Mila Marvizon of Culver City wrote:
I don't know what genetic or environmental factors contribute to homosexuality, nor do I care. I would argue that, whatever the cause, gay marriage is demonstrably as beneficial to society as traditional marriage. On that basis, California should repeal Proposition 8.I have never seen anyone effectively argue that same-sex pairing is as beneficial to society as marriage. Perhaps misanthropes who believe procreation is detrimental would argue such a thing. But as I've said before, no matter how angry it makes people, the demonstrable fact of the matter is that heterosexual coitus, and by extension marriage (in addition to other reasons), benefits society in ways that same-sex pairing can't. It naturally produces new citizens, and marriage gives those new citizens a legally and socially bound mother and father, role models, nurturers, and protectors from both of the two sexes who demonstrate beneficial interaction between the sexes. That two men commit sodomy with each other does not allow them to contribute to society in any positive way that they couldn't have without ever touching each other.
"Demonstrably"??
ReplyDeleteI think this is yet another example of the tendency of many people today to throw out words to back up their personal belief, without first thinking about what the meaning of the word is.
Mr. Walrus,
ReplyDeleteyou don't have a very high opinion of love, do you? By your reasoning, the only marriages that benefit society are the ones that produce "new citizens." What a romantic you are!
Also, if you think that marriage automatically gives children "role models [and] nurturers . . . who demonstrate beneficial interaction between the sexes," you need to get out more.
Miles, thanks for commenting.
ReplyDeleteI have a very high opinion of love. That doesn't chage anything I said - same-sex sodomy does not contribute positively to society like heterosexual coitus.
Love, by the way, is in no way required to get a state marriage license. Most marriages throughout most of history were arranged - counter to what our present-day popular notion of "love" seems to be.
By my reasoning, the state has an interest in bride+groom pairings because they are the only KIND that CAN natually produce new citizens (even if not all do) and provide them with the most stable form of parenting with both sexes.
Are there lousy parents and lousy spouses? There are sure are. But marriage makes it more likely a child will have stable, consistent role models and a nurturing and protecting AND providing mother and father.
I invite you to check out some of the tags in the column on the right and see the extensive discussions we're had here.
I have never seen anyone effectively argue that same-sex pairing is as beneficial to society as marriage.
ReplyDeleteIt's a weirdly-phrased claim; I'd be more likely to say that "a gay marriage is as beneficial to society as a straight marriage," because "as beneficial" implies some kind of statistical equivalence.
That two men commit sodomy with each other does not allow them to contribute to society in any positive way that they couldn't have without ever touching each other.
Commission of sodomy can occur with or without legal same-sex marriage, so the marriage isn't really about the sodomy. But if a couple is raising a child, then the opportunity for that couple to marry benefits the child, does it not?
But if a couple is raising a child, then the opportunity for that couple to marry benefits the child, does it not?"
ReplyDeleteOne would need to argue that the benifits that acrue to that particular child somehow outweight the detriment to all children from up-ending the instiution of marriage.
Of coarse before one even got to that analysis one would ask why a same-sex couple would be so selfish as to deprive a child of a Mother or Father to begin with.
Diversity trumps sameness. Integration trumps segregation. Intact families trump broken homes.
ReplyDeleteLove is a fine and wonderful thing, but hardly enough to make the claim that monosexually segregated and intentionally fatherless/motherless families are just as beneficial to society as diversely integrated intact families are.
That's just ridiculous.
Marty,
ReplyDeleteis it segregationist to allow a white person to marry another white person? No. What's segregationist is when a white person is required to marry another white person.
For the same reason, it is not segregationist to allow a man to marry another man, or a woman to marry another woman. Please tell me that you can understand that.
Miles, the Loving court (you know that one, right?) found that race had absolutely nothing to do with Marriage. No, what they found was that sex/gender had everything to do with marriage.
ReplyDeleteMarty, you did not answer my question. Are the races not as segregated by allowing two white people to marry as the sexes are by allowing two men (or two women) to marry?
ReplyDeleteMiles
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the (horribly over used) Loving example is its power comes from mere analogy. The problem with analogy is it is exactly that: an analogy.
Its weight raises and falls on the strength of the analogy.
Courts have been quick to dismiss this characterization of marriage law with racial segregation. The point of anti—miscegenation laws were to keep the races apart. No one would seriously argue that that is the point of marriage law.
Quite the opposite, the intention of marriage law is to bring the two sexes together.
Note this quick rebuke of same-sex “marriage” offered by the plurality in Hernandez v. New York, Justice Smith, when confronting the idea that marriage as historically defined was analogous to Loving.
“[T]he traditional definition of marriage is not merely a byproduct of historical injustice. Its history is of a different kind.”
The use of the term kind is telling. Not a matter of degree, mind you. Rather a different of qualitative substance…a difference of kind.
As dismissals of the Loving v Virginia case goes, this is rather mild. However – I like it for precisely that reason. It dismisses casually a analogy that doesn’t hold up precisely because it is not the same kind of things being compared.
