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 Friday, December 23, 2005
Kurtz v. The New Republic/Maggie Weighs In
As you may know I've never been a big fan of the "SSM will lead to polygamy" argument for two reasons: first from my point of view (which I realize is probably not where most people are at) polygamy is a common marriage variant anthropologically and in that sense far less of conceptual "shock" to the basic structure of marriage than unisex or genderless marriage. (It is also, in my view, a very, very bad marriage system, but that's another story). Secondly, as I read the play of forces, we don't end up moving to polygamy because that would cost taxpayers money. And once we've established that marriage is just a word for a government Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on romance, I can't figure out what taxpayers are going to be willing to fund it. What the calls for polygamy will do is contribute to an already powerful push to "separate marriage and state." Because well, we've already established there is no very good reason for the government to be involved in people's love relations called marriages anyway. Add to that the fact that, if courts order SSM, many faith communities will join the chorus of people pushing to separate marriage and state, and I see that as the most likely end result of institutionalizing SSM. Nonetheless, when I read Rob Allen's response to Stanley's piece in the Weekly Standard, I found it shocking: Shockingly incapable of grasping Stanley's argument, which is (my interpretation) that if people have a personal right to marry anyone they love, then the claims of polygamists will be hard to resist, once that principle is firmly established. Kurtz points to bisexuality as one potential "interest group" whose personal needs and desires would justify a move to polygamy under the logic of SSM. I'd simply point out we have both a native tradition of polygamy (heretical Mormons) and an imported one (Islam). I don't think its going to take that long for them to begin organizing and pressing claims in courts. So the argument: "Nobody is for this, there are no PACs on this" is a pretty weak response. Especially to people who have witnessed SSM move from a weirdo idea on the fringe to the law of the state of Massachussetts in the blink of an eye. You'd never know from the New Republic's contentless account, about the string of appellate court victories for marriage, the repeated growing electoral victories in statewide referendum, and the sustained opposition to SSM in public opinion polls. I'd post a link to the TNR essay, and let you judge for yourself, but TNR doesn't let nonsubscribers see their stuff. Here's a money quote below from TNR piece: "And as tolerance for homosexuality has increased--or, in other words, as the "ick" factor has become less prominent--the prospects for same-sex marriage have brightened considerably. Among 18 to 29 year olds, 71 percent believe same-sex marriage is inevitable. After reading poll numbers like that one, conservatives have found themselves in a bit of a conundrum; and with the "ick" factor heading towards irrelevancy, the slippery-slope argument against gay marriage is all they have left." Tolerance for homosexuality has increased even while opposition to gay marriage is strong and steady. (BTW: And more than 60 percent of 13 to 17 year olds oppose SSM in the latest polls.) Of course we may stll lose. Young adults are more pro-SSM, currently, than older folks. If we do not come out of this debate with a deeper, richer understanding of marriage as a social institution, and transmit this vision to the next generation, then we will have lost marriage. But right now, we are in the middle of surge of powerful new intellectual argument supporting marriage as the union of husband and wife. And many people who support SSM cannot even recognize that an argument has been made. Hmmm. Good! posted by maggie at 4:29 PM | link 
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"But right now, we are in the middle of surge of powerful new intellectual argument supporting marriage as the union of husband and wife. And many people who support SSM cannot even recognize that an argument has been made. [//] Hmmm. Good!"
Well, not a powerful, _intellectual_ argument, no. I think your centrepiece argument, at least as you typically present it, is a bald non-sequitur. At the same time I don't doubt for a moment that it's a very rhetorically powerful argument to the small number of people who look on marriage as in part a duty to procreate, and the rather larger number who can be counted on to commit a fallacy of equivocation between that and the much more mainstream view of marriage as a licence to procreate if they want the conclusion (no SSM) to be true badly enough.
"What the calls for polygamy will do is contribute to an already powerful push to "separate marriage and state.""
I'm reading the push to "separate marriage and state" more as something always likely to stay a minority view than as a powerful push; I don't see people (most of whom are married or want to be married) suddenly wanting to get rid of the whole system of marital benefits. But, all the same, if I had to choose between that and legalized polygamy (with all the potential taxpayer costs and increase in corporate health insurance costs), I think I'd bet with you on separating state and marriage as the more likely winning scenario. And if legalized polygamy did prove to be the winning scenario, I'd bet on an acceleration in the current trend for companies to stop paying for health insurance.
I think you are right, Lynne. This is now a current, but an undercurrent. But as you watch culture change unfold, you pay attention to where the flow of forces are likely to go.
If we move to SSM, not only will there be a perplexing number of new claimants wondering why their
relationships are not worthy of legal recognition (plus benefits!), but a huge swathe of civil society that now support marriage as a legal institution (people in faith communities) are going to be severely tempted to switch and push for the separation of marriage and state, on the grounds the new legal institution is incompatible with and hostile to their own marriage idea.
The libertarians and the social cosnervatives will join hands with the polyamorists and anti-marriage femininist/Marxists/leftists.
One solution to the culture wars! Of course this is not a necessary or logical consequences: it's a prediction of how cultural forces will play out in the marriage debate. Nor have I offered it as a slippery slope. If people ask me what I think about polgyamy as they do, its just that this is what seems to me more likely over the next generation to emerge in the U.S.
"[...]but a huge swathe of civil society that now support marriage as a legal institution (people in faith communities) are going to be severely tempted to switch and push for the separation of marriage and state, on the grounds the new legal institution is incompatible with and hostile to their own marriage idea."
I actually agree with you that marriage is likely to continue to evolve in ways that you won't like. However I think you're wrong about the role that faith communities will play, because you've been minimizing the main service that civil marriage has always provided to them: providing an centrally administered bright-line distinction between couples that are to be shamed if they appear to be sexual active and couples that aren't. Faith communities aren't suddenly going to stop wanting to give full faith and credit to opposite-sex marriages of other faith groups and opposite-sex civil marriages, and neither are they going to bother setting up a parallel bureaucracy. They're going to continue to piggyback on the civil system for opposite-sex couples, and if they still feel obligated to ignore or shame same-sex couples that's administratively trivial for them to do.
This coming year HBO will have a new show about the wacky adventures of a polygamous couple. Judging from the promo shots I've seen the couple will be very wealthy. A house for each wife! I don't think it takes much for your average liberal to say to themselves: no poor person would indulge in multiple wives because they can't afford it!
If we do not come out of this debate with a deeper, richer understanding of marriage as a social institution, and transmit this vision to the next generation, then we will have lost marriage.
I agree. Of course, I see you as part of the opposition to "a deeper, richer understanding of marriage as a social institution" - since you seem to want to cheapen and make shallow marriage by defining it as something exclusively for and about procreation, and excluding from marriage all couples who cannot procreate together, even if they intend to - or do - have children.
I hope that the increasing recognition that same-sex couples can and should be able to marry is an example of how people are moving towards a deeper, richer understanding of marriage as a social institution - and away from your notions that marriage ought to be an exclusive club for interfertile couples.
And it's hard to see why you think that marriage ought to be an exclusive club for interfertile couples, since your argument requires you to believe that children don't benefit from having married parents.
(Either that, or your argument requires you to believe that the children of same-sex couples would benefit if their parents were allowed to get married, but that they ought to be discriminated against. Which would be ugly of you.)
jesurgislac,
You are misrepresenting the argument regarding procreation. No one is advocating the prohibition of marriage to couples who are unable or unwilling to have children. No one is claiming that procreation is the exclusive purpose of marriage, but that monogamous procreation -- in order to raise children in a family with a mother and father -- is the primary purpose in the context of societal recognition and promotion.
Yes, some couples are unable or unwilling to have children may not procreate, but that fact does not create a reason to redefine marriage from a union whose primary purpose is monogamous procreation and childrearing.
I am not aware of any valid reason for the state to recognize or promote marriage except for the purpose of promoting monogamous procreation and childrearing.
exactly aunursa. Jes keeps forgetting that the needs of families with existing kids could be met with civil unions, which would provide all the protections of marriage but not grant a right to conceive children together. We should not allow labs to start creating people from the genes of teo people of the same sex, all people should come from a mother and a father, for both safety and social reasons. We need to enact the PCBE's proposal to limit procreation to unions of a man and a woman. SSM would be incompatible with a ban on non male-female procreation
No one is advocating the prohibition of marriage to couples who are unable or unwilling to have children.
Maggie is. So is Eve.
No one is claiming that procreation is the exclusive purpose of marriage, but that monogamous procreation -- in order to raise children in a family with a mother and father -- is the primary purpose in the context of societal recognition and promotion.
