To me both sides of this issue is about the government recognizing their relationship for what they see it really is. Both sides see the potential for harm -- but a specific kind of harm -- should the important aspects of their relationship to unrecognized.
For same-sex couples, they want to avoid any social stigma that might give people cause to mock or berate their relationships. I support that, and feel a great sympathy to that.
For people like me, my marriage is about responsible procreation. Which in other words means recognizing the rights the spouse and the child we potentially create together share as equal to my own.
Its why I got married. Its what my union is for. The fact that my wife and I created these children together has meaning to our children.
When we remove "man and woman" from the definition of marriage, we remove its reference to the very event and relationship where these bonds are created, and the rights associated with those bonds (enumerated above).
Children do have a right to know their parentage, but can we recognize that when a same-sex couple feels they have an equal right to have their names listed on a birth certificate instead of the real parentage? As those children grow up they are completely severed from their heritage, and there are even instances where their inability to know the medical history of their family might lead to misdiagnosis or missed opportunities for preventative care. Its a health issue as well as a cultural one.
The mechanism I'm talking about is not novel to marriage defenders. Same-sex marriage advocates use the same mechanism to describe the loss of recognition of rights when there relationship might not be recognized by a hospital if they don't have a marriage license to show them.
And since children have a right to know their parentage, and be raised by then were possible, then each spouse has a right to the love, tolerance and support of the other spouse in their pursuit to provide for their children's rights. Each spouse has the right to have their contribution as a man or as a woman be recognized equally with the other. That doesn't happen when we neuter the definition of marriage from "man and woman", which amounts to directly saying that men or women are superfluous. Walker's decision even provides arguments that men and women are superfluous, and the equality between them is no longer a matter of social concern!
I'm for recognizing same-sex relationships, to help promote and protect them from the bigoted ire of others, but not to the detriment of such a needy and vulnerable classes of people.
What would you suggest? Good post. Thx.
ReplyDeleteWe need new forms of legal kinship laws. Start scratch.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the problem is we really don't care about children's rights. Honestly, most people are ambivalent about children in general. Children are a lifestyle choice, not human beings with rights themselves.
Provisions for designated beneficiaries suffices for the protections that SSMers talk about.
ReplyDeleteThey complain that is not marriage. Sure, but neither is the one-sexed arrangement.
While I do not sympathize with the asserted false equivalence that SSMers make -- it is an underlying assumption that they have not shown to be plausible -- that same-sex sexual behavior is the moral equivalent of conjugal relations between husband and wife, I can and do sympathize with their desire to reconcile moral feeling with moral reasoning. It arises from the human need for meaning.
Immoral reasoning can trick moral feeling by turning half-truths into substitutes for moral truths. It is a matter of pushing buttons.
Given the preposterous reasoning of SSM argumentation, society would be justified in guaurding against succumbing to false compassion.
The moral status of marriage does merit its special status in our laws.
On Lawn, your remarks about responsible procreation aptly demonstrate the moral seriousness of the social institution. But it is alays vulnerable to distortions. SSMers try to claim the term, responsible procreation, by redefining it -- as they redefine most evlerything else that their argumentation touches. But in doing so they inadvertently acknowledge that there is something there in what we are saying on behalf of the birthright of children. Their redefinition necessarily is an incomplete version of the moral reality; and so they must recruit other moral principles, also cut in half, such as fairness.
ReplyDeleteFairness calls on us to treat people the same but the half they omit is that it is unfair to treat people the same for the wrong reasons.
Here, where the SSM idea conflicts with the marriage idea, the issue is the type of relationship that merits the moral status and the special legal status that is known as married. Not this or that type of person, but the type of relationship. You have oft made this point through the years.
The relationship of husband and wife is not the moral equivalent of all two-sexed relationships, sexualized or not. It is a human good, with or without procreation in each and every instance. Responsible procreation is central but it is not the standalone reason for the special legal status and the moral status of the relatiionship type that forms the husband-and-wife life ensemble. It is not merely a vehicle for societal utility. In other words, marriage is not a bus in which some people take a back seat.
What holds the various features of marriage together, as a distinct type of relationship, is its combination: integration of the sexes and provision for respnsible procretion. One without the other does not hold the whole together coherently. Again, this is about the type of relationship rather than this or that particular instance of it.
In contrast, the SSM argumentation that promotes the SSM idea is not morally serious nor intellectually serious. It cannot hold itself together coherently. It flies apart under its own forces.
If civil union or domestic partnershp was ever a viable political option, it was not due to its right reasoning. It was probably due to its appearl to moral feeling. Yet such feeling needs to be reconciled with moral reasoning lest it depend on arbitrary acts of governmental authority. Hence the concern about acting on what amounts to false compassion.
Provision for designated beneficiaries is inclusive and yet it is not entirely morally neutral. It provides protections for those domestic scenarios -- especially those that happen to include children -- in which circumstances have left people with a lack of or a deep diminishment of either responsible procreation or sex integration -- or sometimes a lack or deep diminishment of both. Sometimes the circumstances are by choices made and sometimes by choices of others and sometimes by tragic events beyond direct control of those involved. Compassion is justified, I think, and is reconciled rather closely and rather effectively through provisions for designated beneficiaries.
But we ought to guard against acting unreasonably on moral feeling -- compassion for victims of tragic circumstances -- when responding to the actual problem that roused the feeling, the natural desire to alleviate a wrong. This is where moral reasoning reigns in the strong horse of rightous indignation or the outrage that rightly moves one to defend the vulnerable.
That said, I like your blogpost and your fine attempt to of putting the disagreement in a nutshell. It makes for an excellent starting point that we can return to when feelings run high on this contentious conflict of ideas.
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ReplyDelete"For same-sex couples, they want to avoid any social stigma that might give people cause to mock or berate their relationships. I support that, and feel a great sympathy to that."
ReplyDeleteI hope that you don't regard this as a full version of the case for marriage equality. It's barely a start, and I imagine you understand your opponents well enough to understand that.
Sure Rob.
DeleteBut answer me this. What arguments are unique to removing "man and woman" from the definition of marriage.
In other words, what arguments would not also be valid to argue for CU's or DP's for same-sex couples. Which argument speaks specifically to having to alter the word "marriage" for the sake of homosexuality?
I think when you ask that question, then the answer is well enough said by my point above.
I appreciate your involvement, and if there is anything you can add to it, I'd appreciate it. I'm happy to know there is more, but after a decade in this topic I've not seen it. Please let me know what I must have overlooked.