As the Washington decision illustrates
"We vigorously reject any attempt to link the discriminatory Anti miscegenation laws in Loving with this State’s DOMA. The Washington Court of Appeals in Singer correctly noted:the Loving and Perez courts [Perez v. Sharp, 32 Cal. 2d 711, 198 P.2d 17 (1948)] did not change the basic definition of marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman; rather, they merely held that the race of the man or woman desiring to enter that relationship could not be considered by the state in granting a marriage license. 11 Wn. App. at 255 n.8. Numerous other courts have all rejected the claim that the decision in Loving somehow challenged state laws reaffirming marriage as the union of one man and one woman.25 Careful review of the historical context of Loving further undermines the
dissents’ disturbing attempt to link constitutionally void, racist laws with a historical definition of marriage as between a man and woman. Anti miscegenation laws were anathema to the “color-blind” constitution articulated in Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson.26 Anti miscegenation laws infringed upon the union of one man and one woman by injecting racial status as a qualification. Such laws contradicted the fact that a man and a woman of any race have the natural right to marry and have children. This right is protected by the United States and Washington State Constitutions. Racially discriminatory anti miscegenation laws also violate the right to marriage between a man and a woman. Here, in contrast, the State’s DOMA simply confirms the common law understanding of marriage as a union of a man and woman. It is the dissent that would abrogate the common law understanding through judicial fiat."
Fitz,
ReplyDeletethanks for cutting and pasting--I saw that the first time it was posted. I didn't raise the issue of Loving, by the way; that was Marty.
You write that "[t]he point of anti—miscegenation laws were to keep the races apart. No one would seriously argue that that is the point of marriage law." Marty appears to be arguing just that--that supporters of gay couples' right to marry are trying to keep the sexes apart. I agree with you that no one who holds that view can be taken seriously.
There is one human race.
ReplyDeleteBut if an SSMer wants to bring up the white identity politics that asserted supremacy, then, the gay identity politics asserted by SSMers is closely analogous. It is indeed a very strong analogy.
Identity politics was repudiated in Loving (and in Perez in CA) as the trump card for over-riding the core meaning of marriage and over-riding constitutional jurisprudence. White-centric or gay-centric, identity politics is no trump card.
Meanwhile, the nature of the one human race is two-sexed. The participation of both sexes in marriage is what makes marriage, marriage. Neither sex is excluded.
The one-sexed arrangement -- sexualized or not -- is defined by the one sex it incudes. Marriage integrates the sexes. SSMers say they want the law to integrate the sexual orientations, however, they are actually against mixed-orientation marriages. They argue in favor of purity of gayness when they demand that sex-segregative arrangements be equated with the sex-integrative union of husband and wife.
They assume that segregating by sexual orientation is a necessity; they assume that segregating the sexes is the integration; and they assume that identity politics is the basis for marriage law. And on all of these points they are profoundly mistaken. It is the last point that was forcefully repudiated with the dismantling of the anti-miscegenation system. The first point is as irrelevant to marriage as the second point is relevant to the pro-SSM attempt to gut marriage of its core meaning both legally and culturally.
To answer your question, yes -- the races are segregated when two white people marry each other. But (as the Loving court wisely found), that is as irrelevant to the institution of marriage as my personal preference for blondes.
ReplyDeleteYou may try to argue that your personal preference for men is just as irrelevant to the institution, but that would fly in the face of history, nature, and the Loving court.
The color of the key doesn't change the fact that two keys do not make a "security device".
See, Fitz, here's someone else arguing that supporters of gay couples' right to marry are trying to keep the sexes apart. I told you I wasn't making this stuff up!
ReplyDeleteOn the contrary - Marty is correct, supporters of gay marriage are trying to keep the sexes apart.
ReplyDeleteBoth Marty & myself are talking about marriage not same-sex "marriage" when we write...marriage. Remeber that when quoting our views.
The cultural left has a pedigree. They think marriage is archaic & patriarchal. They find it a font of human and sexual oppresion and virtual slavery for woman.
What is interesting to note is that serious scholars and advocates of same-sex marriage readily acknowledge that same-sex "marriage" will help undermine traditional marriage.
Rather than finding this a negative they find it to be a positive; indeed the cheif reason for supporting same-sex "marriage".
They have no ideological or social commitment to heterosexual or homosexual monogamy and find the very idea regressive.
They make no secret of it….
The want to De-privilege the Privileged (traditional marriage)
And privilege the de-Privileged (anything but traditional marriage)
Marty,
ReplyDeleteso you agree that allowing two men to marry no more segregates the sexes than allowing two white people to marry segregates the races. So all of your talk about sex-segregation is unwarranted smear, right?
Miles, you've gone out on a limb and have sawed it off from the trunk of the tree.
ReplyDeleteYou said: "arguing just that--that supporters of gay couples' right to marry are trying to keep the sexes apart".
Marty is more than capable of responding to your reading of what he said.
I'll add the following:
When viewed through the racialist filter, marraige became a vehicle for selectively segregating the sexes and for undermining the marital presumption of paternity.
The gay identity filter removes sex integration from marriage law and imposes the falsehood that all unions of husband and wife lack either husbands or wives. It also marginalizes the sexual basis for the marital presumption of paternity. It neutralizes the societal preference for the solidarity of motherhood and fatherhood.
