Yesterday I addressed part of David Blankenhorn’s argument, relying on international survey data, that support for same-sex marriage is part of a “cluster” of “mutually reinforcing” beliefs that are hostile to traditional marriage. “These things do go together,” he writes.
I responded by saying that a correlation between the recognition of same-sex marriage in a country and the views of its people on other marital and family issues (1) could not show that same-sex marriage in that country caused, or even contributed to, those other views, and (2) did not tell us anything very important about whether, on balance, SSM is a good policy idea. SSM might be a small part of a project of reinstitutionalizing marriage – despite what those who hold a cluster of non-traditional beliefs about marriage may hope for.
I don’t deny that people who hold non-traditionalist views about family life and marriage also tend to be more supportive of SSM; I simply maintain that the existence of this cluster in some people is not very important in the public policy argument about SSM. By itself, it tells us nothing about what the likely or necessary effects of SSM will be. It would similarly not be very useful in the debate over SSM to note the existence of other correlations more friendly to the case for SSM, like the fact that countries recognizing SSM tend to be wealthier, more educated, more democratic, healthier, have lower infant mortality rates, longer life expectancy, and are more devoted to women’s equality, than countries that refuse to recognize gay relationships.
The second half of Blankenhorn’s argument that supporting SSM and opposing marriage “go together” boils down to this:
[P]eople who have devoted much of their professional lives to attacking marriage as an institution almost always favor gay marriage. . . . Inevitably, the pattern discernible in the [international survey data] statistics is borne out in the statements of the activists. Many of those who most vigorously champion same-sex marriage say that they do so precisely in the hope of dethroning once and for all the traditional "conjugal institution."
In a move that has become common among anti-gay marriage intellectuals, Blankenhorn then quotes three academics/activists who do indeed see SSM as a way to begin dismantling traditional marriage and undermining many of the values associated with it. There are many more such quotes that could be pulled from the pages of law reviews, newspaper op-eds, dissertations, college term papers, and the like. They’ve been gathered with great gusto by Maggie Gallagher and especially Stanley Kurtz, who regards them as the “confessions” of the grand project to subvert American civilization. (Remember the “Beyond Marriage” manifesto that excited Kurtz so much last summer? Not many people do.)
I do not deny that there are supporters of SSM who think this way, including some very smart and prominent academics. I wince when I read some of what they write; in part because I know these ideas will be used by good writers like Blankenhorn to frighten people about gay marriage, in part because I just think they’re wrong normatively and in their predictions about the likely effects of SSM on marriage. But mostly I wince because if I believed they were correct that SSM would undermine marriage as an institution, if I thought there was any credible evidence that this was a reasonable possibility, I would oppose SSM – regardless of whatever help it might give gay Americans and the estimated 1-2 million children they are raising right now in this country.
So I wince, but I am not persuaded that either correlations from international surveys or statements from marriage radicals show that “gay marriage clearly presupposes and reinforces deinstitutionalization [of marriage].”
First, as Blankenhorn well knows, it is not necessary to the cause of gay marriage to embrace the “cluster” of beliefs he and I would both regard as generally anti-marriage. One could, as many conservative supporters of gay marriage do, both support SSM and believe that (1) marriage is not an outdated institution, (2) divorce should be made harder to get, (3) adultery should be discouraged and perhaps penalized in some fashion, (4) it is better for children to be born within marriage than without, (5) it is better for a committed couple to get married than to stay unmarried, (6) it is better for children to be raised by two parents rather than one, and so on.
Second, a policy view is not necessarily bad because some (or many) of the people who support it also support bad things and see those other bad things as part of a grand project to do bad. Some (many?) opponents of gay marriage also oppose the use of contraceptives (even by married couples), would recriminalize sodomy, would end sex education in the schools, and would re-subordinate wives to their husbands. And they see all of this – including their opposition to SSM – as part of a grand project to make America once and for all “One Christian Nation” where the “separation of church and state” is always accompanied by scare quotes and is debunked by selective quotes from George Washington. These are, one might say, a “cluster” of “mutually reinforcing” beliefs that “do go together.” But it would be unfair to tar opponents of SSM with all of these causes, or to dismiss the case against SSM because opposing SSM might tend to advance some of them.
Third, in citing and quoting these pro-SSM marriage radicals, Blankenhorn and other anti-gay marriage writers ignore an entire segment of the large debate on the left about whether marriage is a worthwhile cause for gays. While there are many writers on the left who support SSM because they believe (erroneously, I think) that it will deinstitutionalize marriage, there are many other writers on the left who oppose (or are at least anxious about) SSM because they think it will reinstitutionalize it. Let me give a just a few examples that Blankenhorn, Gallagher, and Kurtz have so far missed.
Paula Ettelbrick, in a very influential and widely quoted essay written at the outset of the intra-community debate over SSM, worried that SSM would reassert the primacy of marriage, enervate the movement for alternatives to marriage, and traditionalize gay life and culture:
By looking to our sameness and de-emphasizing our differences, we don’t even place ourselves in a position of power that would allow us to transform marriage from an institution that emphasizes property and state regulation of relationships to an institution which recognizes one of many types of valid and respected relationships. . . . [Pursuing the legalization of same-sex marriage] would be perpetuating the elevation of married relationships and of ‘couples’ in general, and further eclipsing other relationships of choice. . . .Ironically, gay marriage, instead of liberating gay sex and sexuality, would further outlaw all gay and lesbian sex which is not performed in a marital context. Just as sexually active non-married women face stigma and double standards around sex and sexual activity, so too would non-married gay people. The only legitimate gay sex would be that which is cloaked in and regulated by marriage. . . . Lesbians and gay men who did not seek the state’s stamp of approval would clearly face increased sexual oppression. . . .
If the laws change tomorrow and lesbians and gay men were allowed to marry, where would we find the incentive to continue the progressive movement we have started that is pushing for societal and legal recognition of all kinds of family relationships? To create other options and alternatives?
Since When is Marriage a Path to Liberation?, Out/Look, Fall 1989, at 8-12 (emphasis added).
Professor Michael Warner of Rutgers argues in his book, The Trouble With Normal (1999), that SSM would augment the normative status of marriage, reinforce conservative trends toward reinstitutionalizing it, and thus be “regressive” (all of which for him would be bad things):
[T]he effect [of gay marriage] would be to reinforce the material privileges and cultural normativity of marriage. . . . Buying commodities sustains the culture of commodities whether the buyers like it or not. That is the power of a system. Just so, marrying consolidates and sustains the normativity of marriage. (P. 109) (emphasis added)The conservative trend of shoring up this privilege [in marriage] is mirrored, wittingly or unwittingly, by the decision of U.S. advocates of gay marriage to subordinate an entire bundle of entitlements to the status of marriage. (P. 122) (emphasis added)
In respect to the family, real estate, and employment, for example, the state has taken many small steps toward recognizing households and relationships that it once did not. . . . But the drive for gay marriage [] threatens to reverse the trend [toward progressive change], because it restores the constitutive role of state certification. Gay couples don’t just want households, benefits, and recognition. They want marriage licenses. They want the stipulative language of law rewritten and then enforced. (P. 125) (emphasis added)
The definition of marriage, from the state’s special role in it to the culture of romantic love – already includes so many layers of history, and so many norms, that gay marriage is not likely to alter it fundamentally, and any changes that it does bring may well be regressive. (P. 129) (emphasis added)
As for the hopes of pro-SSM marriage radicals (like those Blankenhorn quotes) that gay marriage would somehow radicalize marriage, Warner counters that “It seems rather much to expect that gay people would transform the institution of marriage by simply marrying.”
