What has same-sex sexual behavior got to do with it?

In response to my query at the NOM blogsite in which I asked about the moral assumptions of SSMers, DavidKCMO left the following comment:

Chairm,

To further my point, morals are judged on their morality-duh, whether or not the activity does or does not cause tangible/interruptive physical or excessive emotional harm/damage. I challenge you, Chairm, to logically prove that homosexuals:

1.) engage in any sexual activity that heterosexuals have never or don't,

2.) can contract any STD that heterosexuals have not or can't,

3.) have never, do not, or can not provide or have not the knowledge of the parenting skills essay for providing emotional/social stability, consistent love, life lessons, etc. that heterosexuals do with the same proficiency,

4.) are capable of harming 1 family unit in a way or ways that heterosexuals have never been, are not and/or never will be,

5.) are less desirable/capable as parents, from the perspective of any infant, than heterosexuals,

6.) as adoptive parents can not provide everything necessary to successfully raise the adopted infant that heterosexuals can,
7.) are worth less to the human race in any way whatsoever than heterosexuals.

See, Chairm, these are the questions to be asked and answered in the Prop 8 trial. Can you answer them?the ultimate test of the "moderator" is whether or not this comment is posted, as it contains all the information necessary to make or break this whole issue. I'll be very surprised to see it posted.

In his previous remarks he had made threats and the like. I admonished him for the thuggish behavior and suggested he stick to substantive arguments and comments instead. Then he submitted the comment above.

Here is my reply to DavidKCMO:

DavidKCMO, the test for you is to comment civilly.

Your comment appeared. You appear to have passed that test this time. That is commendable. Perhaps that surprises you.
_ _ _

You said:

"To further my point, morals are judged on their morality-duh, whether or not the activity does or does not cause tangible/interruptive physical or excessive emotional harm/damage."

Why do you emphasize physical and emotional harm but make no mention of moral harm even as you opened your sentence conceding that casting moral judgements is necessary?

Would you agree that if a moral assumption is wrong then it would be a moral harm to impose it on society through force of law?

I think your itemized list strongly suggests that you concede that the logic of law returns us to the logic of morality.
_ _ _

Your challenge appears to dance around the query I had put forth earlier. The moral assumptions that the SSM campaign depends on need to be backed-up with at least an attempt at moral argument. Lacking that, your items have no relevancy.

#1. What has sexual activity got to do with SSM?

#2. What has sexually transmitted diseases have to do with SSM?

#3. What has same-sex sexual behavior to do with parental status, much less with parenting skills?

#4. What has same-sex sexual behavior to do with preventing harm to families?

#5 & #6. See questions #3 and #4.

#7. What has same-sex sexual behavior to do with worth?

#8. What did the Walker trial have to do with same-sex sexual behavior?

I numbered these questions as responses to your itemized list. I do not think your list is relevant because you need to step back and address the underlying moral assumptions for which you have yet to provide a moral argument in favor.

Please state if you think those moral assumptions are irrelevant to your being certain that the SSM campaign's goal of revising the marriage law is morally the right thing to do. If they are irrelevant, okay, but if that is your position and view, then, you need to show how your items in your list are somehow relevant to deciding the right thing to do.

More to come...

What is the argument for pro-SSM moral assumptions?

In the previous blogpost I quoted an SSMer who wanted the discussion to proceed on the assumption that the advocate of SSM is pro-marriage. So I asked about the basic assumptions of the SSM campaign.

Your emphasis on gay this and gay that is irrelevant to the marriage issue but it is the epicenter of your favored identity group and your proposed (demanded) change to marriage law. So be it. We can take you at your word on that.

There is a twofold challenge that you therefore need to meet successfully or, failing that, drop your pet project and either retreat to quiet or turn instead to favor the man-woman requirement of the marriage status quo.

[...]

The challenge entails your providing the moral argument in support of establishing and advancing the following thusfar unsuported proSSM moral assumptions.

1. That same-sex sexual behavior is moral, ever.

2. That same-sex sexual behavior is the moral equivalent of coital relations of husband and wife.

To stand by either assertion you will need to answer, What is marriage? No arbitrary and glib answer can suffice. No bumpersticker slogan (such as marriage equality) will suffice. Your own bombast has raised expectations of you, JR.

No SSMer has managed to do this basic work but much noise about gay this and gay that has been heard amidst the drum-banging. The SSM idea is a conceptual mess and its argumentation and rhetoric is incoherent and usually self-refuting.

But you, JR, might do better. For more details on this challenge, see the blogpost at this link.

It must be your moral argument, JR, by which your pro-SSM opinion will either stand or fall as per your own promise strictly implied in your earlier comments. If you disown the moral assumptions, do say so without delay and let the chips fall where they may.

Three days later, a few comments appeared to make an effort to reply but did not actually answer the query I had put to them.

More in a bit ...

Why not just assume?

In the next few blogposts I'll discuss certain discussions that have taken place at the blog of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).

Here is JR, an SSMer, who frequents the comment sections at NOM's blogsite:

Most every person I know is pro-marriage. Why does one assume those who believe strongly in marriage equality are somehow anti-marriage? Marriage is not a zero sum game where if too many people marry then all suffer. Let us welcome gay brothers and sisters into the happiness of matrimony.

That is a misleading statement. One must first answer, what is marriage? And also answer, what is "marriage equality"?

Given that the SSM idea (what JR meant by "marriage equality") is an outright rejection of the core meaning of marriage, the SSMer almost certainly includes in his statement those in his circle of friends and acquaintances who reject the marriage idea in favor of the SSM idea. Thus, they would not be pro-marriage. And, if JR looked in the mirror and saw an SSMer he could not truly count himself as pro-marriage. He does not know what he claimed to know. Yet claim it he did.

