Having been married to and divorced from a woman, I’m pretty familiar with the legal benefits and responsibilities.
I can tell you that those benefits and responsibilities would be valued by my partner and me, and would provide stability and longevity in our relationship that would benefit us and our children. I know quite a few other gay couples, and the same is true for them.
Why overcomplicate the legal system by establishing a whole new set of laws for gay couples? Other countries (and two states) have kept it simple by granting the same rights/responsibilities and that makes sense to me.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Making stuff up is obvious in a lot of cases - and in these cases - and really it’s shameful.[/quote]
Again, “making stuff up” is in the eye of the beholder. I think the MA and CA judges genuinely believe they were representing the original intent of the Constitution. You think they “made it up”. You’re entitled to your opinion, but don’t be surprised that people disagree with you.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
What you’re then arguing is that policy makers should assume away the possibility of a problem, given there are observed effects and no proven cause. [/quote]
How many times do I have to repeat myself? Assuming away the possibility of a problem would mean stopping all research and refusing to consider any evidence to the contrary of the null hypothesis. Nobody has proposed that, just the opposite in fact.
Single parenting is almost always worse than having a mother and father. A boy knows he has a father even if the father is missing. Also, there are things a man can teach a boy that a lady can’t.
[/quote]
is it better than bouncing around foster care or living in some shit hole third world contry?
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
That is exactly what you’re saying, because you’re advocating that policy be made based on the idea there is no causation. A decision needs to be made whether to support or not support your policy recommendation in the face of incomplete evidence.
forlife wrote:
However, I also said that social policies should be adjusted if the scientific evidence warrants it.
Later down the road if it is shown conclusively that gay marriage has a serious detrimental effect on straight marriage, then the advisability of allowing gay marriage should be reconsidered. In the meantime, don’t deny people equal rights based on unproven ideas.[/quote]
Again, not a right.
So, experiment with society? See, that’s the issue - that’s what Thunder and I, and many other people - are not willing to risk. Given our understandings, we’re not willing to support such an experiment with society.
We want something to be proved safe when we have concerns about large-scale issues - issues that would essentially be irreversible for at least a generation, if not more. That’s where we are coming from.
He didn’t dodge causation - he was pointing out what we know now. Which is that the attitudes go together, and also go with harm to traditional marriage.
I’ve posted this link innumerable times on this thread.
This, particularly, speaks to our caution:
[i]A really, really, really long post about gay marriage that does not, in the end, support one side or the other
Unlike most libertarians, I don’t have an opinion on gay marriage, and I’m not going to have an opinion no matter how much you bait me.
However, I had an interesting discussion last night with another libertarian about it, which devolved into an argument about a certain kind of liberal/libertarian argument about gay marriage that I find really unconvincing.
Social conservatives of a more moderate stripe are essentially saying that marriage is an ancient institution, which has been carefully selected for throughout human history.
It is a bedrock of our society; if it is destroyed, we will all be much worse off. (See what happened to the inner cities between 1960 and 1990 if you do not believe this.) For some reason, marriage always and everywhere, in every culture we know about, is between a man and a woman; this seems to be an important feature of the institution.
We should not go mucking around and changing this extremely important institution, because if we make a bad change, the institution will fall apart.
A very common response to this is essentially to mock this as ridiculous. “Why on earth would it make any difference to me whether gay people are getting married? Why would that change my behavior as a heterosexual”
To which social conservatives reply that institutions have a number of complex ways in which they fulfill their roles, and one of the very important ways in which the institution of marriage perpetuates itself is by creating a romantic vision of oneself in marriage that is intrinsically tied into expressing one’s masculinity or femininity in relation to a person of the opposite sex; stepping into an explicitly gendered role.
This may not be true of every single marriage, and indeed undoubtedly it is untrue in some cases. But it is true of the culture-wide institution. By changing the explicitly gendered nature of marriage we might be accidentally cutting away something that turns out to be a crucial underpinning.
To which, again, the other side replies “That’s ridiculous! I would never change my willingness to get married based on whether or not gay people were getting married!”
Now, economists hear this sort of argument all the time. “That’s ridiculous! I would never start working fewer hours because my taxes went up!” This ignores the fact that you may not be the marginal case.
The marginal case may be some consultant who just can’t justify sacrificing valuable leisure for a new project when he’s only making 60 cents on the dollar. The result will nonetheless be the same: less economic activity.
Similarly, you–highly educated, firmly socialised, upper middle class you–may not be the marginal marriage candidate; it may be some high school dropout in Tuscaloosa. That doesn’t mean that the institution of marriage won’t be weakened in America just the same.
This should not be taken as an endorsement of the idea that gay marriage will weaken the current institution. I can tell a plausible story where it does; I can tell a plausible story where it doesn’t.
I have no idea which one is true. That is why I have no opinion on gay marriage, and am not planning to develop one. Marriage is a big institution; too big for me to feel I have a successful handle on it.
However, I am bothered by this specific argument, which I have heard over and over from the people I know who favor gay marriage laws. I mean, literally over and over; when they get into arguments, they just repeat it, again and again.
“I will get married even if marriage is expanded to include gay people; I cannot imagine anyone up and deciding not to get married because gay people are getting married; therefore, the whole idea is ridiculous and bigoted.”
They may well be right. Nonetheless, libertarians should know better. The limits of your imagination are not the limits of reality. Every government programme that libertarians have argued against has been defended at its inception with exactly this argument.
Let me take three major legal innovations, one of them general, two specific to marriage.
The first, the general one, is well known to most hard-core libertarians, but let me reprise it anyway. When the income tax was initially being debated, there was a suggestion to put in a mandatory cap; I believe the level was 10 percent.
Don’t be ridiculous, the Senator’s colleagues told him. Americans would never allow an income tax rate as high as ten percent. They would revolt! It is an outrage to even suggest it!
Many actually fought the cap on the grounds that it would encourage taxes to grow too high, towards the cap. The American people, they asserted, could be well counted on to keep income taxes in the range of a few percentage points.
Oops.
Now, I’m not a tax-crazy libertarian; I don’t expect you to be horrified that we have income taxes higher than ten percent, as I’m not. But the point is that the Senators were completely right–at that time.
