Redstate

[whine]I generally tend not to but I saw a lot of folks doing it and ... [/whine]

Nah ... it still didn't feel right doing it. Shouldn't have.

Message received.

I tried so hard to hit "stop" before it went through.

Rights gets to flex its muscle, eh?

They will probably rule that the two heterosexual sisters can only enjoy the same inheritance rights that lesbian couples enjoy if they marry each other. And what right do the British have to say that an adult woman can't marry her sister?

The audacity!

If two people have lived together for decades, as these sisters have done, built lives together, run a home together, why should their tax situation depend on whether or not they were having sex with each other? What is the connection between sex and tax?

For the government to confiscate the home of the surviving sister to pay a tax bill seems iniquitous to me. And I don't need to know anything about the sexuality of the people concerned to reach this conclusion.

It seems odd to me that you do.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

he could've married his daughter sooner.

John E.

Leaving it human-human takes out the opportunity for feigned outrage by the usual suspects. Leftists and gay marriage advocates try their very best to avoid tackling the fact that the very same arguments that they use to justify gay marriage can be used to justify incestuous marriages between consenting adults.

A 53 year old father and his 29 year old daughter? A 32 year old man and his 28 year old sister? Why the hell not?

[1] It's unnatural?
RE: Gay marriage advocates point out that there are many instances of homosexual coupling observed in the animal kigdom. The fact is that incestuous copulation occurs far more often in the animal kingdom. And besides, is it not the same argument made against gay marriage by bigots with living memory?

[2] It would lead to deformed children?
RE: As gay marriage advocates tell us, marriage has never had anything whatsoever to do with children - it's about the two people who want to be together. And what if the two siblings were both of the same sex? And with new technology, soon enough, any genetic abnormalities in the children of opposite sex incestuous couples can be sifted out and treated.

[3] It harms society/marriage as an institution?
RE: As gay marriage advocates plaintively ask, how does Will here marrying his sister Gretchen affect your own marriage? Why should you impose your religious views or legislate morality for people who do not share your views or believe in your definition of what constitutes an immoral act?

[4] There are not that many people who want to marry their family members ...
RE: Numbers mean nothing. Even if the only interacial couple that wanted to get married in the whole of the United States were Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter (of Loving v. Virginia), it still would have been unconstitutional for the state of Virginia to prevent them from marrying each other. Likewise, even if the only brother-sister couple that wanted to get married were Will and Gretchen here, it should be unconstitutional for them to be denied a marriage license.

is substantially more difficult. Since the technology isn't available NOW to weed out deformities, and since gay couples' inability to produce children only removes children from the purpose of marriage and not as a factor, objection #2 can't be eliminated.

Otherwise, I would probably find myself wholeheartedly supporting this argument. Which would discuss everyone else here, I'm sure.

I'm an only child!! Don't hurt me!!

Disclaimer: Works for Alan Schlesinger (R-CT). Volunteer, no pay.

The pragmatic progressives have done their best to teach us that taboo, disgust, and tradition are irrational things to follow. They're so arrogant that they wish to discard centuries of accumulated wisdom, which is why we must reject these lastest reforms of theirs.
--
It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -- Calvin Coolidge

about 50% of the time we DO! :-)
(Judging by the divorce rate that is!)

See The World In HinzSight!
Political HinzSight

I thought you were married -- I must have been wrong, since otherwise your guess would not have been so generous.

Death or Divorce!

I'll leave it to you to decide which is the better alternative! :-)
See The World In HinzSight!
Political HinzSight

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

not the "stay married" type!
:-)

See The World In HinzSight!
Political HinzSight

In Vino Veritas

is the wedding where the blushing bride is all decked out in white, doing her best impression of Elsa's Procession and is obviously seven or eight months pregnant. Where do they find the audacity?

In Vino Veritas

1. Inherited. Some parents don't have either the courage or moral compass to say "No".
2. A product of environment. My friends approve (or don't disapprove) so it's OK. And besides, people on Oprah do it all the time.
3. Part of the make-up of sinful man. I want it. I'll have it.

We, from time to time, have shortages in fuel, shortages in money, shortages in time. We never, ever, seem to have a shortage in audacity.

_______________________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"?

to having the audacity to take and hold a courageous position.

In Vino Veritas

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

Marriage is a social construct. If a society wants marriage to exist only between whites and whites, and blacks and blacks, and so ons and so ons, then a society has every right to put limitations on marriage.

It's not like a black man can't get married if he wants to. He can! He just has to marry a black woman.

I do not think that only racists could take such a position. I think that it would be quite possible for someone to say, in good faith, "don't rock the boat, we have laws for a reason, we have these institutions for a reason, and if we want activist judges to make the decisions instead of the duly elected legislature voted in to represent the people, it will open up a can of worms and soon two men will be trying to marry and people won't be able to come up with an argument against why judges shouldn't give this new "right" to anybody who shows up with a warm body at the clerk's office."

I don't think that such a position contains even a drop of racism.

It strikes me as fundamentally wrong, however. Even if there is zero racism. The racism that might lie underneath it makes it more of an unpleasant argument... but it's not wrong because it's (potentially) racist.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

That argument has no MOJO and is, quite frankly, for the BIRDS! Bird, the difference in KIND between males and females as opposed to that between humans of differing skin color are not comparable. Hint: see the genitalia and watch female child and male child choose between the truck and baby doll. I even know of a girl that got a truck and put it under the covers like a baby.

Did I mention the genitalia? Heterosexually its tailor made. Homosexually leaves one with limited and decidedly unsanitary limitations! the remote control? the Male's predatory nature? the female nesting nature?

The argument for same sex marriage doesn't help its case with comparison's to former Jim crow laws and references to Biblical figures that married outside their race. For that same Bible eschews homosexual sin in no uncertain terms.

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

Mostly because of what the Bible says should be done with the homosexuals.

I'm certain that you and I both agree that we should not follow Leviticus 20:13 literally. I have no doubt whatsoever that you and I agree 100% that practicing homosexuals (assuming consent among all parties, of course) should not be put to death.

From that agreement that you and I share, I conclude that we both agree that there are parts of the Bible that are perfectly okay to overlook.

I suspect that you and I merely disagree as to where and when one must start paying attention again.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

the Hebrew people at a time when they were an isolated and vulnerable group akin to a people as an Army requiring strict discipline for their survival amidst pagans. And in today's' Army, one can be punished severely for disobeying an order for conduct that in the civilian world would be a minor offense. God had a purpose for them that he meant for them to accomplish and needed that it be clear how serious it was that they obey God.

God gets to be God.

There is no admonition in the Bible that the particular punishment applies today to Jews or even that it applied later in the Old testament to Hebrews.

But there are numerous verses throughout the Bible that condemns the behavior without reference to punishment.

The behavior is condemned, as is fornication and adultery, in the New Testament as well, but with no punishment prescribed.

So I do not think it is ok to overlook any portion of the Bible. I do agree that it must be looked at in context.

I actually favored pre-Lawrence law that made adultery, fornication and sodomy crimes on the books, yet that were never enforced except in rare divorce cases to force settlements!

I would not vote for a new law that would criminalize fornication or sodomy however, except that i would favor that sodomy be considered adultery for those that are married and I would keep adultery as a crime.

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

So we can say that Leviticus does not apply to life today. There's stuff that Paul said that backs up a couple of Levitical laws and we can keep that but we need not keep the rest. Bunnies, for example, make excellent stew. Congress with one's wife while she is sufferring her sickness is okay every once in a while (I have heard from the horse's mouth that congress can even alleviate some of the more unpleasant symptoms). Polyester/cotton blends with Hawaiian prints on them are the bomb diggity. We agree that Leviticus should not be taken as Gospel (I don't know whether I intended that pun or not).

We just disagree on where one should come out and say "okay, it is at this point where I can start pointing guns at people and telling them to stop (or, at least, paying other people to do so)."

I suspect that the point where I would pay someone else to point a gun at someone and tell them to stop is much further down the way than yours is.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

This is my take on the bible and homosexuality.

It seems to me that the orientation its self is not the sin, but the commission of the act (in thought or deed). For example, I sin in my thoughts as a heterosexual (married or not) when I think about women in a sexual way, and the homosexual sins when he has adulterous thoughts too. I (and the homosexual) would sin equally if we each go out and have sex outside of marriage as well.

In my opinion, a chaste heterosexual or a chaste homosexual who is able to combat sexual thoughts and actions is walking the right path.

The homosexual has the burden of not being able to act out his desires in marriage as a heterosexual can. But that doesn't (nor should it) change the definition of marriage.

I believe God rewards mightily the homosexual who carries his difficult burden and turns to God for help. I also believe God is angered by those who make the homosexuals journey more difficult by pronouncing homosexual extra-marital sin any more sinful than heterosexual extra-marital sin.

These views cause me grief from both sides of the political fence. I am opposed to special rights and marriage for gays, but also hold that gays are not in sin for their orientation but for the thoughts and acts that might go with it (just like with a heterosexual).

While gays are specificaly mentioned in the bible, so are men who lie down with beasts and men who sin by laying down with a women they aren't married to (see the commandment on adultery, which is more prominently displayed than Leviticus). The New Testement seems to me to be a major dispensation on how to deal with punishment also.

"Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep" - Defoe

The slippery slope argument has a useful purpose in that it points out that the logic being applied to change a tradition in a specific way may be applied more generally to cause it to change in many other ways. It explores the possible unforeseen consequences of a particular logic for change. It is not dispositive but it is an important consideration.

What is often missed in this argument is deference to the status quo which results in misplacing the burden of proof. Tradition is not always right but tradition should be given initial weight. Things very likely got to be the way they are for a very good reason and if we start mucking around with the status quo we dang sure better know why. When we are all satisfied we know exactly why a particular aspect of marriage is the way it is then and only then can we comfortably start making decisions about whether it is a good idea to change it. And the slippery slope argument helps illustrate this.

The advocates for changing traditional marriage really ought to have the burden of proof. In Loving they arguably met that burden against the slippery slope argument as you presented it. I don't think you have met it in the SSM debate. Tell me again, why exactly is it that the rights-based logic of SSM proponents doesn't apply to the UK Burden sister's claim that their rights are violated? Better yet, why should any non-married person accept the unequal distribution of rights that are given to couples just because they get a marriage certificate? Really it comes down to what is marriage for in the first place and why does the society through the State have any interest in encouraging or discouraging it by treating married people differently than any other people?
John E.

I don't argue that two guys have the "right" to get married.

I ask you where you get the right to interfere with two guys who say that they are married.

Because, quite honestly, if two guys moved in next door to me and told me that they were married, I wouldn't think that I had any right to say "You know what? You guys aren't really married." (Of course I would have the right to say it from a "right to free speech" perspective... but that's up there with arguing that I have the right to tell an ugly woman that she is ugly. Yes, you have that right... but of all the places to choose to exercise it, you chose *THAT* one?)

Since I don't feel that I'd have the right to say "You guys aren't really married", I wonder where you get the right to say it.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

I ask you where you get the right to interfere with two guys who say that they are married.

I think you misunderstand what this is all about.

Jake and Jack can have a big wedding ceremony, invite all their friends, get a clergyman from a church that recognizes same-sex "marriages" to officiate, move in together (taking turns in carrying each other over the threshhold of their new home) and declare themselves a married couple.

I have no problem with that. In fact, I personally would applaud if they shot somebody who breaks into their home uninvited to demand that they no longer call themselves married.

It's when Jake and Jack demand that the State recognize them as a married couple, and accord them the privileges the state has reserved for married couples that I and my fellow social conservatives begin to have a serious problem.

Make no mistake, Marriage, everywhere, has always been a concern of the State in every part of the world. That's why I believe gay marriage proponents who praise the halcyon days when Marriage was supposedly the exclusive preserve of the Church are deliberately being disingenuous. Back then, the Church was part of the State and could levy punishments on citizens.

Would it surprise you to know that practically every State of the Union has laws against adultery, some repealed, some not - all unenforced and some instituted these laws after the ratification of the United States Constitution? What does that tell you?

The upbringing of the next generation of citizens is very properly the concern of the state. This does not mean that the state has the right to compel women or married couples to produce children. But it does mean that the State is well within its rights, and in fact, I believe it is a duty of the State, to privilege that arrangement that provides the ideal environment for the procreation, birth and upbringing of the society's progeny.

Is in the assumptions made here:

"It's when Jake and Jack demand that the State recognize them as a married couple, and accord them the privileges the state has reserved for married couples that I and my fellow social conservatives begin to have a serious problem."

I don't think that the privileges granted married couples are "privileges" anywhere near as much as they are "lightened penalties". The State taxes people far, far beyond what is right. Even God stopped at 10%. So when a married couple "only" has to pay taxes at 24.5% rather than 25%, that is not anywhere *NEAR* my definition of a "privilege".

If you look at all of the so-called "privileges" granted to married couples by the State, you'll see that they pretty much all amount to "We won't violate you as much as we would have otherwise."

There's the whole "hospital visitation" and whatnot stuff that I'm too lazy to get into right now but I'm sure we both could guess what the other would say about that.

