The people who superficially agree with me —that gay marriage is poor policy— do so for reasons I abhor like “cuz god hates fags.”

The people who superficially disagree with me —that gay marriage is good policy— do so for reasons I endorse like “liberty by enforcing the minimally discriminatory social polices.”

So, I belong to neither group. That hurts, but I’m used to it.

And by “inhabiting the bottom of the social ladder”, I mean that there is no way to pause your life, have your children, and resume your life a few years later. Yes, some institution will intervene to prevent you from starving or going homeless, but come on, you may have more ambitious goals in life beyond “don’t starve,” and you probably would appreciate the kind of life inhabited by the kind of people who don’t have “institutional interventions” to prevent them from starving.

Think: high school. Do you want to be the kid on food stamps in prep school? Economically, that’s the rational decision, right? Why pay when you don’t have to?

Literally, homosexual marriage makes marriage independent of biological sex. That’s my contention.

My problem is that (in the USA today as a reasonably responsible adult) it’s so terrible to have a child that only the desperate and stupid do it. There is little social support to counteract this trend, and homosexual marriage further erodes that support.

What’s so annoying is that the people that are against gay marriage like I am are against it for painfully stupid and destructive reasons, while the people who are for gay marriage like I am not are for it for generally well-meaning, civil intentions. I guess it’s just lonely being me.

I would support gay marriage if there was some other obvious and effective social institution to help working, educated, responsible adults have and raise children.

As it is —enjoy trying to maintain your career and education while pregnant or raising small children. You might get a few months vacation, a token tax rebate, and some cards from your friends, but guess what, that thesis isn’t going to write itself, and you still have to go to work, and guess what, nobody at the office is really going to care. Or, yah, sure, drop out of civil society and get on government welfare. Have fun inhabiting the bottom of the social latter during the most stressful two years of your life.

So you’re getting married? That’s nice, I like to have monogamous sex, too. Oh, you think that getting married justifies some kind of social signaling that you’ll be needing extra social support soon to raise a family? Yah, whatever, I sure wish Uncle Sam wrote me a check everytime I dumped a fuck into the same person as last time, you mooching welfare queen slacker loser.

—that’s my problem

That’s a plausible idea in the hypothetical future when humans have advanced such that gender distinctions are arbitrary, but that is not true today. I’m pro-transhumanism, but why posture in some silly social class identity skiff? Yes, yes, good university boys and girls sure love to love Diversity, and good proles hate them sum godless fagots gud. Blah blah blah.

Come on.

I believe that child-rearing should be socially revered. A traditional marriage institution isn’t ideal (or even good), but it’s better than reproductive anarchy.

But, yah, equal rights, freedom, and recreational sex for everyone. How can I disagree with THAT? I merely think that the MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE OF ALL BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS —INCLUDING HUMANS, namely, reproduction, hasn’t been given much critical thought. I think that’s bad.

My problem with the “gay marriage debate” is not that either side is hostile to socially intelligent reproductive ideas, but that BOTH “sides” refuse to address the core idea beyond the most cursory dismissals. THAT is my contention: the frame of the “debate” itself.

To me, this marriage debate like listening to a Yankees fans and a U.S. Marine argue opposing sides to “should people be allowed to use performance enhancing drugs?”

It’s funny: everybody blathers about a “Brave New World” dystopia, but in the book, THERE WAS NO “genetic engineering.” Actually, the biggest social difference, and in fact, the prime source of conflict in the book, was the complete destruction of the family as a social unit. “Everybody belonged to everybody else,” and to be a mother or a father was considered a damning taboo.

I bet out of everybody who ever utters “Brave New World,” I bet almost all of them haven’t read either “The Tempest” nor “Huxley’s Brave New World.”

But yah, civil rights… obviously, I’m “pro civil rights.” I just don’t see the point, as a young man, to civilly register my relationships if there’s no understanding that it “marriage” is a social signal meaning that I plan to raise a family with children and so I need special social support.