His statement is false and in the subsequent discussion he failed to back it up with even one shred of evidence. The best he might do is to assert that belief in "marriage equality" is a pro-marriage belief. But that would be contradictory.

When SSMers make such assertions they give something away, inadvertently. They comprehend that it would be fatal to their advocacy of the SSM idea if they were revealed to be anti-marriage. So they hope to wrap themselves in the pro-marriage mantle even though their views and rhetoric and argumentation oppose the special place of the core meaning of marriage.

They insist that the marriage idea is bigoted, hateful, and unjust. That is their complaint; and their remedy is to use the government to replace the marriage idea with the SSM idea. That is the meaning of JR's glib remark.

That goal makes the SSM campaign's attack on the status quo very much a socio-political "zero sum game".

Of course, they portray SSM-as-marriage and so it is fair to ask what is this thing they want enshrined in the law and in the culture? JR asked about an assumption favorable to SSM. So I asked about the underlying moral assumptions of the SSM campaign's rhetoric and argumentation.

More on that discussion, shortly.

Neutered Marriage Means Marriage Can’t Be About Children

Some marriage neutering advocates openly or quietly support changing marriage laws (and other laws) to accommodate polygamy and consensual incest. Then there are marriage neutering advocates who scoff when marriage defenders, clumsily or skillfully, ask why public policy regarding marriage should be changed so radically to remove the all-through-history-universal bride+groom core, but not changed to accomodate polygamous and incestuous marriages, which have been historically recognized as valid marriages. Marriage neutering advocates who claim their arguments should not be applied to give polygamists or incestuous couples their "right to marry" often claim polygamy and incest are harmful to children.

This is a curious objection, because that argument rests on the claim that marriage is tied to heterosexual intercourse, childbearing, and childrearing. Yet, what about same-sex incest and polygamy (which also eliminates the "harmful to women" objection)? And haven't the marriage neutering advocates been arguing that marriage should not be associated with heterosexual intercourse, nor the ability or desire to bear children?

No two men together can ever naturally produce a child. So if two men with no ability to produce children nor any desire to raise children can form a marriage, marriage, as an institution, can't be about children - children are merely incidental to marriage, just like whether the couple rents or owns their residence.

Nor can we say that marriage must mean that we can expect any given sex act to be part of marriage.

Doesn't this mean we can't grant marriage licenses to brideless or groomless couples while legitimately denying those licenses to polygamous or incestuous unions on the grounds of harm to children or the illegality of incestuous sex, because there is no connection between marriage and sex or children?

So, marriage neutering advocates: either tell us what non-arbitrary, consistent argument is there that demands same-sex pairings must be issued state marriage licenses that does not also apply to polygamous or incestuous relationships, or stop scoffing when this is invoked in the defense of existing marriage laws.

Can I please have my own Google Bomb Website now? Please? Have someone who preaches against bullying go ahead and hypocritically bully me that way like they did that other guy.

While we're at it, since marriage is not about children in their perspective, can any marriage neutering advocate explain why a man who has impregnated a woman should have any obligation to propose marriage or actually get married/speed up the wedding date? Also, please explain why any married couple with minor children together should take that into consideration when deciding whether or not to divorce. I'm not talking about law here, but rather peer pressure, morality, etc. (The sad thing is, too many people already don't believe pregnancy should have any effect on whether/when there is a marriage, or whether/when to divorce.)

Making Families as a Service

From the UK, a story on the dangerous shift from recognizing next of kin, to making people next of kin as a service...

A leading psychiatrist faces extraordinary claims he deliberately misdiagnosed parents with mental disorders – decisions which meant their children were taken away from them...

He was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds by social services for the reports which tore children from their parents – many of them young mothers. He is now being investigated over shocking suggestions he distorted the assessments to fit the view of social services.

Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club adds this commentary,

The question is who Dr. Hibbert was really working for. It is an issue of more than academic interest since it turns out there was a demand by government agencies to supply children for adoptions. One way to meet that need was to take away children from unworthy parents. But first they had to be unworthy. And this is where assessments come in.

The allegation is that the doctor could make more money satisfying the agenda of the authorities than serving the needs of his patients. In the language of economists, the agent’s duty to his patients would be “costly to observe” since it would mean a lost “sale” to the government. Lawyers for the patients say, “we believe this distressing case may be the tip of a very big iceberg.”

See also, Don't Feed the Bears

Family Scholars blogger sneers and jeers

Fannie is a guest blogger at the Family Scholars blog (FSB). There she poses as an earnest seeker of dialogue with those of us who disagree with her pro-SSM political views. Whether or not her pose is authentic, the reader can decide.

She often cross-posts her blogposts at both FSB and her own blogsite. But not always. Here is a link to a blogpost at Fannie's Room.

http://fanniesroom.blogspot.com/2012/03/tales-from-definitely-not-bigotland.html

In that blogpost Fannie has sneered and jeered in a manner that aims at building solidarity with her fellow SSMers. This is the immature attitude that forecloses respectful discourse on the issues that she so vehemently contests. It has been her default position to which she has too-often resorted when her poor arguments have imploded. In this way she inadvertently obscures whatever merit her view might have held and whatever mutal understanding -- and even mutual agreement -- might have been reached.

I've explained many times that this stuff about me claiming victimhood misses the mark because I do not claim victimhood as a shield against substantive disagreement. Meanwhile, that shield is clearly something that Fannie is loathe to relinquish to others. She often tries to brandish it as a weapon, too.

