That's OK, obnoxious scientific phillistines who so casually think anything can be certain disguest me.
Well, maybe disgust is a strong word. They amuse and occaissionally irritate me.
Certainty is an illusion, even scientific proof is just another notch along a scale of probability. Nothing is ever really 0% or 100% probable except for a few logical and mathematical constructs (eg 2+2=4 in standard addition). Once you start to actually involve the "real world" you can kiss certainty good by.
This doesn't mean it's logical to make any and all claims you want life, the universe, and everything - but it does mean that people who think you can somehow arbitrarily throw up this wall between things "religious" and things "scientific" are sadly mistaken. A good scientist and a good religious thinker will have the same basic methodology of thought - they just apply the methodologies to very different arenas. In science you stick with quantifiable results. In religion you tend to stick with philosophy and belief - but logic still applies.
Similarly the religious bigot and the scientific phillistine have much in common. Both are very sure in the specifics of their little domains without any general comprehension whatsoever of the common root. Each dismisses the other with such ignorance and disdain for logic that neither is really qualified to be called either a scientist or a religious thinker.
Clear thinking, honest questioning, and overall intellectual integrity are the common root of religion and science.
-stormin
And no - a scientific phillistine is not a contradiction in terms. It should, but sadly it is not.
The right to private property is one of the most fundamental rights of the US Consitution. From it devolve all kinds of other rights. Eg. you own your body, therefore you have the right to control what happens to it. From there we get due-process laws, privacy laws, etc.
Without private property the entire American system of law falls apart.
Wait a fucking second. What's your opinion of polygamy?
My personal opinion is that it sounds like a total mess I would never want to be involved in. If you read the journals of the Mormons living at the time when it was first announced many of them felt the same way. Several leaders left the church over the issue. I guess some people may have tried to join for that reason, but since it didn't really work on a volunteer basis it didn't do them much good. I'm glad it's illegal now and no longer practiced. In any case subsequent marriages were only allowed to be entered into if the first wife agreed - and since mine never would it's kind of a moot point.
On a social level I would probably vote against any renewed effort to practice polygamy by any group. If there was some group of people - like Muslims - that had it as part of their heritage and that could demonstrate it wasn't oppressing women and it passed the same kinds of tests that you've mentioned (clear laws, preventative measures against abuse of the practice, not harmful to society) than I'd at least be open to the possibility of discussing it. As a final note the fundamentalist Mormons are well-known for marrying off their daughters at the age of 15 and such. That would have to be cleared up before I would be willing to not fight against any measure to make the practice legal. I would also want it to pass the same kinds of psychological tests on parenting that I want gay-rights parenting to pass. That's the reason why I think it would be easier for a group with a long history of practicing it to win some kind of legal concession: they have a wealth of evidence on the affects of the practice.
Honestly, I don't think there are enough advocates for either group to consider it a widely desired thing.
I agree, but I think it's a worthy exercise. Here's why:
I know families with same-sex partners, and I know how functional they are, and I don't see any reason to hurt them where we help other much less societally-beneficial relationships. I don't know any relatives that want to get married, and I don't know anyone who wants to marry a gaggle of people. If they could explain the way they think that should work, legally, and what benefits they'd get from legal marriage, then I might have some way of deciding
From reading this I can evaluate that you have the following criteria for making this decision.
1. The societal benefit of the new definition of marriage ("...I know how functional they are..." vs "less societally-beneficial relationships") 2. People that actually want to take advantage of the new definition of marriage. 3. Legal viability of the new definition.
If you agree with these criteria than - even though we still disagree about the outcome - we've established further common ground. Because I can think of no reason not to use this as a perfectly acceptable criteria for evaluating polygamy, marriage, close-family relationsihps, etc. Furthermore, I can agree with you that gay marriage clearly passes #2, and as far as I know passes #3 as well (although there are some speedbumps to overcome, I think it can be made to work legally).
So we come back to #1: the societal benefit of recognizing gay marriage. You think it's societally beneficial, I think it's not. I feel your reasoning is flawed because you continue to evaluate hetero vs. homosexual couples instead of evaluating the institution. If we evaluate the individuals - then I'd be forced to agree with you completely for the reasons you state: a lot of hetero couples a bad parents, homosexual couples can make better parents than them. I just happen to think that homosexuals, by definition, can't be as good parents because they only represent one gender. Whereas with heterosexual marriages the problems arise not from the definition of marriage but from individual failures of the parents. Thus heterosexual marriage as an institution deserves societal preferrence.
since I have not accused you of preventing gay people from marrying someone of the opposite sex, I cannot fathom the reason.
When we started debating you made assumptions, eg - that i was against civil unions. I'm trying not to make similar assumptions about you. A lof of people in the gay-marriage debate wouuld not agree - or at least not initially understand - this distinction. I'm trying to ascertain your position on it. The reason isn't so unfathomable - I'm just trying to understand my opponent. It's fairly routine to assume that if someone keeps asking the same question they simply want it answered. No big mystery there.
I do not believe that it is fair to try to say that Mormon-on-Mormon marriage isn't really marriage, whether or not there are negative characteristics of Mormon-on-Mormon marriage.
Fair enough. I think I've exounded my reasoning on this point to death. I'm actually pretty excited because I think I have a much better argument than I did at the beginning. I wouldn't expect you to see that because I've made a ton of screwups as well, and differentiating between the screwups and the parts that make sense would take some time. Besides - you find my line of reasoning boring. But anyway I want to set aside my own argument for now and learn more about your position.
If you reject my basis for determining a reasonable criteria for redefinition of marriage as it pertains to gov't licenses - what's your criteria? In order for a word to mean something it has to not mean someting else. Definitions are inherently exclusive. So where would you draw the line on marriage? How broad of a definition do you accept and - more importantly - what's your basis for making the decision?
I'm gonna squeeze this in before you address my "welcome" ultimatum. I'm looking forward to that.
1. I say that you have conflated two very different things: evaluation of marriage from the standpoint of the individuals and evaluation of the same question from the standpoint of marriage as an institution. You have misspoken on that point. I gave a concrete example. Here it is again:
Eventually you said it would be ok to prohibit mormon-on-mormon marriage if we could show that Mormons are bad parents... That would be so unbelievably unfair, whether or not Mormonism was bad for children.
You are quite clearly regarding a prohibition on this type of marriage based on "Mormons are bad parents" with "Mormonism is bad for children". "Mormons are bad parents" is a question about Mormons. Thus it's a question of "who can get married". "Mormonism is bad for children" is not about Mormons - it's about Mormonism. Thus it's a question of "what is marriage". You treated the two as equivalent. They are not.
Hence I'm saying "it's discrimination to say Mormons or gays can't get married. Thats the individual-based evaluation and I reject it as illegitimate. But it IS fair to say "homosexual marriage isn't really marriage" just as it's fair to say "polygamous marriage isn't really marriage". It's also fair to try to say that mormon-on-mormon marriage isn't really marriage, but I think it doesn't actually work. Once you've established that the thing in question is the institution and not the individuals you're free to critize and/or restrict it.
Look, help me out here. The question "can gays get married" is distinct from the question "can people of the same sex get married". You can say yes to the first while saying no to the second. And you can say no to the first while saying yes to the second (although why two same-gendered straight people would want to get married is another matter). Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
2. Who brought up the concept of preventing Mormons from marrying at all? Not me!
That was from another thread between you and I that I don't have time to look up. However in this thread we have the following:
You have also not addressed my analogy to prohibiting marriage between two Mormons.
So it's your analogy to prohibit marriage between two Mormons. When I refer to prevent mormons from marrying this is what I'm referring to. Implicit is "...eachother". I'll try to include that word in each referrence to make it clear if that helps. But it's your analogy in the first place, not mine.
3. Who accused you of preventing gay people from marrying someone of the opposite sex? Not me! No, you didn't . I didn't say you did. I'm not sure what your point is here.
Gays can't bring new life into the world (at least not while they're being gay)
Was not clear enough for you. Let me rephrase: If two boys have sex - there's 0 probability that a baby will result. If two girls have sex - there's 0 probability that a baby will result.
But the rights that you specifically named as being OK with you are absolutely the bulk of the difference for me.
OK - so we've got no real argument on the substance of the matter. In your last post there was a typo that made me unsure if that's what you were saying or not.
Your argument for why gay marriage is inherently different in a destructive fashion than any other marriage went so vague and verbosely off the deep end that I didn't have any interest in sorting it out.
