From Patrick Lee, John N. and Jamie D. McAleer Professor of Bioethics at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
Much of what is covered here is, for us here at pw, old ground: the definition of marriage as a type of relationship turns on just how we identify what is special about that type such that the government has a unique and legally defensible interest in promoting it (I don’t share with the libertarians the easy talking point argument that the state should get out of the marriage business altogether; rather, it is, in my opinion, in the fundamental interests of a state whose foundational role is to protect individual sovereignty to promote procreation and social stability for children in a way that is largely free from government intrusion. The simplest and most effective way to do this has historically been to promote traditional marriage arrangements. That is to say, a society organized around a rule of law has a defensible motivation for promoting certain relationships through law so long as in doing so it doesn’t run afoul of the natural rights of individuals protected by the Constitution).
And this has always been the rub for me: what would be the legal upshot of a decision — often on the part of federal courts acting against the will of the people in a given state or locality — that expands the definition of marriage without taking into account just what it is about marriage that makes it marriage, in the traditional sense, and separates it from other social arrangements for the purposes of state promotion. Or perhaps better put, what is the upshot of such a decision when that decision, granted authority oftentimes by a single judge or a small judicial oligarchy, of necessity reimagines the unique aspect of traditional, conjugal-based marriages and shifts the legal fulcrum for defining what constitutes marriage to something else entirely (be it “love,” or “the promise of permanence,” or “household stability” — with this last easily accomplished by, as Lee notes, celibate women running an orphanage, for example).
Having said all this, I believe the states individually, through their electorates, have a right to — among themselves — determine whether or not they as a state want to re-examine traditional marriage definitions and expand them for purposes of promoting certain types of arrangements. With the caveat that, should a state chose to do so, no other state is under any obligation to recognize as legally-binding that re-definition. This is, in my view, a fair trade-off with those who promote same-sex “marriage” (rather than same-sex unions). Because there is no natural right being violated in a state’s decision to sanction as preferable one social arrangement over the next when no individual liberty is being violated as a result: homosexuals are free to marry, though to do so would require of them that they meet the conditions for what “marriage,” as defined traditionally and sanctioned by the state, actually is — just as those who wish to receive driver’s licenses must meet certain conditions for what comes to count as a licensed driver. That the former is more emotionally charged as an issue doesn’t change the basic legal underpinnings that obtain.
It is the obligation of those promoting same-sex marriage to convince voters in individual states that the definition of marriage promoted by the state should be expanded to include additional types of couplings — and in doing so, they must make a coherent case for how and why their preferred coupling will fit into the definition of marriage without fundamentally changing it legally.
I’m not terribly interested, frankly, in the social arguments, save how they redound to what is or isn’t the proper role of government and the courts. And it has been my contention for years now that to define what has never been “marriage” as marriage creates all sort of potential legal problems for the state in terms of what, as a matter of precedence going forward, it can or cannot promote or constrain as a matter of law.
I realize that, coming from a self-described classical liberal, this argument for the government’s right to promote certain social arrangements may seem strange to some. But when looked at from my perspective, what I’m protecting here is a strict reading of the Constitution and negative rights, and the role of the states as co-equal to the courts. I may find it socially wrong to keep the definition of marriage constrained by what some may see as hoary traditions. But what I believe only really matters to the extent that I can convince others. We are, as a whole, a reflection of the state that governs with our consent (supposedly, at least); and so if we as a whole determine that it is in the best interests of society to promote traditional marriage as a way to protect and promote the family architecture that, once extended, will itself best promote a stable citizenry, individual autonomy, and self-reliance (as children reared in such an architecture reach civic maturity), I can think of no Constitutional constraint to any individual on just such an overarching social agreement.
To believe in the “right” of same-sex marriage — in the absence of a coherent justification for a definitional expansion, or a coherent constitutional argument outlining where such restrictions run afoul of individual natural rights — is to believe in, and press for, positive rights.
Which, that may be the faster and more convenient way to press a given agenda; but it is the very kind of maneuvering that has worked over time to unmoor us from the Constitution.
Discuss.
fucking idiot
pre-emptively
Doing stuff with jugs is great fun: like jug bands, for instance.
the Constitution has dick to say about marriagings that’s why people want to scribble on it for to make it to where only Santorum style marriagings are allowed or whatever
Art. IV sec. 2
Amendments IX, X
nothing to say at all
At least they’re willing to scribble on it, happy. Your team just wave your arms and scream that the words mean what you want them to mean, without ever going through the trouble of writing down a set of definitions or strictures.
I’ve known more than a few husband types who thought their marriages violated the 13th too E.
No Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination or double jeopardy either sdferr.
I’ll agree that the state has a right to legally define domestic arrangements, but I disagree that they can redefine marriage. The reason being that marriage pre-exists the state.
Barney Frank can call his domstic partner, “spouse,” “husband,” “hubbie,” just as I can call my wife “the ol’ ball ‘n chain,” but both usages are colloquial. They’re not married anymore than I’m a slave.
Slave to your wife? No. (Ok., well, maybe)
Slave to you and your wife’s progeny? That gets a little more complicated, perhaps more like indentured servitude.
At Common Law, a marriage has not taken place until it has been “cosummated,” which is to say, until there is a physical act of intercourse between the newly married husband and wife. If the newly-married couple steps out of the wedding chapel and husband is struck down by a falling meteor, no marriage has occurred for the purposes of distribution of the man’s estate. I still do not understand how two men can together accomplish a “marriage.”
I’d take minor exception with the use of the terms “gay marriage” and “traditional marriage” in that it implies that there is more than one kind of marriage and leads to the sort of sophistry with which we’re now dealing. They did it with “gender” in place of “sex,” and now we have to put up with boys in skirts in the girlscouts. It’s all part of the same whole, of course, but we begin to lose when we accept the other side’s word games.
Alec — I just tire of putting “” around marriage every time. I expect from context the idea is clear.
Well, certainly one definition of marriage pre-exists the state.
I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say marriage is biological.
No. But it is natural.
I had an interesting discussion with a lawyer about this very subject not too long ago.
We were arguing the federal government overturning Prop 8.
The lawyer argued that the advocates for Prop 8 were arguing from the incorrect premise. I argued that federal courts had no business ruling in the first place. We argued back and forth a bit (the lawyer admitted I was on pretty solid ground in regards to the 10th Amendment) with the lawyer arguing that the State was breaching “separation of Church and State.”
We finally agreed that churches can marry anyone they want. However, States retain the right to recognize marriage as the State sees fit.
…churches can marry anyone they want.
And that brings it all around again. Churches have been free, and still remain free to do whatever they want. The acts simply stand alone and do not have any force of law behind them, a situation no different from baptism, or myriad other rituals.
If our society already had a long standing tradition of same sex couples formalizing their living (and coital) relationships via religious (or even other social) institutions, and significant numbers of people abiding by such traditions, then perhaps the States could be justified in recognizing and codifying these relationships into law. Much like our law has adopted a common pre-existing religious practice of marking the transition to adulthood by a specific chronological age.
As they currently exist the attempts at revising the definition of marriage are a top down effort to impose that which does not readily exist in nature via fiat.
I might be hesitant to look to historical precident on marriage. It’s only been in our time, the last century, that women who are not of the gentry have been treated as more than chattel and possessions of their husbands. Traditional marriage vows included the phrase “to love, honor, and obey“. I can’t tell you how many old women I have talked to who refused to utter that particular phrase in their vows.
Historically, wives have been the property of their husbands, to be treated as they wished with little recourse on the part of the women. Beatings, marital rape and worse have been with us since the dawn of time.
Way to embrace the nihilism leigh.
Oh bullshit, Ernst.
Yeah, no point in noting historical precedent on anything. I mean it is only withing the last hundred or so years that the franchise has been extended to all – women, negroes, even poor inbred white mountain folk…
If you think it’s bullshit leigh, then you make an argument defending the traditional definition of marriage. And if not, be so good as to share why not.
After you do, (or don’t) I’ll tell you why I think your 16 is nihilistic.
My reaction of “bullshit” was to your suggesting that I am embracing nihilism by referencing a point of fact.
I have never embraced the idea that marriage is a relationship that is open to persons of the same sex. It flies in the face of my beliefs.
Your argument against the “historical case” for marriage is nihilistic leigh, whether you recognize it or not.
You’re letting the libtards do your thinking for you by pre-emptively accepting their premises. Don’t do that.
How is it nihilistic to note that traditionally a wife was expected to serve and obey her husband, and a husband was expected to protect and provide for his wife? How is it nihilistic to note that traditionally the expectations for wives were enforced a lot more strictly?
I, for one, think it’s a lot more enlightening (not to mention more honest) to recognize the shortcomings of the traditional order, if one is going to argue the advantages of same. Nihilism doesn’t enter into it.
