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Is there any point in continuing to debate same-sex marriage?

Despite their field’s reputation for interminable controversy, academic philosophers do consider some topics resolved — and a number now think the same-sex marriage debate is one of them.  The case in favor of same-sex marriage has been so firmly established, they believe, that further dialogue is at best a waste of time, and at worst an affirmation of bigotry.

“The topics seem, to me, settled, and the controversies over them frankly silly,” writes philosopher Justin Weinberg at his widely viewed philosophy blog, Daily Nous. “As far as I can tell, there are zero plausible arguments for opposing homosexual sex and zero plausible arguments for a state offering different kinds of marriage rights to homosexual and heterosexual couples.”
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Weinberg plans to continue teaching same sex-marriage as a controversy in his contemporary-ethics course, but primarily in order to shed light on other issues and to expose the “highly problematic” arguments of those who oppose it. He mulls relegating the topic to a course on “historical moral problems,” where it can be discussed alongside slavery and other topics he considers settled.

As a graduate student in philosophy, I’ve heard other tenured philosophers say far less temperate things off the record. Some seem to think that treating same-sex marriage as a controversial subject at all is itself tantamount to legitimating bigotry. They look forward to the blessed day when skepticism of their enlightened views is no longer tolerated in any university classroom.

Granted, some Catholic philosophers — Robby George, for instance — are still vocal in their opposition to same-sex marriage. Some other thinkers, like self-described “Gay Moralist” John Corvino,  continue to respectfully debate conservative opponents.

Nevertheless, the recent political victories of the gay-rights movement seem to have tempted a growing minority to adopt a smug, and sloppy, intellectual intolerance.
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Some philosophical conclusions really are uncontroversial, and for good reason. One could not question the immorality of the Rwandan genocide without showing callousness to the victims of its horrors.

To start, though, discussion of same-sex marriage doesn’t so obviously show callousness to homosexuals: Conservatives’ dispute with liberals is over the details of what a “right to marry” means, not whether some people have this right while others do not.

Philosophers have been thinking — and, it goes without saying, disagreeing — about marriage since the time of Plato. In Family Politics, Scott Yoner demonstrates that modern philosophers like Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Mill, and others have developed sophisticated and wildly different accounts of marriage. That is enough to show, at least, that there are many unsettled philosophical questions about the nature of marriage.

Conservatives prefer to frame the same-sex marriage debate around questions such as, “What is marriage?,” “What role(s) does marriage play in society?,” and “What relationships should be eligible to count as marriages?”

Proponents of same-sex marriage generally decline to give answers to these questions, preferring instead to make their case on the alleged arbitrariness of the “one man, one woman” norm.

That argument may be effective, but it cannot settle the debate in the way the triumphalists claim it has been.