"The upbringing of the next generation of citizens is very properly the concern of the state."

I say "the heck it is". But I say that as one of those people who believes in the right to home-schooling and thinks that the Department of Education should be abolished. Your children are your responsibility. Foisting that off on the State will result in people who never, ever really become parents... they'll just be perpetual adolescents babysitting their kids while they wait for the "real" Mom and Dad (the State) to make all of the important decisions.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

A "lightened penalty" is the same thing as a "privilege." There isn't a bit of difference. If you are a POW and say what they want on camera, they'll give you privileges like a bowl of rice or time outside your 3x3 cage. I suppose you could also refer to those as "lightened penalties," but that doesn't change the fact that they are also privileges. You are still getting something that other people in the camp aren't getting.

In any case, expanding the group of people who receive these tax benefits to include same sex couples doesn't make the system any more just. Plenty of people are still being reamed by having to pay the single rates. If you want to make it more fair, eliminate the married rates and the joint return and have everybody pay the same.
---
"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

Getting rid of all of the Amendments after the 10th one.

I would be 100% down with getting rid of the income tax entirely. Oh, and the death tax as well.

This would have the downside of removing many privileges that married people now enjoy, however.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

I'd rather keep a few of them (#13 comes to mind immedately, as well as the suffrage amendments), including a revised, tightened-up 14th.
--
It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -- Calvin Coolidge

---
"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

Taking into account all your comments on this thread, I must conclude that you don't see any actual meaning or purpose to marriage. If you did, then you would have a basis for deciding whether someone who claimed to be married actually fit the bill. Marriage is whatever it is to whoever it is that claims it and you or I would be exceeding our rights to assert our particular judgment into the matter.

I'll grant you this, with your view there can be no slippery slope because there is no slope. Anybody who says he is married is married and should be so treated by everybody and all of our laws.

Really birdmojo, you have totally dodged my earnest post to you above with this kind of context changing. The way you look at it puts you in a solipsistic fortress. If you can't talk about marriage in terms of the social context that we all share then how can we talk about it at all.

The bottom line is that we supporters of Traditional marriage are not claiming that we have the right - as a matter of personal fiat - to tell someone whether they are married or not. We are saying that society - collectively, past and present - has defined what marriage is. It is in that definition that we find the non-arbitrary retort to your way of looking at it. We are all in the same sandbox and that sandbox wasn't in a state of anarchy when we arrived in it. I hope you have something good to contribute but I a return to anarchy is not my idea of it.
John E.

solipsistic fortress ...

Classic.

Oh how I love Redstate ...

Marriage is a (for lack of a better word) sacred contract between two people and (for lack of a better word) God.

In my own personal estimation, I am far, far, *FAR* more offended by (insert famous person here) and (his/her) (two/three/four/five/six/seven/eight) marriages than I am by the idea of two guys getting married and staying married.

Life is hard. If two people find each other and want to die together, more power to them. I think that they should be allowed to do so. More than that, I don't think that you have the competence to say whether they are really married based on knowing nothing more than their body parts.

Now, does society have the power to prevent certain people from marrying each other and the self-justification skills to explain that it totally was doing it for the right reasons this time and it's completely different from the last time? Oh yes. Absolutely. I do not disagree for a second.

I just disagree about the degree to which this time is different from last time.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

You are still dodging the question of the purpose of marriage as a social institution - you decline to lay out any positive view of your own on that and offer a defense for it. You say no one has the right to say who is married. Then you say its purpose is a contract with God - whatever that means it does imply that it is not a social thing at all. And of course that implies that the State has no business in it. According to this why should the State give anybody any benefits for making a contract with god or get involved in the administration of it and why should any group get off demanding benefits from the State because of their contract with god. You must conclude that the whole debate is absurd from the get go. But then you come around and say something to the effect that the State may have a say in what marriage means - implying that it is not just a contract with god - by virtue of society's interest in marriage. But your aren't satisfied with the answer that society has come up with historically and it is the society's burden to justify its view to you, not your burden to justify your view to the society.

Your position is too incomprehensible or too inconsistent or too parochial to permit a productive dialogue, IMO. I apologize for not finding a reasonable basis on which to continue the dialogue.
John E.

I am trying to unpack that phrase and it keeps being something that you can cut down and cut down and cut down until you get the atom of "its purpose is the purpose as defined by the two people in it."

We can look at marriage in China, marriage in Japan, in Russia, in Italy, in Israel, in Sweden, in Canada, in Mexico, and in the US. You'll find gay marriages in there at one end of the spectrum and all the way over to countries that don't recognize my marriage (on the religious level, anyway) because it didn't happen under the auspices of the right deity (or, in my case, any at all).

What is the purpose of marriage if you look at one marriage from here, one from there, one from over there, and then mine?

It seems to be a (for lack of a better word) sacred covenant between two people and (for lack of a better word) God.

"According to this why should the State give anybody any benefits for making a contract with god or get involved in the administration of it and why should any group get off demanding benefits from the State because of their contract with god."

I already covered this above but I love saying it so I'll say it again. I make distinctions between "benefits" and "lessened penalties". In this country (and pretty much every country with a sufficiently large government), benefits are not given as much as penalties are lessened. Instead of paying 25% tax on your income, you pay 24.5%. Instead of taking half of your worldly goods from you when you die, the government only takes a small fraction. And so on and so forth.

The distinction I am making is between "Marriage as a sacred contract between two people and God" and "Marriage as that thing the government taxes you less for". Society, as a whole, has zero say about the former. They only have a say in the latter.

They tend, however, to use arguments explaining how homosexuals cannot get married in the former sense (something I question whether they have the competence to do) and then go on to argue that that is why we cannot tax them at a lower rate once they commit to each other nor allow them to visit each other in the hospital if the parents of the hospitalized leave a note at the front desk. For the good of society, of course. That the family may be strengthened.

(And, for the record, I do not say that no one has the right to say who is married. I, for one, say that my wife and I are married. I argue that you do not have the right to say that we are not. When I speak of marriage in this sense, I speak of the religious covenant. Now, you may have the ability to say that she and I are not "really" married (in the religious sense) because it happened in a courthouse and was officiated by a woman. There are those who have said that. I disagree. I would hope that you would disagree as well. If two homosexuals went into a church and had a ceremony and got married and you said that they weren't really married, I'd have to say that you would be doing many of the same things that the people who say that my wife and I are not really married. If, however, all you were talking about is how they didn't switch tax brackets... well, of course they didn't. They're still being taxed at the same rate. When I talk about marriage, most of the time, I'm talking about the covenant. Not the tax relationship.)

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Birdmojo, thanks for responding and thanks for the dialogue. On a first read of your last post it looks like this is where we start repeating ourselves. At the moment I don't see how to productively move the dialogue forward. If you want to keep it going here is what I will do. I will come back tomorrow and read all the dialogue in which you participated on the diary. You agree to do that too, paying especial attention to all my entries. If we have anything new to say at that point we will continue. Is that what you want to do or should we just but it to bed right here?
John E.

I've given my definition of marriage and it's an intensely personal thing between two people (but has long-reaching secondary consequences).

People argue that the "point" of marriage is the long-reaching secondary consequences while I argue that the point is the intensely personal thing. A veritable galaxy of intensely personal covenants.

I argue that, being an intensely personal covenant, people outside of said covenant do not have the competence to judge whether the covenant is legitimate or not... at least not based upon information as vague as the physical descriptions of the people involved.

Your argument seems to be that society, at large, gets to decide what is and is not a marriage and society can withhold benefits from couples as it wishes.

For what it's worth, I don't disagree that society can withhold benefits (or lessened penalties) from couples as it wishes.

I just argue that it oughtn't. But, perhaps you're right, and we're just repeating ourselves over and over again...

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

I don't have time to do this right now. Look for me tomorrow. At that time I'll try to summarize for you what prevents me from conducting the discussion based on your claims although I will be repeating myself. And you have not stated my position precisely enough, mainly because you continue to frame it from your point of view that this discussion starts with "who gets to decide" what things mean to the individual with the idea that the individual is preeminent - a kind of solopsistic POV. My point of view starts with the world out there and works back to how you, me and our neighbor fit into it. Later....
John E.

I do not like the whole "what does society say" starting point because, from there, you can justify a great deal of the things currently going on in the Middle East.

There is a right and a wrong. If I cannot know them on my own, then I won't know them if some Imam tells me that women should be covered head to toe or if some plantation owner tells me that the Curse of Ham is why he owns slaves.

It is hardly "solipsism" to say that women should be allowed to wear jeans. It is hardly "solipsism" to say that all men are created equal.

I posit that it is hardly "solipsism" to say that if two guys want to say that they are married, it's none of my business.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Bird, this is the linchpin flaw in the libertarian, leave me alone, argument. You actually don't want to be left alone or leave people alone, because you live in society because you benefit from society more than you suspect being a hermit. Plus, before society, man lived like a wild animal. It was survival of the fittest. In order for man to pursue happiness, he must do so in cooperation with others for their mutual benefit.

Hence, society's wishes will always be the starting point, unless one lets a King or despot decide. Our system is the worst except for all the others.

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

Then by what measure do we say that Wahabbi Islam is wrong? It certainly wasn't selected against in the Middle East.

Can we say that slavery was okay until, oh, the early 1800's? Because that's what society said? Could we use the argument that slavery was, technically, better for the slaves than living in the near-anarchy from which they were plucked?

I find such arguments distasteful, for the record. Even if society, once upon a time, used them. Even if societies today (such as Wahabbi Islam) use them.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Your questions and the assumptions behind them that they naturally follow from my post are non sequiturs. You object to society as a starting point. The only alternative is the absence of society, ie anarchy or a world in which you are the only inhabitant.

I will engage only in serious, coherent and logically progressing conversation only.

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

"I will engage only in serious, coherent and logically progressing conversation only."

Oh, I totally agree. I only engage in serious, coherent, and logically progressing conversations too! This one time, I was in an argument with a guy and he said that... well, you don't care. But trust me. It was infuriating. I told him pretty much exactly what you said and he got all huffy and it was at that point that I knew I won the argument.

Anyway, society as starting point is fine, I suppose, for raising children. The poor dears need society to turn them from Hobbesnian savages into moral agents.

However, once moral agency is achieved, the center of moral decision making must be that of the individual. To make decisions based upon "this is what my society has always done, well, what my teachers told me it's always done, anyway" is to abdicate one's own moral agency.

Making moral decisions with one's own moral agency is pretty much the basis of morality. To merely act as you have been trained is... well, if you've been trained well, it's a good thing and if you've been trained poorly, it's a bad thing. Getting a good society as a starting point versus a bad society as a starting point is pretty much a crapshoot and, looking at the history of civilization, it seems that the odds are much better that you'd get a bad society as a starting point.

Which brings us back to "what if your society says that women aren't real people?" How does one who believes in society as a starting point respond to that question?

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Re: Plus, before society, man lived like a wild animal.

I don't think there's any evidence that there ever was a "before society" for human beings. We have always been social creatures ("It is not good for man to be alone", etc.) and even the most primitive of peoples live in small tribal groups with a degree of structure and order. The "state of nature" posited by Locke and Hobbes is as much a unrealistic myth as the "frictionless surfaces" posited by Newton.

Yes, alecs311 why do you choose to be obtuse? We are making the same point to this libertarian. He supposes that their is an alternative to society as the starting point, and you nitpick me about "before" vs between. The only alternative to society is its breakdown, and I'm sure you are aware that there have been periods of anarchy. In fact, one could probably find some areas in that state most everyday somewhere on the globe, and in tribal areas, this state of affairs lasts for years at a time.

Be nice.

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

First let me say that I do not believe that our starting point for the marriage question encompasses a claim that tradition is always right, nor that tradition is the absolute judge of rightness. Rather, that tradition is an integrated system dynamically formed to serve its constituents quest for what is good and right. Therefore, before we set about reconceiving an important construct of it, like marriage, we had better understand its whys and wherefores and the broader consequences of change. We could have a rational dialogue - with no predetermined in principle outcomes - on these terms but it seems you decline to do so because of your self-as-supreme-reality-on-marriage POV and because of what you think our starting position implies about moral epistemology. If you see that I am wrong about the implications, then I make myself attentive to your logic; I would rather concede the starting position than grant that right and good are mere cultural constructions. I believe that culture is comprehensible and that features of the various cultures are commensurate based upon goodness as it relates to human nature - not the blank slate version - and its environment. However, I don't think the comprehension and comparison is arbitrarily determined by the individual. Our capacity for reason is a great thing but it is quite subject to error so it must submit itself for confirmation to other honest inquirers. The approach of the scientific community is a good model.

As for your argument that claims about marriage are none of our business - aside from the narrow ground that Martin already granted you on this - when I try and view it in its best light, when I try to think it through, it turns up inconsistencies, scenarios that seem absurd to me, and does not seem cohesive enough to be considered comprehensible. This may be entirely my fault, the product of my poor reading comprehension or mistakes in my reasoning. We could sort this out if you allow me to ask you a series of questions to which you will give honest and thoughtful replies with the goal of sharpening up your position so we see how it hangs together and what its implications are. You might guess what some of those questions will be if you reread our transcript. And I am separately willing to submit my position to you under the same rigor.

