Todd, thanks for the question!
I don’t think reproductive technologies change the legal principles surrounding marriage, much, with one big exception, which I’ll get to.
Marriage is a universal human institution because every society needs to regulate the procreative consequences of male-female sexual attraction. (Marriage regulates people who aren’t married by the way, e.g. by making it clear when a baby is going to be born “out of wedlock” . . .This turns out to be quite substantively important for women, who often confuse things like cohabitation with a man’s willingness to be married to them. Marriage as a public category also lets single, as well as married people know when they are committing an act of adultery. Without clear boundaries it could be pretty hard to tell sometimes!)
So marriage as a legal status is one of the ways we get young men and women to do any one of the hard things necessary to make sure they postpone babies until they are married. Marriage is a way of wrestling with the fact that, men and women attracted to the opposite sex can just make a baby, with no intention or forethought, under the grip of a pretty powerful passion to boot: One drink too many and 9 months later, boom there’s a baby. Mom (if she doesn’t abort) is bound to be somewhere around. Dad isn’t necessarily anywhere nearby.
Reproduction via technology is never the result of male-female sexual passion. Let me put it this way: there may be a need for special laws regulating parenting around reproductive technology but they will be distinct from, and need have little to do with, the function that marriage is performing. And if we had to depend on reason and reproductive technology rather than sexual passion to produce the next generation, we’d be in trouble. I mean numberswise.
Secondly, there is an important distinction in law and public policy between encourage, permit, permit but discourage, and ban. Women are legally free to have a baby out of wedlock, too. but that doesn’t mean we no longer care whether children are born to married couples. Marriage is about trying to encourage the ideal. Like adoption, reproductive technology (in current law) is probably best seen not as normative but ameliorative—a happy answer to a less-than-ideal situation. (Some of us are enthusiastic about the former and dubious about the latter, but that’s not part of the marriage debate, particularly).
The one part of reproductive technology that I think is a direct attack on marriage, has nothing to do with technology at all: it is the decision of the law to strip some children of their legal and natural right to father, merely because the mothers in this instance do not want their child to have a father. This is the only instance in which the law permits parents to bargain away their child’s right to the support and care of a father. I can’t do it in a bar, why should I be able to do it in a medical clinic?
There’s a small but growing group of adult children of donor insemination who are getting quite vocal on this point. When the clinic points out their mom and dad signed a contract, they say “I never signed it!”
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Hmmm. I must have missed that one last time I read the constitution....
that could use a little more explaining. What's the problem with IVF? Is it just abortion-type worries, or is there something else?
Reduced to a syllogism, it appears to me that the argument goes:
1. Society promotes marriage to encourage a healthy environment for the raising of the next generation;
2. Gay people are chosing to reproduce / raise children,
THEREFORE:
a. gay people should be allowed to marry; or
b. gay people should not be allowed to reproduce / adopt / raise children.
now, it appear that both a. and b. follow from the premise that marriage is about procreation. While many social conservatives may support option b, that would entail a level of oversight into personal reproductive decisions that most americans, i think, would find intolerable.
there is one other important conclusion that can be drawn from the premise that marriage is about reproduction.
c. The infertile and voluntarily childless should not receive the societal benefits of marriage. (You have to have one dependant to be considered married.)
most notably, Ms. Gallagher, you are apparently making a reason-based (not faith-based) argument against SSM. But you lack direct evidence of your argument because no state has tried SSM for any period of time. Given the idea that the various states may serve as laboratories for experimentation with social policy (see, eg, Oregon and death with dignity, or California and medical marijuana), isn't the appropriate course to allow states to experiment with the idea?
No, only very nosy people who want to use the awesome power of the state to enact their private (and questionable) moral beliefs believe that society "needs" to regulate this.
Without anonymity, the system would have trouble working. I find it unlikely that sperm or egg donors would be nearly as available if they knew they could be sued for child support or abandonment.
Beyond that, think of the implications of your suggestion. The idea that the government should regulate (or ban/discourage/whatever) a contract between informed consenting adults on behalf of something that is not yet a person, because of the fear that one of the adults might do something wrong in the future, is a dangerous one. In effect, you are saying that the government has the authority to limit the freedom of an individual because that individual MIGHT harm someone who does not yet exist. Can you really say with a straight face that the mere possability of a subjective assessment of harm is enough to limit reproductive freedom? Even if you can, how on earth would you find your way around Roe and Griswold to enforce such a prohibition?
