Randy: A few years ago, a study was done asking kids already in foster care:If you could be adopted by a gay couple or remain in foster care, which would you do?The overwhelming majority said that they would be prefer the adoption of a gay couple. 

A few years ago my wife asked my children sitting to breakfast whether what they wanted oatmeal and school today or or cookies and Disneyworld — they all voted cookies and Disneyworld — but they got oatmeal and school.

Randy:Nothing more needs to be said.

Amen.

Randy: Mead:“PLease have them, in the manner nature provided for their begetting and rearing — one male one female parent. I”Yup.Same old drivel.Gays shouldn’t have kids unless it’s on your own terms.

Ah, I see, It is I, magnificent ME, that declared that a man and woman be the manner of getting children. If this is the premise of the argument, need I go on?

Again and again, you refuse to acknowledge the fact that gays DO have kids.

Sure they do. They contrive to have a man and woman do the necessary things (whether mechanically or not is simply adding a layer of obfuscation of the irreducible fact) and then get rid of one or the other to pretend that it did not happen that way — and denying the child the benefit of both her parents. You are so terrifically committed to the unqiueness and value of your own sexual preference, that you devalue the perspective of physical male or female sex and its unqiueness for the developing child to experience and learn. A man playing at mommy is not a mother. A woman playing at Daddy is not a father.

And you time and time after time refuse to offer a solution for the welfare of those kids.

I thought it was about marriage versus what gay people seem to want.

Do they deserve to have married parents or not?

Of course, married parents — a mother and a father, or failing that, an adoptive mother or father. this is not hard to grasp.

You only care about kids that come are raised by straight parents.

If I did not care about kids raised by gay “parents” I would hardly continue this criticism in order to persuade whoever will listen that it is not the best for the child, now would I?

I asked you for actual evidence of any harm done in places were gay marriage exists.You refuse to even address the issue.
I take that to mean that you have no answer and therefore, that you can’t identify any

Well I suppose one can declare victory by ignoring what I did answer, because you didn’t like the answer, and just substituting what you want to rebut and act like I answered that way instead and end up rebutting yourself. I am not persuaded, but there you are.

So then any person who is raising a child on their own, because their spouse died, or they are divorced, should give up their child to a married man and woman to raise? Are you really arguing this?

YOU are arguing that. The discussion was not about singles but about marriage, so the argument simply has no bearing whatsoever. FWIW, if a parent is single and maintains appropriate privacy regarding sexual matters in the presence of children, then really the issue should not come up. Marriage is a sacrament (in my tradition) because it accomplishes what it signifies — unity of persons and creation of new being. A man and a woman signify and can accomplish that — the man-man/woman-woman pairs simply don’t and cannot be fruitful — and so you not only deny the child the external sign of fruitful sexual relationship to follow — but substitute a sterile one in its place — one that cannot accomplish what it signifies.

But you ignore reality …

… because I refuse to acknwledge that in no reality we inhabit do gay couples actually beget children with their preferred sexual partners ??

That number will only rise, as more and more gay couples adopt. Your only solution is to prevent gays from adopting, and to take children away from gay parents.But you have no solution for what to do with foster care children that are already in the system.

It won’t. I know that my descendants will form the society in which they live — and yours, well, you won’t have any. In three generations this little contretemps will be over. A fresh crop of confused gay folks will have to reinvent their relationship to the heterosexual society from which they spring — as they have always had to do, everywhere.

Confused, I say because each of them individually is doomed to a position of doubt and uncertainty — without processes like marriages that are inherently fruitful gay people cannot form durable societies of their own. Just giving you the name “marriage” does nothing for your real problem. And pretending that it does means we are wasting time that could be addressing the real problem. As such, the new gay people three generations hence will again have to either accommodate themselves to the truth of their existence in that society in which they actually exist.

What you want is generally speaking, well-motivated, and I really mean that. But you are blind to the fruitfulness of your own sexual nature — For this reason, marriage, the celebration and sacrament of human fruitfulness, which you rightly desire and perceive has value, will not accomplish what you seek because you mistake its nature and function. In order to make marriage work — you have to change YOU to fit the marriage — something you have ably demonstrated is the last thing you are actually willing to do.

Yup. Same old drivel. Gays shouldn’t have kids unless it’s on your own terms. Again and again, you refuse to acknowledge the fact that gays DO have kids. And you time and time after time refuse to offer a solution for the welfare of those kids. Do they deserve to have married parents or not? Apparently, your refusal to answer this direct question means that no, kids of gay parents should not have married parents, and you would deny them all the benefits of marriage.

That’s fine. But please stop saying that you care about the kids. you only care about kids that come are raised by straight parents.

I asked you for actual evidence of any harm done in places were gay marriage exists. You refuse to even address the issue. I take that to mean that you have no answer and therefore, that you can’t identify any harm.

“And if you really love and wish the best for that son or daughter you would endure the sacrifice necessary to give him or her a loving and present father and a mother,>”

So then any person who is raising a child on their own, because their spouse died, or they are divorced, should give up their child to a married man and woman to raise? Are you really arguing this? And give up the child to whom? There are far more children in foster care than there are adoption parents. Are you going to raise all these kids? No, that’s always someone else’s problem, isn’t it?

” But you see, that subordination is what makes the good father or mother. Having children is not a right merely, but a sacrifice.”

And why do you assume that no gay parents make the sacrifice? You make it seems as though gay parents have kids only for a fashion statement. Yet I know plenty who make much better parents than many straights.

But don’t ask me. Ask the kids of gay parents. If you actually did, and if you actually did care about them, that’s what you would do. And you would find that none of them think that they grew up deprived, unloved, or uncared for. They would not change their parents for anything. What the children of gay parents actually want should be the acid test.

Bottom line: You keep saying that gays shouldn’t have children for all the reasons you posit. But you ignore reality and refuse to address the fact that there are currently thousands of children out there raising gay parents. That number will only rise, as more and more gay couples adopt. Your only solution is to prevent gays from adopting, and to take children away from gay parents. But you have no solution for what to do with foster care children that are already in the system.