It’s only been in our time, the last century, that women who are not of the gentry have been treated as more than chattel and possessions of their husbands.
Only in our time?
The New Testament prescribes a highly reciprocal relationship between spouses, and the Old Testament doesn’t exactly prescribe female slavery to the husband.
Furthermore, marriage has been practiced by all cultures across the entirety of human civilization. How they perceived marriage differed, but the actual setup was limited to one man and one woman or one man and multiple women (always included at least one of each sex).
The idea that traditional marriage equals female slavery is Leftist hysteria.
Furthermore, God instituted marriage with Adam and Eve, and that humans have gone ahead and corrupted aspects of it from time to time. Our distortions don’t need to enter into the definition of marriage.
Because Squid, we’re aren’t talking about the shortcoming of the traditional marriage. What we’re talking about is the definition of marriage.. Marriage is this, not that. How people have behaved, failed to behave or misbehaved within that definition is irrelevant to the definition. What the argument liegh presented reduces to is this: you heteros have so befouled and besmirched and made a mockery of marriage that you have no right to say that gay marriage makes a mcokery of the idea of marriage, so you might as well let us homos have a crack at it.
Obedient submission to marital rape! (my gloss) is the same kind of canard as the Founders owned slaves who they thought were only part human!. That’s nihiliism too.
Marriage/The Constitution don’t mean anything anymore. So they mean nothing. So let’s redefine them.
No. Let’s not.
Dicentra, have it your way. I am neither a leftist or hysterical.
Just going by the horror stories of the marriages of many of my elder female relatives, marriage was hardly reciprocal. The men controlled the money and property, all of which was in the man’s name. Bad marriages left little room for recourse. You literally made your bed and lay in it.
That is not to say that all marriages were like unto prison. But there is a lot of daylight between a good marriage and an awful one.
I, for one, think it’s a lot more enlightening (not to mention more honest) to recognize the shortcomings of the traditional order
The traditional order is one man, one woman.
The expectations concerning the roles of each are irrelevant to the argument, unless there’s something about “the traditional order,” that structurally and naturally compels the sexes to conform to particular roles.
Because if you’ve got two people, one of each sex, what’s to stop them from being full partners, two oxen equally yoked? What compels the woman to hold the status of “slave”?
Nothing.
Ergo, there’s no reason to include roles in the definition of “traditional marriage.”
None of the horror stories have Thing One to do with the fact that marriage was defined as one man, one woman.
They have to do with the fact that people behaved horribly and society left no recourse for escape.
Don’t conflate bad marriage law with “traditional marriage.” We’re just talking about whether the one man, one woman aspect is foundational to the term “marriage.” The existence of same-sex marriage wouldn’t have changed any of the horror stories.
I’m not sure what that means, really.
There’s a certain irony in instructing someone else to not let others instruct them, I think. Not that I’m going anywhere with that idea. Just…struck me as funny, is all.
I have never embraced the idea that marriage is a relationship that is open to persons of the same sex.
Did you miss this above? The one doing the conflating is you and Ernst putting words in my mouth.
Therefore, if we’re looking at the history of marriage, we’re looking to see, for example, if any other society has expanded the definition of marriage to include same-sex couplings, and if so, what was the result?
Ernst and Squid: you seem to be arguing past the point as articulated by Professor Lee (and to some extent, me). Namely, that we aren’t really looking at the totality of the traditional definition of marriage with whatever its shortcomings. What we are interested in is the intersection of the traditional definition of marriage with our own Constitution and Declaration.
If we believe, with Lincoln, that the Constitution and Declaration not only laid the foundations for the refutation of slavery and the suffrage movement, but in fact necessitated them, we need only concentrate on how the traditional definition of marriage is folded into our system of individual autonomy as protected by a limited government.
And so where we need to focus is on that part of the definition that allows it to lay special claim to promotion by a government with limited powers. The rest is a matter of, historically, refining the parts of the traditional definition that don’t work within our Constitutional framework to bring them more in order with it.
Which is why I noted earlier that marriage may be pre-state but that doesn’t make it biological or essential. Instead it has been socially preferable — and there are solid reasons to promote the arrangement and give it preferential consideration if you are governing a society, I think. Especially when doing so doesn’t take away anyone else’s natural rights.
Oops. Dicentra beat me to it.
Watch it, Slart. Ernst will whip a latin phrase at you.
As long as it doesn’t have a penis attached to it, I think I can handle it.
Wait…
leigh, no one is saying that you’re a supporter of same-sex marriage. We’re pointing out that the content of your arguments is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Jeff is talking only about the issue of expanding the definition of marriage to exclude one of the sexes, and whether it’s justified on the grounds he’s laid out, and whether government recognition of any specific type of union is a violation of Constitutional precepts.
Then people observed that marriage, as historically practiced or defined, has never excluded one of the sexes.
And then you said that it’s not a good idea to look at “traditional marriage” on account of the horror stories, as if the horror stories were also within the definition of traditional marriage.
But that’s how Lefties define traditional marriage. (I had some lefty friends who hesitated to get married because of the historical acceptance of marital rape.) THE LEFT frequently and regularly includes the bad behavior as a component part of “traditional marriage” and uses the horror stories as an excuse to tear it down.
Hence the protestations. You were unwittingly using the Left’s definition of “traditional marriage” instead of a saner one.
That’s all.
Jeff, I agree that I’m arguing outside your point; I wasn’t trying to address it, I must confess. My concern was that Leigh prefaced her comment with this: I might be hesitant to look to historical precident on marriage. I took her point to be that arguing from “the way things have always been” is fraught with hazards relating to the fact that those things weren’t always sunshine and daisies. Sometimes, you need a reason beyond “that’s the way we’ve always done it” if you want to be persuasive. For she and I to be tarred as nihilists for such an observation seems unfair.
sdferr: Your quoted passage is intended to show that women fared differently under different types of government, and that there is no monolithic concept of marriage even in the past?
Also, section 16?
Typical men, figuring that women should be equally content with one suitable husband as with another. [spit]
For she and I to be tarred as nihilists for such an observation seems unfair.
The leftists are the nihilists, and you were borrowing their definitions. Nobody here was making a “that’s the way we’ve always done it” argument, except to note that “that IS they way we’ve always done it,” and there must be a reason.
So let’s suss it out.
QED:
(I don’t share with the libertarians the easy talking point argument that the state should get out of the marriage business altogether; rather, it is, in my opinion, in the fundamental interests of a state whose foundational role is to protect individual sovereignty to promote procreation and social stability for children in a way that is largely free from government intrusion.
The fact of the matter remains marriage existed long before the US government.
Back then, the government had nothing to do with it and it was fine.
Then people started using the government to make it ‘better’, to tweak the tax code to incentivize the type of behavior they wanted to see more of.
If you accept the premise, how can you bitch when it gets turned against you?
Why do single people owe more taxes because they haven’t married? Do we have a duty to the State to replace ourselves before we die? If so, what the hell are we and what purpose do we serve? That would seem to suggest we exist to serve the government.
‘Interest’, by the way, is a funny word.
It is often offered as a limiting factor towards foreign policy – we should only intervene to ‘protect American interests abroad’.
But what the hell is an interest? It is so broad as to be meaningless, commerce clause style. It’s no limitation at all.
You could rationalize anything as in our ‘interests’. It would be in our interest to have a stable and democratic trading partner in North Korea… thus we may use to justify invading them?
Only if you first separate it from the very real and concrete interest I outlined — namely, that a particular family architecture best protects and raises those children who will carry on the social contract, as well as promotes the production of such future citizens.
So while I’m sure you could rationalize anything as in our interests, I’m more interested in hearing how they are so, and what the Constitutional and legal arguments are for such things.
I’m no fan of homo marriage but if you want to point the finger at something that is really destroying institutional marriage it is no-fault divorce.
The extent to which the State must be involved in ‘recognizing and codifying’ such a thing, is the same to which it should enforce all personal contracts and contract law. Personal contracts should be legally binding.
No fault divorce literally hollows marraige, because it has made it something less than a legally binding contract. A legally unbindable contract. A tax status.
Only if you first separate it from the very real and concrete interest I outlined — namely, that a particular family architecture best protects and raises those children who will carry on the social contract, as well as promotes the production of such future citizens.
But Jeff, you can claim similar interests in many many things.
Someone could argue the state has an interest in having healthy citizens.
Certainly!
Should they get involved in our excercise routines and diets?
Yes. But we’re dealing with a legal issue in the US.
As to what the government did to make marriage better — provide child tax credits, etc., — again, this has no bearing on what it is that is unique in the definition of marriage that gives a populace supposedly governed by their own consent just cause to lay out its preferences. Which is what my argument is about.
I accept the premise that marriage, though it existed before the state, is still a human social institution. It is not a biological imperative. And therefore, if it gets turned against me by the will of an electorate — itself a human social institution — I have an obligation to try to turn it back, if I don’t agree.
