The Record

Issue date: 11/9/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Katie Mapes Maggie Gallagher speaks as moderator Bob Bordone and Katharine Silbaugh look on.

Maggie Gallagher of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy squared off against visiting Professor Katharine Silbaugh on Monday over the question of whether same-sex marriage is good for the country. The debate, attended by about 75 people, was moderated by Professor Bob Bordone and sponsored by HLS Lambda, the Society for Law, Life, and Religion, and the Society for Law and Family Matters.

Gallagher, who writes a syndicated column, is the co-author of The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially and an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage. Silbaugh, a Boston University professor specializing in family and employment law, worked with the plaintiffs in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, in which the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages must be recognized under the state constitution.

Silbaugh began her ten minute opening statement with a description of a celebratory party she attended the evening the Goodridge decision was handed down, one attended largely by same-sex couples. The room, she recounted, was filled with more emotion than any that she had ever been in. Throughout the debate, she went back to this event, reminding the audience that same-sex marriage is not an abstract, "bloodless" issue, but instead one of tremendous practical and symbolic importance to its proponents.

Silbaugh further questioned the efficacy of banning same-sex marriage, noting that current census data shows that there are gay and lesbian couples in every "city and town" in the state. Banning same-sex marriage will disadvantage those couples, she said, but "is not going to change people's orientation." Similarly, she stated, "straight people do not become gay because same-sex marriage is available. They don't."

For her part, Gallagher focused her argument not on homosexuality or the gay rights movement in general, but on the nature of marriage as an institution designed to "tie children to their fathers" and to create and raise the next generation. By legalizing same-sex marriage, she argued, we are inherently divorcing marriage from that meaning. Further, she argued, we are stigmatizing proponents of that "traditional" viewpoint as "bigots."

Continued...

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