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Monday, July 25, 2011
Why I don't see marriage as a contract or a piece of paper.
When I look at family public policy, I never see it as a 'contract'. Parents don't need a contract to raise their own child, so the idea that we like to have parents raise them together shouldn't need a contract either. Moms and dads are by nature and by right are suppose to raise their children. The event in which they are married, is status to the community that is their intention to be one in that endeavor.
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What your opinion is about marriage means nothing in a court of law Renee. I married my husband out of love, not out of a desire to create children. Not all marriages are about children. We knew heading into marriage that I was not able to carry to term, but my marriage has just as much meaning and significance and yours.
ReplyDeleteI take offense about how people like you are always saying that marriage is about children. It is not, and to say such a thing belittles all of us that can't have children. It is about what the couple married make it about, and that is what the law has always been. Fight the gays all you want but at least fight from a foundation of truth.
I don't know Michelle, I don't agree that Renee is fighting gays or you.
ReplyDeleteAnd what Renee's opinion about marriage means everything in her advocacy, and the voting booth. Which in turn has an impact on the court of law -- just like the rest of us.
I don't know, I just don't see what the hub-bub is in your comment. Your marriage is your marriage, nothing Renee says actually belittles your marriage.
Could you clarify your comment a bit?
I married my husband for love also, it just happens that our physical expression of love leads to getting pregnant. Children are the natural/biological consequence of love between a man and a woman. That foundation is based on truth.
ReplyDeleteNow secular law can not prove or disprove love. Love is an opinion, love is a feeling. Our laws have to deal with facts. Facts show heterosexual sex leads to pregnancy, facts also prove whose the mom and dad. It's the only objective reason why government is in the public policy of 'love making'.
We live in a world in which women 'fear' babies, and justly so. We work hard for our education, try to afford a good home, and maintain a stable career. Just one baby and that changes everything. Babies are a risk, because of the investment we made. Our public policy has to change to make things more flexible.
Michelle, like I always say eve gay atheists have a mom and dad. Again I think that can be proved by fact also. Our society leaves no room for error, and I don't know you or your situation. But let's say a couple who holds the same view as yours, did get pregnant by accident. Would a child created out of a love between a man and a woman be the worst thing for yourselves and for this world?
Unfortunately, it may be for many couples. We need rethink infrastructure and how work needs to be more flexible, there are so many ways marriage/family needs to be addressed in public policy.
Like I said I live in Massachusetts, I believe in my opinion that sexual orientation is very much 'a class' that needs protection. I also think though, by nature, we all have a mom and dad, and children are created through heterosexual behavior that concept of marriage is more then a love between two people. I don't know how these two ideals began to conflict with another, but I take offense to think anyone who understands how babies are made has something against gays.
Michelle, I don't know you, but I take a good guess you have a mother and father. Good or bad, whether they loved your or abandoned you, you have a mother and father. Mothers and fathers need to work together for the benefit of their child, marriage as a matter of public policy works in benefit of the child.
On Lawn, I think Michelle takes offense because it belittles those who can't have children. Yes some heterosexual couples end up suffering from infertility, in fact many because we did the right thing to invest in education and career. It's painful, something my peers are going through.
ReplyDeleteBut acknowledging that individuals have a mom and dad, and the social benefits of every has when mom and dad have a healthy relationship with another shouldn't be offensive to anyone.
Emotions are real when it comes to infertility, and I can respect and value those emotions. I also have to value and respect the objective needs of children. Children have rights, and whenever we can create a public policy that assist moms and dads cooperating, I will advocate that as "a liberal".
Sorry for one more comment, just early last week, I brought up something quite relevant earlier this month, where I talk about (and even praise) the diverse types of individuals who foster/adopt, but I also address what adoption isn't for.
ReplyDeletehttp://opine-editorials.blogspot.com/2011/07/because-adoption-doesnt-cure.html
"Expanding the type of households, that can apply to adopt, doesn’t address the issue of fatherlessness in our communities. The only thing that can solve fatherlessness is a healthy relationship between a mother and father. Once upon a time, we use to refer to this as marriage."
