Same sex marriage and category errors.

I've been on here before stating that many of the arguments against same sex marriage fail because they attribute characteristics to different sex marriage that don't exist or are historically implausible.  Today I'm going to attack another: the idea that if we legitimize any "alternative" to 1-male-1-female marriage, we open the door to all of them.

This stance is not only very common, but is unfortunately helped by the "love is love" argument, which I have made here myself.  I'm going to call that a category error because marriage is not 100% about whom you are attracted to.  The similarities between two people of the same sex getting married are far greater to two people of different sexes than they are to any of the ridiculously suggested "slippery slopes" like human-animal, child, or incestuous marriages.

Validating same sex marriage is not validating any and all variants of human sexual attraction.  This is the argument, and it is false.  Two men or women who wish to commit their lives to each other and form a household as consenting adults are pretty much equivalent to a man and a woman who wish to do the same thing.  They are adults.  They are both capable of fully informed consent.  Both couples are capable of raising and providing for children which will not, from the conception, be genetically disadvantaged.  All of these things are impossible for the "alternative" marriages described above.

The other question that comes up, especially in regards to child marriage, is one of cultural norms.  If, as was common throughout human history, children or young adolescents entering marriage is a cultural norm, shouldn't we tolerate it?  In this case, I think the answer is still no, because we have decided that, generally, children and young adolescents are not capable of making those kinds of decisions.  The frontal cortex is not fully formed until the late teens or twenties, and this development has significant impacts on a person's decision-making capabilities.  The other factor is that child marriage is much more often the girl or young woman being married to a much older man. which initiates not only an impressive power imbalance, but also pairs someone who may or may not be capable of consent with someone who is able to force a decision.  In this case, the woman is undervalued from the start, and this is simply not what we should be striving for.

I've avoided the word "biblical" several times here because there are examples in the Bible of all kinds of marriages, including ones today we would find abhorrent (e.g. children, rape, slaves).  However, what is described in the biblical text and what God has established as ideal for God's people are not the same thing.  I think the biblical text is pretty clear that the ideal marriage in God's kingdom is monogamous and equal and based on love.  These characteristics are easily matched by both same and different sex marriages.  They are not by any other "scary" alternative.