That sounds like a waffly way of saying what Maggie and Eve are always saying: that marriage is exclusively and only for interfertile couples. That any couple who have to use AID to have children, or who have to (or choose to) adopt, or who just don't plan on having children, need to be legally excluded from marriage.
I am not aware of any valid reason for the state to recognize or promote marriage except for the purpose of promoting monogamous procreation and childrearing.
Even granting that's so (I know of no state in the US, and none ion Western Europe, where marriage is legally permitted only to fertile couples, so the state at least disagrees with you) - I know of no valid reason why, if marriage is intended to promote monogamous procreation and childrearing, that marriage should then be forbidden to couples who intend to rear children together.
Yet this is precisely Maggie and Eve's argument: that couples who are not interfertile do not need to get married. They are fighting desperately against a deeper, richer understanding of marriage as a social institution in their (vain) attempts to make marriage a club that's all and exclusively about fertility.
"Even granting that's so (I know of no state in the US, and none ion Western Europe, where marriage is legally permitted only to fertile couples. . ."
I can think of plenty of states that permit the dissolution of a marriage on the grounds of infertility.
Maggie is. So is Eve.
Yet this is precisely Maggie and Eve's argument: that couples who are not interfertile do not need to get married.
No they are not arguing that. You are misrepresenting their arguments. No reasonable person could draw those conclusions from their comments.
"No they are not arguing that. You are misrepresenting their arguments. No reasonable person could draw those conclusions from their comments."
Jesurgislac's last version in terms of "do not need to get married" was a bit off, but the rest is spot on. Maggie and Eve and a whole of other anti-SSM advocates really _are_ saying that same-sex couples need to be excluded because they can't procreate. Moreover, they're not entirely happy about infertile and childless-by-choice opposite-sex couples being admitted either. (From seeing Maggie challenged on the point, I gather that for her, the dreadful messages that are sent by allowing such riff-raff in are trumped by the fact that there might conceivably be a miracle for infertile couples or that childless-by-choice couples might change their minds or slip with the contraception.)
Jesurgislac, the misuse of the language is a pattern that characterizes your comments here.
For readers who would like to see an example of this, consider the repeated misuse of the word, interfertile, in the above comments. Below is some background on both the misuse and what it may reveal about the argument that depends on that misuse.
* * *
12/26/2005 7:42 AM: an exclusive club for interfertile couples
"No human couple is interfertile. Man-woman, man-man, or woman-woman, it doesn't matter. Interfertility refers to the potential to interbreed across species or sub-species to produce hybrid offspring." [See: Who is "interfertile," anyway?]
12/26/2005 7:16 PM: exclusively and only for interfertile couples
"The basic problem here is that the word of choice, interfertile, does not apply to human procreation unless one is ready to say that men and women are subspecies of humankind and that their offspring are hybrids."
"To those SSMers who have unknowingly misused the word, interfertile, all that is asked is that the word be used correctly and that if you mean to say that a couple is fertile, please use the word fertile, not interfertile."
12/26/2005 7:16 PM: couples who are not interfertile
"In an example of an obvious flubdub, SSMers knowingly misuse the word, interfertility. They have conceded this by their continued devotion to a substituted political meaning which blatantly contradicts the useful and established meaning." [See: Flubdubs and substitutions.]
12/26/2005 7:42 AM: children of same-sex couples would benefit if their parents were allowed to get married
"If legal structure of the child-parent relationship was the issue, then, it seems obvious that second-parent adoption would be more straightforward." [See: Children and the legal incidents of marriage.]
Also see: Groundhogs and Gorillas ... and Forks.
And re SSM, children, and related: Gender neutrality reads sameness into diversity.
aunursa said: No they are not arguing that. You are misrepresenting their arguments. No reasonable person could draw those conclusions from their comments.
Actually, plenty of reasonable people can and have, as that is Maggie and Eve's only argument against same-sex couples being allowed to be legally married - that same-sex couples can't procreate together (though they can and do have children together).
Ergo: they believe that couples who can't procreate together can't and shouldn't get married - or else they're homophobic and can't bear the thought of lesbians and gays being allowed to say "I do". As they've continuously argued that they're not homophobic, any reasonable person must conclude that in their view marriage is an exclusive club for interfertile couples only, and it does not benefit adopted children or children conceived by AID to be married: nor does it benefit children whose parents have divorced for either or both of their parents to be able to marry again.
In short, the last thing they want is "a deeper, richer understanding of marriage as a social institution": everything they've said about marriage argues that they want it to be an exclusive club to which only the right kind of people are admitted.
everything they've said about marriage argues that they want it to be an exclusive club to which only the right kind of people are admitted
Another misrepresentation.
* * *
"To stake the claim for SSM on the right of adult choice of partner is to mistake the protocol for the core of marriage. Legal fictions aside, the state's regulation of marriage cannot empower the state to discard the man-woman criterion of conjugality."
"Enactment of SSM would not kill off conjugality, but it would undermine the special status that marriage possesses due to conjugality. SSM would replace state recognition of marriage with state recognition of a new non-marital status. Yes, it might still be called marriage, and it would inherit a network of related benefits, but eventually the value of the status would deteriorate as a public policy vehicle."
"It is straightforward: The state benefits marriage because marriage benefits the state. If the state must indirectly benefit marriage after conflating it with non-marriage, then, the flow of benefits to and from the state would become more confused and obscured by the pull of "adult choice" and radical individualism intrinsic to the SSM argument."
See: Threat to society?.
I oppose same-sex marriage. Civil unions, for financial purposes, etc., I can support, albeit tepidly.
That qualified, I'm just wondering how many of my federal tax dollars went to Ms. Gallagher for this piece.
One thing we all know, and it's been proven, is that Ms. Gallagher does not crank out her material without federal subsidy.
So, Ms. Gallagher, from which federal agency did you gain the dinero for this effort?
- Mark R.
Albany, NY
(Can't stand setting up new accounts, so you get my name instead)
Besides, like Mark Levin on the law, I just can't take Stan Kurtz seriously on social issues.
Ms. Gallagher, federally bought and paid for, does little for me, either.
And I'm no fan of John Normanson or Luci's boy on anything.
Now, John Derbyshire, Andrew Stuttaford, and Ramesh Ponnuru offer thoughtful, well-reasoned insight.
Mark R.
Albany, NY
Hi Mark, thanks for your views. They are of course not based on any personal knowledge or on the actual facts. But they are firmly held, no doubt.
I have never taken "federal subsidies" for anyting. I was hired by HHS to do marriage-related work for which I was well qualified, and billed reasonable rates. My contract with HHS was not a PR contract but an expert consulting contract. There is now a GAO report confirming that my statement is accurate, if you are interested let me know and I'll track down the URL for you.
Otherwise I won't comment further on this.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Especially to you Mark.
Maggie
Jersurgislac:
I understand that we have deep disagreements on marriage. But one thing I do not understand is how relating marriage to the great task of bringing togehter humanities two halves--male and female, in the interests of making the next generaiton and connecting those children to their own mother and father--can be construed as "cheapening" marriage.
I've never found anything in the whole world better than babies. Marriage is not a factor for performing a utilitarian task.
It is the incarnation of erotic love, which includes the strange, wonderufl reality that with our bodies we make people. ANd not just people, our own sons and daughters.
Crazy, man!
Maggie,
First and foremost, Happy Holidays to you and yours!
Here's the link to the General Accounting Office report to which you refer.
http://www.gao.gov/decisions/appro/304716.htm
I will take the word of Anthony H. Gamboa, general counsel at the GAO, with its due weight.
After all, everyone in The Beltway these days knows that a federal employee needs to produce the results deemed appropriate by the party that controls all three branches of government. To do otherwise would be akin to asking to terminate one's federal employment. If these past five years have taught us nothing else, we have learned this lesson and the federal work force in D.C. has learned it especially well.
All the same, I'll accept Mr. Gamboa's, err, decision and, far more importantly, take the position(s) of John Derbyshire, Andrew Stuttaford, and Ramesh Ponnuru before those of your own.
Look on the bright side: At least you're not John Normanson or Luci's boy.
Look on the bright side II: Friends tell me writing gigs are avaiable at The Institute for Policy Innovation and The Copley News Service.
Again, Happy Holidays to you and yours!
Mark R.
Albany, NY
Thanks Mark, for saving me the trouble.
And thanks for the holiday wishes!
