Heterosexual Fecundity: A Coda to the Gay Marriage Argument

Of all the reactions I’ve seen to my recent blog post against gay marriage, the one that surprises me the most (besides Frankie Machine’s half-assed non sequitur) is the curious counter-claim that homosexual marriage should be permissible because straight people who cannot or will not reproduce can also get married.

I think people who raise the “sterile heterosexual” rebuttal believe they’ve advanced an intellectually serious counterfactual to my central claim, but I don’t think their logic holds.

Let’s begin by assuming that my central argument is correct and we all concede that by definition, marriage is no more and no less than a legally and culturally respected contractual framework that provides for the rearing of children and offers a socially useful infrastructure for protecting and privileging close-kin relationships while legitimizing the intergenerational transfer of property.

The state’s compelling interest in supporting child rearing — augmented by a series of tax benefits and an inheritance mechanism — confers publicly financed incentives, some of which are conditioned on the actual production of children and some which are latent in the structure of the marriage institution itself. People who take advantage of those financial benefits without producing offspring are functioning as free riders: They’re being unfairly enriched by participating within a system for which they aren’t entitled to membership, draining the state’s resources without upholding their end of the baby-making bargain.

A few observations:

  1. That heterosexual free riders unfairly benefit from marriage doesn’t mean that homosexuals also deserve a free ride. It’s illogical to claim that one abuse of a system justifies a second abuse; the logical solution is to limit heterosexual free ridership, instead of opening the floodgates to homosexuals. This counterpoint highlights the most significant deficiency with the “sterile heterosexual” rebuttal.
  2. In a practical sense, it’s very easy to see that homosexual couples are biologically incapable of procreation. Heterosexual couples, by contrast, are almost never obviously sterile; the only way to tell for sure whether a heterosexual couple is capable of procreating is to subject both parties to invasive and expensive fertility testing. Were the state to require fertility testing as a prerequisite to obtaining a marriage license, the result is either a very steep bill for the state (and almost surely, in the aggregate, failing a cost/benefit analysis) or the effective restriction of marriage only to the wealthy (which contradicts the purpose of marriage as the optimal family structure for child rearing). The least-worst outcome is probably something very similar to what we have today: Marriage open to heterosexuals on the belief that enough will procreate to justify the public expenditure on tax benefits without incurring extra costs assocated with new barriers to entry.
  3. In a cultural sense, admitting non-fecund heterosexuals into the institution of marriage serves a secondary purpose of reinforcing the desirability of marriage as a normative family structure. Socializing children to look to marriage as a bedrock social arrangement serves a useful public purpose in itself — enough, I think, to partially mitigate the free rider problem for sterile couples.

Thus, although sterile heterosexuals are certainly a problem, they’re not the problem that gay-marriage advocates think. The free-rider nature of non-fecund heterosexual unions is a defect that requires amelioration, not a systemic defect that therefore justifies gay marriage.

Indeed, it’d be more rational to exclude known sterile heterosexuals (e.g., the elderly) than to include homosexuals within the marriage institution, because as long as the state provides taxpayer-funded benefits to married couples, then the state incurs a cognate obligation to ensure that those tax dollars are expended for that purpose with as little “leakage” as possible. Free riders constitute a “leak” in the system — one that should be plugged, not enlarged.

From a purely public perspective, the only way to get around the free rider problem is to create an institution (e.g., civil unions) that don’t confer the same family-raising economic benefits as marriage.

If, and only if, the state removes all child-rearing economic benefits from the institution of marriage, does it make sense for the state to sanction marriage among the homosexual sterile or deliberately non-fecund.

Until then, no number of childless married couples will ever justify opening floodgates to even more free riders.

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8 comments

  1. People who take advantage of those financial benefits without producing offspring are functioning as free riders: They’re being unfairly enriched by participating within a system for which they aren’t entitled to membership, draining the state’s resources without upholding their end of the baby-making bargain.

    Whatever you say, Chairman Mao.

    1. I’m confused. I thought you liked Chairman Mao? In any case, one-line personal insults in lieu of an honest argumentative rebuttal is practically an endorsement of the underlying logic of my position. So thanks for your grudging vote of support!

      1. Says the guy who wrote the following: “Let’s begin by assuming that my central argument is correct.” Holy stacking the deck through circular reasoning, Batman!

        1. Seriously? Did you ever study Logic 101? It’s routine, when advancing a complex argumentative chain, to keep the debate focused on one aspect of the argument (i.e., one link in the chain) by foreclosing debate on other parts that aren’t relevant to the matter at hand. In this case, I’m focusing on a specific economic argument related to tax benefits. The debate should be about that argument.
          Obviously, people can disagree with the argument I first raised. If they do, then there’s no point in discussing the second argument. So, the only way to discuss the second argument is to assume — for debate purposes — that the first argument is correct. It’s a thought experiment, and it’s utterly routine.
          “Circular reasoning” is reasoning that concludes with what we began with. In this case, I’m advancing a secondary argument, not reinforcing the first.
          And by the way … when you introduce non-sequiturs into the debate simply to “score,” realize that it only works when the vapidity of the statement isn’t this transparently obvious.

          Subject: [amildvoiceofreason] Re: Heterosexual Fecundity: A Coda to the Gay Marriage Argument

      2. I never said I liked Chairman Mao. You can find that statement nowhere in anything I’ve written, on this blog or anywhere else. In any case, totally fabricated statements in lieu of an honest argumentative rebuttal is practically an endorsement of the underlying sanity of my position.

        1. My goodness, I’ve certainly gotten under your skin. I didn’t say you said you like Chairman Mao; I merely made the statement that I THINK you like him. Based, I might add, on my own read of your prior writing — invoking a sense of pattern recognition, if you will.
          Oh … I’ll give you an argumentative rebuttal when you provide an argument that’s not an ad hominem.

          Subject: [amildvoiceofreason] Re: Heterosexual Fecundity: A Coda to the Gay Marriage Argument

  2. How does adoption fit into your arguments? Wouldn’t a couple’s willingness and ability to adopt children make them eligible for the the institutional financial benefits of marriage? In which case, shouldn’t gay couples be allowed to marry if they prove that they intend to adopt?

    1. Adoption does make for an interesting line of discussion. It’s possible that adoption could open a door to gay marriage, but keep in mind two important facts: First, the best data we have (the Regnerus study) suggests that the long-term outcomes for children raised in a same-sex household are less optimal than children raised in stable two-parent families, so the state’s interest should be in limiting same-sex adoption in all but a handful of cases (e.g., the child is the biological offspring of a bisexual parent). Second, because the number of gay couples who’d adopt appears to be small, it’s not sufficient to justify opening the institution and its related benefits — again, it’s the cost/benefit. If 5 percent of gay couples adopt, is that enough to justify granting benefits intended for child-rearing to the other 95 percent? That’s a judgment call, but in tough economic times ….

      Subject: [amildvoiceofreason] Re: Heterosexual Fecundity: A Coda to the Gay Marriage Argument

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