Gay marriage: As important as race? Raimond Gaita

The Herbert & Valmae Freilich Foundation Annual Lecture in Bigotry and Intolerance 2011When gays ask to be granted the right to marry, they are not asking for something that can be adequately conceptualised by an ideal of equality that demands equal access to good and opportunities for all citizens of a polity. Nor do they ask for something that can adequately be expressed in classical liberal ideals. They ask, I believe, for the recognition, by their fellow citizens, of the depth and dignity of their sexuality; and they ask it from those of their fellow citizens who appear to believe that gay sexuality does not have the kind of depth that deserves to be celebrated in marriage. Married love, such people believe, deepens sexual love, but it can do so only for sexuality that has the potential for such deepening. They believe, therefore, that gay marriage is a kind of conceptual absurdity, even when they do not find it morally distasteful. There are many kinds of opposition to gay marriage: this kind has, limited but interesting, analogies with the incapacity of racists to see depth in the lives of the victims of their denigration.