Marriage is indeed vitally important, and I can agree with Marta Cook's statement in "Marriage is a Human Right" (Nov. 13) that it is "the bedrock of society." John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Civil Government, refers to the relationship between a man and his wife as "the first Society." It is precisely because of marriage's import to society as a whole -- not just individual couples -- that should give us pause before we accept gay marriage.
Cook's column also makes the unfortunate, though hardly surprising, omission of an important aspect of marriage: children. Marriage is society's most pro-child institution. Due to an unfortunate and certainly unfair biological happenstance, children fare best when they have both a mother and a father, and society fares better as a result. Those with only a jaundiced view of the subject can claim (falsely) that marriage is primarily about property. We must keep this in mind when we are presented with alternative family arrangements to traditional marriage.
Cook acknowledges that traditional marriage is "crumbling," but her assertion that gay marriage could be its "saving grace" is most certainly false. One need only look to those countries who have already adopted gay marriage, and the results are not encouraging. Those countries - especially in Scandinavia, which contains some of the most "progressive" countries in the world -- that have the most permissive marriage laws have the least favorable views of marriage and its importance, and this relationship is strong. While correlation is not causation, it does demonstrate that gay marriage will not "fix" marriage.
There is a public as well as a private component to marriage, and our decisions on this issue affect couples, our children, and our society at large. This debate can indeed be conducted with civility, and as Cook says, without vitriol. Perhaps, when she realizes that having reservations about gay marriage does not make one a "homophobe," she can join the civil debate with the rest of us.
Andrew Morgan
CLAS '06
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