Aristotle, 'logic' have no bearing on gay marriage

Editor,

I saw the letter Benjamin Sanchez wrote against gay marriage in the Daily Lobo on Monday. I thought that, as a philosophy major who specializes in being unreasonable, I could take a whack at responding to it.

The first problem with Sanchez’s argument is that it cites Aristotle. I’ve had to read more of that grumpy old guy than I care to admit. Oh, don’t get me wrong – he was a smart dude who had some interesting things to say about pretty much everything.
The problem is that the argument tries to use Aristotle to justify restricting people’s rights more than 2,000 years after he died in an entirely different culture and situation.

Keep in mind that Aristotle, working from the same premise Sanchez cited, believed slavery to be natural and correct. The philosophies of thinkers much more closely related to 21st century America, like Mills, Rawls and Lady Gaga lead me to the opposite conclusion: It would be wrong for the majority to strip a minority of a right that harms no one.

But even if we were to go with Aristotle, it still wouldn’t prove a thing about gay marriage.
That letter seems to imply that it flows obviously and incontrovertibly from the fact that there are two biological sexes to the conclusion that those two sexes should only have sex with each other, and anything else should be prohibited.

Leaving out the issue of people with multiple gender identities and/or genitalia (sorry to keep bringing up Lady Gaga), Sanchez reads his own interpretation of sexuality into the biological facts.

Sure, conception requires the union of a sperm and an egg. What bearing does this have on the rules we make governing the complex social institution of marriage? Not a darn thing. Do you remember that part in biology 101 where we learned that gay marriage was wrong because of the formation of zygotes? Me neither.

By Sanchez’s reasoning, should the government ban women from using in vitro fertilization? Should the state require all married couples to produce children? Should it be a federal or state prohibition on the sale of hand lotion to single men?
None of these activities bring together the holy combination of man, woman and childbirth.

Yet I hope one would agree with me that none of them should be banned by the government. The answer, certainly, to these questions does not lie, as Sanchez claims, in cold, biological fact or unassailable rational truths. Sanchez needs to step forward, own his beliefs and not blame poor old Aristotle. He has enough to explain.

Van Snow
UNM Student