OK, so this isn't really a writing sample, per se. Think of it as a response to Andrew Sullivan's article (and to those who write against his position).
Equivocation is an argumentative fallacy that uses a word in two different senses to create the impression of proof where none exists. Here's an example:
- Nothing is better than cheesecake.
- Breadcrumbs are better than nothing.
- Therefore, breadcrumbs are better than cheesecake.
(No, I didn't come up with that example myself. It's pretty good, though.)
The confusion comes because "nothing" is being used in two different senses. In the first statement, it means ne plus ultra: cheesecake is the highest that can be obtained. Top of the heap. No foods above it on the list. In the second it means "lack of food." Having breadcrumbs is better than being totally devoid of food.
Now to apply the equivocation idea to gay marriage. We often hear that allowing gays to marry will "destroy marriage." Well yes, it will, but not in the sense that some people imagine.
Marriage has already been destroyed a lot—at least in the sense that our previous definition has been replaced by a newer one. Parents no longer arrange the marriage of their minor children in order to unite two political units. Fathers no longer sell their daughters to the highest bidder. We no longer assume that a man can have multiple wives at the same time. More recently (certainly within the 20th century in America), there was a time when a husband could hold a wife in an undesirable marriage by refusing to grant her a divorce. All of these definitions have been destroyed, and the new paradigm is a more democratic union between two equals, not a master/subordinate relationship.
But when people hear that allowing gays to marry will "destroy marriage," they often take it to mean that heterosexuals will stop marrying, that existing marriages will become more unstable, and that in general people will hold marriage in lower esteem.
Sorry—that's already happened, courtesy of easy divorce, acceptance of unmarried couples living together and producing children, and a general feeling that marriage ties one down too much. Gays didn't do it.
And that easy equivalence of "redefining who may get married" with "make the whole marriage institution less viable" just doesn't hold. It's equivocation.
