I’d say it’s an ethical claim.
iampunha, Locke himself, IIRC (it’s been a couple of years since I read his Two Treatises), did not invoke God or some greater Moral guidance in deriving his thoughts in the Second Treatise (from which much of the intro to the DoI was lifted).
However, you have to view these ideas from the perspective of the Americans of the day. How did they see things? Long into the history of our country we have derived our thoughts (political and otherwise) though the eyes of believers in a God. This hasn’t always been the Christian God, many of the founders and the more educated men of the day were deists, but they all saw public life as being inherently moral.
I won’t claim that the results have always been good with this system, but the influence is undeniable. This influence is still with us today.
You can’t read the works of the men of those days without constantly running into mentions of God in some form. You can’t escape their believe in God, whether it be the “Creator” who endowed us with “certain unalienable Rights” or the “divine Providence” in whose protection the signers of the DoI relied or even “Nature’s God” who created the perfect state of nature in which all are free and equal.
I am not trying to argue that we are a Christian nation, or that we owe allegiance to any deity at all. I am just saying that you cannot understand the nature of American thought from that day (which feeds directly to this) without recognizing their reliance on a strict belief in morality. And therefore, at least in the American tradition, equality, and equal rights is, and has nearly always been, a moral cause.
I have to say that isn’t the opinion I’ve formed from his posts. In particular, this:
Emphasis mine. akennett seems to be playing a sort of tame devil’s advocate, rather than saying that you uppity homosexuals with your sinful lifestyles should just be glad you aren’t killed at birth.
Yep, I’m justing pointing out that this really isn’t a left-right, lib-con matter. Mao’s social engineering did screw up lots of stuff. So is that of Western nations, as I pointed out (shrinking populations).
Emphasis added. That’s the rub, isn’t it? Whatever we think of how govt. should operate, the species itself can only be molded so much by govt. edict or our wishes for it to be one thing or another. It’s a fact that we have dying societies on the planet right now, and the problem is procreation. In fact, it’s a sad reality that the “produce more kids–more!” meme is quite likely to spread the other memes of the societies in which it is present.
It’s all connected: don’t be gay, blowjobs are bad, don’t fuck until a priest says you can–a web of sexual mores/memes that, as history tells us, got the species to reproduce. With a hell of a lot of pain and ignorance thrown in, it is true. The system was based on lies but had the reproductive effect.
Some very few cultures have explicitly recognized the existence of homosexuality and provided roles/outlets for gays (what was the Indian tribe that had a special class of transvestites)? But in the past, most populations were too thin to support a true gay community, in which gays could recognize each other and join forces. Even 20 years ago in the US, the whole reality of homosexuality was shrowded in ignorance, prejudice, and misinformation.
Society has just barely begun to evolve in this regard. I think we should be patient with those who are not up to speed.
How can I take you seriously when I said that I was for SSM?
Listen, huh? Heal thyself, physician.
Also, good comments, Lillairen, which augment what I was saying about marriage having a social purpose.
Morality in itself, or a rejection of the old world and old ways of doing things? I mean, hell, there’s enough indication in the founding legal matter of this country (Amendment 3 protects us from the not-so-high likelihood of soldiers being quartered in our homes during time of war or peace) to indicate that some of it is based not on timeless principles but on then-relevant ideas; I, myself, find it a rejection of the then-status quo* in most government that Jefferson et al. insisted that, for two, governments were human-driven (as opposed to divine) and that certain rights were inalienable. I will certainly grant (since saying otherwise would not only be incorrect but show me a massive ignoramus:D) that Jefferson invoked a Creator, however:)
So here’s another question for you: if we’re to say that laws are based on morals, at what point does the morality of the majority get shoved aside in the name of equal rights? It has certainly been done before:)
Never morality in itself. However, I think there is more continuity between the way things had been done than a break from the past (in the constitution especially). Sure, there were some added protections based on the unpleasantness leading up to and during the Revolution, but by and large the systems and institutions were carried forth from the colonial period. (The largest differences between the old and new world were due to the fact that in America men could acquire enough property to vote much, much more easily.) But I think we are beginning to digress from the main topic.