Because that’s what we’ve decided as a society best promotes the health and continuation of the society. Single people owe more taxes because they aren’t producing more future tax payers, is one way of looking at it, I guess. At least, that’s what we as a culture have come to believe works best for keeping the society healthy and functioning, both now and in perpetuity.
OK, then, instead of the State having an interest, how about the sovereign citizenry having an interest in fortifying those institutions that serve as a bulwark against State intrusion, namely, families and churches?
On account of those institutions being the primary means to pass down value systems that emphasize individual responsibility and fealty to a power higher than (or other than) the State?
Furthermore, marriage is instituted to account for the natural result of coitus, i.e., offspring. State recognition is intended to ensure that the offspring have claim on the resources (including care) of their parents (biological or adoptive).
Because otherwise, you’ve got kids running around in the streets, and they grow up to be predators or at least dysfunctional elements.
It’s the citizenry that has an interest in bringing to bear the state’s legal authority in linking children and their parents, such that deadbeat parents can either be made to provide for their offspring, or adoptive parents can be provided for the children.
Yeah, IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN, except that it actually is.
At least, that’s what we as a culture have come to believe works best for keeping the society healthy and functioning, both now and in perpetuity.
This is true.
It is also true that we as a culture have come to do a lot of things, to shred the Constitutional limitations of government and to drag it’s regulations into virtually every aspect of our lives.
I do not think it good that we’ve done so.
To the extent Government comes back to bite us in the ass, hollows out the Marriage we gave it to manage, and turns it into tax credits for homosexuals… It strikes me as ‘duh’. Like a wages of sin is death, thing. Of course they fucked it up and ruined it. That’s what Gubmint does.
Someone could argue the state has an interest in having healthy citizens.
Moreso than the parents?
That’s where Statism gets off, in usurping the sovereign rights of parents, and assuming that the State knows better than parents and therefore is within its rights to supplant them.
It’s one of the foundational tenets of our government schools: to undo parental “mistakes.”
Once you recognize that parents are primarily responsible for children’s welfare, then the state only needs to make sure that children have parents, and leave it at that.
OK, then, instead of the State having an interest, how about the sovereign citizenry having an interest in fortifying those institutions that serve as a bulwark against State intrusion, namely, families and churches?
Di…
you want to use government as a bulwark against government?
I think those things are great, really. I like families and churches and communities. Why do these things need government to be themselves, free of government? Let us do these things privately, in our families and churches and communities.
Because otherwise, you’ve got kids running around in the streets, and they grow up to be predators or at least dysfunctional elements
Are you not familiar with the Catholic Church charities?
Do you think if the Government gets out of marraige, the Catholics will send the orphans to work the mines?
We did not have this kind of “single-mother” problem BEFORE Government was involved with marraige… Now we have to have government-involvement to prevent the thing government involvement caused?
And?
Yes, you can make the claim. But the point here is that this particular claim is backed by a very long and fairly consistent history, which serves as evidence by which to judge its efficacy as an outline for social architecture. Those who wish to change it need to convince those who don’t why it should be changed. And so far, all I see are the pitfalls — particularly when all that is really being changed is that the traditional definition of marriage is being forcibly expanded to include not marriage, with no real change in how people can choose to live. And that opens up all sort of legal problems going forward.
I’m borrowing nobody’s definitions. You’re the one pretending that wives being subservient to their husbands is a “horror story,” when for much of history it was called a “fact of life.”
Frankly, I still can’t see where this sort of social engineering is any of the State’s business. At the risk (okay, certainty) of lapsing into personal anecdote: I had dinner this weekend with a lesbian couple. One’s a well-paid professional, and the other is a stay-at-home mom to the son she bore (via donor sperm) 2 years ago. They’re an interesting couple, and I quite enjoy our dinners together, apart from being bored silly by some of the stories about babies and dogs, and from their boilerplate Leftist political beliefs that I sometimes find it difficult to challenge in a friendly dinner setting.
Be that as it may, they are completely committed to one another, and to their son. They seem to be exemplary parents. They are every bit as boring and bourgeois as everyone else in my social circle. And I’ll confess that I have a hard time justifying why the State would not have every bit as much motivation to recognize their domestic arrangement, with its legal assumptions and protections regarding progeny and property, as it has for anyone else’s domestic arrangement.
I’ve heard that “the boy needs a father,” and I’m sympathetic, but not to the point where I believe the State is justified at denying them recognition as a traditional family. I’m not interested enough in other people’s sex lives to ask whether their physical relationship is as fulfilling as that between my lovely bride and myself, but again, I can’t see where that’s the State’s business. And I’m not going to ask the State to deny them recognition on account of their shallow political thinking.
If the State can be said to have a legal interest in promoting the formation of stable family units for the purpose of mutual care and the raising of children, then I’d say it’s obliged to promote this one. Personally, I find these arguments dangerous, because they come damnably close to giving the State leeway to define marriage as a list of expected behaviors, which would all-too-quickly become a list of obligations, and I’m really not interested in allowing the State to touch that sort of power.
Think they can convince as an electorate in charge of its own government that this is in our best interest such that we’ll pass a Defense of Forced Exercise Act?
Or would you just prefer a judge step in and tell us that we have no right not to accept Forced Exercise, because Forced Exercise is the only way to insure that every American can come to be socially accepted as a “fit” person?
Once you recognize that parents are primarily responsible for children’s welfare, then the state only needs to make sure that children have parents
But why do we need even that?
It’s like the assumption is that government MUST be involved, and we settle there.
People will have children without government help, or tax incentivization….
It reminds me of the people who argue about demographics, population bombs and such….
How do you figure yourself qualified (or a government panel qualified) to decide how many people there should be?
We can complain (in the case of Japan) that people are not having enough kids, or (in the case of Somalia) too many. Says who? How do we determine the optimum amount of people to have? Why not let the invisible hand work it’s magic and let people be in however many they may? Do they exist to serve the government, so that too many is too unmanageable and too few is too unproductive?
you know how it’s always been totally suspect just on the face of it that global warming perfectly conforms to marxist thinking?
anti-gay marriage thinking is sorta similar except it seems to really a lot dovetail with bible stuff
that’s so funny
That was Reagan, no less.
Or would you just prefer a judge step in and tell us that we have no right not to accept Forced Exercise, because Forced Exercise is the only way to insure that every American can come to be socially accepted as a “fit” person?
Jeff, I am with you 100% on Government not top-down defining marraige or engineering social change.
I am just responding at first to that bit I quoted first, and making note of the fact that had we first not conspired to have tax credits for children (because it was justified that I subsidize other people’s breeding habits apparently), we wouldn’t be in this pickle.
And if we could detatch government from marraige, we wouldn’t be in this pickle of government trying to dictate the terms of marraige either.
It seems to me some people are still arguing that I have to subsidize my neighbors breeding habits for the Greater Good of Society, and so long as we are stuck in our neighbors business, I see no out. People who think they know what is in the best interest of Society will continue to use government to impose it on others… and you’ll get what we have here. Until we agree to leave other alone and keep government out of it – particularly the federal one, which is where you’ll find the baby subsidies.
the state only needs to make sure that children have parents
Huh?
I’m not sure what that means, really.
Sdferr can probably pull up a better cite than mine.
In Lee’s argument, none of the things you mention here are what comes to count in defining marriage. Instead, he argues that they are the kinds of things SSM proponents have brought up to muddy the waters, and intentionally so.
Personally, I believe that if you feel obliged to promote certain types of relationships as worthy of expanding the definition of marriage, then argue the point and persuade people. Because it is the people who make up the government in our system.
What I’m arguing is that there is nothing in our Declaration or Constitution that prevents us as a society from laying out preferred social arrangements so long as no natural rights are violated.
This is a separate question from whether or not you agree or disagree with the product of that social promotion of a particular arrangement, or whether or not setting up preferences in the first place is a good idea.
Ever notice how the only liberties cultural Marxists are concerned with are abortion, sodomy and gay marriagings?
that’s so funny.
you want to use government as a bulwark against government?
No. The families and churches are the bulwark. The state is involved only insofar as it says what is and is not a family or church.
That’s how sovereign citizens use the levers of government power.
Are you not familiar with the Catholic Church charities?
Yes, I am. I also encountered scads of gamines running free on the streets of Very Catholic Colombia.
We did not have this kind of “single-mother” problem BEFORE Government was involved with marriage
The single-mother problem results from welfare checks, not government recognition of marriage.
Ann Coulter articulates the best reasons why government can’t “get out of” marriage.
All societies have sanctioned marriages through recognition by a central authority, be it the entire tribe (they performed the accepted rite) or the government, in larger societies. The government, properly constructed, is a tool in the hands of the citizenry, not the citizens’ master.
