Andrew Sullivan's Generalization Of The Definition Of Gay Marriage

In order to define topics and ideas, individuals incorporate their personal bias, education and morals. Although in doing so, defining such topics could leave to subjective views. In the case of today’s society, many argue that the legalization is either moral or immoral due to what their perspective of the definition of marriage is. Andrew Sullivan, a former editor of the New Republic magazine, thinks that the definition of marriage includes gay marriages due to homosexual couples having the same qualities of heterosexual couples. In contrast, National Review editor William J. Bennett thinks that the idea of a man and woman is the traditional idea of marriage. While both utilize the definition of marriage as their basis of their argument which …show more content…
Sullivan’s main claim of homosexuals having the same sanctity of marriage is overshadowed by his generalizations of conservative views. Throughout his article, Sullivan references “conservatives” without analyzing who this group is compiled of. He assumes that those who identify themselves as conservatives are against gay marriage making claims for them saying gay marriage “chips away at the prestige of traditional relationships” (Sullivan 31). Because of his repetitive generalizations with conservatives throughout his argument, Sullivan decreases the validity in his stance due to the tone of the article representing him attacking conservatives. In contrast, Bennett’s argument starts off with a generalization on the definition of marriage. Bennett claims “marriage is almost universally recognized as an act meant to unite a man and a woman” (Bennett 35). But for a marriage to be universally recognized is vague in the sense that he is generalizing the population, not taking into account that many people at the time his piece was written were transitioning to more liberal …show more content…
Bennett discusses the slippery slope that the nation would fall into if the legalization of gay marriage were to fall through and be allowed to just one area. He states the concept that if one state were to be granted the ability to release gay marriage contracts, that the legalization would spread very quickly from state to state in the way of a “slippery slope” affecting everyone off of just a small introducing ability. When comparing gays to bisexuals, he says “How could they explain why we ought to deny a marriage license to a bisexual who wants to marry two people?” (Bennett 34). This confuses bisexuals to polygamy, but also uses the slippery slope fallacy by stating an unrealistic consequence to gay marriage. It takes until the second half of the article until Bennett stopped talking about the what ifs of gay marriage being legalized to when he starts stating evidence why it should not be legalized (Bennett