Look I don't like being referred as a bigot, because I'm not. I pretty much accept for the rest of my life, I will wrongly accused as one. It's a small price to pay for acknowledging reason and truth.
Renee Aste,
Lowell Massachusetts
What you seem to be missing is that while you are trying to create a solid argument against the homosexual marriage you inadvertently (giving you credit here) harm all those innocent bystanders like myself caught in your crossfire. I'm not able to carry a child full term, not because of life choices I've made or fault of my own. My husband knew this before we married and he loves me enough to be with me even though we won't be having children.
ReplyDeleteYour claim that marriage is about children disrespects all marriages out there that are not about children, and I'd greatly appreciate if you would stop making such false statements. An argument based on lies like this shouldn't come from someone who claims to be a woman of faith.
Oh, and don't try to hide behind the "people call me a bigot" talk point, this has nothing to do with that and you know it. Trying to fashion what I've said into claiming you're a bigot is a lie you create for which you'll have to answer for to God.
I don't care about your views on the gays, for me your attack on marriage is personal. You are assaulting my marriage and marriages like mine each and every time you say marriage is about children.
I would have thought that you, a woman, would understand why your claim would hurt women like me who can't have children, but I guess you're just not that sensitive towards the feelings of others.
Michelle,
ReplyDeleteOp-Ed likes to call your argument "appeal to the thinnest skin". It means that you are asking people to be persuaded because you feel offended.
It is always tricky to mix emotions and logic, but this is wrong even from an emotional standpoint.
I think you really ought to re-think your stance and stand down.
And I say this for Renee as well as you.
Your advocacy is far more dangerous than you realize. I think Renee is being generous when she says that noting the purpose of marriage is about children, that is belittling your marriage. I agree with the sympathy, but not the conclusion.
If she is belittling your marriage, then the Olympics belittles children, the elderly, those without feet, etc...
I also don't see how your situation at all impacts Renee's advocacy. If your marriage derails Renee's advocacy then we should get rid of wheelchair ramps, braille, or any other accommodation made for people who cannot do something everyone else can.
Are those accommodations belittling? No.
But you get all offended anyway, don't you. Do you really want marriage to no longer specifically recognize the special capacity between a man and a woman? That recognizes something important, something that as children of a mother and father we all share in common.
Does recognizing that capacity belittle people who personally are impaired? If yes, then how? How would that be belittling and wheelchair ramps not belittling?
Renee isn't saying you shouldn't be married. I don't say that either. You are trying to do everything you can to be married in spite of your impairment. So is your husband. Why would we look down on that at all? I think not only did you jump to a hasty conclusion on that, you jumped to a conclusion that is patently false -- we don't look down on impairment.
Two of my favorite women in the world are Eleanor Roosevelt and Audrey Hepburn. Why? Because both of those women spent a lifetime talking to people who felt they might not be pretty enough, or might be too poor, or might not be good enough, and told them they were pretty, richly blessed, and good people.
Would you tell them they are wrong, would you turn to the crowd they worked so hard to help and say, "no these people are lying, you should feel sooo belittled, you should feel ashamed!"
How dangerous your advocacy is. To be honest, your situation is great, but your personal presumption in this matter is to me like spitting in the faces of everyone, helpers and those being helped.
We all have things we don't do as well as we wish, and things we can't do at all no matter how much we want to. Honestly, what makes you so important that we need to discourage recognizing something so important to everyone because you feel what you can't do is so much *more* important?
You can save your attempt to divert my points into trivialities, I'm not going to chase you down all those rabbit holes.
ReplyDeleteYou offend people everywhere that are married without children when you say marriage is about children, plain and simple. You do this for the sake of having an erroneous argue point against homosexual marriages.
Renee is a woman and you are not, so she has an advantage to understanding my gripe with her, and she is the one I direct my frustrations to.