Why? Is it a personal querk or a rhetorical strategy or a genuine disregard for the human dignity of those with whom she disagrees? Or fear of having to admit that she has misrepresented the views and motives of those of us who favor the marriage idea over the SSM idea? Perhaps fear that our arguments have moral standing that merits engagement rather than hurried evasion? I think the answer is all of the above.

Readers can review her blogposts at FSB and compare and contrast with what she has said for years and less guardedly on her own blogsite. Checkout her archives. Checkout her "dialogue" with my fellow Opiners, too, just for a little Opine context. Search our archives. It does not take much time to get to the pith of her modus operandi.

Why does Fannie cling to victimhood while posing as an earnest seeker of dialogue on these contentious issues? Readers can decide.

_ _ _ _


I should add that some of the sneering and jeering of SSMers does cause me to chuckle. Having a little fun is not the problem. But the overall tone of that sneering and jeering is inappropriate for those who have the privilege of guest blogging at the respected Family Scholars blog.

Barry Deutsch (aka Ampersand) is another SSMer who guest blogs at FSB and who has sneered and jeered and who has encouraged his fellow SSMers to curse those who oppose their pro-SSM project. Indeed he has declared that we do not deserve any respect at all. He, like Fannie, easily stooped to that tone on his own blogsite but has been more guarded in his remarks at FSB. He too has aborted discussion when his poor arguments implode. Another earnest seeker of civil discourse is he.

Their sneers and jeers bespeak a fragility and a brittleness in their pose. One might empathize with their insecurities in terms of the weaknesses in their argumentation and in terms of the conceptual mess that is their SSM idea; and so one might endeavor to seperate the substance from the considerable heapings of hyperbole and caricaturization. Their rhetorical exagerations are not really considered as such, by themselves and by their fellow travellers, however. (Okay, at best, they might concede slight exageration). And that is not fun and games. It is what they are most and truly earnest about.

_ _ _ _


Also: I will continue my series of blogposts that portray a composite of various real encounters with proponents of SSM over the years. The most interesting are with those who sought me out and who remained calm and respectful enough to learn something from me and for me to learn something from them and our dialogue.

I hope that SSMers and marriage defenders alike will find this series insightful and, yes to some modest degree, also entertaining. The conversational format reflects the gist of the exchanges while putting aside a lot of the empty rhetoric that gets tossed around.

Is same-sex sexual behavior moral, ever?

The marriage issue is not one and the same as the issue of homosexuality. These are two seperate moral isues and thus seperate legal issues.

However, the proponents of the SSM idea insist on blurring the two issues. The homosexual emphasis of the SSM campaign is unmistakable in all venues. It is prominent  in the pro-SSM editorial pages and in the pro-SSM books. It is front and center in the complaints and arguments made by litigants and in the reasoning offered by pro-SSM judges. In public discussions in the blogosphere and in meeting places in the newsmedia, legislatures, campaign rallies and elsewhere, the proponents of the SSM idea operate on various moral assumptions. Among these moral assumptions are two that are highly significant to their making a case for entrenching the SSM idea into our laws. Yet these two moral assumptions have not been backed by sound moral arguments. Asserted, yes, but arbitrarily.

They assume that SSM is a type of marriage that exists independently of the marriage law but is banned where the law requires man and woman. No moral argument has managed to show their assumption to be true. That is why most SSMers resort to attacking the marriage idea rather than promoting their alternative SSM idea.

Until shown otherwise, S.S.M. stands for the specious substitution of marriage. The onus is on the would-be advocate of revision.

Its proponents may assume that SSM is a type of marriage just by affixing the word marriage to what they have in mind, however, they object to such arbitrariness (while framing their complaint against marriage law) and cannot fairly assert a definition without justifying each part of that assertion. 

The second highly significant moral assumption made by the proponents of the SSM idea is one which actually provides the basis for the first assumption. Without this underlying assumption the idea that the marriage law bans a type of marriage that is same-sexed is negated.

What do SSMers have in mind when they stick the word marriage to the phrase, same-sex? They also refer to gay marriage and their rhetoric and argumentation place great stress on gay identity. They do go on about same-sex sexual attraction, same-sex sexual romance, and same-sex sexual behavior as the stuff that motivates their advocacy and that they believe must move society to revise the moral and the legal understanding of marriage. They would leave no room for doubt on this point and so they make this their foundational assumption.

They assert the moral assumption that same-sex sexual behavior is the moral equivalent of opposite-sex sexual behavior such that it is immoral for society to distinguish the two. This assumption, when applied to marriage law, would mean that same-sex sexual relations in SSM is the moral equivalent of the conjugal relations of husband and wife.

Yet what is the moral argument in favor of such an asserted assumption?

My challenge to the proponents of SSM is twofold.

1. What is your moral argument for the claim that SSM is a type of marriage that the marriage law must recognize as real marriage?

To answer this you need to state what marriage is and to explain the moral reasoning that would compel society, through the legal system, to distinguish between marriage and the other types of relationships that populate the nonmarriage category.

2. What is the moral argument for the claim that same-sex sexual behavior is the moral equivalent of opposite-sex sexual behavior? And, as applied to marriage, that it is the moral equivalent of coital relations of husband and wife?

If you have no moral arguments for either of these assumptions, then, that should be stated forthrightly.

Equal Benefits and the argument from Robert P. George

[This blogpost originally appeared on December 29, 2006.]

_ _ _ _


I think that the New Jersey legislature erred in enacting civil union as marriage in all but name. A better alternative, the proposed Equal Benefits Act, resembled Reciprocal Beneficiaries which Hawaii enacted about a decade ago.

Equal Benefits may gain ground in jurisdictions where marriage has been, or will be, affirmed as the union of one man and one woman. Even in New Jersey, something like it would still benefit many citizens in nonmarriageable (and non-civil-union-able) arrangements.

