Because there is this one critical, literally irreplaceable social function that marriage does, and only marriage does: making babies and connecting fathers to the babies they make.

So, again: to you, the useful function of marriage is not providing a stable, nurturing environment for children?

To you, the "critical and irreplaceable" function of marriage is to ensure that when a man has sex, he engenders children, and he knows that the children he engenders are his?

So why don’t we just let marriage go, stop worrying about what people do or don’t do in the bedroom? Because there is this one critical, literally irreplaceable social function that marriage does, and only marriage does: making babies and connecting fathers to the babies they make.

How does that in ANY way impact gay couples? I think its a fairly safe assumption that gay/lesbian couples have extremely few unplanned pregnancies and any babies that come up are probably something that both parents want.

You're arguing for a hetro-normative culture obviously, but providing mostly empty examples. Sweden has a low birth rate, low marriage rate, and gives benefitst to unmarried couples. I think we all can see why giving unmarried couples benefits is a disincentive to marriage. What I HAVEN'T heard is why giving gay men/lesbians benefits and the title of marriage would be a disincentive for heterosexual marriage, or why it would produce more out of wedlock birth.

"So why don’t we just let marriage go, stop worrying about what people do or don’t do in the bedroom? Because there is this one critical, literally irreplaceable social function that marriage does, and only marriage does: making babies and connecting fathers to the babies they make."

If we were really concerned with connecting fathers to the babies they make, marriage would look very different. There is, for example, no legal requirement that a father pay any attention whatsoever to his kids. If he wants to work at a prestigious law firm like Cravath, Swaine, and Moore, where they require 3000 billable hours/year from their associates (that's 12 billable hours every weekday in a 50-week year, and only maybe 60% of hours are billable), he will pay no price for ignoring his kids to live at the office either legally or socially.

We'd probably also REQUIRE fathers to marry the women they get pregnant, or at the very least to spend a certain minimum amount of time with the kids. He doesn't pay much of a social penalty for not doing this either.

I'm with paa here -- I'm baffled by your argument.

First, it proves too much. Society has by your argument gone just as wrong allowing the infertile to marry as it as with gay marriage.

Second, it proves too little. Whether my gay friends can get married had little bearing on my decision to get married, and what little influence it had was in the opposite direction: I felt guilty marrying when the same situation was denied to my friends.

You've run through a lot of facts and deductions as if they added up to an argument, but they don't connect. If you want to ban infertile marriages, just say so and we can argue on that basis. If not, distinguish the case. Similarly, if you or someone you know isn't marrying because gays can in Massachusetts, cite it; if not, explain why people's attitudes toward marriage, which you admit have already changed, can be changed back by denying marriage to gays, or how denying marriage to gays helps society to adapt to those changing notions.

Gallagher describes a situation which she calls a crisis. OK, maybe it is. But what is the connection between that crisis and gay marriage?

Kendall writes:
What I HAVEN'T heard is why giving gay men/lesbians benefits and the title of marriage ... would produce more out of wedlock birth.

That's a particularly pressing question given the fact that extending marital rights to same-sex couples would have a direct, immediate effect in the other direction.

But the truth is that SSM advocates seek in the end the status of marriage (that is its social meanings), not primarily its "legal benefits".

This advocate of SSM has no interest in saving or stripping status from "marriage" - it's a religious thing no matter its purpose. If Maggie helps in repealing the DoM acts that include "or anything like it" language, I'll join her in fighting against SSM advocates who won't accept a "civil union" "compromise".

Of course I'd be happier with the government out of the marriage business entirely, but it'll be a while until that cause gets a majority out to vote.

At best, preventing gay marriage is a case of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, since it cannot be thought a "cause." But, two points:

(1) Does a gay-friendly right to adopt solve the problem?

(2) Is it legitimate to take such a communitarian approach, by which I mean, looking only at the costs and benefits to society, writ large. Shouldn't the harm the present regime imposes on gays -- by selectively denying them a right enjoyed by the majority, to marry the adult non-blood relative of their choosing -- matter a little? (And the benefits descending to their adopted children from being in a two-parent household that might not otherwise exist for them, but for the marriage union?)

