What's Love Got to Do with It?

When President Obama said, “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to each other must be equal as well,” he inadvertently opened a significant topic for reflection.

Let me say first that the part before the dash is fairly unexceptionable, at least until the question arises as to what constitutes equal treatment. Equals should be treated equally. Different treatment can only be based on relevant differences, although the law sometimes creates categories and classifications and gives differing treatment based on them — e.g. age affecting eligibility to vote or to draw social security benefits.

But the second part, after the dash, is what we should think about. In the first place, although the premise is valid, the conclusion does not automatically follow. My love may not be as strong as yours, even though we are created equal. Can one friend's love for another be the equal of a mother's love for her child. And, of course, we can only talk in generalities here. Each couple's love is different. With some it may be shallow or passing; with others it is deep and abiding. But even that is not the biggest problem with what he said.

It is generally assumed that he was trying to make a case for same-sex marriage, but reflection on what he said actually undercuts his case. Of course a gay couple can love each other just as much as a male-female couple. But the equality of our love is an argument for marriage only if love is needed for marriage. But love has never been a requirement for civil marriage. He is assuming a criterion which never existed. The state doesn't care if the spouses love each other. It never has. Love did not qualify a couple to be married, and nobody is proposing that it become a criterion which must be met before the issuance of a license.

(Ironically, it was only the churches which considered love important — not that romantic love had to exist prior to marriage, but at the very least it was hoped that the spouses would increasingly grow in love as they lived out their marriage. I suppose it was also presumed that there was the generalized benevolent love which consists in wishing that others have what is good for them — the love which Christians ought to have for all their fellow humans. At any rate, the argument based on equal love is really more of an argument for religious marriage than civil marriage)

The point that the love of same-sex couples is the equal of that of opposite-sex couples does not really establish that they are entitled to marry as a civil matter. Feb. 2, 2013 — Edited to add: Just to be completely clear, I am not claiming that this proves there shouldn't be same-sex marriage, just that Obama didn't prove that there should be.