We’re not anarchists, are we? We’re minarchists, and under minarchy, government recognition of marriages is a perfectly legitimate and necessary function.
I think it might be a good time to recall that the purpose of our Government was not to preserve itself, but rather our liberties. A self-destruct button was engineered into the design, in the event it should get in the way of that rather than help it.
The purpose of Society is not to simply further itself, and furthering itself, in and of itself, is not a just cause to decrease liberty IMO.
You can make the argument government shouldn’t be attached to social engineering. What I don’t think you can argue persuasively is that it doesn’t have that right, especially because in our system, the government is ostensibly just a concentration of the will of the governed.
Natural rights of the individual are protected by the Constitution. Perhaps a case can be made that forcing people to work for the promotion of others’ families is a violation of a natural right — in which case, we’d be better served going after the progressive income tax rather than tax credits for children, I think.
Yes, you can make the claim. But the point here is that this particular claim is backed by a very long and fairly consistent history, which serves as evidence by which to judge its efficacy as an outline for social architecture.
I do not dispute it’s efficacy. I agree. Really.
But the rightness or wrongness does not matter to me at all.
Just because it’s good, does not mean government should promote more of it. The purpose of government is not to promote good stuff.
Jeff, allowing gays to marry does not change
” a particular family architecture best protects and raises those children who will carry on the social contract, as well as promotes the production of such future citizens.”
As straights will continue to marry, raise children. Or not. Senior citizens certainly are not marrying to have/raise children. Nor do we prevent adults incapable of reproduction the ability to marry.
Several have remarked that we(I) need to address the traditional definitions to explain why changing them was useful. First, I want to expand a definition of marriage to include adult situations that do not require, either implicitly or explicitly the requirement to procreate. There is some evidence and I will concede not nearly enough or long enough, that Victoria and I can raise a child well – at least as well as any straight couple. CJ is 17, V has passed, but the studies at least suggest we can raise children as well as straight couples. But, I am not so easily swayed by the ‘tradition’. Our entire history as a nation is based on breaking from the traditional forms of governance to one of individual sovereignty. While it may be in societies interest to manage acceptable forms of behavior – our Founders sought to separate government as an instrument in doing so (at least at the federal level). Communities (states) could enforce societal proscriptions, as long as they did not interfere in the individual liberties. Now, marriage may not be classified as an individual liberty by a lot of people, but whom we freely associate with is.
I think if government had never been involved in ‘marriage’ which I define as a Sacrament, it would have rightly remained where it was – a blessed Sacrament bestowed by those institutions where Sacrament was/is a fundamental precept. However, it became a contractual, legal issue and because the legal issue is not being restricted or constrained but rather increased and broadened, arguments against it are arguments to keep a traditional ‘limit’.
Government may have an interest in ” a particular family architecture best protects and raises those children who will carry on the social contract, as well as promotes the production of such future citizens” and no one is suggesting that marriage be changed so that such is no longer possible. We are merely saying that expanding a definition to include same sex couples helps to provide a stabilizing influence to relationships that, by everyone’s acknowledgement, are occurring anyway. V and I were together for 18 years when she passed and we had many documents to try to maintain a legal foundation to our relationship. We maintained that relationship without legal ‘marriage’ but by all definitions of a committed relationship, we were a married couple.
When a new bird with a water repellent coat of fur under it’s wings, and a large flat bill and web feet is found, we might call it a duck, or a variation on a duck, but for all purposes, it is a duck even when it honks instead of quacks.
Gay marriage does not end straight marriage, it does not preclude straights from having and raising children, it does not end senior marriage that has no intention or ability of creating or raising children. The state’s interest in continue to promote marriage as a stabilizing influence in relationships is not interfered with and in most cases, promoted further.
Gay marriage does not limit liberties, it broadens them. It has taken many years to ‘broaden’ definitions assumed in the Constitution to those individuals not traditionally considered under those definitions. There is no reason not to broaden this definition also.
If she’s just single, yes. If she’s divorced single, no. Government has made the latter easy and attractive.
That’s not my assumption. My assertion is that it the involvement is socially justified, according to the people the government represents; and that there’s nothing in our founding principles that says otherwise.
This opens the door to change. But it is a change born of persuading the people themselves, not granting the government more authority so that it can disown what authority it truly has.
Squid, the state might not have an interest in making sure the kid has a father, but society does. And society is supposed to be what wields state power, not vice-versa.
Don’t forget that the gay-rights movement comes from the sexual revolution, which was hell-bent on destroying all traditional sexual mores, from marriage to fidelity to public decency. The people calling for gay marriage now are the same ones who insisted that “we don’t need a piece of paper to prove our love,” as if marriage were some kind of dare.
For that reason, I don’t trust them to define marriage, re-define it, or to say what place it has in society one way or the other. In fact, I’m disinclined to listen to them because they’re breaking the first law of remodeling: don’t remove a wall unless you know why it’s there.
They don’t.
I’m not interested enough in other people’s sex lives to ask whether their physical relationship is as fulfilling as that between my lovely bride and myself,
I don’t give a rip about the nature of their relationship, either. That’s not the point. The point is whether, when it comes to marriage, men and women are fungible, whether a same-sex couple is functionally the same as a male/female one.
And because the plural of anecdote is NOT data, you’ll have to come up with a better argument than a couple of lesbians living a stable life and raising a son.
We need to study those kids as adults, to see how they differ from kids raised in opposite-sex households, and the pool of participants is just too small right now.
Those who wish to change it need to convince those who don’t why it should be changed. And so far, all I see are the pitfalls — particularly when all that is really being changed is that the traditional definition of marriage is being forcibly expanded to include not marriage
Under my vision, there would be no entity that controls the definition. The word would evolve it’s meanings naturally, through use, and through majorities of convinced persons, and through the ‘democracy of the dead’ that is Tradition.
Very simply, if you sign a contract saying “Till death do us part”, the government should enforce it like any other legally binding personal contract (like “I will let you use my bicycle”).
If I sign the paper that says “I will let you use my bicycle”, and then I do not, a court may award you damages and restitution for breach of contract.
Ditto, till death do us part. Don’t like it? DON’T SIGN IT.
Apart from that… nothing. No tax credits, of course… but more importantly, no top-down government definition. And that’s it. If people want to considered themselves married before the eyes of god, so be it. And I would (as a private person) encourage them to do so.
Why do they need a government certificate for this?
I see a grant opportunity for a longitudinal study here.
BBL.
The reasons why this should be, are – no more no-fault divorce (pay attention to what you sign).
No possibility of any clergy being forced to marry off anything they don’t want.
No unfair incentivized/subsidized behavior through the tax code.
No possibility of some panel of policy wonks changing the definition on everyone since it will have no meaningful legal definition, apart from maybe as a lose term to broadly define ‘those private contracts which relate to long-term living arrangements’ or something.
I’m not saying it does. I’m saying we as a society have decided to promote certain architectures, and that it is within the purview of a society governed by its own consent to do so.
I am likewise saying that to change the definition of marriage to include that which has never been included in the definition is a dangerous legal proposition. But that it is up to the states to make that determination.
As for the bit about “stabilizing influences on the family” and the like, again, you aren’t accepting the premise of the argument: that is not the unique condition of marriage that gives it is definitional constraint. Dr Lee addresses this in the linked piece.
This is boilerplate stuff. The legal ramifications of expanding the definition of marriage are the concern, and that isn’t addressed at all by what are, in effect, emotional appeals to court-mandated inclusiveness.
Just saying so doesn’t make it so. There are plenty of reasons not to broaden the definition, not the least of which that the people who have chosen to live under a given definition — and who are supposed to make up the very government that protects their rights — don’t seem to want the definition changed.
What’s preventing you from doing so?
You can live with who you want and call your relationship whatever it is you want to call it. For legal reasons, though, if you wish to have it legally acknowledged as being a particular kind of relationship, you either must meet the criteria for the relationship or work to convince people to accept an expanded definition.
Should or not is a separate question.
Gay marriage does not end straight marriage, it does not preclude straights from having and raising children, it does not end senior marriage that has no intention or ability of creating or raising children.
No one is arguing otherwise.
But the foundational assumption for the gay marriage argument is that there’s nothing special about male or female, nothing special about pairing up one of each sex, and so why not pair up two of the same sex, as long as they’re hot for each other?
The ying/yang aspect of the sexes is being ignored. Male and female are the cosmic complementarities, and therefore you have to have one of each to make a marriage, which is a whole unit only because it consists of one of each, just as you don’t have a pair of shoes if both of them are for the left foot.
Marriage must not exclude one of the sexes. That’s different from calling same-sex marriage an expansion.
It’s discouraging that our society has reduced our public understanding of marriage and sex to the point were we can’t even say why both sexes must be included for it to be a marriage.