A few years ago, a study was done asking kids already in foster care: If you could be adopted by a gay couple or remain in foster care, which would you do? The overwhelming majority said that they would be prefer the adoption of a gay couple.

So all your premises are based, once again, upon nothing more than the usual claptrap. No evidence, no studies, no experience with gay couples or their children, nothing at all. Just the usual hot air about gays don’t make fit parents and we are selfish just to have ‘em. THAT is based on nothing more that than usual ad homenims against gays that have existed forever.

Nothing more needs to be said.

Most of the arguments I have read here against SSM are mostly because their religious ‘faith’ dictates to them that homosexuality is immoral. Other than wanting to form a society that conforms to their own brand of religious morality. I have not read one argument here that objectively supports the US government denying an entire group of people equal civil rights under the law or in this case the civil rights, obligations and other privledges that are granted with civil marriage.

I respect others rights to believe in any religious faith as they choose, but it is quite another thing to base civil rights and associated on a particular religious faith.

We should leave religion to religion and civil government to civil government except where the two rationally meet such as with the government supporting and legally protecting the free exercise of religious faith where that faith does not harm another being or society. The government should not be in the business of supporting religious law that demeans or objectively hurts one class of people because a group of persons of faith believe that they should.

There is much objective proof to support this. The countries and societies of the world that have the most secular forms of government and secular laws are consistantly and objectively rated (education, wealth and life expectancy, etc) as the best places in the world to live and have the happiest citizens. Some ‘best places’: Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, etc. (US is one of the best but dropping) Worst places: Iran, Iraq, Niger, Chad, Uganda. While there are many factors that go into determining why a country is more desireable than another, very few if any totalitarian or theocracies enjoy an objectively rated good quality of life. I may also add that many of these ‘best’ places to live already have SSM and enjoy very low divorce rates to boot.

And if you really love and wish the best for that son or daughter you would endure the sacrifice necessary to give him or her a loving and present father and a mother

yankee:
This doesn’t make any sense to me.When we are talking about adoption, I think we should do everything we can to give the a loving and supportive home …

Again with the strawman. Please don’t crab sideways. I said “father and mother” not “loving supportive home.” An adoptive child may or may not have had a loving and supportive home, but definitely had a mother AND a father.

An adoptive girl has lost HER mother and HER father. Maybe good, bad or indifferent — but a mother AND a father. Every human being has one mother and one father, whether living or dead, known or unknown. If you really cared about the child, would you not want to most closely replace what has the child should have had but has lost? Do you not care to remedy her actual loss?

The interests of the child are paramount, … not whether the parents meet your metaphysical concerns about “form and nature,” whatever that means.

Yes, but you ignore the obvious, immemorial interest of every child — her mother and father. There is nothing metaphysical about the loss of one’s parents — it is, in fact, inevitable — but in the case of the adoptive child it has occurred untimely. And there is nothing metaphysical in saying that when her mother and father are gone, her needs include the chance to live with and know a mother and father — which is what she lost. She needs what she has lost — not a material circumstance (a home)– but the set of her OWN first relationships ( mother and father). You are only offering her what YOU want.

G.R. Mead: And if you really love and wish the best for that son or daughter you would endure the sacrifice necessary to give him or her a loving and present father and a mother, not two daddies or mommies because you think you would be just as good — because it is not and never was about YOU. Circumstance may deny a child that natural right to HIS father and His mother — but if we truly want to remedy the injustice to the child — we should do everything we can to replace the child’s loss with the form and nature of the parents they had a natural right to have, and have been denied, don’t you think?

This doesn’t make any sense to me. When we are talking about adoption, I think we should do everything we can to give the a loving and supportive home, whether that means a married heterosexual couple, an unmarried heterosexual couple, a gay couple, a woman who lives with extended family, or an unmarried man who lives in an all-male Opus Dei house where other members of the household would also participate in raising the child.* The interests of the child are paramount, not whether the parents meet your metaphysical concerns about “form and nature,” whatever that means.

* I don’t know if Opus Dei would approve of this sort of arrangement, but that is not the point.

ArthurKirkland:
Can anyone decode any of this to the point at which it makes sense?… This is what happens whe people whose opposition to same-sex marriage has a foundation of supernatural belief attempt to argue that the case against same-sex marriage is based on reason.

I don’t need religious argument to make the case becauas it is objectively true. I believe my faith is consistent with the truth, but to ensure that I do not delude myself in naked belief, I am content to make arguments on purely objective grounds . So I argue completly apart from my tradition hoping to persuade you of an objective truth, not a truth of belief. If you value objective truth, you might be persuaded from an error, and if not, then you won’t.

So, let’s see. I observe above, at some length, that it has not been so, and I examine, at some length, the objective reasons that it has not been so (and does not naturally arise), therefore there is no reason to change the status quo.

But if you simply ignore my reasons for there being no change — What reason do you have, that is not simply founded on the naked belief or feeling that it “must” be so ? And if you claim “equality”, what is that equality founded upon other than positive law?

Objectively, men and women are NOT equal in their sexual nature. In terms of the fundamental biology of sex, neither a man nor a woman is a complete organism when it comes to reproduction, and they play different roles in making a complete reproductive organism. They are not equal by nature, but by nature they are meant to be — ONE — not equal. A man and man cannot function this way biologically, nor a woman and a woman. So you fundamentally sever the relationship between marriage and its simultaneous unitive and reproductive function.

You cannot, and should not try to, sever them, because they are the very foundation of the simultaneous diversity in equal DIGNITY, (that you rightly perceive as linked) but which you then misapply in rhetoric to justify your position based on an untempered passion. You saw at the limb supporting you.

If your position is ONLY grounded on positive law, then those in control of that law can simply dictate later what they then please, as well, a situation NEITHER of us would prefer, I think, and there is no more fundamental basis on which to oppose it. My position argues, in any event, from a more fundamental objective basis — more fundamental than desire, will or positive law, and not from a basis of mere subjective belief.

