SSMers dispute there is one human race.

This blogpost originally appeared on 2011-03-05.

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Here is an exchange between myself and two SSMers.

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Sean:

Marriage equality is inevitable. Eventually, the US returns to its promise to its citizens to treat all of them equally, without special favored groups, such as straight people. [...] The same kind of people who thought black Americans were second-class citizens evidently think that gay Americans are second-class citizens.
There is no public purpose in restricting marriage to straight people. That’s why marriage equality will triumph.

Chairm:

If you are against “special favored groups” then you would oppose treating the gay subset of nonmarriage as superior to the rest of nonmarriage. Yet you support such special treatment even though the families are similarly situated.
There is one human race and its nature is two-sexed. The attempt of SSMers to smear the core meaning of marriage as the equivalent of racisim does not withstand scrutiny.
There are two-sexed scenarios that are ineligible because of the lines drawn around the core meaning of marriage; ineligibility to marry does not stamp “second-class” on such scenarios. Indeed, two heterosexual men would be ineligible as well and that does not stamp them with “second-class” status.
Only through the lense of pro-gay bigotry can equal treatment be deemed “second-class” treatment.
Marriage, under the man-woman basis, is not restricted by identity politics; but SSM is promoted entirely on that basis.
When an SSMer pounds his shoe on the table and essentially predicts that the gay identity group will bury marriage, society would well take that as a threat, as a forewarning, and heed the rhetoric as a deeply bigoted promise against all opposition and open dissent.

Mark:

“There is one human race and its nature is two-sexed.”
And it’s many raced but I don't see you insisting that each race be represented in all marriages.
And, again, approval of SSM does NOTHING (zilch, zip, nada) to OSM.

Chairm:

That is because there is one human race, Mark, and its nature is two-sexed. Marriage includes both sexes of the same human race.
You object. You assert, as per the anti-miscegenation system, that there is more than one human race. If you use the same criteria as that system, then, you reinforce the problem that makes gay identity politics the racialist analogue.

Mark:

“You object. You assert, as per the anti-miscegenation system, that there is more than one human race.”
You are so CUTE when you try to turn discrimination around and blame people who are promoting equality. My guess is you probably can’t define “anti-miscegenation”.
Again, to follow the example you are trying to portray, you would need a member of each race and a member of each sex (which would include male, female and hermaphrodite) to make it a marriage. Otherwise, you are excluding SOMEONE and, per your twisted logic, that is not marriage.

Chairm:

There is one human race and its nature is two-sexed; marriage is comprised of a man and a woman; they are both members of the same race — the human race — and so their union meets even your own terms, Mark, that you would impose on marriage.
The SSM idea, as argued by SSMers far and wide, is about segregating on the basis of sex and on the basis of sexual orientation and on the basis of identity politics. Yes, the SSMer is the racialist analogue.

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By the way, apart from this particular exchange in the comments, Dr J's original blogpost is well worth the read. As are the comments of others that followed.
See: Marching on the Right Side of History, by Dr. J over at the Ruth Institute's bogsite.

Marriage Neutering: State-Level Battles and Biased Media Language Continue

Battles continue in several states over whether or not state licenses will be neutered so that state can pretend that relationships that aren't marriage are marriage.

This Associated Press article by Dadi Crary was headlined "Gay Marriage Returns to the Political Spotlight". I could say my marriage is a gay one. This terminology by the AP and other media is a diliberate manipulation for their bias. They are referring to granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples. A homosexual orientation is not required, nor is homosexual behavior.

In Maryland, New Jersey and Washington, bills to [neuter state] marriage [licensing] have high-powered support and good chances of passage in the legislature.

So much for the "powerless minority" status.

[People who understand marriage unites the sexes] in Maryland and Washington would likely react by seeking referendums in November to overturn those laws, while New Jersey's Republican governor, Chris Christie, says he'll veto the bill if it reaches him and prefers that lawmakers OK a referendum so voters can decide.

In all three states, polls suggest voters are closely divided on whether gays should have the right to marry, so there's a chance one could emerge as the first state to support [neutering] marriage in a statewide vote.

Gay people already have the "right to marry". Nobody, gay or straight, should be able to get a marriage license with a union that excludes one of the sexes.

Maine voters also may have an opportunity to vote for same-sex marriage in November; an announcement by [marriage neutering] activists about a ballot-measure campaign is set for Thursday. Proposed amendments for constitutional bans on gay marriage will be on the ballots in North Carolina on May 8 and in Minnesota on Nov. 6.

It's... not... a... ban... on... "gay"... marriage.

Bigotry and the Conflict of Ideas

As a proponent of the marriage idea I find myself confronted with the charge of bigotry. This charge is something that, in all my years on the marriage issue, has not been pressed against me by adulterers and unwed cohabitors and fornicators.