I agree 100% that government-created disincentives to procreation and the formation and maintenance of stable households are harmful and should be avoided as a matter of policy. But you still haven't shown how gay marriage would function as such a disincentive. It seems like you've occupied a lot of space on this site, but you haven't yet proven the most important element of your argument.

Good lord, so it all comes down to the old canard -- the species needs more straight sex to reproduce? Really, I don't think there is a shortage of new babies.

We've dressed it up with some well-known demography (what? economic development correlates with decreasing birth rates? you don't say!), and changed it to something along the lines of, "American civilization will collapse if more straight people don't get married and have more kids."

Of course, you might as well say that American civilization will collapse if more white middle class people don't get married and have more white middle class babies. There was, last time I checked, no shortage of people looking to come to this country, partake of the opportunities here, and bequeath those opportunities to their children. We have no population problem.

Nor, last time I checked, was there any lack of fertility among poorer and/or non-white Americans. Ms. Gallagher must be referring, then, to some other Americans.

Yet, somehow, if I am prevented from marrying my partner of eight years, and/or if we are prevented from producing or adopting a child, these ills will be solved.

So this was the big evidence of "harm"? She cites a bunch of figures about how societies are changing-- children no longer "pay" for themselves in economic terms, birthrates are lower, there's more illegitimacy, etc. But there's absolutely NO explanation of how prohibiting gays from getting married is going to solve any of that. Indeed, even with respect to the thing that she says prohibiting gays from getting married WILL do, i.e., tie fathers to their children, there is NOT A SHRED of evidence that prohibiting gays from getting married will do it.

Further, while she strikes a few notes about "tolerance" in this post, I don't think that's the reason why her motives are in question. MAGGIE: WHAT CIVIL RIGHTS DO YOU SUPPORT EXTENDING TO GAYS? If your answer is "none" or "very few", then your disclaimer of any desire to "stigmatize" is a baldfaced lie.

I have a feeling that if Maggie Gallagher actually supported extending any civil rights to gays and lesbians, she would have said so by now.

It also seems to me that not allowing gay marriage does a lot more to threaten marriage than allowing it does. For example, in Cambridge Mass. before gender neutral marriage if you wanted to live with someone else is a proctor in the freshman dorms you needed to be married *or* get a domestic partnership (because it wouldn't be fair to exclude gay couples who weren't allowed to get married). But the domestic partnership law was gender neutral, so I knew of straight couples who got domestic partnerships to avoid having to get married but still be able to live together.

It's domestic partnerships that threaten marriage as an institution, not gay marriage.

I think whatever harms it will do are very, very small but I think Ms. Gallagher does have a valid point that redefining marriage to facilitate social acceptance of gays will have an effect on the definition and perception of marriage itself.

Certainly the definition will change, and trivially the perception will change from opposite-sex couples only to all couplings. I'm guessing Gallagher isn't merely stating the obvious and trivial. So, how will the perception of marriage change otherwise?

John H: Only a man and a woman should have the right to marry and procreate. Creating a child that has same-sex proginators is completely unethical and should not be allowed, for many reasons. So if it has different rights, it must have a different name.Preventing gay marriage wouldn't prevent a lesbian couple going to a clinic (overseas if neccessary) and getting such an embyro created and implanted, so what's the reason for outlawing gay marriage?

I think people are missing the point of what's being said. I believe the main thrust of the idea is that changing the traditional societal meaning of marriage will change the rate of out-of-wedlock births.

This may sound like a ridiculous idea. However, at your age, most of you already have your views of the meaning of marriage cemented. That is not the case of the generation that is only in their early youth, or the generation that hasn't yet arrived. If we change the societal meaning of marriage now we may not be effected by the resulting shift, but the children to come will be effected by how society deems marriage and the purposes of marriage.