Maggie
Ergo: they believe that couples who can't procreate together can't and shouldn't get married
Jes, and Maggie, the only couples we say can't and shouldn't get married are couples that we say do not have a right to conceive together, to create offspring. Brothers and sisters. People already married. Children. These sorts of couples cannot ethically procreate AND BECAUSE OF THAT they are not allowed to marry. It makes no difference if they want to procreate, or if they are able to procreate. All that matters is the rightness or wrongness of this sort of couple having children together.
And now we need to add people of the same-sex, because otherwise scientists are going to start trying and it won't be good for society or safe for the people being created. Civil unions can give all the protections of marriage to couples that adopt or already have children but are not allowed to conceive children together. Stop ignoring this answer - it is the answer you are looking for, even though Maggie refuses to join me in making it.
(Chairm) "Another misrepresentation. [quotes]"
But your quotes, which I take to be from Maggie, don't support the claim that anything has been misrepresented. All the quotes show is that Maggie sometimes decorates the argument with a No-True-Scotsman gambit. That is, sometimes she defines True Marriage as for couples able and willing to procreate, and opposes True Marriage being combined with anything else (such as and in particular SSM) in civil marriage. But substantively this is just what J. said - keeping (civil) marriage for the right sort of people.
" Stop ignoring this answer - it is the answer you are looking for, even though Maggie refuses to join me in making it."
Ah, catfights! :-)
mark b., it is plain you did not read the articles and have substituted your own assumptions with what has actually been said.
The quotes are not from Maggie, but the articles discuss marriage along the same lines that Maggie has followed. The argument for marriage (and not for SSM as if it were marriage) as presented is not as you're comments would misrepresent it.
"mark b., it is plain you did not read the articles and have substituted your own assumptions with what has actually been said."
Indeed I did not read the link. Mea culpa. Fortunately it doesn't matter much, because my reaction to the full essay is almost the same: the No-True-Scotman on "marriage" that I identified is just part of a No-True-Scotsman on "conjugality". Now just possibly you had in mind for True Conjugality to be defined implicitly in terms of ability and intent to procreate, in which case we're back at the argument I was attributing to Maggie. However it looks worryingly like you didn't mean to define it in terms of anything but being opposite-sex, in which case it's much more question-begging and vacuous than anything I would presume to attribute to Maggie.
Heterosexual sexual intercourse and homosexual sexual activities are qualitatively different. Society recognizes and honors the uniqueness of heterosexual sexual intercourse when it sanctions heterosexual marriage. In so far as I am aware, there is nothing that can remove the human species dependency on heterosexual sexual intercourse for its continuation. This distinction alone is sufficient for society to sanction the heterosexual relationship above other human activities including homosexual sexual activities.
" Society recognizes and honors the uniqueness of heterosexual sexual intercourse when it sanctions heterosexual marriage."
I always presumed that was the thinking, I was just waiting for someone to make it explicit so I could pour scorn on it without risking committing a straw man. If there's any activity in this world that doesn't need elaborate honours paid to it to ensure it happens, it's opposite-sex sex. It's not called "doing what comes naturally" for nothing. A bunch of straight people honouring themselves for having opposite-sex sex out-chutzpahs the man who killed his parents and pleaded for mercy because he was an orphan. The bit that genuinely needs honoring is the sticking around after the sex to take responsibility for the kids that will tend to be produced. And marriage has always been much less an honour for doing that than a straightjacket to ensure it happens.
Maggie: I understand that we have deep disagreements on marriage. But one thing I do not understand is how relating marriage to the great task of bringing togehter humanities two halves--male and female, in the interests of making the next generaiton and connecting those children to their own mother and father--can be construed as "cheapening" marriage.
Because, instead of celebrating marriage as an institution which, among other things, brings the next generation into the world and raises it, you want it to be an exclusive club arbitrarily for couples who are interfertile. That cheapens marriage, as any attempt to make a grand institution into a private club from which the "wrong kind of people" are arbitrarily excluded will cheapen it.
I've never found anything in the whole world better than babies. Marriage is not a factor for performing a utilitarian task.
Fine: then why are you arguing that some couples with children should not be allowed to get married? If nothing in the whole world is better than babies, and you feel - really, sincerely feel - that babies and children deserve to be raised by married parents, then why argue that some parents shouldn't be married?
I can only conclude that you feel some babies are better than others - that children born to or adopted by lesbian or gay parents somehow don't deserve married parents.
It is the incarnation of erotic love, which includes the strange, wonderufl reality that with our bodies we make people. ANd not just people, our own sons and daughters.
Right: so, as I said, if you're sincere in believing that only couples who, when they have sex, are capable of and do make babies together, your intention is to cheapen marriage by turning it into an exclusive club from which any couple who are not fertile together - whether or not they have children - are arbitrarily excluded.
You are arguing for the creation of a privileged group who alone are entitled to legal marriage - couples who can have children together - and for the exclusion from marriage of all couples who cannot. You are arguing that some children don't deserve married parents, because they aren't biologically related to at least one of them.
As I said: you are not interested in a deeper understanding of marriage as a social institution: indeed, all your arguments are against it.
Mark B., please supply your description of non-vacuous conjugality.
It adds zilch to say that some human twosomes are NOT interfertile, since no human twosome -- both sexed or unisexed -- is interfertile. Any SSMer who knowingly keeps misusing the word must mean that men and women are two different species and that their offspring are hybrids.
* * *
No single sexed combination has ever been infertile, because that combination can not be fertile in the first place.
When a married couple experiences fertility problems, this is a disability due to misfortune. Each and every single sexed combination is as sterile as an individual acting alone. But such a circumstance is not due to a medical disability, but due to the form of the combination. The combo that lacks one of the sexes is sterile from beginning to end.
* * *
The Sterility Strawman does not stand-up except when propped-up by the misplaced ardour of some SSMers.
How would fertility determinations be made without premarital sexual intercourse and the intrusive presumption that all man-woman couples are sterile until proven fertile through premarital childbearing?
It doesn't get past the plausibility test, let alone the deeper test of what marriage is and how it benefits humankind.
There may be better lines of reasoning for SSMers to espouse than that pale imitation of an argument.
"Mark B., please supply your description of non-vacuous conjugality."
Why would I bother? The issues are whether _you_ have a definition, whether it's interestingly different from the criterion I was attributing to Maggie (having ability and intent to procreate) and whether it's non-vacuous in the context of an anti-SSM argument. I don't know if it's poor choice of words or excessive coyness on your part, but I honestly can't guess what exactly you're talking about from the article. I would have supposed that sex had something to do with it but you seem to flirt with the idea that mere difference of sex is enough: "It is about removing the essential ingredient, the man-woman criterion that suffices to mark the social institution as conjugal and integrative of the sexes." That's certainly vacuous in the context of an ani-SSM argument because it's just a fancy word distracting attention from the fact that the argument reduces to the question-begging "Marriage is supposed to be opposite-sex, therefore it has to be opposite sex."
Not opposite-sex, but both-sexed. Society benefits from sex integration.
What is the benefit to society of sex segregation as per SSM which always lacks one or the other sex?
Presumably you advocate for a change that is not vacuous.
Marriage protects children by regulating sex. All this talk of benefits obscures the fundamental reality of a marriage culture: it is normative and directive, sometimes strongly so sometimes less strongly so. It says these types of sexual unions are preferred, normative and other typees of sexual unions are (sometimes) banned or discouraged but (always) in some social sense, second class.
You can't turn marriage into a factory for making children. The way the natural family works is that men and women who are attracted to the opposite sex must first commit to a shared life together, including fidelity, in order to ensure that their children are so protected.
Adding a "fertility requirement" to marriage would reduce, not increase, its ability to protect children
"Marriage protects children by regulating sex. All this talk of benefits obscures the fundamental reality of a marriage culture: it is normative and directive, sometimes strongly so sometimes less strongly so. It says these types of sexual unions are preferred, normative and other typees of sexual unions are (sometimes) banned or discouraged but (always) in some social sense, second class."
I get it that you see normativity about sex as an important part of the concept of marriage, and I don't entirely disagree. In fact I'd be quite happy to sign on to a weak form of normativity along the lines of "If you're going to have sex in such a way as to have a high probability of producing children, you should be married, de facto if not de jure, and have a extra strong commitment to staying married while you're bringing up the kids." I get it that you'd hold out for a stronger formulation, and while I don't think your arguments carry the day, I don't think they're stupid either. I get it that to give substance to any sort of normativity you have to provide incentivization, including carrots, sticks, flattery/shaming through grants of status etc.
