SSM Idea is Unjust and Incoherent

Recommended reading:

Patrick Lee in The Public Discourse.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/01/4597

A law is unjust only if the distinction it creates is not essentially related to a legitimate purpose of law.

Here I will add my own comments to snippets from the article. Patrick Lee's observations describe the arbitrariness of the SSM idea.

I highly recommend reading the full article and contemplating the tone and the content of the conflict that SSMers bring in their objections to societal regard for the marriage idea. Feel welcome to discuss the article or my comments on it.

* * * *

SSM argumentation depends on this principle of unjust discrimination quoted above. At least superficially.

The pro SSM complaint is that the husband-wife union is treated differently from the man-man and the woman-woman types of relationships. They presuppose that the three types of relationships are commonly related to the legitimate purpose of marriage law. And, of course, they dispute that purpose.

Their rhetoric also presupposes that all three are sexual types of arrangements, by default. Thus the form of their complaint is one against arbitrary discrimination based on same-sex sexual attraction, same-sex sexual romance, and same-sex sexual behavior -- together taken as the gay identity. In this way, they obscure the significance of sex difference even within their presuppositions and also make no relevant distinction between the all-male and the all-female types of relationships. Hence the rhetorical juxtaposition of the "same sex couple" and the "heterosexual couple", as if same-sex was the equivalent of homosexual or gay.

That, in my view, is sleight of hand which would make the application of the favored term, same-sex, an arbitrarily over-exclusive distinction. Afterall, SSM argumentation produces the result that SSM, at law, would not be a sexual type of relationship. This contradicts the pro SSM complaint in the first place.

Back to Patrick Lee:

But whatever one holds about the morality of homosexual acts, it is clear that the state does have an interest in promoting and regulating marriage as traditionally defined, and that the sexual relationships of same-sex couples are distinct in kind from that.

This is a problem for SSMers who wage relentless attacks on the legitimate purpose of marriage law in the hope of removing the distinction. They make that effort because the distinction stands in their way. Its significance is not beyond their knowledge.

So, even  if -- contrary to fact -- the state did have an interest in promoting same-sex sexual relationships, that interest would be different from the one served by promoting marriage.

Implicitly in argument, if not explicitly in rhetoric, SSMers acknowledge that the morality of same-sex sexual behavior is at issue, however, they claim that for them resolving that question is irrelevant to the purpose of marriage law.

That is contrary to the obvious emphasis on homosexuality and on gay identity in both the rhetoric and the argumentation of SSMers. This emphasis is supposedly what SSMers believe distinguishes the type of relationship they have in mind from the rest of the types of relationships that are neither SSM nor marriage.

But, as Patrick Lee said, if we put aside the issue of the morality of same-sex sexual behavior there remains a distinction of kind.

SSMers acknowledge there is some sort of difference in kind that sets SSM apart from other kinds of arrangements. They understand the notion of difference in kind of relationship. They assume that this difference is shared with the husband-wife relationship and as such it is a distinction that merits promoting and regulating SSM as marriage.

But if, contrary to SSM arguments, there is a distinction between marriage and SSM, then, SSMers would be expected to labor mightily to obscure it. And they do.

Yet they have difficulty articulating the stuff that is common to SSM and to marriage but not applicable to the rest of the types of relationships and kinds of domestic arrangements. They do rage against the core of marriage but the mumble about the essence of SSM or they gesture toward stuff that their own arguments do not support substantively.

That got my attention more than a decade ago.

The next big thing that drew my attention and which prompted me to join in the defense of marriage (in addition to my lifetime commitment to the promotion of marriage) was the preposterous argumentation that they set against the core meaning of marriage. Lousy arguments usually make for more baiting and bickering than actual airing of substantive disagreement.  So I sought the best arguments for SSM and discovered that the SSM idea lacks strong arguments and depends very much on profoudly flawed thinking. It can only be advanced with brazen arbitrariness. Demonstrate the weakness of the pro SSM view and expect to be attacked as a person. The tactic is to induce issue fatigue.

Obscuring the core of marriage is an unambiguous and necessary goal of SSM. Their efforts are characterized by some of the worst thinking about marriage, the Law, governance, and human nature.