Randy: What you are arguing is that gays shouldn’t have kids.

PLease have them, in the manner nature provided for their begetting and rearing — one male one female parent. IF you respond by saying that is unfair and tragic, and, something along the lines of, “Oh, how could I, that would require me to deny myself, to deny my own natural desires.” Yep. Bingo. Your child should matter more than your desires, a point EQUALLY true of heterosexual and homosexually inclined people.

…” without true marriage that forms and continues society by biological ties, as I have described it — there is no inherent continuity, and thus such a society is passing, frail and cannot endure.”
So then parents who can’t have children and adopt are in the same boat, since they have no posterity of their own, no blood. Their marriages, by your own definition then, should and must be dissolved.

For pity’s sake. The point was that since gay people cannot form their own society with a genetic continuity independent of the larger heterosexual society. They are thus completely dependent for posterity upon, and logically secondary to, the society from which they arise, and what IT requires to maintain its continuity.

Bottom line, YOU want what YOU want, you are not going to let reason stand in your way nor subordinate your self-conceived desire to needs that are not your own. But you see, that subordination is what makes the good father or mother. Having children is not a right merely, but a sacrifice.

If you wanted to make that sacrifice, you would accept that if you wish to have a son or daughter you would submit to what nature requires (not me, not God, not oppressive patriarchy) — nature requires that you subordinate your desire and respond to the complementarity of sex in order to have children — and using mechanical intermediaries does not change that reality — it simply veils it. Heterosexuals have to make other sacrifice of their own desires, tempering their own sexuality in many ways and tempering or subordinating other desires, surely, but sacrifices, equally, they remain.

And if you really love and wish the best for that son or daughter you would endure the sacrifice necessary to give him or her a loving and present father and a mother, not two daddies or mommies because you think you would be just as good — because it is not and never was about YOU. Circumstance may deny a child that natural right to HIS father and His mother — but if we truly want to remedy the injustice to the child — we should do everything we can to replace the child’s loss with the form and nature of the parents they had a natural right to have, and have been denied, don’t you think?

pot meet kettle says:

As a Southerner and Catholic

Color me surprised!

Randy: People like Mead have an iron clad logic:Gays are outside of civil society. Ergo, any arguments that say otherwise are untrue.

Oh, for Pete’s sake — I go to church with at least one gay couple, for the last fifteen years. Sheesh. Whose is the uninformed, stereotypical bigotry, here?

Everything and everyone is loved and has a place — where is it written that the social structures that arise around that fact must ipso facto be uniform for everyone? It is simply illogical to assume that it must be — and wrong to demand that it shall be.

As a Southerner and Catholic

Color me surprised!

It sure is strange. And it makes no sense and is unsupported by any logic or evidence. But I’ve tangled with people just like Mead many times before, and no amount of logic or evidence will sway them. They might allow that adoption by straight parents is a necessary evil (as Maggie Gallagher says), but they don’t really support it. It’s not ‘good’ for society. Only ‘real children’ are worthy of passing on society’s cultures and values. It’s the old macho thing: my blood children are special, your’s are worthless.

They ignore the fact that a gay man might have a natural birth child from a previous marriage. But who cares about them? Lesbians might have a natural birth children, but who care about them? People like Mead have an iron clad logic: Gays are outside of civil society. Ergo, any arguments that say otherwise are untrue.

So, first they posit the conclusion, then they just make up crap to fit it. Hence the strange gyrations and incomprehensible statements about posterity not mourning and all that.

” there is no inherent continuity, and thus such a society is passing, frail and cannot endure.” Because, you know, once the gays marry, then everyone else become sterile.

It sure is. And all available data shows that children raised by same sex parents are just as adjusted and do just as well as children of heterosexual parents. Which is exactly why every single major adoption agency in the US supports adoption for gay parents. Not only do gays make as good parents as straights, but the need is for finding homes is tremendous.

What you are arguing is that gays shouldn’t have kids. But they do. And what you are saying is that children are better off in foster care than in an adopted gay parents home. That’s not only not supported by any gay adoption agency but you completely ignore the fact that thousands of gay couples DO have children. (not that you would care, because you obviously don’t care about facts that conflict with your ideology).

So the point remains: What do should be the policy for children of gay parents? Don’t they deserve the same rights and stability by having married parents? Or are you just going to ignore them as you do now?

“The boundary of death and of memory are equally important as new life and birth of persons and societies, but without true marriage that forms and continues society by biological ties, as I have described it — there is no inherent continuity, and thus such a society is passing, frail and cannot endure.”

So then parents who can’t have children and adopt are in the same boat, since they have no posterity of their own, no blood. Their marriages, by your own definition then, should and must be dissolved.

But of course, you ignore the fact that two lesbians can still produce children. One can be inseminated, and that mixes with her egg, and voila: she has posterity. So by your own defination, lesbians should have the right to marry, since they carry on.

” no one whose blood is yours to mourn you when you pass, to remember your achievements when you have died and to defend you when your memory is impeached.”

Are you really saying that adopted children don’t mourn their parents? Or remember your accomplishments? Or defend your memory? That’s pretty slimy to say such a thing. My niece is adopted, and I know many other parents, both gay and straight, who have adopted. I have told them about these sorts of arguments (you aren’t the first), and they just shake their head that anyone could hold such shameful arguments.

“but without true marriage that forms and continues society by biological ties, as I have described it — there is no inherent continuity, and thus such a society is passing, frail and cannot endure.”

And even if all your BS is true, how does allowing SSM prevent ‘true marriages’? If you are only concerned about parents have natural birthed children, not adoption, do you really think that there are so few straight parents having children? Or are there SO MANY gay couples adopting children that straight people will just die out? Or are there SO FEW gay couples adopting children that you can just ignore the problem?

You see, you want it both ways. You want to say there are so few gays with kids that we don’t have to allow SSM to accomodate so few. But on the other hand, there are so many gays that just allowing some will cause this catastrophe on society.