But when you start on incentivization schemes for sex, and specifically opposite-sex sex in general versus same-sex sex in general, you've completely lost the plot. As I was pointing out to Anonymous above, honoring or incentivizing opposite-sex sex in general is lunacy, not to mention the most pathetic form of empty (largely self-) flattery. For the considerable majority of straight people, opposite-sex sex is powerfully self-incentivizing and there's a vast glut of it. You might as well hand out medals for breathing. _All_ that's required on the sex front is selective deincentivization.
Conversely, same-sex sex is naturally self-limiting. In normal circumstances it's of no interest to anyone but the 3-5% of people who are naturally same-sex attracted (i.e., "gay" in the gay community sense). And for them it's very important - it helps cement their relationships, so nothing short of punitive amounts of deincentivization will do anything. So in terms of quantity of sex, unless there's a opposite-sex sex shortage (ha) so grim as to be worth wrecking people's lives for an extra 3-5% contribution (double-ha), relative incentivization of opposite- versus same-sex sex has no place in the discussion.
Moreover, if we shoehorn it into the discussion regardless, we discover that you're misclassifying it in any case. The main thing that needs to be done for the welfare of children and that marriage has traditionally done is to deincentivize sex that tends to produce children outside stable couples (you would undoubtedly add outside _opposite-sex_ stable couples). Same-sex sex is _first_-class sex according to this criterion. Obviously this is true in a degenerate sense, in that same-sex sex doesn't tend to produce children at all, but it's true nonetheless. So while same-sex couples don't earn any merit badges for avoiding irresponsible procreative sex, neither does anyone have any business deincentivizing their sex.
"Adding a "fertility requirement" to marriage would reduce, not increase, its ability to protect children"
I'm at a loss. I was just coming around to the appreciation that, as much as you go on confusingly about procreation, you genuinely don't seem to have any interest in the details of the actual procreation as long as _childrearing_ is generally done by the biological parents, and failing that, any old opposite-sex couple. I was about to issue a mea culpa when you started in with this seemingly irrelevant obsession about the details of the sex. I'm afraid I have to conclude that stigmatizing same-sex sex has drifted off and become for you an end in its own right.
maggie said... Marriage protects children by regulating sex. All this talk of benefits obscures the fundamental reality of a marriage culture: it is normative and directive, sometimes strongly so sometimes less strongly so. It says these types of sexual unions are preferred, normative and other typees of sexual unions are (sometimes) banned or discouraged but (always) in some social sense, second class.
So, translated, your objective in trying to ban same-sex couples from marrying is because you want to make sure that lesbians and gays are kept fully aware that, in your view, their relationships are always second-class?
Well, that's honest, at least. Of course, that has nothing to do with protecting children: your objective is to attack children.
Both the young people who are LGBT and whom you want to grow up believing that any relationship they can have will be "second-class", and the children of same-sex couples, who will not only not have the benefits of married parents, but whom you want to grow up believing that the relationship their parents have is "second-class".
Adding a "fertility requirement" to marriage would reduce, not increase, its ability to protect children
Precisely why I constantly argued against your doing so, in previous posts when you were arguing that the reason same-sex couples couldn't be allowed to marry was because you wanted marriage to have a fertility requirement.
Now you're arguing instead that the function of marriage is to make lesbians and gays feel "second-class". That's a still uglier cheapening and shallowing of what ought to be a useful and valued public institution, not a means of making "the wrong kind of people" feel inferior.
possibly you had in mind for True Conjugality to be defined implicitly in terms of ability and intent to procreate [...] it looks worryingly like you didn't mean to define it in terms of anything but being opposite-sex
It is unclear whether you imagine that conjugal relations is NOT both-sexed or that you imagine that it is irrelevant to the social institution of marriage.
Do you espouse some superior concept of conjugality, your "True Conjugality"? Or do you propose that marriage is, afterall, not conjugal?
Perhaps the problem here is that you focus on this or that particular couple -- especially the apparent exceptions to what you think others are saying -- and you'd hope to create the illusion that there is an equivalency with the entire single sexed combination.
But do you support SSM as opening marital status for relationships presumed to be homosexed or for all relationships with no presumption of sexual relations?
Would you exclude any combination, as the right kind of wrong kind of people?
"Do you espouse some superior concept of conjugality, your "True Conjugality"? Or do you propose that marriage is, afterall, not conjugal?"
A bit of both. Actually, I'm not all that concerned about precisely how you define conjugality, I'm just concerned not to let you get away with the error/trick, of which conservatives are disproportionately fond, of smuggling in important premises in a definition. Whoever came up with the term conjugality in the first place obviously thought that the element of joining together was particularly important. You obviously grok the sentiment because you echo it as "combine", 'mate", "integrate" etc. Yet as a matter of actual practice, same-sex sex helps to join together, mate, combine, integrate same-sex couples in much the same way as opposite-sex sex does for opposite-sex couples. (Obviously it doesn't lead to procreation, but this subthread started because you were at pains to emphasize that procreation is not the only consideration.) If one had been raised on propaganda to the effect that same-sex sex was necessarily mindless, hedonistic and orgiastic, one might be inclined to doubt this, but one would be wrong. If one had been raised to believe that sexual contrast was crucial one might be inclined to doubt this, but one would be wrong. And if same-sex relationships bonded by same-sex sex work on similar dynamics to opposite-sex relationships, it might well be to society's advantage to incentivize them in the same way. (It's hard to say because you hint at non-procreative reasons why it's a good idea to encourage opposite-sex couples, but you don't ever really spell anything out.)
The question should then arise whether any opposite-sex aspect in the definition is actually important (so as to make the definition "cleave nature at the joints"), or whether it just reflects an irrational bias or a failure of imagination. _I_ think it's natural to extend the concept to include sexual bonding in both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. But I submit to the lurkers that while you probably have a contrary opinion, it's rather unlikely that there's any actual thought behind it. You're not the sort of person who would typically think to ask this sort of question or take it seriously. Rather you're the sort of person who gets emotionally invested in definitions (cf. your outburst over Jesurgislac's malaproprism "interfertile") and tries to project them onto nature. You're the sort of person to dismiss any evidence of similarity between same- and opposite-sex relationships as not "true" conjugality.
But you also asked about how conjugality in any sense relates to marriage. I take it for granted that traditional marriage is normally cemented by conjugality, and that SSM is a natural extension of the traditional concept because it will typically be cemented by conjugality in the extended sense. But to me the core of marriage is commitment. That's what the marriage vows ask for, and all they ask for, and I could care less where the commitment comes from as long as it's sincere. I don't think procreation or childrearing is necessarily part of the contract, but it's still the measure of the depth of the commitment being asked for: it has to be firm enough to stand a good chance of withstanding the stresses of raising a child together.
Would you exclude any combination, as the right kind of wrong kind of people?
as a matter of actual practice, same-sex sex helps to join together, mate, combine, integrate same-sex couples in much the same way as opposite-sex sex does for opposite-sex couples
No, not so much the same. Not in practice, but perhaps in theory. And for most SSMers, the theory is enough to claim even though it amounts to a template that is newly emerged on the fringes of the homosexual population.
You seem to be at pains to discount the potential for procreation, and the need for contingency, and in that you would minimize the significance to society of sex integration.
Make SSM stand on its own two feet. It may be worthwhile for society elevate SSM, but make the case.
Please explain the purpose of society, through the state, in elevating the sterile one-sex arrangement to a preferential status, such as on par with marital status. Marital status is unique. Apparently SSMers cannot make the case for SSM without piggybacking on the esteemed social institution of marriage. It is again more theory than practice.
As you concede, no single sex combo can procreate, yet you distort the words suite yourself. And you taylor the words to refer to homosexed relations, which is just a small subset of the same-sex arrangement. You'd exclude others from state recognition of that arrangement on par with the homosexed subset. So the sex must make the difference in your own categorization. What is the state's purpose in enacting a preferential status on that basis?
If one had been raised to believe that sexual contrast was crucial one might be inclined to doubt this, but one would be wrong.
Not contrasted, but complementary. Both sexes, not two warring sexes. The differences are not in opposition.
It matters not how one was raised but how one has learned of sex integration in the world. If one has instead focussed on sex segregation, the outlook might be as you describe. (See below re interfertile).
You're the sort of person to dismiss any evidence of similarity between same- and opposite-sex relationships as not "true" conjugality.
Sorts? Perhaps the "wrong kind"?
The attempt to personalize is noted. It signifies a profound concession when ad hom is the resort of a commentator who would otherwise seek disagreement on substance.
gets emotionally invested in definitions (cf. your outburst over Jesurgislac's malaproprism "interfertile") and tries to project them onto nature.
