Sorry Fannie. I stand by my remarks.

For the record:

The following exchange with SSM proponent Fannie at her blog, Fannie's Room.
http://fanniesroom.com/2012/02/on-core-of-mariage.html

Crossposted (seperate comment section) at Family Scholars Blog:
http://faimilyscholars.org/2012/02/02/on-the-core-of-marriage/#comments

* * * * *

Fannie wrote a blogpost on the core meaning of marriage. It was prompted, she said, by a previous discussion in the comment sections in which the core meaning of marriage was disputed. Under her "core" blogpost and later under a blogpost on civil union [see links below] Fannie had difficulty sustaining her misrepresentations of the argument she dislikes.

That is the context for the exchange that is on the record under the blogpost I linked above at her blogsite. She deleted my latest comment and expressed her ill-will toward me rather than deal with the errors she had made.

She replaced my words with her own. I think that is symbolic of her approach to her attack on the marriage idea and her defense/promotion of the SSM idea.

Discussion of contentious issues is difficult, of course. So I do not entirely fault Fannie for her easy resort to namecalling on this issue. From the start she merely played out the script taught by the very prominent example of the SSM campaign.

I don't hesitate to put this exchange on the record because it serves as a warning to all sides on the pitfalls in discusson of a conflict in which the assertion of the supremacy of identity politics dominates the underlying assumptions of the pro SSM approach but is treated as untouchable due to the volatile nature of the disputed assumptions. The common ground has been seeded as a minefield.

I am grateful for the blogging that Fannie has done at FSB because she has inadvertently used an prominent platform to reveal the profound weaknesses of the pro SSM arguments and the intolerant attitudes of SSM proponents toward their opponents as persons.

I have often said that if SSMers, such as Fannie, would try harder to understand before demanding that they be understood, then, they might be surprised at how much common ground there really is while also learning to appreciate how significant is the narrowed scope of the actual disagreement. If we'd realize that much it would go a long way to defusing the minefield.

Admittedly there is a limit beyond which I will not put up with personalized attacks and personalized misrepresentations. Fannie threw barbs and accusations and I met that with impatience and an initial note of sarcastic exasperation.

I apologize to her and to readers for that.

At the same time I do not withdraw the substance of my remarks.

I do not rush to call myself a victim, contrary to Fannie's pre-emptive attempt to recast me as someone quick to claim the  mantle of The Victim that she herself clutches habitually when the content of her remarks implode. She attacked a strawman and did not touch me as a human being though she'd clearly intended to insult and to smear me.

I endeavor to aim at the content of remarks whereas Fannie has aimed instead at the content of the character (or rather caricture) of those with whom she disagrees. She is not alone among SSM proponents in that regard.

You can read Fannie's part at her blogsite. Below is my comment which she replaced with her own words to add yet more gratuitous personalized attacks.

* * * *

Fannie, thank you for your rapport-building reply. Maybe you think that I had asked you about the "core" of marriage when I wrote:

Let us go with your thinking on this, Fannie. There is no core meaning; just a lot of different meanings."

I can now see my error. I should have been decipherable and used words more harmonious with your thinking on this, Fannie, and asked about moving forward with your view that there are many different meanings.

I am confident, but not overly confident, that David Blankenhorn might even commend you for bringing up the "core" for discussion with him. Credit where credit is due, I suppose. Where did you get the idea to talk about that given your thinking is of a different sort? It is not very strange at all, I suppose.

Now, more to the point (or beside the point of your blogpost above), let's follow your change of topic. By the way, thank you for the colorful way in which you reminded me that you wrote a blogpost a few years ago.

- - -

Since you wrote your objections to these three points in the MR piece, the facts have not changed. Facts are stubborn things,  you might agree.

The first item was not a statement asserting that imposition of SSM caused HIV/AIDS nor that SSM had caused an increase in HIV/AIDS rates. You misread an "in the period after" use of the word, since, to mean "because"  and, as you insisted, also not correlative in the conversational sense but as a technical statement of statistical logic.

The logic in the item was not as you portrayed it. But you chased that hare anyway.

As for rate increases, which you confounded with causation, you readily agreed that "it is true" that people with HIV/AIDS are living longer. The other half of that thought is provided by your quote of the CDC:

"and because more people become infected with HIV than die from the disease each year."

More infections contribute to the prevalence. It is not just longer survival. The prevalence rates increased across the board (and we should be grateful for the survivors).

We could go into that more deeply, if you feel competent to do so, but it suffices that it is, as you said, true.

