Saturday 22 June 2013

What is the Point of Marriage Equality?

Marriage equality. Equal opportunity. Wealth inequality. Gender equality. Equal outcome. Equality before the law. “All men are created equal.” The concept of equality is pervasive and used to justify a broad range of policies. But what exactly is equality, and why would it serve to justify anything?
There really is no straightforward and obviously correct definition of “equality” or “equal.” Aristotle, agreeing with Plato, defined equality as “treating like cases as like.” When you have two or more members of a set and there is some relevant likeness between them, they will receive equal treatment. But that’s the thing; equal treatment is dependent on that possession of relevant likeness. Appealing to equality presupposes that relevant likeness, but that relevant likeness is exactly what is at issue. Doubling down on the claim of equality misses the point.
Consider the notion of “marriage equality.” Why is it called “marriage equality?” The notion is that same-sex couples are being treated the same, since they already possess the relevant likeness to opposite-sex couples. Is there a relevant likeness? Maybe, maybe not, but you do not prove equality by calling it equality. This may be difficult to understand for progressivists, but demonstrating that marriage is a social construct essentially based on nothing more than love (rather than, say, certain material elements) is hard to accomplish; the testimony of history ought to make one skeptical of the illusively straightforward kinds of argument meant to demonstrate relevant equality.
Read more at Anarcho-Papist.

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