That was no outburst on my part. My comments were not drawn from an emotional investment in a definition. It was a correction of a misuse of the language. That misuse is highly charged with emotion. The core of the SSM argumentation depends on being packaged with hyper-sentimentalization which is irrelevant to the purpose of state recognition of marriage.
My comments on the repeated reference to "interfertile" human couples was an objective assessment of the misuse of a very useful word.
Substituting a sly political meaning into a word that refers to crossbreeding between species, and doing so knowing the substitution is factually incorrect and its usage is untenable, must mean that the abuser of the language wishes to demarcate men and women as producers of hybrids rather than generators of human beings.
That harkens back to the racist system that SSMers love to bring up with the deeply flawed analogy of race to sexual orientation. Perhaps there is no problem within the bubble of SSMers who resist the facts of sex integration, but it ought not blind the rest of society.
Do you defend such misuse of the word?
Is it not an emotional investment on the part of the person who so misuses the language to continue with that misuse even when she has clearly been corrected?
Perhaps one might read the links I've provided above before leaping to an emotionally satisfying and mistaken conclusion. I was going to say a thoughtless conclusion, but let's wait and see.
"Please explain the purpose of society, through the state, in elevating the sterile one-sex arrangement to a preferential status, such as on par with marital status. "
Lurkers, see, it (almost) never fails. Despite entering this thread specifically to protest that ability to procreate is the be all and end all, Chairm is now hinting pretty openly that no matter what we decide about the other matters we were discussing, same-sex couples will never be entitled to marital status because they can't procreate. I would have sworn that I had been through a similar cycle with Maggie, which is why I was attributing a similar position to her above. However I may have been mistaken and if so I apologise. I will have to review the record.
Having conceded that the he espouses True Conjugality, while criticizing others for his perception of doing the same, Mark B. has yet to respond to the twice asked and basic question at issue here:
Would you exclude any combination, as the right kind of wrong kind of people?
"Having conceded that the he espouses True Conjugality, while criticizing others for his perception of doing the same, Mark B. has yet to respond to the twice asked and basic question at issue here:"
I don't think you get the idea of a True Scotsman argument (the prototype of your TC argument). It's when a person whittles a general definition down with arbitrary exclusions based on the claim that certain individuals' scottishness (or whatever) is inauthentic for mysterious reasons apparent only to the arguer. So whatever flaws of logic I may be guilty of it's not a TC, because I'm following the core metaphor (being yoked together) to its logical conclusion and being inclusive. Now inability to procreate is potentially relevant, but as I was pointing out, you got into this thread to protest the suggestion that procreation was the main issue, so I put it to the lurkers that you can't be serious about it and it doesn't count. I put it to them that _all_ you have is a series of unserious figleaves for an arbitrary judgement that "same-sex conjugality" is necessarily inauthentic, and that this is turn is an unserious figleaf for a True Marriage gambit.
"Would you exclude any combination, as the right kind of wrong kind of people?"
Quite frankly, no. Of course the obvious test case is incest where we genuinely don't want closely related people breeding. But marriage hasn't been a meaningful licence to have sex for a considerable time now, it's not salvagable as such, and while I don't particularly care to provoke a gut recoil reaction that obscures the argument, I see no point in humoring people with fond delusions that it's salvagable. If incestuous sex is a Bad Thing (which I gather it is because of the high risk of birth defects), we just make incestuous sex illegal, with stiff penalties (as it is anyway in many jurisdictions I understand), and be done with it. If closely related couples wish to attract fishbowl scrutiny (that they're not having illegal sex) by getting married, good luck to them.
And to answer the obvious next question, marriage isn't salvageable as a licence to have sex because a comfortable majority of people have adopted a car insurance model of risk management for sex and are happy with it. Consider: everytime you get behind the wheel of a car you run the risk of killing or injuring someone. Yet one doesn't hear sermons on the moral evil of driving. One doesn't even hear sermons on the moral evil of _recreational_ driving. It is accepted that meeting a basic standard of care, including driving a roadworthy vehicle, obeying traffic regulations, not driving while drunk, having insurance, etc, takes the basic fact of driving out of the moral sphere. There's still room for recriminations if a moment of stupidity causes an accident, but the basic action of driving is taken to be innocent. There's majority support for a similar attitude to sex, at least long the primary axis of premarital vs. marital. And it's not going to be turned around any time soon because the forces of traditionalism are collectively (present company perhaps excluded) way too unsubtle about wanting to ban premarital sex as an superstitious end in itself, and way too unsubtle about sabotaging safety measures to give them a pretext to do it. (cf.: "We couldn't possibly allow seatbelts, because that might give people the idea that driving was totally safe, and then they might engage in, shock, horror, recreational driving - the selfish hedonistic brutes!")
So if marriage is going to continue to stand for anything good (and there's lot's of good stuff that it could stand for), it has to be organized conceptually about something else besides sex or procreation, and I'm suggesting commitment. This preserves the part of the connection to procreation that was actually important: you need commitment to responsibly embark on having children (by direct procreation or otherwise).
Mark B., what you describe is far closer to Reciprocal Beneficiaries than to state recognition of the social institution of marriage.
what you describe is far closer to Reciprocal Beneficiaries than to state recognition of the social institution of marriage.
Hardly.
"Reciprocal Beneficiaries" make no lifelong commitment to each other, which MarkB has specified as one of his markers for marriage.
And marriage - though you consistently argue otherwise - does not include any legal requirement to have, or to be able to have, children.
RB can encompass a commitment for life.
Enactment of SSM would not include a legal requirement for a lifelong commitment.
SSMers look to the legal shadow of the social institution and mistake its protocols for what the state actually recognizes with a preferential status.
The lawful man-woman criterion signifies sex integration, conjugality, and the contingency for responsible procreation. It does not discriminate on the basis of sex nor sexual orientation.
The presumption that a marriage is conjugal is where the anti-incest laws and marriageability intersect, but this would be removed in Mark B.'s proposed change. Instead the state would be empowered to peer into marital beds of marriages it has licensed. It is much like the faux argument about sterility and the supposed significance of the lack a "requirement to have children"; the alternative universe would make premarital childbearing a prerequisite for marital status; and a Fertility Squad roaming the countryside in search of women in menopause.
But that stuff is all SSM diversions.
SSMers reject RBs because the SSM campaign emphasizes homosexed relations. What is the purpose of society, through the state, in granting a preferential status for the single sexed arrangment (of which the homosexed relationship is a subset) on that basis? There would be no requirement of homosex-related behavior, presumably, should SSM be enacted. Gut the marriage idea and the institution of its purpose, seems to be the explicit goal rather than an inadvertent byproduct of the SSM campaign.
I'm following the core metaphor (being yoked together)
Whence came the metaphor?
you got into this thread to protest the suggestion that procreation was the main issue
I entered to correct a misuse of the language which you over generously described as a malaproprism, thus conceding it needed correction.
Subsequently, I responded to the following misrepresentation:
everything they've said about marriage argues that they want it to be an exclusive club to which only the right kind of people are admitted
It is incorrect that "everything" that Maggie, nor I here, have said on the subject of marriage argues for an exclusive club.
Rather SSMers argue for sex-segregation to be raised in status on par with sex-integration.
When diversions go into the corn fields to draw attention to the Sterility Strawman, it is a sure signal that SSMers are arguing that the boundaries of marriageability ought to be tightened to exclude other people who are either medically disbled or elderly. That would still not extend marriageability to the entire one-sex-short arrangement but it is a blatant attempt to equate the form of such an arrangement with disability. Yet, it is insincere for SSMers do not argue that same-sex attraction is a disability.
The exercise of the choice to enter a non-marital alternative, such as a single-sex relationship, is a liberty exercise and not a right denied.
RB, or something like it, would be a very inclusive non-marital alternative accessible even to those single sex twosomes who would not convert their relationship to SSM. It seems to be just what Mark B. has described above.
"Substituting a sly political meaning into a word that refers to crossbreeding between species, and doing so knowing the substitution is factually incorrect and its usage is untenable, must mean that the abuser of the language wishes to demarcate men and women as producers of hybrids rather than generators of human beings. "
Oh. That's scary. I had taken this for pompous hyperventilating but to my alarm I see you're serious. So for what it's worth, no it doesn't _have_ to mean that. It _could_ just be a simple malapropism that's been picked up and copied. Moreover, that's _exactly_ what it is. Somebody thought that "interfertile" sounded cooler than just "fertile". No comparison to anything to do with different species is intended.
"That harkens back to the racist system that SSMers love to bring up with the deeply flawed analogy of race to sexual orientation."
