Seipp on Same-Sex Marriage

I sometimes think I'm actually less against gay marriage itself than I'm against arguments in favor of it.
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Which points to the essential problem with gay marriage: It's not procreative, so the state has no business getting involved. Yes of course there are childless heterosexual couples — but the state also shouldn't invasively withdraw recognition because of people's private sexual or reproductive situations. The basic blueprint of marriage is to assign responsibility for children that might be born from sexual arrangements. Whether children actually are born is another matter.

What agitators for gay marriage never address is why a homosexual domestic partnership should be more worthy of government approval (or employee benefits) than a myriad of other domestic partnerships. Why not two single moms who live together with their children, like Kate & Allie? Or a straight woman and her gay male best friend, like Will & Grace? Or two unmarried heterosexual sisters who live together and share all expenses — kind of an old-fashioned arrangement, but certainly not extinct; I happen to be friends with a pair like this myself. Why can't they get a tax break?
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I've been getting new heat about my position because of the Independent Women's Forum column I wrote last week, in which I argued that officially sanctioned gay marriage endangers the rights of women in heterosexual marriages. I don't like to see the state further expand into regulating private living arrangements, although I have no problem with people celebrating their same-sex partnerships as weddings if they so choose. Beyond that, however:

I also think that legally recognizing gay marriage undermines the relatively recent (and therefore relatively fragile) concept of Western marriage — in which one man is permitted only one wife, not the traditional assortment of assorted concubines, and is therefore bound to her in an officially egalitarian relationship. No one arguing for gay marriage wants it to be marriage Saudi Arabian style, in which one partner basically owns the other and can dissolve the situation at will.

Yet Saudi Arabian marriage is closer to the primitive default option than marriage in free societies, and recent history suggests that when the rights and responsibilities of modern marriage are expanded to its ersatz versions, the real thing is taken less seriously and the old ways begin creeping back in like weeds. I don't think it's a coincidence that unwed dads forced to pay child support jostle for time on Jerry Springer with deadbeat dads who feel little shame in abandoning their wives and children.