Margaret Gallagher spoke to BC students in an attempt to promote traditional marriage.

Boston College students packed a lecture hall in the basement of the law school to hear Margaret Gallagher give a speech on why she disagrees with gay marriage. Gallagher was invited to speak at Boston College by the BC chapter of the Federalist Society, in keeping with the society’s mission to promote a sense that the “judiciary should say what the law is, and not what it should be.” Gallagher has previously testified before the United States Senate, written for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and founded an organization to promote traditional marriage, the National Organization For Marriage.

The event was highly anticipated, with over 50 law students and the Boston College Police Department waiting outside of the lecture hall before the final class in SW120 was dismissed. The crowd was far from hostile, but most students in the audience disagreed with Gallagher. In an informal poll taken by Gallagher prior to the event, almost 95 percent of the student body identified themselves as being pro-gay marriage, while the remaining five percent were split between “anti-gay marriage” and “it’s none of your business.”

Gallagher, in forming her argument against legalized gay marriage, concentrated on the ramifications that legalizing gay marriage could have on traditional marriage. She cited “concern about marriage as a social institution,” and the need for the law to reinforce the idea that families with one mother and one father are best suited to raise children. Also, Gallagher referred to the definition of marriage which defines it as “an institution for the benefit of a child.” This definition, she claims, results from three essential truths about the human condition; that intercourse leads to babies, that society needs babies to exist, and that children need both a father and a mother.

Referring to sociology, Gallagher argued that almost every known civil society has an institution similar to marriage. “Societies either find a way to grapple with these children or they cease to exist” she said. “Marriage, as a legal institution, only has the power given to it by marriage as a social institution.”

Gallagher cited the preference for both a mother and a father from personal experience. She conceived as a single mother and Yale student in 1982, only to find out in 1986 that the father was no longer interested in helping to raise her son. She described the effects that this had both on her emotional state and the state of the child moving forward.

In speaking about gay marriage, Gallagher called for understanding in both directions. She lamented about what she sees as a tendency of gay marriage advocates to depict traditional marriage advocates as being bigots and comparable to racists opposing interracial marriage. The danger, she claims, is that the “idea of marriage becomes stigmatized as a form of bigotry.” To try and bridge this gap, Gallagher agrees to hold speaking engagements with gay and lesbian organizations.

In a particularly active question and answer session, law students challenged Gallagher to defend her philosophy against their personal experiences. Students and law professors challenged Gallagher to defend her statements about the preferability of two parent households, her exclusive view of marriage, and her belief that allowing gay marriage would decrease the importance of traditional marriage. The questions were very respectful to Gallagher, if not to other law professors in the audience.

Gallagher and the students actually agreed in more instances than the students probably thought possible, as she conceded that in some instances gay parents could probably achieve better parenthood on average than straight parents.

In terms of offering a solution, Gallagher did not pretend to offer any feasible alternatives to the gay marriage problem. Instead, she suggested that the first step towards any serious debate would include getting “out of a space…where there is licensed hatred against those who disagree.” Creating this atmosphere of mutual respect, she suggests, is the first step towards creating a solution that all can accept.

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