Funny,
ReplyDeleteWhen I mention the everyone else in the world but you, you call it a diversion into "trivialities".
Yet you presume to talk for "people everywhere that are married without children".
I'm finding it very hard to take your perspective on this as anything but presumptive and self-centered.
And again you say, "I don't care about your views on the gays, for me your attack on marriage is personal" but turn around on every occasion to accuse, "[y]ou do this for the sake of having an erroneous argue point against homosexual marriages".
To be honest, I feel privileged that you created a blogger account just now when you started talking to us. I like to think that our articles are that engaging that they bring people out from behind the stage to participate.
But your advocacy here has been the type that I can't find much value in.
In short, while I sympathize with your situation I don't come to the same conclusion about it that you do.
And while I appreciate your desire to get an account and talk to us, I do not appreciate your recent refusal to consider what we are saying, and purposefully calling the concerns I recognize in helping people all over the world as a trivial diversion from considering your own offense.
Did you know the word, 'matrimony' comes from the Latin, 'the act of becoming a mother'? So I believe I got precedence of ritual, civil law, and nature on my side here.
ReplyDeleteAnd why does the CDC track the number of unwed births? When I give birth, why does the government want to know if I'm married and if not who's the daddy? And why is my husband presumed to be the biological daddy?
I have married heterosexual friends without children. Whether it be infertility, cost of living/student loans, even by choice.... I do know that they love one another and I hope if by chance there is an oops, that the married couple, their extended family, and the community at large will help them support be wonderful parents.
They call them reproductive organs, when we have sexual intercourse, because they were designed by evolution to reproduce. Also being a complex species, we know that much investment from both parents is needed to raise off spring. That's how I thought evolution has worked in its way.
Please come to your senses, nothing was stated was belittling or offensive.
The only thing being trivialized is the need of individuals at the time of birth. We, as children, need the full support of our mother and our father. They brought us onto this Earth, as children we're defenseless. We need them to care and love us, and the best way is when a mother and father cooperate with each other.
Marriage was (and is) the only thing that brings man and woman together.
Take care,
Renee
What does my blogger account have to do with this? Feel the need to attack my person since you can't argue away my point?
ReplyDeleteMarriage is about what two people who enter the contract decide it's about, nothing more and nothing less.
Oh, and as far as the Olympics go:
The youngest olympian was 13, the eldest was 72, and there have in fact been handicapped Olympians.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWow Michelle, I hate to say it but you are really grasping at straws to take offense at.
ReplyDeleteWhat, at all, could one reasonably take offense at in the statement, " I appreciate your desire to get an account and talk to us" or "I feel privileged that you created a blogger account just now when you started talking to us. I like to think that our articles are that engaging that they bring people out from behind the stage to participate."
Marriage is about what two people who enter the contract decide it's about, nothing more and nothing less.
See, now you are the one belittling what a Marriage is.
You see, we already have something that is "about what[ever] two people who enter the contract decide it's about", and they are called "contracts".
Marriage, as Renee pointed out in the post above, is more than just a contract -- whatever two people think they want from each other at any given time. It is a specific obligation to responsible procreation which exists even if contracts don't.
The youngest olympian was 13, the eldest was 72, and there have in fact been handicapped Olympians.
You really should re-read that point. The fact that some sports favor youth and some favor age, and some handicaps have no impact on competition but some do, is exactly the kind of limitation that you are saying people should be offended for having, and even more offended if people accommodate.
Maybe it is better to let you go back to talking to yourselves instead of having dialog with an outsider. You clearly don't understand that you have offended me by saying marriage is about children.
ReplyDeleteNo, we don't understand why you are offended? It makes no sense on multiple levels. You are angry, lashing out, flopping around with vaugness. You have valid reason to be offended, whatever is really hurting you find peace.
ReplyDeleteRenee, it's pretty simple, I don't like when you argue that marriage is about children. That is my whole problem with you and this blog.
