Gay Marriage and Levels of Abstraction

2014-02-13 two-men-arguingAdam Greenwood has a pretty insightful look at one of the commonly confused aspects of arguing about gay marriage over at Junior Ganymede.

A lot of time gets wasted in arguments that are really about what the proper unit of analysis is, without any of the participants quite realizing that is what their argument is about.

Let’s take gay marriage, for example. Defenders of the traditional definition of marriage believe that marriage is fundamentally tied to procreation. Proponents of gay marriage pooh-pooh the suggestion. The defenders, they point out, do not try to prevent old or infertile couples from getting married, nor do they try to prevent couples who have decided not to have children from getting married.

Read the rest for his resolution of this problem, which is really helpful in bringing some clarity to the debate.

1 thought on “Gay Marriage and Levels of Abstraction”

Comments are closed.