OutRight
by Dale Carpenter

MORE OF US?

Same-gender marriage will breed queer folk, opponents fear

Will gay marriage produce more homosexuals? For many who oppose gay marriage, the prospect that it will lead more people to homosexuality is a powerful (if often unstated) reason to oppose it. They need not fear: Gay marriage is unlikely to have that effect, though it will probably make it seem as if there are more homosexuals. But even if gay marriage did have the effect of increasing the number of homosexuals in the population, that would not be reason by itself to oppose gay marriage.

Gay marriage will likely affect public attitudes about homosexuality. Gays will be seen in stable, committed, long-term relationships. Those relationships will enjoy as much respect as the law can provide because they will be accorded rights, privileges, and protections equal to heterosexual marriages. They will be called marriages, both in the law and in our culture. This will provide a language of ritual in which to speak about gay relationships that is familiar to straight Americans. Gay couples will no longer be “partners,” but spouses or husbands or wives. Gay couples will have engagements, weddings, and honeymoons. These words will be used, for the first time, without winks and nods, without knowing exaggeration.

We can expect, therefore, that over time gay marriage will have the effect of softening opposition to homosexuality in general. It will help alleviate some of the stigma that attaches to homosexuality.

That is not the only, or even the primary, reason to support gay marriage. The better reasons to support it are to encourage long-term coupling among gay men and women, to reduce the individual and social miseries and costs often associated with being single, to protect existing gay couples from significant legal and social disadvantage, and to support gay families in which children are raised. But reducing the hatred of homosexuals will certainly be a welcome consequence of recognizing gay marriages.

For some, however, this positive byproduct of gay marriage carries a significant risk. Gay marriage, in this view, will be a subsidy for homosexuality. And everyone knows that when you subsidize something you get more of it. Similarly, stigma is now part of the cost of homosexuality. Reduce the cost of something and you get more demand for it. Presto, more homosexuals.

Everything we have learned about human sexual orientation over the past half century confounds this seemingly logical conclusion. Human sexual orientation appears to be both unchosen and unchangeable. Whether it is biologically or genetically determined, or simply set at a very young age, sexual orientation does not respond to social influences designed to lead it in a different direction. Efforts to “treat” or to “convert” homosexuals have a long history of failure and no reliable evidence of success.

Further, we have no good evidence for the existence of “waverers,” people whose sexual orientation is on the line between homosexuality and heterosexuality and who may be led in one direction or the other by social and personal influences. Homosexuals are not created by seduction, recruitment, or propaganda.

As conservative legal scholar and federal judge Richard Posner has concluded, homosexuality appears “to be no more common in tolerant than in repressive societies.” For example, there is no evidence that the relative acceptance of homosexuality in the Netherlands and Belgium, both of which recognize gay marriage, has caused an increase in the number of homosexuals.

So gay marriage will not likely increase the number of homosexuals. It will, however, increase levels of happiness among existing homosexuals. How could that be a bad thing?

By helping to reduce the stigma of homosexuality, gay marriage will also increase the proportion of homosexuals who are open and honest about their sexual orientation. That’s because the potential costs of being out—like losing a job, alienating family members and friends, and risking hate violence—will be reduced. So after gay marriage is recognized, it may well seem there are more homosexuals than before.

Perhaps, however, even if gay marriage does not increase the number of homosexuals, it will increase the amount of homosexual sexual activity. Again, this would count as a significant cost of gay marriage to many who oppose it.

Will gay marriage lead to an increase in homosexual sexual activity? It is hard to say. On the one hand, we may conjecture that the stigma-reducing effect of gay marriage may lead to more homosexual experimentation, and at a younger age, by homosexuals and even by heterosexuals.

On the other hand, gay marriage may reduce homosexual activity in other ways. As I have argued, gay marriage would not be a subsidy for homosexuality in general because sexual orientation is immune to a system of rewards and punishments.

But gay marriage will be a subsidy for homosexual monogamy. And everyone knows that when you subsidize something, you get more of it.
So the overall effect of gay marriage may be neither a net gain nor a net loss in homosexual activity.

All of this discussion is predicated on the assumption that there is something bad about homosexuality; otherwise, there would be nothing to fear from an increase in the number of homosexuals or homosexual activity.

And the judgment that homosexuality is somehow bad rests, in turn, on essentially religious grounds. Try as they might to resist this characterization of their position, religion is what opponents of gay marriage must ultimately rest their case upon.

Writing from the conservative end of the spectrum, Dale Carpenter began his column for OutSmart in 1994, when he lived in Houston. Now residing in Minneapolis, Carpenter is a University of Minnesota Law School professor.

If you have any comments about this article, please email them to letters@outsmartmagazine.com.