Currently, gays are allowed to marry in five states, with Massachusetts being the longest. Among countries that allow SSM are Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, S. Africa, Spain, Norway and Sweden. Many have had the for some time. If there was any truth to your ideas, then there should be symptoms of them now. Can you identify any? Birth, marriage and divorce rates have remained fairly steady in all of those places. If there is any truth to your fears, then there should be *something* by now to evidence them. Please identify.

Every marriage is the embryo of a new society. So the joining of a man and a woman is both perilous and innately beautiful for that reason. That peril, that beauty, simply cannot exist in the joining of two men or two women. The same immense mystery is not there.

Can anyone decode any of this to the point at which it makes sense?

You will have no posterity of your own, no descendants, no one whose blood is yours to mourn you when you pass, to remember your achievements when you have died and to defend you when your memory is impeached. The boundary of death and of memory are equally important as new life and birth of persons and societies, but without true marriage that forms and continues society by biological ties, as I have described it — there is no inherent continuity, and thus such a society is passing, frail and cannot endure.

This strange criticism would apply to any person incapable of reproduction, with more force with respect to a homosexual. In the context of a gay man, he could solve the problem by impregnating someone, regardless of marital status.

This is what happens whe people whose opposition to same-sex marriage has a foundation of supernatural belief attempt to argue that the case against same-sex marriage is based on reason.

yankee:
Leaving aside the fact that marriage has more than one purpose, …

Primary and secondary purposes.

A same-sex marriage cannot be “about” procreation, but it can be (and often is) about raising children.Marriage has never been “about” procreation either.People are entirely capable of procreating with out marriage and marriage does absolutely nothing to facilitate it.

It’s like the terra-cotta warriors, only made of hay. The point is not that subtle. Rape is sufficient for procreation but not to form civil societies. A biological child of an actual marriage is a person with equal call on two otherwise unrelated family societies, making them, at least in that one dimension, a single society.

I say it again, homosexual substitutes for marriage do not and can never weld two societies together at the genetic level.

Randy: Mead: ” The process of marriage underlies civil society and the formation of law. It does require legal protection — as it does break down and then societies do fail. Ask Bill Cosby, Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams. Gay “marriage” does nothing to preserve it and much to call it into question, confuse and diminish it. ”On the contrary, denying gay marriage will do much more to destroy it than by prohibiting it…. We are a living example that marriage isn’t needed and what better lesson for young people to avoid getting married?

Societies are defined by the formation and maintenance of their boundaries — I think my argument is fairly clear on this point. Like the complementarity of sexes in a marriage, their is complementarity, too, in the longitudinal boundaries of life in society as well.

You will have no posterity of your own, no descendants, no one whose blood is yours to mourn you when you pass, to remember your achievements when you have died and to defend you when your memory is impeached. The boundary of death and of memory are equally important as new life and birth of persons and societies, but without true marriage that forms and continues society by biological ties, as I have described it — there is no inherent continuity, and thus such a society is passing, frail and cannot endure.

If you do have them by artificial means — how long can that chain of inheritance be maintained in an excusively gay society — for if it cannot, then gay society is plainly dependent on the continuing society formed by actual marriages, and you are shooting your own posterity in the foot.

esurience:

“Marriage requires no legal creation and no legal invention.”

The part that I have bolded is the problem with your thinking. In your view, marriage is self-evidently a heterosexual-only institution,… Your position is inherently undemocratic and authoritarian.

Yes. Please see my previous post.

…and no government, whether through the courts, the legislature, or even the people directly, has the authority to alter what you regard as a self-evident “truth.”

Not exactly so. Apart from the root complementarity of the sexes, laws and other social sanctions have and do alter various acceptable categorical limitations on marriage (both legal and otherwise) — all of which (race, cousinage, class, ethnicity, occupation, etc.) also fit the social boundary control issues that I identify as the root operation of marriage as it forms and informs civil society.

You claim to be privy to certain “truths” (how you are privy to them, you don’t say) that cannot be subjected to any examination for whether or not they are actually true.

They are true and I have said why, if you were reading, and you can read on the manner of evolutionary sociobiology in your local library, if you choose. But apart from the way in which social animals populations change over time, there is a deeper more stark truth that distinguishes the two cases at issue between us.

Every marriage is the embryo of a new society. So the joining of a man and a woman is both perilous and innately beautiful for that reason. That peril, that beauty, simply cannot exist in the joining of two men or two women. The same immense mystery is not there.

Your position is by definition unreasonable because you haven’t arrived at it through reason, and you reject reason as a basis to prove or disprove it.

Saying that does not make it so. Cite any lapse of logic, if you please? What you object to is the assumptions from which our respective reasoning operates — not the reasoning. Factual assumptions of reasoning are neither reasonable or unreasonable — the assumptions are merely true or untrue. Cite an assumption of my reasoning that is demonstrably untrue, please?

The problem with this thinking is that it could quite literally justify … marital rape, denying suffrage, etc… I’m asserting that a woman is subservient to a man by definition of what a man and woman is, according to nature.

Ah, “Might makes right,” eh? The rebuttal to that premise is written in a bloody history, not merely between sexes. And that history shows that where women are valued as persons, not objects, society flourishes, and where women are valued as objects, not persons, society collapses.

Remember also, that, just like you do with regard to marriage, I’m asserting that this is an unalterable truth that no court, legislature, or vote of the people has the power to redefine.

But, it is an historically proven untruth , so… the argument fails at that point

To say that men and women should be equal is like saying that a cow is equal to a duck.

To say that they are equal in dignity is not to say that they are (necessarily) equal in social position or in function in society or biology. A colonel is equal in dignity to his sergeant, but not in position or function; and the best colonels will risk their lives and careers for their sergeants.

The remainder of this strawman has lost all human form so I will leave the haypile there, I think.

