77 Non-religious Reasons to Support Man/Woman Marriage

77 Non-religious Reasons to Support Man/Woman Marriage is a Gish Gallop pamphlet attributed to Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D, purporting to deliver a number of "non-religious" reasons that same-sex marriage should not be allowed. Despite the marriage-related title, many of the listed reasons are actually attacks on homosexuals' parenting rights, as well as single parents and any other arrangement that doesn't resemble the traditional nuclear family. The original of this gumph can be found at her blog and a PDF file hosted by the Eagle Forum.

Dr. Morse Ph.D is the founder of the Ruth Institute, an offshoot of the National Organisation for Marriage. Despite a legitimate doctorate in economics from the University of Rochester, Dr. Morse, Ph.D, seems to follow the usual crank symptom of being so insecure in her qualifications that she must be referred to as Dr. and/or Ph.D at all times.

General observations
Like most Gish Gallop lists, there aren't really 77 reasons given here. Many are vague re-wordings of the same point (mostly "children need both fathers and mothers" repeated ad nauseam) and some don't really fall into the category of "reason" at all - even by a broad definition - but are merely whining statements of supposed fact. In support of the assertion that children need both parents, Dr. Morse Ph.D repeatedly says that this is backed up by the need for children to know and feel close to their biological parents. To cite her biography on her old site, she adopted a Romanian boy in 1991, thus robbing him of his essential right to know his biological parents and experience his culture and heritage. Curiously, this fact is missing from her biography on the Ruth Institute website. Is that an ad hominem? A shameless tu quoque? Yep, and damn proud of it.

Nothing is cited at any point in the list, although if you care to give Dr. Morse Ph.D the benefit of the doubt and say that there isn't room for citations on a mere 2-page pamphlet, that's fine. But, the original word count of all of these points combined is about 2,300 - about the size of a reasonable undergraduate essay that would include footnotes - and the text of the original is remarkably squashed to make it fit onto two sides. The remaining points in the list not falling into "repeat" or "whining" can be categorised as "irrelevant", and so the lack of more specific detail to back up these assertions cannot be excused. This seems to be an exercise in reaching a magical number, 77, rather than building convincing arguments. If it was about simple brevity, only a dozen points at most would be needed; if it was about providing a consistent argument there would be more coherent prose rather than bullet points.

The overall theme is defending and supporting man/woman marriage, but, contrary to what the title would suggest, no one is on record opposing man/woman marriage. As with most modern homophobic tactics (e.g., Heterophobia), this re-frames the debate as not about giving and extending rights to others, but as trying to protect the rights of others. This is, of course, bollocks, since allowing same-sex marriage wouldn't ban or destroy opposite-sex marriage, which would still comprise the vast majority of marriages even if every gay and bisexual person on the planet chose to marry someone of the same sex. So Dr Morse Ph.D's list is fairly underhanded right from the start.

The essential public purpose of marriage
Summary: Dr. Morse Ph.D has not established that child-rearing is the primary and sole reason behind marriage (even if this was demonstrated, wouldn't it logically follow for marriages to be annulled once a child reaches maturity?) and does not back up her assertions with any reason or citation.

Some People say research shows That children of same sex couples do just as well as the children of opposite sex couples
Summary: Some people say research shows Dr. Morse Ph.D cannot form a coherent argument, even given two pages of text to do it in.

But not all married couples have children. How can you say marriage is about the benefits to children?
SUMMARY: The argument so far is that children must be with biological parents, and only with both biological parents. But the only way to consistently follow this up is to make fertility tests mandatory as a qualification to get married, ensure rapists marry their victims, ban adoption in all forms, never take children from their parents even in the most dire cases of abuse, ban divorce, and then make divorce mandatory when their children reach a certain age or the couple becomes infertile. Curiously, Dr. Morse Ph.D doesn't see this obvious solution to the problems and arguments she presents!