The question that is important isn't whet.her the shift in meaining will have bearing on your personal actions, but whether it will have bearings on the actions of people whose views of the proper role and funtion of marriage have yet to be developed

If you want to increase chances of keeping the family unit intact, you should be advocating putting an end to social engineering, in the form of statutory incentives for divorce. Gay marriage has little or nothing to do with that.

It's said that marriage is a partnership (which it ought to be). But a partner in a law firm or accounting firm can't leave the partnership and expect his partner to keep on paying him a share of the partnership income. We'd consider that involuntary servitude.

But that's just what divorce laws currently do. You can cheat on your husband, initiate the divorce, and still get alimony to maintain yourself at pre-divorce standard of living in many states, where considering fault in alimony and equitable distribution is forbidden by case law.

That's welfare, pure and simple. And just as welfare provides incentives for women to become welfare mothers and start single-parent households, alimony provides incentives for wives to become ex-wifes and turn their children's home environment into a father-absent, single-family household.

In contemporary America, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control, more than two-thirds of all divorces are initiated by wives. Typically, these are no-fault divorces. And researchers say more than three-quarters of divorces in families with children are by the wife.

One reason for this is that wives can get custody (there is a strong gender bias in custody decisions) and alimony based heavily on their gender.

(More than 99 percent of all alimony awards are to wives, even though husbands make less than their wives in at least one-third of all households, and do as much child-rearing as their wives in at least a third of all married households. Low-income husbands who help put their wives through college or professional school by working two jobs receive no alimony, while countless ex-wives receive alimony despite contributing nothing to their husbands' earning capacity and doing little work of any kind, in or outside the home, during the marriage).

This sort of discrimination has much more severe consequences -- lifelong financial consequences and lost contact with one's children -- than the discrimination gay marriage advocates complain about, which affects far fewer people.

If you got rid of the gender bias, and the redistributive bias, in divorce laws, that will do much to reduce the divorce rate and ensure that more children will grow up in an intact household with two parents.

That's much more important than all the fuss over gay marriage.

Cabbage: If I have to spell it out for you, she's saying (oh, only about 10 times) that encouraging stable two parent families, with a mother and a father, is the prime social function of marriage.

Yes: but the reasons she's given for why this is good are (1) because that way a man knows the children that a woman has are his children.
(2) because that way more babies are born.

In short, she's arguing that providing a nurturing environment for rearing children is not a prime social function of marriage.

It's hardly even worth "debating" with someone with these reading comprehension "skillz".

Suggest you try out your reading comprehension skills on the text at the end of each thread on this blog. In particular, the sentence which says: "We'd like the posts to be civil, of course (no profanity, personal insults, and the like), but we're also hoping that people try to be as calm, reasoned, and substantive as possible."

Maggie, it seems you’re a minority of one on this blog. There are three rational arguments against state-sanctioned gay marriage:

1. “Gay marriage” will never be written into law because of the cost of verifying that two individuals are gay is prohibitively high. SSM, in contrast, has in part been sanctioned because the cost of verifying that two individuals are the same-sex is extremely low. One probable consequence of “same sex” marriage laws is that two heterosexuals of the same sex will marry to obtain the benefits of SSM, and that this will lead to an expansion of the state benefits (to people who were not previously eligible for such benefits). Why would libertarians want to expand state benefits?

2. SSM has been tried in Scandinavia, and the upshot is not good: Fewer straights are getting married, more children are being reared out of wedlock, and more children are being reared by single parents, which places children at risk for poverty. (One theory is that expanding the definition of marriage to include homosexuals *further* decouples marriage from a procreative function, and social norms to have children within a marriage are subsequently loosened.). Why would libertarians want to endorse policies that, social science research suggests, lead to more single parent households and child poverty? (An increase in single-parent households (and poverty) would probably lead to expansion of the welfare state to address the problem.)

3. SSM could encourage an activist judiciary to redefine marriage. Lawmaking requires internal consistency: Once marriage is expanded to include gay couples, activist judiciaries might begin asking questions like: What is the principled objection to two member of the same sex (who are not gay) getting married? What is the principled objection to polygamous marriages? Why should employers not be forced to provide benefits to same-sex marriages when they already provide benefits to opposite-sex marriages?