The purpose of white supremacy is a nonmarraige purpose that was pressed into marriage. It explicitly classified people by skin color or bumps on the head; such criteria are irrelevant to integration of the sexes and the marital presumption of paternity. These criteria's relevancy lies only in identity politics. And these were pressed into marriage; there was no flaw in the social institution itself.
The purpose of asserting the supremacy of gay identity politics is also a nonmarriage purpose that is being pushed into marriage law; it makes marriage a legal and cultural vehicle for driving government to innoculate gay identity politics from dissent and opposition. There is no flaw in the social institution, yet SSMers demand that the special reason for the special staus of marriage be abolished. That's what merging marriage with SSM would accomplish. Minus the core meaning of marriage, SSMers demand that SSM be granted special status for no other reason that gay identity politics. The SSM campaign frames this as a gay/straight issue rather than a question of what makes marraige, marriage.
That is the very same approach taken by white supremacists. The analogy is very, very close indeed.
Miles (writes)
ReplyDeleteYou write that "[t]he point of anti—miscegenation laws were to keep the races apart. No one would seriously argue that that is the point of marriage law." Marty appears to be arguing just that--that supporters of gay couples' right to marry are trying to keep the sexes apart. I agree with you that no one who holds that view can be taken seriously.
Notice the key conflation and rank dishonesty...
I wrote... "No one would seriously argue that that is the point of marriage law"
Miles (wrote)
"that supporters of gay couples' right to marry are trying to keep the sexes apart"
Does anyone really think that miles cant distinguish between "marriage law" - clearly denoting marriage quo marriage as traditionally defined & same-sex "marriage" supporters.
Its naked supterfuge, bald question begging, and open manipulation of clear understandings.
Please Miles - if you are to come here and try and argue...realize your audience is intelligent enough to notice such rank manipulations.
Painting with an awfully broad brush there, Fitz. Pretty sloppy.
ReplyDelete"so you agree that allowing two men to marry no more segregates the sexes than allowing two white people to marry segregates the races. So all of your talk about sex-segregation is unwarranted smear, right?"
ReplyDeleteReading comprehension problem Miles? What I said was that two white people marrying each other DOES segregation the races -- but that the Loving court found that racial segregation had nothing to do with the institution of marriage.
But that same court found that sex integration was crucial to the institution of marriage, and to our very survival as a species.
I will argue that "sexual orientation" is as irrelevant as race, to marriage. This is proven true throughout history and culture, as gays and lesbians have never been prevented from marrying a member of the opposite sex, and indeed they still do to this very day. It's not even a question on the license form.
Next time, please read -- reread if neccesary -- before responding.
Miles (writes)
ReplyDelete"Painting with an awfully broad brush there, Fitz. Pretty sloppy."
Not at all Miles, just because you are not aware of what the very well placed and influential protaganists of same-sex "marriage" want and desire out of its inception does not mean that I dont.
Lenin had a term called "usefull idiots" to describe those who joined the revolution without a keen insight as to its intent.
My case is only bolstered by the fact that the further decaying and underminding of marriage is in fact what same-sex "marriage" has accomplished.
Chairm,
ReplyDeletewhat, in your view, makes marriage marriage?
Fitz, did Lenin also misspell "useful"?
ReplyDeleteMarty,
ReplyDeleteapparently you misread me. I said that allowing two men to marry no more segregates the sexes than allowing two white people to marry segregates the races, and therefore that all of your talk about sex-segregation is unwarranted smear. Do you disagree?
Miles,
ReplyDeleteDid Lenin, or Carpenter for that matter, try to avoid answering a point by playing grammar nanny? :)
Nutshell: Racial segregation (or integration) is irrelevant. Sexual segregation is. Sexual integration is sin qua non!
ReplyDeleteMiles, it is not merely my opinion.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I view marriage as a foundatinal social institution of civil society.
Society, through governing authorities and the law, shows preference for marriage as a social institution. That prefence arises from its core meaning; variable traditions and protocols do not negate the existence of universal features.
The core meaning of marriage is the combination of 1) sex integration and 2) provision for responsible procreation. This combination gives the social institution its coherency. And this, taken as a whole, is the special reason for the special status that society accords the social institution. The boundaries around marriage are drawn based on society's response to concerns about that core meaning.
This is what the historical and anthropological record shows -- across time, geography, religious and irreligous belief systems, and cultures. I view marriage through this long and successful record.
In the legal system, traditions, and customs of our civilization, this core meaning is embedded. The most obvious direct expressions of this core meaning: 1) the man-woman criterion, and 2) the sexual basis for the marital presumption of paternity. None of that fits the one-sexed arrangement -- sexualized or not.
Now, if today, some believe that our society must respond differently to that core meaning, then, they are burdened with the need to offer a replacement meaning that is superior.
In your pro-SSM view, what makes marriage, marriage? More precisely, what are the essentials of the type of relationship you have in mind when you make claims about what is unjustly excluded?
* * *
Miles, don't fret over spelling and punctuation. This is a comment section at a blogsite, not a spelling bee or a grammar class.
Spelling and grammar aren't the same thing, On Lawn. You just happen to be bad at both of them.