Some peoples say children only need two adults who love each other and that love is more important than biology
SUMMARY: This section is almost entirely irrelevant to same-sex marriage owing to the false analogy with step-parents - having a child from age 0 isn't entirely the same situation as suddenly getting a child aged 10 with a history and established relationship. As a defense of marriage as opposed to an attack on same-sex marriage, this may have a point, but then why would Dr. Morse Ph.D bring up the man/woman issue at all if she was defending marriage rather than attacking homosexual couples? This would be more aptly titled "77 Reasons for Enforced Marriage Between Biological Parents". Or, like, 12 reasons given the number of blatant repeats.

Men and women are not interchangeable
SUMMARY: Hi, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse Ph.D! Cast your mind back to the bland summer of 1980 when you were writing your thesis at Rochester. Remember that? I know it was economics, but I'm sure you had a thing called a "reference" section. You know, the bit at the back with all the numbers and the italics and all that? Yeah, remember that? I know it was a long time ago but surely it's not too difficult. You've repeated yourself so much here that you have more than enough space to add some citations.

Redefining marriage marginalizes fathers
Summary: This is tedious bullshit, and seems to be laboring under the assumption that same-sex marriage will lead, long term, to some weird lesbian world government.

The Pandora’s box of artificial reproduction
Summary: This list seems to assume heterosexual couples have no fertility problems. It also seems to suggest that it's homosexual couples that have spurred the idea of "entitlement" to this treatment. Obviously, Dr. Morse Ph.D must be aware that this is wrong, as in the previous section she made reference to the UK's use of fertility treatment, and that this was made available on the NHS under certain circumstances long before the UK introduced civil partnerships (and only introduced full marriage rights to non-hetero couples in England and Wales in 2014). So, in short, an argument about fertility treatment is really a dead end.

Same sex marriage redefines marriage
Summary: Dr. Morse Ph.D lives in a fantasy world where a minority of people can destroy an institution that doesn't really exist in the first place. Despite this supposedly being a non-religious list, none of these "reasons" (only about half of this section count as arguments under even broad terms) can support the general argument without resorting to religious definitions of marriage, as Dr. Morse Ph.D seems eager and willing to throw out society's definitions and attitudes in support of her own view as a Catholic.

Redefining marriage redefines parenthood
Summary: This list is getting strange. It seems that all same-sex couples are selfish in "wanting" children. Does this imply that children are best raised in environments where they're not wanted? Further from that, it seems to be less about an issue of marriage and now more about scaremongering over the government controlling marriage rights. However, this list is supposedly "non-religious" in nature, so there can really be only two options for who controls and recognises marriage rights: the government or society. As arguments about what society wants seem to be largely ignored here (because you'd quickly find most of society is in favour of not arbitrarily restricting rights to groups of people these days) you're left with the government as a de facto provider and insurer of rights. So, why be scared of it, as without it marriage wouldn't exist at all?

Same sex marriage empowers the state at The expense of civil society
Summary: This section summarises a religious persecution complex, rather than supposedly "non-religious" reasons to support something. There is really not much left here to say.

Conclusions
Out of 77 supposed reasons we have:


 * 14 clear repeats of previous points
 * 13 totally irrelevant points
 * 7 blatant cases of "citation needed"

So that's 43 reasons, not 77. And that's being generous.

In general, the points fail to state:


 * Why many of these arguments cannot be levied at heterosexual couples equally (for instance, entitlement to fertility treatment)
 * Why support for same-sex marriage in society can be ignored if marriage stems from society, not religion
 * Why many of the stated outcomes of allowing same-sex marriage are actually bad things
 * Why, if it's important to have a father and mother, it is apparently worse to have two fathers or mothers than to have a single parent--given that the right wing isn't actively campaigning against divorce
 * Any evidence that it actually is better to have a father and a mother
 * How to reconcile the repeated assertions that children can only form good relationships with biological parents with the assertion that adoption is fine for heterosexual but not homosexual couples
 * How cases of religious groups throwing a hissy-fit have a place in a "non-religious" list of reasons

In short: Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse Ph.D, your mission to "make marriage cool" is failing miserably.