Notwithstanding the above, we're deadly serious about the comparison with race. Of course it's by no means perfect in every respect, but the important aspects are spot on. First, sexual orientation is an innate characteristic like race. That assumes that one is using the term in the mainstream/gay-community sense of a fixed pattern of attraction to others of the same sex. Conservative christians seem to understand it differently (and others have picked up on their usage) which causes a lot of confusion. I gather they have in mind a pattern of _behaviour_ of regularly or even addictively having same-sex sex. But that won't do because (a) it's non-standard and (b) more importantly, it incorporates false assumptions about what's going on.
Being "gay" in the mainstream sense of same-sex attracted is the exact mirror image of the experience of the considerable majority of people. It's not in any way a learned response. It comes on full-strength and fully-formed right at puberty. People of the opposite sex just aren't arousing, whereas selected people of the same-sex are. It's instinctively obvious that it would be incredibly nice to get physical with some same-sex person you're attracted to, even if you're so homophobically brought up that it's pretty much literally unthinkable, and even if you're so sheltered that you have no idea how opposite-sex physicality is supposed to work, let alone what to do with a slot and a slot or a tab and a tab. That is, same-sex sex is the exact opposite of an addiction, where the desire to do a behaviour again is created largely or entirely by having done it before.
It's also worth noting that to say it's innate is not to say it's necessarily genetic. It remains a fair bet that it's genetic even though we haven't convincingly narrowed down one or more responsible genes or a strong inheritance pattern. But it doesn't matter, because "genetic" is just being used carelessly in these discussions as a crude proxy for "innate" or "immutable". It's innate in that it's manifest at the earliest time it could sensibly be manifest, and it doesn't change thereafter.
Second then, it's like race in that it attracts a lot of bigotry which causes wrecked lives and misery. (And no, I don't accept sincere religious belief as an excuse, any more than we accept it for slavery. Note that the Bible explicitly authorizes, not just poor Israelites selling themselves into temporary servitude but full-on, permanent chattel slavery of people bought from surrounding nations - Leviticus 25:44.) Of course racism and homophobia* each have many manifestations and there aren't good parallels for all of them, but it doesn't matter. In particular, the fact that racist bigotry is triggered primarily by the innate condition itself whereas homophobic bigotry is triggered mainly by a natural action (same-sex sex) in accomodation to an innate condition (same-sex attraction) is not significant. First what consenting adults do in private is no business of anyone else's in the first place. (To the standard slogan one should also add the fineprint that they're not entangled in other relationships or producing unwanted kids.) And the fact that the amount of pressuring and guilt-tripping required to same-sex attracted people into unsatisfactory opposite-sex relationships or out of any relationships at all is extremely psychologically damaging just raises the stakes from rudeness to a major evil.
Of course, in principle, opposition to SSM might be based on something other than homophobia (which by the way is intended as analogous to francophobia or racism rather than say claustrophobia), and I'm sure many contributors to md.com are trying after a fashion. Unfortunately (a) I don't buy that they've succeeded - there are just too many gaps in the logic concealing homophobic tacit premises, and (b) it's lipstick on a pig in any case because it's not representative of the broader alliance.
"Mark B., what you describe is far closer to Reciprocal Beneficiaries than to state recognition of the social institution of marriage."
Possibly. Without knowing exactly what you take to be implied by each of the terms, it's hard to say. If you had in mind the issue of whether a licence to have sex is included and the social institution of marriage as it stands today, then I would say no, because, although there's by no means a consensus, the majority understanding of marriage as a social institution has _already_ lost that implication. More likely of course you had in mind the conception of marriage in some golden age, in which case yes, but so what? You've lost that battle, and unless you can stuff several genies back into bottles, including banning birth control and returning women to domestic slavery (which I'm not at all interested in helping with), I don't see how you can retake the ground.
"Whence came the metaphor?"
The observed fact (observed by the coiner of the word) that sex helps draw together and bind together opposite-sex couples. And since the coiner probably didn't have the opportunity to observe stable same-sex couples, any opposite-sex implication in the word has to be considered suspect because it's as likely due to selection bias or arm-chair theorizing as any substantive reason.
"It is incorrect that "everything" that Maggie, nor I here, have said on the subject of marriage argues for an exclusive club."
Certainly hardly anything you say is an argument by you that marriage should be an exclusive club. This is not incompatible with the proposition that, with only modest allowance for hyperbole, "everything" you say argues that you _want_ it to be an exclusive club. And when you offer an argument in terms of conjugality as presumably relevant to a discussion where the claim is being made that it's all about procreation that suggests you're disputing that it's all about procreation. And when the argument about conjugality turns out to be a True Scotman argument and you quickly abandon it and revert to emphasizing procreation, that argues, whether you want it to or not, that you really just want to keep marriage an exclusive club (for straights) and you're just brandishing the nearest blunt logical weapon to hand at any time without regard to consistency.
It _could_ just be a simple malapropism that's been picked up and copied. Moreover, that's _exactly_ what it is. Somebody thought that "interfertile" sounded cooler than just "fertile". No comparison to anything to do with different species is intended.
It is to your credit that you'd offer a charitable "could be" scenario. I've done the same [see links above] by asking those who would unknowingly misuse the language to note that the word, fertile, is apt and that the use of the word, interfertile, is out of order when describing human fertility.
Neither you nor I can read the minds of the persisently deliberate misusers.
The intent has been stated. The goal is to describe same-sex couples as fertile couples. The penchant for sex-segregation stands front and center in how they get from A to B.
But whence came the core metaphor, being yoked together?
Please cite your source, because it would help in discussion of what looks to be your (mis)understanding of that which you would "follow to its logical conclusion".
"Please cite your source"
Oh please. The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary: "conjugal: of marriage or the relation between husband and wife. [...] conjugality [...] L /conjugalis/ f. /conjux/ consort (as COM-, /-jux/, /-jugis/ f. root of /jungere/ join)
"[....] being _yoked_ together?" [MB's emphasis]
Further to the above, "yoke" is from the same Indo-European root as join, cf. the Sanscrit "yuj": http://www.experiencefestival.com/yuj .
Maybe I did not communicate the question well enough. My fault.
I am interested in the source of the metaphor that carries you to the logical conclusion you have described.
Is it a religous source? Philosophical source? Folklore?
The metaphor was introduced by you as being central to your thinking on marriage; and I presumed it did not come from flipping through the pages of a dictionary.
This is an honest question asked in the hope of furthering the discussion.
"I am interested in the source of the metaphor that carries you to the logical conclusion you have described."
And I already gave it to you: the etymology. That's it. It's deliberately minimalistic.
"Is it a religous source? Philosophical source? Folklore?"
Probably none of the above. It's so basic as almost not to be a metaphor at all. Observe that most synonyms are also based on general purpose words meaning join: "marriage", "wedding", "(holy) union" etc.
"The metaphor was introduced by you as being central to your thinking on marriage; and I presumed it did not come from flipping through the pages of a dictionary."
It's not central to _my_ thinking about marriage, it's central to my critique of _your_ thinking. Given that you didn't define conjugality initially and have been evading defining it since, I took as a placeholder the least crumb of substance that your conception of conjugality could sensibly have had. And the argument I gave is intended as protoypical of the criticisms I would make if you added more detail in any of several obvious ways. After all, sex is only one of the things you might have had in mind as typical and characteristic of "the conjugal state or condition".
Of course, very possibly I'm being too clever. I was doing my duty and trying to salvage some hint of an argument from the fog of your essay, but it looks increasingly as though there wasn't anything to salvage.
So do you think that when I join someone waiting in line for the bus, I am having conjugal relations with that person? At what point does joining someone really mean something special, worthy of the word conjugal? I'll tell you - it is when the two people have sex, and enter into that state of not knowing if their relations might have just joined their DNA and created a child. If you wake up the next day wondering (sanely) if your union might have taken on a physical manifestation, then it was conjugal - you owe your faithfulness and love to that person now.
"So do you think that when I join someone waiting in line for the bus, I am having conjugal relations with that person?"
_I_ wouldn't say so, but Chairm might for all the detail he's given so far. I had mind more a whole list of things such as those Canadian courts have used to identify common-law marriages - http://www.egale.ca/index.asp?lang=E&menu=64&item=143 .
"At what point does joining someone really mean something special, worthy of the word conjugal? I'll tell you - it is when the two people have sex, and enter into that state of not knowing if their relations might have just joined their DNA and created a child. If you wake up the next day wondering (sanely) if your union might have taken on a physical manifestation, then it was conjugal - you owe your faithfulness and love to that person now."