I did not mean to say, and certainly hope I did not imply, that the movements of government and society were always dictated by religion or morality. I meant that these men viewed their actions and decisions through a moral filter, that they tried to uphold these standards, and that it was (to them) from these moral standards that they derived or understood their basic principles.
That’s a very good question. (I suppose, since I’ve already been called a sophist in this thread, that would make you Socrates? 
)
I’m willing to go with the supposition that laws are based on morals, but I would much rather say that our guiding principles are/were based on morals. That these guiding principles then inform our laws. In this case, I would again argue that our believe in equal rights is based in this moral tradition, it is one of our guiding principles, coming (in many minds) in conflct with another guiding principle, namely, the right of conscience.
I make this distinction for a purpose. If a law comes in conflict with a guiding principle, I think that the law must always yield. This is directly analogous to a law being passed in Congress that is directly in violation with the Constitution. The law is null and void, and the Constitution is upheld.
When two guiding principles come into conflict, on the other hand, the question is much less clear. It is this situation that we find ourselves (IMHO). Try to strip the question of its context. How do you chose between two guiding principles that have come into conflict? It’s not an easy question to answer if you aren’t already leaning one way or the other.
A tame devil’s advocate, eh? Well, yeah, I can see how I come off like that. But I am genuinely interested in these questions. I wouldn’t have spent so much time here just to play DA.
<snip>
They do not ask that others give up their rights to their consciences. It would be foolish to do so. The law can have no bearing on what people resolve in their consciences. They can do what other conscientious objectors have done in the past – refuse to cooperate through non-violent means. That is another great American tradition. If failure to comply with the laws of the land is also against their consciences, then the delimma is theirs to resolve.
Isn’t this no different than arguing that homosexuals already have the full right to marry? If they chose to spend their life with someone of the same sex, they can do so, but they can’t marry; but that dilemma is theirs to resolve.
“No different?” It’s completely different. If someone is openly homosexual, then he has already resolved the only moral dilemma that is relevant to his marriage – is it “wrong” to be a homosexual? And if he’s openly homosexual, his conclusion is “no.” He sees absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t be able to be married, but someone else, who is completely unaffected by his marriage, has declared that he is unable to.
I was under the impression that “morality” referred to a person’s behavior, not who a person is. I want to do everything it is that married people do, things that are accepted as “moral” by and for the vast majority of human beings. I am not permitted to do this, because I am a homosexual. That is not a moral argument.
I still fail to understand why same-sex marriage is being described as an assault on people’s consciences. The question of whether it’s “okay” for a person to be sexually attracted to a person of his same sex is one for everyone to decide for himself.
The question of whether it’s “okay” for two people who are in love to pledge themselves to each other for life as a “married” couple has already been decided millions of times, over and over again: it’s okay. The question of whether it’s “okay” to deny someone the right to something that everybody else has, because of a precondition, has already been decided: it’s not okay. Where is the dilemma?
I think this type of argument is detrimental to the cause of SSM, and I see it advanced over and over: “What we have is so right, and because it’s so right, we should not be prevented from doing so.”
The trouble is that there are many people out there who don’t feel it to be “so right,” and they can conclude from this very argument that, since it’s not “so right,” it deserves not to be. Now, one may conclude that such people are cretinous bigots; but there are a majority of the world and the country right now, and if you don’t respect their brute power, you are being unwise.
Much better, I think, to express the argument in terms of fairness, equal protection, and equal rights. You don’t have to love SSM in order to let people have it and enjoy it.
I would ask another tangential question, however. Why hasn’t SSM existed (to any considerable degree) for the past several millenia? If it is such a positive, beautiful thing for two people of the same sex to find their soul mates, why has not this been celebrated?
The answer, I think, is that there are contradictions within human nature, and between the needs of the individual and those of the group. The idea that mankind can just slough off its particular accretion of ignorance and false beliefs regarding SSM in a matter of decades is terribly naive. Getting SSM to work in societies around the world will be, for the next several decades, an uphill battle and requires the hard work of forging compromises with many different world views.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but I don’t remember a time when people were legally required to marry. That would be the necessary counterpart to your analogy.
