Corvino, Gallagher disagree sharply in cordial conversation
John Corvino drew laughs as he debated same-sex marriage, in an event hosted by Carolina Productions Tuesday night, and he didn’t shy away from the nitty-gritty of the issue.
“One of the arguments against same-sex marriage is complementarity: Plumbing, the parts don’t fit,” Corvino said. “And when people tell me the parts don’t fit, I have a very simple response: Yes they do. Because if they didn’t, people wouldn’t try it, and they would do something else.”
Corvino argued in support of same-sex marriage against his friend, Maggie Gallagher, another expert on the issue.
But in spite their opposing perspectives, there was an apparent friendliness between Corvino and Gallagher.
To more laughs, Corvino said that he was able to spend so much time with her “because I drink.”
It set the tone for a cordial discussion. Corvino and Gallagher presented their respective arguments before responding to the other and finally taking questions from the audience.
Around 400 people attended the debate. When asked by Gallagher, by a show of hands, who in the audience was in favor of, against, or undecided on same-sex marriage, an overwhelming majority of the audience indicated that they were supporters of such marriages.
Corvino argued for the legal equality that same-sex marriage would offer same sex couples. He argued that they promote greater privacy for couples in deciding their financial and next-of-kin arrangements, as they would be afforded equal marital rights as heterosexual couples.
He was quick to stress that the unions would represent marriage in a civil sense, not a religious one. Civil marriage, he argued, would allow same-sex couples to publically declare their commitment to their partner and to foster more stable and socially accepted relationships.
That’s why Corvino sees same-sex marriage as a “win-win situation — good for gay people and good for society at large.”
Then Gallagher had her response, arguing that “gay marriage will change the fundamental union of man and woman.”
For Gallagher, marriage is a public and sexual union that can only exist between men and women.
“If the heart of gay marriage is equality, marriage becomes ungendered and so there is a privatizing, stigmatizing and surrendering vision of classical marriage,” she said.
Gallagher added that the “rich social norms created by heterosexual marriage would be undermined,” making “husbands and wives no longer unique.”
Gallagher’s argument primarily centered on what she described as the “need to bring together male and female to raise the next generation,” founded on her argument that children should be raised by two parents of the opposite sex.
Corvino responded by suggesting that Gallagher’s argument advocated classical marriage as a means of “pressuring men to commit to their offspring.”
Gallagher argued that marriage was not “punishment for men” but that it was a way of promoting parental responsibility: Same-sex marriage would cause children to be raised in more fragmented families, she said.
One audience member posed the question of what Corvino and Gallagher saw as the distinction between a civil union and marriage, and the two found an agreement, of sorts. Neither support the idea of a civil union.
Gallagher said a civil union “still cheapens the idea of man and woman,” and Corvino argued that it would inevitably lead to unfairness, since it doesn’t extend equal rights to same-sex couples.
And so the debate closed with both representatives agreeing on the need for greater thoughtful, civil dialogue on the subject of same-sex marriage to allow for a debate that is “more productive than the way in which most arguments of this kind are conducted,” Corvino said.