I was trying to differentiate between evaluating marriage as an institution and evaluating marriage in terms of individuals. That's what it comes down to. It's a subtle distinction (as opposed to vague) and it is a bit verbose. As far as being "off the deep end" - what can I say to that? We're talking about one of the oldest human social institutions in existence. I'm not sure how run-of-the-mill you expect it to be. I won't tire you with rehashing all of my arguments. It's a shame you decided against them based on verbosity rather than content. Goes back to what I've been saying about playing the partisan and making assumptions (although you cleared up at least one of those apparent assumptions).
No, but you need the county clerk to give you shared property rights.
The purpose of the analogy is to reveal the reason for marriage. So your counter-argument is off base. I was just trying to demonstrate that the common marriage-related concerns (eg "love", "commitment") are of no interest to the gov't. The other benefits - like shared property rights - can be granted under a civil union. We already both realize that I don't oppose that, so what are you trying to prove with this statement?
Do you understand how broken your line of reasoning sounds?
Well, considering you're not interested enough to actually read it I'm not sure how much impact you expect this claim to have on me.
How many things you've backtracked on?
I would say that being capable of frankly admitting errors in one's own argument is - logically speaking - not such a bad thing. If we're trying to look better than you get points for making me look unsure of myself. But if the question is an earnest search for truth, than I don't see how this is relevant one way or the other. All it demonstrates is that I'm willing to face the logic when it doens't work out in my favor. You've made some significant points and I've made some mistakes. I'm comfortable with that.
Eventually you said it would be ok to prohibit mormon-on-mormon marriage if we could show that Mormons are bad parents... That would be so unbelievably unfair, whether or not Mormonism was bad for children.
The fact that you conflate "Mormons are bad parents" with "Mormonism [is] bad for children" highlights the fact that you continue to fail to understand the critical difference between evaluating marriage as an institution and evaluating parents. As I stated before: I've made every effort to address your points to your satisfaction. This is my main point. If you're interested in the argument you'll do us both a favor and actually try to understand the point I'm making.
Do you realize how far removed that is from our culture's "definition" of mariage?
This statement (question) just doens't make sense. What's far-removed from the "definition" of marriage? I think rather than a definition you're talking about our societal mores regarding who can get married. And it's repugnant to us to say that people can't get married to each other for any reason. That's why the rhetoric of the gay-marriage movement is so successful. It passes itself off as discrimination. For the hundredth time: what I'm pointing out is that it's discrimination to say "mormons get married". It's also discrimination to say "gays can't married". But as I've pointed out, gays can get married. That's clever rhetoric that disguises the real issues. The catch is that it's NOT di
How is it informative reading to present a list of scientists you disagree with and then say each one is an idiot? There was no actual information conveyed by that article that I'm aware of.
You could have said this a fucking decade ago and we'd have been done.
By what strange logic do you conclude that in an argument your opponent is not only responsible for expressing what he does believe, but also listing all of the things that he doesn't? It's kind of a quibbling point, but let's be honest here. My position is and has this entire time been utterly unambigious: I'm against gay marriage. It's on your head if you decide to assume I am opposed to civil unions as well. Whenever it's come up in these posts over the last couple of days (remember, I've been writing to a lot of other people too) I've simply said "I'm not opposed to civil unions".
However from your additional point: No reason. They aren't. There are a number of rights conferred to marriage that are not provided to domestic partnerships, and if that were changed I wouldn't care one iota about gay marriage. it seems to me we don't agree so much after all. If the rights of a civil union are expanded to include all those of marriage than we have a distinction without a difference. Which brings us to:
I'll point that most of the state ballot items in the last election, paid for and voted for by the religious right, also prohibited civil unions between same-sex partners. The only explanation that I can perceive is that the goal was to hurt families. The ones that y'all don't like.
1. Yes, the move was clearly an effort by the Religious Right to use widespread and popular opposition to gay-marriage to turn what would have been a reactive law (stop marriage from changing) into a much more proactive and restrictive one (stop civil unions too). I believe the RR was a legitimate fear that gay-rights advocates would succeed in getting civil unions that are indistinguishable from marriages. The Religious Right - and I'm with them on this - don't want homosexual marriage to be legalized under a different name either.
2. Yet another example of your assumptions about who I am and what I believe beyond the scope of what I've said or even implied. Mormons are not the Religious Right. Your "ya'll" is totally inappropriate. We are allied on a number of social issues, but they happen to think we're all going straight to Hell and that we're unchristian masqueraders tempting the faithful away from the perfect and complete Word of God (aka the Bible). We happen to think they're wrong, but are generally uninterested in publishing pamphlets to argue about it. We also tend to stay away from saying anybody's going to Hell - which lets us seem friendlier but makes our theology a little less exciting.:-) You would probably be well served to come to understand your opponents a little better.
Finally, I'm a little disheartened by this: There is very little in above comment that means anything to me, and I disagree [with] what does. Your haste to lump me with the RR and make assumptions about my arguments combined with your utter disinterest in anything I have to say that's not relevant to your own conclusion seem to indicate to me that you're a true partisan on this issue. You're not interested in actually understanding the arguments of your opponent - simply in learning the rudiments so that you can oppose them. You seem to give priority to the sound bites over the logical framework.
This is further illustrated by your dogged determination over the past few posts to get me to respond to a few specific points of yours. I don't fault you for this: it helps ensure greater communication when you ensure that I'm actually really understanding and responding to your points. I wonder if it occurs to you to think about it from another person's perspective, however. You were so anxious to have me respond to all of your points and yet when I finally say I've really got it together you simply dismiss almost the entire post. You're applying a rather obvious double-standard in the argument here. Every point you consider important has to be addressed to your satisfaction, but
Just as a note, I think the following is significantly more informative than my last few posts. You've pushed me pretty hard and made me spout out a few ideas before I was sure about them. Some of this has backfired on me and our argument has descended into confusion at least in part because I've been confused. I'm not going to say I have it all figured out now, but I do believe that I've come to realize the really fundamental disagreement that we're having here. In short it's this: Whether the gov't should redefine marriage to include gay parents or not is a question that addresses marriage as an institution and is blind to individual variation. The only relevant evaluation is gay vs. straight marriage organizationally and NOT gay vs. straight parents. The former involves marriage licenses, the latter involves social services.
The lengthy explanation follows:
I believe the fundamental building block of society is the traditional family unit. While the parenting skills of individuals can be correlated to educational level, family background, income and many other factors the fact remains that individual variation is far greater than the variation of the means of these groups. In plain English a poor, illterate couple from abusive family backgrounds may make better parents than rich, college educated parents with no problem backgrounds. For that reason and for the further previously stated reasons regarding civil rights and restrictions on the power of the government I believe that the government has no right whatsoever to regulate the individual procreative or child-rearing lives of its citizens. You seem to think that issuing marriage licenses is regulating child-rearing or even regulating marriage. It does no such thing.
Despite what's been said about individual variation in parenting skills I believe that there is one unique institution, system, and organization that raises children better than any other. That organization is marriage - and it is deferrence to marriage - and not married couples - that the government espouses when it issues marriage licenses.
This is a subtle shift from "can gays make good parents vs. straight people" to which the answer - due to individual variation - is obviously "yes" to "are homosexual marriages as good at fostering family development as heterosexual marriages". What's at stake here is the institution and not the individuals. This point is absolutely critical and I think it's your failure to differentiate between the two that has led to much of your frustration with my arguments. You either haven't grasped the fact that I'm making this fine - but crucial - distinction or you've dismissed it as immaterial or non-existent without providing your argument for why. This is synomous to my oft-repeated mantra: "The question isn't 'who can marry' it's 'what is marriage'."
You frequently bring up examples - child molesters, felons, Mormons - that have nothing to do with the institution of marriage as an institution. Our definition has historically been "one adult male, one adult female". It has said nothing about able-bodied, healthy, nice, mean, abusive, etc. Marriage licenses have made no reference whatsoever to the individuals getting married because the gov't has been supporting the effectiveness of the the institution in raising children - not of its constituent members.
You seem to misunderstand this and you've thus been led to conclude that the gov't regulates married people. To an extent it does so - but this is done via social services and is, as you put it, "un-fucking-related" to marriage licenses. That was what really helped me see the problem we are having: social services and marriage licenses ARE totally unrelated.
So the real question for me to see is "can homosexual marriage - as an institution - be as effective at raising children as heterosexual marriage". In other words - if you take two average gay people and two average straight people which will make bet
Oh well, and I thought we were really doing well on the whole mutual respect thing. At least neither one of us has actually compared the other to a Nazi yet. So - that's something to be relatively proud of.
We don't prevent people with the same recessive-allele genetic disorders from getting married. We don't prevent felons from getting married. We absolutely do now and always will "formally allow sub-optimal parenting to be equivalent".