Finally, there is no "legal or natural right" to a father. In nature, animals abandon their young all the time, the only parent that can be even reasonably depended upon is the mother, and even that is not a guarantee. Legally, a child has NO natural right to a parent. The courts do not force unwiling parents to spend time with their children, safe haven laws allow parents to abandon their children, and parental rights can be voluntarily (or involuntarily) terminated without the child's say. Parents are a good thing, yes, and perhaps a loving two parent household is the best possable solution, but do you really want anyone legislating parenthood?
Horse puckey. You've lost the "marriage is necessary for procreation" bit, so your position is now that the government needs to manage marriages for us to deal with the consequences arising from procreation. So in that formulation, marriage is primarily massive, but in your view morally necessary, government social engineering.
You are not going to find many people to support that argument on a libertarian blog.
I think Maggie isn't saying that IVF or abortion is the problem, but the solution. IVF is the solution to the less-than-ideal situation of infertility. Abortion is the solution to the less-than-ideal situation of an unwanted pregnancy.
Some call this the conservative case for same-sex marriage. I call it the Parent Trap. To state it briefly, it may in fact be a case for Reciprocal Benficiaries, since even non-sexual couples (such as a mother and her sister) would fall under the camp of unmarriable situations raising children. But unfortunately there seems to be a problem with that, and oddly enough for all the inclusive talk of the ss"m" advocates it is too inclusive for them.
> Dilan Esper: No, only very nosy people who want to use the awesome power of the state to enact their private (and questionable) moral beliefs believe that society "needs" to regulate this.
I actually find that the establishment and trust of the family entity as a political unit increases self-government. A marriage is how 99% of individuals will influence the future. A marriage, while the fulfillment of individual capacity is the first step towards social representative governance as we raise our children. As Frederick Jackson Turner postulated that free land was neccissary to teach the realities required for good governance, it is even more evident that families are our best and most lasting way to learn for ourselves the neccissary principles of governance that help us be effective and positive contributors to democracy.
Government in defining marriage isn't regulating this as much as recognizing it (though both are happening).
Please understand you are not wining the debate, but chopping off a head of the sterility strawman.
In short, no one is arguing that marriage is required for procreation, that is a strawman of your own design. What is argued is that marriage monitors for responsible procreation.
Maggie's initial posts argued that "the" purpose for marriage's existence was procreation, strongly suggesting to my reading that in a perfect world she would require marriage to be a prerequisite for reproduction.
So this is your argument--nothing to do with logic or the law, but rather your personal moral definiton of what makes someone "responsible" enough to marry? (If it is to monitor procreation as you say, gay marriage would be ideally monitored since there can be no physical procreation)
I actually think she's saying something other than that, but I'm really not sure.
To say that my opinion has nothing to do with logic or law is unsupported and slanderous. I'll forebare the formalities. I've been around long enough to see people so hell-bent on creating strawmen that honest discourse is almost impossible.
Sufficient to say, you are miscasting her argument and to better encourage discourse you should re-read her posts keeping in mind that your first impression was wrong. Look again for responsibility, for nurturing, for logic and law. You will find plenty of it, and you may even wind up understanding where Maggie really is coming from.
This gets closer to a justification for limiting marriage to opposite sex partners.
In other words: marriage is part of an ovearll pro-natalist policy. We give tax credits for additional children; so too we extend the benefits of marriage to those people who form the ideal household for the raising of children.
Closer, but not close enough. (I'm not talking about law here, I'm talking about social policy.) If we have a pro-natalist, pro-marriage policy, clearly we should limit child tax credits to children born within marriage. And that might not be a bad idea.
But trying to achieve a pro-natalist policy by restricting marriage to persons of the opposite sex? Sounds to me like a pretty circuitous route ...
Maybe if we go all the way back to Olduvai Gorge and "government" is the tribal elders she's right that the purpose is to provide for the welfare of children. But at least since government has become as complex as the council of a city-state, the historical purpose of government involvement in marriage seems to have been more concerned with property and inheritance. Id est, the purpose of formal rules around marriage and children seems more designed to avoid nasty feuds between powerful clans over property and inheritance that might sweep up innocent bystanders in the mutual destruction.
As evidence I adduce the fact that laws and practises of child custody post-divorce have swung about all over the place in the last few centuries, e.g. from presumption of father custody to presumption of mother custody and back again. Does this sound plausible if marriage itself is founded on plain bedrock principles about what's good for children on which we've all agreed the past 5000 years? I don't think so. I think, sadly enough, that the child bearing and rearing aspects of marriage have been largely treated in the public arena as secondary aspects of -- or even nuisances attendant on -- marriage.