ReplyDeleteMiles,
ReplyDeleteRacism and sexism are both very bad things, but the sexes need each other, while the races, sadly, can get along without each other. Or at least people think they can, and even if we tried to tell people they had to marry one of another race, they still would. Need I spell this out further, or need I provide historical examples to make the point?
The fact about same-sex marriage is that it leads to a situation where we send the message that each gender does NOT need the other.
To answer the underlying assumption in Miles's question, one would need to agree or disagree that the human race is subdivided into sub-species objectively identified. I disagree. Racialist divides are irrelevant to the core meaning of marriage.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile the nature of the human race is two-sexed, not one-sexed; the nature of human procreation is opposite-sexed, not sex-neutral; and the nature of human community (of which family is the basic organic element) is sex-integrative not sex-exclusive or sex-segregative. The combination of man with woman is highly relevant to marriage.
The combination of man with woman is highly relevant to marriage.
ReplyDeleteIndeed it is the very thing that makes marriage Marriage.
So your position is that allowing gay couples to marry sends a sexist message, that each gender does not need the other? Why should that be the case?
ReplyDeleteOK, Miles, tell me now, with SSM, how DOES each gender need the other? Answer without trapping yourself.
ReplyDeleteIs it your view that gay people want to bring a world-wide halt to human procreation? Why would gay people want that?
ReplyDeleteI think most people view their spouse as an individual rather than a gender representative. You all have to stake out some pretty weird ways of looking at things in order to justify your anti-gay positions.
A world-wide halt to human procreation? That's ridiculous, of course. But a world wide halt to the idea that the man and woman that created a child are his parents? Yeah, I see GLBT activists working actively towards that.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, you "have to stake out some pretty weird ways of looking at things in order to justify" the idea that a child can have two moms, but no dad.
Marty, I've said nothing about gay parenting/adoption. Please stay on topic.
ReplyDeleteWhatever friend. But you can't argue on one hand that gender integration is unimportant to the institution of marriage, and still maintain that mothers and fathers are both important to the idea of family.
ReplyDeleteWell, i suppose YOU could, because you're all over the place. But your fellow GLBT activists certainly won't. For them, "parental status" is something bestowed by the state, and the "male + female = baby" thing is merely a coincidence.
You trapped yourself, Miles. So, you're saying that men and women still need each other to reproduce the species, even if it becomes a smaller number of men and women that need each other for this. How small?
ReplyDeleteR.K.,
ReplyDeleteyour fear is that if gay couples are allowed to marry, so many people will decide to marry people of the same sex that the future of humanity will be threatened? You need to get hold of yourself.
Miles (writes)
ReplyDeleteI've said nothing about gay parenting/adoption. Please stay on topic.
I love it when this happens. The single comment reveals how dishonest a broker we are dealing with.
Care to explain, Fitz?
ReplyDeleteAnd that reminds me: did you hear about the first gay couple to marry in Ireland? Patrick Fitzgerald and Gerald Fitzpatrick. Just like lock & key, eh, Marty?
Chairm
ReplyDeleteRe: racial vs gay
Its well to remember
Rather than being some far-fetched "far -right" argument - this argument was forewarded by nothing less than the deep blue very liberal and very influential New York Supreme Court in it's recent decision Hernadez v Robles.
"Thus, because Perez and Loving refused to allow the marriage institution to be appropriated for nonmarriage ends, to use those two cases to advance just such an appropriative project is to betray them. In other words, the Perez/Loving argument advances a superficial analogy that masks a deep disanalogy. That disanalogy is between the intention of Perez and Loving to protect marriage from appropriation for nonmarriage purposes and the intention of the present marriage project to make such an appropriation. Thus, those who deploy the Perez/Loving argument, whether advocates or judges, are misleading people, including perhaps themselves."
Hernandez, 805 N.Y.S.2d at 379–81, 381 n.3, 382
Now that type of language used by a State Supreme Court is so powerfull and blunt that (If people knew anything of the law) Its very existance in such a prominent and indeed direct case on the merits for same-sex "marriage" would (or should) give even the most ardent same-sex "marriage" enthusiast real cause for concern. That fact that it does not shows the ideological nature of such claims for re-difineing marriage. However such language will not be lost on the Federal or Supreme court(s).
miles: your fear is that if gay couples are allowed to marry, so many people will decide to marry people of the same sex that the future of humanity will be threatened?
ReplyDeleteI once would have thought myself that that was a bad and simplistic argument, but seeing how birthrates are below replacement level already in many states and countries, and in general even more so in those which have or are considering SSM, that argument is not as bad as I once thought.
Actually, though, this is not even all I had in mind when I said it would be dangerous for men and women to think they do not need each other. We've seen what that does for race and religion, have we not? It could be a slow process, but there's all kinds of ways it could happen, especially when new technology is put into the mix.
"Care to explain, Fitz?"
ReplyDeleteSure, to procced to talk about marriage as if it is not intrinsicly connected to childbearing/rearing is to be narrow abtuse and didactic.
I am more than sure that you would procced on such a self serving basis, but doing so marks you as an unworthy opponent.