I disagree. When we give a license to a couple without doing a background test we're not formally allowing sub-optimal pareneting. We're simply saying "we don't live in a police state so without any reasonable suspicion we can't violate your rights by requiring a genetic test, background test, etc." That's not permission to abuse your kids. That's just recognizing the constraints of american civil liberties. The fact that we have Social Services to go in after the fact and take kids away when there IS reasonable grounds to suspect abuse demonstrates society's attempt to balance the rights of the individual parents with the rights of their children.
I understand that you think that I'm dodging your point - but I'm actually addressing it head on. Here is what you want me to address:
"Just like any other criterion that may or may not influence, but definitely doesn't determine child-rearing ability, it doesn't make any sense to prohibit marriage based on it."
And here is what I'm saying:
Homosexuality is not like "any other criterion". Most obviosly it is differnt in that it doesn't require any breach of privacy to ascertain that gay marriage is between gay people. But it does require a breach of privacy to ascertain that straights getting married may or may not be abusive, pyschologically disturbed, etc.
Think about it this way. Cops aren't allowed to break into your house at random to search for drugs. They would find a lot of people that use drugs that way (just as a lot of people with marriage licenses are not going to make good parents) but the cost (violation of a fundamental right) outweighs the benefit (enforcement of laws). But if you light up on the street corner they can arrest you. Even if Joe Schmoe down the street has a full-blown crystal meth lab (analogy: molests his own children) and you are just smoking a joint (analogy: gay parent) the fact is that they can do nothing against Joe Schmoe because there's no lawful way for them to know about his activities but they can throw you in jail.
This is the very specific way in which homosexuality is different than other criterion and now you should see why I keep bringing up the relevance of gays as bad parents. If straights are bad parents in such a way that it's common knowledge - we should take action to discourage their marriages too. Of course, it's less practical in the case of straights because they can have kids without a license. Homosexual sex doesn't get anyone preggers. So why restrict a marriage license from someone who's going to make babies anyway? This doesn't mean we should give licenses to gay people with parental rights anymore than we should give marriage licenses to child abusers who have legal custody.
On the other hand for some straights - eg child molesters - not only does it make no sense to give them marriage licenses it makes no sense to let them have children at all. I'm completely willing to consider a kind of parole of child abusers (is their a potential for reform?) that renders them infertile either permenantly or until they've "recovered". And yes - we could deny marriage licenses to molesters. There's no violation of privacy in this case since there has already been a trial.
This post is already really long. Regarding the two Mormons getting married I think everything I wrote in my initial post responding to that stands. It's not a genuine redefinition of marriage - it's just a filter on who can get married. That's discrimination.
*Sigh* I didn't think anyone was actually going to contend that marriage wasn't a fundamental part of our society. So you're right, I haven't "proven" that point. Honestly, I've got a lot of work to do and I'll just have to let that one go by.
certain peripheral bits
At this point I have to question whether you're even being serious. Marriage has always been - among other things - the foundation for a family. It was the societally acceptable (and I believe psychologically preferable) way to bring new lives into the world. Gays can't bring new life into the world (at least not while they're being gay). If that's a peripheral bit - I want to know what the germane issues are.
I'm not trying to be disingenuous, but that doesn't necessarily make the miscommunication your fault. I hate it when I feel like I'm making a good point and it keeps getting ignored, so I'm going to try really hard to address what you're saying here.
Suppose that we decided to define marriage as "a union of two people that are not both Mormon".
I think I see what you're getting at. But I continue to see two distinct questions.
1. What is the state of marriage? 2. Who can enter into that state?
It seems to me that while gramatically you are trying to adjust 1 for all intents and purposes you are really only adjusting 2. If the only redefinition of marriage is to say that neither party can be Mormon than you've made no substantial change to the definition. You've simply created a restriction on who can enter into the state of marriage and phrased it deceptively. On the other hand when I say: "marriage is - from the gov't's perspective - fundamentally about bringing children into the world" I am actually referring directly to what marriage is. It's a union of two people to bring children into the world. Gays are completely able to enter this relationship, but they choose not to. The restriction "but you have to marry someone of the opposite gender" is not an artificial restriction on who can get married - it's a natural and inevitable result of the definition. If it's discrimination it's biologically determined and not politically determined.
Finally - not sure I like this creepy talk about "regulating" families.
I think I handled some of this in my other thread. I'll try to recap. Here's my argument.
1. The US has the legal and moral perogative to refuse to redefine marriage to incorporate same-sex unions just as they were justified in refusing to allow a redefinition of marriage to include two or more wives to one husband 150 years ago. (Corollary - there's no rule that says anything you can't prove to be harmful must be made legal. As a rather conservative fellow I'm pretty close to that position, but as a conservative fellow I also tend to want to be careful about changing laws before we're sure of the ramifications). 2. The burden of proof to change a law - any law - is on the people that want the law changed. This is just a fundamental principle of legal stability (we heard all about a specific instance of this in the Alito and Roberts hearings but I won't spell it because I have no idea how). 3. Finally I think that homosexual marriage would or could be harmful in the following ways: 3a. Increasing spread of homosexuality in society generally.
I believe that homosexuality is partially genetic, but also partially choice. I've known many friends to experiment with homo- and bisexuality not because it was taboo but because of it's growing acceptance. I'm not saying we should put it back in the "taboo-not-to-be-spoken-of" category, but I am saying that increasing general acceptance of homosexuality can, has, and will continue to increase homosexuality in our culture. Since I think homosexuality is a psychological dysfunction, I'm opposed to this in the same way that I'd be opposed to some law that increased the spread of OCD around. I'm not in any way harmed by other people being gay - but I think homosexuality is harmful to those who practice it. If everyone who practiced it was a consenting adult it would be none of my business. But since experimentation tends to start much earlier I feel the legal and moral basis exists to oppose it. I can't stop a bunch of adults from doing psychologically stupid things, but I can oppose movements which I think would spread psychological disorders - be it OCD, depression, or homosexuality - to kids.
3b. Increasing spread of homosexuality to children.
This isn't abuse. But if you are raised in a house where harmful behavior patterns are deemed normal I think there's a greater chance you will fall into those behavior patterns yourself.
3c. Children deserve a mother and a father by default.
It doesn't always work out that way. Due to divorce and death even marrieds end up becoming single-parents. You think that the privacy aspects are trivial, but I think they are essential. We can not monitor the sex lives of our citizens. Homosexual acts should not be monitored, nor should child-bearing acts. So if some girl gets knocked up the gov't has no way to prevent this. But that doesn't change the fact that our current definition of marriage enshrines the dual-parent family as the default status for children.
Redefining marriage is an unnecessasry step that removes that default status and instead institues a same-sex parenthood as equivalent. Where single-parenting is an exception to the general two-parent (two gender) rule, you're advocating overthrowing the rule entirely. An exception to a rule that can't be realistically mitigated is one thing, but changing the rule (and I mean rule in the loose sense of "general expectation" not in the strict sense of "enforceable code") to formally allow sub-optimal parenting to be equivalent is in my opinion reprehensible. There are certainly some heterosexual parents who do far more damage to their children than some homosexual couples would. I understand and accept that. But in general two-parents (man/woman) is better than two-parents (same gender) and therefore the law - as a blunt instrument - should encourage the former over the latter.
I don't have time to continue on. But I think I hit the major points. The US has the moral and legal right to not redefine marriage, the burden of proof is on those who want to change it, and so far not only have they failed to present adequate reasons for doing so but there are powerful reasons against such a move.
Imagine for a moment that you more-or-less agreed with one of those stronger anti-Mormon cases. I'm sure you would still agree that it would be wrong to prevent you and your wife's marriage.
To deny to me and my wife what is not denied to other people would be discrimination - and wrong. But that is not what happened in the case of polygammy. In that case the US asserted that there is one defintion of marriage acceptable: 1 man and 1 woman. That wasn't discriminating against Mormons. They simply said no one - Mormon or otherwise - could be in that kind of a marriage. It was against Mormon belief and I suppose it would have been nice of them to have not passed such a law but it was within their right. We were not discriminated against in that instance. This is the same case as gay-marriage. They are not being discriminated against either. They are simply in favor of an alternate form of marriage. The US is well within its rights not to allow that new form of marriage. Note that this is a case for the why it can be banned morally and legally - not for why it should be banned.
My point is this. While I would argue it would be wrong to prevent me and my wife from marrying (discrimination based on who we are) I would not in fact argue that it would be wrong to ban me from trying to marry another woman in addition to my wife (although that's a moot point: my real wife would kill first if I tried anyway).
This is the same point I was hinting at when I mentioned Mormons being able to speak on it "authoritatively". That might not have been the best word choice. I was just pointing out that as a culture this is an issue we've probably thought about a lot more than most people - since we've experienced trying and failing to redefine marriage first hand.
