Precisely. There is no rational[1] grounds to oppose gay marriage, so we are left with the only remaining possibility - irrational aversion to homosexuality.
[1] where by "rational" I mean justifiable with facts and statistics to back it up.
It's marriage. It's a tradition, not something which you can derive rationally. Let's hear your rational explanation of the role of marriage. Be sure to explain why it follows logically that it should only apply to groups of two or more.
If you're honest with yourself, you recognize all of this language about rationality as rhetoric in a culture war in which you're attempting to shift cultural norms.
Marriage is not solely a tradition, or there wouldn't be a problem here, as anybody could claim themselves to be married and the world would go on. Instead, it's tied heavily into the legal system, as well as into policies of organisations across the world.
When people say that gay people are not to marry their partners, that is discrimination under the legal system, entirely ignoring any cultural aspects.
Religious marriage may be a tradition. Civil marriage, though, isn't, and that's what's at stake here. For the full reasoning, See page 25 of Friday's federal court decision on Michigan's anti-gay-marriage amendment: http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4220110321.PDF
In the United States, the tradition of marriage excluded interracial marriage until rather recently as well. Just because something is a tradition doesn't mean it morally right.
... the donation does not in itself constitute evidence of animosity. Those asserting this are not providing a reasoned argument, rather they are labeling dissenters to cast them out of polite society. To such assertions, I can only respond: “no”.
There are other reasons for opposing things, religious reasons for example. Not saying they're well thought out or even remotely valid, but thinking in such a black and white manner isn't beneficial to decent conversation.
You're saying that if I have a religious reason for harming you, then you'll be happy to treat that harm as a good-faith action, and propose "decent conversation" with me?
Of course not, but then again I don't consider intentional physical harm & objections to marriage even remotely comparable situations.
Latent effects of refusing marriage like lack of insurance coverage leading to preventable deaths would be a much better match though. And to that, I still believe conversation is a better tool than outright condemnation & intolerance.
No idea where "intentional physical harm" came from, but it wasn't me.
Preventing a family from getting married is harm. It is at the very least expensive in time and money. But it also puts children at substantial risk. See the recent decision on the Michigan Marriage Amendment for more on that: http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4220110321.PDF
> thinking in such a black and white manner isn't beneficial to decent conversation.
Should having "decent conversation" be the goal?
Because I prioritise not being discriminated against by my government because of my sexual orientation slightly higher than having a decent conversation.
The real issue for some folks is that "marriage" is a word defined by their religion. (not for you or me, but some folks)
If government ditched the word "marriage" and said you can designate a person you "cohabit" with for purposes of taxes, benefits, etc, how many of those folks would be against designating someone of the same gender? Those people I'd call "homophobic".
Government has as much right to the word as religions, it's not like religions invented marriages. The catholic church, for instance, only took over marriage during the middle ages. Historically,
> marriage vows did not have to be exchanged in a church, nor was a priest's presence required. A couple could exchange consent anywhere, anytime.
For the first quarter of the common era, the church was split between trying to get the church involved in marriages (e.g. Tertullian recommending that christians "request marriage from their priest") and recommending eternal celibacy and virginity. Augustine and Isodore of Seville developed the sacramentality of Christian marriage (Augustine at least still taught that virginity remained superior).
The official catholic declaration of marriage as a sacrament (and thus declaration of the takeover) was actually political: it was made at the Council of Verona in 1184 as part of the case against Cathars, who held that marriage and procreation were evil.
The case for marriage belonging to religions is "it's been that way for as long as I've lived". Previously in that category: slavery, illegal abortions, children labour and lots of other awesome company.
You hit the nail on the head with marriage definitions.
A bigger problem, not admitted by the religious side of this debate, is that the legal definition of marriage is what grants many states rights. To some extent that some states would have to rewrite their constitutions to no longer honor marriage as an institution.
I don't think the end game legally would end very well for the people stating that "marriage" is a religious term. It might be in common speech, but given we're talking about granting legal rights its about as relevant as ice cubes to an eskimo. Push this matter too hard and its likely that marriage as a legal term or definition goes away entirely.
I'm all for it but pushing the religious points too far will only cause more issues for those fighting via that angle. (no i'm not a lawyer)
Rationality is not the only factor we should look at.
Think of having sex with 12 years old girls - there is nothing irrational in it (it was normal and legal a few hundred years ago), why we keep it forbidden now?
Similarly it is not legal to merry 4 woman (or man). Why? Where is rationality in forbidding this. In fact rational is the opposite - it would be good to have spare wife or husband, just in case of death or ilness.
> Think of having sex with 12 years old girls - there is nothing irrational in it (it was normal and legal a few hundred years ago), why we keep it forbidden now?
Since the beginning of the Industrial Age, we've lengthened human childhood. Because people have more to learn today before they can be productive adults in society, the period of your life that is "youth" is longer, and the age where we consider a person mature enough to be fully responsible for their own body is older now.
12 year olds used to be adults, now they're children.
> Similarly it is not legal to merry 4 woman (or man). Why? Where is rationality in forbidding this. In fact rational is the opposite - it would be good to have spare wife or husband, just in case of death or ilness.
If there was complete gender equality and polygamy was as common as polyandry, it would be probably be fine. In reality, polygamy is historically dramatically more common than wives with multiple husbands.
If you take as a given a roughly 50/50 distribution between men and women (and relatively even proportions of homosexuals), that means widespread polygamy causes a large number of men for whom there are no wives available. If one person has five wives, it means there are four men out there with none.
That has a destabilizing effect on society. It's best for everyone if the possibility of finding a mate is not hampered in that way.