- - -

The second item in your list of objections is also factual. An SSM question was on the bar exam. The marriage amendment was still in the works ... with more signatures on the petition than any other recent initiative ... and the gentleman in this item protested the politicization of the exam. It was removed later. You disagreed with his protest. Your disagreement (and mockery) does not make this item a lie.

Same goes for the third item, regarding the concerned father of a child in public school kindergarten, which is also factual.

These are the items that you raised to the fore in 2008 and which, frankly, I had thought represented trivial cause for your overhyped outrage. The facts did not change since you wrote your objections.

These claims are not egregious claims. Nor asinine. Nor disgusting. Nor invented. Concisely stated, yes. Conversational, yes. In the common form of a political pamphlet, yes. But what is so wrong with that?

You moralized quite a bit in your frenzied objections, Fannie, and showed a lack of moral neutrality on he facts. That is okay but keep that in mind when next you feel it advantageous for you to claim that you are ready to cool things down, to seek dialogue, to stick with the facts and to reason the way forward.

- - -

I am not affiliated with MR. And they can defend themselves independently of Opine and myself. That is up to them.

I took a look at your objections. I agree with the facts. You disagree with the source more than the facts.

If you want to press this further, okay, but since the imposition of SSM in Massachusetts no SSMer has managed to justify the special place of marriage in law, much less in the culture. Maybe it is not so special in your view, afterall. That might be an intellectually honest view, which needs only to be articulated by someone who holds it. Maybe you?

Maybe you will get around to coherently addressing the key questions that arise from within your own SSM argumentation and your own remarks about no core and about as-if-married.

- - -

I sympathize with the complaint about the amount of effort it can take to unpack and address items that are presented concisely. SSMers thow about falsehoods aplenty. When thoroughly addressed, they complain about that. Oh well.

- - -

Apologies for the typos. I have a slight disability with my hands and wrists.

* * * *

Links:

http://fanniesroom.com/2012/02/on-the-core-of-marriage.html
http://familyscholars.org/2012/02/02/on-the-core-of-marriage/#comments

http://opine-editorials.blogspot.com/2008/10/it-is-worse-than-most-realize

http://fanniesroom.com/2008/10/propaganda-watch-harm-of-same-sex.html

* * * *

Also see previous blogost, "Fairness and the Core Meaning of Marriage".
http://opine-editorials.blogspt.com/2012/02/fairnessand-core-meaning-of-marriage.html

Fairness and the core meaning of marriage

Recommended reading: Check out the comments of fellow Opiners, RK and Fitz, in the discussion beneath the blogpost by an SSMer who guest blogs at Family Scholars Blog.

See:
http://familyscholars.org/2012/02/02/on-the-core-of-marriage/#comments

RK's comment [02.08.2012 at 10:20] thoroughly answered the pro SSM notion that there can be no core meaning of marriage (or even that a core would be undesirable anyway). The analogy regarding boundaries works well.

Fannie's comment section closed without her addressing RK's comment.

Fitz's comment [02.05.202 at 7:48] was short and sweet and highly effective.

RK and Fitz were joined by Daughter of Eve (familiar to Opine readers). In addition to her two very reasonable comments [02.05.2012 at 7:48 and 02.08.2012 at 10:20], take note of the pro SSM commenter Tristian's accurate representation of the pro marriage notion of dealing with different types of relationships [02.02.2012 at 4:25]. Unlike Fannie, Tristian at least acknowledged this legitimate point of our argumentation.

Each of these comments hits on the principle of fairness which calls on us to not treat people differently arbitrarily AND to not treat people the same arbitrarily.

SSMers generally rely on turning the first part of that principle against the second part or just neglecting the whole of the principle. But this principle of fairness does not contradict itself the way that SSMers routinely claim when they call for fairness.

They invoke fairness to draw upon the moral feeling that defends against unjust treatment. But the defense of marriage invokes the two-part principle which draws upon this moral feeling too.

The latter is a coherent appeal to both reason and feeling.

The former ends up depending on the feeling invoked by a half-truth  and thus contradicts the application of fairness and misleads the moral feeling closely aligned with fairness. That arbitrary call on feelings would openly set moral feeling against the full principle of fairness. Indeed SSM rhetoric leads SSM argumentation by the nose such that we are urged to follow our feelings rather than reason. That is not the basis for legitimate lawmaking.