Randy: Furthermore, you want arguments for a civil society?Here are some:Married people are more likely to live longer lives and healthier lives that unmarried people.Therefore, our society is better off if gay people live healthier lives, as it reduces the costs to our society. Married people are much more likely to adopt children than unmarried couples. …

Married heterosexual couples live longer. The data does not say what you wish it to say, and your inferential extension of it based on the word “marriage” simply assumes facts not in evidence and infers a factual equivalence of a materially different arrangement, on which the data are utterly silent, and thus is not valid as inference.

As to adoption — what are you waiting for? I don’t approve of “tests” of people’s proclivities to sin, or unduly intrusive into their actual sinning (nunya f*** bidness, thank you very much), anymore than I would approve such inquiry into my own. Sins: everybody has them, get over it, forgive, move along. (In my religious tradition, please understand, homosexuality is just that, a proclivity, neither good nor evil as such. Enjoying drink is not sin but is a proclivity toward drunkenness, which is, usually a sin) as opposed to objective violations of safety, peace or justice toward others when considering qualifications for adoption. But objective living arrangements for a child ARE HIGHLY material. If one cared more for the child than about one’s status as a parent (which is and ought to be a primary condition of adoption, near as one can determine) then one would look to see what arrangements in which, objectively, children best develop. This data is available.

Interracial couples didn’t have to ‘prove’ their worth to society, or that they are important to a civil society.

You mistake the point. Take off your own cultural filter a moment and consider the matter without that bias of our particular society in mind. Rights are granted because we recognize someone as a member of “our society.” Only in an egalitarian society do we recognize those rights as being, in principle. equal; and even in explicitly egalitarian societies, not ALL rights are equally enjoyed, bestowed or enforceable, nor are all factual situations treated as equivalent to all other factual situations, or the legitimate sorting mechanisms of legal entitlement could not function at all.

That we value positional equality does not mean that we treat all positions as equal in that society. In fact, we depend greatly on internal inegalitarian societies to make our larger egalitarian society work BETTER — Courts, for instance — please try telling the judge you are her equal in court. The military, for another example, is highly structured and deeply inegalitarian. Marriages, I submit, are another one — at least with regard to the positional dependence on complementarity of sex.

They were denied their rights for no reason other than base prejudice dressed up in fancy arguments about ‘civil society’ and God’s intent, and all that.

Actually, blacks were denied rights simply because they were not admitted to white society, same as Irish wernot admitted ot English society for long years, and Koreans are not admitted to Japanese society despite four hundred years of residence there; and Koreans in East L.A. are not readily admitted to Black or Latino society there, and a whole host of other examples at any and all possible scales.

Marriage, historically, erodes those lines and binds those communities progressively into closer and closer relations — without any legal sacntio or process whatsoever. Literal relations. (Read Romeo and Juliet again, please.) Homosexual marriage does not can can never do that. Marriage actively alters and creates new societies, a priori to any positive law.

G.R. Mead: Well, either pretend, or be forced to withdraw from the public sphere as a matter of conscience. Which has already happened. Catholic Charities has had to withdraw under threat of legal sacntion form adoption services in Massachusetts, a social service in place for over a hundred years — because they happen to hold that all children are ideally entitled to a mother and father, and to make that ideal a superior preference in adoption, and excluding same-sex couples. Instead, the issue was determined merely on the now sanctioned “right” of the would-be adoptive gay couple.

This had nothing to do with gay marriage and everything to do with antidiscrimination laws.

G.R. Mead: Gay “marriage” is not, will not, and cannot be for and ABOUT children, therefore is not, and will never be equal to actual marriage.

It can’t? Leaving aside the fact that marriage has more than one purpose, gay and lesbian couples can and do raise children, whether from a previous relationship, through artificial insemination/surrogacy, or adoption. I believe same-sex couples are also more likely to adopt hard-to-place children—those who are older, disabled, and/or nonwhite—but I could be wrong about this. A same-sex marriage cannot be “about” procreation, but it can be (and often is) about raising children.

Marriage has never been “about” procreation either. People are entirely capable of procreating without marriage and marriage does absolutely nothing to facilitate it.

On the contrary, denying gay marriage will do much more to destroy it than by prohibiting it. Marriage has been breaking down since the 1920s when divorce rates skyrocketed to 50%. They dipped in the depression and the war, and held steady until they rose again in the 60s. It’s a myth that marriage was stable and everyone got married and no one divorced until the evil 60s came along. And the reasons for divorce rates is because women became much more independent and could afford to leave a bad marriage. So you want legal protection for marriage? Go back to when the wife’s assets were automatically her husband’s and deny women the right to earn a living wage. That will cause the divorce to drop quite dramatically. Whether it will earn you the stable society is another question.

But there’s a better reason to allow gay marriage. Gays are coupling up with or without your approval, mostly without. And we adopt children. We raise families, we stay together for a lifetime, we care for each other. We act as though we are married without the benefits of marriage. And we are able to do it successfully.

And so the lesson to young people is that you really don’t have to get married to have all these benefits. Just look at the gays! They make is work as a family, often better than many straight families, I might add, and that’s proof that marriage isn’t needed.

So if you really want to break down marriage in our society, you are doing a great job. Keep it up! We are a living example that marriage isn’t needed and what better lesson for young people to avoid getting married?

But if you really cared about marriage, you would be insisting that all gay couples get married. You certainly would insist that any gay couple that has children should be forced to get married, for the betterment of our society.

G.R. Mead: Show that legally enforcing gay “marriage” has a role to play in the States marriage policy of preserving the civil society formation role of actual marriage. The policy goal is to PRESERVE the mechanism of civil society formation — not to invent or create it. Marriage requires no legal creation and no legal invention.

The part that I have bolded is the problem with your thinking. In your view, marriage is self-evidently a heterosexual-only institution, and no government, whether through the courts, the legislature, or even the people directly, has the authority to alter what you regard as a self-evident “truth.” Your position is inherently undemocratic and authoritarian. You claim to be privy to certain “truths” (how you are privy to them, you don’t say) that cannot be subjected to any examination for whether or not they are actually true. Your position is by definition unreasonable because you haven’t arrived at it through reason, and you reject reason as a basis to prove or disprove it. It’s an unalterable truth for you.