However, the existance of the income tax allowed for a slow creep that eroded the American resistance to income taxation. External changes–from the Great Depression, to the technical ability to manage withholding rather than lump payments, also facilitated the rise, but they could not have without a cultural sea change in feelings about taxation.
That “ridiculous” cap would have done a much, much better job holding down tax rates than the culture these Senators erroneously relied upon. Changing the law can, and does, change the culture of the thing regulated.
Another example is welfare. To sketch a brief history of welfare, it emerged in the nineteenth century as “Widows and orphans pensions”, which were paid by the state to destitute families whose breadwinner had passed away.
They were often not available to blacks; they were never available to unwed mothers. Though public services expanded in the first half of the twentieth century, that mentality was very much the same: public services were about supporting unfortunate families, not unwed mothers.
Unwed mothers could not, in most cases, obtain welfare; they were not allowed in public housing (which was supposed to be–and was–a way station for young, struggling families on the way to homeownership, not a permanent abode); they were otherwise discriminated against by social services. The help you could expect from society was a home for wayward girls, in which you would give birth and then put the baby up for adoption.
The description of public housing in the fifties is shocking to anyone who’s spent any time in modern public housing. Big item on the agenda at the tenant’s meeting: housewives, don’t shake your dustcloths out of the windows–other wives don’t want your dirt in their apartment!
Men, if you wear heavy work boots, please don’t walk on the lawns until you can change into lighter shoes, as it damages the grass! (Descriptions taken from the invaluable book, The Inheritance, about the transition of the white working class from Democrat to Republican.)
Needless to say, if those same housing projects could today find a majority of tenants who reliably dusted, or worked, they would be thrilled.
Public housing was, in short, a place full of functioning families.
Now, in the late fifties, a debate began over whether to extend benefits to the unmarried. It was unfair to stigmatise unwed mothers. Why shouldn’t they be able to avail themselves of the benefits available to other citizens? The brutal societal prejudice against illegitimacy was old fashioned, bigoted, irrational.
But if you give unmarried mothers money, said the critics, you will get more unmarried mothers.
Ridiculous, said the proponents of the change. Being an unmarried mother is a brutal, thankless task. What kind of idiot would have a baby out of wedlock just because the state was willing to give her paltry welfare benefits?
People do all sorts of idiotic things, said the critics. If you pay for something, you usually get more of it.
C’mon said the activists. That’s just silly. I just can’t imagine anyone deciding to get pregnant out of wedlock simply because there are welfare benefits available.
Oooops.
Of course, change didn’t happen overnight. But the marginal cases did have children out of wedlock, which made it more acceptable for the next marginal case to do so.
Meanwhile, women who wanted to get married essentially found themselves in competition for young men with women who were willing to have sex, and bear children, without forcing the men to take any responsibility. This is a pretty attractive proposition for most young men.
So despite the fact that the sixties brought us the biggest advance in birth control ever, illegitimacy exploded. In the early 1960s, a black illegitimacy rate of roughly 25 percent caused Daniel Patrick Moynihan to write a tract warning of a crisis in “the negro family” (a tract for which he was eviscerated by many of those selfsame activists.)
By 1990, that rate was over 70 percent. This, despite the fact that the inner city, where the illegitimacy problem was biggest, only accounts for a fraction of the black population.
But in that inner city, marriage had been destroyed. It had literally ceased to exist in any meaningful way.
Possibly one of the most moving moments in Jason de Parle’s absolutely wonderful book, American Dream, which follows three welfare mothers through welfare reform, is when he reveals that none of these three women, all in their late thirties, had ever been to a wedding.
Marriage matters. It is better for the kids; it is better for the adults raising those kids; and it is better for the childless people in the communities where those kids and adults live.
Marriage reduces poverty, improves kids outcomes in all measurable ways, makes men live longer and both spouses happier. Marriage, it turns out, is an incredibly important institution. It also turns out to be a lot more fragile than we thought back then.
It looked, to those extremely smart and well-meaning welfare reformers, practically unshakeable; the idea that it could be undone by something as simple as enabling women to have children without husbands, seemed ludicrous.
Its cultural underpinnings were far too firm. Why would a woman choose such a hard road? It seemed self-evident that the only unwed mothers claiming benefits would be the ones pushed there by terrible circumstance.
This argument is compelling and logical. I would never become an unwed welfare mother, even if benefits were a great deal higher than they are now.
It seems crazy to even suggest that one would bear a child out of wedlock for $567 a month. Indeed, to this day, I find the reformist side much more persuasive than the conservative side, except for one thing, which is that the conservatives turned out to be right.
In fact, they turned out to be even more right than they suspected; they were predicting upticks in illegitimacy that were much more modest than what actually occurred–they expected marriage rates to suffer, not collapse.
How did people go so badly wrong? Well, to start with, they fell into the basic fallacy that economists are so well acquainted with: they thought about themselves instead of the marginal case.
For another, they completely failed to realise that each additional illegitimate birth would, in effect, slightly destigmatise the next one.
They assigned men very little agency, failing to predict that women willing to forgo marriage would essentially become unwelcome competition for women who weren’t, and that as the numbers changed, that competition might push the marriage market towards unwelcome outcomes.
They failed to forsee the confounding effect that the birth control pill would have on sexual mores.
But I think the core problems are two. The first is that they looked only at individuals, and took instititutions as a given. That is, they looked at all the cultural pressure to marry, and assumed that that would be a countervailing force powerful enough to overcome the new financial incentives for out-of-wedlock births.
They failed to see the institution as dynamic. It wasn’t a simple matter of two forces: cultural pressure to marry, financial freedom not to, arrayed against eachother; those forces had a complex interplay, and when you changed one, you changed the other.
The second is that they didn’t assign any cultural reason for, or value to, the stigma on illegitimacy. They saw it as an outmoded vestige of a repressive Victorian values system, based on an unnatural fear of sexuality.
But the stigma attached to unwed motherhood has quite logical, and important, foundations: having a child without a husband is bad for children, and bad for mothers, and thus bad for the rest of us. So our culture made it very costly for the mother to do.