Well, except for the fact that “equal rights” is the law of the land (yours and mine), and “the Bible says so” is explicitly forbidden from being the law of the land (in your country… even though mine seems to have gotten over it more quickly).
It has merit precisely because marriage has never been purely religious. Marriage should be divided into its secular and sacred aspects if we want it to be lawful and fair in our secular government, and moral and proper in all of our religious traditions.
I do believe you’ve misinterpreted what SolGrundy has said. His point is that SSM doesn’t force anyone to do what they don’t want or to go against their moral beliefs, because they aren’t involved. The only people involved are the couple trying to marry.
Yes, this part of the argument is necessary and sufficient. Indeed, it’s what’s won us our rights in this country, as we have a robust Charter that guarantees the said equality to us explicitly, and less of a tradition of applying it to everyone except those icky homosexuals.
So this paragraph leaves me confused. This exactly is the “screaming about rights” part that’s been so vigorously denounced in this thread. We have preexisting rights to equality that are being legally ignored. The ‘persuading people we’re OK’ part is the cultural shift that you refer to in your next two paragraphs.
I don’t know. If black people have human rights, why wasn’t this recognized for the many centuries the slave trade went on? Honestly, this is a very weak argument (always presuming that you mean it to be an argument against SSM.)
In 1999, the Parliament of Canada passed a resolution reaffirming that marriage was the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others.
In 2003, Ontario became the first province to legalize same-sex marriage. A parliamentary committee recommended that the government not appeal the ruling. Five other provinces and territories followed. By September 2004, the government had stopped even opposing such rulings in court. Over 50% of Canadians now believe that same-sex marriage should be legalized, up from 30% in 2001.
That’s a substantial amount of progress in just five years. Hell, just eight years ago it wasn’t even entirely certain we were even covered by the Charter.
And it’s not like this is restricted to Canada. In the United States, the last remaining sodomy laws were struck down only in 2003, not even a year before SSM came in in Massachusetts. In Spain, a government we railed against in the streets at Pride in Madrid in 2002 was defeated by a government whose leader promised in his first speech to bring in SSM, which they will be doing in October.
And those are in a matter of years, not decades. There have been changes since I came out that most gay and lesbian people before that would scarcely have allowed themselves to hope to see in their lives.
I imagine that it would be naive to think that this exact tempo could be reproduced in the rest of the US, let alone in the rest of the world, but the point is, it’s not without precedent.
That would be why the law on civil marriage is made by the government, not by churches.
Huge social pressures. In many societies it was get married or become a monk/priest/nun. And just look–even today in the US, most people end up giving it a shot.
As you surely know, many societies had arranged marriages, with the spouses-to-be having little or no say in the choice.
Even in more modern times in the West, the “bachelor” was considered an odd character. My guess is that most such people really were gay, although you don’t see them treated so in the literature.
WTF?
You are sounding less and less logical every post.
Do you denying that there are vegetarians whose decision not to eat meat is a moral one?
And your "harm from the government"sentence is to tortuous that i can’t even parse out what you mean by it. I can think of no way to explain the sentence that makes the slightest bit of sense.
But why is one of those positions any more or less reprehensible than the other?
In your world, it would be acceptable for me to oppose any behavior, and stop people from engaging in it, as long as i could prove to you that my position was a “moral stance based on informed reflection.” That’s a pretty dangerous precedent to set.
No, in fact i explicitly DON’T expect other people to care about my MORAL OBJECTIONS. For example, i do, in fact, have a moral objection to eating meat. The reasons for those moral objections are, as per your desirable criteria, the product of “informed reflection.” But i don’t expect my moral objections to rule other people’s actions. I don’t think that other people should be denied the ability to eat meat, just because of my moral objections. Do you get it? It’s my own behavior that is my concern, and forcing others to comply with it is of no interest to me.