Many other activists and intellectuals have written a stream of editorials and position papers over the past two decades expressing a similar “assimilation anxiety” (William Eskridge’s phrase) about SSM. Here are just a few:
“[Same-sex] Marriage is an attempt to limit the multiplicity of relationships and the complexities of coupling in the lesbian experience.” Ruthann Robson & S.E.Valentine, Lov(hers): Lesbians as Intimate Partners and Lesbian Legal Theory, 63 Temp. L. Q. 511, 540 (1990).“[I]n seeking to replicate marriage clause for clause and sacrament for sacrament, reformers may stall the achievement of real sexual freedom and social equality for everyone. . . . [M]arriage – forget the gay for a moment – is intrinsically conservative.... Assimilating another ‘virtually normal’ constituency, namely monogamous, long-term homosexual couples, marriage pushes the queerer queers of all sexual persuasions – drag queens, club crawlers, polyamorists, even ordinary single mothers or teenage lovers – further to the margins.” Judith Levine, Stop the Wedding!, Village Voice, July 23-29, 2003.
“As an old-time gay liberationist, I find the frenzy around marriage organizing exciting, but depressing. . . . Securing the right to marry . . . will not change the world. Heck, it won’t even change marriage.” Michael Bronski, “Over the Rainbow,” Boston Phoenix, August 1-7, 2003.
“But the simple fact remains that the fight for marriage equality is at its essence not a progressive fight, but rather a deeply conservative one that seeks to maintain the social norm of the two-partnered relationship – with or without children – as more valuable than any other relational configuration. While this may make a great deal of sense to conservatives . . . it is clear that this paradigm simply leaves the basic needs of many people out of the equation. In the case of same-sex marriage the fight for equality bears little resemblance to a progressive fight for the betterment of all people.” Michael Bronski, “Altar ego,” Boston Phoenix, July 16-22, 2004.
So, David Blankenhorn, I see your three marriage radicals and raise you three!
Seriously, here's another "cluster" of beliefs to add to the mix: gay marriage will enhance the primacy of marriage, take the wind out of the sails of the "families we choose" movement, cut off support for the creation of marriage alternatives (like domestic partnerships and civil unions), de-radicalize gay culture, gut the movement for sexual liberation, and reinforce recent conservative trends in family law. So say what we might roughly call the anti-SSM marriage radicals.
These anti-assimilationist writers (some of whom have actually opposed SSM and some of whom, to be fair, are just very uncomfortable about it) have not gotten as much attention in the press as other writers because they greatly complicate an already complex debate. And indeed it’s fair to say they have kept themselves fairly quiet for fear that their concerns would be seen as undermining gay equality and thwarting gay marriage, a cause that has broad support among gays. They don’t want to be seen as opposing benefits for gay people (which in fact they do not oppose).
But these anti-SSM marriage radicals comprise a significant perspective among what I would call “queer” activists, those who observe that the gay movement is pursuing traditionalist causes in traditionalist ways, who think it is endangering sexual liberation, and who fear it is making gay people just like straight people (who are, by implication, all boring, uncultured philistines who couple up, vote Republican, and live in the suburbs). And they think these are bad things.
The point is not to argue that any of these writers are correct that gay marriage will have the significant reinstitutionalizing effect they think it will have. I think both the anti-SSM marriage radicals and the pro-SSM marriage radicals Blankenhorn cites are far too taken with the transformative power of adding an additional increment of 3% or so to existing marriages in the country. So are anti-gay marriage activists generally. I think all of them – including Blankenhorn – are mistaken if they imagine that straight couples take cues from gay couples in structuring their lives and relationships, if they think straight couples may stop having children, or if they predict straight couples will be more likely to have babies outside of marriage because gay couples are now having and raising their children within it.
The point is that both support for and opposition to SSM well up from a variety of complex ideas, fears, hopes, emotions, world-views, motives, and underlying theories. The debate will not be resolved by dueling quotes from marriage radicals. SSM will have the effects it has – good or bad – regardless of what marriage radicals with one or another “cluster” of beliefs hope it will have.
I should add that I have begun reading Blankenhorn’s book, The Future of Marriage. So far, I find it lively, engaging, subtle, interesting, happily free of jargon, and deeply wrong. It is probably the best single book yet written opposing gay marriage.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Rauch on Blankenhorn:
- Blankenhorn and the purposes of marriage:
- Blankenhorn (Round 3):
- Blankenhorn (round 2):
- Blankenhorn and the marriage radicals:
- Blankenhorn on SSM in the Weekly Standard:
The important factor here is how one defines "traditional" marriage. If it is just one man and one woman, the argument holds. If it can be two men, or two women, or some other mixture, it doesn't. But that's not very traditional.
So now it's "radical" to say marriage is one man and one woman?
Since marriage entitle couple to get benefits, after certain time people realize that it is more convenient to get those benefits just by marrying relatives.
E.g. parents live with children until adulthood children are covered by their parents insurance. After children turn 18 years old. Parents get divorce and marry children of the same sex to continue insurance coverage.
After while everyone is going to get married everyone.
What is a great world we live in.
Your posts tend to be quite long. Is there any way you could insert a "continue below the fold" hyperlink, so that only the first few paragraphs are on the main page? (It's not that what you have to share is uninteresting, it's just that other conspirators are worth reading too, and you push them too far down.)
In regards to tradition, the substitution of "person" for "man" or "white man" has certainly caused its fair share of difficulties in the past.
That's a nice catch. I did not believe that such scholars existed. Let's compare your assertions to Prof. Carpenter's, though. You said,
"It's been at least a decade since people who were anti-marriage glommed onto SSM as a tool for the destruction of marriage. SSM might not fulfill their wishes, but it's probably worth considering they may be on to something. . . . Just keep reading and watching. You'll see them. There are a few in some of the liberal churches--ordained hierarchy, I mean--and columnists. They are sometimes feminists who think marriage is an oppressive institution."