ReplyDeleteMarriage is not about children all the time, and when you say marriage is about children it distorts the truth that some marriages have nothing to do with children, like mine.
"Marriage is about what two people who enter the contract decide it's about, nothing more and nothing less. "
ReplyDeleteSo what I'm getting at is that you get offended when children enter the relationship, because marriage is ONLY about two people? Children are 'property', they're human beings.
What matters is not the defenseless children, who should to be loved and cared by their mother and father, what really matters are the 'two parties'?
Geesh.... Hope you have a change of heart.
Michelle, Please take this with charity, even though you will be even more offended, but how dare you be so completely self-center and narcissistic to attack the idea that mothers and fathers should raise their children in a cooperative manner under one roof and as a matter of public policy acknowledge and support that.
oops.... children 'aren't' property....
ReplyDeleteBecause Michelle is just begging for more evidence, that will offend her. Why else would we call it define it as one man and one woman for all these years.... here I go with more facts that will offend her marriage.
ReplyDeletehttp://fatherhood.about.com/od/fathersrights/a/fatherless_children.htm
Here are three...
Suicide. 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau of the Census)
Behavioral Disorders. 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes (United States Center for Disease Control)
High School Dropouts. 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.)
All these facts are simply trivial though. A man and woman living together, cooperatively in a healthy relationship with openness to children, how dare we care as a society! Rather marriage should be about a contract between two people, and absolutely nothing to do with the well being of the offspring between a man and a woman. Evidence? Who needs evidence, who needs objective understanding, Michelle feelings are hurt.
And Michellle that is how I see you're argument.
Sigh....
Maybe it is better to let you go back to talking to yourselves instead of having dialog with an outsider.
ReplyDeleteIt was a dialog up to the point you started calling discussion about concerns for people other then you to be trivial diversions.
At that point it seems you are the one uninterested in dialog.
Let me get this straight, I say marriage is not always about children and that hits Renee's ears as "Children are 'property'"?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you don't practice law, you need more practice in logic.
Btw Renee, you are one of the few true female chauvinists I've come across.
Your hatred towards men is a whole other issue you need to come to terms with as well. You should read your own writing sometime and look at it from the perspective of psychology; you might learn a thing or two about yourself you'd find very upsetting.
We're done here, unless you'd like to take another potshot at completely distorting my words.
Yeah, you should be lecturing me on logic. You're offended that I acknowledge where babies come from. Seriously.
ReplyDeleteMarriage is a contract about 'nothing really', just happens to be about two people'. Yet it is so important as a right....
You are extremely disingenuous, as we have been trying to be charitably with you. As you saw I corrected my typo, talk about distorting words.
I think we all got played with this troll.
More on Michelle, the troll.... hence the reason why a new account was created for the purposes of posting here. Ahem...
ReplyDelete"I would have thought that you, a woman, would understand why your claim would hurt women like me who can't have children, but I guess you're just not that sensitive towards the feelings of others."
Oh, the irony! One would think as a woman, you would sympathize with a single mother who has been abandoned by the father of her child! Never mind that half of all infertility is a male problem.
Hey, if you can't argue against my point with logic you can simply attack me as a person, right? Let the ad hominem attacks fly Renee, and let us see why you'll never find your way to a court of law.
ReplyDeleteMarriage is not always about children. That is the truth you can't shape into something else.
Marriage is not always about children. That is the truth you can't shape into something else.
ReplyDeleteMarriage the cultural institution is about children (though that's an oversimplified way of putting it, yes) even though not every individual marriage is, and we have never said that every marriage must produce children, or that any marriage with a potential mother and father that does not produce children is any less a marriage because of it.
You crossed a line when you accused Renee of "lying", Michelle. A lie is to say something knowing it to be untrue. We all know that not every individual marriage produces children. You do not know that children are not central to the cultural institution. You can argue that that's a debatable point if you wish, but don't argue that you know it to be untrue, and don't argue that people who disagree with you know it to be untrue. That is an unworthy method of debate.