Why would libertarians want to endorse policies that will likely to lead more government intrusion, particularly in the area of private employment?

This is a long one, but I thought maybe some statistics from the last census about LGBT families would be useful:

This information was prepared in part by The Human Rights Campaign and Gary J. Gates, Ph.D. Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at The Urban Institute.

The prevalence of children: Same-sex couples are raising children in at least 96 percent of all counties in the nation. At least one out of three lesbian couples and one out of five gay male couples are raising children nationwide.

The three counties with the greatest numbers of same-sex couples raising children are:
Los Angeles County, with 8,015 couples; Cook County, Ill., with 4,090 couples; and Harris County, Texas, with 3,050 couples with children.

- The stability of relationships. Gay or lesbian unmarried parents are twice as likely as heterosexual unmarried parents to be in long-term relationships (which Census 2000 measures by couples who have been together five years or more).

- Family income. Whether gay or straight, couples raising children earn less on average than couples without children. (This is probably due to the fact that one parent is often at home caring for the children – a trend that is as common among same-sex couples as opposite-sex couples, and even slightly more common among gay male parents.)

But there are stark differences in how families headed by same-sex and opposite-sex couples are treated, both financially and legally. As of this writing, the full and certain protections of marriage are available in no state. This means that no same-sex parents or their children have access to the 1,138 federal protections that come with marriage. And only couples in Vermont and California have access to the hundreds of marital benefits states provide.

Moreover, same-sex couples with children are not even guaranteed the right in most states to establish a joint legal relationship to the children they are raising together. Nor may they enjoy the most basic protections that come through such a legal relationship. In fact, protections are least available in precisely those parts of the country that have the highest percentage of same-sex couples with children – namely, the South and Midwest.

DEMOGRAPHICS OF SAME-SEX PARENTING IN THE UNITED STATES

One out of three female couples and one out of five male couples are raising children in the United States, according to Census 2000. More specifically, Census 2000 shows that:

- 45.6 percent of married heterosexual partners are raising children.
- 43.1 percent of unmarried heterosexual partners are raising children.
- 34.3 percent of female partners are raising children.
- 22.3 percent of male partners are raising children.

Same-sex couples raising children live in 96 percent of all counties in the United States, according to the 2000 Census – forming essentially a part of every community in this country. But looked at regionally, there are some geographic surprises in where same-sex couples are likely to be parents. For example, of all same-sex couples:

- The South has the highest percentage of same-sex couples who are raising children, with 36.1 percent of lesbian couples and 23.9 percent of gay male couples doing so.

- The Midwest has the second highest percentage, with 34.7 and 22.9 percent, respectively.

- The West figures third for lesbian couples and the Northeast for gay male couples.

This pattern mirrors the geographical distribution of unmarried opposite-sex partners raising children, where the South also is home to the greatest percentage, followed by the Midwest, the West and finally the Northeast. For married opposite-sex couples raising children, the West is the most popular region, followed by the Northeast, the Midwest and the South.

The states with the highest percentages of lesbian couples raising children:

- Mississippi, with 43.8 percent
- South Dakota and Utah, with 42.3 percent each
- Texas, with 40.9 percent

The states with the highest percentages of gay male couples raising children:

- South Dakota, 33 percent
- Mississippi, with 31 percent
- Idaho and Utah, with 30 percent each



The 10 counties with the greatest number of same-sex couples with children. The counties with the total number of same-sex couples raising children also harbor some surprises, as the top 10 list includes counties in Texas, Arizona and Florida – all of which have poor protections for same-sex couples and their children. For example, Florida is the only state in the nation with a law that bans gay and lesbian individuals and couples from adopting, even though it relies on gay and lesbian people to serve as foster parents for needy children. It also forbids the establishment of joint legal parentage for same-sex couples who have become parents by other means.