There are several ways to distinguish your conspiracy theory from Prof. Carpenter's post. First, he cites specific examples, rather than throwing out a blanket assertion that "they" are out there, waiting to sow chaos. Did you know of these specific examples earlier? Did you have specific examples in mind? Second, and relatedly, Prof. Carpenter gives details. This is directly germane to my point in the other thread - the anti-marriage crowd is short on details and long on rhetoric. Your comment was rhetorical gold, warning of nebulous and undefined others who are waiting for their chance to destroy marriage. The post above discusses specific scholars and analyzes their impact.
Even bearing in mind the limitations of a comment to a blog post, there is a world of difference between "They're out to get us, and I can't tell you who they are but just you wait and see," and, "Here is a number of scholars who believe in the stated assertion. Their influence and numbers are limited. This is how their advocacy works..."
More importantly, though, your comment was a conspiracy theory because it theorized (on the back of precisely no offered evidence) that a significant portion of SSM advocates do not actually want SSM, but advocate it as a tool to destroying marriage altogether. The scholars Prof. Carpenter cites oppose SSM. Their intentions and goals are right out in the open, and not in the least conspiratorial.
The demand for providing links and names is not done in good faith, but instead is done to discredit people who have directly experienced such things without writing down the sources.
Yeah, I have seen some of the stuff referenced above. I've seen stuff not referenced above, there being a good deal too much of it to put in any one place, and heard live advocacy of it in church settings--the hierarchy, not the congregation--which wouldn't probably make it to the public unless some church newspaper got quoted someplace. I refer both to the anti-marriage movement and the hoped-for impact of SSM.
So, we managed to prove that calling a reference to a conspiracy a "conspiracy theory" didn't make it go away. Didn't we?
If the benefit of marriage is the decision of two adults to raise their own biological children in concert, and I believe this is the major impetus for governmental subsidy of marriage, then we should recognise and subsidise this behavior independently of marriage. If we value and appreciate the collaboration of two people in raising children, their own or otherwise - and I think we should - then we should provide a similar subsidy for them. And if we value the potential that a mated pair of adults promises for the eventual raising of children, even if they have no obvious prospects or express intention of doing so, there should be a subsidy there as well.
But equating a same-sex couple to a marriage doesn't really do that. It certainly covers some ground, but the explanation of WHY we are doing this is inaccurate. It's not because same-sex couples are as good as opposite-sex couples, it's because marriage is not the only way you can provide the societal benefits we value. And calling it marriage ACTIVELY OBFUSCATES THE PROBLEM.
You may begin your accusations of rampant casual homophobia now.
About halfway through this, I got a little woozy.
What about those of us who just have common sense? You know, those of us who think that "gay marriage" is a ridiculous perversion of the language and custom?
What about those of us who would just as soon decapitate ourselves as have these issues decided by lawyers?
Is there any way we can rid outselves of lawyers who write incredibly dense verbage that defies common sense?
Huh?
I hear you.
Its not just Orwellian, its Carol-wellian.
Allow me to apologize, on behalf of the real world, for the fact that law is hard. Laws, rights, and the intersection of the two are rarely simple or determined by one guy's subjective "common sense."
Is there any way we can rid outselves of lawyers who write incredibly dense verbage that defies common sense?
Yes. You could live in a state of nature.
Consider reading a less academically sophisticated blog. VC does not purport to dictate the terms of debate over gay marriage in America. The post merely makes some arguments that, to some, are more interesting than the conclusory and undefended assertion that "'gay marriage' is a ridiculous perversion of the language and custom."
And then counts himself among another (supposed) section of those who believe it wont (further) deinstitutionalize marriage: and hold no animus toward the institution.
How curious.
Why do we not trust them?
How curious.
Why do I suspect your arguments of being emotional rather than rational?
Do you really think that all the gay couples who, following the Goodridge decision, went out and got married, are in on some elaborate plot to bring down the institution of marriage? That they really despise the institution, but spend thousands of dollars on weddings, make solemn vows in front of all their loved ones, and commit to the legal responsibilities of marriage because they take a perverse pleasure in the hope that twenty years from now the institution well fall apart?
Gay couples demonstrate their respect to the concept of marriage every day by committing to it. You tell me, why do you not trust them?
Dale Carpenter: Not a radical
The institution of SSM is seen by some as decrapitating traditional marriage. It is unlikely, as you point out, that the SSMers are the ones trying to deloosen traditional marriage.
That is also hugely irrelevant. And does not address the argument at all. Which I'm sure you know.
Irrelevancies of this magnitude are not introduced innocently.
Just in case you missed it, the anti-marriage folks are almost certainly not the SSMers. They just hope the SSMers will have an anti-marriage effect. Are they right? They think so. Are they utterly clueless on the subject? What do you think?
Another part have no amious to gays but they don't want anything to change for they are tradition bound.
Another part of the right wants to extend the legal benefits of marriage to gays but with another name (civil unions or various other names).
Another part of the right wants to extend marriage to gays.
Another part of the right doesn't care one way or another for it doesn't affect them personall.
Another part of the right says Sodomites are going to hell, they are heathens, and that is all they have to say about it.
Why do we not trust them? Is it because a group of people don't have the same views on one thing thus they can't be trusted for they can't make up their mind. Or we paint a group of people all the same way, especially in the most negative light/opinion and say they are all the same.
Maybe it would be smarter to address arguements of people instead of doing a us vs them type termiology. You know use our god given reason and mouths and communicate our ideas and opinions to each other civilly?
I am not assuming anything. I assume that we live in "anything goes" world. Gay marriage is a marriage for beneifts that is it.
There is no one compelling reason have ever been presented why marriage should include also benefits for homosexual relationship but not for any kind of relationship (sexual or asexual)
Once majority of people at least 2/3 in U.S. (who against SSM) realize that that marriage is just benefit reaping process everyone start marry everyone. It is simple.
You have to understand that for majority of people in U.S. marriage is still something special. Marriage is an environment and most effective way for rearing children, so it should be special and should be supported by the government a.k.a people for the sake of future generations.
How does one quantify "one great swath?" Is it more or less than twelve people? Is it inclusive of all "[the] left," even those who disagree with the stated premise?
For the purposes of this discussion it means those in power.
Their weren’t a lot of Bolsheviks either.
AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE PUBLISHES PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF FAMILY DISSOLUTION
http://www.ali.org/ali/pr051502.htm
LAW COMMISSION OF CANADA REPORT: BEYOND CONJUGALITY
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2002/rpt/2002-R-0172.htm
Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships
http://www.beyondmarriage.org/
They make no secret of it….
The want to De-privilege the Privileged (traditional marriage)
And privilege the de-Privileged (anything but traditional marriage)
In this regard the first two represent very important, very influential legal opinion. (do look into who is actually leading you… and where)
Why do I suspect your arguments of being emotional rather than rational?
Because you don’t actually read my posts.
Luddite:
Do you really think that all the gay couples who, following the Goodridge decision, went out and got married, are in on some elaborate plot to bring down the institution of marriage? That they really despise the institution, but spend thousands of dollars on weddings, make solemn vows in front of all their loved ones, and commit to the legal responsibilities of marriage because they take a perverse pleasure in the hope that twenty years from now the institution well fall apart?