I think each of the comments that I have recommended here applies that principle in a coherent and reasonably stated account that is morally and intellectually serious. And understandable. I think, it is at once convincing (a right appeal to reason) and persuasive (a right appeal to feeling). But for SSMers it ought to be understandable at the very least.

There is no excuse for Fannie to continue to claim she cannot understand that much. She cannot reasonably revert to the comfort of ignorance-is-bliss. She cannot deny there is a conflict between the SSM idea and the marriage idea. She all but acknowledged it when she responded to comments by David Blankenhorn.

She may be inching toward the actual disagreement.

The Right to Marry

Why should the law bind two people so? To enhance their visibility and respect in the community? Not likely. Rather than enhance the status of the couple, marriage seems rather to place them in a position of lifelong subservience, both to one another and to the state.
As they say, you get less for murder.
No, the only conceivable reason for binding two people in a lifelong union is because marriage anticipates procreation.
Activists deny this. But why else would Article 23 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights affirm a compound right “to marry and to found a family”? Why not have two separate rights, if marriage is not about procreation?
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights unequivocally supports the conflation of marriage and procreation. In its General Comment (no. 19) on Article 23, the Commission states: “The right to found a family implies, in principle, the possibility to procreate and live together” (at par 5). All of this is bound up in the one right, under Article 23, “to marry and to found a family”.

Well, that's getting to The Punch...  (emphasis mine)

Motherhood 'Detrimental' to Women's Scientific Careers, Study Concludes

Women with advanced degrees in math-intensive academic fields drop out of fast-track research careers primarily because they want children – not because their performance is devalued or they are shortchanged during interviewing and hiring, according to a new study at Cornell University.

Ideas on how to solve this? What is it that really makes fast-track research incompatible with having children?

 

Washington State's Paternity Laws

How may I legally establish parentage?

There are four ways to establish parentage.
(1) Marriage. If the mother and biological father decide to marry before the child is born, the marriage may create what is called a presumption of parentage. Unless a parent or some other interested party later challenges that presumption, the man will be considered the legal father of the child.
(2) Registered Domestic Partnership. If the mother was in a registered domestic partnership during the pregnancy, the registered domestic partnership may create what is called a presumption of parentage. Unless a parent or some other interested party later challenges that presumption, the registered domestic partner is the legal parent of the child.
(3) Paternity Acknowledgment. The Paternity Acknowledgment is a legal form. The man who signs the form will be considered the legal father after the form is signed, notarized, and filed at the Washington State Department of Health, Center for Health Statistics (DOH/CHS).
(4) Court Order. The court may determine if a person is the legal parent of a child. The court may require a genetic test of the mother, child, and a man alleged to be the biological father.

I think #2 was interesting, because in #1 it assumes there is a biological father and in the goals of #3 and #4 is that the biological father be known, while in a registered domestic partnership no mention of the sort.

Also most states have specific information to help fathers, no such topic exists on the DSHS website except for situations in the mother and children are at risk of domestic violence. Domestic violence exists, no doubt. I can't find any engaging pro-father material on their site, but they do have a state 'family planning' link to prevent children.

Edit: I found this community based organization in Seattle, Divine Alternatives for Dads. Also here is a link to the founders personal story.

Poll Dancing in New Jersey

As New Jersey lawmakers head towards a vote to neuter marriage that the Governor has vowed to veto, Tina Susman reported at LATimes.com (or, what I call The Pink Lady):

Most voters in New Jersey support gay marriage, but a majority also say the issue should be put on the ballot for voters to make the final decision, a new poll finds.

Why is this surprising? The licenses are issued on behalf of the people. The people want to vote.

Referendums in Minnesota and North Carolina would limit the definition of marriage to male-female unions.

That's written as though this would be a new idea. The referendums would limit? That’s been the core definition of marriage for all of human history.

In Maine, meanwhile, supporters of [neutering] marriage are planning a ballot measure that would expand the definition of marriage to a union involving same-sex couples.

"Expand" it. Heh. Newspeak much?

I went to check out the New Jersey poll myself. I'm suspicious of a university pollster who calls it "gay marriage" in the official documentation.

Notice that the first relevant question is:

On another topic, some people say gay marriage should be legal. Others oppose legalizing gay marriage. What is your position? Do you:

Support Gay Marriage
Oppose Gay Marriage
Support CU/Oppose GM (vol)

I'm not sure what the "vol" means. Does that mean the respondents weren't given the option but had to volunteer it? That would be a big problem. Even without that, though, the way the question is worded could be confusing. I don't think it should be illegal for anyone to have a ceremony, live together, and call themselves married.