Similarly, i don’t care about other people’s moral objections to SSM. While i don’t agree with those objections, those people are perfectly entitled to hold those opinions, and i would never deny them that right. When i say that i don’t care about their objections, i mean this in a literal and neutral sense—not that i want to change their opinion, but that their opinion is irrelevant to me, just as my opinion is irrelevant to them. What i do expect is that their moral objections NOT be allowed to dictate my ACTIONS.
Well, as i said, those who oppose SSM aren’t just trying to enforce an idea on others; they’re trying to dictate their actions. I claim no moral high ground for the idea of SSM; i do however, claim a moral high ground for the attempt of gay men and women to free themselves from the dictates of meddling moralists.
Can’t you see the distinction here? Opponents of same sex marriage are trying to force gay men and women to conform to a particular model of behavior. Proponents of same sex marriage are NOT trying to get heteros to do anything except leave them alone.
No, because there is a fundamental difference.
As i said above, i don’t expect them to care about what i think. All i expect is that they not try to dictate my actions.
Unfortunately, the end result is not much different—a denial that gays should be allowed the same rights as straights.
Yes, but we’re talking about legal marriage here. Unless you’re claiming that the social pressures you’re talking about are so meet and right that they ought to be expressed in the law, then they’re really of no relevance to the discussion.
Well, as akennet has been pointing out, that’s not quite true: SSM will have many legal implications affecting a wide range of people. I gave the example of immigration policy.
Also, I’ve read (on the Net, etc.) many times the sentiment, “Oh, I can’t wait until SSM is a reality, because then we’ll be respected as a real married couple.” This is naivete par excellance. The fundies (Christian and Moslem) will not grant that respect, and there will be lots of friction in society over the matter. The trouble is that marriage, as it has existed in the US for the past several centuries, is about a shared vision of how men and women should get together and behave after doing so. You should have kids, you should not cheat, you should come over as a couple to our house and have dinner, etc. etc. This whole vision has broken down over the past few decades, no doubt. But I think most people who oppose SSM feel that it, historically does not fit into this shared vision, and they don’t want a new vision imposed on them. And it is a kind of imposition, because it is built by society as a whole. I think gays have a hard time understanding this, as they are de facto not on that wavelength to begin with and have a hard time respecting it.
As Akennett has pointed out, the notion of SSM as being a matter of equal rights is NOT accepted by a large number of people. You need to convince them of that. Stating it as an axiom, damn your bigoted soul if you don’t get it, is not a winning strategy.
Personally, I don’t see marriage as a right. I think in the interest of fairness that any two people (sexually involved or not, and perhaps not limited to two) should be able to establish a dometic partnership and get the same goodies that heterosexual people get. Two best friends, mother and daughter, whatever. And you can call it marriage if you want or anything else (maybe they should all just be called “domestic partnerships” in the legal realm), because it’s just a word and why be stingy about that?
But marriage itself is an old institution that societies created to control people. To control sexuality, encourage procreation, and, as Lillarein points out, pursue a number of other goals as well. Hence, the notion of “marriage” as a right is a little silly. Consider also that, in a number of (many?) states, there are many control-oriented laws related to marriage: laws against adultery, fornication (sex outside of marriage), etc. All silly stuff to us moderns, right? But the idea was that you could not get laid until you got married. Society didn’t want that! Marriage was the gateway to sex. It was about control, not a “right.”
Ah, but look where your own question takes you. The technologically advanced Europeans created the self-serving myth of black inferiority and enslaved and otherwise exploited black people. It was an evil purpose, but we can understand what the Europeans got out of it.
Homosexuals were not an oppressed class; they were not even recognized as existing as a “group” (in most societies). People classified it as “buggery” or “perversion”: an individual vice, not a type of person. Socieities just wanted gay people to go away. In the closet, as it were. Why? Because gayness violated their vision of “correct” sexuality. The sad thing is that many, many people still think this way. In fact, probably the majority of people on this planet (including, of course, the whole Moslem world with very few exceptions).
I agree that it’s a good thing, but the hearts and minds of the majority have not changed in many places. Even if it’s 50% in Canada that support it, there are still a lot of people out there who oppose it.