No
Gay couples demonstrate their respect to the concept of marriage every day by committing to it.
They demonstrate their respect for each other, or even monogamy – not marriage. That is a horse of a different color.
If its a horse of a different color, can you please describe the horse please. What is the civil (law) definition of marriage.
If its a horse of a different color, can you please describe the horse, please I am trying to understand. What is the civil (law) definition of marriage.
Respectfully, I don't think it is irrelevant that thousands of couples support gay marriage, but are not "trying to deloosen traditional marriage." Rather, this fact responds directly to Fitz's not-so-implicit disbelief that there is "another (supposed) section of those who believe it wont (further) deinstitutionalize marriage: and hold no animus toward the institution."
My claim is not that the gay couples who get married disprove the existence of a "swath" of people with animus toward the very institution of marriage. My claim is simply that a large group of people who support gay marriage but don't want to deligitimate it constitutes proof of Dale's point - that some people who support gay marriage respect marriage as an institution. I had thought that his was tautologically correct.
>> "They demonstrate their respect for each other, or even monogamy – not marriage. That is a horse of a different color."
Ramza wrote:
> "If its a horse of a different color, can you please describe the horse, please I am trying to understand. What is the civil (law) definition of marriage."
You appear to be asserting that the civil definition of marriage is monogamy? Is that true?
I'm curious as to what you assert the civil (law) definition of marriage to be.
No, that is incorrect. If we are at all committed to remaining on the current topic - i.e., whether some people can support gay marriage without wanting to delegitimate the institution - the question at issue is whether gay couples respect the institution of marriage, not whether you see their actions as consistent with marriage. Under this standard, you have a heavy burden of production before you can plausibly claim that people who publicly and expensively purport to commit to an institution are in fact motivated by some ulterior motives.
You may well think that gay couples couldn't possibly support the institution of marriage because what they are doing is not "marriage" - you could even be right. Ball all evidence points to the fact that gay couples think they are supporting the institution of marriage. And you have offered no evidence to the contrary.
> "Dale's point - that some people who support gay marriage respect marriage as an institution. I had thought that his was tautologically correct."
Just what that respect entails is uncertain however. It appears they like the benefits, and dignity but have no appreciation for what is so compelling about marriage that warrants those kudos in the first place.
Those that wish marriage de-institutionalized probably have the same view about the worth of marriage as it is understood today, but disagree as to the importance of the goodies.
Not hardly.
The people trying to discredit marriage are not SSMing it all over the place. It would be insane. So to say, --are you telling me that all these folks who go to all this trouble to get married are against marriage--is to misrepresent the issue. Of course they're not. They are also not the folks who are against marriage.
And Carpenter had a long list of the latter.
Your attempt to conflate the SSMers with the anti-marriage types "are you telling me...." is transparent.
Inane. Are you actually pretending that "those in power" want to destroy marriage, and intend to use SSM as a tool to do so? Who are they? What "power?" Your rhetoric is becoming progressively more unmoored from reality.
Do you really think the fight over gay marriage is about benefits? If it were, why were months spent in Massachusetts debating whether to implement gay marriage, or pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing only civil unions? Both sides understand that gay marriage, as opposed to civil unions, are an important symbol. For gay couples, marriage is a way to place their relationship in a deep historical tradition - one that carries both commitment and societal recognition. For opponents of gay marriage, the act constitutes a perversion of that tradition. But both sides are fighting to lay claim to a tradition.
Of course, you can say that gay marriage advocates are attempting to undermine the tradition of marriage by laying claim to it, but this is just a play on words - it does not speak to whether they have animus toward marriage.
Nore do I wish to.
Point conceded: (most?) gay couples think they are supporting the institution of marriage.
You've written eloquently about a new ideal of recognition of households outside of marriage. Even asexual relationships. Do you support recognizing those equally with homosexual relationships? And should the name for this institution still be "marriage" in your eyes?
Mr. Carpenter produced multiple quotations on the subject and I provided three separate examples.
I've read your last post three times, but I am still a little confused. My only claim, from the beginning, is that I think the following statement of Dale's is obviously correct:
"First, as Blankenhorn well knows, it is not necessary to the cause of gay marriage to embrace the “cluster” of beliefs he and I would both regard as generally anti-marriage."
I am not trying to "conflate the SSMers with the anti-marriage types" - I was trying to say that the two are entirely distinct as an analytical matter and merely offered earnestly married gay couples as one example.
You have suggested that my previous comments were "not introduced innocently" and that my "attempts to conflate the SSMers with the anti-marriage types . . . is transparent", but to be honest, I am not sure you understood my comments.
> "Do you really think the fight over gay marriage is about benefits?"
Don't ask me, I have no interest in altering marriage to accommodate homosexuality, polygamy, or any other lifestyle. Ask the people who are fighting to enact gay marriage what their struggle is for.
Or as an imperfect sampling, you tell me the purpose behind gay marriage. If you wish to describe that in a way that is void of any desire for any benefits that might happen with government recognition, all the better to justify you asking that question, no?
> "If it were, why were months spent in Massachusetts debating whether to implement gay marriage, or pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing only civil unions?"
A good question, since the robed council of supremacy decided for the people anyway.
> "For gay couples, marriage is a way to place their relationship in a deep historical tradition..."
That makes as much sense as someone putting a BMW symbol on their Ford Festiva to place their car in the deep historical tradition of Bavarian Motor Works. But that is an imperfect analogy.
I spoke more on the conflicted assertion of altering the institution of marriage in order to take part in it for historical reasons in my reply to Dale.
> "you can say that gay marriage advocates are attempting to undermine the tradition of marriage by laying claim to it"
No attempt to divine the intentions of the neutered marriage advocate is being made. Because, while they are apparently very enthralled with their own intentions and identity, reality moves at a different pace and orbit. Their intentions, best laid in the land, do not determine the actual path they are treading.
That they share that path with people who are ideologically opposed to marriage, even calling on their support, is cause for us to pause and reflect just where the road really goes.
For the sake of what you point out, I will amend that comment to read:
And I will await your answer to the question I directed to you, above.
You even said they overlap specifically in their, "raising children", and "meeting of the minds" which "assumes consent".
There are a number of situations outside of homosexuality that overlap in those very same areas. Yet it is the small yet relatively politically powerful subset of those situations to whom marriage is also unavailable that you seem to be considering.
Perhaps to directly ask the question, How can you justify that discrimination against the larger non-marriageable segment of households that you are fighting for, specifically, same-sex marriage?
Or, do you fully embrace these non-marriageable households in their equal status and equally overlapping situations with marriage?
You can either justify the discrimination, or you cannot and perhaps treat them equally with homosexual couples.