But SSMers take the default position that being in favor of the marriage idea and opposed to replacing it with the SSM idea is grounds for such a charge. This arises not from the marriage idea but from the SSM idea.

It is exceedingly rare for an SSMer to express a substantively different default. Sure, there are SSMers who publicly play the part of Skeptic but even then it comes off as cynical rhetorical tactic that would place the onus on the accused to earn a sort of temporary reprieve and grant of probation.

One is reproached for not playing along with the default as part of the bargain.

At Family Scholars Blog (FSB), Fannie presented a query to supporters of the marriage idea. Her blogpost was answered by Fitz and by RK (both familiar to Opine readers) and I encourage you to take a looksee.

http://familyscholars.org/2012/01/3/on-hatred-and-bigotry-again

I left a comment but my comments of late have not been showing up in the comment sections of FSB so I will post it here add will add more later.

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Fannie, RK's comment has well-answered your blogpost. It merits being reposted as a blogpost of its own.

I will comment on this further at Opine Editorials in my own blogposts. Your remarks are contradictory and seeded with the very flaws you would assign to others.

Phil's remarks typify the accusation of bigotry that is central to the SSM campaign. It is an accusation that defies reason and defies your own pose as one seeking a civil discussion on SSM.

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Also see:

Family Scholars Blogger Says:
Curse them because they don't deserve any respect at all.
http://opine-editorials.blogspot.com/2011/1/family-scholars-blogger-says-curse-them-because-they-dont-deserve-any-respect-at-all

And:

Bigotry [defined]
http://opine-editorials.blogspot.com//202/01/bigotry

And please read my comment at the end of the discussion under this blogpost (and then read the whole thing for the context):

Bigotry and the SSM project
http://opine-editorials.blogspot.com/2006/04/bigotry-and-ssm-project.html

And please read the discussion that followed this blogpost:

Nuts and Dolts
http://opine-editorials.blogspot.com/2006/03/nuts-and-dolts.html

Neutralizing the word "Family"

Katie Miller at the Huffington Post writes three reasons why recognizing same-sex marriage by the military is a good idea:

3) Same-sex marriage recognition in the military reclaims (and possibly neutralizes) the term "family."

It's far too often that we hear Republican candidates (can you guess which GOPer this hyperlink goes to?) toss around the word "family" as a euphemism for anti-gay sentimentality. If the military -- as one of the most family-oriented institutions in American society -- recognizes same-sex families as legitimate, then others will inevitably do so, as well. Again, families are "the strength of our nation." If gays are included in this military definition of family, I would consider that a step up from the classification of "pervert" and "sexual deviant."

Pushing for same-sex partner recognition and family benefits in the military may appear to be a narrow goal in the wide scheme of LGBT issues, but it's part of a larger agenda. It's about reclaiming and eventually neutralizing the terms "family," "spouse," and even "patriotism" so they can't be placed in opposition to everything the LGBT movement stands for.

It was, admittedly, a bit painful to read. But then again what I feel reading that is probably the same feeling that motivates Miller to write it.

Family Scholar Blogger's Sneers Met with Civility and Charity

In reaction to the thorough argument in favor of the core meaning of marriage made by Robert George in, "What Is Marriage", Barry Deustch who has guest-blogged at Family Scholars Blog wrote an immature and embarrassingly inept critique. It is a wonder that he still has blogging privileges at FSB or that he got them in the first place.

See:
http://www.

Crossposted:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2010/12/21/what-is-bodily-union-a-response-to-what-is-marriage/

Robert George and his co-authors have invited and have responded to critiques from some notable pro-SSM scholars. Deutsch does not perform as a scholarly blogger despite his presence at FSB as a guest, however he has used FSB as a platform from which to take on the argument presented by Robert George. And his critique was dissected with philosophic and scholarly discipline combined with considerable civility and charity.

Deutsch did not engage the actual argument with intellectual and moral seriousness, the co-authors  observed. While mistakenly claiming that George's argument is a non sequitor, "Deutsch's claim against us is itself a non sequitor."

(It has been my own observation that Deutsch is in the habit of doing the very thing he imagines his opponent doing. Too often his complaints are based on misunderstanding or outright misrepresentation upon which he makes glaring errors. As in this case.)

The co-authors state the obvious about Deutsch's poor excuse for a critique:

"Ridicule is the last resort of desperate arguments. [...] A sound objection would have sufficed. But a dozen sneers do not make an objection."

Read the exchange for yourself.

See: Real Bodily Union
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/12/2277

And don't miss Deutsch's admission that he does not respect those who disagree with him on marriage and on SSM. See his comments under his blogpost at Amptoons where he crossposted with FSB.