Personally, I believe that if you feel obliged to promote certain types of relationships as worthy of expanding the definition of marriage, then argue the point and persuade people.
I believe this very strongly. That’s why I want to take the power to define marraige away from government altogether. They can no more force a change in ‘marraige’ than they can a change in the meaning of ‘apple’ or ‘spaghetti’.
By taking coercion off the table, all that remains is persuasion.
Important modifier here is “simply.” No one has argued that the purpose of society is “simply” to further itself; or even that it must necessarily (though doing so seems a good idea, particularly in our society as founded).
And the question is being begged: I have noted that no natural rights have been violated when a society determines to promote a particular arrangement of this particular sort. Show me how that is not so and I’ll rethink my position.
Otherwise, I stick with the framework, however inconvenient or slow-moving it may sometimes prove to be in changing its parameters.
For [leigh] and I to be tarred as nihilists for such an observation seems unfair.
In my own defense, I don’t think I tarred anybody with anything.
I do think, though, that before the Left can transvaluate all values, they first have to convince us that there is no worth to the things we deem worthy (—little nod there to sdferr’s crusade to save angels’ wings—). Hence, the “way to embrace the nihilism” quip.
What’s preventing you from doing so?
No fault divorce… that’s what I meant. Marraige contracts are not treated like normal contracts. They aren’t really enforceable anymore.
You can live with who you want and call your relationship whatever it is you want to call it. For legal reasons, though, if you wish to have it legally acknowledged as being a particular kind of relationship, you either must meet the criteria for the relationship or work to convince people to accept an expanded definition.
Certainly… but again, most of those things, if they cannot be reached in an agreement between any 2 individuals, are then special treatment for a special sort, and should not exist at all IMO – things like subsidizing babymaking (an activity I never would think one needs to subsidize).
So then work to beat back no-fault divorce.
I have noted that no natural rights have been violated when a society determines to promote a particular arrangement of this particular sort. Show me how that is not so and I’ll rethink my position.
But they do, of course they do! It violates equal protection.
To take from one and give to another because we like the way the 2nd behaves better, even though neither has violated a law?
Society cannot ‘promote’ anything without doing something, and in the doing (if not in the theoretical abstract promoting of it) is where the problems are.
We all pay taxes. Mandatory.
A tax subsidy for the married is no different than a tax penalty for the unmarried.
In Lee’s argument, none of the things you mention here are what comes to count in defining marriage.
Indeed. In Lee’s argument the only thing that counts is the exchange of the appropriate bodily fluids. Every other element described in that article is present in the relationship I described above.
What I’m arguing is that there is nothing in our Declaration or Constitution that prevents us as a society from laying out preferred social arrangements so long as no natural rights are violated.
But if I argue Constitutional points relating to freedom of association or equal treatment under the law, I’m part of the Judicial Oligarchy.
I understand and agree that this is the sort of thing where popular, evolutionary change through state legislatures is preferred to some sweeping decision from on high a la Roe v Wade. And I’m on record as having a hell of a lot of sympathy for those who have no desire to accept same-sex couples as part of their understanding of the sacrament of marriage. But it really chafes me when Lee writes “you can’t be arbitrary” and then arbitrarily draws a line in the sand, and it similarly bugs me that we’re talking about the State’s justification in promoting certain social arrangements and then using Lee’s non-arbitrary arbitrary line, and (here’s the gripping hand again) it bugs me still more when the “historical definition” of marriage is whitewashed to exclude all the institutionalized dysfunction and inequality that attended the arrangement through the centuries.
In sum: color me frustrated.
No, there is no more contract. And if there are kids involved, you throw them to the tender mercies of Your Betters in black robes who will make all the necessary decisions for them according to the “best interest of the child” standard, which means absolutely nothing, as it means whatever they want it to mean.
So then work to beat back no-fault divorce.
or
Otherwise, I stick with the framework, however inconvenient or slow-moving it may sometimes prove to be in changing its parameters.
You keep bringing this up in one form or another. What do you think I am doing?
I am talking to you, not suing you. I’m not forcing anything on anyone.
I agree with you, that the way they have tried to ram homo marraige from the top down is all wrong. And I have always opposed homo marraige.
I just also happen to oppose marraige altogether, as a legal thing.
I have thought, if any chick is ever fool enough to ‘marry’ me, she’ll move in and she’ll legally change her last name and we’ll have a ceremony at the church with family and we’ll crank out kids.
But depending on how the taxes end up looking, I am not sold on the whole City Hall and certificate thing. I’d rather not have it be a ‘legal’ marraige.
Howso?
Freedom of association is most certainly not being violated. Equal treatment under the law is run afoul by any progressive taxation, and the case can be made that anything incentivized by government creates a condition of inequality under the law.
Fortunately for me I’ve always been for a flat tax.
Or an inducement toward the unmarried to sneak into the married’s den to steal an equivalent value of their electronic stuff. Havatchu. Gesundheit.
Di, you wrote:
We need to study those kids as adults, to see how they differ from kids raised in opposite-sex households, and the pool of participants is just too small right now.
Can you understand how deeply, deeply troubled I am at the prospect of a “committee of experts” to determine whether gays are good enough parents to warrant equal treatment under the law? Can you see where that sort of possibility would lie at the heart of my earlier statement regarding a State-mandated list of obligations?
Any progressive tax or incentive can be said to violate equal protection, viewed this broadly.
And the way around this is to say that you are taking from everyone, just taking less from some in exchange for some promotional consideration on behalf of the state. I’m not sure how this works legally speaking, but I imagine it’s been challenged and found not in violation of equal protection.
I’m skeptical about all these anti-gay marriage arguments
Freedom of association is most certainly not being violated.
Except that I can’t enter into a marriage contract with a man.
It seems to me that this whole argument balances on the well-worn point that the contract says “opposite sex” without saying which sex, and therefore it isn’t discriminatory. I’m not entirely convinced by this line of argument.
I’m sorry you’re frustrated Squid. Sincerely. As to the “historical definition” of marriage, dysfunction is a problem of the human condition. All institutions are disfunctional. Inequality is a bit more complicated because there’s equality and then there’s égalite, or “sameness,” “fungability.” Men and Women aren’t equal in the latter sense. I’ll grant you that that inquality has been used to justify all sorts of injustice, but not all inequality is injustice.
Because two men coupling together can enter into a civil union contract, just not a marriage contract, because they aren’t married by definition.
And around we go.
Don’t forget that the gay-rights movement comes from the sexual revolution, which was hell-bent on destroying all traditional sexual mores, from marriage to fidelity to public decency.
Yes, and women’s suffrage was pushed by the Temperance Union. I’m as sensitive to Leftist redefinition as any reader here, but that doesn’t mean that an idea is bunkum simply because a Leftist espouses it.
And around we go.
I see I’m not the only one left chasing his tail today.
And Ernst — no worries on the frustration thing. I’m frustrated by a hell of a lot when it comes to political arguments, and most of those involve things a lot more concrete and damaging to the Republic than a potential expansion of the definition of marriage. Also, they mostly involve counterparts that are staggeringly ignorant and obtuse, unlike the crowd around here.
Yes, and women’s suffrage was pushed by the Temperance Union.
Funny they should get brought up. Wasn’t it them that started dicking with the tax code to subsidize stay-home mamas and such?
Half way into a bottle of bourbon and I’m as staggering and obtuse as you can get.
Now scotch on the otherhand, that’s civilizing.
Any progressive tax or incentive can be said to violate equal protection, viewed this broadly.
You won’t catch me arguing against that view.
I’m skeptical about all these anti-gay marriage arguments
And I’m downright suspicious of anything you have to say on any subject at hand, including “good morning” and “good night.”
I strongly believe the tax code is not the place for social engineering.
What I convienently leave out of the above sentence is that I do not believe there is any place for social engineering.
All the same, certainly not the tax code.
If we come so far down the libertarian path that most people would take such a view of mine seriously about ending tax credits for having children, I wager we’d already have a flat tax before we got there. That’s certainly a bigger fish in my book.
As a flat tax proponent, I look at tax incentives as temporary fixes to even greater governmental intrusions by way of taking the fruits of one’s labor. I’m far more content when those fixes going to child credits and low capital gains rates than I am going to environmental NGOs and the like.
Yes, I am. I also encountered scads of gamines running free on the streets of Very Catholic Colombia.
That is a completely different culture than ours. You really think we’re going to have chillins running around in Dickensonian rags?
No. The families and churches are the bulwark. The state is involved only insofar as it says what is and is not a family or church.
Um… that’s total power. How can the family and church be a bulwark if the government is allowed to decide what constitutes family and church? Case in point, Government has decreed 2 gay dudes and a bullwhip are a ‘family’.
I will ask you the same thing I ask gays – why the hell do you feel you need the government to sanction you? They want gay marraige because they want to force me to accept them, that is what I have always thought. They want the force of the government asserting their union is as good as any other. I think verry poorly of that and have always opposed it.