"Rather, that tradition is an integrated system dynamically formed to serve its constituents quest for what is good and right."

In our own particular case, this is true. I can point to any number of traditions across the world and show you traditions that serve merely the elite within the society or serve primarily the males. Look at Islam, for example.

I do not hold that it does a particularly good job of serving its constituents quest for what is good and right. There seems to be a lot more of alpha male primate behavior going on.

This may result in a great many children who then carry on the traditions who then have a great many children who then carry on the traditions... but that has nothing, if anything, to do with goodness or rightness.

To sum up: I do not see "society" as an end in itself.

Moreover, I suspect that people handing more and more power to the government over marriage will result in far more cheapening of the good that comes out of marriage than allowing homosexuals to take a .5% joint filing tax cut would do.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

I did not imply that traditions always ideally satisfy the quest. They have to do it well enough to survive though, because their hosts - as social animals with relatively fewer instincts and hard wired environmental adaptations - homo sapien sapiens depend on their culture for prosperity.

We can take a specific tradition of another culture and try to figure out why it developed, what good purposes it serves (or served), what bad consequences it causes, what values it reflects and the propitiousness of those value systems, all with the aim of determining the vitality of that specific tradition. I expect that for the given class of specific traditions you have alluded to, we will both come to the conclusion that they fail to 'deliver the goods' so to speak. That would be just the kind of project that would allow us to examine our own tradition of marriage were it not for you POV with its predetermined outcome. If you still want to bring me around to it I have given you access to the best way I know how to move me toward it - the q&a. That may be too tedious, there is no obligation here.
John E.

Do you feel that our society will be destroyed (or, at least, weakened to the point where it will no longer be able to provide prosperity for its humans) if homosexuals are given tax breaks and other legal rights similar to those provided by the society to married heterosexuals?

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

I am not sure of that one way or the other. The way of thinking that justifies such a change might lead to a broader break down. I don't know. But I don't think we need to look at the situation in such dramatic terms in order to reach conclusions.

As to that specific change, my question is whether it hurts our chances or may harm our overall prosperity in specific ways - more generally: is it good for us. So the pertinent standard is that we do what is best for our general prosperity. We have a small group demanding that we make a significant change - in the definition of marriage - for the sake of what they perceive satisfies their interests, without much consideration for anybody else. The logic that supports this supports all kinds of changes irrespective of consequences, as Martin's diary indicates and as your kind or argument confirms.

The question works in reverse too. What are the consequences if we do not make such a change? Does history show us that the status quo on this matter harms society in specific ways?
John E.

"The way of thinking that justifies such a change might lead to a broader break down."

I posit that the way of thinking that justifies such a change started decades earlier and gay marriage is a symptom of this thinking and legislating against gay marriage will change no one's thoughts on the matter.

When sex was divorced from reproduction (readily available and 99% effective birth control, readily available and legal abortion), gay marriage was pretty much inevitable.

I don't see birth control going away (and do not, in any way, think it should) and I don't see abortion going away (and am one of those wackos who sees abortion as extremely immoral but thinks that, like with prohibition on alcohol and the current war on drugs, giving the government the power to prevent the act will create more wrong than not giving the government the power te prevent it).

I don't see gay marriage going away.

I'd even go so far as to say it's inevitable.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Please note that I left a Question For Birdmojo at the end of the diary, because we have become so deeply nested here.
John E.

What bugs me is that you could use that very argument to argue against Loving v. Virginia.

No.

"Loving v. Virginia" did not alter an iota the basic definition of marriage or in any way negate the institution of marriage's raison d'etre - providing a mechanism by which a man is tied to his offspring and the mother of his offspring in order to provide the best environment for the upbringing of the next generation.

Remember that marriage is a universal institution. People married in Europe, Africa, South America who immigrate were recognized as married in America even in the 1950s - including marriages between men and women of different races.

Let me be clear; there really is no continuum/slippery slope between allowing two people of different races to get married and allowing two people of the same sex to get married.

If there was, that argument would have been made at the time Loving v. Virginia was decided. In fact, the primary reason why anti-miscegenation laws were instituted was to prevent the birth of children of mixed race; hence why they were called "anti-miscegenation". So, in fact, the people back then recognized that interracial marriages would produce children.

Can we say the same of same sex marriages? Can they produce children? So what possible reason could I be led to think that I, as a black man, marrying a woman of Indian descent would damage the strength of the traditional family - which has always been Dad, Mom and children?

I think it's nothing more than historical revisionism for gay marriage advocates to assert that the definition of a traditional family historically mandated that the married couple be of the same race. That is not true. We have so many stories of cowboys marrying Native American women and having their marriages recognized the nation over that that theory is shot full of holes before it even wears its shoes to run around the country.

Same sex marriage (practiced nowhere on Earth past or present) completely decouples children from the institution of marriage while interracial marriage (happened regularly and quite often throughout history) does nothing of the sort.

The fact is that if children are no longer relevant at all to the institution of marriage then there is absolutely no reason to prevent more than two people to enter a single marriage contract and neither is there any reason to deny a father and his adult daughter a marriage license.

And, with all due respect, in case you're planning to bring up the red herring of saying that if marriage and procreation were so intimately related, that this means that non-procreating heterosexual couples must be forced to separate or be refused marriage licenses, just don't. That's way too weak an argument to even bother with.

It comes down to what you see the point of marriage is.

If you want to argue that the point of marriage is to strengthen society, great. Go there. I do not see that as the point of marriage.

If two people want to get married, I don't see where I would get the authority to say "Sorry, you can't. You can have a ceremony and you can live together and you can even engage in Congress but you aren't really married." I mean, I might have insight to say that Bob and Sarah aren't "really" married. Bob is just looking for someone to claim on his taxes and Sarah is just looking for regular income without having to get a job and, hey, they've reached an arrangement... but that's just for those particular two people.

I don't see where I would have that authority to make a sweeping statement about a member of one group marrying a member of another. If I don't have it, I don't see how finding a dozen (or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million, or six billion) people who agree with me would grant it to me.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

I am not saying "Marriage does not strengthen society".

It does. It obviously does.

I am just saying that that is not marriage's point.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Look mojo. Every society on Earth has marriage at the heart of it. Every society sets it up so that a child ideally has a man it can call its father and a woman who it knows to be its mother.

That's it. That's the point of Marriage. Using clever euphemisms such as "strengthen society" in order to avoid this fact is futile.

There are three simple laws to guide this, each important because it directly relates to procreation.

[1] Only two people in one marriage contract.
Why? Only two people can produce a child. A woman may fall pregnant today after having sex with twenty men. But only one of those men would be the father of her child.
PS: Polygamous and Polyandrous homes satisfy this requirement as well. Think about it.

[2] Only people of opposite sex in a marriage contract.
Why? Only people of opposite sex can produce a child. No amount of anal, digital or oral sex would ever result in offspring.

[3] Only non-consanguineal people can be in a marriage contract.
Why? Children of parents who are too closely related tend to produce genetically compromised children. It is not in the interests of society to have a significant percentage of its children born with deformities in either body or mind.

So, if you are really concerned as to how the State can decide whether or not couple A or B or C should be issued marriage licenses is by asking these questions. [1] Is the couple composed only of two people? [2] Are they of opposite sex? [3] Are they sufficiently unrelated to each other?

If the answer to all these three questions is "Yes", then the State should issue them a marriage license. And once they have it, they are married. Simple.

What happened before we had a society with enough extra resources to have civil servants 10 minutes away from pretty much anybody, though?

When were "marriage licenses" first handed out by The State?

I am willing to suspect that people of my station and lower have been getting marriage licenses for only a handful of generations.

I know that my ancestors had to deal with travelling ministers and ex post facto marriages were commonplace.

Marriage, as the civil institution as it exists today, doesn't have anywhere near the amount of tradition as Marriage-in-the-eyes-of-God does.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

If two people want to get married, I don't see where I would get the authority to say "Sorry, you can't. You can have a ceremony and you can live together and you can even engage in Congress but you aren't really married."

What we are saying when we say "you can't" is "you can't have children together." And that means we are denying permission to engage in any activity that might join their gametes together (not that our lack of permission has much to do with what they might do in the dark, but it could sure have an effect on what labs are allowed to do in the marketplace).

When a couple is not "really married", they don't really have a license to conceive.

Same sex couples, like siblings, should not have a right to conceive children together. The risk of birth defects is only one of the reasons to deny this right. It is a supportable basis, as opposed to an "insupportable basis" like the couple not being the same race.

I find the above argument to be analagous to that of some of my bride's relatives.

My wife's family is Catholic. She and I were married in a courthouse by (gasp!) a woman judge. She has relatives that think that she and I "aren't really married".

I have no problem with them thinking this, of course. They can think what they want.

I just kind of think of them as... well, I won't say what I think of them as. I'm sure you can guess.

I see the fertility arguments as somewhat analagous to their arguments about whether she and I are "really" married.

They are irrelevant to what is actually the case.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Sterile people still have a right to attempt to conceive. And first of all. their sterility is private anyhow, so it's none of anyone's business, even if there was some way to tell who was sterile and who wasn't, which there isn't. A marriage has a right to conceive, which means they have a right to use whatever technology they want in order to achieve conception. Two people of the same sex shouldn't have the right to conceive, because the genetic engineering required is going to be radically experimental and unsafe and it would be unwise to allow its development, let alone its use.

So make no mistake - a same-sex marriage would really grant conception rights to a same-sex couple. The worst thing about a same-sex marraige is that they are indeed really married, there are no quotation marks around marriage, it is a real marraige, just granted in ignorance.

Tax breaks? Sure. Hospital visitation rights? Youbetcha. Automatic inheritance rights? Absolutely.

Marriage? Marriage is not something you have the ability to grant or take away from any other two people.

I see this as similar to the argument about where the Freedom of, say, Speech comes from. Is it granted by the Constitution or does it predate the Constitution and all the Constitution does is protect it?

I take the latter view. I take a similar view with marriage. It's not something you have the power to grant. All you can do is force people to pay more in taxes or prevent them from visiting each other in the hospital.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Marriage is precisely something granted by society. The very definition of marriage is the recognition by society of a new societal unit. Two (or more) people have the same right to announce that they are married and that everyone else must accept it as they do to announce they have established their own soverign two-person nation which the United States must treat with as an equal.

As well as where it comes from.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

There is no "disagreement". Marriage is what it is, and is not what it is not. And it is not and never has been the sort of contract which you are asserting. In a very real sense, you are only married if other people (society) says that you are.

You have just as much right to declare yourself married as you do to declare your house to be a soverign nation where American laws do not apply. That is, you are free to say whatever you wish, but what matters is what everyone else says.

You can't just go around conjuring up an alternate reality where words mean whatever you wish them to.

Were Mr. and Mrs. Loving "really" married before the Supreme Court said that they were?

Or was it a Schrodinger's Cat situation where they both were and were not married until the box was opened and we saw the Supreme Court's decision?

When two dudes in Canada have a marriage ceremony, are they "really" married? How about if they vacation in the US for a couple of weeks? Do they stop being married?

What if a couple of guys from the US go up to Canada, get married, then come back? Are they "really" married? What about if they move to Canada?

I find it difficult to believe that "really" married is something that can change from country to country... unless, of course, you're just talking about the tax relationship instead of the covenant.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Re: In a very real sense, you are only married if other people (society) says that you are.

Well then the question comes up, what happens as gay relationhsips begin to be recognized by "other people" as de facto marriages even if they are not recognized de jure? We are already approaching this situation: many same sex couples are treated as married by friends, families, their (liberal) churches, and often enough by their employers. As this becomes more and more common what ought the law to do? Change to acommodate reality? Or hide its head from reality much as it did for a generation with the 55mph speed limit which even the police and public figures often disobeyed?

This is irrelevant.

Jon Sandor is exclusively talking about state recognition of a marriage. When there is no state/governmental recognition of gay marriage; an employer is free to grant or deny privileges to gay "married couples" that he gives to married couples. State recognition would force him to give to both same sex and opposite sex married couples whether he wants to or not.

What you have here is a non-sequitur. We already know that any group (two or more) of people can be considered married by any subset of their peers. John, Jake, Rachel, Anne and Paula can all be bisexuals and John and Anne could be cousins while Rachel and Jake are siblings and they could all find out that they have all fallen in love with each other and all five of them want to spend the rest of their lives together.

If they want, they could establish a religion that would allow them all to have a ceremony that would declare them all married to each other. i.e. Any subset of the five could have sex with each other without it being adultery. It is their right. They could have their arrangement recognized as a marriage by their "friends, families, their (liberal) churches, and often enough by their employers."

The issue here is, should the State issue them a marriage license and the privileges that come with a marriage? For example, the right not to be forced to testify against a spouse - John has the right to refuse to testify against Jake, Anne, Rachel and Paula, Jake has the right to refuse to testify against John, Anne, Rachel and Paula, etc.