Homosexual couples
1. Do not create environment where children know only one way to start a new familiy on its own.
2. Arbitrarily deprive children right to know their bilogical parents.
So homosexual couples are not contributing to the society at all, rather they confuse children and violate U.S. constitution creating inequality among kids where one group know their biological parents and the other don't.
Mentioning the SSMers as if they were the same people as those who sought to discredit marriage is bogus. That's exactly what you do in your post addressed to Fitz at 2:43.
Your failure to quote my post is telling. At 2:43 I wrote:
"Fitz,
Do you really think that all the gay couples who, following the Goodridge decision, went out and got married, are in on some elaborate plot to bring down the institution of marriage? That they really despise the institution, but spend thousands of dollars on weddings, make solemn vows in front of all their loved ones, and commit to the legal responsibilities of marriage because they take a perverse pleasure in the hope that twenty years from now the institution well fall apart?
Gay couples demonstrate their respect to the concept of marriage every day by committing to it. You tell me, why do you not trust them?"
This was in response to an implied claim by Fitz that there existed no third group -- in addition to those who sought to discredit marriage -- who "believe [gay marriage] wont (further) deinstitutionalize marriage: and hold no animus toward the institution.
I just fail to see how my response -- which suggested that there IS a group that believes SSmarriage won't deinstitutionalize marriage and holds no animus toward the institution -- "Mention[s] the SSMers as if they were the same people as those who sought to discredit marriage is bogus"
I would say that errors of this magnitude "are not introduced innocently," but I hesitate to accuse someone of bad faith so quickly.
#1. Not a probable cause of further deinstitutionalization
#2. &hold no animus twoards the institution.
As to the actual GLBT community – they are what Marx called “useful idiots” in this battle.
(FYI - I suspect there are more academics on the left who want to deinstitutionalize marriage than academics on the right who wish to reinstitute the death penalty for sodomy, but I also suspect they have no more actual influence than the death-penalty-for-sodomites academics.)
If you are willing to say that you don't think SSMers and those seeking to discredit marriage are the same group, go ahead.
The links I refer to above are extremely influential groups. Both the ALI &Canada's rep Ella
When you start entering the world of legal academia, these groups are very powerful. (especially in the realm of effect on judicial opinion)
P.S. When did we have the death penalty for Sodomy?
Fitz's post referred to "one great swath of left [sic]," "another great swath of the left," and "another (supposed) section of those who believe." I apologize for failing to understand that this referred only to academics.
I was not aware that it was my responsibility to look behind the objective meaning of language — under which "another section of those who believe" is an open class of people — and anticipate the unstated meaning of the poster - to be clarified in a later post. I do commend you on your psychic gift however. Clearly, in criticizing my initial post, you anticipated that Fitz was referring only to academics.
I also apologize for my use of a rhetorical question and appreciate your rhetorical advice. However, I see know that rhetorical questions unjustifiably rely on the fact that words will mean what they say.
[/snark]
Best typo I've seen in a long, long time
I didn't see anything in the ALI or Canada report that actually advocated deinstitutionalizing marraige. To the extent that the Canadian report advocated recognizing non-marital relationships, it explicitly did so as a way of responding to problems that have arisen as a result of preexisting trends in adult relationships. To the extent that the ALI document dealt with the issue, it was summarizing state responses to these problems.
This is very different than advocating deinstitutionalizing marriage because you think marriage is bad/negative/whatever. These reports were responding to a problem. The desire to respond to this problem by creating new legal institutions (e.g. in the Canadian report, registered relationships) or presumptions is not advocacy - it's driven in large part by a desire to conserve legal resources and save time and trouble. THe same pragmatic desire drives many of the marital privileges. Legal requirements or presumptions relating to marital property division in the event of death or divorce and even tax preferences and benefits exist in large, to avoid costly and time consuming disputes about what the parties intended/agreed/etc when the marriage breaks up. They also make it easier for doctors, schools, and other service providers to conduct their business when sharing information or taking care of a person who has become incompetent.
I don't claim to be an expert on legal academia, but I'm actually in my last semester of law school and nowhere in my law school or undergraduate education (the latter at an ivory tower Ivy League school) have I ever encountered advocacy of deinstitutionalizing marriage outside of internet chatboards.
And while I can't point to a state statute that provided the death penalty for sodomy, English law provided the death penalty for it until well into the 19th century. Presumably, at least SOME of the American colonies followed it. And there are right wing whackos who advocate restoring it - see some particularly offensive Christian reconstructivists.
Your definition of civil marriage in the US says, "the joining of a male and female in matrimony..." This is a bit like defining marriage as marriage. What do you mean by matrimony in the sense of civil marriage?
Nevertheless, a good laugh. But it prompts me to post something that crossed my mind yesterday while reading either an excerpt of Blankenhorn or a comment by Dale. One of them used the term "authoritative marriage". I find that to be a much better term than "traditional marriage" when describing what marriage used to be a few decades back.
ALI is decrapitating the institution of marriage by publishing a book on the law of divorce!
While adoption is better than state institution care, it may not be ideal. Of course, society gets to decide what it thinks about adoption. Most gay marriage advocates want to take that choice away from society via the courts.
Children often turn out great from a lot of situations, either great, good, average, bad, or horrid. The observation that children often turn out great is beside the point.
I am concerned about lesbian couples depriving a child and father of the right to know each other if gay marriage is recognized.
FF marriage. They decide they want a kid. The woman who wishes to carry is bisexual, picks up a man in a bar, has sex with him, gets pregnant (maybe she has to try a few times). In some states her husband-wife-partner-whatever is the legal father of the child born in the marriage. In other instances, he will never know, unless the woman goes on welfare, etc.
So forget the guy in the bar eh? Why does biology matter then? Why do men that were in one night stands even get visitation?
Because society whats them to? What about the father's substantive due process right to be involved in the life of his children (I know that the courts are not serious about this "right," as is often the case with substantive due process)?
These are some of things that make me agnostic about both gay marriaeg and substantive due process.
I also fail to see how restricting your children to one and only one way of starting a family is positive. There are, after all, at least three such ways: you can couple with a member of the opposite sex, couple with a member of the same sex, or adopt a child as a single parent. All three produce a family every bit as legitimate and valid as a heterosexual marriage producing biological children, which is merely a subset of the first option. Indeed, while marriage by definition incorporates a family, family does not by definition incorporate a marriage.
> "I would suggest that adoptive gay parents arbitrarily *provide* parentage"
I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the word parentage. Adoption does not provide parentage, though it might provide parental figures and a stable household for their upbringing.
To say that adoption replaces the child's parentage re-affirms the concerns both Eric's, and SpringJourney's comments above. Concerns I also have, and were presented by Margaret Sommerville, and the same David Blankenthorn that Carpenter is writing about.
So forget the guy in the bar eh? Why does biology matter then? Why do men that were in one night stands even get visitation?