Here is a link to the testimony [PDF] of Robert P. George who earlier this month appeared before the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to Civil Union and in support of the Equal Benefits Act.

A snippet:

The Equal Benefits Act is superior to proposed civil unions legislation because it provides a moderate, sensible solution to the problem now facing the New Jersey legislature. It provides a way to fulfill the Supreme Court’s mandate while preserving in both name and substance the conjugal conception of marriage. It extends benefits to same-sex partners as the Court’s order requires, but does so in a way that is inclusive and nondiscriminatory. It takes the vexing and divisive issue of sex out of the equation by predicating the extension of benefits on caring and mutual support rather than sexual conduct. Same-sex couples are eligible, but their eligibility is not based on the existence or assumption of a sexual relationship between the partners. Partners whose relationship is sexual are not excluded or disadvantaged in any way; but by the same token there is no discrimination against otherwise identically situated partners with the same commitment and needs whose relationship is not sexual.

The Equal Benefits approach acknowledges that the Supreme Court’s concern was with ensuring that partners who are not and cannot be married to each other, but who share each others lives and are prepared to care, and take responsibility, for each other, are assisted, empowered, and facilitated by the law just as spouses are.

* * *

In July 2001, Robert P. George had the foresight to write the following about marriage in an opinion piece in the National Review:

At the core of the traditional understanding of marriage in our society is a principled commitment to monogamy and fidelity. Marriage, as embodied in our customs, laws, and public policies, is intelligible and defensible as a one-flesh union whose character and value give a man and a woman moral reasons (going beyond mere subjective preferences or sentimental motivations) to pledge sexual exclusivity, fidelity, and permanence of commitment. Yet any argument for revising our law to treat homosexual relations as marital will implicitly do what clearheaded and honest proponents of "same-sex marriage" explicitly acknowledge: It will deny that there are such moral reasons. Any such argument would have to treat marriage as a purely private matter designed solely to satisfy the desires of the "married" parties. If that is the case, there is no principled reason marriage need imply exclusivity, fidelity, permanence, or even a limit of two people.

Thoughtful people on both sides of the debate recognize this. It is evident, then, that legal recognition of same-sex marriages, far from making marriage more widely available (as well-intentioned but misguided conservative advocates of same-sex marriage say they want to do), would in effect abolish the institution, by collapsing the moral principles at its foundation.

* * *

And writing in The Wall Street Journal in November 2003, Robert P. George said the following:

It is important to protect the substance of marriage, but a sound amendment need not, however, forbid states from enacting certain forms of domestic partnership. It need only ensure that laws do not treat nonmarital sexual relationships as if they were marital by making such relationships the basis for allocating benefits. An amendment protecting the substance of marriage would ensure that neither the federal government nor the states may predicate benefits, privileges, rights or immunities on the existence, recognition or presumption of nonmarital sexual relationships. In other words, domestic partnerships, if states elect to have them, should be nondiscriminatory and inclusive. They should be available to people based on needs, not on sex. The law certainly should not discriminate in favor of those unmarried people who are in sexual relationships over those with the same needs who, though committed to caring for each other, are not sexual partners. Widowed sisters living together and looking after each other, or an unmarried adult son taking care of his elderly father, may have the need for domestic partner benefits such as hospital visitation privileges and insurance rights.

A constitutionally sound domestic partnership law would not discriminate against such people by excluding them from eligibility simply because their relationships are not sexual — just as a nondiscriminatory and inclusive law would not undermine marriage by treating unmarried sexual partners as if they were married.

* * *

Seems to me that he makes a series of points that are familiar to readers of this blog. Marriage is both-sexed. The enactment of SSM as if it was marriage would replace marriage with something else; as such it would be a solution in search of a problem. The better route would be to affirm marriage as the union of man and woman (i.e. the combination of sex integration and responsible procreation) while also making provision for improvement in accessibility to designated beneficiaries for nonmarital combinations. This would be an apt solution to actual needs and would not be limited to the relatively few among the homosexual population who'd convert their same-sex arrangements to civil union (or SSM) if that were to become available.

Your comments are welcomed.

* * *

More on the Equal Benefits Act that was proposed in New Jersey:
Equity For Me, But Not For Thee.
Testimony of Len Deo, President, New Jersey Family Policy Council.
Gay marriage foes propose public vote on the issue.

* * *

More on Robert P. George:
Remarks at the 1998 American Political Science Association Convention.
The Remarkable Mind of Robert P. George, by Anne Morse, Crisis Magazine.
Member of the President's Council on Bioethics.
Recipient of the Bradley Prize.

Politicians mocking marriage

New Hampshire State Rep. Seth Cohn says he'll introduce a bill to bar left-handed people from marrying each other. In a ... http://cdn.localwireless.com/wap/news/text.jsp?sid=225&nid=2258643100&cid=4598&scid=-1

That is what we are dealing with.

Teaching Motherhood

Dr Davis said: "Despite all the differences in advice advocated by these childcare 'bibles' over the years, it is interesting that they all have striking similarities in terms of how the experts presented their advice. Whatever the message, the advice was given in the form of an order and the authors highlighted extreme consequences if mothers did not follow the methods of childrearing that they advocated.

[...]

Dr Davis said: "I was struck by the cyclical nature of these childcare bibles, we start out with quite strict rules laid down by Frederick Truby King, whose influence is very much evident in the 1940s and following decades. The principal thread running through his books are that babies need strict routines. We then find the advice becomes less authoritarian and regimented as we go through the decades and the influences of Bowlby, Winnicott, Spock and Leach.

