Prof. Chai R. Feldblum of the Georgetown Law Center has prepared this paper (43 pages, pdf) as part of the Moral Values Project. A few excerpts:
Moreover, to the extent that the struggle for marriage equality focuses solely on achieving the right to marry because that is what a pure equality discourse calls for, the movement will also miss the chance to make a moral case for supporting the range of other creative ways in which we currently construct our intimate relations outside of marriage. And that would be as much of a missed opportunity as would be the lost opportunity of convincing the general public of the moral equivalence of gay and heterosexual sex . . .
Direct engagement with the issues of morality surrounding either gay sex or gender identity is thus not at the forefront of either our political or legal advocacy for LGBT people. Nor is it highlighted in our theoretical understandings of LGBT rights. This is both unfortunate and short-sighted. As a practical matter, changing the public’s perception of the morality of gay sex and of changing one’s gender may ultimately be necessary to achieve true equality for LGBT people . . .
There is a conversation that is happening regarding visions of normative good in the struggle for marriage equality—but it is largely an “internal movement” debate about whether marriage is a good institution and whether it is one into which gay couples should seek entry. Radical feminists, queer theorists, and others argue that marriage, as historically and currently constructed, constitutes a normative harm that should be dismantled by society overall rather than embraced by gay couples. On the opposite end of the spectrum, socially conservative gay rights advocates argue that extending a traditional expectation of marriage to gay couples will help solidify an appropriate social norm of sexual restraint and care-giving within the family. In these discussions, the moral merits of fitting (or condensing) gay coupling into the marital institution are interrogated, while the moral good of gay sexual coupling is at least implicitly uncontested or assumed by all discussants.