Which cloud has a silver lining, I suppose. If Maggie is correct, as I think she is, that marriage as a public institution is crumbling today, then we can take comfort in the fact that this probably has little consequence as far as child bearing and rearing mores go, and probably just stems from the simple fact that the clan is no longer the most powerful social institution to which one belongs, and the property and inheritance aspects of marriage are no longer very important.
What Maggie really ought to do, if she's serious about the welfare of children, is explicitly abandon the sinking ship of state-sanctioned marriage and refocus on some other kind of covenant between men and women that explicitly revolves around children.
One reason to do so is because, frankly, modern family law is so viciously and thoroughly anti-paternal in practise that I predict there is no hope whatsoever of recruiting men in majority numbers to the ranks of committed supporters of a child-rearing covenant that is interpreted by state judges.
I've been looking for the logic, but all I see are assumptions and assertions. Her case seems to boil down to:
1. Marriage is about making and raising babies
2. It is desirable for the government to regulate how we make and raise babies
3. Gay couples are incapable of "properly" making or raising babies
4. Therefore, the government should outlaw gay marriage
This works only if you accept her assumptions. I assert that they are (with the exception of biological reproduction among gay couples in #3) false. She asserts that they are true. Does this really advance the debate?
I see no dillema here. In fact I see the concordance of inheritance to be a direct result of responsible procreation (lineage) and the established governance of a household.
Your arguement to me is like saying an engine is more about driving places than converting chemical energy into mechanical energy.
Now, it's possible that society would be better off if certain long-standing relationships other than marriage received some state recognition and some limited benefits. But preventing gays from being "married" if they so want, while holding out some other form of state recognition is just the old Separate But Equal idea that we got rid of as a country a long time (actually, not so long) ago.
Yet the question those links were answering was much more specific...
The fact that some in the gay community are opposed to Civil Unions or Reciprocal Benefits does not really bear on the question.
I submit it does, in a reduction-ad-absurdum kind of way. If the argument is followed to its logical extention yet produces a different result then the premise is flawed. The logic clearly presented would include non-sexed couples which ss"m" advocates in those instances directly exclude. The framework be it RB's CU's or ss"m" does not change the premise or conclusions.
But preventing gays from being "married" if they so want
Let me point out here that the requirement for equal gender participation does not violate the choice people have in getting married. It is a requirement that is a direct extension of the reason marriage exists, a neccissary component in its formulation to see the desired results.
I am not proposing seperate but equal, but distinction and integrity which violates the call for equalization and homogenization. It is not a passive releasing of the gates that will bring about equality in capacity between homosexual and heterosexual relationships. In Goodridge the Mass. Supreme Court directly called on the state to devote resources to equalize the two relationships. I see no government reason or goal to justify the use of resources to equalize product of gender preference. Especially when in practice that calls on children to be denied their heritage, handicapped to be used and margionalized, and a sexual habits to be directly regulated and pampered.
Sure, let some state experiment. So far, no state has voted for SSM.
First it was "activist judges" and "the legislature should decide!"
Then after a legislature did decide it was "activist judges, loonly legislatures" and "only a refferendum can decide!"
What's next?
So, clearly, same-sex couples who want to have children should be allowed to get married.
That's logic.
Maggie asserts: Marriage is about trying to encourage the ideal.
yet seems to feel that same-sex couples must NOT be encouraged into this ideal. And hasn't explained why.
Marriage is NOT an ideal! It might be for some people, but not everyone is ready or capable of being in a marriage. So the ideal for them is no marriage! I know lots of people who are happily unmarried, and have no children or desire. How do those people fit in MG's arguments? They don't.
But what about people in bad marriages? How does that help people? When a children see their dad beating up mom, or otherwise treating her badly, how does that help society? What if mom is a hopeless alchoholic who emtionally abuses the children? Better being motherless than having that mother. It is simply not true that ALL children are better off with both a mother and father; rather, some are and some are not.
Divorce rates often rise with economic expansion. When women have options other than bad marriages, they take them. As I said in another post, Elizabethan England had a divorce rate of about 80%. Why? Because women could earn and keep money! so they got rid of the deadbeat husbands and either remarried (sometimes several times) or remained single. I think this is good.