"However, when we reach the 1990s when Gina Ford came to prominence, we come back to the strict regimented approach of Frederick Truby King several decades earlier. More than 50 years on and experts still cannot agree on the best way to approach motherhood, and all this conflicting advice just leaves women feeling confused and disillusioned."

It doesn't mean they are all wrong, or all right. It means they esteemed their own opinions too highly, and did not give enough credit to young mothers.

Kinship: An important factor in a child's welbeing.

From the local paper, here in Lowell Massachusetts

Restrictions overseas, fewer foster children at home reduce Mass. adoptions

The number of domestic adoptions processed through the state's foster-care system has also fallen in recent years. In fiscal 2011 there were 663 children adopted through the state Department of Children and Families, the lowest figure in more than a decade, down from a 10-year high of 922 adoptions in fiscal 2005.

This decline is in line with a reduction in the total number of youth in foster care. Today, DCF has 2,000 fewer children in foster care than it did five years ago. Officials attribute this to the department's work to keep families intact, place children with kin, and reunify families when appropriate.

"If a child must be removed from their home to ensure their safety, reunification of families in a timely manner is a priority," said Cayenne Isaksen, a DCF spokeswoman.

When children are unable to remain in their home because of safety concerns, placement with kin is a preferred placement option.

Disclosure: I volunteer at DCF.

Infertility is a Disability says US Supreme Court.

Disability is impairment of an ability. Ability is the capacity or means to do something. Inability is an inherent lack of power to do the thing in question.

Within the same-sex type of relationship the lack of the other sex is intrinsic and thus the lack of capacity or means to procreate is clearly inherent. The necessity of going outside the same-sex type of relationship to involve the other sex to import the means to procreate makes it obvious that the procreative ability is not enabled within the one-sex scenario. Fertility and infertility are extrinsic or foreign to it.

Equally obvious, the ability to procreate, and the corresponding disability, resides within the opposite-sex type relationship. Fertility is the ability. Infertility is the impairment or disabliity of the capacity or means to procreate.

Without the other sex, fertility is neither enabled nor disabled but is precluded. The absence of either sex signifies a concrete inability. Procreation is neither enabled nor disabled. [Footnote 1]

_ _ _ _


Where the husband and wife experience infertility their reproductive capacity or means to reproduce together is disabled. The postmenopausal woman shares her disability with her husband; in effect they share her biological clock. The husband who has undergone vascectomy shares with his wife the disabling of their capacity to procreate together. The surgical removal of the wife's uterus likewise disables this capacity. If the husband has suffered a severe injury such as a combat wound to his reproductive system, then, he and his wife, together, suffer the disabling of the means to procreate together. This is an aspect of the integration of the sexes at the core of marriage.

Note that even in the variability of the experience of infertility there is a constant feature: an ability that inheres to the two-sexed type of sexual relationship is disabled. Sometimes this disability is temporary and sometimes it is reversible and sometimes it is permanent. Sometimes it is intended and sometimes it is not. Sometimes it is inevitable and sometimes it is preventable. And so forth. But the ability has been disabled.

_ _ _ _


Some SSMers might take a narrowed legalistic approach to argue that infertility is not a disability in our legal system.

According to the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court and its understanding of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) a disability is an impairment such as a physiological disorder, a medical condition, or anatomical loss. Infertility is an impairment that substantially limits reproduction. Reproduction is a major life activity. Infertility is an impairment of that very thing. It is a disability.

Here is the key to the court's stated context:

"Reproduction and the sexual dynamic surrounding it are central to the life process itself."

[Bragen v. Abbott 1998]

That sexual dynamic or sexual ecology is foreign to the same-sexed scenario. It is extrinsic to the homosexual emphasis of the rhetoric and the argumentation of SSMers. It is not the moral nor the legal equivalent of the lack of the other sex which manifests this scenario's inherent inability -- not disability -- of the capacity or means of procreation. Procreation is an ability that does not inhere to the lack of the other sex.

Now, I am not saying that the ADA is the legal basis for the eligibility of the bride and groom who may experience infertility (temporarily or indefinitely), but the precedent indicates that the United States Supreme Court has found convincing the legal argument that infertility is an impairment of procreative ability under the law. That is not a legal argument made-up (and approved by the judiciary) to slight the gay identity group. It is based on what is euphemistically known as the facts of life. It is neutral on sexual orientation and neutral on group identity. It is even neutral on that pro-SSM bugaboo -- 'gender roles'. And yet it does not neuter infertility nor does it neuter fertility. Infertility and fertility are not one-sexed nor sex-neutral.

That said, the prototypical infertile bride and groom duo is eligible to marry but not just because they might experience infertility; and the infertile husband and wife union retains  marital status but not just because they have experienced infertility. The infertile couple does not wave around an infertility card demanding the right to marry and to remain married on that basis.

This stands in marked contrast to the pro SSM approach which has emphasized gay identity as the reason for supposed eligibility of the prototypical same-sex couple.

I will expand on that point in future blogposts.

The lack of the other sex is not infertility but it is the basis for the assertion of a moral and legal equivalence with infertility. Neither homosexuality nor gay identity can make the same-sex couple (or any one-sexed scenario) the moral and legal equivalent of the infertile couple. A clear-eyed examination of form and function, at the very least, reveals the assertion of these false equivalencies to be the product of confusion whether that confusion is due to sloppy thinking or due to purposeful, if cynical, obfuscation.

_ _ _ _


Footnote 1: The inability to engage in the procreative type of sexual behavior is likewise intrinsic to the same-sex type of relationship. This inability of behavior matches the inability of procreation within the one-sexed scenario.

This not a variable feature of the type of arrangement or type of relationship that lacks the other sex. That lack, we are told, is not experienced as a deficit nor as something missed, but it is both a desirable and a definitive feature of the homosexualized or gay identified type of relationship. This is what the SSM campaign means and we can take it at face value.

