It’s Perfectly Logical to Oppose Abortion and Support Gay Marriage

[DonViejo]

By Mark Joseph Stern

To my mind, it has always seemed perfectly consistent to support gay marriage but oppose abortion. I don’t personally agree with the distinction at the heart of this dichotomy, but it’s still a pretty rational one: You can support gay marriage because you believe in the dignity and equality of all human life—and oppose abortion for the same stated reasons. Besides, married gay couples will very rarely need abortions, whereas gay people pressured into straight relationships can and do. For the anti-abortion crowd, gay marriage should be a win-win.

On Thursday, however, Carson Holloway of the archly conservative Witherspoon Institute penned a firm counterpoint to my assumption, proclaiming an unbreakable link between opposition to both abortion and gay marriage. Holloway’s argument is admirably simple. The constitutional right to abortion is based on a modern interpretation of the 14th Amendment, and so is the constitutional right of gay people to marry. According to Holloway, then, opposing the right to abortion necessarily means opposing the right to gay marriage. The two issues, as Justice Antonin Scalia might put it, “spring forth from the same diseased root”—an equality-minded interpretation of an opaque yet expansive text. They thus cannot logically be severed.

If every American’s support for gay rights sprang directly and exclusively from their personal interpretation of the 14th Amendment, then I guess Holloway would be correct. But of course, support for marriage equality goes far beyond constitutional exegesis: It is entirely possible to support gay marriage in principle without believing that the constitution commands its legalization nationwide. Even President Barack Obama seemed to strike this pose when he first endorsed marriage equality, though he has since quietly abandoned it.

Holloway ignores this counterpoint entirely, insisting instead that gay marriage and abortion are intrinsically linked due to this single fairly arbitrary connection. In his polemic, he claims that “the Republican Party cannot surrender the cause of marriage ... without also in practice surrendering the cause of life,” because “a Republican Party that gives up the fight against judicial activism in order to make peace with same-sex marriage will also be surrendering the fight for a constitutional order more protective of the right to life.” But if you remove the judicial activism component from this equation—by, for instance, supporting gay marriage by referendum or legislation, exclusively on the state level—then the whole edifice crumbles.

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http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/05/15/it_s_logical_to_oppose_abortion_and_support_gay_marriage.html?

[Warpy]

1. Only if you're a gay male

who isn't very churchy but loves to split legal hairs to his advantage as long as he doesn't have to admit women are adult human beings with civil rights of their own.

That's what these losers always miss, that there is a grown up person with rights of her own involved in their funny equations.

So yes, if you think women are lesser beings who don't rate full civil rights, then it looks perfectly logical to you, there are only the fetus and the state involved.

[SamKnause]

2. Abortion

is a woman's health care issue.

The only people who should be making decisions about a womans health care is her and her doctor.

Politicians are governing based on religious issues.

This is wrong.

This harmful to women.

Supporting gay marriage is an equality issue.

I believe in equality for all.

[Cha]

3. I support Gay Marriage and GBLT Rights.. and I support a Woman's Right

to Choose what she wants to do with her own body.

Stay out of it Viagra loaded men in Congress.



Mahalo DonViejo

[shenmue]

7. :)

True.

[Gravitycollapse]

4. Gay marriage and abortion rights are two distinct issues. They only coexist...

Because we as a society are too stupid to grasp two independent ethical principles at once. Everything must be singular and streamlined.

Life is so much different from the political narrative. It is so much more complex and non-competitive. Each concept tumbles around on its own, sometimes intermingling with others. But not always. When you try to make issues compete, one inevitably becomes subordinate to the other. Which is the wrong path to liberation.

We have to measure these issues as worthy of immense reflection on their own merits and not simply as the fabled stories of political elections.

[RandySF]

5. I'm pro choice, but I do see this slight distinction.

At some point in the pregnancy it ceases to be a fetus and becomes a person, and where that moment falls I just don't know. That's why I see a grey area in terms of when it becomes illegal barring a major medical emergency. Marriage between two consenting, unrelated adults, on the other hand is different because no one else is at risk.

[Lee-Lee]

8. If it's still a parasite on my body, it's my choice

Period.

[MFrohike]

6. Whoa boy

I read the original article and it's just a repetitious sermon to the choir. He never really establishes a link between the two issues, he just holds them up together and says they're linked. I get that this sort of thing is really common to political arguments, but it still hurts the mind.

There was one really funny thing. At one point, he argues that the GOP's most expeditious strategy to outlaw abortion is to elect presidents who will appoint justices who will eventually overturn Roe. I had to laugh when I read that. I always thought the most expeditious way in this case was the amendment process. By way of analogy, and forgive the tangential touching on Godwin, it's as though George Marshall argued the most expeditious way to beat the Nazis was to wait for Hitler to die of old age rather than invading France.