They are:

1. Los Angeles County, Calif. 8,015 couples
2. Cook County, Ill. 4,090
3. Harris County, Texas 3,050
4. Kings County (Brooklyn), N.Y. 2,485
5. Maricopa County, Ariz. 2,335
6. Queens County, N.Y. 2,050
7. Dallas County, Texas 1,970
8. Orange County, Calif. 1,930
9. Miami-Dade County, Fla. 1,915
10. San Diego County, Calif. 1,900

Note: Census 2000 counts of same-sex unmarried partners should not be interpreted as an actual count of either the entire gay, lesbian and bisexual population or the same-sex coupled population of the United States. Counts of same- sex couples do not include any single gay men or lesbians as the Census questionnaire did not include questions about sexual orientation, sexual behavior or sexual attraction. Further, Census 2000 probably undercounts same-sex couples (identified by their sex and relationship status: an adult of the same sex is identified as the "husband/wife" or "unmarried partner" of the person filling out the Census form). Several factors could explain this undercount. For confidentiality reasons, some same-sex couples may feel uncomfortable identifying the nature of their relationship on a government survey. Some couples may define their relationship as something other than "husband/wife" or "unmarried partner." Estimates of the undercount vary. In their report, "Missing Same-sex Couples in Census 2000," Badgett and Rodgers (IGLSS 2003, http://www.iglss.org/media/files/c2k_leftout.pdf) find that the Census Bureau missed at least 16 percent to 19 percent of all gay or lesbian couples. If 5 percent of the U.S. adult population is gay or lesbian and approximately 30 percent of gay men and lesbians are coupled (as several surveys suggest), then Census figures did not count 62 percent of all same-sex couples.

Stability of same-sex parenting relationships. Same-sex parents, who are denied the right to marry, are on average more than twice as likely to be in long-term relationships as heterosexual parents who choose to remain unmarried. (They have lived together for five years or more, which is the only Census 2000 question about relationship stability.) Specifically, 19.9 percent of unmarried heterosexual couples raising children have been together for five years or longer while 41.1 percent of same-sex couples raising children have stayed together that long.

Since marriage is generally considered a stabilizing factor, the implication appears to be that granting marriage rights to same-sex couples would lead to an even greater degree of stability in these families.

TRC: SSM has been tried in Scandinavia, and the upshot is not good: Fewer straights are getting married, more children are being reared out of wedlock, and more children are being reared by single parents, which places children at risk for poverty.

Actually, what Scandinavia has is technically not same-sex marriage, but state-recognized civil unions: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Greenland all offer registered partnership to same-sex couples, which is legally almost identical to civil marriage, offered to mixed-sex couples.

The argument that these civil unions have "caused" fewer mixed-sex couples to get married is invalid: marriage rates have been declining steadily in Scandinavia for some time, and the rates for each country have not changed when civil unions were introduced.

More children are being born and reared outside marriage, but Scandinavian countries have no legislation penalizing children born/reared outside wedlock.

More children are being reared by single parents, but this does not place children at such risk of poverty as it does in the US: childcare facilities are available for children aged 0-6 (the age at which a child starts school), mothers get an average of 18 months paid maternity leave, and everyone (not just mothers with children) is covered by the public health care system. cite, cite.

DM Andy, is this one of the sources you've seen?

Will Providing Marriage Rights to Same-Sex Couples Undermine
Heterosexual Marriage?
Evidence from Scandinavia and the Netherlands

http://www.iglss.org/media/files/briefing.pdf

Since marriage is generally considered a stabilizing factor, the implication appears to be that granting marriage rights to same-sex couples would lead to an even greater degree of stability in these families.

The counterpoint to this argument can be found here and here.

Marriage is a word we use to describe something, its like finding a flat surface suspended on legs and wondering "what do we call this thing?" A table, is the answer for english speakers. A table holds up many objects and supports my family dinners. But calling a bench a table does not enhance the capacity to equalize it with properties of another entity called the same name. Does labelling a can of cola with a "Pepsi" moniker.