Ugh. The traditionalist in me thinks this is a very very poor way to deliberately start a family, whether hetero- or homosexual. I would advise my son, were I raising one, to avoid finding himself in this situation at all costs. Wearing a condom or two would certainly help to protect him, if he chose to engage in risky one-night stands with a person he barely knew who might have intentions more devious than just sexual purposes. Hopefully, my children -- educated in my personal/traditional values -- would be confident enough in themselves to reject the quick inebriated sexual pleasures that come at bar-time, and seek to pursue that in a loving committed relationship -- hopefully marriage. (And I hope they're not big drinkers either -- huge college campuses that promote the drinking culture personally sicken me.) Still, in reality, I would educate them on birth control in case they every rejected my sexual values and were tempted by the quick pleasures.
I also think if a biological father can prove via DNA that he is the child's father and wants to be involved in the child's life, the courts should (and do, I think) respect this relationship and encourage it. Hence, I'm glad Elian Gonzalez got to be with his dad, and I hope baby Danielynn soon gets the same respect from the Bahamian courts too, assuming Howard Stern is not her biological father.
If anyone else wishes to help me understand better the reason marriage law needs to be altered, please do so by answering the same question.
However, if an older person who is childless or is otherwise well informed about the consequences of the sale/donation chooses to release their potential children in this way, I would respect that decision too.
On Lawn:
I'd stop waiting. You might want to ask someone more educated than I (am). I hope my earlier responses though helped you "understand better the reason marriage law needs to be altered", imho. See 1:42 for my attempt at the clearest reasoning I can provide.
He does, but you apparently do not. There is a definition of parentage requiring actual descent, but even that is arguably met in adoption (as adopted children are inheritors of family interests). But as a general matter, and as my dictionary confirms, "parentage" may also mean simply the state of being a parent. Adoptive parents are, of course, parents.
Where would the anti-SSM position be without arbitrary definitions of convenience?
I don't justify any such discrimination. So long as any people get government benefits from legal marriage, any parties capable of consenting should be allowed to marry and receive the same benefits.
Ideally, the government would get entirely out of the business of marriage and provide no special financial incentives to married couples. Those incentives come directly on the backs of those who are unmarried by choice or legal prohibition.
I don't care what it's called if the alternate marriage-that-is-called-non-marriage provides just as much legal/economic benefit as traditional marriage.
> "He does, but you apparently do not. There is a definition of parentage ... "
The habit of saying someone is wrong while providing evidence that they are right, perhaps, requires more rigor on your part to resist.
> "There is a definition of parentage requiring actual descent, but even that is arguably met in adoption (as adopted children are inheritors of family interests)."
Inheritance is not lineage, heritage or parentage.
> "But as a general matter, and as my dictionary confirms, 'parentage' may also mean simply the state of being a parent."
The meaning and context was provided in the quote he was replying to:
So, either Caliban is employing a devious equivocation substituting his own context for the one he is replying to. Or he misunderstands the word. And I never ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity.
Adoption is not in conflict with the child's right to heritage unless it takes on the radical "The state is everything. The ego is death" exalting of legal reality above reality. That is, that the adoption is the same as their birth.
Adoption is not birth or procreation. It can, and hopefully does, try to restore to children what might have been lost to them. But a child never loses their heritage, just perhaps their access to it. And adoption does not need to take a child from their heritage, unless a non-fertile segment of society wishes equal dignity for their family formation style. In which case the child's needs are simply their vain ego.
Have you adopted and raised kids? If no I question whether you should be attributing things such as people adopting kids which are currently being "nurtered by the state" to such things which you call "vain ego."
> "So long as any people get government benefits from legal marriage, any parties capable of consenting should be allowed to marry and receive the same benefits."
That is fine for you to say, because in your own words you "Ideally, the government would get entirely out of the business of marriage and provide no special financial incentives to married couples." However I believe that puts you in the category that Dale Carpenter wishes to distance himself from. That is in people who wish to de-institutionalize marriage entirely.
But you relay faith in marriage as a cultural entity:
> "Note that I am a believer in the institution of marriage as a cultural concept."
Perhaps this is further evidence of what I pointed out in my reply to Dale at Opine. That much of what he holds on to that separates himself from those that would de-institutionalize marriage is, perhaps, encapsulated in your addendum.
But as to your greater point that you don't see justification for the 'same-sex' emphasis (for lack of a better word), I have to agree.
Thus it becomes something of a strawman argument to state the correlation has not been proven, absent more conscientious, refined and better contextualized definitions applied to such terms as "correlation" and "proof." Within the range of all the subjects being addressed (e.g., ethical/moral and normative valuations, also policy, data/scientific, political, cultural, social issues and questions), it is all too easy to misapply such terms and definitions/connotations and to therein lend confusion rather than clarity to the range and nexus of issues being addressed. DC states this nicely enough in noting "[t]he point is that both support for and opposition to SSM well up from a variety of complex ideas, fears, hopes, emotions, world-views, motives, and underlying theories."
Too, while Blankenhorn has not numerically proven the correlation in question, neither does DC's originating post prove the opposite. Instead it largely argues by means of a via negativa and via abstracta, it by no means, arguably far less than Blankenhorn, successfully argues its own case in any positive sense.
(Perhaps Al Gore and Laurie David are readying a "documentary" on the subject even now, declaring something about the scientific consensus and the non-existence of any serious contending, contrary science, etc., etc. - together with Ellen Goodman ready to remark upon the variety of traditionalist and supportive arguments as being virtually identical with holocaust denial to boot.)
> "Have you adopted and raised kids?"
Currently raising, and have worked closely with people on both sides of the adoption isle.
> "If no I question whether you should be attributing things such as people adopting kids which are currently being 'nurtered [sic] by the state' to such things which you call 'vain ego.'"
That would be a 'vain accusation' :)
I specifically noted what I thought would be labeled as a 'vain ego', and an accurate reading would relay that I do not find that a vain ego exists in that desire at all. Just something labeled a such who find that quality of children to be inconvenient to how they want to view their own families. You should re-read the comment, and I hope you catch the intended meaning.
I hope that clears it up?
I think Madonna and Guy Ritchie, Brad and Angelina are fertile. (?) Points for consistency if you really are advocating to end adoptions, but in reality it's not practical. Why do you assume children being raised by homosexual parents necessarily lose their heritage anyway? One night stands, sure, but if you go slow and are informed about the heritage/medical/familial history of the biological parent(s) ?
"But a child never loses their heritage, just perhaps their access to it."
> just perhaps their access to it. And
> adoption does not need to take a child
> from their heritage
I think you're misunderstanding my view of the situation.
Here is a child. The child has two biological parents. Otherwise, there would be no child. The child is not, in any normal culture, available for adoption.
The child becomes available for adoption when circumstances demand that the child be deprived of its biological parents. Perhaps its parents are unfit, or unwilling, or simply unavailable (e.g. catastrophic accident).