The problem with this thinking is that it could quite literally justify anything, including things we rightly regard as deplorable.

If I told you that it was a self-evident truth of nature that a woman’s role is to be subservient to man, and I used this as a justification for marital rape, denying suffrage, etc… how would you begin to attack this position?

Remember that I’m asserting that a woman is subservient to a man by definition of what a man and woman is, according to nature. Remember also, that, just like you do with regard to marriage, I’m asserting that this is an unalterable truth that no court, legislature, or vote of the people has the power to redefine. To say that men and women should be equal is like saying that a cow is equal to a duck. Government only has the authority to recognize the natural difference between men and women, not to redefine it by saying they are “equal” — preposterous!

You could also justify, from your reasoning, that treating African-Americans differently from white people was just the government acknowledging the that there is a “natural” difference between blacks and whites. And reasoning along this lines was of course used in justification of slavery and segregation and lots of deplorable things.

Married people are more likely to live longer lives and healthier lives that unmarried people. Therefore, our society is better off if gay people live healthier lives, as it reduces the costs to our society.

Married people are much more likely to adopt children than unmarried couples. There is a huge backlog of children in foster care in the US, and it is better for our society if these children were removed from foster care and placed in a loving home that will adopt them and care for them the rest of their lives. Therefore, our society is better off and more stable by allowing gay people to marry, and encouraging them to adopt the unwanted children that you straight people have brought into the world.

Lastly, our society is not based on rights that a group must prove that they are entitled to. Opponents will always move the goal post and say, nope, sorry, you still haven’t proven why you are deserving of rights. Instead, our constitution says that all rights are to be applied equally to all. Which is exactly what SCOTUS said in Loving. Interracial couples didn’t have to ‘prove’ their worth to society, or that they are important to a civil society. They were denied their rights for no reason other than base prejudice dressed up in fancy arguments about ‘civil society’ and God’s intent, and all that.

Why is interracial marriage necessary for a civil society? According to your logic, there is none. We had a civil society before Loving v Virginia, and we have a civil society after it. Therefore, it should not be allowed because it’s not necessary. Yet SCOTUS said the opposite, that marriage is a fundamental right.

Ditto with SSM. We have a civil society in many states that don’t allow it, and a civil society in the few states that do allow it.

The question therefore isn’t whether it’s important for a civil society, but it’s a question of rights.

But if you want to go the civil society route, there is clearly a need for children to have the stability of married parents, rather than unmarried ones.

The trouble with your logic is that you never define what ‘civil society’ is. It is what ever you say it is. Therefore, nothing can every refute it, because you just change the goal posts, and you always can exclude gays. It’s very convenient, and you can say you take the high road: “See? No one can refute such simple logic!”

Right. And every study shows that children of married couples do much better in school, in society and as adults when they are the children of married parents.

Since there are many thousands of gay couples who have children, either due to adoption, or natural birth, or whatever, you would then of course be insisting that these gay couple be married. Because you care about the children, and that is marriage is all about.

But I suspect you will say something along the lines that children of gay parents don’t deserve the same rights as children of hetero parents, right?

Kenster999: Logically, getting government out of the marriage business so that everyone has a “civil union” certainly is “equality” and makes sense on some level. But that’s not what we’re asking for. We’re not trying to destroy marriage. We want to be a part of it. “It became necessary to destroy marriage in order to save it.” heh, not looking for that!

Hold on a second. No one is talking about destroying marriage. I’m talking about returning it to its proper sphere: a private arrangement between individuals. Why do you and yankee assume that government must be involved in marriage for the institution to remain viable? I think it is a tremendous leap to say that if the government stopped issuing marriage licenses that that would destroy marriage altogether. The institution existed for millenia without marriage licenses and the conglomeration of government interventions that we have today. Do you have any credible reason to believe that it could not do so again? If so, I’d like to hear it.

esurience:

How can I meet the burden without you telling me what burden it is I’m supposed to be meeting? Would you agree that if it could be shown that allowing gays and lesbians to marry was not inconsistent with the policy goals of marriage, then gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry? If so, then what are those policy goals that you think gays and lesbians are incapable of meeting? I’ve rebutted your points on procreation, several times over now (in various forms that you choose to phrase it). If I’ve missed something, let me know what it is.

Show that legally enforcing gay “marriage” has a role to play in the States marriage policy of preserving the civil society formation role of actual marriage. The policy goal is to PRESERVE the mechanism of civil society formation — not to invent or create it. Marriage requires no legal creation and no legal invention. The process of marriage underlies civil society and the formation of law. It does require legal protection — as it does break down and then societies do fail. Ask Bill Cosby, Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams. Gay “marriage” does nothing to preserve it and much to call it into question, confuse and diminish it.

You have not rebutted procreation issues, you have rephrased my issues in that way so as to sidestep. You never addressed the distinction between the condition of actual fertility that we cannot enforce and sexual complementarity (promoting fertility) that we do. It is on the second ground that all the marriage debate lies, not the first, which is simply a strawman.

yankee:
What does allowing gay marriage require anyone to “pretend”?Marriage does impose some obligations on third parties (such as a requirement to pay damages for wrongful death), but nobody is required to assert a belief in anything.Catholics are not required to profess that the so-called “marriages” of divorcees are marriages in the eyes of God.

Well, either pretend, or be forced to withdraw from the public sphere as a matter of conscience. Which has already happened. Catholic Charities has had to withdraw under threat of legal sacntion form adoption services in Massachusetts, a social service in place for over a hundred years — because they happen to hold that all children are ideally entitled to a mother and father, and to make that ideal a superior preference in adoption, and excluding same-sex couples. Instead, the issue was determined merely on the now sanctioned “right” of the would-be adoptive gay couple.

History, tradition and evolution are on the side of the position now “banned in Boston” (rich irony that, I’ll give you). But so what about children. The structure of complementary sexes in parenting is not “equal” to to like-sex pairs in supporting the development of children. Not logically, emotionally, or developmentally. If we insist on calling a “couch” a “chicken”, do children sleep just as well on a chicken or grow just as well eating a couch?