Also note that amidst the sneers  Deutsch continues to flog the infertility strawman, which is among the favorites of the SSMer's collection of manufactured misrepresentations of the actual argument. He has been at this for years and seems unwilling to improve his understanding of the content of the disagreement.

True Marriage? And, Related How?

Here is a comment I left at Amptoons.

www.amptoons.com/blog/2011/02/23/will-legal-same-sex-marriage-lead-to-incestuous-marriage-no-it-wont

Ampersand, your comment indicates that you agree with myca's comment in it entirety.

[See the comments at the above link.]

Did you invoke the count of cultures? Yes you did. That is no misconception. You sought to quantify for the sake of rendering an accurate definition of your own.

In the breadth of known human cultures, the practice of men 'marrying' men, or women 'marrying' women, does not count in huge numbers or majorities nor does it even qualify for the descriptor, many. The count would need to include, as confirmed, all the speculative exceptions and include the smattering of present day anomalies to quantify the practice as a tiny drop in the sea.

But since the count clearly favors the two-sexed relationship, as even polygamy demonstrates, it would be counter-intuitive,  as you put it, and dubious, as you put it, to define marriage as other than two-sexed. Or to claim that all these known cultures had it wrong in the aggregate and it is only the smattering of present day portions of western culture that now finally has it right.

But you did.

Moving forward, please confirm, correct, or clarify: You reject the notion that marriage has an independent reality. [You think] that there is no true marriage [core definition] despite your offered core definition.

Such a rejection would render inapt Myca's beetle analogy since the decisive stuff of marriage would not be something intrinsic to the type of relationship but rather something extrinsic.

The stress on practice is presented in lieu of a principled basis for something classifed as marriage. That would mean recasting the thing endlessly maleable and thus not actually definable by stuff integral to it.

By the by, while you made a prediction about the future of incestuous marriage, George did not. His query - and the challenge he set forth - is about the principled basis for something like marriage. Your remarks about incest demonstrate that your proposed definition is incoherent and incomplete.

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Update:

The exchange at Amptoons has already indicated that the SSMer has an inkling that marriage can be reasonably defined based on features found amidst the great variety of the great bulk of human cultures.

Ampersand thought he could reduce the core to 'making unrelated people closest kin'. (Read his blogpost and the exchange for his carefully worded definition of marriage across human cultures.) His reference to polyandry and polygny  - the practice as opposed to the concept and its principled basis, mind - backfires as my subsequent comments there will demonstrate.

I'll crosspost here if the comment section is still open to my participation there. Otherwise I'll continue here what Ampersand started there (with his own blogposts, but not his comments, crossposted at Family Scholars Blog where my comments have been hindered arbitrarily.) The fragility of his pose calls out for a gentle if frank response from defenders of marriage.

SSMers try to mimic the promarriage arguments but their distortions depend very much on leaving stuff out. This has led to misconstruing the challenge that Robert George put to them. This is evident in Ampersand's use of the phrase "core definition" and his claim that the definition that Robert George presented is not representative of marital relationships across cultures. Ampersand counted polygny and polyandry as counter examples to the one-man-one-woman basis but Robert George did not neglect polygamy in his argument. Meanwhile his point (which Ampersand actually quoted but skipped past) is that human cultures regulate the natural connection of mom-children-dad (to paraphrase).

If the unrelated man and woman become related each to the other, how would it be possible? If they do not actually become physically related how are they more closely related than those already related by birth?

Bodily union integrates the male and female persons comprehensively since each person is a body and a personality. This procreative type of relationship is orientated toward the sexual type of behavior which itself commonly makes mom and dad related through birth - the birth of their children. Bodily union is essential to this type of relationship.

This comprehensive union arises from the two-sexed nature of humankind, the complementarily-sexed nature of human procreation, and the both-sexed nature of human community. It is far more than a concept or theory or abstract definition. Human cultures respond to this, as described by Robert George.

This comprehensive union extends beyond the  particular husband and wife; it qualifies marriage as an organic social institution that is recognized rather than created and owned by Government. Through its sexual ecology on the personal level but also on the cultural level, the marital relationship integrates the sexes and provides for responsible procreation.

This is how the man is transformed into husband and the woman is transformed into wife and thus becomes each other's close kin; this is basis for societal response, for recognition by governing authorities, and  both for the special place of marriage and for the boundaries drawn around it. They aren't just close kin; they are a particular kind of kin. That is, the marital relationship is different from other types of relationships (of related people or unrelated people) both in kind and in degree.

Thus united, the wife and husband become the closest that two unrelated embodied personalities can come to being blood related. Ampersand may faintly percieve this for he talks of closest kin without identifying how the unrelated become closet kin. Through marriage but how?