REGARDLESS of any adoptive parents, homosexual or otherwise, the child is ALREADY deprived of its biological parents and heritage. The Bad Thing you want to avoid is already here. You have lost.
When adoptive parents present themselves, regardless of what word you want to use to describe their involvement, regardless of their sexual preferences, regardless of whether there are two or three or just one, the child's life is almost certain to improve with their involvement.
Nobody believes that children should be adopted rather than being raised by their biological parents. Pretty much everybody, however, believes children should be adopted rather than orphans.
To purposely, wilfully deny any child a mother or a father, particularly for selfish financial, political, or supposedly economic reasons is a monstrous crime. Any discussion that does not focus on nurturing mature and stable offspring through lasting heterosexual bonds condemns children to lifelong debilities from which few individuals and no societies emerge.
Choose your canon: Throughout human history, for excellent socio-cultural --even survival-- reasons, all polities have sought to place the basic family unit on a plane over-and-above mundane concerns. Let's face it: In the short-term, commercial/political, hedonistic sense there is no --repeat, NO-- gain in committing to a marriage, raising kids. Homosexuals feed off parents' self-sacrificing time, trouble and expense; and should your offspring prove one of their fourteen per thousand, your family name will perish with all else-- no grandchildren, no legacy of affirmation, trust. Mocked and spurned, you will have fostered cowbirds desecrating their own nest.
As Europe is discovering, all the collectivist Statist forcing in the world will not engender one responsible, civic-minded adult in face of crass and vulgar narcissists intent on self-aggrandizement. A virtual Darwinian selection process rapidly ensues, so far beyond Parliamentary niceties as to make nonsense of SSM's convoluted propositions, which all boil down to: We want something for nothing, and we want it now.
By all means, debate statutory chapter and verse, adopt noxious and self-serving precedents. Absent "parentage", there will be no citizens of character and education, no culture worth the having. To ideologues of a certain stripe, that of course will be just fine.
Inheritance is, in fact, a form of heritage, unless you are arbitrarily limiting “heritage” to the biological variety. I'm not sure if you're appallingly ignorant or just unwilling to limit your rhetoric to the facts.
So, either Caliban is employing a devious equivocation substituting his own context for the one he is replying to. Or he misunderstands the word. And I never ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity.
Neither is justified. Caliban is clearly explaining that adoption provides “parentage” to children who are already deprived of biological parents. You replied that adoption does not provide "parentage," but you are factually wrong. Think before you criticize a point like Caliban’s. Adoption obviously does provide parentage; it’s strange to whine that Caliban should have been limited to a biological sense of “parentage” when he was explicitly describing adoption as a situation in which biological parents are excluded.
Adoption is not in conflict with the child's right to heritage unless it takes on the radical "The state is everything. The ego is death" exalting of legal reality above reality. That is, that the adoption is the same as their birth.
Each of those sentences appears to be a non sequitor. How does equating adoption with birth require “ the radical ‘The state is everything. The ego is death’ exalting of legal reality above reality?” What does ego have to do with it?
But a child never loses their heritage, just perhaps their access to it.
Yes, in fact, they do. Depending on the jurisdiction and the property in question, an adopted child loses their right to inherit from the biological parents. (Many jurisdictions allow adopted children to inherit physical property but not causes of action, for instance.) And of course, adoptees routinely “lose” their heritage of testate biological parents. I think your rhetoric is getting increasingly sloppy; you can’t mean “heritage” in the literal sense. So what do you mean?
Your arguments would be greatly improved if you would remind yourself, before posting each comment, that facts are not determined by belief. Saying a think does not make it so, and saying it twice doesn't help.
To the extent that the ALI document dealt with the issue, it was summarizing state responses to these problems.
(from my article on the subject)
Founded in 1923, the ALI includes within its membership many of America’s most influential judges, lawyers, and law professors. The influence of the ALI includes aiding in the Uniform Commercial Code’s drafting, as well as other model codes, such as the Model Code of Evidence, and the Model Penal Code. It has been typically known for its “Restatements of the Law” in certain fields, including contracts, torts, trusts, and conflict of laws.52 This pedigree has established an informal system through such restatements whereby members of the legal community and, significantly, judges, will use these restatements in discerning the direction of their own state's case law when confronted by conflicts in the law and undecided cases with no state precedent, essentially adopting in the process the restatements' recommended thrust or specifics.
It is considered unusual for ALI to make a foray into a field such as family law. Stranger still was for the ALI to recommend changes to existing law. As we have seen, it has been typical for it to simply restate existing law.53 However, the timing of the Report's release made it more than fortuitous.
The Report was released while both the Lawrence and Goodridge cases were pending. Issued only six months before the former and less than a year before the latter decisions were announced, the Report “appear[ed] intended to influence legal developments, particularly those initiated by judicial decisions.”57 As Arizona law professor and editor of the ALI report Mark Ellman noted, “the new report is intended to set guidelines and for individual judges and state legislatures.”58
Equal to the prestige of the body making the Report and its curious timing is the startling nature of the proposals made in The Principles of the Family Dissolution when compared with family law as practiced.
Indeed, David Westfall, writing in the Harvard Journal of Law in an article entitled “Unprincipled Family Dissolution” goes so far as to raise concerns about the “controlled nature of the consultative process”60 used in drafting the Report, noting how the small group of legal academics who produced it had such broad latitude on a subject of such general and public concern.
The remarks of Professor Katherine Bartlett, one of the three principal drafters of the Report, both tells us something about those drafting this work, as well as neatly summing up the drive of the proposals:
52 See The American Law Institute, at http://ali.org
53 The Future of Family Law, Law and the Marriage Crisis in North America A Report from the Council on Family Law at 16
57 Katherine Shaw Spaht THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE The Current Crises In Marriage
58 Karen S. Paterson Love and the Law: A realty Check USA Today, Dec. 4, 2002, at D8
59 David Orgon Coolidge, Widening the Lens: Chapter 6 of the ALI’s Principles, Hawaii and Vermont, 4 J.L. &Fam. Stud. 79 (2002) Id. at 79
60 David Westfall, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 27 (2004): 918-20.
61 Katharine T. Bartlett, “Saving the Family from the Reformers” (Brigitte M. Bodenheimer Memorial Lecture on the Family), University of California, Davis Law Review 31 (1998):
Drug Addict Parents (I have 1 aunt and 2 uncles who my family adopted due to the state taking the kids from such unfit parents, my family raised them as their own), Teenage pregnancy, Parents who are incestuous or beat their kids, I can go on but I recognize your rhetorical point even if your sentence wasn't thought through completely.
When encountering such debates it is important to note….
You are being needlessly acrid, and contrarian. Your accusations, stacked as best as you can, do not accurately represent the conversation.
I see nothing new to reply to, just more emphatic versions of the same fallacies.
