>I’m tending toward more materialist explanations related to reproduction and having offspring and descendants and grandchildren. I >think the “average” person doesn’t think in terms of the rights of others on this, but in terms of the impact society legitimizing gay >marriage might have on the sexual orientation of their children.
What about the argument in this book? Anyone read it? I'm going to look for it in the library:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/CARRAC.html
Race Men Hazel V. Carby
Who are the "race men" standing for black America? It is a question Hazel Carby rejects, along with its long-standing assumption: that a particular type of black male can represent the race. A searing critique of definitions of black masculinity at work in American culture, Race Men shows how these defining images play out socially, culturally, and politically for black and white society--and how they exclude women altogether.
[...]
This is from the introduction:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/carby-race.html
[S]ince the dominant view holds prideful self-respect as the very essence of healthy African American identity, it also considers such identity to be fundamentally weakened wherever masculinity appears to be compromised. While this fact is rarely articulated, its influence is nonetheless real and pervasive. Its primary effect is that all debates over and claims to "authentic" African-American identity are largely animated by a profound anxiety about the status specifically of African-American masculinity.