Thanks for the entertainment Michelle.
ReplyDeleteHey, if you can't argue against my point with logic you can simply attack me as a person, right?
Only, you didn't make a point, you complained you were offended.
And your goading, "you can't argue against my point" have more weight if it weren't for the fact that Renee already did discuss it, and you never even acknowledged what Renee wrote.
As I recall, it was you who decided to not engage in logical discussion anymore when you decided anything about anyone but you was diversion into triviality.
And now you are accusing Renee of lying? Poor form.
I have to admit, you've abandoned all pretense of sincerity. And that is even more sad to see.
From the get-go, Michelle mentioned it was personal.
ReplyDeleteThe completely ironic part is that I'm really supportive to the needs of my friends who are trying to have a baby, usually one of the first things when they get off the Pill is call me. Why because well with whole Natural Family Planning I practice.
Knowing about fertility and infertility, I never ask 'why don't you have kids yet', like I mentioned in the first post I don't know what a couple has been through. I just don't, but I relate to the factors that postpone childbearing, and see how trying for a baby really hard can drive you crazy. Just search trying to get pregnant after 35, and it is a really stressful read. You spend 15-20 trying NOT to get pregnant, only to deal drop in fertility when you do.
Still I pointed out facts, on why marriage exists.
Facts about the initial necessity that fathers are more then sperm donors. Fathers play a role, even at an evolutionary scale of being attached to the mother of his children. Yes, it emotionally love why we marry, but chemically it's all about creating an environment to welcome children into the relationship.
Here is a post from 08'
http://www.healthychild.com/attachment-and-connection/bonding-matters-the-chemistry-of-attachment/
Bonding Matters. . . The Chemistry of Attachment
"Released in response to nearness and touch, vasopressin promotes bonding between the father and the mother, helps the father recognize and bond to his baby, and makes him want to be part of the family, rather than alone. It has gained a reputation as the "monogamy hormone." Dr. Theresa Crenshaw, author of The Alchemy of Love and Lust, says, "Testosterone wants to prowl, vasopressin wants to stay home." She also describes vasopressin as tempering the man's sexual drive.
Vasopressin reinforces the father's testosterone-promoted protective inclination regarding his mate and child, but tempers his aggression, making him more reasonable and less extreme. By promoting more rational and less capricious thinking, this hormone induces a sensible paternal role, providing stability as well as vigilance."
Michelle, who needs courts? All you have to pay off politicians with big donors. And as with what we see in NY, and now Maryland. Follow the money, it's all corrupt.
ReplyDeleteWhy not talk about courts.... Back in 06' New York Courts sided with marriage as one man and one woman*. It was legislature that redefined it, what is the most interesting things is the how money infused the movement. Gay marriage isn't like the civil rights movement of the 60's, gay marriage is just another special interest. The Wall Street that screwed over our economy, have become biggest supported of gay marriage in New York. How does the Democratic Party, which has historically know to care about the poor reconcile with that?
ReplyDelete* The New York Case in support of man/woman marriage
From the Court of Appeals in New York
" In arguing that the definition is overinclusive, plaintiffs point out that many opposite-sex couples cannot have or do not want to have children. How can it be rational, they ask, to permit these couples, but not same-sex couples, to marry? The question is not a difficult one to answer.
While same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are easily distinguished, limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples likely to have children would require grossly intrusive inquiries, and arbitrary and unreliable line-drawing."
ReneeL > From the get-go, Michelle mentioned it was personal.
ReplyDeleteThat is a good point. She made many decisions in the discussion which were suspicious.
People who make their own offense the only point in an argument, for reasons that they can't quite explain or even give much introspection to, are not the best spokespeople for any movement. In fact they will only undermine their own credibility and that of their cause with it.
We all have friends who suffer from infertility in one way or another. I encourage her to speak out on the matter to help raise awareness, and I hope she chooses a better way to do that in the future.