It amounts to (at the very least) an implicit acknowledgement that within the same-sex homosexualized scenario the inability to engage in the procreative type of behavior and the inability to procreate are not disabilities and are neither categorical nor particular instances of infertility. Likewise it is a tacit acknowledgement that the procreative type of sexual behavior is not disabled by the lack of the other sex but is purposefully precluded by the very nature of the relationship that SSMers have in mind when they refer to gay marriage or homosexual marriage or same-sex marriage or same-sex union.

If SSMers think that this is stating the obvious, then good -- we can agee on that much already.

Advice from the oldest living couple on Earth

Oldest Living Couple on Earth Gives Great Relationship Advice from Your Black World

They have been married 85 years (86 in May) and hold the Guinness World Record for the longest marriage of a living couple and get this…. Zelmyra is 101 years old and Herbert is 104.

Is there anything you would do differently after more than 80 years of marriage?
We wouldn’t change a thing. There’s no secret to our marriage, we just did what was needed for each other & our family.

What was the best piece of marriage advice you ever received?
Respect, support & communicate with each other.Be faithful, honest & true.Love each other with ALL of your heart

At the end of bad relationship day, what is the most important thing to remind yourselves?
Remember marriage is not a contest – never keep a score. God has put the two of you together on the same team to win.

And mother-in-laws are important too!

How did you cope when you had to be physically separated for long periods of time?
Herbert: We were apart for 2 months when Z was hospitalized with our 5th child. It was the most difficult time of my life. Zelmyra’s mother helped me with the house and the other children, otherwise I would have lost my mind.

Marriage Unites Kin

In a couple of earlier blogposts I asked a few questions about the notion that marriage changes two unrelated individuals into closely related individuals.

Here are those questions restated:

If the unrelated man and woman have become directly related, each to the other, how would that be possible? Are they related by blood (genetically for instance) or by a metaphorical concept or by some other means or way?

If they do not actually become physically related, how are they more closely related than those already closely related to each of them by birth? What is the meaning of prioritization of kinship ties, anyway?

If husband and wife have become closest kin within the marital relationship, why would their conjugal relations -- shared sexual behavior of some kind -- not also be incestuous sexual relations? Are they not related at least as closely to each other as they are to other close kin with whom they would be barred from marrying?

These are not trick questions although to some of us these might feel like a mindtwister. Is there something here that we can't not know?

Readers are invited to ponder and to comment on the overall query: Does marriage make kin? If yes, how, and, if not, what, if anything, does marriage have to do with making families? Or with sexual behavior?

These are questions that go to what precedes the law -- stuff that comes before the creation and maintenance of positive law to establish a relationship status, affixing a name to it,  and drawing boundaries and societal policies for it. The laws and customs of the wide range of known cultures might help to shed light on possible answers but such provisions would be societal responses to something, to the type of relationship, or to some essential(s) of humankind.

Or is there some other appropriate way to reconsider marriage and kinship, some innovation of modern times, some new charter for our time and place?

Happy International Women's Day

International Women's day is a time to remember that women are more than mothers, they are CEO's, Doctors, Scientists, Artists, Entrepreneurs, Accountants, Engineers .. they are in ever professional endeavor.

Some choose to be those things instead of being mothers, and their success is to be expected and appreciated.

At the same time we recognize mothers are not less than their sisters in capacity, effort, capability or practice. Probably no where are all of the talents of the CEO, scientist, artist, etc... needed and developed more sharply in just one place than in their role in governance of a family.

Its a statement that can sound striking to any mathematician, but so accurate in any case... Women are more than mothers, but mothers are not less than any of them.

Monogamy Reduces Major Social Problems of Polygamist Cultures

Monogamy Reduces Major Social Problems of Polygamist Cultures (Science Daily)

Considered the most comprehensive study of polygamy and the institution of marriage, the study finds significantly higher levels rape, kidnapping, murder, assault, robbery and fraud in polygynous cultures. According to Henrich and his research team, which included Profs. Robert Boyd (UCLA) and Peter Richerson (UC Davis), these crimes are caused primarily by pools of unmarried men, which result when other men take multiple wives.

Monogamous marriage has largely preceded democracy and voting rights for women in the nations where it has been institutionalized, says Henrich, the Canadian Research Chair in Culture, Cognition and Evolution in UBC's Depts. of Psychology and Economics. By decreasing competition for younger and younger brides, monogamous marriage increases the age of first marriage for females, decreases the spousal age gap and elevates female influence in household decisions which decreases total fertility and increases gender equality.

Disability and inability and the procreative type of relationship

An SSMer disputed "the disability/non-ability distinction" (her words) that she noticed in remarks where I had distinguished the variable nature of human fertility which is two-sexed and the constant nonfertility of the one-sexed scenario.

Basically, fertility requires two sexes and so infertility is a disability of reproductive powers of the male-female twosome. On the other hand, the lack of the other sex is not a disabilty because the one-sexed scenario is not fertile (without the other sex, of course) and so it is not rightly described as infertile. Indeed the lack of the other sex is deemed both desirable and definitive of the homosexualized one-sexed scenario that the SSMer had emphasized. That nonfertility is not the moral nor the legal equivalent of infertility.

The distinction is not between disability and "non-disability", anyway.

I think that the SSMer had difficulties thinking clearly about this because of her misuse of the relevant words. It is very likely she has lost the ability to hold certain ideas in her thoughts because she had lost the necessary vocabulary with which to express those ideas. A cloud of confusion does tend to envelope SSMers. At times that is manufactured by their own rhetorical fog machine.

