LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES--WHY HETEROSEXUALITY IS A FORCE FOR CHAOS: EveThe thing about sex is, people want to do it. People want to do it for its own sake. They want to do it because it unites them more fully with their beloveds--what with us being enfleshed persons and all. But the problem with sex is that it doesn't always work out how you want it to. Sometimes you get hurt emotionally ("Before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed"/"So would I ha' done, by yonder sun, an thou hadst not come to my bed"). Sometimes you get a disease. (That's not a risk specific to sex, though.) Sometimes you damage yourself spiritually, using others and becoming trapped within the self, prideful and cruel.
And sometimes, if you're one of those people who are attracted to the opposite sex, something happens that is very wonderful but sometimes very terrible: An entire new human creature will begin. A new individual life will start--certainly without that individual's consent, and quite often without yours either. We need this to happen; that's the point of Europe's "demographic crash." We need new people. But (and this is where America's heterosexual problem differs to some extent from Europe's) we also need these new people to be well-cared for. By far the simplest way to do this is to make sure the children's own mother and father are committed to care for one another and the babies they make together. This is the way that requires the least government involvement, and also the way that is symbolically richest and therefore emotionally most sturdy, drawing on the deep biological ties I talked about in premise #3 above.
What people who sleep with members of the opposite sex have to do in order to avoid causing societal chaos is actually very difficult. Some large-enough number of them needs to refrain from sex outside of marriage and be fruitful within marriage. They need to have babies and raise 'em right. (We're doing better at the former than the latter; Europe to some extent the reverse.) They need--for the sake of the children who (in the common adolescent complaint) "never asked to be born!" and for the sake of their own society--to defer gratification, resist temptation, stay married despite personal unhappiness. The way societies have handled these needs--the way societies have managed the "can't live with it, can't live without it" nature of heterosexual sex--is through acknowledging and honoring a status called marriage.
Marriage emerges, cross-culturally, as a response to the point lesbian comedienne Lynn Lavner noted: "The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision."
posted by Eve at
12:36 AM | Link |
we also need these new people to be well-cared for.
And that is where Maggie's theory that children don't benefit from marriage breaks down.
Maggie's been arguing that adopted children don't benefit from married parents; that children who are only biologically-related to one parent don't benefit from married parents: that the only benefit marriage provides to society is if the couple are married at conception/birth.
If you think of a baby as a beginning, instead of (as Maggie has said) an end, then it's clear that even if people think of marriage only in relation to children, there's good reason not to withhold the freedom to marry from same-sex couples.
Now, how do we make Maggie understand that?
Maggie's been arguing that adopted children don't benefit from married parents; that children who are only biologically-related to one parent don't benefit from married parents: that the only benefit marriage provides to society is if the couple are married at conception/birth.
Has she really? Or has she argued that two biological parents are normative?
Has she really? Or has she argued that two biological parents are normative?
I asked why she doesn't support marriage for same-sex couples who adopt children: she said she didn't think marriage benefited adopted children, and that it ought to suffice if one person adopts a child and the other person gets to apply for second-parent adoption. No marriage necessary.
How would the legal incidents of marriage benefit the legal child-parent relationship, when there is a second-parent adoption?
Especially in contrast to the legal incidents of civil unions that didn't grant procreation rights to the same-sex couple. It would be better for the existing kids if their parents didn't try to procreate together.
Maybe someone should hound the SSM side for answers to sticky questions they inadvertently raise with their hounding and virtual lynching of Gallagher and Tushnet.
Whoa, look, it's just people disagreeing. I've got no beef with people disagreeing with me. Inflammatory terms like "hounding" (and "lynching"--come on!) don't make this discussion any more likely to be fruitful.
Now, if people were calling the Enterprise a garbage scow, THEN we'd have to have words! [/geek]
Eve
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