Referring back to the original point - should gay marriage be legal - I feel that whether or not homosexuality is a psychological dysfunction is relevant for two reasons. 1 - possibility of passing on behavior to children (either directly or by promoting the feeling that nothing is wrong with homosexuality. If it's a dysfunction than there is something wrong with it. Even if it doesn't hurt other people it's bad in the sense that OCD is bad even though it doesn't hurt other people very often either. 2 - possibility of abuse of children
Note that I'm just tossing #2 out there. It's probably the most contentious claim I could possibly make, and I'm suggesting it as a possibility as opposed to arguing that it's true.
In any case my argument can be summed up as follows: 1. The US has the moral and legal perogative to ban gay marriage or more accurately to refuse to allow marriage to be redefined (polygamy stuff as my main example) 2. The burden of proof for changing an existing law is on those who want to change it. 3. So far I see very little reason to change the legal definition of marriage (since i reject the "rights"-based arguments) and I see some potential reasons not to change it.
I'd also like to just thank you for your civil tone so far. Despite a few misunderstandings and some major differences of opinion it's been a good discussion. That's got to count for something.
You believe it because homosexuality is prohibited by the inspired word of God.
This comment indicates to me that you have an extremly naive view of religion and religous conviction. It's analagous to me saying "you believe the square root of two is not a rational number because your math profesor told you so." What you're implying is that - at the root - I unquestioningly follow Mormon doctrine because I accept an argument based on authority. God is authoritative, Mormone doctrin is God's will, therefore I follow Mormon doctrine regardless of any and all logic, reason, etc. Similary some people realy do believe that, for example, the square root of two is irrational simply because they trust in the authority of the teacher or text book from which this information was first learned. They either don't or can't understand the proof itslef. But you can't reduce all scientific learning to authority any more legitimately than you can reduce all religious belief to authority. Authority does have an important role to play in both scientific and religious education - but not the charicatured role which you envision for it.
Your ignoring the very complicated - and logical - alternative approaches to religious belief. If you're interested I'd be happy to get into it more with you. Not to try and convert you but because you have the same understanding of religion that an elementray school student may have of science: superficial and inherently flawed. It's perfectly reasonable to come to an appreciation of the intellectual underpinnings of another faith without in any way giving your own assent to that system of faith. But assuming you don't want to hear all of this, however, I'll get to the point: the "rhetoric" that I inserted was actually not just a guise to cover my authority-based belief - it was sincere argument and should be addressed as such.
If you were gay (and you might be) I could just as easily retort that your own logic was in fact nothing more than rhetoric to back up your unquestioned convictions. Even if this were the case (and I'm not saying it was) it doesn't justify dismising a priori whatever argument you choose to put forth.
I think Mormonism is a psychological dysfunction.
Again - you're not thinking this through. If there's one culture in the USA that has the right to authoritatively speak on the question of marital law, it's the Mormons. As practically everyone knows Mormons practiced polygamy during the 19th century. We took our fair share of abuse for that practice. When the territory of Utah applied for statehood the practice of polygamy was one of the chief arguments used to oppose that movement. In fact the entire assets of the Church were eventually frozen, many of the leaders imprisoned, and the Church brought to edge of bankruptcy precisely because a majority of Americans - like you - felt that Mormonism was a psychlogical dysfuntion (ot at leeast, the polygamous aspects of it) and made the practice illegal. So while you generously say: I don't see any reason why that should prevent you from marrying your wife or having any of the other rights that I enjoy. the fact is that you're about a century and a half too late. American society has already cast its vote, polygamy is illegal, and in order to survive as a religion the Mormons officially disavowed the practice. A handful of fundamentalists continue the tradition but the largest branch by far - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - will excommunicate anyone who practices it. The USA has the right to define marriage - it has done so before and may do so again.
On a final note I want to point that gays can get married. A gay guy and a gay woman can go get married. This isn'tplaying with words. It's essential. The "right" to marriage is available for all responsible adults already. What's at stake is not the opportunity to marry - but the definition of marriage.
In any case, i stand by my previous logic explaining why I think it' reasonable
Sorry - I don't try to evade hard points on purpose. But I don't see any child rearing points that you made in the previous few parents in this thread.
My generic response is that I believe that biologically human children need both a father and a mother (male and female) for healthy pyschological and social development and that thus the traditional family is preferred to single-partent, single-sex, or other arrangements.
In addition I tend to view homosexuality as a psychological dysfunction. Brand me as a bigot if you will, but it's my opinion and I'm open to be swayed if you can bring me good evidence or reasoning. But as it stands it seems to me that homosexuality is an evolutionarily unfavorable trait in that it removes individuals from the gene pool. This has more than just genetic implications, however. It is in the act of procreation that as humans we both acknowledge and defy our own mortality. There are intimate and profound connections between human sexuality, human mortality, and human psychology. Sex is more than just an act of pleasure and love (while it is both of those) but it is also the fundamental thread that strings the human generations together and provides the fountain of all human life. Homosexual sex fails in both of these aspects in an immediate sense. Homosexuality as a lifestyle goes even further and fails in complete sense. While I'm open to the possibility that homosexuality may fit into this matrix as a healthy alternative, I currently do not believe that to be the case and furthermore I find that because the issue has become so highly politicized it's hard to even have an open discussion on the topic. Without the present possibility of serious discussion on the topic and with my current misgivings regarding homosexuality you should be able to at least understand - if not agree with - my reluctance to be happy about children raised by same-sex couples. Or you might just call me a bigot because of what I believe and not why I believe it (which I may as well point out right now is a misuse of the word 'bigot').
1. The maths have already been thoroughly trashed and I've already admitted I had it completely wrong. Twice. I can do so a third time if you'd like.
2. Just because an argument has been trotted out for the wrong reasons doesn't mean it's always wrong. It comes to this: you should be careful when you tinker with the fundamental institutions of our civilization. That doesn't mean the tinkering shouldn't be done. Major changes have been made that needed to be made. But that doesn't mean ALL changes to traditional institutions are good - does it? My contention is that those institutions exist for a reason. In the case of slavery it's obvious - and it's obviously a bad reason. In the case of our traditional definition of marriage and the gov't handing out licenses I think the reasons for the institution are sound - and not biased.
Look, at this point you're just making no sense at all. Are you saying that religion is synonymous with the economic and political systems of the middle ages? That religion was responsible for feudalism? As far as I'm concerned the religious expression of the time was a symptom of the problems not the cause.
Furthermore just because someone ELSE had literacy doesn't mean you shouldn't be grateful to the Irish monks for preserving literacy. Sure Greek and Latin were being used: by religious organizations. In Europe literature was maintained by the religious. As long as you're a westerner you have them to thank for your literacy.
Because there would be no legal meaning to such a union.
Seems obvious enough to me. Barring a prenuptial agreement the marriage is treated as a legal entity and when one spouse dies the assets go to the marriage to be used by any of the remaining partners. If the marriage is anulled all property in the marriage is divided back to the surviving partners equally. Could it be messy? Yes - but so are divorces between one man and one woman. It's not a serious obstacle.
I'm tired of people misunderstanding this simple point. I'm NOT saying that marriage doesn't come with a bunch of genuine benefits. Why would I be making that claim?
What I'm saying is why on earth would the gov't be in the business of issuing marriage licenses if marriage is about love, commitment, or any other emotional/personal thing? Does the gov't offer "best friend" licenses? How about "aquaintance licenses"? "father-son licenses"? Humans are involved in dozens of different types of relationships of all different kinds and yet the gov't sees fit to offer licenses for exactly one type of human relationship: marriage.
So I have no idea what you're getting at with this list of stuff. It's a good list of stuff. It's what marriage gets you. But it's utterly WORTHLESS towards answer the question of WHY gov't is interested in giving this stuff to married couples. The question isn't "gee - what do marrieds get?" it's "why does gov't issue marriage licenses in the first place?"
I'm undecided on the issue, but I'm generally inclined to say that seems like a good compromise. If you're going to allow civil unions for homosexuals, however, I think you have to allow them for any group of consenting adults. Why stop at two?
I really did stir up the hornest nest! I ran into the "no more than 30 posts in a 4-hour time period" screen (which I'd never seen before). I'm just glad that most of the discussions have been pretty open and interesting - I think it's been a good series of posts all in all.
Slashdot Mirror
That's OK, obnoxious scientific phillistines who so casually think anything can be certain disguest me.
Well, maybe disgust is a strong word. They amuse and occaissionally irritate me.
Certainty is an illusion, even scientific proof is just another notch along a scale of probability. Nothing is ever really 0% or 100% probable except for a few logical and mathematical constructs (eg 2+2=4 in standard addition). Once you start to actually involve the "real world" you can kiss certainty good by.
This doesn't mean it's logical to make any and all claims you want life, the universe, and everything - but it does mean that people who think you can somehow arbitrarily throw up this wall between things "religious" and things "scientific" are sadly mistaken. A good scientist and a good religious thinker will have the same basic methodology of thought - they just apply the methodologies to very different arenas. In science you stick with quantifiable results. In religion you tend to stick with philosophy and belief - but logic still applies.
Similarly the religious bigot and the scientific phillistine have much in common. Both are very sure in the specifics of their little domains without any general comprehension whatsoever of the common root. Each dismisses the other with such ignorance and disdain for logic that neither is really qualified to be called either a scientist or a religious thinker.
Clear thinking, honest questioning, and overall intellectual integrity are the common root of religion and science.
-stormin
And no - a scientific phillistine is not a contradiction in terms. It should, but sadly it is not.
The right to private property is one of the most fundamental rights of the US Consitution. From it devolve all kinds of other rights. Eg. you own your body, therefore you have the right to control what happens to it. From there we get due-process laws, privacy laws, etc.
Without private property the entire American system of law falls apart.
-stormin
Please mod parent funny. Please. It even made my wife laugh.
-stormin
Wait a fucking second. What's your opinion of polygamy?
My personal opinion is that it sounds like a total mess I would never want to be involved in. If you read the journals of the Mormons living at the time when it was first announced many of them felt the same way. Several leaders left the church over the issue. I guess some people may have tried to join for that reason, but since it didn't really work on a volunteer basis it didn't do them much good. I'm glad it's illegal now and no longer practiced. In any case subsequent marriages were only allowed to be entered into if the first wife agreed - and since mine never would it's kind of a moot point.
On a social level I would probably vote against any renewed effort to practice polygamy by any group. If there was some group of people - like Muslims - that had it as part of their heritage and that could demonstrate it wasn't oppressing women and it passed the same kinds of tests that you've mentioned (clear laws, preventative measures against abuse of the practice, not harmful to society) than I'd at least be open to the possibility of discussing it. As a final note the fundamentalist Mormons are well-known for marrying off their daughters at the age of 15 and such. That would have to be cleared up before I would be willing to not fight against any measure to make the practice legal. I would also want it to pass the same kinds of psychological tests on parenting that I want gay-rights parenting to pass. That's the reason why I think it would be easier for a group with a long history of practicing it to win some kind of legal concession: they have a wealth of evidence on the affects of the practice.
Honestly, I don't think there are enough advocates for either group to consider it a widely desired thing.
I agree, but I think it's a worthy exercise. Here's why:
I know families with same-sex partners, and I know how functional they are, and I don't see any reason to hurt them where we help other much less societally-beneficial relationships. I don't know any relatives that want to get married, and I don't know anyone who wants to marry a gaggle of people. If they could explain the way they think that should work, legally, and what benefits they'd get from legal marriage, then I might have some way of deciding
From reading this I can evaluate that you have the following criteria for making this decision.
1. The societal benefit of the new definition of marriage ("...I know how functional they are..." vs "less societally-beneficial relationships")
2. People that actually want to take advantage of the new definition of marriage.
3. Legal viability of the new definition.
If you agree with these criteria than - even though we still disagree about the outcome - we've established further common ground. Because I can think of no reason not to use this as a perfectly acceptable criteria for evaluating polygamy, marriage, close-family relationsihps, etc. Furthermore, I can agree with you that gay marriage clearly passes #2, and as far as I know passes #3 as well (although there are some speedbumps to overcome, I think it can be made to work legally).
So we come back to #1: the societal benefit of recognizing gay marriage. You think it's societally beneficial, I think it's not. I feel your reasoning is flawed because you continue to evaluate hetero vs. homosexual couples instead of evaluating the institution. If we evaluate the individuals - then I'd be forced to agree with you completely for the reasons you state: a lot of hetero couples a bad parents, homosexual couples can make better parents than them. I just happen to think that homosexuals, by definition, can't be as good parents because they only represent one gender. Whereas with heterosexual marriages the problems arise not from the definition of marriage but from individual failures of the parents. Thus heterosexual marriage as an institution deserves societal preferrence.
It's nice to have the
Let me get this out of the way first:
since I have not accused you of preventing gay people from marrying someone of the opposite sex, I cannot fathom the reason.
When we started debating you made assumptions, eg - that i was against civil unions. I'm trying not to make similar assumptions about you. A lof of people in the gay-marriage debate wouuld not agree - or at least not initially understand - this distinction. I'm trying to ascertain your position on it. The reason isn't so unfathomable - I'm just trying to understand my opponent. It's fairly routine to assume that if someone keeps asking the same question they simply want it answered. No big mystery there.
I do not believe that it is fair to try to say that Mormon-on-Mormon marriage isn't really marriage, whether or not there are negative characteristics of Mormon-on-Mormon marriage.
Fair enough. I think I've exounded my reasoning on this point to death. I'm actually pretty excited because I think I have a much better argument than I did at the beginning. I wouldn't expect you to see that because I've made a ton of screwups as well, and differentiating between the screwups and the parts that make sense would take some time. Besides - you find my line of reasoning boring. But anyway I want to set aside my own argument for now and learn more about your position.
If you reject my basis for determining a reasonable criteria for redefinition of marriage as it pertains to gov't licenses - what's your criteria? In order for a word to mean something it has to not mean someting else. Definitions are inherently exclusive. So where would you draw the line on marriage? How broad of a definition do you accept and - more importantly - what's your basis for making the decision?
-stormin
-stormin
I'm gonna squeeze this in before you address my "welcome" ultimatum. I'm looking forward to that.
1. I say that you have conflated two very different things: evaluation of marriage from the standpoint of the individuals and evaluation of the same question from the standpoint of marriage as an institution. You have misspoken on that point. I gave a concrete example. Here it is again:
Eventually you said it would be ok to prohibit mormon-on-mormon marriage if we could show that Mormons are bad parents... That would be so unbelievably unfair, whether or not Mormonism was bad for children.
You are quite clearly regarding a prohibition on this type of marriage based on "Mormons are bad parents" with "Mormonism is bad for children". "Mormons are bad parents" is a question about Mormons. Thus it's a question of "who can get married". "Mormonism is bad for children" is not about Mormons - it's about Mormonism. Thus it's a question of "what is marriage". You treated the two as equivalent. They are not.
Hence I'm saying "it's discrimination to say Mormons or gays can't get married. Thats the individual-based evaluation and I reject it as illegitimate. But it IS fair to say "homosexual marriage isn't really marriage" just as it's fair to say "polygamous marriage isn't really marriage". It's also fair to try to say that mormon-on-mormon marriage isn't really marriage, but I think it doesn't actually work. Once you've established that the thing in question is the institution and not the individuals you're free to critize and/or restrict it.
Look, help me out here. The question "can gays get married" is distinct from the question "can people of the same sex get married". You can say yes to the first while saying no to the second. And you can say no to the first while saying yes to the second (although why two same-gendered straight people would want to get married is another matter). Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
2. Who brought up the concept of preventing Mormons from marrying at all? Not me!
That was from another thread between you and I that I don't have time to look up. However in this thread we have the following:
You have also not addressed my analogy to prohibiting marriage between two Mormons.
So it's your analogy to prohibit marriage between two Mormons. When I refer to prevent mormons from marrying this is what I'm referring to. Implicit is "...eachother". I'll try to include that word in each referrence to make it clear if that helps. But it's your analogy in the first place, not mine.
3. Who accused you of preventing gay people from marrying someone of the opposite sex? Not me! No, you didn't . I didn't say you did. I'm not sure what your point is here.
-stormin
Clearly this:
Gays can't bring new life into the world (at least not while they're being gay)
Was not clear enough for you. Let me rephrase: If two boys have sex - there's 0 probability that a baby will result. If two girls have sex - there's 0 probability that a baby will result.
-stormin
But the rights that you specifically named as being OK with you are absolutely the bulk of the difference for me.
OK - so we've got no real argument on the substance of the matter. In your last post there was a typo that made me unsure if that's what you were saying or not.
Your argument for why gay marriage is inherently different in a destructive fashion than any other marriage went so vague and verbosely off the deep end that I didn't have any interest in sorting it out.
I was trying to differentiate between evaluating marriage as an institution and evaluating marriage in terms of individuals. That's what it comes down to. It's a subtle distinction (as opposed to vague) and it is a bit verbose. As far as being "off the deep end" - what can I say to that? We're talking about one of the oldest human social institutions in existence. I'm not sure how run-of-the-mill you expect it to be. I won't tire you with rehashing all of my arguments. It's a shame you decided against them based on verbosity rather than content. Goes back to what I've been saying about playing the partisan and making assumptions (although you cleared up at least one of those apparent assumptions).
No, but you need the county clerk to give you shared property rights.
The purpose of the analogy is to reveal the reason for marriage. So your counter-argument is off base. I was just trying to demonstrate that the common marriage-related concerns (eg "love", "commitment") are of no interest to the gov't. The other benefits - like shared property rights - can be granted under a civil union. We already both realize that I don't oppose that, so what are you trying to prove with this statement?
Do you understand how broken your line of reasoning sounds?
Well, considering you're not interested enough to actually read it I'm not sure how much impact you expect this claim to have on me.
How many things you've backtracked on?
I would say that being capable of frankly admitting errors in one's own argument is - logically speaking - not such a bad thing. If we're trying to look better than you get points for making me look unsure of myself. But if the question is an earnest search for truth, than I don't see how this is relevant one way or the other. All it demonstrates is that I'm willing to face the logic when it doens't work out in my favor. You've made some significant points and I've made some mistakes. I'm comfortable with that.
Eventually you said it would be ok to prohibit mormon-on-mormon marriage if we could show that Mormons are bad parents... That would be so unbelievably unfair, whether or not Mormonism was bad for children.
The fact that you conflate "Mormons are bad parents" with "Mormonism [is] bad for children" highlights the fact that you continue to fail to understand the critical difference between evaluating marriage as an institution and evaluating parents. As I stated before: I've made every effort to address your points to your satisfaction. This is my main point. If you're interested in the argument you'll do us both a favor and actually try to understand the point I'm making.
Do you realize how far removed that is from our culture's "definition" of mariage?
This statement (question) just doens't make sense. What's far-removed from the "definition" of marriage? I think rather than a definition you're talking about our societal mores regarding who can get married. And it's repugnant to us to say that people can't get married to each other for any reason. That's why the rhetoric of the gay-marriage movement is so successful. It passes itself off as discrimination. For the hundredth time: what I'm pointing out is that it's discrimination to say "mormons get married". It's also discrimination to say "gays can't married". But as I've pointed out, gays can get married. That's clever rhetoric that disguises the real issues. The catch is that it's NOT di
How is it informative reading to present a list of scientists you disagree with and then say each one is an idiot? There was no actual information conveyed by that article that I'm aware of.
-stormin
You could have said this a fucking decade ago and we'd have been done.
:-) You would probably be well served to come to understand your opponents a little better.
By what strange logic do you conclude that in an argument your opponent is not only responsible for expressing what he does believe, but also listing all of the things that he doesn't? It's kind of a quibbling point, but let's be honest here. My position is and has this entire time been utterly unambigious: I'm against gay marriage. It's on your head if you decide to assume I am opposed to civil unions as well. Whenever it's come up in these posts over the last couple of days (remember, I've been writing to a lot of other people too) I've simply said "I'm not opposed to civil unions".
However from your additional point: No reason. They aren't. There are a number of rights conferred to marriage that are not provided to domestic partnerships, and if that were changed I wouldn't care one iota about gay marriage. it seems to me we don't agree so much after all. If the rights of a civil union are expanded to include all those of marriage than we have a distinction without a difference. Which brings us to:
I'll point that most of the state ballot items in the last election, paid for and voted for by the religious right, also prohibited civil unions between same-sex partners. The only explanation that I can perceive is that the goal was to hurt families. The ones that y'all don't like.
1. Yes, the move was clearly an effort by the Religious Right to use widespread and popular opposition to gay-marriage to turn what would have been a reactive law (stop marriage from changing) into a much more proactive and restrictive one (stop civil unions too). I believe the RR was a legitimate fear that gay-rights advocates would succeed in getting civil unions that are indistinguishable from marriages. The Religious Right - and I'm with them on this - don't want homosexual marriage to be legalized under a different name either.
2. Yet another example of your assumptions about who I am and what I believe beyond the scope of what I've said or even implied. Mormons are not the Religious Right. Your "ya'll" is totally inappropriate. We are allied on a number of social issues, but they happen to think we're all going straight to Hell and that we're unchristian masqueraders tempting the faithful away from the perfect and complete Word of God (aka the Bible). We happen to think they're wrong, but are generally uninterested in publishing pamphlets to argue about it. We also tend to stay away from saying anybody's going to Hell - which lets us seem friendlier but makes our theology a little less exciting.
Finally, I'm a little disheartened by this: There is very little in above comment that means anything to me, and I disagree [with] what does. Your haste to lump me with the RR and make assumptions about my arguments combined with your utter disinterest in anything I have to say that's not relevant to your own conclusion seem to indicate to me that you're a true partisan on this issue. You're not interested in actually understanding the arguments of your opponent - simply in learning the rudiments so that you can oppose them. You seem to give priority to the sound bites over the logical framework.
This is further illustrated by your dogged determination over the past few posts to get me to respond to a few specific points of yours. I don't fault you for this: it helps ensure greater communication when you ensure that I'm actually really understanding and responding to your points. I wonder if it occurs to you to think about it from another person's perspective, however. You were so anxious to have me respond to all of your points and yet when I finally say I've really got it together you simply dismiss almost the entire post. You're applying a rather obvious double-standard in the argument here. Every point you consider important has to be addressed to your satisfaction, but
Blasted italics tag. Forgot to close it. Oh well - I think it's legible without it.
-stormin
Just as a note, I think the following is significantly more informative than my last few posts. You've pushed me pretty hard and made me spout out a few ideas before I was sure about them. Some of this has backfired on me and our argument has descended into confusion at least in part because I've been confused. I'm not going to say I have it all figured out now, but I do believe that I've come to realize the really fundamental disagreement that we're having here. In short it's this: Whether the gov't should redefine marriage to include gay parents or not is a question that addresses marriage as an institution and is blind to individual variation. The only relevant evaluation is gay vs. straight marriage organizationally and NOT gay vs. straight parents. The former involves marriage licenses, the latter involves social services.
The lengthy explanation follows:
I believe the fundamental building block of society is the traditional family unit. While the parenting skills of individuals can be correlated to educational level, family background, income and many other factors the fact remains that individual variation is far greater than the variation of the means of these groups. In plain English a poor, illterate couple from abusive family backgrounds may make better parents than rich, college educated parents with no problem backgrounds. For that reason and for the further previously stated reasons regarding civil rights and restrictions on the power of the government I believe that the government has no right whatsoever to regulate the individual procreative or child-rearing lives of its citizens. You seem to think that issuing marriage licenses is regulating child-rearing or even regulating marriage. It does no such thing.
Despite what's been said about individual variation in parenting skills I believe that there is one unique institution, system, and organization that raises children better than any other. That organization is marriage - and it is deferrence to marriage - and not married couples - that the government espouses when it issues marriage licenses.
This is a subtle shift from "can gays make good parents vs. straight people" to which the answer - due to individual variation - is obviously "yes" to "are homosexual marriages as good at fostering family development as heterosexual marriages". What's at stake here is the institution and not the individuals. This point is absolutely critical and I think it's your failure to differentiate between the two that has led to much of your frustration with my arguments. You either haven't grasped the fact that I'm making this fine - but crucial - distinction or you've dismissed it as immaterial or non-existent without providing your argument for why. This is synomous to my oft-repeated mantra: "The question isn't 'who can marry' it's 'what is marriage'."
You frequently bring up examples - child molesters, felons, Mormons - that have nothing to do with the institution of marriage as an institution. Our definition has historically been "one adult male, one adult female". It has said nothing about able-bodied, healthy, nice, mean, abusive, etc. Marriage licenses have made no reference whatsoever to the individuals getting married because the gov't has been supporting the effectiveness of the the institution in raising children - not of its constituent members.
You seem to misunderstand this and you've thus been led to conclude that the gov't regulates married people. To an extent it does so - but this is done via social services and is, as you put it, "un-fucking-related" to marriage licenses. That was what really helped me see the problem we are having: social services and marriage licenses ARE totally unrelated.
So the real question for me to see is "can homosexual marriage - as an institution - be as effective at raising children as heterosexual marriage". In other words - if you take two average gay people and two average straight people which will make bet
Choke & die, you inveterate moron.
Oh well, and I thought we were really doing well on the whole mutual respect thing. At least neither one of us has actually compared the other to a Nazi yet. So - that's something to be relatively proud of.
We don't prevent people with the same recessive-allele genetic disorders from getting married. We don't prevent felons from getting married. We absolutely do now and always will "formally allow sub-optimal parenting to be equivalent".
I disagree. When we give a license to a couple without doing a background test we're not formally allowing sub-optimal pareneting. We're simply saying "we don't live in a police state so without any reasonable suspicion we can't violate your rights by requiring a genetic test, background test, etc." That's not permission to abuse your kids. That's just recognizing the constraints of american civil liberties. The fact that we have Social Services to go in after the fact and take kids away when there IS reasonable grounds to suspect abuse demonstrates society's attempt to balance the rights of the individual parents with the rights of their children.
I understand that you think that I'm dodging your point - but I'm actually addressing it head on. Here is what you want me to address:
"Just like any other criterion that may or may not influence, but definitely doesn't determine child-rearing ability, it doesn't make any sense to prohibit marriage based on it."
And here is what I'm saying:
Homosexuality is not like "any other criterion". Most obviosly it is differnt in that it doesn't require any breach of privacy to ascertain that gay marriage is between gay people. But it does require a breach of privacy to ascertain that straights getting married may or may not be abusive, pyschologically disturbed, etc.
Think about it this way. Cops aren't allowed to break into your house at random to search for drugs. They would find a lot of people that use drugs that way (just as a lot of people with marriage licenses are not going to make good parents) but the cost (violation of a fundamental right) outweighs the benefit (enforcement of laws). But if you light up on the street corner they can arrest you. Even if Joe Schmoe down the street has a full-blown crystal meth lab (analogy: molests his own children) and you are just smoking a joint (analogy: gay parent) the fact is that they can do nothing against Joe Schmoe because there's no lawful way for them to know about his activities but they can throw you in jail.
This is the very specific way in which homosexuality is different than other criterion and now you should see why I keep bringing up the relevance of gays as bad parents. If straights are bad parents in such a way that it's common knowledge - we should take action to discourage their marriages too. Of course, it's less practical in the case of straights because they can have kids without a license. Homosexual sex doesn't get anyone preggers. So why restrict a marriage license from someone who's going to make babies anyway? This doesn't mean we should give licenses to gay people with parental rights anymore than we should give marriage licenses to child abusers who have legal custody.
On the other hand for some straights - eg child molesters - not only does it make no sense to give them marriage licenses it makes no sense to let them have children at all. I'm completely willing to consider a kind of parole of child abusers (is their a potential for reform?) that renders them infertile either permenantly or until they've "recovered". And yes - we could deny marriage licenses to molesters. There's no violation of privacy in this case since there has already been a trial.
This post is already really long. Regarding the two Mormons getting married I think everything I wrote in my initial post responding to that stands. It's not a genuine redefinition of marriage - it's just a filter on who can get married. That's discrimination.
*Sigh* I didn't think anyone was actually going to contend that marriage wasn't a fundamental part of our society. So you're right, I haven't "proven" that point. Honestly, I've got a lot of work to do and I'll just have to let that one go by.
certain peripheral bits
At this point I have to question whether you're even being serious. Marriage has always been - among other things - the foundation for a family. It was the societally acceptable (and I believe psychologically preferable) way to bring new lives into the world. Gays can't bring new life into the world (at least not while they're being gay). If that's a peripheral bit - I want to know what the germane issues are.
-stormin
I'm not trying to be disingenuous, but that doesn't necessarily make the miscommunication your fault. I hate it when I feel like I'm making a good point and it keeps getting ignored, so I'm going to try really hard to address what you're saying here.
Suppose that we decided to define marriage as "a union of two people that are not both Mormon".
I think I see what you're getting at. But I continue to see two distinct questions.
1. What is the state of marriage?
2. Who can enter into that state?
It seems to me that while gramatically you are trying to adjust 1 for all intents and purposes you are really only adjusting 2. If the only redefinition of marriage is to say that neither party can be Mormon than you've made no substantial change to the definition. You've simply created a restriction on who can enter into the state of marriage and phrased it deceptively. On the other hand when I say: "marriage is - from the gov't's perspective - fundamentally about bringing children into the world" I am actually referring directly to what marriage is. It's a union of two people to bring children into the world. Gays are completely able to enter this relationship, but they choose not to. The restriction "but you have to marry someone of the opposite gender" is not an artificial restriction on who can get married - it's a natural and inevitable result of the definition. If it's discrimination it's biologically determined and not politically determined.
Finally - not sure I like this creepy talk about "regulating" families.
-stromin
I think I handled some of this in my other thread. I'll try to recap. Here's my argument.
1. The US has the legal and moral perogative to refuse to redefine marriage to incorporate same-sex unions just as they were justified in refusing to allow a redefinition of marriage to include two or more wives to one husband 150 years ago. (Corollary - there's no rule that says anything you can't prove to be harmful must be made legal. As a rather conservative fellow I'm pretty close to that position, but as a conservative fellow I also tend to want to be careful about changing laws before we're sure of the ramifications).
2. The burden of proof to change a law - any law - is on the people that want the law changed. This is just a fundamental principle of legal stability (we heard all about a specific instance of this in the Alito and Roberts hearings but I won't spell it because I have no idea how).
3. Finally I think that homosexual marriage would or could be harmful in the following ways:
3a. Increasing spread of homosexuality in society generally.
I believe that homosexuality is partially genetic, but also partially choice. I've known many friends to experiment with homo- and bisexuality not because it was taboo but because of it's growing acceptance. I'm not saying we should put it back in the "taboo-not-to-be-spoken-of" category, but I am saying that increasing general acceptance of homosexuality can, has, and will continue to increase homosexuality in our culture. Since I think homosexuality is a psychological dysfunction, I'm opposed to this in the same way that I'd be opposed to some law that increased the spread of OCD around. I'm not in any way harmed by other people being gay - but I think homosexuality is harmful to those who practice it. If everyone who practiced it was a consenting adult it would be none of my business. But since experimentation tends to start much earlier I feel the legal and moral basis exists to oppose it. I can't stop a bunch of adults from doing psychologically stupid things, but I can oppose movements which I think would spread psychological disorders - be it OCD, depression, or homosexuality - to kids.
3b. Increasing spread of homosexuality to children.
This isn't abuse. But if you are raised in a house where harmful behavior patterns are deemed normal I think there's a greater chance you will fall into those behavior patterns yourself.
3c. Children deserve a mother and a father by default.
It doesn't always work out that way. Due to divorce and death even marrieds end up becoming single-parents. You think that the privacy aspects are trivial, but I think they are essential. We can not monitor the sex lives of our citizens. Homosexual acts should not be monitored, nor should child-bearing acts. So if some girl gets knocked up the gov't has no way to prevent this. But that doesn't change the fact that our current definition of marriage enshrines the dual-parent family as the default status for children.
Redefining marriage is an unnecessasry step that removes that default status and instead institues a same-sex parenthood as equivalent. Where single-parenting is an exception to the general two-parent (two gender) rule, you're advocating overthrowing the rule entirely. An exception to a rule that can't be realistically mitigated is one thing, but changing the rule (and I mean rule in the loose sense of "general expectation" not in the strict sense of "enforceable code") to formally allow sub-optimal parenting to be equivalent is in my opinion reprehensible. There are certainly some heterosexual parents who do far more damage to their children than some homosexual couples would. I understand and accept that. But in general two-parents (man/woman) is better than two-parents (same gender) and therefore the law - as a blunt instrument - should encourage the former over the latter.
I don't have time to continue on. But I think I hit the major points. The US has the moral and legal right to not redefine marriage, the burden of proof is on those who want to change it, and so far not only have they failed to present adequate reasons for doing so but there are powerful reasons against such a move.
-stormin
Imagine for a moment that you more-or-less agreed with one of those stronger anti-Mormon cases. I'm sure you would still agree that it would be wrong to prevent you and your wife's marriage.
To deny to me and my wife what is not denied to other people would be discrimination - and wrong. But that is not what happened in the case of polygammy. In that case the US asserted that there is one defintion of marriage acceptable: 1 man and 1 woman. That wasn't discriminating against Mormons. They simply said no one - Mormon or otherwise - could be in that kind of a marriage. It was against Mormon belief and I suppose it would have been nice of them to have not passed such a law but it was within their right. We were not discriminated against in that instance. This is the same case as gay-marriage. They are not being discriminated against either. They are simply in favor of an alternate form of marriage. The US is well within its rights not to allow that new form of marriage. Note that this is a case for the why it can be banned morally and legally - not for why it should be banned.
My point is this. While I would argue it would be wrong to prevent me and my wife from marrying (discrimination based on who we are) I would not in fact argue that it would be wrong to ban me from trying to marry another woman in addition to my wife (although that's a moot point: my real wife would kill first if I tried anyway).
This is the same point I was hinting at when I mentioned Mormons being able to speak on it "authoritatively". That might not have been the best word choice. I was just pointing out that as a culture this is an issue we've probably thought about a lot more than most people - since we've experienced trying and failing to redefine marriage first hand.
Referring back to the original point - should gay marriage be legal - I feel that whether or not homosexuality is a psychological dysfunction is relevant for two reasons.
1 - possibility of passing on behavior to children (either directly or by promoting the feeling that nothing is wrong with homosexuality. If it's a dysfunction than there is something wrong with it. Even if it doesn't hurt other people it's bad in the sense that OCD is bad even though it doesn't hurt other people very often either.
2 - possibility of abuse of children
Note that I'm just tossing #2 out there. It's probably the most contentious claim I could possibly make, and I'm suggesting it as a possibility as opposed to arguing that it's true.
In any case my argument can be summed up as follows:
1. The US has the moral and legal perogative to ban gay marriage or more accurately to refuse to allow marriage to be redefined (polygamy stuff as my main example)
2. The burden of proof for changing an existing law is on those who want to change it.
3. So far I see very little reason to change the legal definition of marriage (since i reject the "rights"-based arguments) and I see some potential reasons not to change it.
I'd also like to just thank you for your civil tone so far. Despite a few misunderstandings and some major differences of opinion it's been a good discussion. That's got to count for something.
-stormin
You believe it because homosexuality is prohibited by the inspired word of God.
This comment indicates to me that you have an extremly naive view of religion and religous conviction. It's analagous to me saying "you believe the square root of two is not a rational number because your math profesor told you so." What you're implying is that - at the root - I unquestioningly follow Mormon doctrine because I accept an argument based on authority. God is authoritative, Mormone doctrin is God's will, therefore I follow Mormon doctrine regardless of any and all logic, reason, etc. Similary some people realy do believe that, for example, the square root of two is irrational simply because they trust in the authority of the teacher or text book from which this information was first learned. They either don't or can't understand the proof itslef. But you can't reduce all scientific learning to authority any more legitimately than you can reduce all religious belief to authority. Authority does have an important role to play in both scientific and religious education - but not the charicatured role which you envision for it.
Your ignoring the very complicated - and logical - alternative approaches to religious belief. If you're interested I'd be happy to get into it more with you. Not to try and convert you but because you have the same understanding of religion that an elementray school student may have of science: superficial and inherently flawed. It's perfectly reasonable to come to an appreciation of the intellectual underpinnings of another faith without in any way giving your own assent to that system of faith. But assuming you don't want to hear all of this, however, I'll get to the point: the "rhetoric" that I inserted was actually not just a guise to cover my authority-based belief - it was sincere argument and should be addressed as such.
If you were gay (and you might be) I could just as easily retort that your own logic was in fact nothing more than rhetoric to back up your unquestioned convictions. Even if this were the case (and I'm not saying it was) it doesn't justify dismising a priori whatever argument you choose to put forth.
I think Mormonism is a psychological dysfunction.
Again - you're not thinking this through. If there's one culture in the USA that has the right to authoritatively speak on the question of marital law, it's the Mormons. As practically everyone knows Mormons practiced polygamy during the 19th century. We took our fair share of abuse for that practice. When the territory of Utah applied for statehood the practice of polygamy was one of the chief arguments used to oppose that movement. In fact the entire assets of the Church were eventually frozen, many of the leaders imprisoned, and the Church brought to edge of bankruptcy precisely because a majority of Americans - like you - felt that Mormonism was a psychlogical dysfuntion (ot at leeast, the polygamous aspects of it) and made the practice illegal. So while you generously say: I don't see any reason why that should prevent you from marrying your wife or having any of the other rights that I enjoy. the fact is that you're about a century and a half too late. American society has already cast its vote, polygamy is illegal, and in order to survive as a religion the Mormons officially disavowed the practice. A handful of fundamentalists continue the tradition but the largest branch by far - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - will excommunicate anyone who practices it. The USA has the right to define marriage - it has done so before and may do so again.
On a final note I want to point that gays can get married. A gay guy and a gay woman can go get married. This isn'tplaying with words. It's essential. The "right" to marriage is available for all responsible adults already. What's at stake is not the opportunity to marry - but the definition of marriage.
In any case, i stand by my previous logic explaining why I think it' reasonable
Sorry - I don't try to evade hard points on purpose. But I don't see any child rearing points that you made in the previous few parents in this thread.
My generic response is that I believe that biologically human children need both a father and a mother (male and female) for healthy pyschological and social development and that thus the traditional family is preferred to single-partent, single-sex, or other arrangements.
In addition I tend to view homosexuality as a psychological dysfunction. Brand me as a bigot if you will, but it's my opinion and I'm open to be swayed if you can bring me good evidence or reasoning. But as it stands it seems to me that homosexuality is an evolutionarily unfavorable trait in that it removes individuals from the gene pool. This has more than just genetic implications, however. It is in the act of procreation that as humans we both acknowledge and defy our own mortality. There are intimate and profound connections between human sexuality, human mortality, and human psychology. Sex is more than just an act of pleasure and love (while it is both of those) but it is also the fundamental thread that strings the human generations together and provides the fountain of all human life. Homosexual sex fails in both of these aspects in an immediate sense. Homosexuality as a lifestyle goes even further and fails in complete sense. While I'm open to the possibility that homosexuality may fit into this matrix as a healthy alternative, I currently do not believe that to be the case and furthermore I find that because the issue has become so highly politicized it's hard to even have an open discussion on the topic. Without the present possibility of serious discussion on the topic and with my current misgivings regarding homosexuality you should be able to at least understand - if not agree with - my reluctance to be happy about children raised by same-sex couples. Or you might just call me a bigot because of what I believe and not why I believe it (which I may as well point out right now is a misuse of the word 'bigot').
That cover it or did you have something specific?
-stormin
1. The maths have already been thoroughly trashed and I've already admitted I had it completely wrong. Twice. I can do so a third time if you'd like.
2. Just because an argument has been trotted out for the wrong reasons doesn't mean it's always wrong. It comes to this: you should be careful when you tinker with the fundamental institutions of our civilization. That doesn't mean the tinkering shouldn't be done. Major changes have been made that needed to be made. But that doesn't mean ALL changes to traditional institutions are good - does it? My contention is that those institutions exist for a reason. In the case of slavery it's obvious - and it's obviously a bad reason. In the case of our traditional definition of marriage and the gov't handing out licenses I think the reasons for the institution are sound - and not biased.
-stormin
Look, at this point you're just making no sense at all. Are you saying that religion is synonymous with the economic and political systems of the middle ages? That religion was responsible for feudalism? As far as I'm concerned the religious expression of the time was a symptom of the problems not the cause.
Furthermore just because someone ELSE had literacy doesn't mean you shouldn't be grateful to the Irish monks for preserving literacy. Sure Greek and Latin were being used: by religious organizations. In Europe literature was maintained by the religious. As long as you're a westerner you have them to thank for your literacy.
-stormin
Because there would be no legal meaning to such a union.
Seems obvious enough to me. Barring a prenuptial agreement the marriage is treated as a legal entity and when one spouse dies the assets go to the marriage to be used by any of the remaining partners. If the marriage is anulled all property in the marriage is divided back to the surviving partners equally. Could it be messy? Yes - but so are divorces between one man and one woman. It's not a serious obstacle.
-stormin
Thanks for that dude - I had a good laugh.
Enjoy your new sig!
-stormin
I'm tired of people misunderstanding this simple point. I'm NOT saying that marriage doesn't come with a bunch of genuine benefits. Why would I be making that claim?
What I'm saying is why on earth would the gov't be in the business of issuing marriage licenses if marriage is about love, commitment, or any other emotional/personal thing? Does the gov't offer "best friend" licenses? How about "aquaintance licenses"? "father-son licenses"? Humans are involved in dozens of different types of relationships of all different kinds and yet the gov't sees fit to offer licenses for exactly one type of human relationship: marriage.
So I have no idea what you're getting at with this list of stuff. It's a good list of stuff. It's what marriage gets you. But it's utterly WORTHLESS towards answer the question of WHY gov't is interested in giving this stuff to married couples. The question isn't "gee - what do marrieds get?" it's "why does gov't issue marriage licenses in the first place?"
-stormin
I'm undecided on the issue, but I'm generally inclined to say that seems like a good compromise. If you're going to allow civil unions for homosexuals, however, I think you have to allow them for any group of consenting adults. Why stop at two?
I really did stir up the hornest nest! I ran into the "no more than 30 posts in a 4-hour time period" screen (which I'd never seen before). I'm just glad that most of the discussions have been pretty open and interesting - I think it's been a good series of posts all in all.
-stormin