No one made the case from the perspective of the children before issuing ukase’s to the Church that they violate five-thousand year old religious sanctions that seem to be — evolutionarily speaking, pretty “fit.” Instead, the issue was determined merely on the now-sanctioned “right” of the would-be adoptive gay couple. Regardless of belief systems, in evolutionary sociobiological terms, “gay marriage” is by definition “not fit” and is a fool’s errand as social policy, and is already doing much social damage with no commensurate or superior social benefit to show.

Marriage as an institution is about caring for children, like a hospital is about caring for sick people — even if it is empty, unfinished, or decaying and unfit for that purpose anymore. So you see that the law requiring gay “marriage” is NOT even the same in concern or impact as the law applied to actual marriages. Gay “marriage” is not, will not, and cannot be for and ABOUT children, therefore is not, and will never be equal to actual marriage. Which means also that the war from a position of strong passion to make it so — against the intransigent facts — CAN NEVER END. It also means you have not cured an existing division in civil society — you have simply shifted its location in the body politic, and are widening it measurably.

But to make a legal sanction as “marriage” would require recognition
as “marriage” — in any public setting — with legal consequences. E.g. —
http://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen/09d/vadala/index.html
http://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen/09d/vadala/Brookstone_letter.pdf

We already see teaching of such relationships as being normal in public schools where these ideas have taken hold, insinuating, in a society that prohibits praying in schools, a specific moral agenda to inculcate a belief contrary to the express religious teachings of about, oh, 80% or so of the population. Does one really believe that that sense of surreptitious approach to the ideas that people’s children will be taught is answered by most commmon folk from a position of reason and measured caution ? The risks of visceral (and political) counter-reaction and unintended consequences have not been weighed by the proponents.

G.R. Mead: You are very welcome.I have no reason to give up yet, until my reasoning is soundly rebutted.

OK, I understand your points and perspectives. We obviously disagree, and I think a large part of that is because we have different assumptions. Regardless, I’ve appreciated hearing your thoughts and opinions, especially because it’s been difficult for me to understand why some people are opposed to same-sex marriage.

Thanks again, and all the best.

esurience: And when people examine the arguments on both sides, they’ll find out that your side has no answer to the question:

How is allowing gays and lesbians to marry inconsistent with the purposes of marriage, as it it currently implemented? In other words, on what grounds do you disqualify gay and lesbian people from marrying, but manage to keep marriage the same as it is right now for all heterosexuals?

G.R. Mead: This is a legal forum and I reiterate that begging the question as “why not” assumes the conclusion to shift the burden without proof — to change a longstanding and durable status quo. Yours is the burden.

How can I meet the burden without you telling me what burden it is I’m supposed to be meeting? Would you agree that if it could be shown that allowing gays and lesbians to marry was not inconsistent with the policy goals of marriage, then gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry? If so, then what are those policy goals that you think gays and lesbians are incapable of meeting? I’ve rebutted your points on procreation, several times over now (in various forms that you choose to phrase it). If I’ve missed something, let me know what it is.

G.R. Mead: If in your vocabulary it is a “decent” thing to forcibly compel by penalty of law unwilling people to pretend something is true that they do not believe, have objective reason to reject, and which is unnecessary to the society on which they depend — then we have no universe in which a civil conversation can occur.

What does allowing gay marriage require anyone to “pretend”? Marriage does impose some obligations on third parties (such as a requirement to pay damages for wrongful death), but nobody is required to assert a belief in anything. Catholics are not required to profess that the so-called “marriages” of divorcees are marriages in the eyes of God.

Kenster999:
Yeah, I didn’t think that would convince you. :)But it’s still how I feel.

That is the foundaiton of the disconnect in the debate. In clasical rhetoric the issue can be resolved by agreement on either of the three grounds of argument — Pathos(feeling), Ethos(morals) or Logos (Rreason). The two sides cannot agree on their feelings about it; they cannot agree on ethical foundations to determine it. That leaves only one real mode of argument in play.

You feel one way; opponents feel another way — But contesting feeling often ends in war. But there are usually reasons for feelings, and if we look at the reasons for those feelings objectively we might change the way people feel about it, the ethical basis they use to determine it or, who knows, “the horse might sing” … at least enough to avoid political as well as actual violence prompted by raw feeling.

The proponents are working hard to change feelings, mainly by arguments of pathos demonstrated here — appeals to shame, indignation, pity, and others — but without alot of reasoned argument — IMO. I think the same effort at changing feelings needs to made from the opposing camp — but with the reasoned arguments that are not simply dismissed.

…I’m not sure how else to put it — I am trying to be sincere.)

You did fine by me.

I know you won’t like the comparison, but it really does seem to me like the old argument against interracial marriage. I’m sure that when it was allowed by the courts, many people who were against it felt that it was unfair that the court imposed a new definition on them. And that was certainly true: those people were offended, and a new definition was imposed, effectively. But all things considered, I think the benefit to those allowed to marry (over 1100 federal rights, hundreds of state rights, freedom to pursue happiness, etc) outweighed the burden on those who disagreed.(Please note: I’m not saying you’re racist, of course, I’m just making a comparison.)

As a Southerner and Catholic, I have familial and personal history attesting for me two different types of social integration. Marital barriers defined separate societies. Removing the marital barrier integrated those separate, though cohabiting, societies into one more cohesive society (eventually) through common descendants. That process will not and can never have any applicability for the homosexual case — and so it is an inapt comparison.

In any case, it seems unlikely we’ll agree, or change each others’ minds. Thanks for the civil discussion, though. :)

You are very welcome. I have no reason to give up yet, until my reasoning is soundly rebutted.

G.R. Mead:
“Decent?”On what moral ground? If an objective one, then state it. If your own subjective one, then you abet a mob in mere tyranny. If in your vocabulary it is a “decent” thing to forcibly compel by penalty of law unwilling people to pretend something is true that they do not believe, have objective reason to reject, and which is unnecessary to the society on which they depend — then we have no universe in which a civil conversation can occur.

