Letter: No rational ban to gay marriage
Billy Bradford of Castro Valley, Calif., waves a pair of flags outside City Hall while same-sex couple line up to see if they can be married in San Francisco, Thursday, August 12, 2010. A federal appeals court plans to announce Thursday, Feb. 2, 2012 if it will unseal video recordings of the landmark trial on the constitutionality of California's same-sex marriage ban.(Aug. 12, 2010) Credit: AP
Charles Krauthammer's column on gay marriage ["Gay marriage: empathy or right?," Opinion, May 20] mentions two arguments in support of gay marriage. There is a third argument: that there is really no rational basis for prohibiting gay marriage, and therefore it should be permitted.
The main argument that I hear from anti-gays is that marriage is for procreation and child-rearing, which requires a man and a woman. This argument is flawed. First, heterosexual couples are free to marry whether or not they wish to have children, whether or not they are able to bear children, or even if they never bear children. Why shouldn't gays and lesbians have the same right?
Second, heterosexual couples are free to have non-procreative sex or even no sex. Third, two parents -- whether they are two fathers, two mothers or one of each -- tend to have more combined time, knowledge and wisdom to transmit than one parent alone.
Fourth, with today's advances in artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood, and in-vitro fertilization, gay and lesbian couples can bear children and raise them -- and they do.
Daniel A. Okrent, Hempstead
