Rhetorical Analysis Of What's Wrong With Gay Marriage

What is wrong with gay marriage? That is the question writer Katha Pollit asks in her essay “What’s Wrong with Gay Marriage?”. The essay is clearly intended for people who are against gay marriage. The title alone shows that she does not understand why people think gay marriage is wrong. Pollitt’s audience must have different reasons for being against gay marriage. This is why she addresses the main reasons why people may think gay marriage is wrong. Pollitt talks about how people believe marriage is about procreation and tries to convince them they are wrong. Pollit says “As many have pointed out, the law permits marriage to the infertile.” She also talks about marriage being a way for women to domesticate men. Pollit says “although it overlooks

such husbandly failings as domestic violence, child abuse, infidelity, and abandonment.” She even gives the audience a history lesson because she thinks they may not know the correct history of marriage. She lists the many different kinds of marriages throughout history like arranged, forced, and child marriages. The audience may have thought marriage was always like it is now and that it shouldn’t be changed.

Pollit then goes on to tell her audience that marriage is not as sacred as it used to be and can be easily dissolved. The audience may seem marriage as some holy sacred bond between a man and a women and Pollit tries to show them that is not the case. Pollit tells all the benefits marriage brings and shows how society rewards you for marriage and says that it is wrong to deny anybody of it. One of the major reasons the audience is against gay marriage is because it goes against their religion. Multiple times Pollit talks about how marriage is not about the church but about the government. She says “It’s not about what God blesses; it’s about what the government permits.” Pollit tries to get the idea of religion out of people’s minds and tries to say it doesn’t matter. Her essay ends with her saying “Gay marriage it’s not about sex, it’s about separation of church and state.” The audience must really believe that gay marriage is wrong because of their religion because her closing argument is about how it should be up to the state not the church. She may have intended this essay for a hostile audience but it does not seem like something they would

read. Someone from a supportive audience would enjoy reading this essay because they would agree with everything that Pollitt said. This essay is like a love letter to people who support gay marriage. Pollitt makes it seem like every argument against gay marriage is invalid. If someone from a neutral audience read this, they may be persuaded that gay marriage is not wrong. It would be unfair to them because they would only get one side of the argument. They deserve to get all the facts of the argument not just one. When a person in the hostile audience reads this essay they may not be persuaded they are wrong. This essay is written wrong for a hostile audience. Pollitt needed to make her points without insulting peoples beliefs or ideas. It seems like she is calling the audience of this paper dumb for thinking gay marriage is wrong. The audience also might be offended especially if they are religious. This paper may work better on a hostile audience if she did not insult them and wrote it more objectively. The audience Pollitt is writing this for is people who are against gay marriage for any reason. She does not write the paper with respect to them but instead she wants to make them feel like they are completely wrong. She does not care about what they believe she thinks the decision should be left up to the government and wants the people in her audience to agree with her and not voice their opinion unless it agrees with hers. Her intended audience may not even read this essay but Pollitt did not write this essay for anyone else but them.