But in the case of hetero marraige, it’s even more senseless. Why do you need the government to recognize you to feel married? Why can’t you just know that you’re special and your union is more valuable and righteous than other peoples in your heart?
Then again, I don’t really view promotion of the family as social engineering in any but the most strict sense, because unlike marriage (a social institution), I believe family bonds are in fact biological.
I’m far more content when those fixes going to child credits and low capital gains rates than I am going to environmental NGOs and the like.
Me too. We are arguing in an ideal vacuum, or at least I am. I would not support the idea that we’re just going to repeal the child credits and nothing else. That would wind up nothing but a disguised tax increase, the way things are.
I’d say this in closing: go to a flat tax system, remove the incentives, and then make the arguments for either expanding marriage or keeping it as traditionally defined.
Then again, I don’t really view promotion of the family as social engineering
I would, because when you get down to the doing of it, it certainly would be that.
Maybe not in the abstract. But ‘family’ doesn’t need promoting persay, it just needs not-assaulting.
Family predates government (hell, family is the original government). The government need not promote family in any fashion, it will simply be, far more dependably and eternally than any government. All that it needs is to not assault it.
You get into actual ‘promotion’ and you get things like punitive taxation on working parents to encourage mothers to stay home more, because that’s better for the kids.
I happen to agree that it is indeed, but that’s none of their business. That’s back to trying to force down your ideal of what a family should be like onto people rather than persuading them, for their own good of course.
I believe family bonds are in fact biological.
The non biological parent in the lesbian family of Squid’s acquaintance is crushed
he said dryly.
Would it help clarify things if we said that the social institution known as marriage is organic rather than a social construct?
OT here is for dicentra’s perusal
yup National Soros Radio put this on the air today
in the same article we learn
there was really nothing terribly ideological about Saul Alinsky, says his biographer, Sanford Horwitt.
we also learning that Mr. A is
“a noted liberal activist,” Schnur says.
We need to study those kids as adults, to see how they differ from kids raised in opposite-sex households, and the pool of participants is just too small right now.
Can you understand how deeply, deeply troubled I am at the prospect of a “committee of experts” to determine whether gays are good enough parents to warrant equal treatment under the law?
This is a great example.
On the one hand, put me in the “kids need both sex parents” camp. Gay parents are non-ideal and we shouldn’t adopt out to them but as a last option. Maybe not even then.
On the other hand… they don’t need to adopt. They can get pregnant too, they can hire surogates. Then what? You can’t do shit. They’re entitled to their own children same as anyone else, and you can’t touch them without assaulting parental rights.
I know you don’t want to assault parental rights… You hold that above everything. But you will if you don’t mind your limitations. Just as those temperance people who used government to promote marraige never thought it would result in gay marraige, your “who’s a good parent?’ government panel will end up, in due time, siezing your kids from you because you tought them religion.
You know who won’t give orphans to gay people? Private catholic charities.
You know who will? Gubmint.
Get them out of it. Road to hell is paved with good intentions. Not the government’s place to ‘do good’. Governments place ought be to mind that people mind their own business, and we must accept that some screwed up people will do everything all wrong, maybe even with horrible consequences. If we care, we must try to persuade them.
Social engineering is like the One Ring.
Throw that thing in the volcano before you lose a finger.
I myself am adopted. I’m not saying that people can’t feel the same kinship with an adopted child as a biological parent — or even that a biological parent is of necessity better than an adopted parent for a given child.
I’m only saying that I believe family bonds are hardwired. Marriage is not.
I’m adopted too hey we could be brothers
In the land of hammers, it helps to get sanctioned as “not a nail.”
“They” are the government, and the government is “they.” Making “none of their business” incoherent.
That’s the point: it is their business, so long as it doesn’t violate the natural rights protected by the social compact we all live under.
And it is the goal of Sauron to make relative all manner of social arrangements in order to declare that when a society chooses any single one to promote, even if that one is the one with the breadth of history or biology behind it, it is engaging in a kind of pernicious “social engineering” unfair to the shiny new arrangements that don’t get promoted equally.
By the way, I don’t have any idea who or what Sauron is. I just remembered there was, like, a CBS Eye involved, so I took a guess for my analogy.
I’m not saying that people can’t feel the same kinship with an adopted child as a biological parent[.] I’m only saying that I believe family bonds are hardwired. Marriage is not.
I admit I hadn’t considered that. I need to find a way to refine my argument then.
“They” are the government, and the government is “they.” Making “none of their business” incoherent.
Why is that incoherent? It is none of the government’s business whether my wife stays home or works herself. They should stay out of it.
The federal constitution clearly puts such matters in the hands of the people or their states, and most state constitutions likewise pass on the matter.
RE: Squid being frustrated.
As frustrating as such arguments can get, I got to say it’s a welcome relief from arguing Mittens or Gingrich.
Hell I had forgotten all about that for a couple hours.
It’s none of their business because they decided it’s none of their business. We are they; they is it; it is we. That’s all I mean by that.
And in my argument I note quite clearly that I believe the states, through the people of those states, get to make these determinations.
so you are no longer for a constitutional marriage amendment?
cause it’s part of the litmus test for president you know – Cain was the only non-supporter of an amendment unless you count the Ron Paul
Team R is very pro-scribbles at the end of the day
they’re not having none of this “states …. get to make these determinations” business
In that sense, I see what you are saying, although I think we have slightly talked past each other on that issue.
My position was never really that the institutionalization of marraige CANNOT be done by government, but rather SHOULD NOT be done by government, because it is a bad idea that leads to gay marraige (chickens coming home to roost, so to speak).
What the socon set may want to do with government is not unnatural but rather SOP throughout history. That’s not an argument in it’s favor neccessarily, so is tyranny, and America was to be exceptional.
It is just that, if you do these things, I think the law of unintended consequences will come back and bite your ass in 20 – 200 years.
If you consolidate this kind of authority and sanction these kind of centralized institutions of social mores, you somewhat externalize them from the communities they sprang from, and make them vulnerable to be stolen or co-opted out from under you or evolving seperately from you and used against you, when – while they may be somewhat handy – they were never strictly necessary to begin with.
Such structures should not exist at all, because they beg abuse.
It is, certainly like you say, a natural tendency of peoples. Us is them and them is us, we are the government, and the government certainly can (and will) operate on the social mores of the people who constitute it. But the natural desire to go creating things like bureaucracies of marraige and certificates of interpersonal relationships is something I think best resisted if we are long sighted.
Because… well … THIS. We end up here. Would that we could go back, and tell those Christian Progressive Temperance marms that by creating the structures of social engineering in their desire to promote stable traditional families, they were laying the groundwork for gay marraige and transgender bathrooms? IMO, they were indeed. Unintended consequences.
In fact, the whole Prog movement has been fairly continuous… it just ceased being Christian, predominantly, and became… well, whatever the hell you’d call it. Cultural marxists.
We certainly like religion, and so we made Seperation of Church and State, more to protect religion than to protect politics.
If we like marraige we might consider a similar arrangement.
Certainly, we’ve shown economics is far better off the further away from State it is. (If only Jefferson had written a letter dreaming up that Wall!) Seems to be a trend.
Like I say – if the people had been a little less natural and a little more exceptional, and kept their marraige to themselves, today ‘marraige’ would mean a certain union like ‘spaghetti’ means a certain pasta dish, because that’s its commonly understood meaning plain and simple, and the social engineers would have dick all to do with it. Without this authority we gave them, they would have no certificate-wielding ability to define it against the wishes of the masses, any more than the government can make people call spaghetti arugala.
It’s all right there in my post.
Like I say – if the people had been a little less natural and a little more exceptional, and kept their marraige to themselves, today ‘marraige’ would mean a certain union like ‘spaghetti’ means a certain pasta dish, because that’s its commonly understood meaning plain and simple, and the social engineers would have dick all to do with it.
While I understand your frustration, I say bullshit.
The State is going to be involved in marriage no matter how much someone “keeps it to themselves” because of childcustody/property/inheritance/paternity et al issues. You can demand that every case be brought before a court for adjudication and the courts should have some sort of guidelines. one can no more legally ignore marriage then one can legally ignore tenant/landlord issues. Or business partnerships.
Let’s say you have your way — a magic wand wipes all family law away in one stroke and the State declares it will ignore all marriages.
So what happens when John dies suddenly without a will? He used to have a wife and kids, but legally they are strangers to him. There is no default set of statute that will ensure his property is passed to his family. Without legal marriage and without a will his “family” has no more standing to his property than anyone else.
Except that I can’t enter into a marriage contract with a man.
.. or a minor
.. or with your parent
.. or with your sibling
.. or with your adult offspring
.. or with a married person
.. or with two or more other people
geez, how Hatey-hatey is this marriage thing, eh?
vastly if you must know
Without legal marriage and without a will his “family” has no more standing to his property than anyone else.