The question boils down to this, is the properties of marriage come from its gender integration or from a piece of paper from the government entitling it to priveledges? Given what we've learned through biological and humanitarian studies the diversity and integration of genders provides a much more likely candidate than government recognition. Especially considering marriage's history which predates government (or at least was the foundations of the first governments).

So whats the harm? Imagine if the government required all Cola's to be labeled as Pepsi, or even Fanta.

It's Mr. Queer to you!, Yes, that was, although I found it on a different site. I'm willing to be shot down on that if that paper's statistics are flaky. I seem to remember Andrew Sullivan having some stats when Stanley Kurtz cited Sweden as evidence.

Interesting post, Mr. Queer, but you've fallen into a statistical fallacy and assumed that the subset of gay parents is equal to the subset of straight parents. They're not the same.

By the even the most generous estimates, gays and lesbians make up only 3% of the US population. Therefore, while straight parents make up about one-quarter to one-third of the US population, gay parents are less than 1% of it.

Furthermore, while there may be at least one gay couple in 96% of US counties, the overwhelming majority of gays live in urban areas, especially on the coasts.

In other words, the two groups are quite dissimilar, both in size and distribution.

That makes a big difference when you're seeking to do valid, objective research about the effects of gay parenthood. You're far less likely to get a representative sample of gay parents to compare to straight parents simply because there's not very many of them to begin with, and they tend to be a highly self-selecting group due to the costs associated with artificial insemination and adoption.

Which brings up another point: I'm extremely curious as to the definition of "raising children". I suspect that someone like my former neighbor, who "discovered" his gayness after several years of marriage and got divorced, would be defined as "raising" his son because he happens to have monthly visitation.

This is the reason I don't put much stock into research which "proves" that gay parents are equal to or even better than straight ones. Most of the studies I've seen used very small, very carefully-selected groups of parents and the results are simply not applicable to gays or lesbians in general.

If SSM was really about the benefits, then I think in a democratic society, we could easily handle this and all go home. But the truth is that SSM advocates seek in the end the status of marriage (that is its social meanings), not primarily its "legal benefits".

So much to disagree with here, and in general with Ms. Gallagher. I think this whole exercise is destined to be fruitless as long as the cross-talk about 'purposes' of marriage continues. If one were to accept Ms. Gallagher's premise that 'procreative stability' is the primary purpose of marriage, then much of her argument does follow. However, from a strictly legal standpoint, marriage is much more about stuff - property - then it is about procreation.

Moving on from that point, no, I don't think as a democratic society, we can all agree that marriage-like propert benefits for gay couples are fine "and we [can] all go home". From the incoherent 'cheapens straight marriage' argument to TRC's comment detailing more principled objections, American society does not have a consensus on this matter.

As to SSM advocates seeking the same social status as married, I think this is both an overgeneralization, and carries an element of "so what?" Homophobes aren't going to change their opinion of loving gay couples because of a piece of paper. (And, what would be so wrong about it if SSM did reduce homophobia in our culture?)

Finally, and this point has been made ad nauseum, but allow me to pile on: who seems more likely to properly care for and raise a child in a loving environment, two gay/lesbians who have battled social stigma and legal obstacles and managed to adopt or otherwise become parents, or a 'shotgun-wed' straight couple? With the current divorce laws, it seems mildly disengenous at best to argue against SSM on the basis of 'sanctity of the insitution'.

Captain Holly,

But it always will require significant effort on the part of gays to have kids. They're not going to have any "accidents." So it's not crazy to think that those gays who become parents will be more dedicated, on average, than straight people who do. You've got to really want to become a parent to have a kid if you're gay.

And that's not going to change if SSM is legal.

You lost me at "misunderestimates."

I hope the Bush administration didn't pay you to promote Dubya's make-believe word!

Regardless of the merits, Maggie, I think you're quite brave to face so much commentary criticism here.

Is she? Has she posted in a comments thread, or responded to a post in any way?

