I have difficulty seeing why the government should be involved in marriage at all given that homosexual marriage has been enshrined into law.
When I ponder marriage, I find myself concluding that the only possibly compelling reason for the government to be involved in marriage to begin with is because it has an interest in perpetuating itself (and the only reason I add the qualifying adjective "possibly" is because I am not sure the government should be involved in marriage in the first place). In other words, the state has an interest in providing stable healthy environments for its future denizen,viz., children, and helping married couples provide that is why the state is involved. Yes, some married people never have children; some are physically unable to have children. But these are exceptions to the rule: historically, married couples have had children with one another. And laws are directed to the common good, not to individual goods, which is why it made sense to give married couples tax benefits -- they will typically have children and children are, as many parents know, expensive. So in order to help married couples provide a stable environment for childrearing, the state gives them tax breaks. This is, I believe, the only possibly compelling reason for why the state should be involved in marriage to begin with.
But this reason for the state's involvement does not extend to homosexual marriage. Per Obergefell v. Hodges, the state now recognizes as marriage a type of union which cannot possibly produce children. The only way for married homosexual couples to have children is for them to adopt (or at least for one of them to). And the vast majority of married homosexual couples do not raise children. So, because it is biologically impossible for homosexual couples to reproduce, and because only a small percentage end up adopting and raising children, it would seem that the state's interest in such unions should be minimal or nonexistent. Unlike in the case of heterosexual marriage, there's simply no similarly possibly compelling reason why the state should support these types of unions. The state should not be in the business of regulating love affairs, as most people would grant. But that is basically what the current state of play is in the United States. Once you take children out of the equation, the state's regulation of marriage simply amounts to the state's regulation of peoples' love affairs. And I submit to you that it is no business of the state to be involved with the love affairs of its denizens. Why should the state care whether Joe and Bob, or Mary and Sally, would like to live with one another and engage in sexual acts in the privacy of their own bedrooms? I can detect no compelling reason for the state to insert its tentacles here. And given that I see no compelling or even good reason for state involvement here, I believe that giving out tax breaks in support of homosexual marriages is simply a waste of hard-earned taxpayer money. Basically, I believe that the state's blessing homosexual unions and thereby elevating them to the status of a legally codified contract called "marriage" is silly. I see it as a reductio ad absurdum for current government involvement in marriage in the first place. Maybe the state should recognize hetereosexual marriages, maybe not. But if the state is going to recognize homosexual unions as marriages, then I think it's better off just getting out of the marriage business entirely. If, as I believe, the only putatively compelling reason for the state to be involved in marriage to begin with is children, and marriage is, from the state's perspective, no longer about children, then the state should no longer be involved in marriage.
Now, someone may respond and say that while it is true that it is biologically impossible for homosexual married couples to produce children, and that most of them do not end up raising children for adoption, many heterosexual couples do not end up raising children either (whether because of infertility issues or otherwise). So, the argument goes, my view unjustly discriminates against homosexuals. By way of rejoinder I would repeat what I said above: laws are meant to be promulgated for the common good, and not to individual goods. That is, laws are not meant to make exceptions, but to make rules -- exceptions and particularities are handled at the level of the actual application of the law to a particular case. Most heterosexual married couples can conceive and have historically had children. The same is not the case for homosexual married couples. So there is no unjust discrimination in my view that there is a putatively compelling state interest in enshrining heterosexual marriages into law, but not homosexual marriages. However, I'm open to the possibility of only bestowing tax breaks for married couples, heterosexual or otherwise, who can prove that they are raising children. But perhaps that will be too messy. And perhaps that's all the more reason the state should finally get out of the marriage business.
