would choose not to attend; that means, of course, that 80% would.  Such an outcome was, literally, unthinkable forty years ago.  In the space of a generation we have gone from being told by doctors, psychiatrists, politicians and religious leaders that being gay was a wilful perversion, to it being an illness, to it being a lifestyle choice to it being quite simply what some individuals are.  That is quite a movement!

What I find particularly interesting though in the context of our society is the way in which minorities seeking to change legislation or social practices are often met with the question, ‘why?’  The response, I think, ought to be ‘why not?’  When the majority asks ‘why?’ it immediately puts the onus on the minority to prove that it has a right to be listened to; that the majority ought to ‘permit’ a change in the way society shapes itself.  In other words, it is a subtle way of asserting that minorities are dependent on majorities for any rights or ‘privileges’ that they might enjoy.  Surely the right way to go about ordering our society is for all of us to empathise with everyone in our society, however challenging that might be.  The question then becomes, why should minorities not be able to express themselves in exactly the same ways as majorities?  There might still be some cases where this is not a good thing, but I suspect they will be many fewer than at present. 

Why not gay marriage?  Why not racial equality?  Why not religious freedom?  The irony is that some of the voices raised most strongly against gay marriage come from within minority groups, such as churches, who will soon have to realise that their freedoms depend on the majority taking a ‘why not’, rather than a ‘why’ approach to their practices.