That is, the problems with the legal definition of "man" and "woman". Now most men have got 46xy chromosomes, most women have 46xx chromosomes. Most men have masculine genitalia, most women do not. Most women have feminine genitalia, most men do not.
But nearly 1 in 50 do not fit that nice, neat, default ordering of things.
There are people who look like girls at birth who turn into boys late in puberty - they have 5ARD, 5 alpha reductase deficiency, and that's so common in the Dominican Republic and parts of Oceania that they have words for the condition, such as Guavadoches.
There are people who have 47xxy chromosomes, and although most are normal guys (just tall, sterile, slightly odd teeth etc) some are not, and some have even been biological mothers.
1.7% of the population ( we think - we know it's around 1-2% anyway) is Intersexed in some way. Many don't know it, they just have been told they can't have children. Some are even just infertile, they look female, so what if 40% of their cells are male? Or 100%, if their cells aren't responsive to the primary male hormone, testosterone (CAIS - complete androgen insensitivity syndrome)
The Law has not kept up with medical science. We're now pretty sure - at least on the balance of probabilities, though not beyond reasonable doubt, that Transsexuality - you know, those weirdoes who want a sex change - is caused by neurological Intersex. We can't correct the brain, we can modify the body so it's not so hideously uncomfortable, feeling abnormal and perverse.
I know. I had one of the less common IS conditions, one of the ones where apparent sex changes over one's lifetime, like 5ARD. My UK Birth Certificate says "Boy", and not being a normal Transsexual, I can't ever get it changed under the UK Gender Recognition Act. My UK Passport on the other hand says F for Female, based in the medical evidence. I'm married (to another woman) as for most of my life I looked male, and tried to be the best Man a girl could be. Heck, it took a specialist medical exam 20 years ago to find out I wasn't 100% male!
I'm a biological father - and unlike some Intersexed people, I don't have the bits to be a biological mother. And it took medical help.
The formation of same-sex marriages is illegal here in Australia, but the validity of a marriage is judged at the time it was contracted. Practically as well as legally, in 1981 I was male. Mostly.
But in 2005 I was treated for "severe androgenisation of a non-pregnant female", a diagnosis that requires peer review. Shortly thereafter I started a course of hormone therapy designed to stabilise my system (it did) and accelerate the feminisation (it didn't). My UK Passport, as I said, says Female, and if I divorced that would be adequate documentation under the Australian marriage act for me to marry a man. Yet my birth certificate would be adequate documentation for me to marry a woman. In either case, it would be open for the Family Court to decide the marriage was invalid, though I think they'd judge me female on past case law.
In the USA, things are even more bizarre. In order to prevent "same sex" marriages from surgically altered people, 36 counties in Texas have actually allowed them. You see they don't recognise anything other than an original birth certificate. Now move over a county line, and the marriage becomes illegal, an abomination.
It could be argued - an argument I find very persuasive - that the whole of society should not be turned upside-down to accomodate a tiny minority.
But we're talking about possibly half a million people in the US. It is no "tiny minority", it's just that everyone is so embarrassed, and people who are Intersexed are subject to such hate, ridicule and violence, that the extent of the problem has been concealed. Moreover, we're not asking for a huge change, just the recognition that we exist. That we have minimal human rights, amongst which is the right to marry and have a family, adopted or biological.
Same Sex Marriage would at least allow people whose sex is questionable to marry, without it being necessary to make a legal decision as to what their sex might be. For if they have, say, female genitalia, a male birth certificate, have a mosaic 45x (Turner Syndrome Female) /46xy (male) cell line, look likeb women, and self-identify as female, as some people do, then what sex are they? Especially if they are genetic fathers, having had viable sperm extracted from (now removed as due to cancer risk) testicular structures?
Unless you want to answer tens or hundreds of thousands of such fraught questions, where each case differs in the details, then maybe Same Sex Marriages might be justified on purely pragmatic grounds. Because by legislating to prevent them on Religious grounds, you automatically legalise them in cases of Intersex. Maybe the Almighty is giving you a hint.
Finally, and this has not been publicised, but a statement of principles was issued by a panel of eminent jurists on Monday at Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This clarified existing provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is not "new law" as such. And it is now made explicitly clear that not only is discrimination on the base of sex, race, nationality or religion prohibited, but so is discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Furthermore those stats do not address the amount of kids who are "taken care" of by the state for while they have parents, and most parent contact has been severed/denied voluntarily or by force, the links haven't been separated completely. Because of this there is still a chance, but a very remote one that there parents may take them back. (If anybody remembers the child movie years ago Angels in the Outfield, the Roger Bomman the white kid who saw angels would be one such kid)
> "I think you're misunderstanding my view of the situation."
Perhaps, please explain.
> "Here is a child. The child has two biological parents. Otherwise, there would be no child. The child is not, in any normal culture, available for adoption. ... Nobody believes that children should be adopted rather than being raised by their biological parents. Pretty much everybody, however, believes children should be adopted rather than orphans."
As far as that is true, I can agree with that. While you put that in opposition to comments such as Eric's and SpringJourney's, I do not find how that actually opposes what they wrote.
> "REGARDLESS of any adoptive parents, homosexual or otherwise, the child is ALREADY deprived of its biological parents and heritage. The Bad Thing you want to avoid is already here. You have lost."
If that is what you are saying, I believe I can say that I do understand what you are writing. But what circumstances do children lose their ability to know their heritage, a right recognized by the UN to combat genocide.
If it is your typical child in a civilized society, no doubt a record of that birth is on hand. The child has access to that birth record. From there they have access to know their heritage. That is not lost when their parents die.
If I can say, I believe your approach shows you are unfamiliar with the arguments being presented. That is okay, its new to everyone sometime. For a better explanation of the position, please follow the links I provided to Margaret Sommerville and David Blankenhorn above.
You seem to be thinking intently about the community you find yourself apart of. I do not deny that the numbers represent real people &real practical problems for both law and culture. Nor do I dismiss the numbers as so small enough to ignore their plights.
Given the numbers manageability and the particularities of the wide varieties of circumstances it’s prudent to note that we have courts precisely to judge things on a case by case basis.
It’s even more important for me to note that the rest of the populations are human also. Their sexuality is important to them, as is their biological linage, their natural parents and a culture and law that reflects their needs.
Are you saying that without neutering the definition of marriage, there is no access to the institution of marriage for people of ambiguous gender?
A friend of mine actually uses their example to point out that there might be easier access for same-sex couples to marriage if they treated their own gender as meaninglessly as they wish marriage policy to. In other words, to claim themselves functionally females or males respectively to gain the same access that gender ambiguous people do.
If I have it right, there has been at least one case of a person in two different marriages as each gender respectively. But if so, your argument is not an argument for neutering the definition of marriage, that is if the pathway already exists through the same method. But I have no idea what is required or qualified in such circumstances to do more than speculate.
Have you heard that Karl Rove's father, Louis, was gay? Apparently it's a confirmed fact by the son.
I'm not too into