I'm a heterosexual divorced male lawyer with kids. I'm engaged to a divorced female with kids. We're currently "living in sin" and we have a very strong, healthy family. Our kids have strong relationships with our ex's. I'm an athiest and a republican.

For days I've been reading Gallagher's verbose ad hoc rationalizations for promoting her Catholic agenda and trying to ram it down our throats. Most of the intelligent legal and social policy arguments against her position have already been made by other commenters. I agree with most of those.

As yet, she hasn't even attempted to make a coherent argument to support her bald claim that SSM would erode the institution of marriage. Nor do I see how she could even if she devoted another 10,000 words to the effort (which she will attempt, no doubt).

Engaging her seems like a complete waste of time, because she will not truly engage. She's of the Catholic baby factory mold, and the dogmatic "gay is sick and immoral" ilk. Regardless of how many jugs of words she sloshes in our direction, it all distills to the same drops of irrationality. So why bother?

Warrants mentioning, as well, that there's no such thing as the Institution of Marriage. All you have is the sum of particular relationships. The only way the "institution" is threatened is if individual marriages are threatened. The only way that could be so is if people would leave to go have gay marriages. But that seems unlikely; is homophobic (since it says the closet is best for all involved); and makes individuals worse off. The sooner we stop saying aggregated data equals some sort of reification, we're all better off.

As for James Earl's Quote

At its base, marriage is a religiously-based institution that has as much of a right to self-define as any other group. Contrary views can be held but should not be enshrined with the legitimate mandate of the government.

So let's say my religion wants to marry gay people. Why then should the government prevent it from doing so? It seems the religions that support gay marriage have a claim for marriage equality based on your reasoning.

SSM advocates don't want to force baptist churches to marry them. They want to get married on their own. Nobody's going to be forcing religions to recognize marriages they don't want to. This is solely about the government, and about having it treat its citizens equally.

Your argument is not against gay marriage, but against any government involvement in marriage at all, if you agree with what you wrote.

James Earl,

How about we call what the state gives "civil unions" for all couples, and leave "marriage" to the private sector?

Sounds good to me.

James Earl, you write:

This obviously raises church/state issues, and a good argument for separation — namely that state involvement inevitably secularizes. By getting state recognition of what used to be exclusively a religious function, religions lost the ability to assert dominion... People have rights-claims on marriage by virtue of citizenship, as it is a state-provided benefit. The ability to self-define was lost when the first statute regulating the subject was passed...

I'd agree in principle that the state should stay out of marriage. That said, it needs to have some interest here in enforcing what is essentially the contractual agreement you enter into in a marriage - the division of property, custody, inheritance, etc. that go along with it.

I would disagree with the latter statement however, on two grounds. First, if you were to accept that people may have a "rights-claim" to the benefits of marriage once they are extended to a group, I don't see how that extends necessarily to a particular title, especially one that is religious in origin. The term "marriage" is, as a state function, a secular convention embodying the sum of benefits, priveleges, and responsibilities that the state recognizes as accompanying the filing of a marriage license. We could just as easily call it something else but use the traditional term for convenience.

I also don't know that I buy the fundamental premise here either. We pass laws that restrict certain priveleges to one group of citizens all the time; affirmative action, various tax breaks, and so on and so forth. The fact that something is codified in law hardly requires it to be extended to all citizens. This is rather secondary to the main argument though.

jrose:

Point taken. The absence of a baseline represents a significant problem in interpreting Kurtz’s data. To be fair, however, social science research must often rely on “messy” data because controlled (laboratory) experiments are not possible. I think I have a possible solution, though (see my “interrupted time series” proposal above).

Thanks for providing the links to the counter-arguments. (I probably spend too much time on National Review and the Weekly Standard; and too little time on Mother Jones and Kos.)

It’s 7:26 pm (CST in the US), I’m at my office, and my wife wants me home.

