Left-Handed Desks and Same-Sex Marriages:

That's the title to this new article by John Corvino which argues for same-sex marriage as a reasonable accommodation, much in the same way left-handed desks for southpaws are reasonable accommodations. In the process, he shoots down many of the non-sequiturs used to argue against gay marriage. Here is a taste:

Consider an analogy: most school classrooms have both right-handed desks and left-handed desks. Now imagine a time before left-handed desks. A reformer then might have argued, “Hey, right-handed desks are great. But not everyone is right-handed. Left-handed desks would make life better for left-handed people; their classroom experience would be more productive, and in the long run, their increased productivity would benefit everyone, left-handed and right-handed alike.” Sounds like a strong argument for left-handed desks.

Now, imagine an opponent responding, “But we've always had right-handed desks! Right-handed-desks have served society well. We obviously don't NEED left-handed desks; we've gotten along fine without them thus far. What's more, introducing them is an untested social experiment, one that could have serious repercussions for our children!”

Before you dismiss this comparison as silly, recall that left-handedness was once considered a sign of moral depravity, witchcraft, or worse. It's no accident that the word “sinister” matches the Latin word for “left.” But that's not the point of the analogy.

Many of the arguments against same-sex marriage—including some of those offered by Glenn Stanton—commit the same fallacy as the response above. They rightly point to the many social benefits of heterosexual marriage, but they then wrongly infer that any other marriage arrangement must be bad. This is a non-sequitur.

Let me be clear on what I am not saying here. I am not saying that choosing a spouse is just like choosing a desk, or worse yet, that whether children are raised by mothers or fathers is somehow equivalent to whether they have right-handed desks, left-handed desks, or both. When I used the analogy during a debate last week, Stanton misread me to be saying just that. (In fairness to him, I should note that he was responding off-the-cuff.)

What I am saying is that we can recognize something to be good without inferring that any alternative must therefore be bad. Right-handed desks are good for most people, but they're not good for everyone. Similarly, heterosexual marriage is good for most people, but it's not good for everyone.