Open Letter to Patrick, Author of "Ethical Defense of Gay Marriage in the United States"

The philosophy of Patrick gives people another lens for thinking about gay marriage.



Dear Patrick,
I want to let you know that I did, finally, read your philosophy paper from last term. You did an amazing job counteracting arguments against gay marriage, and gave me new fuel for my fire, so to speak.

These are your points that I had never really considered (or at least, that I had never noticed as a logical argument against bigots) -

Gay people are raised with the same cultural values regarding marriage, so to claim that they would take it lightly is erroneous. This is such an important statement. We take our values from the environment in which we are raised, so to argue that a gay person is treating marriage disrespectfully is flawed.

The value of marriage is relative to how we treat it: It is a culturally valuable institution only because we have decided it is so. This reminds me of money, and how money has no real value, only the value we, as a culture place upon it. So who is to say that we can't transform the perspective of marriage to include people that are homosexual?

The issue of gay marriage can be aligned with the evolution of the acceptability of interracial marriage. Isn't it amazing to look back on history, and see these parallels? I was moved to tears recently at a children's music program when a child spoke, in hind-sight, about the ridiculousness of slavery. I wondered if, in one hundred years, a child will make the same statements about gay marriage and our marginalization of people based on sexual preference. I believe that this will happen, and I can only hope it happens in our lifetimes.

"The establishment of equal rights is the first step towards equality, but is only one in perhaps a never-ending cycle." As a student of teacher education in our time of diversity conflict at the UO, I see this as crucial. We, as a culture, need to focus our efforts not on political correctness, but on becoming critical thinkers that can see the sometimes invisible experiences of people from different backgrounds. Only then can we develop a framework for treating people equitably.

"My preliminary conclusion is therefore that the opponents to gay marriage may indeed have studies to prove their point, but they are not as comprehensive and certainly not easily accessed." To simply say that studies are valid and reliable, as the person you spoke with indicated, is inappropriate, even at face value. Studies are only valid relative to the large body of results that they produce which indicate the same trends. If these institutions have conducted even twenty studies, who is to say that this is a large enough body of research? If the opposing institutes cannot give us information about their studies in full disclosure, we have no basis on which to see them as valid or invalid. We cannot look at the number of participants in their studies and decide if it was representative of our culture, if it was large enough sample. We can't tell if they used measures that have limitations, like self-reported surveys. We can't tell if the items in the measure were biased toward the institution's paradigm. No social scientist would ever accept results of a "secret" study as conclusive, and to not reveal research methods raises the question, "What are you leaving out?"

Thanks for letting me read your paper, Patrick. I wish I could comment more, but I'm out of time and taking up too much blog space. Love you much. Viva la revolucion!

Love Sara & the "We Love Patrick" Fan Club