Gay marriage advocates say yes because marriage is about adult happiness and that people should have a right to State recognition of whatever form their relationship takes. Marriage advocates say no because marriage is primarily about establishing a stable environment for the next generation.

PS: Do you believe Will's marriage to his sister should be recognized by the state of Massachusetts? If not, why not? What if their "friends, families, their (liberal?) churches" already recognize them as a married couple?

Re: In fact, the primary reason why anti-miscegenation laws were instituted was to prevent the birth of children of mixed race; hence why they were called "anti-miscegenation".

Did those laws forbid interracial sex or interracial marriage? It's my understanding they forbade the latter not the former, but I may be wrong. In any event the Old South seemed to have no issue with interracial sex as long as it was slavemaster male with slave female. Innumerable mixed race children were born in this manner.

No one could have sex outside of marriage, even if they were considered the same race. That's why the Lovings had to marry in order to be able to exercise their basic civil right to procreate. Premarital sex used to be unheard of until very recently. That is, it may have happened, but it sure wasn't talked about. There used to be serious punishments too.

As to people having unmarried sex with slaves; if that was considered acceptable, which I seriously doubt, it had a lot more to do with slavery and racism than it did with marriage.

Re: No one could have sex outside of marriage, even if they were considered the same race.

And when as this? I know of no era (certainly not in the USA!) where sex outside of marriage was not common. And bastard children we have always had with us.

fornication and many are still on the books, though after Lawrence, they are of dubious constitutionality. These laws were conspicuous by their rare enforcement but it did serve the purpose of making society's will clear. One of the most important issues for societies in history has been the struggle to prevent the production of mouths to feed with no father to do the feeding and thereby putting the burden on already scarce resources of the maternal grandfather and society as a whole.

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

Lawrence had nothing to do with sexual intercourse, it was only about what it was about, done in the private home so that no one else knows about it. Sex can't be kept private, because it sometimes produces a very public member of the public even if the couple tried to keep it private.

and their is no doubt that if a court follows the reasoning of the case, laws making fornication a crime would be struck down as well.

Gamecock: summa cum laude, phi beta kappa, juris doctor, veteran of hundreds of criminal and civil trials and scores of appellate case involving constitutional law. I'm a helluva golfer too!

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

Hey, you make-a me rememba I gotta summa too - math. My lone gold star. Hellava mandolin player though... well not really, not compared to Chris Thile.
John E.

I don't feel like it!!!!!!!!!!!

hahahha

did I mention that Mother said I was good looking to boot

navel-gazing moment over

more later
must go polish my key.......

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

John E.

I think you deserve all the respect you get; and some you don't.
John E.

There is no doubt that the logic and reasoning of Lawrence would not apply to something as public as sexual intercourse. It is impossible to have private sexual intercourse, because there is always a chance that a pregnancy will result nine months later. Even the ability to abort a pregnancy does not negate the chance that a child will be born. Children are public, they don't just exist in the privacy of a person's bedroom.

Yes, "legally", thanks gc. And they really do influence people's behavior. If the state says it's legal, couples will be influenced to go ahead and do it even if they don't really want to, whereas if they remember that they are supposed to be married first, they can use that as support.

are almost certainly the most ignored laws on the books with the possible exception of the 55 mph speed limit. About the only time they had any teeth is when a young women of good family ended up in a family way and they served as a back-up for the shotgun in hauling the libidinous beau to the altar with her. Indeed, before the liberalization of divorce not just fornication but husbandly adultery was often winked at, with married men of substnace often enough having a mistress on the side as an open secret, while less prosperous genetlmen kept the bawdy houses (which were generally legal businesses, albeit strictly regulated) in silk stockings and velvet draperies.

Pre-marital sex used to be uncommon. If you are over fifty, your parents probably did not have premarital sex. And if people did, they were very secretive about it, because it was illegal and wrong.

My grandmother, for example, was married at 15. My grandfather was 19 when he married her.

This is a couple within living memory. If we go back further, newlyweds will average younger and younger.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Re: Pre-marital sex used to be uncommon.

Not if you look at the statistics for births and weddings and the timing thereof. And given that pregnancy is a fairly uncommon result of sex, I think you'd need to multiply a lot of the precipitous post-wedding births by a factor of ten. Also, the stats for houses of prostitution are truly eye-opening such that even a staid city like Boston had one prostitute for every thirty or forty adult males at some eras, and since all those ladies of the evening did not starve to death, someone was keeping them fat and happy.

I think this is true for my mother and less so for my father. They have said that they recognized a double standard regarding sex prior to marriage. I am not so sure whether their parent's generation accepted a double standard as they seemed to have been stricter. This is a view into white southern small city middle class.

My mother has never allowed any of the children - or even guests of any kind, including her own age - to sleep in the same bedroom at her house with their non-married partner.
John E.

a randy lot from colonial times to the present. Even "Puritanical" New England had unspoken rules that sanctioned marriage well into a pregnancy to avoid the bastard stigma. On the frontier, men took their comfort where they found it and extramarital and interracial unions were common, both with and without benefit of clergy or permanence. Brothels followed the frontier and the military as surely as did the sutlers and liquour dealers throught our history. So lets not be idealistic or hypocritical about it.

One need only look at the features and skin tones of the African-American population today to accept the fact of White-Black interracial sex. The Southern white male's propensity to take his pleasure in the slave quarters, and later the tenant shacks, is well documented, often bitterly, in the literature of the day. The most accessible is Mary Chestnut's, the wife of a SC Senator, diary in which she bitingly criticizes the men for doing it and the women for looking the other way. Most slave states had elaborate legal codes concerning treatment of slaves. I've never delved into them enough to know to what degree they addressed sexual conduct, but even in the time of slavery sex with slaves was officially disapproved. The draconian anti-miscegenation laws are more a product of the Jim Crow era but are themselves an expression of Southern womens' bitter disapproval of the practice. Only Louisiana had an openly mixed race society going back into its French origins. Throughout the South there was an elaborate vocabulary to describe the kind and degree of mixed race heritage: mulatto was half Black, half White technically but had universal usage; creole was Black and French; and it went on to quadroons and octoons for quarters and eighths and beyond. Both Blacks and Whites used the term "high yellow" to describe light-skinned Blacks and the Blacks had an elaborate subculture of "passing" in White society by having light skin.

What was universal however, was official societal disapproval of the practice of extramarital sex. Premarital and other extramarital sex has never until recent times been approved and in most states was offically illegal. The laws may have been enforced only in the breach, but they were the law, and in many states they remain on the books. Even in today's no fault divorce environment, one can if angry and wealthy enough, pursue a divorce for cause and adultery is almost universally cause.
In Vino Veritas

But I did want to tell you that your legal analyses, and esp one upthread you composed today, are simply a pleasure to read. I'm certain that I really should have a restraining order served on you, but I just cant bring myself to do it! I would say that I would love to hire you to write breifs for me, but there may be one of the secrets we learn in the 3-yr boot camp...nah, I'll pay the going rate in Fairbanks or Valdosta, whichever is less!

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

to do one or the other before much longer. And thank you for the kind words. Better half retires next Oct., and I'm pretty sure this is my last winter in the Frozen North unless Sarah Palin has something really, really interesting for me. I give good brief, but came to not like it much, especially post hearing. Just give me five minutes to assemble my thoughts then an oral close and call it DONE. That's the only downside to being retired; I really miss somebody turning to me and saying, "You may inquire."

In Vino Veritas

Re: Same sex marriage (practiced nowhere on Earth past or present) completely decouples children from the institution of marriage

This is a very gross exaggeration. Given the relatively small number of homosexuals, and the likelihood that only some fraction of them would enter into a same-sex marriage, children would be only marginally more decoupled from marriages than they already are by the existence of childless (by accident or design) heterosxual couples. Children would remain a part of the vast majority of marriages so the "decoupling" effect you cite would be quite minor, and thing but "completely".

It's a definitional issue. What is marriage for?

Marriage as an institution, worldwide, is exclusively reserved for heterosexual couples because heterosexual sex is the only way a new human being is conceived and brought into this world. Marriage is about procreation and not some great conspiracy to persecute gay people.

The instant we allow just any two people to get married, then society has made it clear that children have absolutely nothing to do with the institution of marriage and has now redefined marriage to be exclusively about the wishes and happiness of adults.

And in that case, a man/woman can marry his/her (adult) brother, sister, mother, father, son or daughter so long as it makes him/her happy. What right have you to tell them that they can't get married?

So the number of gay people who do decide to get married or the number of married heterosexuals who are childless by disability or design does not matter an iota. What you're bringing up here is a red herring. No one said that married heterosexual couples would no longer have children.

PS: If you're going to reply ... please don't even think about bringing up the dumb and very inapt analogy gay marriage advocates try to bring up likening interracial marriage and homosexual marriage. That's like comparing apples to airplanes.

PPS: Neither is it a valid counter for you to assume that marriage being about procreation somehow obligates the wider society to actually compel procreation by every single married couple.

Martin, the thing is, they are working on ways for same-sex couples to have children together. They have already done it in mice, creating the mouse Kaguya by combining one mouse's egg with another mouse's genetically modified egg. One researcher in New Jersey is working with stem cells and expects a child to be born to a same-sex couple within three to five years.

So, if we allow them to do it, it will no longer be true that heterosexual sex is the only way to make babies. If we allow them to do that, and we currently DO allow them to do that then it totally seperates marriage from procreation to not let same-sex couples marry. It makes zero sense to forbid a couple to marry but allow them to conceive, but of course the way to reconcile this is to forbid same-sex conception. That is what used to be conveyed by forbidding marriage - that we were forbidding their conception.

We need to enact an egg and sperm law, as the President's Council on Bioethics recommended in 2004, so that conception will clearly be a right that people only have with someone of the other sex. Once we do this, your post above will make sense, and we will be able to show why marriage must be reserved for couples that have a right to conceive children together (ie, not siblings), and more importantly, we will have prevented genetic engineering from creeping in and creating a brave new world.

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

When the arguments are made for gay civil unions I hope to hear them from you. Your honest clear-headed approach makes me hopeful that you will be able to answer what questions may arise in my mind concerning it. And consider me a well-wisher. May we all meet with whatever measure of happiness our particular live may afford us.
John E.

"This need for validation smacks more of insecurity than alleged victimization."

Amen to that. On another thread, I argued essentially the same thing, though not in the same words. The issue is not marriage, it is approval and affirmation. Granting the title 'marriage' will massage that part that craves absolute approval and acceptance from society.

As long as the title is withheld, Gays will correctly perceive that society sees something wrong with them or their lifestyles.

The problem is that even if the right to 'marry' is won, much of society will still see something wrong with them and their lifestyle and then the fight will move forward to another arena, such as what parents can teach their kids.

If socirty says you can be gay and be married and I teach my kids that it is not, there will still be conflict.

I would be interested in getting your take on my comment upthread on my perspective of homosexuality. I would value your insight very much.

"Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep" - Defoe

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

The right only has to SHOW UP for the press to play us as having a bad image.
--
It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -- Calvin Coolidge

I also agree. The moment someone puts gay marriage above border security (on a scale so vast even the constitution can be affected) is the moment someone has gone absolutely insane and should retire immediately. Especially if that group won two elections and are comfortable making people extremely uncomfortable with their privacy in the name of national security.

I believe that aside from becoming fiscal conservatives again a big way for Republicans to survive 2008 would involve trading gay marriage for securing the Mexican border.

I'll tell you what's insane with respect to security: opposing the ability of the government to listen in on international phone calls to terrorists.
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It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -- Calvin Coolidge

I never said I did. It's just that there's always the vast chance the suspicion of being a terrorist winds up being unfounded (as well as the undeniable possibility that these procedures can be misused); whereas there's nobody who should be legally jumping over the American/Mexican border without authorization and therefore no way this wall could be used incorrectly. I think you should always take the step that can't malfunction before you take the step that can.

It's just that there's always the vast chance the suspicion of being a terrorist winds up being unfounded (as well as the undeniable possibility that these procedures can be misused)

I'll worry about that when I'm over on vacation in the hills of Afghanistan hanging with a bunch of jihadists and innocently running around with a RPG and AK47. It's not something I do very often, but yes, in that case, I could see how someone could mistakenly be rounded up and "falsely" accused of being a terrorist.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

Hey, terrorists are pretty good at hiding. It's always possible one can become a close friend of someone you don't know is a terrorist (or is about to become one) and maybe even be tricked into helping him. I think that happened on a pretty big scale during the Afghan Mujahideen.

However, we're getting off topic. My point was that domestic surveillance without a warrant has the potential to go backfire, whereas a giant wall with a few guarded doors doesn't; and it's a tad hyprocritical to divert attention from a foolproof plan, enforce a non-foolproof plan that has the same effect as the foolproof-one, claim you're good at enforcing that effect, and spend time talking about something relatively inconsequential like gay marriage.

it is essential that we get it built. It does not depend on the rare Chief Executive that has the guts to enforce immigration laws and go against the long tradition of not minding the border. I think only TR and IKE have ever taken strong action in this regard.

