Are marriage laws a violation of SOCAS?

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by SuaSponte *
**

[ul]
[li]One, sometimes I fail to respond to idiocy in general. My failure to respond does not indicate assent, anymore than when I fail to respond to the rudeness of strangers.[/li][li]Two, you haven’t defined “atheistic country,”[/li][li]Three, my assertions were based upon the ethical morality of marriage laws relative to SOCAS in THIS country, “…protection of Divine Providence…”, thus the practices of “atheistic countries” are not germane.[/li][li]Four, I care almost as little about Judaic history as I do about lesbian history, and neither is germane to any discussion about marriage law relative to SOCAS in the United States.[/li][li]Five, thanks for your assertions about the serially-monogamous behavior of Homo Sapiens. They provided some real laughs for my wife (the anthropologist) and I over dinner.[/ul][/li]
You may declare victory and crow as loudly as you like. I’m bored with this topic, with you, and I’m going to find something more interesting to read.

42

Wait, Screwtape, explain to me how you think religion has to be older than “society”. It makes no sense. Sure, cave paintings could be religious in nature, and yes, lots of smart people have concluded that they were. But that doesn’t mean that they were, since lots of smart people have concluded otherwise. What I’m saying is that we just don’t know, but that is irrelvant since I’m not saying that Cro-magnon’s didn’t have something that we could call religous practice.

What I don’t understand is why you think that these Cro-Magnon’s wouldn’t have marriage or “society”. If we look at our close primate cousin species, Chimps, Gorillas, Orangutans, and Gibbons, we find that all of them have different social structures…mixed bands, harems, solitary, and territorial pairs respectively. Humans live in pairs but also in groups. I don’t see how you can argue that a social strategy employed by 100% of the human race is not a natural thing.

And I’m annoyed with you for claiming that I don’t think gay people feel love. Please re-read what I said. We evolved the instincts that we call love because they cause us to mate and take care of our children. That doesn’t mean that you cannot feel love unless you mate and take care of children, don’t be ridiculous.

43

Screwtape, I think you undermine your own point regarding the SOCAS status of marriage laws when you begin discussing political serial monogamy. The marriage laws are not so much religious as they are political; any partnership state other than that between a man and a woman tends not to produce heirs, so their inclusion in the laws regarding marriage would have been pointless.

44

The discussion seems to have gone off into some interesting directions (biology, archaeology, anthropology), but that is beside the point. The idea of the state existing separate from the church pretty much started with the US Constitution, so going back before that is irrelevant to this particular discussion.

The issue is not about church-sanctioned marriage, it is about why US marriage laws exclude same-sex or multiple-partner marriages. If anyone can show a good, non-religious reason to limit marriage to one-man-one-woman, I’ve never heard it (and I did start a thread on this a couple weeks ago and did not hear any good argument there). The framers of the Constitution did not mention marriage, but they did refer to making laws respecting a particular religion.

As it has been stated, marriage contracts are about property and children. But no-one forbids you to marry if you are sterile, or unlikley to own a lot of stuff, or are simply disinclined to have things. Besides, inheritance and pre-nup contract take care of most of the property issues, and there are tons of laws on the books protecting children’s financial well-being, regardless of the marital status of it’s parents.

Ask people why they got married and they will only rarely mention children and property, but they will wax rhapsodic about love, companionship, friendship, sex, etc. Sometimes wanting to have children or security will also be mentioned, but usually only in conjunction with the emotional reasons. So, since that the reasons people marry has changed so dramatically in the last couple hundred years, why hasn’t the state updated the laws, or more correctly, why haven’t the challenges to these laws succeeded in opening up marriage options beyond on-man-one-woman? I can see no non-religious reason why anyone who wants to marry (assuming they are consenting adults) should be excluded from having a legal secular marriage.

(And btw, I don’t believe that humans are serially monogamous. If some of them occasionally act like they are it is usually because they are using intellectual filters to overcome biological desires. Especially true of human males, but not entirely exclusive to them. We would hardly need so many laws controlling natural forms of behavior if there were no reason to suppress them. And can you really imagine that the world’s oldest profession would be so universal if we were monogamous animals?)

45

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Screwtape *
**

::sigh:: You don’t seem to understand “debate”. As for the atheistic countries’ point, I have already identified them as former and present Communist countries, wherein atheism is the official policy and ideology. The relevance of these atheistic countries is to provide evidence that marriage, and specifically one man/one woman marriage exists outside the confines of religion.
You now say that the practices of other countries is irrelevant, but you are the one who moved the discussion out of the context of the United States.
Next - whether you care about Judaic history is irrelevant. You tried to butress your case about one man/one woman marriage being religious in origin by talking about religion all the way back to prehistory. I responded by pointing out that several religions, dating back to prehistory, defined marriages in ways other than one man/one woman.
Finally, you and your wife can chuckle all you want about my suppositions about humans and serial monogamy, but you haven’t provided a citation to refute it. I note that earlier you said you were going to - perhaps you couldn’t find one?