Fertility is an intrinsically variable ability and infertility is the corresponding disability. The nonfertility of the one-sexed scenario is simply an inability that is intrinsic and constant. That is, fertility was not disabled because it was not enabled due to the lack of the other sex. The notion and the fact of fertility/infertiltiy is extrinsic to the one-sexed scenario.

Consider, during a large part of every month, even the reproductively healthy male-female twosome is infertile. In the normal course of things, people start life prefertile, grow into fertility, and mature out of fertility. Men and women vary throughout this very significant life passage. That human generativity is variable is undisputed and in that sense it ought to be unremarkable when discussing eligibility to marry.

The inability -- the inherent nonfertility -- of the entire spectrum of the one-sexed  scenarios is constant due to the lack of the other sex. That, too, ought to be undisputed as unremarkable.

_ _ _ _


When pressed, the SSMer will agree on both points. But then a stubborn effort to ellide the obvious is embarked upon in a slightly different way which recycles the same basic confusion of categories.

The SSMer clarified that she had meant to compare the homosexual twosome and the heterosexual twosome. But that would just be another way of spinning the one-sexed and the two-sexed scenarios. She was merely choosing to highlight a narrowed subset of each scenario but she did not explain why sexual orientation was relevant to the proposed comparison regarding disability and inability.

If the relevance is found in sexual behavior, then, the distinction I made still applies. Same-sex sexual behavior is definitively nonfertile. That is not a disability. That is an inability.

The sexual twosome that lacks the other sex is not a reproductively enabled unit. It does not become infertile due to ill-health, malformed or gravely injured reproductive anatomy, nor due tonormal human maturation (ie growing old). It is nonfertile, beginning to end, and sexual behavior is irrelevant in this regard.

Obviously. Or one might think.

_ _ _ _


The SSMer said she meant to compare like and like. But that did not mean comparing the male-only and the female-only subsets of the homosexual category. No, she meant a different compaison.

She meant to compare the non-procreative type of sexual behaviors within the entire homosexual category and the procreative type of sexual behavior within a narrow subset of the heterosexual category. She was still in search of a disablity that she might claim to be the equivalent of an inability.

In restating her comparison she sneaked in a change in word usage, as often happens in such discussions. She assumed that all sexual behaviors that do not result in procreation may be recategorized as non-procreative types of sexual behavior. That would be misleading.

The way she put it serves to illustrate how her switch in word usage is misleading.

She would compare all the "non-procreative" homosexual couples with the "non-proceative" heterosexual couple whose sexual behavior could not lead to conception. For instance, she said, consider the post-menopausal bride and her groom.

Well, first, the bride and groom's fertility would be disabled. The disability-inability distinction applies to the comparison with all homosexual couples.

Second, the bride and groom's infertility does not render their coital relations non-procreative by type.

To compare like and like, consider the reproductively healthy bride and groom whose coital relations are procreative by type even during large parts of each month during which as a couple they are infertile; up to and after the wife reaches menopause their sexual relations remain procreative by type. This married couple compares with the newlywedded post-menopausal bride and her husband. In both examples the coital relations are procreative by type of behavior. Like and like

It would be a comparison of unalikes to compare the coital relations of either of the bride-groom examples with the non-procreative types of behavior to which the male-only and the female-only homosexual couples are limited.

Sexual behavior does not provide the type of comparison the SSMer had hoped for. It actually showed the significance of sex and behavioral difference rather than the illusion of behavioral sameness.

_ _ _ _

But the SSMer would compare the couples rather than the types of behavior. The obvious problem with that is the SSMer has emphasized homosexuality and has presupposed the comparison on the basis of sexual orientation. That is, she has chosen to compare the homosexual and the heterosexual types of relationships and thus the comparison is of the definitive sexual behaviors of each type of reationship.

Remember, the homosexual emphasis is her emphasis and not mine. She has insisted upon it and that is undisputed and, of course, not somethng she might suddenly describe as remarkable when discussing the pro SSM arguments about marriage

Yet the SSMer has not proposed a comparison of like and like. In the first place she has not stated the sexual behavior that she believes to be applicable to both the male-only and the female-only versions of the homosexual scenario. Whatever she'd select as the common behavior between those two versions, it would not be procreative by type, anyway. So the SSMer hurriedly skipped that step because she did not grasp that her comparison was of types of sexual behavior afterall and not a comparison of types of couples.

If she skipped that step deliberately, then, what is the reason? I will leave that for her to say and for readers to ponder.

If the types of sexual behavior are irrelevant to the SSMer's intended comparison, then, her homosexual emphasis is neutralized. That would be her doing and not mine.

That returns us to the broader comparison of the wide range of sexual and nonsexual types of relationships that populate the many one-sexed and two-sexed categories. The ability and inability distinction applies at that level too.

_ _ _ _


What the SSMer is really trying to do is to relocate the infertile husband-wife out of the procreative type of sexual relationship and to the margins of the one-sexed category. But that cannot be accomplished without negating the homosexual emphasis. And even at that the distinction she has disputed is still applicable.

Other SSMers have made a similar error in word usage. They would rather compare all homosexual couples to the childless husband-wife. But that is based on their insistence that the lack of a legal requirement forcing married people to procreate can only mean that procreation is irrelevant to marriage eligibility.

The marriage idea does not depend on such a totalitarian use of state power. There are legal requirements in our marriage law that express the two-sexed sexual basis for marriage and that express the orientation of the marital relationship toward responsible procreation.

In addition to the man-woman requirement, see the sexual basis for consummation, annulment, adultery, and the presumption of paternity. These are reasonable requirements. Taken together they reflect societal acknowledgement and endorsement of the social institution that the law reflects and neither created nor owns.