This cannot be so for a same-sex scenario which would depend entirely on a legal fiction rather than comprehensive union via the procreative type of relationship. Each insance of SSM is sex segregative and nonfertile as a type of relationship. It lacks the intrinsic features that classify a human relationship as marital.

Ampersand's attempted core definition is designed to suite his SSM idea but, in terms of marriage across the historical and anthropological records, it is incomplete and thus insufficient.

He had used the count of cultures to make the claim that his offered definition is more accurate. That mimickry of Robert George's argument backfired on Ampersand.

#marriageequality Defined...

Marriage Equality the way I think it can be recognized in a way that endorses the most responsibility towards the most important and the greatest number of our human rights.

The equal recognition of the rights and responsibilities of the man, woman, and children they potentially have together.

Children have a right to know their parentage and to be raised by them wherever possible. And spouses (the people we create a child with, or in other words the people who shared their identity to create the child) deserve the love, support, and tolerance of each other to help fulfill their responsibilities towards the children.

Many of these rights can be recognized in many different situations, which is why I support recognizing them (such as recognizing Same Sex Marriage or Gay Marriage in a way that recognizes all mutually trusting and committed households.

However, we should all recognize that just like the only way a door can be opened is when the lock and key are together, the only place all of our children's and our spouses rights can fully be realized is in a committed household where they look after each other's rights together. Nothing else is equal to full recognition of everyone's rights, nothing is equal to integration. And that is the lesson that Marriage has been trying to teach humanity, likely, for millions of years through all cultures and societies.

Only when the complementary parts unlock all of our human potential, and with it our human rights and obligations, is that really what marriage is fully about.

Footnote no more

What we've been saying all along, thank's Carey Goldberg for putting it so well...

What happened to me? What happened to the independent woman who, by the time she married for the first time at age 44, felt no particular need for a piece of paper from City Hall?
It is this. Day in and out, through lunch-packing and play date-making and bath-running, I am struck by a surprising truth: Though the raising of our children constitutes the central activity of our family, it is the love between Sprax and me that constitutes its ineffable core.

That sounds like a traditional religious point of view, but we are not religious. I've come to this understanding simply as an observer of my own heart and the family dance. It is, apparently, just an emotional fact of life -- at least, of our life.

The story of how their relationship went from sperm donation to marriage is very endearing. But think about it this way, the father went from a potentially interesting note in history for their child to a living person she could interact with and get to know -- personally. Imagine how an engaged husband, a fully realized family, has brought the love between the two spouses to fruition in such real and tangible ways.

The Government Angel

I offer this money line by Ross Douthat as my thought for the day, hattip to NOM...

There is no government program that can guarantee a happy childhood or a devoted spouse. (If you replaced Clarence from “It’s a Wonderful Life” or the Angel Gabriel of the Gospels with a Health and Human Services bureaucrat, those stories would probably have a much grimmer ending.)

Does Marriage Really Make People Happier?

"Marriage has long been an important social institution, but in recent decades western societies have experienced increases in cohabitation, before or instead of marriage, and increases in children born outside of marriage," said Dr Kelly Musick, Associate Professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University's College of Human Ecology. "These changes have blurred the boundaries of marriage, leading to questions about what difference marriage makes in comparison to alternatives."

[...]

"We found that differences between marriage and cohabitation tend to be small and dissipate after a honeymoon period. Also while married couples experienced health gains -- likely linked to the formal benefits of marriage such as shared healthcare plans -- cohabiting couples experienced greater gains in happiness and self-esteem. For some, cohabitation may come with fewer unwanted obligations than marriage and allow for more flexibility, autonomy, and personal growth" said Musick.
"Compared to most industrial countries America continues to value marriage above other family forms," concluded Musick. "However our research shows that marriage is by no means unique in promoting well-being and that other forms of romantic relationships can provide many of the same benefits."

As an advocate for marriage, I'd love to show that marriage has great benefits for the health and well being of the adults involved. That would make for a great political rallying cry to encourage more recognition of marriage to the very people it would benefit. However, this study doesn't show that. Come to think of it, we've covered a number of reports that say marriage is over-rated from the standpoint of adult happiness.

But is that really odd? I can just as easily point to a number of studies that show how beneficial marriage is above and beyond co-habitation for children. Leaving the merits of this study aside, it is clear to see that marriage's best value is seen in how it effects the environment the mother and father create together with the children they create together. Even when the benefits for adults who "have blurred the boundaries of marriage" are so unclear.

That isn't a conceit, how children play the central role in what defines marriage has been our message since our first post.

If someone is given a gift that they don't really like, it is not likely going to make them happy. The real success of a marriage, the happiness we get from marriage, must be rooted in a job well done. Its rooted in responsible procreation fulfilled. The fewer people get that message from the beginning, the fewer that will find the treasure at the end of the hard work.