Screwtape, it’s really very simple what happened here. You made an assertion, and when it was challenged, you buttressed the assertion by expanding the argument outside the scope of the United States and its laws and practices. I responded to your attempts to buttress your assertion with countervailing evidence. You don’t like the fact that I was able to, so you are now claiming that you never went outside the scope. Now you no longer want to play. Fine. Ta-ta.
Sua

46

Well, since I just made the assertion as well, and Screwtape doesn’t seem to be around today, here’s one quick cite - all I have time to look for at the moment, but I’ll what else I can find later:

http://www.slam.ca/HealthNews/980925_infidelity.html

47

Thanks for providing a citation, Lucie. However, the cite actually supports my position. As I noted earlier:

[quote]
As for your problems with football players (people who sleep around), this is called “cheating”. It has been well-documented in monogamous species.[\quote] (parenthetical added for clarification.)
Perhaps I wasn’t clear when I mentioned “serial monogamy” all those many posts ago. I didn’t mean that humans don’t cheat. I mean that humans pair-bond. The term used in your cite is “social monogamy”.

As for your larger point, that there isn’t a good reason to prohibit multiple or same-sex marriages, I couldn’t agree more. All I’ve been trying to say is that arguing that one man/one woman marriages violate the separation of church and state is a non-starter. There are sufficient non-religious reasons (note, I didn’t say “good reasons”) for one man/one woman marriages that it would pass the Lemon test, and therefore would be constitutional.
I’m not the only one who believes this. Check out the Hawaii, New Hampshire, and other cases in which one man/one woman marriage was challenged. The plaintiffs in those cases and their attorneys did not make a First Amendment argument (or at least didn’t push it hard) - they made equal protection arguments. I’m willing to believe that the attorneys were competent enough to have considered, researched, and then rejected a First Amendment argument as unviable. (Of course, none have adopted my “best interests of the (actual or potential) child” argument, but I assume it’s just because they haven’t gotten around to reading my article yet. :D)
Sua

48

Yup, you’re right. I was misinterpreting the term, but additional reading clarifies the point. Serves me right for posting off-topic, but it did give me an excuse to find some other interesting stuff which is not really applicable to the OP but was brought up in subsequent posts. This link is provides a whole series of paragraphs citing a whole variety of works, many of which have to do with the evolution ot human sexual relations. I don’t know that I agree with some of them, but since I would need to read the entire work (of which only a paragraph or two is quoted) in order to make any educated comments, I’ll just post the link here and refrain from any comments on them.

http://www.humanevolution.net/a/hominids.html

There is an interesting point (near the bottom) about how modern society may be actually working it’s way back around to a Pleistocene “norm” in sexual relationships, rather than it being something shocking and unusual.

49

Loved the link, thanks. The paragraph about the Pleistocene “norm” started me thinking I was all off, until they listed serial monogamy. So, I think we should call that one a draw - at least according to this source, serial monogamy is one of humans’ natural mating practices.
The only part of the link I had problems with (admittedly, I skipped a good deal of the beginning of the page, as it was off-topic), was the discussion of sperm competition. I may have been wrong, but the author seems to be equating sperm competition with a large penis. I thought that sperm competition was indicated by large testes. I still haven’t read a cogent explanation as to why human males have large penii, at least compared to other apes. Though we still ain’t got nothing on the humpback whale. :wink:
Sua

50

SuaSponte,

An article in Discover Magazine some years back suggested that the over-sized human penis may well be anagolous to the Tucan’s beak–it was attractive to potential mates.

Now, before you think dirty thoughts,the arguement went on that large penises may have implied greater fertility, even if they didn’t actually grant it. Anagolous to this wuld be the female tendency to deposit fat on the hips. Wide hips don’t actually mean that an indiividual will give birth more effeciently, but even today many people will alude to the size of a pregnant woman’s hips when making predictions about her coming labor.

51

Yeah, that was one of the paragraphs that I wasn’t so sure about. I think it needs more scrutiny. Lots more scrutiny. With pictures.

I agree with Manda Jo - any additional size over the length needed to guarantee fertilization sounds like one of those secondary sexual characteristics designed to draw attention, but wasteful in any other sense. Like antlers or a peacock tail, it announces that he who possesses it has nutritional resources to spare, and wouldn’t you like your kids to be as successful a hunter as him. Of course, this may not work as an ideal pick-up line for most guys.