If you don't, then perhaps you should argue for an economic contraction, perhaps another Great Depression, to cure our divorce rate. But whatever you argue, please don't make the assumption that all marriages are good ones. It's a complex world out there, and a one-size-fits-all attitude only makes things worse. And that is exactly what Maggie is guilty of.
In Connecticut, the legislature approved civil unions for gays, and indicated that if works out okay, they will consider marriage in a few years. Furthermore, 49? of Californians now approve of gay marriage, and 49% against, and even split, but it shows much greater support than even two years ago.
When you break it down by generation, the younger you go, the more in favor of gay marriage you. Teens today overwhelmingly support gay marriage.
The future, at least in the blue states, is gay marriage. It's just a matter of time.
Actually it was the CA constitution that precluded the legislature not ss"m" advocates. The Log Cabin Republicans in the state, and Arnold Shwarzenagger both are for ss"m" but found the egregious manner in which AB 849 was brought up to be something they didn't want to associate with.
Jesurgislac: By what means to you preport ss-couples "have children". Describe that process for everyone curious as to how a sterile arrangement procreates.
Because the ammendment's comprimise of civil unions was something that neither ss"m" advocates or pro-marriage folks could stomach. A new ammendment has been circulating since before this one took its second vote, it is the one Maggie references in her digression.
Except that the annoying little thing called reality gets in the way here. Same sex couples can't physically have children. It's simply not possible. One half of a same sex partnership could use artificial means to have a child with another unrelated opposite sex partner (or non-artificial, for that matter). But same sex couples can never actually produce children.
What is the purpose of marriage? If it is the ideal for people intending to have children, same sex couples do not fall into this category. The problem with SSM advocates is that they treat two members of the same sex as equal to the opposite sex for purposes of creating children - when this is simply in contradiction of biological reality. As Monty Python showed us, men can have the right to bear children - but they can't actually do it.
Another issue that SSM advocates seem to ignore is the differences between male and female interaction with children. It has been clearly shown that mothers and fathers both have different yet integral roles to play in raising children. If a child is brought into this world, it deserves a father - and, for that matter, a mother. Do you also support single mothers having children? Single fathers? Bringing a child into the world without raising it properly (e.g. food, shelter, education, a mother and father) is immoral, and we as a society should work to prevent such occurences when possible.
Congress should enact the ban ASAP, there is no need to wait.
Only a man and a woman should have a right to create children together.
As a thought experiment, let's say genes from any two people can be combined and result in normal offspring which are statistically similar to the offspring of heterosexual couples.
In that case what is unethical about producing children with this technique?
The most common methods I can think of are:
1. from a previous marriage
2. by AID
3. by adoption
Pretty much the same way any couple who isn't interfertile would have children. Were you really uninformed about divorce, AID, or adoption?
That works if you want to argue that mixed-sex couples who aren't interfertile and have children by AID shouldn't be allowed to be married.
As others have said, the argument that marriage is only for those who can physically have children together works only if you apply it consistently, which no one does.
What is the purpose of marriage? If it is the ideal for people intending to have children, same sex couples do not fall into this category.
Well, except that many same-sex couples DO intend to have children. And then do. (And many mixed-sex couples don't intend to have children. And don't.)
You've already argued that couples who can't have children without artificial assistance shouldn't be allowed to get married. But if you're consistent about this, you're also arguing that couples who can't or don't want to have children biologically, but who intend to adopt, shouldn't be allowed to get married.
The problem with SSM advocates is that they treat two members of the same sex as equal to the opposite sex for purposes of creating children - when this is simply in contradiction of biological reality.
The problem with anti-marriage advocates is that they want to argue that marriage is solely about procreation. That a couple who can't procreate can't get married, because (presumably) kids from AID don't deserve married parents, and adopted kids don't deserve married parents, and hell, foster kids don't deserve married parents. Further, any couple who can't have children wouldn't be allowed to get married: and that would by no means be just same-sex couples.
Another issue that SSM advocates seem to ignore is the differences between male and female interaction with children. It has been clearly shown that mothers and fathers both have different yet integral roles to play in raising children.
Another issue that anti-marriage advocates seem to ignore is the fact that no one has been able to show, after decades of evidence, that children reared by same-sex couples are any different as adults from children reared by mixed-sex couples.
If a child is brought into this world, it deserves a father - and, for that matter, a mother. Do you also support single mothers having children? Single fathers? Bringing a child into the world without raising it properly (e.g. food, shelter, education, a mother and father) is immoral, and we as a society should work to prevent such occurences when possible.