That is just not true. You could arguably say his WIFE will have no standing to property that is not jointly held, without a will… but his children are still his children and his family is still his family.
The fact of the matter is, you cannot do a ‘static’ analysis of this. When the law changes, behavior changes.
Rather than predict courtroom chaos, I would predict people wiseing up to that fact and it becoming common to have standardized ‘marraige contracts’ that would take those things into account. Pastors, etc. (or lawyers) could advise on these things.
You could have a contract that would make Marraige all that it ever was, as that is what (legally) marraige was. A sort of hodge podge of common law as relates things like property.
It’s simply an issue of the common law – one legal standard of marraige for all – vs. just enforcing contracts and allowing people to define the legal aspects of their relationships by that.
As (post no-fault divorce) marraige has come to mean almost nothing, we in fact already see this occuring somewhat with things like “Convenant Marraige” and others.
Wow. I am in complete awe of the roughly 130 arguments above. Really well reasoned, thought out, historical, etc. But I have to go back to the original article (and someone will eventually have to take me by the hand to explain HTML and linking):
“Rather, what proponents of same-sex “marriage” principally desire is the social affirmation and endorsement of homosexual relationships as such.”
The definition of marriage since time immemorial has been one man-one woman for all of the reasons in this thread. What the same-sex marriage contingent has failed to do is to convince society at large that its new definition is valid and should replace the old. And having the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court opine in a 5-4 decison is not convincing society at large.
As our host continually points out, language has meaning. Definitions have meaning. You cannot ignore the biological imperative of man/woman and the propogation of the species. If we are worried about overlaying a veneer of couples’ “rights” on top of this, fine. No one has abrogated the concept of contract, and civil unions can take care of that. But you cannot substitute one man-one woman with one man-one man, one woman-one-woman, one man- one goat, one man one-sister, etc.
Such a contract – that would make marriage all it now is – would need be written all of once, ever.
Then you can just download the ‘standard marriage agreement’ off Legalzoom for $5.
Contract does not equal zygotes.
SSM is actually the new hotness joining greek yogurt and swedish electro-pop and The Hunger Games movie
may the odds be ever in your favor
Contract does not equal zygotes.
Huh?
SSM is actually the new hotness.
Or in other words, a fad.
Sorry, Entropy, I occasionally get too terse. Perhaps I should have said that contract does not equal the exchange of DNA, together with the commitment of two parents of the opposite sex to raise their offspring in a committed mother/father relationship.
you can never tell at first Mr. Ernst that’s why pop culture is so exciting
contract does not equal the exchange of DNA, together with the commitment of two parents of the opposite sex to raise their offspring in a committed mother/father relationship.
This is true… but what I am talking about is basically a seperation of the legal aspects of marriage (those parts being accomplished through contract) and the social, moral, religious and personal aspects, which could then remain seperate from government.
As it sits, the legal aspects of marriage, which Darleen brings up, are basically legal/contract things, having nothing to do with DNA exchange or mother/father relationships anyway.
that’s why pop culture is so exciting
That’s what the Prohibitionists thought. And the New Dealers and the New Frontiersmen and the Great Society libs. And the McGoverniks.
down came the rain and washed the spider out
Entropy, I have to refer to the societal arguments in the original article and above. While I am really uncomfortable with government involvement in the “social, moral, religious and personal aspects” of marriage, I think it goes to some of the basic truths about what we allow the government to be involved in.
Government encouragement of stable family relationships seems to be in the interest of the social compact. The legal aspects can cover all of the other relationships via contract.
My good Catholic girlfriend who just gave birth to her tenth child would be in the money if Santorum had his way.
$30,000 a year is a full-time job.
I personally think Ernst’s description of marriage as an organic construct as opposed to a social one is pretty close to why a term other than marriage is most appropriate for SSM than coopting the traditional term.
Depite my by now renowned God-botheryness among the commentariat, I’ll try to resort to purely rational arguments.
The male-female pair bond is the oldest for obvious reasons; not the least being that before the advancement of fertility medicine, “test-tube babies”, etc. it was the only way new humans were successfully created by existing humans.
Now over millenia, the pair bond proved to be the most successful; a postulate based on evolution’s penchant for selecting to optimize success. And while the behavior is not necessarily biological, hardwired that is, it was replicated by succeeding generations in the same way that successful farming techniques and such eventually were also replicated.
Disregarding the religious aspect of the institution, I think it’s accepted without much argument why societies came to recognize the ancient, successful, populace expanding strategy; that is, to ensure property stayed in the family-so to speak. Another side benefit of societies affirmation of the exclusive (in most cases) pair bond was the implied stigmatization of infidelity; which would certainly harsh the mellow of both aristocracy and wealthy bourgeoise who wanted to make sure their stuff was only going to their actual offspring.
To get to the point, only modern medicine allows female same-sex-couples to bear children in the usual fashion, and male “partners” must avail themselves of either a donor and surrogate for invitro techniques, or adoption. These are brand new arrangements, only possible because of new revolutions in medecine and technology. And just like every other advancement, they shouldn’t be lumped into the existing lexicon. I mean, we don’t call airplanes flying automobiles, do we?
And running a bit further with the analogy, even though automobiles and planes both transport people, they don’t do so equivalently in any fashion saved for the act of transport itself, and perhaps appliances like chairs or on-board restrooms(R.V.’s and buses, which are subsets of automobile family).
Similarly, same sex pair bonds may have many of the same accoutrement as traditional pair bonds, love, sex, children, cohabitation, etc; but they are fundamentally different, and should be referred to by their own unique term.
I think we all realize that this is all about society at large, especially religious institutions, being forced to affirm, nay celebrate, a lifestyle they may not approve for any variety of reasons. And it is couched in false-flag rhetorical statements such as, “our love is no different from your’s”, or, “people who can’t concieve children aren’t denied the right to marry”, etc…
Which, you know, for all the TL:DR blather I went through; an airplane is not just a flying automobile :)
And to finally address the post, and Jeff, directly.
He’s correct, of course, in noting that there are no “rights” being violated by denying federal affirmation of SSM. Indeed, it is something that should be handled on the state level; with the unique caveat that no other state that chooses instead to stick to the traditional definition of marriage need recognize those undertaken in other states. I realize that this would lead to some new and difficult contract construction so that legal rights for SSM couples would cross state lines easily, that’s one for the legilators to straighten out.
Sorry for the TL:DR. But y’all know I can get up on a soapbox occasionally :)
Did Odysseus and Penelope share gang signs, or something like that, sdferr :)
Yo! West Sigh-eed!
Ith-a-ca…Ith-a-ca…
“Sorry for the TL:DR.”
Bob,
I’d be happy to forgive if I knew what the heck a TL:DR is.
Might be the only entry on there that doesn’t require a profanity warning.
Let me parse a bit:
States have the right to determine whether or not they, as a state, want to re-examine traditional marriage definitions and expand them for the purposes of promoting certain types of arrangements.
Because there is no natural right being violated in a state’s decision to sanction as preferable one social arrangement over the next when no individual liberty is being violated as a result.
Premise:
So….the state can sanction a social arrangement it prefers as long as it does so without violating an individual liberty. Such is the enforcement mechanism of society.
Your argument, your premise, though I don’t agree that our society can do so as long it doesn’t violate individual liberty. Although I can’t suggest an example at this moment, just because society (via gov) does not violate individual liberty does not mean it’s actions are warranted. Still, going on…
Let me break this into two pieces:
It is the obligation of those promoting same-sex marriage to convince voters in individual states that the definition of marriage promoted by the state should be expanded to include additional types of couplings
Society may have several reasons to sanction couplings (marriage), among them procreation and the raising of children but also family stability, care of elders, financial stability and wealth accumulation, educational achievement. If the benefits of the coupling accumulate to both the participants and society then society’s purpose for the sanction is to acknowledge the benefit of the coupling: this coupling is important to society’s continuation/improvement/benefit. The couplings that benefit the society (and the participants involved) are worthy of the state/society sanction. Those that do not benefit the participants and society would not receive a sanction.
— and in doing so, they must make a coherent case for how and why their preferred coupling will fit into the definition of marriage without fundamentally changing it legally
If the primary definition of marriage is ‘between one man and one woman’ and that is the basis of the sanction, I can see that society has a very limited view of what benefits society. Does a 90 yr old man marrying a 20 yr old woman benefit society? Or the reverse, a 20 yr old man marrying a 90 yr old woman? It would seem, while meeting that primary definition, the actual coupling does not seem to benefit society in any way – unless “ family stability, care of elders, financial stability and wealth accumulation, educational achievement” are also important, if not co-equal benefits. If one or more of those benefits is not present, it does not negate the other possible benefits to the participants or society. Obviously the more characteristics present within the coupling the more beneficial it is to society. Procreation and raising children in a stable environment (and to concede but not agree that father/mother are the (only) optimum) are valuable characteristics in a coupling to society and worthy of it’s sanction.
