Though I am a bit late posting on this topic (in the sense that the peak of the hoopla surrounding this issue ended over a month ago), I though it necessary to point out something that I have yet to see discussed elsewhere...
I don't intend to write much on this topic, as discussions of gay "marriage" from an Orthodox standpoint are all over the place right now... some very good, others questionable. However, there is one pro-gay marriage argument that I think needs to be central to this discussion:
Over and over again, I hear people ask, "How do marriage between same-sex couples affect you?" The question is rhetorical with the assumed answer being, "They don't." This answer is not true... Gay marriage affects many things which impact the lives of other people. But even if gay marriage did NOT have a direct affect on others, I still think that it's necessary to answer this question with another question: "Is this really the standard for morality that we wish to place on ourselves?"
In other words, this question assumes that our morality is based solely on the affect one's behavior has on another. If I hit you, my action has negatively affected you, and such an action then ought to be illegal. If I decide to wear terribly uncomfortable shoes, though, this may be a bad personal choice, but it has no ill effects on my neighbor. Thus, no intervention of law or moral standards in society are necessary. The concept is simple... or so we believe.
The truth is, there are MANY thing that virtually any person in the world would not like to see occurring around them which they believe morality directs us to avoid... even going so far as to make them illegal. Public nudity, for instance, is largely eschewed, as most certainly public sexual acts would be. We wouldn't allow our neighbor to use his lawn as his own personal outhouse. This goes even further. In NYC, for instance, Mayor Bloomberg attempted to ban large sodas and "sugary drinks"... a ban he found far more support for than I thought there would be. He attempted to make an argument that the government ought to be involved in making good decisions for others where he felt they might make bad decisions, instead. Much of government activity, in fact, centers on this principle today.
The questions of how gay marriage affects others is a question with a faulty - and dangerous - premise: that all activity that does not directly harm others should be legal and accepted. But nobody with a sound mind, I believe, can deny that what goes on in society affects society as a whole.
Take this scenario: Image twin brothers, age 15, both with very similar values and personalities. Image that they are split up and place on two very different islands. On one island, the nuclear family is very much intact. Churches are attended every Sunday, traditional values are widely-held. A spirit of personal responsibility, a hard work-ethic, and high moral standards are the status-quo. What little there is of a presence of television contains family-oriented shows, movies devoid of sex, cursing, or explicit violence, and educational documentaries. On the second island, broken families are the norm. Beyond this, many youths drop out of school for a life filled with drugs and alcohol. Loose sexual relations are the norm, and pornography is everywhere. Television contains sexually-charged shows and mindless violence, almost without end. Aggressive and violent video-games are the national pastime for youths, though many adults play them as well. Now imagine that, 15 years after being taken to these islands, they are brought back together...
Would we expect these now 30-year-old men to look, think, or act very similarly? Of course not. Though none of the activities are either island are said to "directly" affect others, the truth is that the general morality that surrounded the boys were starkly different. These things do affect us, whether we like it or not.
The goal for any government, then, is to uphold the highest standards of morality and let people decide whether they want to follow it or not. To ask "How does 'X' negatively affect your life?" opts instead for the lowest common denominator of morality... This is a dangerous question because it betrays a dangerous premise, and this premise ought to be passionately challenged whenever it pops up.
That's very well argued.
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