But a fence only deals with those that are not inside the US, and so is irrelevant to the domestic surveillance issue.

War is war. War is being waged against us by agents within the US. Nineteen that had lived among us for many months and some for up to 2.5 years attacked us on 9/11. Ashcroft rounded up 700 on expired visas in the weeks after 9/11. I am convinced that is the main reason there were no follow ups.

NONE OF THE ABOVE AGENST WOULD HAVE BEEN STOPPED BY A FENCE. THEY WERE ALL HERE LEGALLY. The 9/11 Commission report shows that if the present program was in place, we probably would have prevented 9/11.

It would be cause for Impeachment if Bush were not doing this. Clinton did MORE in the 90s with Echelon, in terms of a wide sweep of actual bugs that recorded every call. And let me assure you, we are doing more than the NYT has discovered.

And thank God we are.

None of what they gather can be used for criminal prosecution, and NOT ONE PERSON IN % YEARS has been shown to have suffered any damage or loss due to this program.

But thousands have been saved. We have rounded up many cells of plotters in Detroit, Michigan, Oregon and elsewhere.

You may even be alive today solely due to this program.

Now get on your knees and thank God for George W Bush. And say it loud. He may be listening!

www.race42008.com
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
http://gamecock.townhall.com

My point was that domestic surveillance without a warrant has the potential to go backfire, whereas a giant wall with a few guarded doors doesn't; and it's a tad hyprocritical to divert attention from a foolproof plan, enforce a non-foolproof plan that has the same effect as the foolproof-one, claim you're good at enforcing that effect, and spend time talking about something relatively inconsequential like gay marriage.

How is a fence going to gather intelligence on terrorist operations? How are monitoring the international communications of terrorists going to keep people from sneaking into this country under the cover of darkness? I'm not sure on what planet these two things would "have the same effect," and could even be compared, but it sure isn't this one.

As for the wall, passing and signing into law a bill that provides 700 miles of fencing on the border sure is a strange way to "divert attention" from the plan. As others have pointed out, you'd have to be a fool to think the Democrats will ever support a wall. They want that border open as it is a source of future voters for them. The GWOT doesn't concern them, because hey, that's just Bush's so-called war anyway. And, as one lefty commentator said, you have a better chance of falling off a ladder than dying in a terrorist attack.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

The 700 miles was a nice start, but there's still enough of a hole to be a problem. (By the way, it'd prevent terrorism by stopping the cork of undocumented people from an area controlled by drug-traffickers and gangsters; I am actually quite shocked nobody with a dirty bomb and some other stuff he got south of the border hasn't wandered in with the other illegal aliens and blown himself up on the national mall.

I never said I'm against wiretaps (although if you can get a warrant 48 hours after the deed is done, you really ought to get that warrant), just the order the Administration was doing it in. I also never said I think the Democrats would do a better job. Sadly, both parties seem to have gone nuts.

If the writers of RedState ran for Congress and maybe President, though, the Republican party would certainly get my vote and this planet would be a far better place.

The "same effect" was the "prevention of terrorism" in general. In that case, the "taking credit for that effect" was the very broad "TOUGH ON NATIONAL SECURITY!" banner that gave the Republicans such vast victories in '02 and '04. The political strategists crammed all that together, not me; I was only attacking the political strategy when I said that.

That is all that was on the menu... and it couldn't have even got through the Senate at all (with stiff Democrat opposition) if it wasn't so close to an election. Hopefully we can finish the job after we get that 700 miles built. Apparently that is going to take years.

As for the wiretapping thing, that has been beat to death, but I have no problem at all with the program. Both things are necessary to the security of the United States... and just because security is the #1 issue, that doesn't mean there isn't time to also deal with other things. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

I also support the wiretapping itself, just the way it's been executed makes me very uncomfortable (I still don't see why retroactive warrants can't be used).

Are you sure we can walk and chew gum at the same time? From my perspective, at least, the moment gay marriage amendments go on the table the MSM and the Congress seem to drop what they're doing and rush to start yelling about it. (Except Lou Dobbs.) Even if we could maintain these two heavy things at once, it's not exactly being done in the right order; we're putting way too much thought into savoring the taste of our chewing gum than we are avoiding the broken glass on the sidewalk. I don't see why authorizing a fence a full five years after 9/11 while trying a gay marriage amendment twice makes sense when you're "tough on terror", especially when you're comfortable walking into the political and moral minefield of warrantless wiretapping.

By the way, I love security. In fact, I think that the public-monitoring 365-degree-helmet-cam speech-isolation system in London and Switzerland's mandatory-bomb-shelter road-auto-destruct system is pretty nice... largely because I know it's there and it's far harder to abuse. (Also, it's being done on public property where anyone with something embarassing/blackmailable (by whatever corrupt executive branch will come into power in the future, and there will certainly be one) to say should know better anyhow.

I have a feeling I'd consider my ideal defense system pretty Orwellian (and not just by leftist standards) if it also wasn't entirely out in the open. Imagine Big Brother, but open-source (I believe the imagination of the observant American public can find fault in a security design much faster than a terrorist, especially if that terrorist is dealing with tons of other pressures) and clearly labelled. Oh, and it runs on BSD.

Or do you believe Will should be able to marry his sister?

A stable marriage between gays is better than closeted gays trying to lead double lives, don't you think?

There's no need for anybody to remain "closeted" or to "try to lead double lives" just because they can't get government recognition of their relationship.

The states can choose to regulate marriage any which way, and I ask, if I can drive around in the car of my choice, talking on a cell phone while doing so (which is patently dangerous) saying what I please, WHY SHOULDN'T I MARRY WHO I PLEASE?

I'm not really sure what one has to do with the other. You can't drive anywhere without a license. You have to meet whatever requirements the state sets up to get one. You can't drive any car of your choice. It has to be within certain guidelines and it has to be registered. In some states you can't drive around while talking on a cell phone. Do we only need SSM in the states that don't have the cell phone while driving prohibitions?
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

"There's no need for anybody to remain "closeted" or to "try to lead double lives"......

Hmmm, after reading some of the "judgemental" comments here, I can better understand why someone might want to stay in the closet just a little while longer.

People can maintain any kind of relationship they want. We don't throw anybody in jail for being in a homosexual relationship. Anybody can choose to lead a double life for any number of reasons, but it has nothing to do with SSM.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

John E.

So is it your argument that if it were only ONE gay couple in all of America that wanted to get married it would be okay to deny them the "right" to marry?

With all due respect, I think you misunderstand the concept of civil rights. For one, it is independent of numbers.

So even if it were only ONE incestuous couple that was demanding their marriage be recognized by the state as a civil right, you have to take them just as seriously as you would if there were one thousand of them.

William Corman Phillips wants to marry his sister, who wants to marry him as well. You are a supporter of gay marriage. Can you explain to him why you believe he should not be issued a marriage license like Jack and Jake from across the street?

Of course you're allowed to judge. As I've said earlier, I have people in my life who have reached the conclusion that I am not really married to my wife.

I think that those people are wrong. They think that they are right. I don't think that any minds will be changed.

Thankfully, my lessened tax burden is not dependent upon whether they think I'm really married. On top of that, if pressed, I'm pretty sure that they would argue that, yes, we're not *REALLY* married but we should still be able to visit each other in the hospital even if our mother-in-laws hated their respective child-in-law and wanted to prevent the visit.

My argument is not that we have the competence to judge whether two people who claim to be married really are married. I don't know. My argument is that you don't have the competence to say that two people who claim to be married really are not.

If two guys in Canada say that they're married, what basis will you use to say that they really aren't? That they aren't really married according to our society? They wouldn't be really married if they moved here? Would you rely on Leviticus and/or Romans?

If they are really married in Canada, I would argue that they are really married even if they move to the US and we say that they can't inherit the other's stuff automatically when one dies.

If they aren't really married, it doesn't matter if they're in the US, in Canada, or in Gaymarriageistan where everyone has to be "married" to someone of the same sex or they will have a wall toppled on them.

The big issue with the gay marriage debate involves a blurring of the two definitions of marriage: The Covenant and the tax relationship. People argue that gays should be denied the tax relationship because there is no way that they have access to The Covenant.

I argue that they do not know that... and even if they happen to be right, that's not sufficient grounds to deny legal protections to a committed relationship.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

You left some questions which I will be glad to answer, but I want to use this thread to get a clarification or your position. And regarding the "big issue" comment I do not believe that I am making that argument. Some may make but I believe nearly all TM supporters would make the societal "purpose? children" argument.

Your answer still does not permit me to comprehend the aspect or your position that I attempted to ask you about. You might reread it... Or perhaps I should break it down into more narrow sub-questions.

You have said: "Since I don't feel that I'd have the right to say "You guys aren't really married", I wonder where you get the right to say it."

You also gave a definition. If someone has a definition even less restrictive than yours by which they claim to be married, do you have a right to say "You guys aren't really married?"

John E.

Mine pretty much just asks for ostenable commitment between two consenting adults. I suppose a less restrictive definition would be "we're just getting married for the night" (what a way to get around local prostitution laws!) or asking if two 9 year-olds "playing house" who want to pretend to get married and have a pretend ceremony are "really married".

I would just do my best to explain to people who argue the former that marriage is a lifetime kinda commitment. Two people, 'til death do you part, and so on and so on. If someone wanted to argue that, hey, my first wife... we were kids! We didn't know any better! So we got divorced! My second wife, well, I was really upset at my first wife and married my second wife to get back at her. I figured out that that was a mistake about eight months in. I didn't date for a while and then found my third wife and we had a really healthy relationship for about 2 years (and so on and so forth), well, I would argue that this person really and truly does not understand the purpose of marriage. I'd not argue that he should be legally prohibited from marrying (or divorcing), but I would seriously suggest counseling. "Are you sure you wouldn't prefer common law?"

As for the kids... well, I think that you should have to be over 18 to get married. Yes, there is the occasional exceptional person who is in love at age 16 and does know that she wants to spend the rest of her life with that guy and people in living memory have gotten married at much, much younger (My grandmother, whom I already mentioned, married at 15). I would think that parental permission or emancipation would be required to marry at that age today.

But, of course, now *I* am blurring the two definitions of married. Instead of talking about whether (for lack of a better word) God would see them as married, I'm going back and talking about legal recognition.

In any case, I think that my legal definition (compososed of *two* *consenting* *adults*) is probably the loosest workable definition. Polygamy would create too many problems on the legal level. If you want to be "really" married to more than one consenting adult, I don't see how we could stop someone from doing that, any more than we could stop someone from having a mistress. We don't have to split up social security checks, however and mail them to separate addresses. That's just silly.

If the people in question want to argue that they "really" are all married, my response would be similar to yours on the gay marriage thing, I suppose. "Sure you're really married. Mazel Tov! You're not getting extra social security checks because of this."

All that to say, I may not have the right to say whether two (or three or more) people are "really" married to each other but I am still entitled to my opinion. If people are married and they communicate that they are married because of something approaching "love", well, that's great. If they communicate "we're trying to game the system", that's very bad and it cheapens the covenant... but not as much as the setting up of the gameable system did in the first place.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Ok, I read your response three times. I asked a rather straightforward question and I still don't know the answer. At one point you make it sound like you would make a definition that is determinative (like we do, just a different one) and at another that the other individual's judgment is determinative regardless of your definition.

Let me try a multiple choice question: Why can't I understand your answer to my question?
a) John is not smart enough to understand Birdmojo.
b) Birdmojo is not capable of explaining his well considered position.
c) Birdmojo is intentionally obfuscating.
d) Birdmojo's thoughts are happily muddy and inconsistent.
e) Birdmojo is thinking out loud trying to decide what he actually believes.
f) John refuses to understand.
g) John's question is stupid
John E.

I must not have understood your question.

Could you rephrase it so someone as thick as I am could understand it? Thanks.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

You have said: "Since I don't feel that I'd have the right to say "You guys aren't really married", I wonder where you get the right to say it."

In http://www.redstate.com/blogs/martinaknight/2006/nov/23/i_am_fighting_fo...
you used this as an argument against applying the traditional definition of marriage - man and wife - as a limiting factor for granting all the things that go along with the institution of marriage - like as you say above "extra social security checks".

You have also supplied your own definition which does not involve man and wife. And have also said "If the people in question [ those who don't conform to your definition] want to argue that they "really" are all married, my response would be similar to yours on the gay marriage thing, I suppose. "Sure you're really married. Mazel Tov! You're not getting extra social security checks because of this.""

In which case you advocate treating them as if they are not married in just the same way as we are, the only difference being the definition. Don't you see Birdmojo? If you really believe this latter point, then your first argument really is irrelevant. Since our whole discussion revolves around society's grant of legal recognition of marriage - like the "extra SS checks" - our point of disagreement is over the proper definition of marriage, not some principle that prevents us from tying a marriage license to a definition.

If however you really believe the former point - no right to say "you aren't really married" - applies to the discussion of legal recognition and all that entails, then you have contradicted yourself by the latter point in which you deny them "extra SS checks" for failing to meet your definition. In that case, anybody by any definition of their own who claims to be married, by virtue of our having no right to say otherwise, must be granted legal recognition.