I support the bride+groom requirement in state marriage licensing.
I oppose removing the bride+groom requirement in state marriage licensing.
I oppose redefining marriage so that it no longer means something that unites the two sexes.
I support the freedom of association, including the freedom of homosexual people to associate as they mutually agree.
I support the right to vote, including the right to vote on the condition of licenses issued on my behalf.

People of New Jersey: It is practical, important, and Constitutional to favor maintaining the bride+groom requirement in your state marriage licenses. Brideless or groomless pairings are not marriage, should not be licensed as such, and do not contribute to society the same way that the institution of marriage does.

I'm still waiting for someone to conduct a poll that looks more like this one.

The whole disagreement, in a nutshell

To me both sides of this issue is about the government recognizing their relationship for what they see it really is. Both sides see the potential for harm -- but a specific kind of harm -- should the important aspects of their relationship to unrecognized.

For same-sex couples, they want to avoid any social stigma that might give people cause to mock or berate their relationships. I support that, and feel a great sympathy to that.

Judicial Novel Writing

Having had a few days to review the reactions to the 9th Circuit decision, I have a few observations.

• It seems generally accepted that the decision was tailored towards Justice Kennedy. Many of the legal arguments require a great bit of stretching and cutting corners, and the shape that stretching and cutting takes seems to match perfectly a case that Kennedy wrote the opinion on.
• It seems generally accepted that the decision tries to limit itself to the California case as much as possible, even to the degree that it ignores much of the Walker ruling they were supposed to review.

It is, in so many words, an advocacy brief more than a decision. And the people who are cheering it are, well, cheering it on those points as being an effective advocacy brief.

On the other side seem to see the decision's advocacy as heading in a wrong direction. (I'm admittedly in that crowd).

And in the middle seems to be a large number of legal scholars (like Eugene Volokh and Orin Kerr) who put judicial propriety and obligation higher than their own personal advocacy. They may support same-sex marriage, but a judicial ruling is a place to give a dispassionate and careful consideration of the arguments presented to the court. Even the Washington Post considers the 9th decision to be "wobbly".

To use that as an opportunity to present your own arguments in the matter, as if it was fruitless to even review the previous ruling or the arguments given in the first place, is pretending to be an attorney who wishes they had that case. It is not the policy of an impartial judge.

Obama tells gay donors more work to be done

Obama tells gay donors more work to be done (CBS NEWS)

Obama made the remarks to around 40 gay and lesbian donors who paid $35,800 each to see him speak at a private home in Washington.

The event came on the heels of a decision by a federal appeals court in California to strike down that state's ban on gay marriage. Obama, who supports civil unions but has stopped short of embracing gay marriage, made no reference to that development or his own views on the matter, which he's said are "evolving."

Republicans or Democrats same difference, money talks.

Preserving marriage, preserving intact families...

So here's a thought...

Would you let a family fail rather than tell them how important their relationships are to each other?

What if telling people how important those relationships were hurt the feelings of people who don't have those relationships?

A brave woman I once knew talked about the shame of being a drunk driver who crashed her car. She was given a very harsh sentence because of it.

She said about her own story that when she first got the DUI she was afraid to tell anyone. But now that she sees what her actions caused, and more importantly what they could have caused, she wants to tell everyone. Preventing people from harm was more important than the shame they might feel over their own alcoholic habits, bar ownership, or drunk driving.

I am sensitive to those that do not or cannot have those relationships, but I cannot stand silent while those relationships are threatened elsewhere. If we do nothing that only adds to the misery and loss.

Some Formerly Cohabiting Couples With Children Keep Romantic Relationship

Some Formerly Cohabiting Couples With Children Keep Romantic Relationship via Science Daily

"Children whose parents are still romantically involved are going to see the parent they don't live with more often, and that's generally good," she said.
"Research has shown that father involvement is beneficial for children, and that involvement is one benefit we could see if couples continue a romantic relationship even after they stop living together."

Kamp Dush found that couples who stayed connected after moving apart tended to have two factors going for them: they had more relationship "investments" with each other and had less family chaos.
Relationship investments included things like pooling money, having a joint checking account or credit card, or having a second baby together.

"The negative effects of divorce for children are clearly documented and cohabitation dissolution likely has similar impacts on children when it ends in breakup."
From a policy perspective, Kamp Dush said the results point to the importance of providing good and flexible jobs and quality child care to low-income parents in order to help them stay together.

Move on.... Move on... Nothing really obvious or important here I guess...