TRC

I am a heterosexual woman. I've been in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship for almost ten years. I plan to have children soon. But I will not get married so long as the state limits access to marriage on the basis of sexual orientation. In other words, just as I wouldn't (as a white person) join a club that my non-white friends couldn't join, I won't join a club from which my gay friends are excluded. I don't know how many other heterosexuals share my views, but I know at least a handful of similar thinkers among my own acquaintances. So if the goal is to ensure that child-bearing heterosexual couples get married, keep in mind that some of us won't do it until same-sex marriage is an option.

Straight Woman - Please be honest with us. Are you sure that your political feelings about the legality of homosexual marriage is the real reason you are not going to marry this man you've been in a relationship with (dating? cohabitating?) for 10 years? That doesn't really pass the smell test.

Country Lawyer --
Your sense of smell is off. I won't promise to tie the knot as soon as same-sex marriage becomes legal, but I'll have one less reason not to do it. As I see it, marriage is a mixed bag, and the ultimate decision is a highly personal one rather than a political one. But my *personal* (not just political) feelings about equality -- e.g., the fact that I'd be ashamed to send wedding invitations to gay friends who desperately want to marry but can't -- lead me to decline to sign up for an exclusively heterosexual institution.

Horsefeathers. SSM advocates can, and frequently do have ceremonies that thier religions, friends, and usualy families recognize as marriages.

If it's not about the benefits, and SSM advocates are really in some sinister conspiracy as Maggie mentions, just the ceremonies alone should be enough.

What really cheeses Maggie off is that an same sex couple might be able to demand and force people to give things like health insurance anywhere in the US that they're granted to het heterosexual couples. To her, it's only OK is heterosexual couples have that right.

Please explain just how would that "experiment" manifest itself in your life, particularly in the context of your marriage? How would you even know whether the gay couple living down the street tied the knot? How would your working relationship with your co-habitating gay colleagues change if they became married? What would unravel in your own marriage? What in the hell are you afraid of?

In your question to Country Lawyer, you failed to notice that he also objects to the Lawrence decision. If he had his way, he'd wouldn't have any gay neighbors or gay colleagues. They'd all be in jail.

Point taken. The absence of a baseline represents a significant problem in interpreting Kurtz’s data. To be fair, however, social science research must often rely on “messy” data because controlled (laboratory) experiments are not possible. I think I have a possible solution, though (see my “interrupted time series” proposal above).

Of course, even ITS studies have two significant problems. First, just as a lab rat used in medical studies is merely an approximation of a human being, a study of the societal effects of SSM on, say, Norway would paint a skewed picture of SSM's likely effects on American society. Simply put, Norway is not America. Any number of societal and cultural factors present in Norway but not in the U.S. (or vice versa) are bound to color the results, possibly to the point of meaninglessness. The same holds true for states within the U.S. - Massachussets is not Alabama is not California is not Wisconsin, etc.

The second problem - and by my guess, what troubles many SSM opponents even if they have not articulated this concern well - is the long-term ethical one. It will probably take at least a couple of generations of people living with legally recognized SSM in any given nation or state in order to get anything close to a true picture of its impact on its society. If the SSM opponents' stated fears turn out to be well-founded - or even if other unintended consequences emerge that neither side was able to foresee - then you've just left millions of people to pick up the pieces of their society, and an untold number of broken lives, damaged by this little social experiment. Simply repealing SSM won't undo this damage if it comes to pass - as the old cliche goes, you can't un-ring a bell. (To be fair, this also applies to any other form of social experimentation.) It is no more ethical to use an entire nation or state (even your own) full of living human beings as a social laboratory than it is to use one as "flypaper" for terrorists.

Neither of these points, mind you, should be taken as an argument against SSM. My view is that if you're going to legalize SSM, legalize it on principle (the Declaration of Independence's assertion of the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness seems to fit this bill nicely), and not just because SSM happened to work out well in some other country or state.

Joe,

Such is the nature of a red-herring. Child safety in automobiles does not suffer because people point out the danger in ss"m" for children. Both pursuits are possible, and its doubtful that anyone who really cares about kids does not pursue both. That you wish to throw something out as more important to lead people away from something you want is... well... a red herring.