It is reminisent of the ideological hostility toward marriage, family, and civil society that I and my family encountered in our homelad. The attempts to publicly humiliate and to misrepresent are habitual among SSMers far and wide. Most SSM supporters manage only soft support for SSM and tend to go along toget along; soft SSMers generally follow the lead of the hardcore radicals whose belligerence seemingly knows no bounds. If that sort of wrecklessness were to become official government policy, history will repeat itself, yet again, and the supremacy of identity politics will take generations to correct.

At root the SSM idea is radically anti-social and radically anti-liberty and yet it is dressed-up as the very opposite. In my view the ways and means of the SSM campaign are openly bigoted in terms of what it is hostile toward and in terms of for which it demands favoritism. The rights talk is a disservice to civil rights movements everywhere. That rights talk is just lipstick on a pig.

The SSM idea and its campaign rhetoric merit no less than a rigorous and determined opposition.

Back to Patrick Lee:

And so the two types of relationships or arrangements should not be lumped together. Moreover, falsely to equate the two is to obscure the nature of marriage.

[...]

So, the proposal is for the state to promote something called, marriage and that marriage is to be understood in a way that will include same-sex partners. [...] But what, in their view, is the thing called "marriage," and why should the state promote it? What distinguishes marital unions from others, such that the state should promote them?

SSMers are obstinate that the state does not promote marriage. It just gives licenses for no particular or for any and all reasons. That contradicts the courtcentric pro SSM argumentation pesented in favor of the societal preferrential treatment of marriage. It has prestige of some sort but on what basis the SSMer is usually very reluctant to say. What is offerred is sentimental pablum that does not merit moving the hand of government. The SSM campaign delivers the mixed message that marriage has a special status because the government benefits this type of relationship but that there is no special reason for this special status.

One cannot just pronounce that these couples will now count as married; there must be something one means by "being married"; something held in common by all married couples. But the same-sex "marriage" position cannot provide a coherent account what that something is.

The typical response from SSMers is that they believe that there is no coherent answer possible or even desirable. They absolve themselves of the need to be held accountable for this lack of coherency in the pro SSM position. They say that if there is a core it is drawn from government and not from the essentials of a type of relationship.

There must be some non-arbitrary features shared by relationships that the state promotes which make them apt for public promotion, and make it fair for the state not to promote in the same way other relationships lacking those features. Without this the distinction is inviduous discrimination. The conjugal understanding of marriage has a clear answer: a) marriage is a distinct basic human good, that needs social support and that uniquely provides important social functions; (b) marriage's organic bodily union inherent orientation to procreation distinguishes it from other relationships similar in superficial respects to it. But the same-sex proposal's conception of marriage has no answer. In fact, its conception of marriage is actually an arbitrarily selected class, and so the enactment of this proposal would be unjust.

SSM argumentation begins, we are told, with the supposedly arbitrary terms for eligibility in the status quo. That is, the man-woman criterion is deemed unjust discrimination based, not on the kind of relationship, but on the sexual orientation of the participants -- or I would suggest more precisely, based on the socio-political gay identity group's claim to a special place in society. What makes marriage special for SSMers is the gay identity group's demand that same-sex sexual behavior must be regarded and treated as the moral and legal equivalent of conjugal relations; it is to be enforced by government authority so that fellow citizens must be taught to believe it and and to act as if this was true ... or at least act as if they believed it was true. The over-arching theme is to use marriage as a vehicle by which to promote a nonmarriage purpose. Indeed, to promote an anti-marriage purpose.

Please go read Patrick Lee's article and consider what the SSMers you have encountered might believe to be non-arbitrary about their revisionist view but arbitrary about the conjugal view. The upshot is that if the SSM proposal replaces the marriage idea then the special status of marriage will become unsustainable both culturally and in terms of the law and social policy. First, because the marriage idea would be replaced by the SSM idea; second because the marriage idea would be deemed hateful and bigoted and unjust; and third because marital status would become an arbitraily favored status alighted on the slim reed of gay identity politics.

Remember that in oral argument before the California state high court the pro SSM side shrugged and said that if marital staus was abolished that would satisfy their demands. They did add that they counted on society to sustain the special status of marriage rather than abolish it. The promoters of the SSM idea are holding marriage hostage, in effect, to their political demands. The hardcore SSMers regard this to be about "just us" and not justice. It really cannot be more arbitrary than that.