R.K.,
ReplyDeleteyour attraction to the opposite sex must be pretty weak, for you to believe that allowing gay couples to marry will dissuade most men from trying to sleep with women.
It's not a matter of even "most" men, Miles, it's just a matter of enough of them, particularly when the birthrate is already low enough. And yes, I've known enough such men.
ReplyDeleteAnd forget about trying to use psychology on me. Honestly, in online argument, I could care less whether people think I'm gay, straight, bisexual, "weakly" straight, or whatever. Assume whatever you want to assume.
So, Fitz, when elsewhere Chairm claimed that no one says that marriage is solely about procreation, he was wrong? Are you saying that marriage is solely about procreation?
ReplyDeleteYou can hold that view if you want, but I think it's rather uncharitable of you to call me a liar just because I disagree with you on that point.
Let me ask you this, R.K. Do all of these bi-curious men that you hang around with have to get married to another man in order to enjoy the pleasures of gay sex? Your problem isn't with gay couples getting married at all, is it? Your problem is with homosexuality.
ReplyDeleteR.K.
ReplyDeleteSuch arguments take two forms.
#1.Overall birth rates
http://www.demographicwinter.com/index.html
#2. Family formation itself.
We know that when men are not found essential to family life they abandon it. Once they do the coresponding violance and social breakdown is massive.
On the second point I always quote the following.
"Marriage is neither a conservative nor a liberal issue; it is a universal human institution, guaranteeing children fathers, and pointing men and women toward a special kind of socially as well as personally fruitful sexual relationship. Gay marriage is the final step down a long road America has already traveled toward deinstitutionalizing, denuding and privatizing marriage. It would set in legal stone some of the most destructive ideas of the sexual revolution: There are no differences between men and women that matter, marriage has nothing to do with procreation, children do not really need mothers and fathers, the diverse family forms adults choose are all equally good for children. What happens in my heart is that I know the difference. Don't confuse my people, who have been the victims of deliberate family destruction, by giving them another definition of marriage."
Walter Fauntroy-Former DC Delegate to CongressFounding member of the Congressional Black CaucusCoordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s march on DC
Miles (asks)
ReplyDelete"Are you saying that marriage is solely about procreation?"
No, Im saying its about family formation in light of procreative capacity.
i.e - it promotes responsible procreation amoung the one and only class of couples (male + female) that can reproduce.
"You can hold that view if you want, but I think it's rather uncharitable of you to call me a liar just because I disagree with you on that point."
I never called you a lier, I said to procced to talk about marriage as if it is not intrinsicly connected to childbearing/rearing is to be narrow, abtuse and didactic.
Fitz, you're right that you didn't use the word "liar." You used the word "dishonest."
ReplyDeletemiles said...
ReplyDelete"Fitz, you're right that you didn't use the word "liar." You used the word "dishonest."
Yes, & as the quote from Hernandez v Robles I use above notes..
"Thus, those who deploy the Perez/Loving argument, whether advocates or judges, are misleading people, including perhaps themselves."
When we do "lie" it is usually to ourselves.
So you did call me a liar? Or you didn't? Which is it?
ReplyDeleteAnd refresh my memory: Perez and Loving--did those cases revolve around the issue of gay parenting/adoption? Because that's what you called me a liar over--my contention that the issue of gay parenting/adoption was beside the point. Please explain how I was deploying the Perez/Loving argument in that instance.
Let me ask you this, R.K. Do all of these bi-curious men that you hang around with have to get married to another man in order to enjoy the pleasures of gay sex?
ReplyDeleteUh, Miles, I thought we were talking about same-sex marriage as it relates to the issue of raising kids, and whether or not it means more kids will be raised without mothers and fathers, and other implications of SSM. The issue of whether or not more will identify as homosexuals and never get married to women in the first place is relevant to this, yes. It's certainly a question to be asked.
Your problem isn't with gay couples getting married at all, is it? Your problem is with homosexuality.
This is just a standard dodge used when a person's argument is failing and they know it.
Wait is miles & Phil Thibedeaux the same person?
ReplyDeleteBecause they argue in the same exact (and strange) way.
Miles (WRITES)
"did those cases revolve around the issue of gay parenting/adoption? Because that's what you called me a liar over--my contention that the issue of gay parenting/adoption was beside the point. Please explain how I was deploying the Perez/Loving argument in that instance.
I quote from Hernandez was used soley to point out how people (often) misleading themselves...
As far as what I said, I'll say it again...
"Sure, to procced to talk about marriage as if it is not intrinsicly connected to childbearing/rearing is to be narrow abtuse and didactic."
"I am more than sure that you would procced on such a self serving basis, but doing so marks you as an unworthy opponent."
At this point you are doing whats called "waving the bloddy shirt" over me calling you a "dishonest broker"
Not at all, R.K. Your concern is that so many men will opt for sex with other men over sex with women that the future of humanity will be threatened. My point is that this "threat" exists apart from the issue of marriage. Your argument was made decades ago by people who sought to justify criminalizing homosexual behavior. Thus, your beef seems to be more with gay people existing than with gay couples marrying.
ReplyDeleteMiles...
ReplyDeleteShowing us that no drip thinks itself responsible for the flood.