Lower the cost, and you raise the incidence. As an economist would say, incentives matter.
(Now, I am not arguing in favor of stigmatising unwed mothers the way the Victorians did. I’m just pointing out that the stigma did not exist merely, as many mid-century reformers seem to have believed, because of some dark Freudian excesses on the part of our ancestors.)
But all the reformers saw was the terrible pain–and it was terrible–inflicted on unwed mothers. They saw the terrible unfairness–and it was terribly unfair–of punishing the mother, and not the father.
They saw the inherent injustice–and need I add, it was indeed unjust–of treating American citizens differently because of their marital status.
But as G.K. Chesterton points out, people who don’t see the use of a social institution are the last people who should be allowed to reform it:
[quote] In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox.
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.”
To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street.
Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious.
There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution.
If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served.
But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.[/quote]
Now, of course, this can turn into a sort of precautionary principle that prevents reform from ever happening. That would be bad; all sorts of things need changing all the time, because society and our environment change.
But as a matter of principle, it is probably a bad idea to let someone go mucking around with social arrangements, such as the way we treat unwed parenthood, if their idea about that institution is that “it just growed”.
You don’t have to be a rock-ribbed conservative to recognise that there is something of an evolutionary process in society: institutional features are not necessarily the best possible arrangement, but they have been selected for a certain amount of fitness.
It might also be, of course, that the feature is what evolutionary biologists call a spandrel. It’s a term taken from architecture; spandrels are the pretty little spaces between vaulted arches.
They are not designed for; they are a useless, but pretty, side effect of the physical properties of arches. In evolutionary biology, spandrel is some feature which is not selected for, but appears as a byproduct of other traits that are selected for.
Belly buttons are a neat place to put piercings, but they’re not there because of that; they’re a byproduct of mammalian reproduction.
However, and architect will be happy to tell you that if you try to rip out the spandrel, you might easily bring down the building.
The third example I’ll give is of changes to the marriage laws, specifically the radical relaxation of divorce statutes during the twentieth century.
Divorce, in the nineteenth century, was unbelievably hard to get. It took years, was expensive, and required proving that your spouse had abandonned you for an extended period with no financial support; was (if male) not merely discreetly dallying but flagrantly carrying on; or was not just belting you one now and again when you got mouthy, but routinely pummeling you within an inch of your life.
After you got divorced, you were a pariah in all but the largest cities. If you were a desperately wronged woman you might change your name, taking your maiden name as your first name and continuing to use your husband’s last name to indicate that you expected to continue living as if you were married (i.e. chastely) and expect to have some limited intercourse with your neighbours, though of course you would not be invited to events held in a church, or evening affairs.
Financially secure women generally (I am not making this up) moved to Europe; Edith Wharton, who moved to Paris when she got divorced, wrote moving stories about the way divorced women were shunned at home. Men, meanwhile (who were usually the respondants) could expect to see more than half their assets and income settled on their spouse and children.
There were, critics observed, a number of unhappy marriages in which people stuck together. Young people, who shouldn’t have gotten married; older people, whose spouses were not physically abusive nor absent, nor flagrantly adulterous, but whose spouse was, for reasons of financial irresponsibility, mental viciousness, or some other major flaw, destroying their life.
Why not make divorce easier to get? Rather than requiring people to show that there was an unforgiveable, physically visible, cause that the marriage should be dissolved, why not let people who wanted to get divorced agree to do so?
Because if you make divorce easier, said the critics, you will get much more of it, and divorce is bad for society.
That’s ridiculous! said the reformers. (Can we sing it all together now?) People stay married because marriage is a bedrock institution of our society, not because of some law! The only people who get divorced will be people who have terrible problems! A few percentage points at most!
Oops. When the law changed, the institution changed. The marginal divorce made the next one easier. Again, the magnitude of the change swamped the dire predictions of the anti-reformist wing; no one could have imagined, in their wildest dreams, a day when half of all marriages ended in divorce.
There were actually two big changes; the first, when divorce laws were amended in most states to make it easier to get a divorce; and the second, when “no fault” divorce allowed one spouse to unilaterally end the marriage.
The second change produced another huge surge in the divorce rate, and a nice decline in the incomes of divorced women; it seems advocates had failed to anticipate that removing the leverage of the financially weaker party to hold out for a good settlement would result in men keeping more of their earnings to themselves.
What’s more, easy divorce didn’t only change the divorce rate; it made drastic changes to the institution of marriage itself. David Brooks makes an argument I find convincing:
That the proliferation of the kind of extravagent weddings that used to only be the province of high society (rented venue, extravagent flowers and food, hundreds of guests, a band with dancing, dresses that cost the same as a good used car) is because the event itself doesn’t mean nearly as much as it used to, so we have to turn it into a three-ring circus to feel like we’re really doing something.
A couple in 1940 (and even more so in 1910) could go to a minister’s parlor, or a justice of the peace, and in five minutes totally change their lives. Unless you are a member of certain highly religious subcultures, this is simply no longer true.
That is, of course, partly because of the sexual revolution and the emancipation of women; but it is also because you aren’t really making a lifetime committment; you’re making a lifetime committment unless you find something better to do.
There is no way, psychologically, to make the latter as big an event as the former, and when you lost that committment, you lose, on the margin, some willingness to make the marriage work. Again, this doesn’t mean I think divorce law should be toughened up; only that changes in law that affect marriage affect the cultural institution, not just the legal practice.
Three laws. Three well-meaning reformers who were genuinely, sincerely incapable of imagining that their changes would wreak such institutional havoc. Three sets of utterly logical and convincing, and wrong arguments about how people would behave after a major change.
So what does this mean? That we shouldn’t enact gay marriage because of some sort of social Precautionary Principle
No. I have no such grand advice.
My only request is that people try to be a leeetle more humble about their ability to imagine the subtle results of big policy changes.
The argument that gay marriage will not change the institution of marriage because you can’t imagine it changing your personal reaction is pretty arrogant. It imagines, first of all, that your behavior is a guide for the behavior of everyone else in society, when in fact, as you may have noticed, all sorts of different people react to all sorts of different things in all sorts of different ways, which is why we have to have elections and stuff.
