Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [121]
Proponents of embryonic stem cell research reply by pointing to the medical benefits the research may bring, including possible treatments and cures for diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and spinal cord injury. And they argue that science should not be hampered by religious or ideological interference; those with religious objections should not be allowed to impose their views through laws that would ban promising scientific research.
As with the abortion debate, however, the case for permitting embryonic stem cell research cannot be made without taking a stand on the moral and religious controversy about when personhood begins. If the early embryo is morally equivalent to a person, then the opponents of embryonic stem cell research have a point; even highly promising medical research would not justify dismembering a human person. Few people would say it should be legal to harvest organs from a five-year-old child in order to promote life-saving research. So the argument for permitting embryonic stem cell research is not neutral on the moral and religious controversy about when human personhood begins. It presupposes an answer to that controversy—namely that the pre-implantation embryo destroyed in the course of embryonic stem cell research is not yet a human being.22
With abortion and embryonic stem cell research, it’s not possible to resolve the legal question without taking up the underlying moral and religious question. In both cases, neutrality is impossible because the issue is whether the practice in question involves taking the life of a human being. Of course, most moral and political controversies do not involve matters of life and death. So partisans of liberal neutrality might reply that the abortion and stem cell debates are special cases; except where the definition of the human person is at stake, we can resolve arguments about justice and rights without taking sides in moral and religious controversies.
Same-Sex Marriage
But this isn’t true, either. Consider the debate over same-sex marriage. Can you decide whether the state should recognize same-sex marriage without entering into moral and religious controversies about the purpose of marriage and the moral status of homosexuality? Some say yes, and argue for same-sex marriage on liberal, nonjudgmental grounds: whether one personally approves or disapproves of gay and lesbian relationships, individuals should be free to choose their marital partners. To allow heterosexual but not homosexual couples to get married wrongly discriminates against gay men and lesbians, and denies them equality before the law.
If this argument is a sufficient basis for according state recognition to same-sex marriage, then the issue can be resolved within the bounds of liberal public reason, without recourse to controversial conceptions of the purpose of marriage and the goods it honors. But the case for same-sex marriage can’t be made on nonjudgmental grounds. It depends on a certain conception of the telos of marriage—its purpose or point. And, as Aristotle reminds us, to argue about the purpose of a social institution is to argue about the virtues it honors and rewards. The debate over same-sex marriage is fundamentally a debate about whether gay and lesbian unions are worthy of the honor and recognition that, in our society, state-sanctioned marriage confers. So the underlying moral question is unavoidable.
To see why this is so, it’s important to bear in mind that a state can take three possible policies toward marriage, not just two. It can adopt the traditional policy and recognize only marriages between a man and a woman; or it can do what several states have done, and recognize same-sex marriage in the same way it recognizes marriage between a man and a woman;