#fail
Carpenter plays the same gambit, that neutering marriage isn't responsible for anything that also happens from people calling their same-sex relationship a marriage. They are, in-fact, the same thing. And endorsing/subsidizing that only expands the effects.
Fitz, that direct quote from the Hernandez case is so good that you might consider devoting a new blogpost just to highlight it.
ReplyDeleteYour concern is that so many men will opt for sex with other men over sex with women that the future of humanity will be threatened.
ReplyDeleteAnd if your argument is that it could not happen, you have done nothing to refute it.
My point is that this "threat" exists apart from the issue of marriage.
And you haven't refuted that it likely could become MORE true under SSM.
Your argument was made decades ago by people who sought to justify criminalizing homosexual behavior.
This is the common "they were wrong in the past, so they are wrong now (about a different issue)" fallacy. Now, I'm not disagreeing that there were less who practiced homosexuality when it was illegal. That we legalized it and raised the threshold, and likely the number who engaged in it, and that whatever the increase it has not yet threatened our replacement rate does not mean that raising the threshhold further yet may not still do so.
Thus, your beef seems to be more with gay people existing than with gay couples marrying.
No, just that too many of them can affect the birth rate. (Of course, this is only one of my arguments). But then on that you and I agree, unless you believe that a 100 percent exclusively homosexual population will not affect the birth rate. No, I'm not arguing that that will happen. But if you agree that we could not reproduce with a 100 percent exclusively homosexual population, then if you have any sense of mathematics you must know that there is someplace before that point at which a threshold is reached where replacement would be threatened.
Miles (wrote)
ReplyDelete"Not at all, R.K. Your concern is that so many men will opt for sex with other men over sex with women that the future of humanity will be threatened."
Straw man alert....Straw man alert...
When did R.K. EVER argue this insane argument...
Answer...never...
Lest Miles argue otherwise, arguing that the replacement rate is threatened is NOT the same thing as arguing that the human race will become extinct.
ReplyDeleteArguing that the replacement rate is threatened is to point out that a culture is thus threatened, usually relative to a different culture which may have very different values.
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think that the worldwide population is likely to be driven to extinction by an increase in the percentage of homosexuality to one hundred percent. But sometimes, to make your point about thresholds, you have to point out the extreme. That low birthrates are already a major concern in Europe and even some states of the U.S. is a fact, and pointing out that it could get even worse is not illegitimate.
So what you're saying, R.K., is that if gay couples are allowed to marry, the terrorists will win? Christian America and Europe will decline, and all the unwashed brown people of the globe will overwhelm us?
ReplyDeleteI've got some bad news for you, R.K. If you think the future of Western Civilization depends on us being able to out-baby-make the developing world, then the future does look pretty bleak.
The following blogposts from our archives might be useful to the latter part of the discussion underway here.
ReplyDeleteF. Rottles on calling in-tact marriages a "sham".
Child Custody and Disparagement.
* * *
RK and Marty and Fitz have answered the question put by Miles. I agree with what F. Rottles wrote on this very topic. See the above links.
* * *
ReplyDeleteThe marriage idea makes normative solidarity of motherhood and fatherhood. The SSM idea works in the other direction: it makes the marriage idea barely tolerated in the public square and would deride it as bigotry in the law.
And at the same time the SSM idea would provide no positive influence to replace that of the marriage idea's positive influence.
The reach of the influence of the SSM idea -- even in societies where it has been rejected but is still contested prominently -- depends a great deal on the negative assertion that nonmarital trends make it more plausible for society to shrug and to merge SSM with marriage.
Since the practice of same-sex householding is marginal within the homosexual population, the SSM idea will have little, if any, potential impact on the behavior of people in that segment of the population. A slight uptick in same-sex householding, perhaps, but where SSM has been imposed the participation rates have been low and declining. Dissolution rates have been high and rising -- much higher than for unions of husband and wife. Legal contests over parental status in same-sex householding scenarios are not made smoother by the imposition of SSM. In fact, such contests make a mess of the basic principles of family law.
Yet, none of those SSM-specific trends matter much to the social institution of marriage since SSM is extramarital anyway. The problem is that for the SSM idea to become entrenched, it must demote the marriage idea for all of society, and so its reach is beyond the homosexual population.
The real measure of the SSM campaign's attack on marriage is the influence of the SSM idea on the rest of society. This is primarily a cultural influence but SSMers are trying to force cultural change through legal change.
If governmental police power is recruited to enforce the anti-marriage axioms of the SSM camaign, as it has in Canada and Holland and the UK for a few big examples, then, the influence of the SSM idea will be maginified far beyond the homosexual population's marginal domestic practices.
The SSM idea, frankly, is unsustainable without government interventions to lean against the marriage idea.
Also see:
No Explanation.
And:
Dutch Debate
.
A group of five scholars in the Netherlands issued a letter addressed to "parliaments of the world debating the issue of same-sex marriage."
[S]upporters of same-sex marriage argued forcefully in favor of the (legal and social) separation of marriage from parenting. In parliament, advocates and opponents alike agreed that same-sex marriage would pave the way to greater acceptance of alternative forms of cohabitation.
