If the argument the gays are making is found to be true, then it is true not only for gays, but for everyone.

That’s not a slippery slope fallacy. That’s a precedent. If a new right is found to exist for gays, then the principle of equality under the law says that it must also exist for everyone else.

Is the right to enjoy sex with your spouse a basic human right?

Is the right to marry the person you love, enjoy having sex with, and/or want to be with a basic human right?

Is it true that it’s unacceptable (illegal and discriminatory) bigotry to hold that marriage has a procreative function, or to value the family-preserving functions of marriage?

If it is, then the principle of equality under the law leads logically and inevitably to the recognition that, as it is true with gays, so must it be for any couple or group: if marriage is a “right”, then the burden of proof should not be on those who wish to unite to prove that their union will do no harm, but rather the burden should be entirely on those who would prevent their union to demonstrate how that union would do harm significant enough to override their basic right to marry.

On the issue of marriage being all about kids, by that measure straight people who don’t want to have kids mustn’t get married either. What are we doing to stop them?

Gay marraige is wrong though, the bible says so!

Beneath all this talk of marriage is a will-to-power rightisms. It reminds me of Diane Keaton saying she adopted because she wanted to know what it was like. Another notch on the experience belt. Here’s an easy prediction. Same-sex marriage, like gay adoption, will fade into desuetude in less than a generation. It was never about marriage. It was never about children. All civil rights movements have devolved from individual dignity to a mania for power. Look at Detroit. Listen to the president. Then there are the sad incoherent bumper stickers I saw on one car the other day. One: Feminist for Life. The other: Obama 2012.

David Riel,

Actually, you are incorrect. According to Wikipedia:

Same-sex unions are legally recognized in Brazil since 2004. Same-sex couples enjoy the provisions of several constitutional principles and the absence of prohibitive legislation. The Brazilian cohabitation (unregistered unions) policy grants rights similar to those granted in heterosexual marriages, including adoption, welfare benefits pension, inheritance tax, income tax, social security, health benefits, immigration, joint property ownership, hospital and prison visitation, IVF and surrogacy. Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled, in 2011, that same-sex couples are legally entitled to those unions, laying a legal foundation for future legislation on same-sex matrimonial rights. Several unions have been converted into full marriage by state judges.

In Brazil, a same-sex couple may convert their civil union into marriage with the approval of a state judge. This has occurred on a case-by-case basis.

If your point, however, is that R. R. Reno and Robert George (in another post) are making a big deal where none is warranted, I agree completely.

Private parties can contract among themselves anywhere, regardless of whether same-sex marriage is recognized or not. Indeed, Brazil does not recognize same-sex marriage. It is not so much that the author is “out of his mind” as it is that he lacks the integrity to weigh evidence and to present facts accurately to his readers. He has staked out his position and now will reach for anything to justify it.

Cojuanco,

If same-sex marriage is not legal in Brazil, I am not sure how the title From Gay Marriage to . . . can be relevant. If you don’t have gay marriage, how can you go from gay marriage to something else?

Wikipedia says, “In Brazil, a same-sex couple may convert their civil union into marriage with the approval of a state judge. This has occurred on a case-by-case basis.”

Katherine Infantine,

My nephew and his wife talk about their dog as a member of the family. He appears with them on their Christmas card photo. Probably millions of people feel the same way about their pets. Family has always meant much more than nuclear family (husband, wife, children). The idea of the nuclear family as a unit of society is in fact only a few hundred years old.

We don’t know the details, but what we do know is that this three-person union is a civil union. Brazil has both civil unions and same-sex marriage, so we’re not talking about a polygamous marriage in Brazil. And if it should be the case (as I am only guessing it might be) that the man in this civil union thinks of the two women a his wives, and they think of him as their husband, we don’t have a same-sex marriage.

And of course, as I keep repeating, polygamous marriage is marriage. In Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, Davidic descent is from David and Bathsheba, who was David’s seventh wife. Some of the greatest figures in the Old Testament had multiple wives (or wives and concubines), and it would be bizarre indeed to claim that they were not really married.

Many people consider the same-sex partners of their sons and daughters as part of the family, and many families have close friends that they think of as part of the family. I don’t think it has ever been the case in living memory (for me) that if someone claimed someone to be a part of the family who was not a close blood relative, people would have objected and claimed the meaning of family was somehow being degraded.

Same-sex marriage is a very new concept, but polygamy is a very old concept, and it has never gone away. Polygamous marriage is fully legal in close to fifty countries and recognized in more. It strikes me as not just willfully blind but arrogant to claim that polygamous marriage is not marriage, or that those in polygamous marriages are not families.

I would certainly agree that polygamous marriage is not right for Western countries or for many of the countries where it is practiced. But it certainly is marriage, and polygamous family arrangements are families.