I nearly resigned before this post. I have laid it out as clearly and explicitly as I know how to do Birdmojo. If you hope to make your thoughts comprehensible to me, you are going to have to clearly choose either the latter or the former.
John E.

John E, your patience in playing this never-ending game with birdmojo is heartwrenching to me. I can't stand seeing so much energy expended on this debate whilst super-important issues go ignored. There is another way: Tell birdmojo that same-sex conception should be prohibited, tell him that only a man and a woman should have a right to have children together.

If he protests that it has nothing to do with marriage, just tell him again that same-sex couples should not have the right to conceive children together, and make him deal with that issue. Confront him with this: If he wants to conceive a child, he will have to choose a female to do it with, not a male. And remind him that he has the same right as anyone to do so. Who cares what it has to do with marriage at this point? They think it might happen in three to five years, so it has to be stopped ASAP. As long as it is legal and being developed, what difference does it makes if it has something to do with marriage, we should just stop it. So please don't let him waste our time.

Just stick to the concrete: same-sex couples should not have a right to conceive children together. And then we can point out that only couples with a right to conceive children together can get married, as this thread points out. Not all both-sex couples can marry - only those that have a right to conceive together. Couples that do not have a right to conceive children together do not have equal rights to couples that do. Allowing couples that are prohibited from conceiving to marry would utterly change marriage and put all our conceptin rights in jeopardy. And not allowing marriage to couples that we allow to conceive together also utterly changes marriage, it "divorces" marriage from procreation much more than not punishing out-of-wedlock conception does.

Looks like I assumed wrong that birdmojo was a gay man, sorry.

and good at it. You all join the long list of people he/she/it has driven to distraction.

In Vino Veritas

Nope, sorry. Happily (and monogamously) married to a woman who drives me to distraction.

She'll get a kick out of this, though.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

John, I tried to get off this merry-go-round many posts ago. And am very close to doing so now as we complete another circle. Birdmojo will leave no doubt about who he is. By posting here, it appears you are willing to take my place - I will let you have it gladly. :)

Regarding your issue. I already told you the manner in which I am willing to support it. Conducting genetic engineering experiments with human beings as the test product is immoral, period. To me, that is not a rights issue or a gay issue or a marriage issue. Its just wrong on its face. And it needs legislation which bans it.

You are certainly right about me needing to find more productive ways to spend my time!
John E.

I don't care about birdmojo, I am hoping to show gay marriage opponents a new argument they can use so that we can actually finish this argument once and for all. You say you agree with the goal of prohibiting genetic engineering to produce people. Well, that means you agree that only both-sex couples should be allowed to conceive together. That means you agree that same-sex couples shouldn't have the right to conceive together. Why not say that?!?!!?! Why chase these fluttering birdmojos around, when you can simply say "people should only have a right to conceive with someone of the other sex?"

I'm telling you, it would utterly change the marriage debate, and in winning it, restrore meaning to marriage.

So I'll be happy to deal with birdmojo for a while, but please take the lesson of Kaguya with you: same-sex conception would be completely unethical and should not be allowed. Period, end of marriage debate.

John, I believe I already told you, on your two diaries about this subject, why I disagree with using the issue as you are trying to do. Your come back over there did not change my mind. If I have the facts wrong and there will be no impact of this kind of experimentation on human lives then it is more difficult for me to be against it. If you want to debate me more on this subject, pick up the thread on your diary. I don't want to do it here.

John E.

but i see you over here in this long debate with birdmojo about the rights of same-sex couples and marriage, and yet you are ignoring the major right that should not be given to same-sex couples and the sine non qua right of marriage. Did you read that researchers think it might be just three to five years away, and that means that human experiments are planned. They think they have the right to do this, and we shouldn't let them, but we are, because we are too afraid to raise this issue. A person, gay or straight, should not have the right to conceive except by combining their gamete with a gamete of the other sex. That is the only way that it is safe and equal for everyone.

John, if I have made any claim that causes you believe that my motivation has anything to do with blocking or denying rights to people, I invite you to take it up with me here. As to the rest, please refer to my previous post.
John E.

You did say here that you agree there should be a federal law prohibiting same-sex conception (or actually, everything except egg-and-sperm conception). There can be no such ban if we allow people to claim a right to conceive children with someone of their same sex, and through out history the right to conceive together been the primary right granted by marriage. The right to conceive children together is at issue here, as it was during every other marriage debate people have ever had. No person, gay or straight, should have a right to conceive with someone of their same sex, as surely as no person should have a right to conceive with their sibling. We all should have a right to conceive children with someone of the other sex.

And your initial position that you stated on my post was your initial position, before I had had a chance to have this discussion with you. Surely this is not the first time someone has tried to convince you to reconsider your position on something? I am not sure you realize how damaging it is seperate the marriage rights question from the conception rights question. We should be working harder to find ways to reconnect marriage and conception, not purposefully keeping the issues apart. Arguing against same-sex marriage by pointing out that same-sex conception is unethical and should not be a right is a great way to reconnect marriage and childbearing in people's minds, as well as a great way to stop genetic engineering (which won't be stopped if we allow it for same-sex couples), and a great way to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman. When people don't use this argument, they further the seperation of marriage from procreation, they allow same-sex conception to be researched and experiments to take place, and virtually guarantee that marriage will eventually be granted to same-sex couples if scientists are successful in producing a child for a same-sex couple.

John E.

I'll use emphasis this time. "Sure you're really married. Mazel Tov! You're not getting *EXTRA* social security checks because of this."

If a guy is married to two women, say, then passes and he qualified for social security to be given to his wives, they don't get two times as many checks because he was married to two women. He gets the same number of checks as if he were married to one.

I argue that, say, homosexuals in committed relationships that have gotten "married" should also be eligible for the social security checks from a deceased partner who qualifies.

(Now, if you really want to get into it, I think that social security is an awful, awful program and it should be abandoned, abandoned, abandoned. But that's not going to happen and that probably deserves a diary on its own.)

Here we get to the meat of the issue. "Our point of disagreement is over the proper definition of marriage."

Great. I agree that that is the main font of disagreement.

I argue that marriage is a lifetime (hopefully) committed relationship between two people. All of those words are pretty much equally important. Lifetime. Committed. Two. People.

That's my definition for "marriage in the eyes of (for lack of a better word) God". If you would like to argue that marriage in the eyes of God is actually something else, great. If you want to argue that it's (a lot) more narrow than my definition, you have a lot of religious texts and even more human traditions that agree with you. But, and here's where you can pull out your hair, I don't necessarily accept the authority of the religious texts and I certainly don't automatically accept the authority of human tradition.

I think we've even hammered out that if two guys get married in a church, there is a sense in which that they are "really" married. Haven't we? Am I making a huge leap with this assumption?

If not, it seems to me that the issue is now one of hammering out how one's government ought to respond to the actual marriage that exists. Saying that the two guys aren't "really" married seems patently false in the face of the evidence... at least the evidence that I have seen from the long-term life partnerships that I've been lucky enough to witness.

I look forward to your next post explaining how I haven't touched on a single issue you've raised nor answered a single question you've asked.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

"If you hope to make your thoughts comprehensible to me, you are going to have to clearly choose either the latter or the former."

Please refer to my former post for the context of that statement. We might be getting somewhere as it seems you are now admitting that the latter (the defintion) is what our dialogue should be about. Please confirm that the former is irrelevant to our discussion.

John E.

If "married in the eyes of God" is irrelevant to our discussion and all we are discussing is whether society has the power to deny benefits to homosexual couples, well... of course society has the power to do that.

If we're arguing over whether society ought to do that (or, as I hold, ought not to), the former is extremely relevant. The former is what makes society ought not to, say, deny hospital visitation rights.

As a matter of fact, I hold that making the former irrelevant is the kind of thinking that will lead to marriage becoming worthless.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

birdmojo, shut up about all that stuff, who cares. People should only have the right to conceive children with someone of the other sex. A man and a woman should have different rights than a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. Same-sex couples should be denied a right to conceive children together, like siblings are. The state, on behalf of future people, should jail or imprison everyone that attempts to conceive children in any manner other than combining a man and a woman's gametes.

Huge discrepancy in rights, do you agree? Or do you you feel that same-sex couples should have conception rights?

Remember that argument in Life of Brian?

About the guy who wants to have babies and they attempted to come to the compromise that he had the RIGHT to have babies... if not, you know, actually have them.

Is this one of those things where we worry and gnaw at the possibility that a scientist somewhere might mix two sperm together and make a baby who is the son/daughter of two daddies?

Perhaps implant the egg in the man's tummy much like in that movie Junior?

Caesarian birth, of course.

And then! And then! Homosexuals will be able to have children too! At which point, we won't be able to deny them marriage anymore?

Is that the issue?

To answer the question you asked in your post, I don't feel that men have any particular right to have an egg implanted in their belly that was engineered from the semen of two different guys, no.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

They're really working on it, birdmojo. Not the pregnancy part (yet), but the conception part, by using genetically engineered gametes derived from stem cells. And there are lots of people who feel that two people of the same sex not only should have the right to conceive chldren together, but that we have an obligation to make it safe and affordable. They oppose any restriction on their right to attempt same-sex conception. But you do not, which is good, bceause it is really unethical.

So, birdmojo, you acknowledge that people should only have a right to conceive with someone of the other sex? Same-sex couples should not have a right that bothsex couples should have? Do you see how not having conception rights conflicts with marriage?

Would you support my proposed federal compromise, where same-sex couples give up conception rights and the word marriage, in exchange for getting federal recognition of civil unions, which would be defined as having all the other rights of marriage in civil unions? It could be done in one day in Congress, and not need any amendments.

It pains me to feel like I have to actually say this... but I don't see where in the Constitution the Federal Government gets the jurisdiction to legislate against same-sex reproduction.

General Welfare, maybe?
Interstate Commerce?

But, sure. We live in a country where Wickard.v.Filburn was decided and everyone agrees that it was a great little piece of legislation.

Let's give the Federal Government jurisdiction over this too. Why not? We can publically pass a law that says that only men and women can conceive children.

In exchange, homosexuals get civil unions but they don't get to call it marriage. Well, they can call it marriage but the government won't.

I'll even go one further: the chicken dance will only be allowed to be performed at heterosexual weddings. In exchange, YMCA will no longer be performed at heterosexual weddings but only at homosexual civil union life partnership ceremonies. (To be perfectly honest, they have more of a claim to it than we do anyway.)

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Let marriage be defined by "the States, or the People", the way the Constitution says most things should be decided.

The whole thing is Lincoln's fault. If he'd only let States secede, we'd not have these problems. Of course, we'd have a completely different set of even worse problems, and there would be no "we", and the not-we would be speaking German on the East Coast and Japanese out West, but hey.

Not a good assumption. If it weren't for Wilson, WWI would have worked itself out on its own and it would have reached resolution rather than just being put on hold for 25 poisonous years.

But, really, isn't it the fault of the founding fathers for not dealing with the slavery issue when they had the chance?

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Yeah, Congress can pass the egg and sperm law and it would be constitutional for those reasons. I never heard anyone arguing against the proposed ban on cloning on Federalism grounds, so it is curious that it gets brought up all the time regarding something even more risky and destablizing to society. We cannot let one state legalize genetic engineering

Allow me to say that I argue against a whole lot of things on Federalism grounds.

I argue against a lot of things on moral grounds as well... I almost always feel the need to point out that just because I don't think that something should be illegal on a Federal level that everyone should be doing it on a Tuesday afternoon.

I just think that most of these things should be handled on a county level. If you don't like the laws of your particular county, vote with your feet and move to the next one.

Giving the Feds the power to say to all of the counties anything more than "Don't limit the right of The People to keep and bear arms" results in all kinds of wacky stuff that actively harms communities as a whole.

But I say that as a nutzo Libertarian.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

It isn't that we'd have to allow gay marriage if they start having children, but that we'd open the door to a brave new world of genetic engineering and put kids at grave risk of new genetic disorders that might be passed on to their children. Certainly we should allow gay marriage if we allow same-sex conception, even if it hasn't been done successfully yet.

At same-sex conception. You would agree that the "parents" should be allowed to be married at that point?

See, I just think that two people who love each other and want to commit to each other until one or the other is dead is where the bar should be set.

I don't know if human cloning is a higher bar or a lower bar than that one.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

I mean, assuming it is allowed. Even if they don't succeed, if they just are allowed to attempt it, they should be married before they do, just like a man and a woman should be married before they attempt it, whether or not they succeed. And since same-sex couples are currently allowed to attempt it, I think same-sex marriage should be legal also. I think it sends a terrible message to allow people to conceive but not let them marry, it is really backwards.

But if a child were produced illegally, in spite of the ban (say, in some Island of Dr Moreau lab) then they shouldn't be allowed to marry merely because they are both parents of a child. They would be like siblings who had a child together. Marriage grants rights going forward to attempt to conceive, it really isn't about existing children at all.