The Pink Lady's Coverage of 9th Circuit Court Decision

The Los Angeles Times, ever obsessed with one of their favorite causes – neutering marriage – had at least three print articles in reaction to yesterday's news on the California Marriage Amendment, voted in as Proposition 8. The headline of this article by Maura Dolan and Carol J. Williams is "Divided Court Rejects Proposition 8". My headline: "Most Overturned Federal Appeals Court Rejects State Constitutional Amendment." This article repeatedly uses the erroneous "gay marriage" and "ban" wording.

A federal appeals court has declared California's 2008 voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, concluding that the prohibition served no purpose other than to "lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians."

Got that? The bride+groom requirement in marriage has been nothing more but a hateful worldwide conspiracy carried out since the dawn of humanity by all governments, people groups and every major religion as well as atheists to make homosexual people feel bad. It was only a little over ten years ago that this conspiracy was first exposed. Not even prominent civil rights activists in history, not any of the great liberal SCOTUS Justices noticed this conspiracy, or were somehow prevented from speaking out about it.

The 2-1 ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was narrowly written to limit its scope to California's borders and possibly even avoid review by the U.S. Supreme Court, legal experts said.

Once the federal courts get involved in an internal state matter, I don't see how the highest federal court could be prevented from getting involved. Why shouldn’t SCOTUS get involved – precedent? It's not in their power? HA! Those would be hilarious reasons, given what Walker and then the Appeals court have done.

Nonetheless, gay-rights advocates hailed Tuesday's decision as historic, while supporters of Proposition 8 immediately vowed to appeal.

Not all "gay rights" advocates are marriage neutering advocates. And "supporters of Proposition 8" are defenders of the state constitution.

Instead of expanding the constitutional rights of gays and lesbians, the court based its decision on a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court precedent that said a majority may not take away a minority's rights without legitimate reasons.

True rights are not invented by year 2008 state court decisions. There are legitimate reasons to reserve state marriage licenses for bride+groom unions, due to the fact that they can (and usually do) naturally create new citizens and unite both sexes that comprise all of society.

If a Native American tribe (historically oppressed minority) demanded some sort of official state designation that a bacon-and-shrimp dish was "kosher", this court, if being consistent, would have to agree, especially if a lower court said so and then voters later said "no". After all, how does calling such a dish kosher hurt anyone else's kosher? Marriage is even more important that dietary customs.

"Proposition 8 operates with no apparent purpose but to impose on gays and lesbians, through the public law, a majority's private disapproval of them and their relationships," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the court.

One need not disapprove of homosexual people, relationships, or behavior to believe marriage licenses should be reserved for bride+groom unions. The state issues both driver's licenses and state identification cards that are not driver's licenses. Does this show disapproval for religious minorities who don’t use motor vehicles?

"It's no surprise that the 9th Circuit's decision is completely out of step with every other federal appellate and Supreme Court decision in American history on the subject of marriage," said Andy Pugno, a lawyer for ProtectMarriage.

But you see, all of those courts were part of the conspiracy.

But other lawyers and legal scholars said the 9th Circuit might have the final word on Proposition 8 because the ruling was so pointedly limited to California, a state where voters stripped a minority of a right that already existed and where the usual justifications for a same-sex marriage ban, responsible parenting and procreation, are undercut by domestic partner laws.

Like I've said, marriage defenders now must oppose any legal union such as domestic partnerships or civil unions if the law will treat them like marriage, because they are used as Trojan Horses. Many people who have, or would have supported such laws to make life easier for people who do not want to marry (unite with someone of the opposite sex) now can't because of what we now know courts will do, in addition to whatever concerns we had about the social effect on marriage.

In the opinion, Reinhardt drew close parallels between Proposition 8 and a 1992 Colorado initiative that barred the government from passing laws to protect the civil rights of gays and lesbians. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a decision written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, struck down Colorado's law in 1996.

Calling Proposition 8 "remarkably similar" to the Colorado initiative, the 9th Circuit said both measures singled out one class of people and removed an existing right without serving any reasonable purpose.

I'd like to know where, in the text of Proposition 8, one class of people was singled out.

"It is implausible to think that denying two men or two women the right to call themselves married could somehow bolster the stability of families headed by one man and one woman," the court said.

That statement is either intentionally deceptive or terribly stupid. It is astounding that a federal court could make such a statement. Who is denied the right to call themselves married? Brideless and groomless couples have been doing that for what, decades now? They can still do that, as can anyone else.