In our judgment, it is difficult to imagine that a lengthy, highly visible, and ultimately successful campaign to persuade Dutch citizens that marriage is not connected to parenthood and that marriage and cohabitation are equally valid 'lifestyle choices' has not had serious social consequences....
* * *
In effect, when there is a concerted effort to convince people that fathers are not essential, that mothers are optional, that marriage does not bond man and woman, indeed that the normativity of fatherhood-motherhood is rejected and tarnshied, then, it should come as no surprise, really, that more and more people believe it and act on in accord with the pervasive negative influence of the SSM idea.
What do you do for a living, Chairm? I'm guessing anesthesiologist.
ReplyDeleteDon't quit your day job for comedy, Miles.
ReplyDeleteSo what you're saying, R.K., is that if gay couples are allowed to marry, the terrorists will win? Christian America and Europe will decline, and all the unwashed brown people of the globe will overwhelm us?
ReplyDeleteIronically, Miles, the beneficiaries of below-replacement level birthrates are likely to be the more strictly religious of all faiths, "fundamentalist" Christians as well as Muslims and others.
You really need to read up on the many articles about the problem of low replacement levels in Europe and elsewhere. It is not about skin color, race, or even religion, but about economics (too few young to pay for the elderly) and about cultural advancement. (Ironically, cultural advancement tends to produce the very conditions which increase the vulnerability which may lead to its collapse).
I've got some bad news for you, R.K. If you think the future of Western Civilization depends on us being able to out-baby-make the developing world, then the future does look pretty bleak.
Actually, that would particularly be bad news for you, Miles. You can try to oversimplify my argument to make it look like mere race-baiting if you wish, but check out the reality first.
BTW, Fitz, thank you for the link on demographic winter that you provided, and for the rest of your post.
ReplyDeleteOf coarse before one even got to that analysis one would ask why a same-sex couple would be so selfish as to deprive a child of a Mother or Father to begin with.
ReplyDeleteSome children already lack biological parents, Fitz. Don't pretend that gay couples are breaking into suburban homes and kidnapping kids from their bio parents.
The only same-sex couple I know who is raising a child involves a lesbian mother who got pregnant while she was a college student. She's been raising a little boy, now six years old, with her female partner since the child was one.
I don't know the specifics of her impregnation, except that I'm fairly certain it wasn't intentional, and I know that she chose not to have an abortion. The father has never tried to be a part of the child's life, and the mother doesn't know how to reach him or where he is.
As it stands, the child has been raised by two women, both of whom he calls Mom. If those women could marry, it would probably benefit the son. He's a specific, actual person.
Do you think it would be better for him if his bio mom hunted down his bio dad and tried to convince the guy to marry her and act like a real father? Do you think that is always, always the best solution for a woman raising a child without the biological father?
Phil: I don't know the specifics of her impregnation, except that I'm fairly certain it wasn't intentional, and I know that she chose not to have an abortion. The father has never tried to be a part of the child's life, and the mother doesn't know how to reach him or where he is.
ReplyDeleteExcellent example of why man-woman couples need marriage.
Phil: Do you think it would be better for him if his bio mom hunted down his bio dad and tried to convince the guy to marry her and act like a real father?
ReplyDeleteIt would have been better if she'd done that before she got pregnant. Thanks for underscoring, again, why man-woman marriage is important.
Fitz: Straw man alert....Straw man alert...When did R.K. EVER argue this insane argument...Answer...never...
ReplyDeleteGet used to it. That's what Miles (aka J. Stone) does whenever he encounters an argument he cannot refute.
op-ed:
ReplyDeleteIt would have been better if she'd done that before she got pregnant.
Obviously, op-ed, that can't happen, because it is in the past. You realize that, right?
Phil,
ReplyDeleteThat is the problem with your own scenario. You wrote the scenario to put the child in jeopardy just to justify a less then satisfactory solution. You wrote the scenario, and obviously it is just as well to write how the scenario should have happened.
In short, don't feed the bears.
Op-Ed correctly noted what a real marriage ideal would mean in that scenario. There are scenarios that you can write where marriage between the parents is not practical, but that is always a tragedy in and of itself. Assistance may be needed, but that doesn't justify calling something a marriage which doesn't follow the same purpose that would have worked to protect against that situation in the first place.
Again, you can cry in your type-writer that Op-Ed pointed out what marriage really means in your scenario, but he was every bit as right to do so. The two links I provided are fictional tales, one relayed by me and one by Op-Ed, which illustrate that.
Phil: Obviously, op-ed, that can't happen, because it is in the past.
ReplyDeleteBut it's not too late for those in the future whose understanding of marriage you want to change.
Don't feed the bears, I like that :)
ReplyDeleteDo you think it would be better for him if his bio mom hunted down his bio dad and tried to convince the guy to marry her and act like a real father?
Yes. That's certainly the least tragic solution, and the most fair to the child. Why should the father get off scott free here? At a minimum, he owes child support, and probably ought to have some visitation.
This kid HAS a mother and a father, barring some tragic circumstance. But his mother won't allow it... because she's gay? Or for some other reason?
I've compiled a list of 10 assertions and am curious to find out which, if any, of them are held by any of you to be false. If you wish, you can simply respond with something like "1-7, agree; 8, not sure; 9-10, disagree."