But, for what it's worth, if I did, I'd probably reach the same conclusion.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Ok, then please admit that the latter is irrelevant to our discussion, because no matter what definition somebody uses, and no matter that society has the power to decline to recognize it, you say society has no RIGHT to decline to recognize it.

John E.

Perhaps if you could answer that question for me, I'd understand why you think that it does.

Because, as it seems to me, if two guys go to Canada and get married in the Eyes of God and This Congregation and they come down to the US to do some antiquing, maybe a little hiking, perhaps some skiing... there is a very real sense in which they are married. Even if the US does not recognize it.

So if society ups and says "Sorry, Charlie. You guys aren't married.", I'm just wondering where they get the right to say that.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

You forget BM, on this thread I am trying to make sure I understand your position before I discuss it with you.

You can go back and trace the conversation beginning at
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/martinaknight/2006/nov/23/i_am_fighting_fo...

"I don't argue that two guys have the "right" to get married... I don't feel that I'd have the right to say "You guys aren't really married"..."

Then you go on to argue that you have the right definition and we don't. Then I say, what is the use of arguing about definitions when you believe as a matter of principle that society has no right to apply any definition. Then you repeat both your arguments together. Then I repeat myself and try to bow out. Then you repeat yourself and ask me to continue. And so we continue to circle around back to the same point which I have now laid out very clearly in the present context:

Ok, then please admit that the latter is irrelevant to our discussion, because no matter what definition somebody uses, and no matter that society has the power to decline to recognize it, you say society has no RIGHT to decline to recognize it.

You must realize and accept that implication of your claim before little old me will even begin to offer you an answer as to why I think you are looking at it the wrong way. Alternatively, if you mean to be indicating that you think your former claim might be insubstantial, then please say so and by all means let us examine it together with an open mind.

And as long as you maintain that former position, surely you can see why I think all these other tendentious discussions about definitions and the current state of things are irrelevant when it comes to the honest reasons for your view. Even if I were to successfully defend the normative societal definition it would not cause you to change your position, because you would fall back to this claim that as a matter of principle, society has no right to apply its definitions. That claim is the point of stasis between us. That is the point from which we can proceed in a logically progressing dialogue which provides us equal opportunity to move each others fundamental position. If you look at it from my point of view, all your talk about definitions is not much more than harassment of my position because it is not essential to your own.

So if you want to proceed with me in terms of an equitable and honest dialogue which has an opportunity to logically progress, then please get me on board by responding clearly to the blockquote.
John E.

My definition of marriage has Marriage in the Eyes of the State (or Society) predicated upon Marriage in the Eyes of God.

MES is predicated on MEG. I cannot say that MEG is irrelevant to the discussion.

How's this. I will drop my definition of marriage. I will try to not bring it up again. Give me your definition of marriage and we'll work from there. You're asking me to come out and say that the thing that I see predicates what we're arguing about is irrelevant to the discussion.

I cannot do that.

Now, what I can do is this: drop it and work with your definition for a while.

Because it gets back to this: "Even if I were to successfully defend the normative societal definition it would not cause you to change your position, because you would fall back to this claim that as a matter of principle, society has no right to apply its definitions. That claim is the point of stasis between us."

I see the anti-miscegenation laws as society applying its definitions in a way that it had no right to do. I see the forces working against gay marriage as analagous (not identical... but there is a family similarity there) to the arguments against mixed-race couples laws.

How's this? If you can agree that the anti-miscegenation laws were an example of society wrongly applying its definitions, I will agree that, sometimes, it's good for society to apply its definitions on individuals within it and, when it's good for society to do that, society has the "right" to do it.

Then we can start arguing about whether society fighting against gay marriage is an example of society wrongly applying its definitions or an example of society exercising its "right" to protect itself. ("Right" is in quotes because I am under the impression that individuals have Rights. Societies don't.)

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Surely you realize by now that I want to have a discussion about definitions - yours included - just not a discussion that ends with making definitions - yours included - irrelevant because society has no right to apply them. In that you have come around to throwing off that individualistic anarchistic impediment to such a discussion... Hallelujah! I salute you. Yippee! We now have a valid basis for actually talking about these issues.

And yes I can and have already agreed that sometimes society gets it wrong and those anti-miscegenation laws appear to be a good example of that.

"Then we can start arguing about whether society fighting against gay marriage is an example of society wrongly applying its definitions or an example of society exercising its "right" to protect itself. ("Right" is in quotes because I am under the impression that individuals have Rights. Societies don't.)"

Yes we can and that's a good thing. Hallelujah. But I have spent so much energy getting to this point I think I am going to have to give it a rest for a while. But this is definitely the point at which to resume. Thanks for that! I just hope you really have concluded that "sometimes it is right for society to apply its definitions on people" and are not just making a deal with me, because that would entirely deflate all this exuberance that you have given me.

John E.

BTW, we have never been talking about a narrow case of what society has the power but not right to do. If you have, then you have simply introduced confusion into the dialogue which has made it unproductive.
John E.

Insofar as I see gay marriage as analagous to interracial marriage, and insofar as our country, in living memory, has arrested two people for claiming to be married despite not fitting society's definitions... I think that banning certain kinds of marriage between two consenting adults is kinda relevant.

Yes, I understand that being gay is nothing, at all, like being black. I understand that women are women and men are men and it's Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve.

And yet there are a lot of echoes that seem to be around in the argument over gay marriage. No, it isn't the same thing... but it is analagous.

(I suppose if you don't see, on any level, how any single person could honestly come to the conclusion that there are analogies to be made between gay marriage and interracial marriage, I suppose I could see how you might think that this is just a case of introducing confusion.)

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

I thought what I was saying would be clear from the context, since it immediately followed "Ok, then the latter".

It could have been made slightly more context free if I had said

BTW, we always been interested only in talking about what society has both the power and right to do; we have never been talking about a narrow case of what society has the power but in principle has no right to do (resolve reference as "say you are not married"). If you have, then you have simply introduced confusion into the dialogue which has made it unproductive.

As long as you continue to maintain that in principle society has no such right, your response above is just an further example of introducing that confusion.

And if you still don't get that, please refer to You forget BM for further elaboration.

John E.

This is the sticking point for me: Individuals have Rights. Societies do not.

If you want to argue that societies have rights, I would ask where those rights come from.

I know where individual Rights come from. They are given by, for lack of a better word, God.

I don't know where society's rights would come from. It seems to me that, throughout history, society exercising its "rights" do so at the expense of individual Rights.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Deflation...

If you frame the question as you are doing - in terms of society's rights akin to and in competition with individuals rights - you get no justification for society rights and end up in an absurd endorsement of anarchy. That reductio ad absurdum suggests to me that there is something wrong with the way the question is framed.

Actually I have a problem with the way so much of our thinking is framed in terms of rights because most of the time I can't figure out any broadly accepted basis for claiming those specific rights. When they are tied to the realities of human nature I can usually go along.

But leaving that aside and accepting your frame on rights... I suggest one way you may be able to resolve the issue from your point of view is to revert back to the idea of democratic government of by and for the people. "the people" express their will and the government imposes it. I am not enough of a political theorist to be able to provide you a pat answer on this. I expect if you put out the question in a diary you would get some pretty solid answers. I do see clearly enough to know that the alternative is anarchy and so that the alternative is absurd and so I reject it out of hand.
John E.

But it would be unethical and unsafe to allow a lab to attempt it. We need to prohibit attempts at conceiving a child that do not join a man's sperm and a woman's egg.

Same-sex couples should not have a right to conceive children together.

If you're open-minded enough to support gay marriage, how can you be so bigoted to say I do not have the right to marry my sister?

How does it negatively affect you?

Sincerely,
Will C. Phillips

1) Actually to bring about the change, we should have to legislate for it.

Well, on the practical level, this is absolutely true. If two guys want legal protections from the government for their committed relationship, the legislature will have to do it. Most people are against it and have no compunction against amending the state constitution of the state they live in to deny not only "marriage rights" to homosexuals but "civil union rights". I absolutely and wholeheartedly agree that if gay marriage is to come about, it will have to come through the legislature. In the legal sense of "marriage", of course.

2) "If sex were truly "divorced from reproduction" decades ago, then I might agree with your inevitability theory. (Actually, I think that would inevitably shrink the institution of marriage, not expand it). But it isn't."

Isn't it? Has marriage actually grown since The Pill was introduced? How have divorce rates done since then? What was the average age of people getting married in the 50's? The Pill was introduced in 1960, wasn't it? What happened to the institution of marriage since then? I would argue that the institution has shrunk since then. I don't see how someone could argue otherwise.

2a) "This theory of rights is the only force lending any inevitability to the specific change you are talking about as it is successively applied to more varied groups, primarily by judges."

My theory of rights is not that married people have some sort of "right" to the "protections" given by the government. It's more that people, in general, have a right to be left alone. If two guys want to say that they're married, they have the right to be left alone. It's that simple. When we get into all of the violations the government imposes on absolutely everybody and then see that the violations are lightened, ever so slightly, for married couples, people should be saying "the government should relax for everybody!" instead of "if the government even thinks about relaxing for homosexual couples, we should amend the state constitution to make sure it can't". I do not argue that homosexuals should have "special rights". I do not see "being left alone" is, in any way, "special".

3) "The question works in reverse too. What are the consequences if we do not make such a change? Does history show us that the status quo on this matter harms society in specific ways?"

What are the consequences if we do not make such a change? Probably very little. If we assume that only 2-3% of the population is gay and then assume that only about a third of those people want to get married (and, most likely, to each other), then probably less than 1% of the population, and certainly no more than 1% of the population, will be denied legal protections for their relationships.

No Real Biggie.

Does history show us that the status quo on this matter harms society in specific ways? You mean other than that 1%?

Probably not. I do think that there is something kind of ugly hiding within a very small percentage of those opposed to gay marriage (but certainly not all and certainly not most) and that is, I think, bad. But that's bad on an individual level. I don't think it's terribly prevalent... but it is around enough to be noticable.

Also, I'd prepare for more movies like Brokeback Mountain getting more Oscars in the years to come. The possibility of having to listen to people talk vapidly about what a "powerful" movie "Elephant Butte" was and how we need to be more "open minded" is too high of a price for me.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

2) you said "sex was divorced from reproduction by the pill." You questions and conclusion are non sequiturs as related to that claim, so I am leaving them untouched.

2a) I brought up a specific phenomena, a 20th century judicial trend, as an explanation for your "inevitability" theory. I might have gotten around to asking you about your personal theory of rights on the other thread, if I could get beyond the first question in that process of clarifying your position to me. Being as this is the thread where you get to ask me questions about my view of things I'll give you this.

We just voted here in Georgia and there were several amendments and initiatives on the ballot relating to expanding inheritance rights for spouses. I voted for them because I reasoned about how Dad often gets the paycheck while Mom spends more time with the child bearing and rearing, so Mom ought to get what Dad has earned if Dad passes. I expect that is the way most of these special treatments have accrued to marriage. There were special treatments for other groups that I voted against. So...

3) THere is nothing in my motivation that has anything to do with denying legal protections. I think this follows from 1) and 2a).
John E.

You are the one who said, and let me quote this so I get it right, "that clearly does not follow on from birth control and that is either sloppy thinking or a rhetorical trick on your part. Birth control may effect our attitudes toward the morality of sex outside of marriage but sex is still obviously, beyond any dispute, still the means and cause of reproduction. You prove my patience with such a comment."

I am not arguing that you cannot have reproduction without sex (although you can) but I am arguing that you can have sex without reproduction and, it is simple enough to have sex without reproduction that it's, essentially, a different category anymore. I don't see this as a rhetorical trick but merely a description of the state of affairs in our society. If you could explain to me how I am wrong in this observation, I would love to hear it.

2a) My theory of rights is very much a "negative rights" kinda theory. I'll assume you're familiar with the skeleton of that viewpoint. The clarification of my position is the meat upon that skeleton. The US violates the rights of its citizens with, among other things, its levels of taxation. Married people enjoy a lighter punch to the nose than most. Homosexual couples are asking for a tax burden similar to those asked by heterosexual couples. There are several issues in here. 1) I believe that the tax rates should *NOT* be anywhere *NEAR* the level they are now. 2) I believe that stability within society is provided by stable couples, not necessarily stable heterosexual couples. These both lead me to the position that tax breaks should be given to stable couples who want them, because I know that we won't be getting rid of the 16th Amendment anytime soon.

I hope that clarifies my position somewhat.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

I have argued that the production of children as a result of sex, the requirements of child rearing, and society's interest in the successful outcome is the likely cause and purpose of the public institution of marriage.

You said "When sex was divorced from reproduction (readily available and 99% effective birth control, readily available and legal abortion), gay marriage was pretty much inevitable."

I said "that clearly does not follow on from birth control and that is either sloppy thinking or a rhetorical trick on your part. Birth control may effect our attitudes toward the morality of sex outside of marriage but sex is still obviously, beyond any dispute, still the means and cause of reproduction. You prove my patience with such a comment."

