James Barbour’s letter published February 18, 2008, attacks my expertise and that of my colleague Dr. Patrick Fagan relative to the marriage issue: that is, whether it is wise to radically redefine marriage both legally and socially from the union of a man and a woman to the union of any two persons (hence, “genderless marriage”). In Mr. Barbour’s words, our “’expertise’ on this matter has no scientific basis” and we base our “conclusions on religious grounds.”
Both of Mr. Barbour’s assertions are false – as even the slightest bit of fair-minded attention to our UVM presentations and scholarly publications will confirm. Indeed, Mr. Barbour’s assertion that we base our “conclusions on religious grounds” is so patently, so wildly erroneous as to compel the conclusion that he has ignored our body of work entirely. (My Harvard, Duke, Rutgers, etc. publications are readily available at www.marriagelawfoundation.org.)
Early in the debate over the marriage issue, Canada’s brilliant Professor Somerville identified with her characteristic astuteness the strategy deployed in Mr. Barbour’s letter and its harmful consequences:
“One strategy used by same-sex marriage advocates is to label all people who oppose same-sex marriage as doing so for religious or moral reasons in order to dismiss them and their arguments as irrelevant to public policy. Good secular reasons to oppose same-sex marriage are re-characterized as religious or based on personal morality and, therefore, as not applicable at a societal level. In the same vein, people who oppose same-sex marriage are labeled as homophobic, ultra-conservative, or self-righteous. These are ad hominem attacks that do not seek to address the arguments but to denigrate and thereby dismiss the people so labeled. They cause people to fear speaking out and do not serve the best interest of either individuals or society in this debate.” Margaret Somerville, “What About the Children?” in Divorcing Marriage 70-71 (D. Cere and D. Farrow eds, 2004).
The marriage issue is so important to Vermont that all fair-minded people here, regardless of their position on the issue, ought to unite in condemning such an odious strategy
Monte Neil Stewart
President, Marriage Law Foundation