ReplyDelete1. Some people are gay.
2. Some gay people live together as couples ("couple": two people who are married, engaged, or otherwise closely associated romantically or sexually).
3. Gay couples are prohibited from marrying in California.
4. Gay couples/individuals are not prohibited from adopting (or creating through IVF/ART) children in California.
5. Tens of thousands of children are being raised by gay couples in California alone.
6. "[I]t is almost certainly true that gay and lesbian couples and their children would benefit by having gay marriage."
7. There is no guarantee that California's prohibition against gay couples marrying will ever be lifted.
8. Whether gay couples can marry in California has no effect on the legal capacity of those couples "to become parents" (via the means discussed in #4 above).
9. It is possible that some gay couples in California are waiting "to become parents" until they are legally allowed to marry.
10. It is possible that the sun will explode tomorrow.
"1. Some people are gay."
ReplyDeleteI believe some people have attractions to the same sex.
"2. Some gay people live together as couples ("couple": two people who are married, engaged, or otherwise closely associated romantically or sexually)."
Of course.
"3. Gay couples are prohibited from marrying in California."
Same-sex couples aren't granted marriage licenses. They can choose to be monogamous, live together, have a ceremonie and parties, refer to themselves socially as married, exchange rings, etc.
"4. Gay couples/individuals are not prohibited from adopting (or creating through IVF/ART) children in California."
If I had my way, third party reproduction would only be legal for a bride+groom couple - or at least only a "right" for such couples.
"5. Tens of thousands of children are being raised by gay couples in California alone."
This is usually the result of someone messing up big time, such as making babies with one person and then taking up with someone of the same sex.
"6. '[I]t is almost certainly true that gay and lesbian couples and their children would benefit by having gay marriage.'"
Probably. The children would be even better off with a bride+groom couple raising them, though, and the detriments to society outweigh the benefits to a few couples. It would benefit Native Americans, a class that has been discriminated against, if they were each guaranteed a million dollars of taxpayer money every year. Wouldn't obligate us to do it.
"7. There is no guarantee that California's prohibition against gay couples marrying will ever be lifted."
The California Marriage Amendment could be appealed, struck down, or may stay in place.
"8. Whether gay couples can marry in California has no effect on the legal capacity of those couples "to become parents" (via the means discussed in #4 above)."
FALSE. They would have more leverage to adopt.
"9. It is possible that some gay couples in California are waiting 'to become parents' until they are legally allowed to marry."
Not likely for many, given domestic partnerships.
"10. It is possible that the sun will explode tomorrow."
Highly improbable, but possible.
miles: I've compiled a list of 10 assertions and am curious to find out which, if any, of them are held by any of you to be false.
ReplyDeleteThat's what your own blog is for. Please keep comments relevant to the post to which they are attached.
Thanks, Mr. Walrus. Anyone else?
ReplyDeleteAnd don't be such a spoilsport, Op-Ed. These assertions are relevant to the discussion held yesterday. If you don't want to contribute constructively, no one is forcing you.
Miles, feel free to offer up such comments as front page material, and I have no problem with moving it there.
ReplyDeleteIts not off-topic for the site, but maybe for the discussion thread. If you wish to take polls, the front page is a better location, no?
Thank you, On Lawn. That sounds like a good idea. Is there something I need to do, or are you able to move the material to the front page yourself? (I'm not the most tech-savvy person around, I'm afraid.) Thanks for the assistance.
ReplyDeleteJust make the comment, and request it to be on the front page, for future reference.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't mean I'll do it for every post, but I'll let you know publicly why it may be denied if at all.
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ReplyDeleteSince Miles' list was to be moved to a new blogpost, I decided to withdraw my initial response and wait to see if Miles' assertions would be accompanied by a better explanation.
ReplyDeleteFor discussion of the lack of a clear explanation, see here..
* * *
Under the new blogpost that On Lawn put up for Miles, I explained the context in which his list of assertions had first appeared here in this discussion.
For the full comment, see here.
* * *
The context as indicated in Playful Walrus' blogpost above:
PW used the example of the all-male same-sex pairing to provide contrast to the societal significance of coitus. Whatever sexual behavior such a pairing might engage in "does not allow them to contribute to society in any positive way that they couldn't have without ever touching each other."
The purpose, as such, of Miles responding to that here with his list of assertions, was to address the following:
Can "anyone effectively argue that same-sex pairing is as beneficial to society as marriage"?
Miles said he had additional purposes; the only one he stated was "to discuss the implications of allowing (or not allowing) gay couples to marry."
The emphasis on gay was, as Miles explained, his way of specifying a sexualized version of the one-sexed arrangement. So Miles had recognized the comparison with coitus that PW had intended.
That said, I'll respond to the list of assertions give the context and purpose presented by Playful Walrus (and also Mile's additional stated purpose). That response will be left as a comment under the guest blogpost that On Lawn setup.
See here.
Mile's list of assertions has a different immediate context and purpose but that lacks clear explanation from Miles -- by his design.
So I'll respond in the the context and to the purpose derived from PW's blogpost.
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ReplyDelete