Removed from consideration, part 3

In an earlier blogpost I observed that SSM argumentation provides the best arguments against SSM. This irony is something with which the SSM campaign has yet to come to terms.

Unknown, a pro-SSM commenter in our comment sections, made comments recently that effectively dismissed from consideration the mutual attraction between those who'd SSM. Instead Unknown has brought up conduct and societal approval and disapproval of conduct.

That switch from attraction to conduct is tut-tutted by the typical SSMer who objects to civil discussion of the argument that same-sex sexual behavior is immoral behavior. The SSMer conflates attraction with behavior and places group identity above and beyond the reach of public morality. The difference between feelings and conduct and between group identity and conduct must be obscured, deliberately and belligerently, according to the SSMer. This blindness, the SSMer insists, must be imposed by government.

This is not because the SSMer has won the moral argument. Refusal and inability to engage substantively is the retreat itself. But then the SSMer claims victory behind the facade of neutrality. The retreat is real but the SSMer shifts to an attack on the person who would dare observe the fact of retreat. Then with open disregard for the actual moral argument, the SSMer, having chosen to flee rather than make a counter argument, proceeds to declare that the moral argument has been run out of town and those who refuse to submit or at least appear to submit must not be welcomed in the public discourse on marriage. Submission is the price of admission.

All this posing and fleeing and ad hom attacking is because the SSMer is not equipped with a counter moral argument -- one of approbation of same-sex sexual behavior. While it is undoubtedly a tactical retreat from a moral battle that the SSMer must fear to lose, the SSMer would rather shift ground from marriage to something else anyway. Hence the homosexual emphasis.

While the SSMer will flee engagement on the moral argument, the defense of marriage does not depend on the moral argument against same sex sexual behavior. Instead it hinges on the justness of societal preference for the congual relationship of husband and wife. But the SSMer will strike the pose of one who defeated the moral argument against same sex sexual behavior; supposedly the retreat to moral neutrality is recast as bold charge up to the moral high ground from which the SSMer can claim to have rose above pesky disputes of morality. The effort to brazen it out follows a script that features the assertion of the supremacy of gay identity politics.

These tactics are meant to remove from consideration the moral basis for laws and policies that express the societal regard for the core meaning of marriage. Marital status is a special status in our culture and in our legal tradition. SSMers have conceded as much in courts in which the pro-SSM arguments have been made.

Prominent among those arguments is the attempt to assert a moral equivalence between the man-woman basis of marriage and the racist basis for the defunct laws against inter-racial marriage. This is used as "moral dynamite", as FSB blogger David Blankenhorn has put it. That is indeed the way that SSMers consider it and, thus, they hurl the 'bigot' and 'hate' bombs from ground they claimed as morally neutral.

The racist analogy is presented by the SSMer with the pretense of a moral analogy but it fails in terms of moral reasoning. It fails in terms of plain legal reasoning. But it provides tactical cover - like a bombardment - that distracts from the lack of a moral argument in favor of same-sex sexual behavior.

SSMers invest much import in the notion of "the same sex couple". When asked what they mean by this turn of phrase, the typical SSMer will become agitated and insist that it is self-explanatory. Other than the count of two, what is meant by 'couple'? Not romance, surely, since romance is not a legal requirement. Not mutual attraction of a sexual kind for that is not a legal requirement for SSM.

It means just a count of two. And that is an arbitrary count since the same-sex scenario is not intrinsically limited by the number two.

Also it is not intrinsically a sexualized type of relationship. Unknown has already acknowledged that much in his understanding of the law he envisages for SSM.

This stands in contrast to marriage law which is based on the sexual type of relationship between man and woman. The lines of eligiblity are drawn around that which is intrinsically two-sexed because it is sexual and around that which is sexual because it is two-sexed. The union of husband and wife is not sex-neutral in marriage law.

And so the SSM argument depends on injecting into the discussion an emphasis on homosexuality or more pointedly an emphasis on the group identity they would prefer society to refer to as 'gay'. Indeed the SSMer will use "same-sex couple" in lieu of the more obvious "the homosexual couple" or "the gay couple" and makes repeated comparison with "the heterosexual couple".

But two heterosexual persons of the same sex are ineligible to marry. Two homosexual persons of the opposite sexes are eligible to marry within the boundaries drawn around the core of marriage. Some two-sexed scenarios are ineligible because of societal regard for th man-woman basis of marriage. Societal regard for the core meaning of marriage justifies and sustains both the special status of the union of husband and wife and the limits on eligibility. The SSM idea is based on societal disregard for that.

The SSMer wants society to regard gay identity rather than marriage itself. But gay identity is not a window into the social instutution of marriage. It is something extrinsic to marriage.

The marriage law is already neutral on homosexuality. But the SSMer insists that society regard homosexuality with favoritism and, on that basis, remake marriage law.

Once again there is the pose of having retreated to neutral ground in which favoritism is removed from consideration. Yet despite the lack of a homosexual criterion for eligibility to SSM, the SSMer will insist that the basis for SSM in law would be same-sex sexual attraction and same-sex sexual romance and, indeed, the societal approbation for acting on those feelings.

But the legal arguments in favor of establishing SSM in law contradict such a basis.

And so the SSMer dodges the actual disagreement regarding the marriage issue and instead returns to the homosexual emphasis. The issue of gay identity is outside the marriage issue. But gay identity is central to the pro-SSM issue of licensing of - and governmental preferential treatment of - same-sex sexual attraction, same-sex sexual romance, and same-sex sexual behavior - i.e. the conflation that is gay identity.

The pro-SSM song and dance is assert-retreat-smear-ellide-deny. The issue of marriage law is the core meaning of marriage. The issue of SSM law would be gay identity politics. The arguments in defense of marriage reference marriage but the arguments that push SSM reference gay identity and little else. Along the way the SSM cause attacks the marriage idea, promotes double standards, and would remove from consideration the moral basis for marriage law.