Meanwhile there is no homosexual requirement proposed nor enacted wherever SSM has been pressed into te law. Yet the homosexual emphasis is the supposed source of the pro SSM complaint and the pro SSM demand for remedy.

There is no sexual basis for presuming that co-parenting is a default of SSM to which those who participate give their automatic consent. Likewise there is no sexual basis in SSM law that ties together consummation, annulment, and adultery. These parts of marriage law, we are told, are not significant anyway and must be deeply discounted if not disowned in societal regard for marriage itself. If we take that "assurance" at face value, then, SSMers concede that SSM at law would not be a sexual type of relationship.

They shrug because they mean to pre-emptively recast marriage as the same. That may be the price they assume comes with the SSM project but that aso negates their complaint that the man-woman criterion is discrimation based on sexual orientation. It negates their homosexual emphasis. It would negate marriage as a sexual type of relationship under the law prior to SSM. It would negate the careless claim that their argumentation would not change marriage but merely expand marriage.

It leaves in tatters the SSMer's dispute regarding disability based on comparison of all homosexual couples and this or that heterosexual couple.

_ _ _ _


The same SSMer who stumbled over her own feet in her proposed dispute with "the disability/non-ability distinction" has also blatanty told a falsehood when she claimed that I thought procreation was a legal requirement for eligibility to marry.

She has been corrected on that very point in previous encounters so her retelling of that misrepresentation is fairly described a lie told knowingly. This is someone quick to accuse others of lieing but seems oblivious to her own peculiar penchant for speaking deliberate falsehoods.

Those who enter marriage give their consent to the vigorously enforced default that the husband would be the father of children born to he and his wife. That does not make sense in a groomless or in a brideless scenario. But it does makes sense given that coital relations of husband and wife provides the sexual basis for consummation (which seals the agreement to become husband and wife), provision for annulment (the marriage did not exist), and for adultry (grounds for injury and divorce).

Marriage is shaped by and is pointed toward responsible procreation. The procreative type of sexual behavior unites man and woman in their sexually embodied reality and makes of marriage the intimate relationship of now-closely-related kin; and this bodily union -- this sexual type of union --  is entailed in a comprehensive relationship that also features the volitional, emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions of sex integration. It is simultaneously a deeply private relationship and a public relationship deeply-rooted in the two-sexed nature of humankind.

This also illuminates the incest taboo and the concrete way in which unrelated bride and groom become each other's closest kin. I will discuss this aspect more in later blogposts. For now ask yourself, if husband and wife became closest kin via the marital act, why is their subsequent sexual relations not also incestuous? It is not a trick question although to the SSMer it might feel like a mindtwister.

_ _ _ _

Anyway, the distinction between ability/disability and inability is significant because the marital relationship is a sexual type of relationship with great societal significance.

Ellen DeGeneres and I may disagree on marriage, but I will still shop at JCPenny

I'm up to here with boycotts/buycotts.

Done.

Ellen DeGeneres is talented and witty, and for all of the silliest things on her shows, the dumbest parts are the stars chit chatting. Ellen, herself, she's funny.

It's wonderful she has a companion, she is comfortable living her life with. Awesome.

I can defend marriage and still shop at JCPenny, where she is the new spokeswoman for. Ellen DeGeneres is working, that's her job being a celebrity, selling stuff. How does her being gay directly affect this season's latest apparel? I rather go shopping with her, then my mom!

From Legal Insurection: Welcome to total political war. (on the recent issues of advertisers being pressured to pull ads)

What is happening goes beyond Obama’s call for people to argue with their neighbors and get in their faces. It goes far beyond Bill Clinton’s politics of personal destruction directed at accusers, and beyond name-calling by right wing pundits.

This total war, in which no one is allowed to be non-political and neighbors and clients become mere pressure points, is a dangerous development.

I've participated in boycotts/buycotts in the past, I need to not second guess every indirect decision I make. Some boycotts/buycotts can be justified, but there has to be clear and direct connection with the product/service.

Renee Aste
Lowell Massachusetts

But marriage isn't in the Constitution

Yes, I know. Almost everything and the kitchen sink isn't in there also.

We're free to define words legally and culturally. We define and redefine words merging concepts and leaving behind old definitions, while rolling of the eyes when we see them in historic context.

As human beings with languange, we're free to make up words and change their meaning. Yes, I acknowledge that freedom.

The question isn't that we are not free to redefine words, like marriage, but rather is it a good idea to do so. Do we have any obligation to the language we speak, and the meaning of words we create?

In law, we debate what words mean all the time. We reassign meaning to them. Today corporations and PACs, are treated as equally as individuals in the name of political speech under the 1st Amendment. And strangely somehow the death penalty isn't cruel, under the 8th Amendment. (I oppose both Super PACs and the death penalty.)

I've seen legal cases determining what's a sandwich? Why is a burrito not a sandwich, but a grilled wrap one?

Before we had a word like marriage, as homosapiens, males began to stick around beyond the conjugal act. Males began to have the ability to be useful to females, when females became mothers.

In this change of behavior, we began to evolve not just as habitual bipeds primates, but we began to evolve into what we call now a society. We created a culture complex, yet woven.

The thread has been unraveling, more then we want to admit.

Healthy Marriage?

There are at least two characteristics that all healthy marriages have in common. First, they are mutually enriching, and second, both spouses have a deep respect for each other. It is a mutually satisfying relationship that is beneficial to the husband, wife, and children (if present). It is a relationship that is committed to ongoing growth, the use of effective communication skills and the use of successful conflict management skills.

Where did I find this quote?

Here: http://fatherhood.hhs.gov/Marriage/index.shtml