Sub-optimum couplings are common in our society and society makes no allowance for removing or restricting the availability of the sanction in those cases. The goal is to sanction ‘family’ couplings as beneficial to society. Unless sub-optimum couplings are distinguished from those with sanction, sub-optimum couplings of same sex should receive the same sanction for the same reasons as opposite sex sub-optimum couplings do – the coupling benefits the participants and the society, “family stability, care of elders, financial stability and wealth accumulation, educational achievement” and as many have pointed out, raising children.
Children are being raised outside the sanction of marriage – it is not optimum but certainly the choice of many parents, society would prefer it be done within the sanction as it benefits the couple, the children and society – extending that benefit to a “sub-optimal” couple raising a child but happening to not meet one characteristic of the definition of marriage seems to be a benefit to society.
Ok,
I tried going thru this thread backwards and failed.
Then I went to the beginning and it seems to grow faster that I can read.
Slow down people you’re making me dizzy;)
G’night All.
Thanks for the learnin BMoe :)
That may be the most incoherent — not to say ignorant of our basic foundation — pair of sentences the pikachu has ever bestowed on us.
‘feets, the “states get to make these determinations” because in the actual mechanism laid out in the effing Constitution 2/3 of the total representatives they elect followed by a majority of the population in 3/4 of them have to approve it.
That’s a pretty damned high bar to clear. If it was a tall building only Superman could clear it in a single bound.
90% of our issues come from the simple fact that the Left knows damned well its’ pet causes couldn’t clear that bar, so they have to get a very limited group of people in positions of power — robed or bureaucratic — to impose those causes by twisting the language to pretend those causes are already there.
All the Team R president candidates want an amendment for the sole purpose of forcing states that have passed gay marriage to knock that shit off – they’re not happy with what happens when states make their own determinations… it’s simple as that.
I was just curious what Mr. Jeff thought about the Holy Definition amendment given that all the Team Rs we can possibly support are promising to push one. It didn’t sound to me like he thought scribbles were the optimal solution here.
Thanks, Ernst, for unpacking. Aristotle had this tendency to come full-circle in his arguments, IMO, so that that which was good and right was good and right because of its goodness and rightness, and not because of anything innate that can be pointed to and justified with something other than assertion.
Marriage, therefore, should always be a union of man and woman because that’s what it always has been, and that’s what God says it should be, and because Aristotle says so. Not all that convincing, IMO.
And of course children raised by opposite-sex parents are in better hands than children left in orphanages because no one wants to adopt them excepting for the icky same-sex couples. Is the message I seem to be getting.
Yes: ideally, families may well be best & optimal if there’s a mommy and a daddy. I don’t know if that’s proven, but I’m willing to take it as a given for the purposes of discussion. But we live in a decidedly un-optimal world, and there are kids that mommies and daddies cannot or will not adopt. So…what do you do?
All the Team R president candidates want an amendment for the sole purpose of forcing states that have passed gay marriage to knock that shit off.
Or they just want to say as much, knowing that it scores them easy points while never having a chance of going anywhere.
wheels within wheels with Mr. President Bush I always knew that he never wanted insipid scribbles to really pass
I just don’t have that same relationship with Romney
And of course children raised by opposite-sex parents are in better hands than children left in orphanages because no one wants to adopt them excepting for the icky same-sex couples. Is the message I seem to be getting.
From whom? Because what I’ve seen is that, yes, same-sex couples can adopt, but they are second to married couples in hierarchy.
Not as discrimination against teh gheys but because THE CHILD involved has a right to first crack at having a mom and dad.
The whole SSM movement is based on the fallacy that men and women are fungible and that dads and moms don’t matter.
Just FYI…
There hasn’t been an orphanage in this country in decades. It’s been replaced by the foster system.
Lots of people seem convinced of things they read in Dickens, but that don’t actually exist.
Marriage, therefore, should always be a union of man and woman because that’s what it always has been, and that’s what God says it should be, and because Aristotle says so. Not all that convincing, IMO.
I haven’t made it to sdfer’s comment you’re replying to yet but I find that unlikely.
If it’s Aristotle we’re citing ‘god’ should be pluralized.
Also possibly drunk and possibly banging your mother behind a shed somewhere.
It wouldn’t score them easy points if there wasn’t a large constituency for the message.
Perhaps because you’re simplifying it and then applying some irony to maybe ridicule the very idea — of a Biblical edict, of long historical precedence and successes (vs. well, no evidence of successes to the contrary), of hoary old philosophers musing in their leisure…
Here’s the obverse, Slart, permitting me that same simplification and irony: The social “problems” supposedly caused by SSM are only problems because most people are either bigots or else susceptible to fear mongering. And the reason there are no historical records of national successes with the recognition of SSM is that it hasn’t been done properly yet.
Like, for instance, communism.
I haven’t made it to sdfer’s comment you’re replying to
It’smy comment actually.
Not all that convincing, IMO.
To which I reply:
And:
“To demand that things justify themselves before the bar of reason, in a world where no one has even one percent of all consequential knowledge, is to demand that ignorance be convinced and it’s permission obtained.” (Thomas Sowell Intellectuals and Society (2009), p. 27-8)
I don’t believe I’m the one who needs to persuade. I’m the one who needs to be persuaded. At least until such a time as I’m part of that “perverse and obstinate” minority Burke mentioned. Clearly we’re not there yet, not even in California.
“Warranted” implies rectitude, which is subjective, or else we would have an objectively settled issue. I happen to think them warranted, but that’s beside the point of my argument. Which is that they are permitted, under the Constitution. And in fact do so in any number of cases, from age of consent to restrictions on drivers’ licenses and zoning.
What you see as beneficial is only relevant insofar as you’re able to make your case and convince your neighbors to accept your premises. A 90-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman are still a man and a woman, and so they meet the criteria for marriage as recognized by most states, even though they are as a couple very obviously outliers.
Except that the coupling’s uniqueness is based on the joining of man and woman, not on family stability, which is conceived of as the anticipated social benefit of that promoted joining. So no, it doesn’t follow that just because a man and a woman marry and then have no kids, or an infertile man and woman marry, same sex marriages need be recognized because a similar outcome is likely. There are other contracts available to same-sex partnerships; the insistence that the coupling be called “marriage” is an argument that hasn’t convinced enough people to gain cultural purchase in most states.
For my own part, my concerns are largely semantic — and from there, legal. I don’t see how we logically expand the definition of marriage to allow same-sex couples and then somehow arbitrarily close the box and say we’ll be able to exclude consensual polyamory, eg. What is fundamental about the number of participants if the sex of the individuals is said not to matter?
Pardon the reductio ad absurdam, but what’s fundamental about the species of the individuals? Don’t animals have rights too?
Ernst
Animals can’t consent.
No consent no marriage (or any other contract). e.g. one cannot marry a person in a coma.
Point taken. Foster care, though, is I say nowhere near as good and healthy environment as having a pair of committed parents. YMMV, though.
Not entirely true, but close to it. Florida had had it outlawed outright until a few years ago.
I’m having trouble parsing this, Jeff; it appears that you’re saying there is no evidence of successful adoptions by gay parents. But I can’t imagine you’re saying that.
No. No evidence of successes over time by societies that have normalized same-sex marriage.
Not yet, but there is a movement on to secure them rights.
Animals can’t consent.
That’s why they need guardians ad litem appointed by the courts to protect the rights speciesists like you would deny to them.
I don’t know why we need to needlessly hyper-problematize a dealio what’s basically a live and let live no big deal kinda thing.
Gay marriage is just a new tool for to help people organize their affairs. We don’t regulate who gets to buy trapper keepers cause that would be silly. So how is this any different?
Don’t even go there, Ernst.
You’d have to ask your gay friends.
Bullshit. Once they bring it up the onus is on you to defend your hate. Hater.
Why do you hate?
And worse, why do you keep bringing it up?
You know what really says “live and let live”?
The Closet
The Closet doesn’t say anything, because closets can’t talk.
I won’t go all crazy this time, promise – short comment, two quotes and I’ll leave it alone!
So, the uniqueness is man+woman and that is the definition as it has been for all recorded history, no evidence exists that suggests any society has tried same sex and survive therefore, it is up to those of us that want to change it to offer evidence (that doesn’t exist) in support of the change to the definition.
One might argue that a Constitutional Republic had no precedent in history (except Greece and it too had slaves) and that suggestions that ‘citizens’ could run make decisions about government was…well, here is Edmund Burke on the issue:
That wasn’t the two quotes I was planned on. Here, Jefferson and then John Stuart Mill:
And from On Liberty: