Apr 10
11
by Jason Stotts
I am a fan of the blog WoPSR run by “Qwertz.” He generally has good analysis and frequently deals with interesting legal issues. Unfortunately, this time, he strayed too far afield and right into my bailiwick.
In his essay “Rand’s Razor v. Gay Marriage” Qwertz takes the position that for a married homosexual to use the word “husband” or “wife” is inappropriate. Why? Because: “I have always found myself a bit nonplussed [d. surprised and confused] whenever I hear someone mention his husband, or her wife. [...] This mental response of ‘there’s something not quite right about that usage’ is subtle, but consistent, which makes me think it is not inconsequential and deserves investigation. There are two possibilities: either I subconsciously do not accept a man in a same-sex marriage as a proper unit of the concept ‘husband’; or such a person is not properly a unit of the concept.” Thus, his reason to think that it is inappropriate for a gay man to use the word “husband” to refer to his spouse is because it makes him feel uncomfortable.
I think he is right that there are two possibilities for this: 1. that he does not accept same-sex marriage or 2. that same-sex marriages should not use “husband” or “wife.” I’m certainly going with 1 here, but just to be fair, let’s look to the concepts of husband and wife and see if there is something about them that prevents their use in same-sex marriages.
Husband and wife are what is considered a “relational concept,” much like friend, brother, daughter, etc. In a relational concept, the essence of the concept is not be found in the people in the relationship, but in the relationship itself. For example, friendship is not to be found in a person, but is how that person acts and behaves to their friend: the “friendship” itself is the relation of two people to each other.
So, we know that “husband” and “wife” are relational concepts, but to what do they relate? Well, clearly they denote a marital relation: that is, that one is in a relationship that we call marriage. To say that a woman is “a wife” is to say that she is married; to say that she is “my wife” is to use the possessive, to say that she is married to me. The concept wife just denotes that a woman is in a marital relationship: but it does not specify with whom. In order to specify with whom, one must add additional information to the concept. This is very important because the concept that Qwertz is using is “wife+heterosexual+married to a man.” He’s attempting to load a concept with information that does not belong in it. Let me draw an analogy with “bachelor,” which everyone who has ever had a philosophy class knows, is “an unmarried man.” Bachelor is a negative relational concept, it denotes that a man is not in a marital relationship. Now, imagine if we “Qwertz” the concept and make Bachelor “male+heterosexual+not married to a heterosexual female.” He’s filling the concepts with information that is unnecessary.
All of this is ironic, as Qwertz asserts that he’s using Rand’s Razor (a coinage by Rand that is a reference to William of Ockham) to mean that: “concepts are not to be multiplied beyond necessity—the corollary of which is: nor are they to be integrated in disregard of necessity.” (ITOE 72). It’s ironic because his addition of unnecessary information would require that we create a whole host of concepts, like his “gay husbands.”
Thus, I think it’s safe to say that his option 2 falls flat: there is nothing in the nature of the concepts “husband” and “wife” that would prevent them from being applied to a same-sex marriage. This, by process of elimination, leaves us with option 1: Qwertz does not accept same-sex marriage as legitimate. Frankly, that’s a personal problem and, Qwertz, you need to just get over it. Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable does not mean that you should attack same-sex marriage: that is the modus operandi of the christians.
How about this: let’s just all accept that some people are gay and they deserve to be happy. They deserve to have relationships, to be in love, and to have their love recognized by others and the state. There is no danger in this to heterosexual marriage or children or the nature of society. The only danger it has is to our unchallenged beliefs that we will be forced to confront–and that’s the real fear isn’t it? That we’ll all have to look inside ourselves and actually think about homosexuality.
