I know this is nothing new, but as I was reading more about the House GOP and its efforts to defend DOMA, I wondered why defending marriage is defined as making sure that it’s between a man & a woman.
What about serial adulterers? Pedophiles? Rapists? Child abusers? Parents who abuse each other in front of the kids? If they get married, that’s OK?
And I don’t mean from a religious point of view; churches absolutely have the right to decide which marriages to condone and often impose restrictions that would be illegal if imposed by the state.
But why should a child-molester have survivor rights and other legal benefits of marriage but not Nice-Guy Joe because he’s gay?
Is there a coherent argument that is not religion-based?
Because he is gay. It is apparently the sin of sin and cirme of crimes to be born this way but that is the way it is.
I love the conservatives belief in keeping government out of the lives of citizens unless, of course, we are talking about a womans’ vagina or a mans’ a$$hole. Those deserve the full weight of the federal government to come down from on high and smite the one’s found being naughty thine sight.
Because marriage is between a man and a woman. Two people with no criminal records who are in love, have a business together, share a home and raisie children together have no business marrying each other.
But a female serial killer and a male serial rapist are just fine-and-dandy. Get married have conjudcal visits, have children, what-fucking-ever.
Marriage is about complementarity and division of labor. The purpose of marriage is to allow a man and a woman to have a family. In order for it to make sense rationally for a woman to have a child she must have the man precommit to raising that child. Marriage precommits the man to raise the child by giving the woman a claim to the man’s wealth if he abandons his commitment and leaves. This gives the woman the precomittment she needs to make childbearing rational.
Since the few gay couples that adopt children have no biological differences that predispose one to have an advantage when the relationship ends there is no need for them to marry. However changing the definition of marriage from what that involves children and family to one that involves love and legal rights will change it for everyone. While the bonds of children and family are very secure and long lasting for most people the feelings of love are much more ephemeral. Thus changing the definition of marriage makes marriage as an institution less useful and fewer people will either get married or choose to have children. The laws have been changing over the last 50-60 years to make marriage less permanent and less focused on the children and more focused on the feelings of the participants. The result has been an explosion in illegitamacy and divorce with resultant rise in social pathologies and poverty amoung women and children.
There are those who say that the feelings of a few thousand gay people are worth having millions of children grow up in poverty. For others of us, not so much.
By that logic neither handicapped people nor sterile people would be allowed marriage. Try again.
No, “illegitimacy” was highest in the 50s. And you are conveniently not counting “trapped in a marriage you hate” or “killed by your spouse” as social pathologies.
That’s a typically silly argument. Same sex marriage won’t put any children into poverty. The two aren’t connected at all.
So my SO and I, a non-married heterosexual couple with no plans to have children, should not be allowed to marry, since there is no need to divide child-rearing and wage earning? My grandfather and his second wife should not have gotten married, since they were in their 60s at the time, and had each already raised their children?
Thanks for the answer. The only problem I see with it, is that there seems to be absolutely no connection between what you wrote, and gay marriage. Other than that, well done.
Not entirely. For instance, do you believe that only virtuous gay people should be able to get married, and not the murdering pedophile serial adulterating gay people? And then there’s Yankee fans.
Pedophiles are allowed to marry adults, but they can’t marry children. Homosexuals are allowed to marry members of the opposite sex, but they can’t marry members of their own sex.
The thing is, I think that people like the OP tend to think of the issue in terms of which individuals are allowed to marry, while opponents of same-sex marriage think of the issue in terms of which combinations of people are allowed to marry each other.
So, opponents think of the issue as problematic for the same reason interracial marriage (which is defined by the combination and not be either individual) has historically been considered problematic. Gotcha.
The argument also requires the state to impose a minimum income/property requirement on any man seeking to marry. Logically, the minimum would be set at 150% of average income/wealth, to insure ability to support a family of three (assuming the minimum of one child) at the standard of living considered normal for society. For the sake of efficiency, it might be simplest to require him to post bond for 150% of the local average income up front.
This is a bit snarkier than I like to be in these sorts of discussions, so let me try that again.
puddleglum, you seem to be arguing that there are two major problems with the contemporary conception of marriage: they are too impermanent, and they focus on the happiness of the spouses to the exclusion of the well-being of the children. Correct?
Okay, now, I disagree with that, but that’s not important right now, because the topic of this thread is not, “What should the purpose of marriage be?” but rather, “Why should homosexuals be excluded from marriage?” Your response does not address that second question. Let’s assume we all agree that marriages should be harder to get out of, and be geared more towards the rearing of children. There are ways we could do that. We could start repealing no-fault divorce laws, for example. But if we do that, we still have the question, “Why shouldn’t homosexuals be allowed to enter into these iron-clad, inescapable marriage contracts?” If we want to make marriage more child-centric, there are ways we can do that, too. Make marriage contracts contingent upon conception within five years, or the initiation of adoption proceedings in the same time period, or they are voided. But that still doesn’t address the concept of hetero-exclusivity in the institution: why shouldn’t two lesbians be allowed to marry, provided one of them gets knocked up shortly after the wedding?
In your post, you only come close to addressing gays at all in two places. There’s this:
Which I can’t make heads or tails of one way or the other. And then there’s this:
Which is not supported by anything else you’ve said. All the regressive changes you want to see in the institution of marriage are perfectly applicable to gay couples as well as straight. This statement functions, in fact, as an argument against your position: the desire to reproduce is no less strong in gay people than it is in straight people. Deprived of the opportunity to marry, gay people are still raising children. If the institution of marriage is so critical to the well-being of children, how do you defend your refusal to extend the marriage franchise to gay parents?
I struggle to see the problem, to me it is pretty straight forward
Marriage is a religious institution. If you read the Bible, it’s is pretty clear that that God is not a big fan of gay people. (as a matter of fact they should be killed in his opinion). Ok so if the guy who inspired the rulebook (Bible) is a homophobe, why should his followers allow gay marriage??
Im for gay marriage. For other reasons by the way. But I absolutely see where the christians are coming from.