My purpose here in responding to Mr. Tweedt’s recent article “Discrimination has its place in Society” is not to defend the proposition of same-sex marriage, but simply to point out some basic flaws in Mr. Tweedt’s argument.

The first premise with which there seems to be great difficulty is in the idea that partners in a same-sex marriage could not benefit society in any way. To quote Mr. Tweedt, “you, who want to have sex with another person in a way that will never in any way benefit our society.”

Now, what is being said here? That two homosexuals, benefiting from a lawful marriage, would somehow be incapable of using said benefits to support our civilization in any way at all? This seems very unreasonable.

There does not seem to be any reason to suppose that two homosexuals would be unable to take advantage of the benefits provided by a lawful marriage and turn around and use these benefits to further contribute to society. So it seems Mr. Tweedt’s point must be something else, or he has no point at all. Rather, he must be saying that the act of homosexual sex can never benefit society in any way, whereas heterosexual sex can, for it can further the human race into the future.

But this seems to rely on the assumption that marriage has only one possible advantage, namely procreation, which seems altogether too extraordinarily reductionistic, and which also leads us to the next difficulty.

This involves Mr. Tweedt’s analogy, which runs something like this: A sink is a sink, even if it does not produce water, but a towel rack is never a sink. And the sink is, of course, heterosexual marriage, and the towel rack, homosexual relations. This analogy is supposed to allow for the possibility of a lawful, yet sterile heterosexual marriage. But it ought to be clear that Mr. Tweedt is begging the question with this point.

We all would agree that homosexual relations can never be exactly the same as heterosexual relations — hence the different appellations for these sexual preferences — yet, what we don’t agree on is that marriage should be defined only as a heterosexual relationship. This is exactly the matter at hand — should marriage be exclusively heterosexual?

Mr. Tweedt, the burden is on you to provide us with sound reasons why marriage must be heterosexual.

It is likewise the burden of the LGBTAA to provide us with sound reasons why marriage must not be restricted to heterosexual relationships, and they do appear to be trying to do this.

Benjamin Zahradnik

Senior

English