Well, if you're arguing about the length of childhood (which IMHO shouldn't be the basis for age of consent, decision-making maturity should be), then we have not lengthened human childhood.
Socially, we've delayed the age when youngsters achieve self-sufficiency, start working, etc; but instead of prolonging "youth" currently our habits (most likely due to food industry) have achieved earlier age of puberty than before; biologically those kids are maturing sooner for having kids of their own.
Regarding polygamy, we would have to rewrite all sorts of laws (inheritance laws, laws detailing benefits to spouses, etc.) with multi-partner marriages in mind.
I think this is the real answer. I don't know that it's an insoluble problem, but it's a very hard one, compounded by the absence of a pre-existing societal consensus on what would be reasonable and fair.
To be pedantic, it should be noted that the contrast to polyandry I believe you're looking for is 'polygyny'. PolyGAmy refers to any practice of having more than one spouse, regardless of gender.
Bullshit. Glad to see you lump people who don't want government in the marriage business at all with homophobics. Believe it or not, these people exist.
That justification is what is bullshit. We're talking about support for Prop 8. If Prop 8 was about getting the government out of all marriage, you would have a point. But Prop 8 was about removing the ability for a specific group of people to marry while still keeping the government in all other marriages.
Their position makes even less sense than the other one, the creation of stable family units, and thus the provision of legal and financial advantages to these units trough official recognition of them is usually considered a social good, and the government "being involved" as the provider of the aforementioned advantages is sensible.
Right because government marriage is really doing a great job at that with its >50% divorce rate. Of course there's also the fact that your position is incredibly unimaginative - you can't imagine there are other systems of social organization, other than government licensed marriage, that might be an even greater public good? As long as we keep promoting the paradigm of government sponsored marriage we'll keep going down the same rabbit hole.
A lot. By giving incentives, both explicit (taxes, pensions, medical benefits) and implicit (encouraging a social construct through government enforcement of licenses and contracts) government encourages people to get married or stay together who possibly wouldn't otherwise. It probably doesn't make up 90% of the decision, but it may be enough to tip the scales one way or the other.
Edit: Or get divorced for that matter - divorce laws enforced by government (which only exist because it licenses marriages in the first place) have a big impact on who gets divorced.
I'm not really buying the argument that government-provided benefits are enough of a "bribe" to be a significant factor for why people are getting married. Indeed, marriage rates (at least in Europe) show a net decline. My guess is that it is primarily an effect of looser social pressure (it is considered normal, even in more conservative areas, to live as a steady couple without being married), which also correlate with a decline of religious attendance.
So the tax-provided incentives are clearly not sufficient to compensate for this decline, and I really doubt they contribute significantly in most cases.
It's well known that government incentives tip the scale in favor of some more marriages. It's the reason the incentives were created in the first place, obviously! But if you can't follow that line of reasoning, you're welcome to read papers that are tangentially related and prove the the point of how strongly influenced by economics/finances marriages are:
It's also what my Public Economics professor said back in the day in college... and he was a smart dude.
Also, you're ignoring most of the argument - it's not just about the tax incentive - it's about all of the incentives that government licensed marriage creates. Re-read my prior comments throughout this whole discussion if you don't know what I mean.
> It's well known that government incentives tip the scale in favor of some more marriages. It's the reason the incentives were created in the first place, obviously!
It is? First off, the fact that a policy has been put in place is no evidence that it actually works (see also "trickle down economics" and "abstinence-based sex programs"). Secondly, it's difficult to argue about the purpose of the incentives outside of a historical context. The best I've been able to find is regarding the tax part of the incentives: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg145?pg=2
It does not appear to be part of a nefarious plot to get more people married.
> you're welcome to read papers that are tangentially related and prove the the point of how strongly influenced by economics/finances marriages are
After skimming the papers, my understanding is that they demonstrate that for a number of women, the social condition of their prospective husband is a huge motivational factor. That is fine and well, but what does it have to do with the state? I'm sure you could find the same studies regarding unmarried couples. I haven't found any mention of government incentives in them, but I may have overlooked something.
> Also, you're ignoring most of the argument - it's not just about the tax incentive - it's about all of the incentives that government licensed marriage creates. Re-read my prior comments throughout this whole discussion if you don't know what I mean.
You are correct that I focused on the tax incentives, as I see that as the most visible of the government-provided incentives. Let's look at the other benefits you list:
> (taxes, pensions, medical benefits) and implicit (encouraging a social construct through government enforcement of licenses and contracts)
I'm not aware of any pension-related advantage of married couples where I live, and there is certainly no medical benefits in a land of socialized healthcare. Is this a US thing? As for the implicit benefits, I'm not entirely clear on what you mean. Are you objecting to the existence of a legal framework formalizing the rights of each party?
Assuming that your position is correct, how is fighting against gay marriage a good for anybody and at all productive? From what I can see, it serves to divert resources from your stated purpose, needlessly antagonises people who might support said purpose and serves to maintain a right-less underclass. And no the latter's not going to fight for your purpose since they're busy fighting for equal rights.
Like I said - I don't oppose gay marriage - but the argument could be made that by establishing government licensed marriage as "something worth fighting for" it further entrenches the notion that government licensed marriage is a positive social construct.
> the argument could be made that by establishing government licensed marriage as "something worth fighting for" it further entrenches the notion that government licensed marriage is a positive social construct.
But that's a completely useless and unproductive argument to make in the context of the fight being underway, let alone making it while fighting on the other side.
[1] where by "rational" I mean justifiable with facts and statistics to back it up.