And second, the unwavering belief that the only reason that marriage, always and everywhere, is a male-female institution (I exclude rare ritual behaviors), is just some sort of bizarre historical coincidence, and that you know better, needs examining.
If you think you know why marriage is male-female, and why that’s either outdated because of all the ways in which reproduction has lately changed, or was a bad reason to start with, then you are in a good place to advocate reform.
If you think that marriage is just that way because our ancestors were all a bunch of repressed bastards with dark Freudian complexes that made them homophobic bigots, I’m a little leery of letting you muck around with it.
Is this post going to convince anyone? I doubt it; everyone but me seems to already know all the answers, so why listen to such a hedging, doubting bore?
I myself am trying to draw a very fine line between being humble about making big changes to big social institutions, and telling people (which I am not trying to do) that they can’t make those changes because other people have been wrong in the past.
In the end, our judgement is all we have; everyone will have to rely on their judgement of whether gay marriage is, on net, a good or a bad idea. All I’m asking for is for people to think more deeply than a quick consultation of their imaginations to make that decision.
I realise that this probably falls on the side of supporting the anti-gay-marriage forces, and I’m sorry, but I can’t help that. This humility is what I want from liberals when approaching market changes; now I’m asking it from my side too, in approaching social ones. I think the approach is consistent, if not exactly popular.
Update A number of libertarians are, as I predicted, making the “Why don’t we just privatise marriage?” argument. I don’t find that useful in the context of the debate about gay marriage in America, where marriage is simply not going to be privatised in any foreseeable near-term future.
I wrote an immediate follow up saying just that, but of course, I got a lot of readers from an Instalanche, which I didn’t expect (no one expects an Instalanche!), and they just read the one post. So the second post is here; if you are thinking of making the argument that we should just get the state out of the marriage business, please read it.
Also, a lot of readers are saying that I’m wrong about marriage always being between a man and a woman, citing polygamy. I have been told this is a “basic factual error.”
No, it’s not. Polygamous societies do not (at least in any society I have ever heard about) have group marriages. Men with more than one wife have multiple marriages with multiple women, not a single marriage with several wives.
In fact, they generally take pains to separate the women, preferably in different houses. Whether or not you allow men to contract for more than one marriage (and for all sorts of reasons, this seems to me to be a bad idea unless you’re in an era of permanent war), each marriage remains the union of a man and a woman.[/i]
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
Making stuff up is obvious in a lot of cases - and in these cases - and really it’s shameful.
forlife wrote:
Again, “making stuff up” is in the eye of the beholder. I think the MA and CA judges genuinely believe they were representing the original intent of the Constitution. You think they “made it up”. You’re entitled to your opinion, but don’t be surprised that people disagree with you.
Human bias, and all that.[/quote]
No, not in the eye of the beholder. Their newly formulated rights were not in the respective texts, and there is no serious argument that they reflect the original public meanings of the respective texts. They’re made up.
[quote]forlife wrote:
Having been married to and divorced from a woman, I’m pretty familiar with the legal benefits and responsibilities. I can tell you that those benefits and responsibilities would be valued by my partner and me, and would provide stability and longevity in our relationship that would benefit us and our children. I know quite a few other gay couples, and the same is true for them.
Why overcomplicate the legal system by establishing a whole new set of laws for gay couples? Other countries (and two states) have kept it simple by granting the same rights/responsibilities and that makes sense to me.
You’re welcome to your opinion though.[/quote]
That’s interesting experience - but it still wouldn’t imply you’re aware of all the legalities that attach to marriage, unless you and your former wife experienced the impact of all of those - child custody, widow’s share inheritance, contracting privileges, etc.
And it still doesn’t account for why you wouldn’t even want to look into the issue. It’s irrational.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
So, experiment with society? See, that’s the issue - that’s what Thunder and I, and many other people - are not willing to risk. Given our understandings, we’re not willing to support such an experiment with society.
We want something to be proved safe when we have concerns about large-scale issues - issues that would essentially be irreversible for at least a generation, if not more. That’s where we are coming from.[/quote]
“Given our understandings” = “I have no evidence for my concerns”.
You’re catastrophizing based on unproven ideas. In the meantime, a whole class of people is being denied the same benefits that straight couples enjoy.
People are dying in the hospital without being visited by or having medical decisions made by their life partner.
Children with gay parents do not have the security and stability of knowing their parents are married.
Couples that have been together for 50 years are paying the same high taxes as if they were single and not in a committed long term relationship.
And the list goes on…
Go back and read the article. The only correlation in attitudes pertaining to gay marriage that I could find was between support for gay marriage and the belief that a union should be private.
Please explain to me how that in any way demonstrates “harm to traditional marriage”, let alone provides an explanatory mechanism for such harm?
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
What you’re then arguing is that policy makers should assume away the possibility of a problem, given there are observed effects and no proven cause.
forlife wrote:
How many times do I have to repeat myself? Assuming away the possibility of a problem would mean stopping all research and refusing to consider any evidence to the contrary of the null hypothesis. Nobody has proposed that, just the opposite in fact.[/quote]
You can keep repeating that you don’t mean what your statements clearly and necessarily imply, but it won’t change what they clearly and necessarily imply.
You want policy makers to ignore an effect for which there isn’t an established cause and go ahead and make a policy change decision. Alternatively, they could wait until they had the evidence to decide to make a policy change.
That’s the relevant decision: wait for resolution, or plow ahead and make a social experiment.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
That’s interesting experience - but it still wouldn’t imply you’re aware of all the legalities that attach to marriage, unless you and your former wife experienced the impact of all of those - child custody, widow’s share inheritance, contracting privileges, etc.
And it still doesn’t account for why you wouldn’t even want to look into the issue. It’s irrational.[/quote]
I never said I wouldn’t want to look into the issue. I said that based on the collective experience of myself and my friends, and based on the decisions made by numerous governments, it makes the most sense to me simply to grant the same privileges to both gay and straight couples.
If people were to research it and find some compelling reason not to do so, that would be fine with me. I just don’t think you’re going to find anything.
Would you be in favor of keeping everything the same for gay couples if the research didn’t provide a compelling reason not to grant the same benefits?
Correlation of attitudes that indicate devaluation of the traditional marriage relationship.
[i]Take the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), a collaborative effort of universities in over 40 countries. It interviewed about 50,000 adults in 35 countries in 2002.
What is useful for our purposes is that respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with six statements that directly relate to marriage as an institution:
1. Married people are generally happier than unmarried people.
2. People who want children ought to get married.
3. One parent can bring up a child as well as two parents together.
4. It is all right for a couple to live together without intending to get married.
5. Divorce is usually the best solution when a couple can't seem to work out their marriage problems.
6. The main purpose of marriage these days is to have children.
Let’s stipulate that for statements one, two, and six, an “agree” answer indicates support for traditional marriage as an authoritative institution.
Similarly, for statements three, four, and five, let’s stipulate that agreement indicates a lack of support, or less support, for traditional marriage.
Then divide the countries surveyed into four categories: those that permit same-sex marriage; those that permit same-sex civil unions (but not same-sex marriage); those in which some regions permit same-sex marriage; and those that do not legally recognize same-sex unions.
The correlations are strong. Support for marriage is by far the weakest in countries with same-sex marriage. The countries with marriage-like civil unions show significantly more support for marriage.
The two countries with only regional recognition of gay marriage (Australia and the United States) do better still on these support-for-marriage measurements, and those without either gay marriage or marriage-like civil unions do best of all.
In some instances, the differences are quite large. For example, people in nations with gay marriage are less than half as likely as people in nations without gay unions to say that married people are happier.
Perhaps most important, they are significantly less likely to say that people who want children ought to get married (38 percent vs. 60 percent). They are also significantly more likely to say that cohabiting without intending to marry is all right (83 percent vs. 50 percent), and are somewhat more likely to say that divorce is usually the best solution to marital problems.
Respondents in the countries with gay marriage are significantly more likely than those in Australia and the United States to say that divorce is usually the best solution.
A similar exercise using data from a different survey yields similar results. The World Values Survey, based in Stockholm, Sweden, periodically interviews nationally representative samples of the publics of some 80 countries on six continents–over 100,000 people in all–on a range of issues.
It contains three statements directly related to marriage as an institution:
1. A child needs a home with both a father and a mother to grow up happily.
2. It is all right for a woman to want a child but not a stable relationship with a man.
3. Marriage is an outdated institution.
Again grouping the countries according to the legal status of same-sex unions, the data from the 1999-2001 wave of interviews yield a clear pattern. Support for marriage as an institution is weakest in those countries with same-sex marriage.
Countries with same-sex civil unions show more support, and countries with regional recognition show still more. By significant margins, support for marriage is highest in countries that extend no legal recognition to same-sex unions. [/i]
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
That’s interesting experience - but it still wouldn’t imply you’re aware of all the legalities that attach to marriage, unless you and your former wife experienced the impact of all of those - child custody, widow’s share inheritance, contracting privileges, etc.
And it still doesn’t account for why you wouldn’t even want to look into the issue. It’s irrational.
forlife wrote:
I never said I wouldn’t want to look into the issue. I said that based on the collective experience of myself and my friends, and based on the decisions made by numerous governments, it makes the most sense to me simply to grant the same privileges to both gay and straight couples.
If people were to research it and find some compelling reason not to do so, that would be fine with me. I just don’t think you’re going to find anything.
Would you be in favor of keeping everything the same for gay couples if the research didn’t provide a compelling reason not to grant the same benefits?[/quote]
That would be fine - what I said, and what prompted your reaction, was that there was no value in being the same, just for the sake of being the same.
Then I said they should look into it and try to craft something that would work best for homosexual couples. And you have been arguing with that for several pages.
[quote]In considering that constitutional question, the majority opinion discusses a number of distinct legal issues.
First, the opinion analyzes the scope of Family Code section 308.5, the statutory provision enacted by the voters�?? approval of Proposition 22 at the March 2000 election.
The parties challenging the marriage statutes asserted that the limitation on marriage embodied in section 308.5 was intended, and should be interpreted, to apply only to marriages performed outside of California �?? leaving the Legislature free to authorize the marriage of same-sex couples within California.
The majority opinion rejects the challengers�?? contention on this point, concluding that the provisions of section 308.5 properly must be interpreted to impose a limitation on marriages performed in California as well as on out-of-state marriages.
Second, the opinion addresses the nature and scope of the constitutional right to marry under the California Constitution. The opinion observes that although, as an historical matter, civil marriage and the rights associated with it have been afforded in California only to opposite-sex couples, the California Supreme Court�??s landmark 1948 decision in Perez v. Sharp,
32 Cal.2d 711 �?? which found that the California statutory provisions prohibiting interracial marriage were inconsistent with the fundamental constitutional right to marry, even though those statutes had existed since the founding of the state �?? demonstrates that �??history alone is not invariably an appropriate guide for determining the meaning and scope of this fundamental constitutional guarantee.�??
Upon reviewing the numerous past California decisions that examine the underlying bases and significance of the constitutional right to marry, the opinion explains that the core substantive rights embodied in the right to marry
�??include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish �?? with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life �??
an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage.�??
The opinion then observes that �??in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual�??s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual�??s
sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual�??s sexual orientation �?? like a person�??s race or gender �?? does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.�?? The opinion concludes that �??
in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.�??
Furthermore, although the opinion acknowledges that the recent comprehensive domestic partnership legislation enacted in California affords same-sex couples most of the substantive elements embodied in the constitutional right to marry, the opinion concludes that by assigning a different name for the family relationship of same-sex couples while preserving the historic and honored designation of �??marriage�?? only for opposite-sex couples.
the California statutes threaten to deny the family relationship of same-sex couples dignity and respect equal to that accorded the family relationship of opposite-sex couples and thereby impinge upon a same-sex couple�??s right to marry as protected by the California Constitution.
Third, the majority opinion addresses the equal protection issue raised by the case. In considering whether the assignment of a different name for the official family relationship of same-sex couples as contrasted with the name for the family relationship of opposite-sex couples violates the state equal protection clause,
the opinion initially examines whether the different treatment between opposite-sex and same-sex couples should be evaluated under the deferential �??rational basis�?? test that is applied to ordinary statutory classifications, or under the more exacting �??strict scrutiny�?? standard that is applicable when a statute�??s differential treatment rests upon a �??suspect classification�?? or impinges upon a fundamental right.
In addressing this point, the opinion first rejects the contention of those challenging the marriage statutes that in treating same-sex couples differently from opposite-sex couples, the marriage statutes embody an instance of discrimination on the basis of sex or gender and are subject to strict scrutiny on that basis.
Nonetheless, the opinion concludes that the strict scrutiny standard is applicable in this case
(1) because the statutes discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, a characteristic the majority determines represents �?? like gender, race, and religion �?? a constitutionally suspect basis upon which to impose differential treatment, and
(2) because the different statutory treatment impinges upon a same-sex couple�??s fundamental interest in having their family relationship accorded the same respect and dignity enjoyed by an opposite-sex couple.
Finally, in applying the strict scrutiny standard, the majority opinion determines the challenged statutes do not satisfy that standard, because the state interest underlying the marriage statutes�?? differential treatment of opposite-sex and same-sex couples �?? the interest in retaining the traditional and well-established definition of marriage �?? cannot properly be viewed as a compelling state interest for purposes of the equal protection clause, or as necessary to serve such an interest.
The opinion explains that the exclusion of same-sex couples from the designation of marriage clearly is not necessary to protect all of the rights and benefits currently enjoyed by married opposite-sex couples:
permitting same-sex couples access to the designation of marriage will not deprive opposite-sex couples of any rights and will not alter the legal framework of the institution of marriage inasmuch as same-sex couples who choose to marry will be subject to the same obligations and duties that are currently imposed on married opposite-sex couples.
The opinion further observes that retaining the traditional definition of marriage and affording same-sex couples only a separate and differently named family relationship will, as a realistic matter,
impose appreciable harm on same-sex couples and their children, because denying such couples access to the familiar and highly favored designation of marriage is likely to cast doubt on whether the official family relationship of same-sex couples enjoys dignity equal to that of opposite-sex couples,
and may perpetuate a more general premise that gay individuals and same-sex couples are in some respects �??second-class citizens�?? who may be treated differently from, and less favorably than, heterosexual individuals or opposite-sex couples.
Under these circumstances, the opinion finds that retaining the traditional definition of marriage cannot be considered a compelling state interest. Consequently, the majority opinion holds that the marriage statutes are unconstitutional.
The opinion also explains: �??[A]ffording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official, or any other person;
no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs.�??[/quote]
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
Find one that’s more than a blank assertion.
forlife wrote:
Here you go. Note that 3 of the 4 judges in the majority opinion were Republican. You can find the complete text of the court ruling here:
In considering that constitutional question, the majority opinion discusses a number of distinct legal issues. First, the opinion analyzes the scope of Family Code section 308.5, the statutory provision enacted by the voters�?? approval of Proposition 22 at the March 2000 election.
The parties challenging the marriage statutes asserted that the limitation on marriage embodied in section 308.5 was intended, and should be interpreted, to apply only to marriages performed outside of California �?? leaving the Legislature free to authorize the marriage of same-sex couples within California.
The majority opinion rejects the challengers�?? contention on this point, concluding that the provisions of section 308.5 properly must be interpreted to impose a limitation on marriages performed in California as well as on out-of-state marriages.
Second, the opinion addresses the nature and scope of the constitutional right to marry under the California Constitution.
The opinion observes that although, as an historical matter, civil marriage and the rights associated with it have been afforded in California only to opposite-sex couples, the California Supreme Court�??s landmark 1948 decision in Perez v. Sharp, 32 Cal.2d 711 �?? which found that the California statutory provisions prohibiting interracial marriage were inconsistent with the fundamental constitutional right to marry,
even though those statutes had existed since the founding of the state �?? demonstrates that �??history alone is not invariably an appropriate guide for determining the meaning and scope of this fundamental constitutional guarantee.�??
Upon reviewing the numerous past California decisions that examine the underlying bases and significance of the constitutional right to marry, the opinion explains that the core substantive rights embodied in the right to marry �??include,
most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish �?? with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life �?? an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage.�??
The opinion then observes that �??in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual�??s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual�??s sexual orientation, and, more generally,
that an individual�??s sexual orientation �?? like a person�??s race or gender �?? does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.�?? The opinion concludes that �??in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental right to form a family relationship,
the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.�??
Furthermore, although the opinion acknowledges that the recent comprehensive domestic partnership legislation enacted in California affords same-sex couples most of the substantive elements embodied in the constitutional right to marry.
The opinion concludes that by assigning a different name for the family relationship of same-sex couples while preserving the historic and honored designation of �??marriage�?? only for opposite-sex couples,
the California statutes threaten to deny the family relationship of same-sex couples dignity and respect equal to that accorded the family relationship of opposite-sex couples and thereby impinge upon a same-sex couple�??s right to marry as protected by the California Constitution.
Third, the majority opinion addresses the equal protection issue raised by the case. In considering whether the assignment of a different name for the official family relationship of same-sex couples as contrasted with the name for the family relationship of opposite-sex couples violates the state equal protection clause,
the opinion initially examines whether the different treatment between opposite-sex and same-sex couples should be evaluated under the deferential �??rational basis�?? test that is applied to ordinary statutory classifications,
or under the more exacting �??strict scrutiny�?? standard that is applicable when a statute�??s differential treatment rests upon a �??suspect classification�?? or impinges upon a fundamental right.
In addressing this point, the opinion first rejects the contention of those challenging the marriage statutes that in treating same-sex couples differently from opposite-sex couples, the marriage statutes embody an instance of discrimination on the basis of sex or gender and are subject to strict scrutiny on that basis.
Nonetheless, the opinion concludes that the strict scrutiny standard is applicable in this case (1) because the statutes discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, a characteristic the majority determines represents �?? like gender, race, and religion �?? a constitutionally suspect basis upon which to impose differential treatment,
and (2) because the different statutory treatment impinges upon a same-sex couple�??s fundamental interest in having their family relationship accorded the same respect and dignity enjoyed by an opposite-sex couple.
Finally, in applying the strict scrutiny standard, the majority opinion determines the challenged statutes do not satisfy that standard,
because the state interest underlying the marriage statutes�?? differential treatment of opposite-sex and same-sex couples �?? the interest in retaining the traditional and well-established definition of marriage �?? cannot properly be viewed as a compelling state interest for purposes of the equal protection clause, or as necessary to serve such an interest.
The opinion explains that the exclusion of same-sex couples from the designation of marriage clearly is not necessary to protect all of the rights and benefits currently enjoyed by married opposite-sex couples:
permitting same-sex couples access to the designation of marriage will not deprive opposite-sex couples of any rights and will not alter the legal framework of the institution of marriage inasmuch as same-sex couples who choose to marry will be subject to the same obligations and duties that are currently imposed on married opposite-sex couples.
The opinion further observes that retaining the traditional definition of marriage and affording same-sex couples only a separate and differently named family relationship will, as a realistic matter, impose appreciable harm on same-sex couples and their children,
because denying such couples access to the familiar and highly favored designation of marriage is likely to cast doubt on whether the official family relationship of same-sex couples enjoys dignity equal to that of opposite-sex couples,
and may perpetuate a more general premise that gay individuals and same-sex couples are in some respects �??second-class citizens�?? who may be treated differently from, and less favorably than, heterosexual individuals or opposite-sex couples.
Under these circumstances, the opinion finds that retaining the traditional definition of marriage cannot be considered a compelling state interest. Consequently, the majority opinion holds that the marriage statutes are unconstitutional.
The opinion also explains: �??[A]ffording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official, or any other person;
no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs.�??[/quote]
Umm, where does it say that the original public meaning of the CA Constitution contained a right to marriage? I see a case cite to a 1948 case, but not anything pointing to any text and telling me what it meant when it was passed.
Then they essentially say that the traditional understanding of marriage - thus what it would have been at least in 1948 - is being overturned - a policy decision by the judges to even expand upon the right to marriage that seems to have been created in 1948.
ADDENDUM: BTW, it’s irrelevant what the party affiliation of the judges is.
ADDENDUM II: You may find that victories won via judicial activism via making stuff up are Pyrrhic indeed. Judges tend to piss off voters when they take hotly contested political issues out of the realm of politics. The MA decision spawned many amendments to other states’ constitutions to particularly disallow gay marriage: U.S. state constitutional amendments banning same-sex unions - Wikipedia
In some cases the amendments are worse for gay couples than the previous silence - see: Virginia for example.
A Federal Marriage Amendment was proposed - but not supported because most of the people who would support it if there were federal judicial activism on the issue are content to let the individual states deal with it, per our federal system with its various “laboratories of democracy.”
The Mass Legisltature used a procedural device to refuse to have a vote on an amendment to the MA Constitution that would have oveturned Goodridge - and would have passed pretty handily, based on polling data. Their state government is set up to allow that if the governor goes along with it - which he did. It may still pass eventually. Same-sex marriage ban advances - The Boston Globe but it’s failed for the time being: http://www.thetaskforce.org/press/releases/prMF_061407
So if that passes - and in states that have passed them - or if a Federal Amendment passes, assume you’re correct and the current trajectory is toward popular accceptance of gay marriage.
Minus judicial activism and the counter reaction, in such an environment it would be easy to get the legislatures to change the law via the normal processes and create marriage laws that included same-sex couples.
But if the constitutions are amended to specifically exclude same-sex marriages from marriage, you will be SOL until you get a supermajority.
Remember the collapsed mine example? John the Miner is buried under so much rock that it is impossible to extract him before the air runs out. Mark the Miner is also buried under rock, but not so far that he is beyond our ability to extract in time. In both cases, the principle of compassion requires saving the miner. However, the application of the principle is different for the two cases. There is a qualitative difference between the two cases, not in principle but in application.
Nobody would argue that because you are unable to apply the principle equally in both cases, the only fair solution is to apply the principle in neither case. John the Miner is beyond our help and nothing we do can change that. But that doesn’t mean we should turn our back on Mark the Miner. Doing so would violate the very principle we are trying to enact. [/quote]
Your analogy is a bad one for a number of reasons. Mainly, in the “saving the miner” scenario, there is only one option; it is an either/or. As I have written till my fingers have creaked, we don’t suffer that limitation here. We can provide an equalization of relationships, just as we would do in a situation that involved legal privileges based on Race. The problem is that you fail to recognize that we can save both “miners” in the marriage context - we can equalize the relationships, by eliminating public privilege altogether. That puts all relationships on the equal playing field that a rights-based theory demands.
Your scenario involves a choice of essentially moral pragmatism - it’s morally better to save one, than none. That isn’t our scenario with non-traditional marriages - we have a way out of the back of the mine where both miners can get out and both live, if we take your analogy seriously: completely privatize marriage.
And, further, remember - “equalization” is the best outcome, because we are talking about rights. You would choose an option that privileges gay marriage against the others when an option to equalize them all exists. You would deny others their rights when an option existed to give them the same rights. That makes you a hypocrite, for purposes of this discussion under a rights-based theory.
I get your point - you are passionate about your cause, and you aren’t open-minded about it. You are more than happy to have a “more equal” gay marriage at the expense of other relationships. The problem, as I pointed out pages ago - is that this rights-based approach is the very principle gay marriage advocates use to try and convince skeptics as to the moral authority of granting gay marriage. Taken to its conclusion, it undermines the very argument they are making, so it is self-defeating. You won’t see that, because you refuse to concede anything that would make you have to reexamine your argument to provide a more sound justification - in which case, the problem lies less with skeptics, and more with you.
That was the entire point of my raising the question about the rights-based theory in the first place : all the gay marriage advocates in the thread at that time - Makavali and CappedAndPlanIt - acceded to the point and acknowledged they were fine with privatizing marriage altogether for the sake of equal rights. Then the argument shifted to why equalization and privatization was or wasn’t a good idea for society as a whole. But at least they were consistent with their rights-based approach. You, however, have no such desire to remain consistent - and it hurts your argument.
Asked and answered previously.
I don’t have any “moral” qualms per se, but I can flatly tell you that I do not believe that a homosexual relationship is
“equivalent to, just different from” a heterosexual relationship. I have maintained that point since the beginning of the thread.
Well, in a weird twist, after reading through the several exchanges between you and Boston over the last pages, I actually think I have a more open mind than you.
You are thoroughly confused on the concept of science and policy, which demonstrates your lack of an open mind and unwillingness to respect other points of view.
When experiments are conducted in science to test a hypothesis, they are done in a controlled universe where the end result is observation, not reform. The whole point of doing this is to not only to control the aspects of the testing for informational purposes and to rule out “noise” that could otherwise affect the learning, but also to keep the observers objective by not having a direct involvement in that partitioned-off universe.
That is science. Not policy. For a good reason.
Policy means making choices that may or may not “experiment” not with an isolated, artificially constructed universe, but with the world that we have to live with. If an experiment demonstrates something bad, we aren’t merely observers, recording the effects and coming to a new theory or branching off into a new hypothesis to test in a new, artificial, controlled universe. In society, we don’t have the luxury of that detachment - as Gods Outside the Machine - we are in it, and we live with the results of the experimentation.
As such, we can’t indulge in “experimentation” without ignoring the risks. There is no “risk-free trial”. This is a key distinction between “science” and “policy” - we are the “white mice” when we choose to experiment and try new things to see if they work in society.
And because we have to consider Risk, we don’t operate in the same way to “test a hypothesis” in science. We take incomplete information and predict - because we have to. We look at correlations that may or may not be causations, but are useful all the same because that incomplete information is the best we have to decide whether we will change a policy or not.
Public policy is not, and never will be, purely “scientific” for all kinds of reasons, and thank God for that. But, a main reason is that we can’t create a “controlled universe” outside of ourselves in which to find out whether a public policy works or not, and so we can’t pretend Risk doesn’t exist, even if a Jacobin like yourself insists we can put the toothpaste back in the tube if something goes wrong.
Don’t confuse science and wisdom.
You’re drunk driving - how can you, without an open mind, possibly be concerned about what conclusions an “open mind” should reach? You don’t hold yourself to any standard of having an open mind, why should anyone else?
And, again, you continue to abuse the notion of “scientific facts” - there are plenty of facts with which to make a public policy decision.
Between your deliberate misunderstanding of science, and your forays into supporting judicial nihilism - “the law is whatever some judges say, as they are just a panel of ‘eyes of the beholder’, and all opinions are subjective and of equal weight”, which by the way, is flatly ant-democratic, but God knows you don’t care a whit about such humanistic principles as democracy on your way to seeing Utopia realized - I think you are hurting your cause more than helping it.
Here are some links on the pitfalls and problems of America polygamy just from a cursory search. Most I had time to dig up right now. I’ll do a lot more in September when I get back from China.
I think this last one, a first-hand account of Julie Allen to be quite interesting and telling.
I also think this quote by Professor John Witte captures things very well. “For nearly two millennia, the Western tradition has included polygamy among the crimes that are inherently wrong. Not just because polygamy is unbiblical, unusual, unsafe, or unsavory. But also because polygamy routinizes patriarchy, jeopardizes consent, fractures fidelity, divides loyalty, dilutes devotion, fosters inequity, promotes rivalry, foments lust, condones adultery, confuses children, and more. Not in every case, TO BE SURE, but in ENOUGH cases to make the practice of polygamy too risky to condone.” emphasis added by me. My interest has been piqued, anyway, to do some real investigation and some research on this matter. Maybe I’ll publish a law review article on the issue after doing some research in September. Possibly a comparison to gay marriage too, since I don’t think the distinctions have been dealt with particularly well. I’ll post here first if I decide to take the time and do it.
Here are some links on the pitfalls and problems of America polygamy just from a cursory search. Most I had time to dig up right now. I’ll do a lot more in September when I get back from China.
I think this last one, a first-hand account of Julie Allen to be quite interesting and telling.
I also think this quote by Professor John Witte captures things very well. “For nearly two millennia, the Western tradition has included polygamy among the crimes that are inherently wrong. Not just because polygamy is unbiblical, unusual, unsafe, or unsavory. But also because polygamy routinizes patriarchy, jeopardizes consent, fractures fidelity, divides loyalty, dilutes devotion, fosters inequity, promotes rivalry, foments lust, condones adultery, confuses children, and more. Not in every case, TO BE SURE, but in ENOUGH cases to make the practice of polygamy too risky to condone.” emphasis added by me. My interest has been piqued, anyway, to do some real investigation and some research on this matter. Maybe I’ll publish a law review article on the issue after doing some research in September. Possibly a comparison to gay marriage too, since I don’t think the distinctions have been dealt with particularly well. I’ll post here first if I decide to take the time and do it.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Your scenario involves a choice of essentially moral pragmatism - it’s morally better to save one, than none. That isn’t our scenario with non-traditional marriages - we have a way out of the back of the mine where both miners can get out and both live, if we take your analogy seriously: completely privatize marriage.[/quote]
Are you proposing that straight couples should no longer enjoy the privileges and responsibilities of civil marriage? Your proposal is akin to achieving equality by trapping all miners. It’s not about trapping anyone; it’s about freeing as many as you can.
You’re ignoring the reality that other countries (and two of our own states) are already running the mice through the maze. In some cases, gay marriage has been in place for many years.
Despite that, the best critics of gay marriage can come up with are cherry picked non-explanatory correlations. However, they conveniently ignore the cases where there is a reverse correlation between gay marriage and the divorce rate.
I don’t. However, true wisdom is informed by things as they really are rather than by things as people might wish or fear them to be. It is the job and contribution of science to help us understand things as they really are.
It’s not so much your lack of openmindedness that concerns me. I’m just looking for an honest admission that you have your own agenda, whether overt or covert. Your comments and your interpretation of existing “evidence” lead me to believe that you have a preexisting bias against gay marriage despite your claims to the contrary.