That's all very poetic and I'd be sympathetic if you used it as the basis of an argument that some couples _should_ get married (or should be forced/strongly encouraged to), but Chairm was trying to make an argument that some couples _shouldn't_ be allowed to marry, so I don't see how it helps.
Mark B.,
Your words in this thread indicate you'd replace marriage, not open it up. Look into Reciprocal Beneficiaries (RB) as enacted in Hawaii. It is an expressly nonmarital alternative based on the merits of the trust relationship as established with affidavit.
If in your view, RB is not lacking somehow, perhaps you'd have ideas on how RB could be enhanced following the principles you have hinted at here.
The law can only shadow the social institution of marriage. But your comments point toward the close relationship model and I think that is more compatable with RB than with marriage.
Checkout the homepage:
http://www.marriagedebate.com/
Then see the link in the topright of the rightmost column:
"The Future of Family Law: Law and the Marriage Crisis in North America"
That report gives a good overview of the conjugal model versus the close relationship model.
* * *
Why should society, through the state, grant special status to the social institution of marriage? The purpose of that recognition -- subsequent to enactment of SSM -- would be .......?
"Your words in this thread indicate you'd replace marriage, not open it up."
No. I propose to keep the name and vast majority of the large corpus of marriage-related law exactly the same and just tweak the entry requirement. If you choose to throw a Not True Marriage tantrum as a result, that's your prerogative. However nobody appointed you the trustee of the concept so I shan't be taking much notice.
"Look into Reciprocal Beneficiaries (RB) as enacted in Hawaii. It is an expressly nonmarital alternative based on the merits of the trust relationship as established with affidavit."
That's ironic. I'm sure when you chose the phrase "trust relationship" you were trying to echo my concept of marriage as based on commitment. But in fact it couldn't be a more perfect summing up of the fact that RBs are precisely _not_ about commitment, in contrast to marriage, which already is. Although RBs are similar to marriage in an impressive number of ways, the key difference is that RBs can be terminated unilaterally at a moment's notice with no recourse to the court for alimony or division of property. That is, they're for people who are trusting (in the present tense) but not committed (in the future tense).
And of course, that's not an accident. RBs weren't primarily designed to serve _well_ the needs of couples who were trusting but not committed, as much as that might be the cover story or as worthy a project as that might be. They were primarily designed to serve _poorly_ the needs of same-sex couples who were not just trusting but _also_ committed. They're deliberately broken relative to marriage, mostly by way of a general "f--- you" to gay couples asking for marriage, but also partly by way of insinuating in particular that gay couples _couldn't_ be all that serious about their relationships.
"Why should society, through the state, grant special status to the social institution of marriage?"
How special and relative to what? So extremely special relative to being in a non-marital opposite-sex sexual relationship that almost no one chooses the latter? Then no reason. First, it's not directly possible - you can't pay or flatter people that much, you can only punish alternatives. Second, changing circumstances such as the advent of reliable contraception have, I would argue, made punishing alternatives not worth doing, taking the bad effects with the good. Third, enough people agree with me about point #2 that marriage as a social institution already has at best a modest status differential. Fourth, in view of #3, even if you thought it were worth trying to turn back the clock and could commandeer the mechanisms of the state to try, you would still probably fail because the state never did most of the enforcement in the old days to begin with and it's just not the sort of thing it's good at.
If on the other hand you mean just special enough that people already in committed relationships would look to marriage to protect those relationships, then there _is_ a reason: because it's a service that the government can provide to make people's lives better, that most people would be in a position to take advantage of at some time in their lives. It's not a very libertarian view of course, but then I'm not a libertarian and in fact I think libertarianism is dangerously stupid - up there with pure socialism.
The purpose of that recognition -- subsequent to enactment of SSM -- would be .......?"
Part I
The word marriage has such a time-honored, privileged position in all societies that it is understandable how some would like to apply it to any of their dear, "committed" relationships. The word can be changed to mean whatever an individual or a society wishes it to mean. So, if you wish to define the lifelong, committed relationship between a man and his faithful dog as a "marriage" you are free to do so.
But this is certainly not what has been universally understood by marriage since time immemorial. And it is not how the vast majority of humanity wishes to define marriage even today.
Through clever bombastic language, arguments are made to rationalize deconstructing the meaning and function of marriage so as to include almost any "committed" relationship under the "large corpus of marriage-related law" merely by just a "tweak" of "the entry requirement." Wow, some "tweak"! More like the breaching of the New Orleans' dams.
Well, though some judicial activists and politicians may welcome such sophistry to justify their homosexualist agenda, we, the more common folk, the vast majority of humanity, just ain't buying it. Marriage for us is really quite simply what it has always been understood to mean: The biologically complementary relationship between man and woman that may be blessed with the bearing of children. If the biological parts that differentiate the sexes do not complement each other and through which the relationship may be consummated, there can be no marriage. Homosexual relationships merely make a mockery, a sham of marriage. We, the voters, are not allowing it.
—
Part II
Though marriage has been universally understood, until a few recent aberrant decisions, as the biologically complementary relationship between man and woman that may be blessed by procreation, a society need not accept, need not privilege through special benefits, every form of marriage that meets this criteria. Societies have historically recognized, for instance, both incestuous and polygamous relationship as marriage, and they do fit the criteria of complementarity and procreation. Yet, for other reasons, both of these marriage forms may be rejected by our society. A society may also reject the marriage of individuals that may pass on to each other and/or to their progeny particular diseases. Age requirements may also be imposed. There may be other reasons to reject marriages meeting the fundamental criteria.
Society, that is the people, reserves the right to determine what constitutes marriage for itself. In a democracy the people may even decide to call "marriage" that which thoroughly fails the objective, time-honored meaning of marriage. They may decide to offer special privileges to almost anything they wish to call "marriage," any so-called "committed" relationship. An entire family or tribe may be called a marriage as its members are so "committed" to each other.
The people may even amend the Constitution. Hmmm.
If the laws are changed to grant special privileges to relationships that are merely called "marriage" through the deconstruction of both the universal meaning and function of marriage, then of course marriage has become meaningless and special benefits are merely handed out to whatever two or more people wish to have them.
The idea of marriage as a possibly permanent, deliberately un-procreative relationship, lacking even biological complementarity is simply an absurdity. It takes a particular "intellect" to fabricate such nonsense and of course there are unfortunately too many gullible people ready to throw out common sense and buy the Brooklyn Bridge or Lincoln Tunnel from varied con men.
Mark B., it was not my intent to upset the bee in your bonnet. Calm down and yoke yourself to the task at hand.
Please take note of the comparison of the conjugal model and the close relationship model which appears in the overview brief that can be found on the homepage of this website.
Your words continue to amount to a call for RB despite your stated intent. Your previous comment pushes more toward RB than you seem to give yourself credit for.
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Part III
Mark B offers us a compendium of the homosexualist's party line. He has bought it all and strives to secure a place among the chief propagandists of the party. Obfuscation of meanings and distortion of word use is a key tool of the propagandist.
Foremost in the homosexualist propagandist's quest today is the capturing of the word marriage. Some people are being confounded by their convoluted verbiage and superficial appearance of rationale. My advice is to keep it simple and straightforward and don't let them drag you into a debate on their terms and their fabricated terminology.
Marriage is what it is and always has been. It is not what they would like it to be. There is a difference between civil marriage and objective marriage. Objective marriage is defined by a higher order and relates specifically to the natural order of the human being with respect to the complementarity of the sexes and the need of the species to procreate. From the higher order it receives its direction of monogamy and temporal indissolubility. Objective marriage may or may not correspond to the institution of civil marriage. Civil marriage brings with it the subjectivity of the members of the society and the established structure of the society. It is a social construct. There may come a point when civil "marriage" is so far removed from objective marriage that no one seeking an objective marital relationship could in good conscience solicit a civil "marriage" license for its rights or benefits as it would make a mockery of their marriage. Instituting homosexual relationships as civil "marriage" brings us to this point as such relationships are totally devoid of the essential criteria for marriage. Instituting polygamy does not bring us to this point but it should be rejected for other reasons.
It is my recommendation that no one seek a civil "marriage" license in Massachusetts. Let them obtain their marriage licenses in another state where government has not defiled the meaning and function of marriage.
"Mark B., it was not my intent to upset the bee in your bonnet."
Then get a clue and don't compare deliberately broken schemes like that in Hawaii to anything I propose. Them's fightin' words.
"Please take note of the comparison of the conjugal model and the close relationship model which appears in the overview brief that can be found on the homepage of this website."
