Gay Marriage:Should the Inability to Procreate Stop Homosexual Marriage?
...e sure that people who are genuinely in love and in it for the right reasons, not just to make babies, are being told that they do not deserve the same opportunities as all heterosexuals? Who should be given the right to chose whether or not a couple should have children; the people involved in the relationship or a completely biased group of heterosexuals? Heterosexuals, including elderly people who are married late in their lives, handicapped individuals who are physically incapable of procreation, sterile individuals, and couples who are able to have children but who do not chose to are all able to receive a marriage license and join in this sacred union, why aren’t procreationists questioning them? The group of heterosexuals unable or unwilling to reproduce is much larger than that of homosexuals, why don’t we chastise them for a while? Referring to the statements about the love from homosexuals raising children not being as genuine as the love that could come from biological parents is ludicrous. If a procreationist who believes this was placed around a family in which the parents are homosexual I am sure that they would not see a difference. I have been in contact with many people where this is the case and in most the love seems to radiate even stronger than many of the heterosexual households that I am in on a regular basis. Homosexual couples who are in love and want children cannot have them on their own. They wait for years to be able to adopt and when their baby arrives I am sure that they want nothing more than to love that child as if it were their own. They are mothers or fathers who don’t yet have children and who can’t do it without the help of heterosexuals. Love is not genetic, just because you are born into a family doesn’t mean that you instantly have love for every single person who is in that family. I am sure many of the people who where given up for adoption by their parents would much rather be raised by a homosexual couple than in an unloving home where they aren’t wanted. Social harmony is something that is not being supported when arguments of this nature arise. Morality sometimes requires people to sacrifice their self interest, especially their short- term, self-run, self-interest, in order to benefit and protect others. Moral code should not only provide guidance on how to treat other people but should also provide guidance on how to achieve happiness (Barcalow 79). This code goes along with John Stuart Mill’s take on utility or utilitarianism which says that when dealing with happiness it should result in the “greatest good for the greatest number” (Barcalow 17). Is preventing gay marriage and backing up the reasons for the lack of equality with comments of their inability to procreate supporting the greater good of the majority or disregarding the minority’s right to happiness? Immanuel Kant would say that the moral issues behind gay marriage and their inability to procreate “doesn’t depend on the particular circumstances or the facts of the situation, and that it does not depend on the customs of a particular society or the feelings of its members.” Kant believes that “every rational individual has the ability to decide for themselves the rightness or wrongness of an action. Nature must have intended us to use our reason for a purpose” (Solomon/Green 258). How did homosexuals get put into a group of individuals that have been deemed by the majority to be unable to reason for themselves? Many procreationists would say that homosexuality isn’t natural and would disagree with Kant’s references to nature and it being in charge of our ability to reason. There are many things in this world that aren’t natural, should people stop taking preventative cancer drugs and die just because they are not coming from our God given immune system? Then why would we halt the revolution of openly gay couples who want to marry and raise families because it isn’t the natural or normal thing to do? If we are going to ban gay marriage because it is un-natural, according to Kant we would have to ban everything that is un-natural such as medicines that keep us from dying or genetically engineered food products. So unless a maxim like that can be created “we might concede that homosexuality would undermine the traditional sense of family, but only in the sense of providing alternative versions of the family” (Barcalow 264). Different versions of family are needed in this country. In the 1930’...