Same-sex marriage is advocated as a basic human right. We applaud any expansion of human rights. Yet, as we’ve watched the debate over this issue unfold over the years, we have had some misgivings about the current approach: It seems too piecemeal. First some couples get admissions tickets to the legal benefits and protections of marriage, then the gates are opened to other kinds of couples. But why should a person have to be part of any kind of couple in order to qualify? One of us (Bella DePaulo) found some relevant arguments articulated by others and posted excerpts from them, and the other (Rachel Buddeberg) added many more. We decided to pool our efforts and continue searching.

We were intrigued by the number and diversity of people who have made relevant statements on the role of government in marriage. We’ve collected some of them here. (Further suggestions are welcome.) The people (and groups) we have quoted have cast their arguments in terms of getting beyond marriage or conjugality, or privatizing marriage, or abolishing marriage, or maintaining the separation of church and state. The authors include libertarians, liberals, and conservatives; people from various religious perspectives; gay rights activists and people hostile toward the GLBT community; people taking a marketplace perspective as their starting point and others starting from a concern with basic human dignities and needs.

There are important distinctions in the arguments that have been advanced. For example, some simply suggest replacing marriage with civil unions – civil contracts for all couples. That option, though, would continue to privilege conjugal couples. A more inclusive possibility is to open the civil contract to any two people, whether friends, relatives, or conjugal couples. Again, though, people would qualify for protections only by way of their link to another person (or persons, in some versions). Even broader is an approach that regards every individual as equally deserving of fundamental protections.

Take the Family and Medical Leave Act as an example and consider its relevance to people in the same generation ( i.e., setting aside parents and children). If you are seriously ill, your spouse can take time off from work to care for you under the Act. If the conjugal criterion were set aside, then people could also qualify to take leave to care for, say, a sibling or a friend with whom they had a civil contract. With the broader approach, any person could take leave to care for any other person in need (within the usual stipulations, such as the 12 week limit). Within a given workplace, every employee would have the same opportunity to give or receive care under the Act, regardless of their relationship status.

Here are some of the statements we found, arranged under these headings:

1. Statements from formal groups
2. Arguments from book-length discussions
3. Contributions from anthologies
4. Arguments from academic journals
5. Arguments from religious perspectives
6. Articles from political publications
7. A sampling of other arguments online

Check out the list – and add to it if you know about more voices – at Bella DePaulo’s blog.

The percent of males without insurance ranges from 40% in the 65+ population to 58% in the 18-25 age range. Yes, that is a disconcerting difference since males are roughly 50% of the population. However compare that with the single population: 47% to 100% of the uninsured are single, depending on age group whereas they make up 1% to 26% of the population! That’s a huge difference – at least 40 percentage points. So, why doesn’t the headline read “more singles to benefit”? The IWPR fact sheet does report on this larger gap, too, but it doesn’t make the headline despite the so much larger gap!

We said at the beginning that we would establish three things: that marriage is a fundamental right, and that depriving gays and lesbians the right to marry harm them and harm their children, and that depriving gays and lesbians the right to marry could not help heterosexual marriage at all.

Not being married harms us, a claim based on the false belief that marriage makes us happier, healthier, and wealthier. And children growing up within single parent families are harmed – actually, children are harmed in any family other than that headed by a married couple. Both of these claims are false and singlist perpetuating stereotypes against singles. I find it frustrating that the attorneys could not find arguments for same-sex marriage that do not require put downs of singles, including the conjuring up of incorrect “evidence.” If they had not been driven by matrimania, they could have utilized the strongest argument for marriage equality: Not providing protection in case of divorce is unjust. But that would require admitting to the reality that marriages do not last forever, which contradicts the matrimanic assumption that marriage leads to infinite bliss.

Update: Here is a great post by Bella DePaulo making similar points in much more detail.