Yeah, I didn’t think that would convince you. :)

But it’s still how I feel. I think it’s pretty self-evident that allowing gay people to marry they person they love is the decent thing to do, and harms no one. (You’re free to continue to believe that it’s wrong, abnormal, whatever.) I’ll grant that it may annoy you, you may feel like it contributes to the destruction of society, and you don’t like the tyranny of a changed definition of marriage being imposed on you. I disagree with the middle point, of course, and am sorry for the other two. (I’m sure that came out condescending, but I’m not sure how else to put it — I am trying to be sincere.)

I know you won’t like the comparison, but it really does seem to me like the old argument against interracial marriage. I’m sure that when it was allowed by the courts, many people who were against it felt that it was unfair that the court imposed a new definition on them. And that was certainly true: those people were offended, and a new definition was imposed, effectively. But all things considered, I think the benefit to those allowed to marry (over 1100 federal rights, hundreds of state rights, freedom to pursue happiness, etc) outweighed the burden on those who disagreed.

(Please note: I’m not saying you’re racist, of course, I’m just making a comparison.)

In any case, it seems unlikely we’ll agree, or change each others’ minds. Thanks for the civil discussion, though. :)

I work with 42 people. 40 of them are married. 38 of them have children. All of my neighbors are married with children (except for the couple up the street whose husband died last week). I can’t think of single client I have had in the last 15 years wasn’t married and didn’t have children. So unless there a whole lot of gay men that get married and have kids I seriously doubt I know very many. My clients are people that I work with for weeks to months to years.

why are you so afraid of gay marriage then?

esurience:
How is women having the right to vote necessary for civil society? How is allowing inter-racial marriage necessary for civil society?

Voting isn’t necessary for a civil society. Racial integration isn’t necessary for a civil society. I might not prefer either civil society in which those conditions held — but that would not mean they were not civil societies simply because I might disapprove.

You’re starting with a faulty premise: the idea that we only compel things through the power of law if they are “necessary for a civil society.”

Less faulty than yours. As a libertarian, I DO start with that premise. I have no desire to outlaw private conduct that does no objective harm — even though my faith teaches it is sin. Hell, I do things that my faith teaches is sin. In fact my faith teaches that there isn’t anyone who doesn’t sin. They sin; I sin; everybody sins; we can get over it. So it isn’t about putting homosexuals into hairshirts with leper bells.

We do not, in fact, use the law so sparingly. We use the law, in most cases, to do things which we think would have some sort of benefit, either to a segment of society or all of society, a benefit which outweighs any costs it might have.

Then we disagree on the purposes of law and valid public choice. Law is the instrument of civil government — but all government is force, and law is simply an instrument of penultimate force.

I do not hold that a man may compel a benefit for himself at the point of gun, except in need of protecting life, liberty, or property. The number of men with guns is irrelevant to the moral calculus. And if you do not share that basic moral conviction — then we, likewise, have no universe in which to have a very extensive civil conversation.

We don’t use the power of law only in cases where we think civil society would utterly collapse if we didn’t — don’t be ridiculous.

You construct a strawman or gravely mistake my actual argument.

There’s no doubt, I hope you agree, that gays and lesbians in this country are subject to a lot of prejudice, and that historically it’s been far worse for us.

Than for whom, exactly? The Irish? The Jews? The Chinese? Blacks, of course? Turks in Germany?

When you have that kind of history of pervasive discrimination against a group of people, …

I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that marriage is a consolation prize for past abuse. In fact, the precedents in the mentioned out-groups suffering from such exclusions and socially (and in some cases legally) barred from intermarriage with the majority groups in those societies were part of the exact process of enlarging and integrating civil society by the peaceable means of acquiring common bonds of blood. That process of removing marital barriers that defined two civil societies to make a larger single society has no function in the homosexual setting. None whatsoever.

Additionally, history does not reflect that such integration processes may be hurried by enlightened elites dictating the time and manner of its occurrence. DuBois said it could be dictated legally and politically; Booker T. Washington said it should be allowed to evolve naturally. Given the evidence of the state of black families — I’d say Booker T. Washington’s policy would have been the better bet.

I think people really do have a duty, as citizens, and as anyone who wants to call themselves a decent person, to think about the issue and consider whether it’s just culturally-ingrained prejudices that have been guiding their feelings on it thus far.

Am I guilty of not thinking about the issue, would you say?

And when people examine the arguments on both sides, they’ll find out that your side has no answer to the question:How is allowing gays and lesbians to marry inconsistent with the purposes of marriage, as it it currently implemented? In other words, on what grounds do you disqualify gay and lesbian people from marrying, but manage to keep marriage the same as it is right now for all heterosexuals?

This is a legal forum and I reiterate that begging the question as “why not” assumes the conclusion to shift the burden without proof — to change a longstanding and durable status quo. Yours is the burden.

So I put it to you: How is it consistent with the societal formation function of marriage outlined in sociobiological terms above, and just illustrated historically, as the means by which different societies become more integrated over time ?

Kenster999:
Because it’s the decent thing to do.

“Decent?” On what moral ground? If an objective one, then state it. If your own subjective one, then you abet a mob in mere tyranny.

If in your vocabulary it is a “decent” thing to forcibly compel by penalty of law unwilling people to pretend something is true that they do not believe, have objective reason to reject, and which is unnecessary to the society on which they depend — then we have no universe in which a civil conversation can occur.

I can’t think of single client I have had in the last 15 years wasn’t married and didn’t have children. So unless there a whole lot of gay men that get married and have kids I seriously doubt I know very many.

I can think of three gay men that I know / or have known that did just that. Again, just because they got married and had kids does not mean they are not gay. If you’re gay man, you are still quite capable of fertilizing an egg. If you’re gay, you are perfectly able to get married to the opposite sex (as we are always reminded). It’s certainly possible that all your clients are indeed straight and not gay. But it’s also possible that one or two of them are pulling James McGreevey.