OK. I don't actually see any non-question-begging difference. Let's see. Proposed CM characteristics: Sexual union. Typically, but only typically, yes, for any such union. Husband and wife. Yes by definition for opposite sex couples, question-begging for same-sex couples. Sexual fidelity. Typically yes, but negotiable away in either case. Mutual caretaking. Typically yes in any case. Joint parenting. Typically yes for opposite-sex couples in either case, not uncommon for same-sex couples. Fundamentally child-centred. Only indirectly. See following. Proposed CR characteristics: primarily satisfying needs of adults. Not interestingly different from previous.
This supposed difference between child-centred and adult-centred is precisely why I was asking about what the status of marriage was relative to. There's nothing about even the most traditional concept of marriage that's more child-centred than adult-centred in and of itself. Marriage only looks child-centred if you stamp out all childbearing outside marriage, which traditionally was approximated by trying to stamp out all sex outside marriage. That made the child-centredness mostly illusory because most people got married for the very adult-centred reason of wanting to have sex. And given that you've irretrievably lost the battle to stamp out sex outside marriage for reasons that I've outlined, the idea that marriage is the least bit child-centred is completely illusory and the only message you send by outlawing SSM is that same-sex sex is evil.
Mark B., your description of the conjugal model matches SSM argumentation but is not a fair representation.
I'll restate what I think the brief has already adequately described.
Conjugality is the sexbridging and procreative dimension of marriage. Given human nature, conjugality is not always marital and taking that into account is culturally intrinsic to the social institution's legal shadow.
In law and in culture marriage is the sexual union of man and woman (not just erotic sex play, but complementarity of both sexes) within the constraints (and advantages) of sexual fidelity, mutual caretaking, and joint parenting of their children.
Marriages are presumptively procreative. Particular marriages disabled due to misfortune, or due to the universal process of ageing, are not weeded out because they do not overtun this very useful and purposeful presumption which allows for marriage to be flexible enough to accomodate shortfalls. For example, sexbridging is positively expressed in law and in practice where the child of a man's wife is presumed borne of him.
One must take the social institution as a whole, not as a grocery list of bits and pieces. Overall, marriage is intensely sex-integrative for the benefit of the couple and of children they may have and would educate to survive and contribute in our society; the well-ordered regeneration of society is what interests the state in its recognition of the package deal that is the social institution.
By "regeneration" this clearly is not restricted to procreation, but it cannot exclude procreation. (Prior to reading Cere's brief, I had referred to the procreative model but that sometimesthis confused SSMers who would then translate my words into the strawman, "marriage is ony for the proven couples proven to be procreative".) This is where the inherently normative aspect cannot be dismissed as inconvenient for those who would choose nonmarital alternatives.
One can take marriage apart at least in theory, like a motor car, and examine its parts one by one on the workbench. But like any social institution, marriage is the sum of its parts, and is not merely the itemized list of its disconnected components; assembled (or rather not unassembled) and primed and cared for, it enables driver and navigator (and the kids in the backseat) to get from A to B. Parts strewn on the garage floor, or parceled for storage on the shelf, do not function as a whole motor car. The parts might be repurposed or discarded, but indivdually they would signify a dissassembled thing, not the thing itself.
The unique status of marriage arises out of its conjugality, the integration of the sexes, its wholeness. In our society we require equal participation of both sexes in each marriage. The state does not intrude deeper than this and that is best for our liberty.
It is very unclear what societal interest there would be in a purely erotic union between any two individuals. There is a great societal interest in espousing the union of the sexes in such a way as to minimize fatherlessness in our society.
A single sexed arrangment need not be based on erotic sexual bonding. The homosexed pair is a subset of nonmarital arrangements that have been emphasized by SSMers, as you have done here. If there is a societal interest that focusses on such bonding, please spell it out, because thusfar it does not appear to be something that ought to move the state's hand. In fact, previously, you declared that such erotic sexual matters were best left behind the legal veil of privacy.
Marriage is public. In elevating marital status, the society, through the state, acknowledges the conjugality that integrates the sexes, one with the other, and provides the for a relatively non-coercive contingency for procreation.
All else -- nonmarital sexual relationships, extramarital childbearing, third party procreation, adoption -- are reflected in the law through more coercive measures (some less so than others) to makeup for shortfalls that would otherwise be mitigated within the social institution of marriage.
The growth of these other areas increases the state's presence in private matters and will incrementally diminish liberty of all -- not just those directly impacted by the state's arm reaching in.
SSM is sex-segregative in every instance. To raise it to the level of preferentail status reserved for sex-integration needs a great deal of justification and that challenge has yet to be well-met by SSMers. It is not far from enough to assert that SSM is outlawed (it is not) or to allege that those with whom SSMers disagree are motivated by animus.
Argh. So many typos.
Two clarifications:
1. Marriage is more than the sum of its parts.
2. It is not enough to assert that SSM is outlawed (it is not) or to allege that those with whom SSMers disagree are motivated by animus.
Jose, I agree with most of what you have said. (Note: Jose and I are both guest contributors to Opine.)
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Mark B.,
RB is expressly nonmarital. If your chief complaint is that RB is not marriage in everything but name, I think you have missed the point. By the way, the phrase, trust relationship, long predates our discussion here. As does RB. As does provision for affidavit to establish RB.
You emphasized adult commitment, which is at the heart of the close relationship model in the brief by Cere. You seem to feel this is sufficient to claim that RB is "deliberately broken", and yet you have continued to itemize how marriage, in your estimation, is irretrievably broken. Even if what you say is true, it does not follow that either RB or marriage are damaged beyond repair, vitalization, or deliberate public utility.
SSM argumentation relies very heavily on making much of negative trends as the means by which to gain traction in discussions about marriage. (From my observations, most people respond to negative trends by feeling even greater concern about marriage and diminished support for SSM.)
But what you have espoused here is much closer to RB than to marriage; this indicates that RB is a step in the direction your words would take us. Rather than deconstruct the social institution of marriage to make it more like RB, we might seek to revitalize marriage in our society. On the other hand, RB is new and still evolving as a nonmarital alternative and perhaps could be enhanced in its provisons for dissolution, for example.
You reject RB, as other SSMers have done, precisely because you place great esteem in homosexed relations. But should that move the state's hand in elevating such private relations on par with conjugal relations? I thought you had declared that private erotic behavior is not of public interest. On the other hand, conjugality -- as described by Cere -- is very much a societal interest.
"RB is expressly nonmarital. If your chief complaint is that RB is not marriage in everything but name, I think you have missed the point."
This is a good opportunity to clarify my position. Since you mentioned RB first and suggested that the CR model was similar, I focussed initially on RB. My main complaint against RB was that it's not a good-faith implementation of any coherent vision about anything. It's nothing but a way of being seen to be doing some token amount for gay couples while avoiding acknowledging that what they need has already been designed and debugged: it's marriage. I'm sure that some of the people who laboured on it were genuinely concerned to do as well as they could for gay couples, but it doesn't change the fact that the most important design goal was to fall short of marriage in some conspicuous way. I don't think I'm being unreasonable in taking offence that you would compare _any_ proposal of mine to RB.
Then you emphasized the Close Relationship Model, so I went back and read up on that. As I pointed out, the descriptions of the Conjugal Model and the CRM are tendentious to the point of dishonesty. The CM misrepresents the Traditional Model and arbitrarily appropriates every virtue, whereas the CRM is portrayed as the epitomy of selfishness. For a while I thought that there might be something salvagable and I might be able to take the side of the CRM for the purposes of debate. After all, in terms of emphasis at least, the CM really is a little more child-centred than the CRM. But in the course of subsequent debate, I've reconsidered. It's too much of a straw man and I'm as offended to be associated with it as with RB.
"You emphasized adult commitment, which is at the heart of the close relationship model in the brief by Cere."
I certainly emphasized adult commitment, but equally certainly it's not at the heart of the CRM as portrayed. The CRM is a straw man that has no heart by design. On the one hand, as I already pointed out, Cere appropriates commitment (between adults) as a virtue of the CM, even though it detracts from its supposed child-centredness. On the other hand, Cere specifically avoids attributing it to the CRM, using instead the noncommital description that it is to "satisfy the needs of adults".
"You seem to feel this is sufficient to claim that RB is "deliberately broken", [...]"
Yes.
"[...] and yet you have continued to itemize how marriage, in your estimation, is irretrievably broken."
Certainly I've continued to itemize how marriage is irretrievably not the way it was.
"Even if what you say is true, it does not follow that either RB or marriage are damaged beyond repair, vitalization, or deliberate public utility."
I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. RB isn't worthless, it just deliberately falls short of the needs of the main group that it was aimed at. Marriage isn't useless, it just can't be the way it was.
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