You said "I am not arguing that you cannot have reproduction without sex (although you can) but I am arguing that you can have sex without reproduction... I don't see this as a rhetorical trick but merely a description of the state of affairs in our society. If you could explain to me how I am wrong in this observation, I would love to hear it."

Well that's one rhetorical trick: using "divorced" to imply that heterosexual sex is now akin to homosexual sex. And now you have tried to pull the old switcheroo by ignoring the original context of your argument and claiming that you were merely arguing sex can occur without reproduction; a point I fully acknowledge without any argument by you whatsoever.

John E.

Perhaps the issue is that I am talking about the idea of sex and you are talking about the act.

The idea of sex no longer carries with it the idea of pregnancy for a HUGE swath of people. There is The Pill. There are condoms. There is stuff out there now that I never even heard of in my college days that will prevent not only pregnancy but the visits of the muse.

Is my original point still obtuse? Or is it just me?

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

If
you had said "When idea of sex was divorced from idea of reproduction (readily available and 99% effective birth control, readily available and legal abortion), gay marriage was pretty much inevitable."
Then
it would not have changed a dad-gum thing. And you should not need me to tell you that. I guess "it is just you."

And more than that it is about you. As I said before as my condition for continuing the dialogue in the interest of finding away to make it productive, repeating myself now, this thread is where you get to ask questions about my position. The other thread is where you get to try to make your position comprehensible to me.

John E.

The ready availablity of birth control in our society making sex and reproduction fall into two different categories seems so absolutely obvious to me, I don't see how someone could argue otherwise. Sex does not mean kids anymore. "She won't get pregnant and, even if she does, we can always go to the clinic."

Do you not see this attitude in society? If not, where in the heck do you live?

"And more than that it is about you."

Unintentional Irony, perhaps? Why do the "defenders" of Traditional Marriage defend it? "For the good of society"? I am a member of society and I do not need nor desire your protection of marriage, thanks. "For the good of The Children"? Whenever I hear anyone argue about how we have to do something for the sake of "The Children" it always strikes me that they must think that The Citizens are Children ("you are the child, the government is the village", I think is how P.J. O'Rourke summed up the famous book by HRC).

To make it even more about me, I think that the government should leave people alone. Yes, I will benefit from this. Yes, you will too. To bring this back to the topic of Protecting Traditional Marriage, I do not see how I benefit from two homosexuals being prevented from having, say, the right to visit each other in the hospital despite the protestations of their "in-laws". I do not see how you benefit. I do not see how society benefits. I do not see how The Children benefit.

The same goes for giving homosexual long-term couples tax breaks or inheritance rights similar to heterosexual couples get. I do not see how you benefit from preventing that from happening. I do not see how society benefits. I do not see how The Children benefit.

Could you explain to me why it is so important that we use the force of government to prevent homosexual couples from having access to these legal protections? Because that is something that I still don't understand.

(And, if you want me to jump back to the "married in the eyes of God" definition of marriage, I argue that, if two men actually can become married in the eyes of God, you would not be able to prevent two men from becoming married with an axe, with a gun, or with an army. You are just limited to preventing them from, say, getting a marriage license from the county clerk.)

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

"Do you not see this attitude in society? If not, where in the heck do you live?"

I already answered the first and the second I take as mere useless rhetorical flourish, since its literal answer is none of your business.

The next three paragraphs are derived from what appears - as it occurs repetitively - to be your technique of taking my statement out of context and using it to create your own diatribe. If you have something to say about that statement based on the context that it was given in - that indicates some kind of effort at comprehension of it - I'll be happy to reply to it.

"Could you explain to me why it is so important that we use the force of government to prevent homosexual couples from having access to these legal protections? Because that is something that I still don't understand."

I have previously told you that we have no such motivation. Honest attempts to listen and comprehend do wonders for the understanding. Since there is a transcript, I am not going to repeat the explanation here.

Recommendation - If you honestly want to understand, try going back to the beginning of the thread and use your next post to practice Active Listening.
John E.

You pointed out the (rather trivial) point that sex is the only way to reproduce children... to be perfectly honest, I don't see how this argues against my basic point at all.

The idea of sex no longer necessarily carries with it the idea of reproduction. This has fairly long-reaching social effects. The Pope, of all people, talks about the social effects of birth control. Perhaps you could explain to him that sex remains the only way to reproduce children. When he clarifies what he means when he talks about the effects of how sex is thought about, you could tell him that that doesn't change a dad gum thing. When he clarifies again, perhaps you could point out that you already addressed this issue and he's just not listening.

You know what? Readily-available Birth Control, available for pretty much anybody (I had condoms available when I was in High School, all you had to do was ask) changes the way that society, as a whole, thinks about sex. It cheapens the idea of sex and, yes, divorces it from reproduction.

If you disagree with my use of the word "divorce", I retract it. Sure. Let's just say "legal separation", then. (Reproduction wants to reconcile, sex is having too much fun out there on its own.)

If you want to argue that, no! You can't have a baby without people having sex!, I'm afraid that you're very much missing the point. Try reading it again. Active listening, maybe.

You keep mentioning that you "have no such motivation"... I must not be phrasing my questions well. I am not asking about your motivation, per se. I am more asking what the actual, measurable, goal is.

Is there something that the Protect Traditional Marriage position is hoping to accomplish? What is that?

Is there something that the Protect Traditional Marriage position is hoping, instead, to prevent? What is that?

Here's my stated goal in this particular debate: if two gay guys want to get "married" and share some legal protections, they should be able to. I've got friends who are long-term partners, I've got relatives that are long-term partners. I think that they should be able to get the same protections from the government that are available to me. And that's pretty much it.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Birdmojo, I am trying to practice active listening. I think what I am doing on the other thread - the one all about your position - is a pretty good example of telling you what I think you are saying and asking for your confirmation. Since this thread is where you get to try understanding my position, this is where you might benefit from the technique. If you don't want to, fine, but it doesn't seem you are doing very well at understanding me. Perhaps it is best to just drop this thread altogether. That's my inclination and unless I see something to make me believe differently I am going to drop this thread - just so you no in advance why I may have chosen not to respond.

There is nothing new to be said here - after all your further comments - about your claim of the inevitability of marriage being asexual as a result of birth control. It doesn't belong on this thread anyway as it is about your position not mine. If we ever get beyond the first question I asked you about your position we might eventually get to this again.

You ask what we are hoping to accomplish. I want to clearly understand why the institution of marriage has developed to this point just as it has. I want to understand what essential good purposes the institution serves for society at large - in priority order - and I want to make sure that no changes occur which dilute its capacity to provide those values.
John E.

I'm beginning to suspect that it is not, in fact, my fault.

I am not saying that marriage is asexual.

I am saying that the ready availability of birth control has changed the idea of what sex is. Once upon a time, we could have argued whether sex in our society is primarily about pairbonding or whether it is primarily about being fruitful and multiplying.

I am pretty sure that that argument has been settled. Sex is, anymore, primarily about pairbonding.

Which brings us to: "I want to clearly understand why the institution of marriage has developed to this point just as it has. I want to understand what essential good purposes the institution serves for society at large - in priority order - and I want to make sure that no changes occur which dilute its capacity to provide those values."

The discussion about what sex is, anymore, deals directly with "no changes occur which dilute its capacity to provide those values". When the idea of sex changed, the idea of marriage changed. I hold that it is no coincidence that the ready availability of birth control was followed, within a couple generations, of a 50% divorce rate.

As to the essential good purposes the institution serves for society at large, I'd have to say that the list includes everything from "it is not good for man to be alone" to "it gets cold at night" and, yes, "thats where babies come from" (which, coincidentally, is directly related to the other two things).

And, dealing with the first thing last, "I want to clearly understand why the institution of marriage has developed to this point just as it has", well... this is a tall order. I personally lean toward "the good things given by the essential good purposes the institution serves for society at large are better than the essential good things given by other variations on the institution".

Now, I am pretty sure that you disagree with those takes of mine... but what are your takes on it?

The way you phrased things seems to point towards "if we allow gay guys to get married, it will do dilute the capacity of marriage for everyone else in the country to do as much good as marriage has done in the past." Is this the case?

It appears to me that the capacity of marriage to do good has been much diluted in the last, oh, 50 years. Does it not appear this way to you? What do you think caused this disollution?

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

I will grant you that I was groping for a shorthand word to describe what you are talking about. I understand why that choice of word has connotations which you find inappropriate. I do think I understand what you are talking about, but again this thread is not supposed to be about you.

"I am pretty sure that that argument has been settled. Sex is, anymore, primarily about pairbonding."

That claim is what I call sloppy thinking.

For more on my views, you can read the following links.
1) http://www.redstate.com/blogs/martinaknight/2006/nov/23/i_am_fighting_fo...
2) http://www.redstate.com/blogs/martinaknight/2006/nov/23/i_am_fighting_fo...
3) http://www.redstate.com/stories/archived/polygamy_the_new_black#comment-...
4) http://www.redstate.com/stories/archived/polygamy_the_new_black#comment-...
5) http://www.redstate.com/blogs/martinaknight/2006/nov/23/i_am_fighting_fo...

I would like to get the issue of society's right to decide resolved before putting much effort into this line of the dialogue. I will grant you that the effectiveness of marriage -as an institution - to hold parents together for the sake of raising their children - which is the primary reason for marriage and the only reason that I as a single person tend to vote to for ballot measures that extend unique privileges to married couples - has been weakened since divorce laws started treating it as if it was so much about the happiness of individual relationships. In my parents generation divorce was frowned upon and rare. Many more people stuck together in unhappy marriages or worked out their problems. Now marriage has become more selfish, less about the sacrifice for raising children and more about the ones own personal happiness. Steps which codify the idea that marriage is primarily about relationships rather than primarily about progenitors providing a good family unit for raising children propel the slide in the wrong - and perhaps fatal for our society - direction. I personally do not think society is justified in imposing an institution like marriage simply for the sake of encouraging relationships. And if marriage never was about children, I don't see how such an institution would have developed simply for the sake of encouraging relationships. See link 4) for elaboration. I can tell you this for sure that I would never have voted for a single ballot measure granting special privileges to people simply because they have a relationship.

John E.

To be perfectly honest, I don't think that there's any way to change society's definition of marriage back to being about holding parents together for the sake of the children. There are too many people who enjoy a "child-free" lifestyle, there are too many divorces of people who are merely "unfulfilled" in their marriages and the social response is one of "well, it's good that you got divorced if the other person was holding you back", and so on and so forth.

I, personally, think that the way to correct this is for society to say that "Marriage is for life. It's a lifetime commitment. If you get divorced, there's probably something wrong with you. Either you're a flake or you're the type of person who marries flaky people. In either case, you shouldn't have gotten married in the first place."

This seems to me to be the only direction we can go from where we currently are. I do not see gay marriage as a step in the wrong direction from this destination.

Marriage, as a social institution, will be helped by this attitude, not harmed.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Birdmojo, I think we can end it here with an agreement of sorts. I have invested a lot of capital in this dialogue with you and quite honestly, I am for the moment spent. (And perhaps rightly mocked :) )

It appears that we can agree that TM supporters of my ilk are trying to get the genie - marriage is about children - back in the bottle or at least keep it from getting out any further than it has. It appears our opponents of your ilk believe that genie is out of the bottle and welcome its replacement - marriage is about relationships. If I personally felt motivated to endorse this change, I would agree with your logic (in that you have dropped the anarchistic claim). Yes, in that case, I would support more - probably nearly all - brands of relationships being endorsed and encouraged by marriage. But I don't feel that way and some of my reasons are in the above links but perhaps we can save that conversation for later. I hope the converse is also true and that if you felt the way I do about the genie, you would see the logic of my position.
John E.

I look forward to the next gay marriage thread where we can do this all over again.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

"And, if you want me to jump back to the "married in the eyes of God" definition..."

What I want is to deal with the relevance of this on the thread which is all about comprhending your position. John E.

Or so it seems to me... is one dealing with the two definitions of marriage.

Married in the Eyes of God is a very, very, very good thing for society. Married in the Eyes of Society is how society rewards Married in the Eyes of God (it used to use social benefits and punishments to a huge degree, now it pretty much just sticks to civic benefits/punishments).

The civic benefits of marriage are pretty much what the homosexuals are clamoring for (yes, there are some nuts who are clamoring for more than that, they aren't representative of any of the couples I know). And, it seems to me, that many of the benefits given to society at large by stable heterosexual marriages will also be given by stable homosexual ones. The vast majority of the arguments given against providing the benefits of MES to homosexuals rely upon MEG definitions. And there is a blurring between the two.

That's why I think that the MES/MEG thing is relevant.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

See http://www.redstate.com/blogs/martinaknight/2006/nov/23/i_am_fighting_fo...
AND
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/martinaknight/2006/nov/23/i_am_fighting_fo...
And all the dialogue which precedes those comments on that thread.
John E.

50% of marriages failing doesn't mean that 50% of the people run around getting divorced.
--
It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -- Calvin Coolidge

But, normally, it's in the bad way.

Thanks.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

The law of conservation of momentum shows all that discussion had to ricochet and send SOMETHING else flying..
--
It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. -- Calvin Coolidge