And rapidly, these anti-marriage advocates seem to move on to a totalitarian society where people who want to have children can be prevented from doing so.
Would you consider two parents of the same sex better or worse than a single parent, and why?
If a child is brought into this world, it deserves a father - and, for that matter, a mother. Do you also support single mothers having children? Single fathers? Bringing a child into the world without raising it properly (e.g. food, shelter, education, a mother and father) is immoral, and we as a society should work to prevent such occurences when possible.
The intact family with married parents is the gold standard by which all other alternatives have thusfar fallen short. That includes single sex scenarios of various kinds, but not exclusively those with two adults who engage in same-sex sex play.
In any case, how do SSMers spin this into a plus for their advocacy of SSM?
Which is an argument for same-sex marriage. As you well know. If marriage is vitally important for families, then it is discriminatory to the children of same-sex couples to declare that same-sex couples are not allowed to get married.
Because it's only "the gold standard" when you control for factors like wealth and education. If you want to legislate to the advantage of the most likely successful parents you're going to cut off enough less educated/poor hetero couples to favor a group of rich/well-educated single parents and SS couples.
Aultimer, that is irrelevant. Control for those factors and the difference in outcomes for children remains significant when compared with intact families consisting of married men and women. The available data does not support discarding the man-woman criterion of marital status.
Never? Not necessarily Maggie.
Maybe this is too much information readers of this blog, but having gone through IVF...
The man needs to provide sperm.
The movies show the man going into the little room alone and watching pornos.
However, what often happens is the man and woman go into the little room and ...the jar comes back full.
Leaving aside the objection that we can't get to that point without unethical experiments, I'll play along:
Two women would ony be able to have girls together, and probably lesbians, if there is actually a genetic component to homosexuality. Their children then would be required to also use these labs and clinics to have their own children, assuming they want to have children with someone they love. That would create a whole new species, technically, and one dependent on commercial enterprise.
Two men would have to use a surrogate or an artificial womb, costing them more money and giving them less control. (For that matter, the two women would have issues about which mom should be the carrier of their children). Their children could be boys and girls, but again, if genes have anything to do with it, these kids will carry them, and will also be dependent on the lab for their own children.
The commercial aspect is troubling, why do we want a Monsanto involved in family creation?
It would require government oversight and regulation, also, and it would require that we study the people created this way for their whole lives, as well as the children they produce, to look for problems. That would be a psychological burden.
It would also cost a lot of money, and SSP would either require government subsidy or just be the privilge of the rich.
It would move us beyond what Bill McKibben calls the "Enough" point, opening the door all the way to creating people that could not be created by healthy people, ie, it would lead to genetic engineering, which would also have all the problems of government study and subsidy and all that.
It would leave the men and women who remain heterosexual subject to uplanned pregnancy, keeping them a caste below those who produce their children only if and when they are ready for them.
It diverts funding and resources from actual health problems that cause real suffering.
That's just a few of things I can think of that would be unethical about it even if it is safe. Of course we will never get to that point, because it is unethical to go even one more day in the direction of producing children that are not the union of a man and a woman.
I agree with you that it's unlikely we'd arrive at the point where we need to ask these questions, but, uhm, where on earth do you draw some of these assumptions? Two women could only have a girl - sure, I suppose that makes sense. If homosexuality has a genetic component, their daughter would probably be a lesbian? Big big stretch there. If homosexuality has a genetic component, isn't it clear that said component is nowhere near as strong as the genetic influence on things like height, coloring, etc?
You got my meaning. I'm dubious that in three years Americans are going to be saying things like: "Let's see what happens if we hybridize the DNA from two women!" And I'm especially dubious that you'd hear it from the left; ferchrissakes, we're afraid of genetically modified grain.
My question is where you drew the notion that two lesbians would likely produce a lesbian. Perhaps you're correct, but you can't say "probably" because you don't know, and neither do I. And not just "you don't know because we haven't done it," but "you don't know because until we have evidence for homosexuality's genetic component (if it's there) and can map the way it works, and understand how it interacts with other factors, we have no idea how it works." Most of the time, it's not as simple as an on/off switch; think of family resemblances. I have a (male) friend who looks exactly like his mother, and he has a sister who looks exactly like their father. Corresponding noses, ears, and so forth. (I think she got the better part of the deal.) There's other (better, doubtless) examples.