Rational, fallacy-free case for Prop 8?

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK, I am not here to debate this, I hope I get some good answers before it turns into a debate and gets dumped in GD, so please act quick :slight_smile:

I have recently become increasingly involved in lobbying certain elected officials regarding their pro-Prop 8 stance.

At a public meeting last week, after the Mayor and I expressed in no certain terms a difference of opinions, an elderly gentleman spoke offering to more or less act a an intermediary to explain what we were trying to say to each other.

I don’t think what I am saying isn’t being heard by the Mayor or other officials, so I am not looking for a spokesperson or mediator. Quite the opposite actually, this guy doesn’t know what is going on behind the scenes.

Still, in the guise of keep your friends close and your enemies closer, I spoke with him briefly after the meeting and gave him my email.

We have traded a few back and forths, he seemed to insinuate that as Prop 8 supporter, he is able to make a full, fallacy free argument if only I would debate him adn allow him to forward the debate to the Mayor.

I told him I would not debate him, but I would be interested to see such an argument in its entirety as I am too busy to get into an endless debate with anyone that approaches me.

Needless to say, no such argument has been forthcoming. Also, the fellow is not exactly unknown to me, he has written in the local rags prior to the last election and defended his position (fallaciously) in the comments section of the online version of the paper. Until it was discovered that his son is prominent and successful in an industry where gay men are often successful, that the son makes no bones about being gay and living a “West Hollywood/Castro” type life, and having come from this California Bible Belt town.

That revelation instantly ended a discussion that seemed as though it would never end. Until now when he resurfaces again.

My question is this: Is there a vetted, rational, fallacy-free argument put forth by pro-Prop 8 forces in any context in California, or by anti-SSM forces anywhere in the US?

If not, has there been an attempt to present such a case? If there was an attempt, what caused it to fail? Is it possible to make a rational, fallacy-free argument in favor of Prop 8? Why or why not?

If there is such an argument, can I see it please? Please share :slight_smile:

2

I suppose rational and fallacy free are both in the eye of the beholder.
I think the most likely arguement you will be facing is something like the following. In societies where gay marriage is allowed the changing of emphasis from creation of families to the more ephemeral romantic love has led to less people getting married. This leads to more single parent raised children. Children raised out of wedlock are more likely to have dysfunctional lives. Therefore, allowing gay marriage will increase dysfunction in our society.
Better written versions of this arguement can be found at: http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_3_gay_marriage.html

3

I don’t follow how less people would get married when you allow more people to get married. :confused:

And to answer the OP, no I have never yet heard a reason that was not based on either religion or just simple dislike of gay people.

4

Please tell us which societies these are. Give us the names of countries, the percentage of children living in single parent homes, and the percentage of gay couples in those countries.

And don’t tell me to look at your link. I did, and it names no such societies.

5

I think-- although I am not sure-- from your OP that you may be looking for an understandable reason why a person might reasonably be pro-Prop 8. However, this is distinct from the other thing you might equally be looking for: a rational fallacy-free argument reasonable enough to convince someone against Prop 8 that this was the incorrect stance. I am just about positive you will never find the latter.

The reason I think this is impossible is that it’s impossible to satisfy “fallacy-free,” as I think that this is the sort of argument where there are so many definitions, assumptions, and personal perceptions inherent in the position one takes that the other side could always point out a fallacy by saying “That’s a stupid definition,” or “The way you perceive that is incorrect.” … as is often done in GD for all sorts of subjects :slight_smile:

6

Yes, that was what the guy claimed he would deliver.

When I asked it t be delivered in one fell swoop rather than be dribbled out in endless pieces, he seemed to not be able to present anything at all.

I am equally positive, yet he insisted he could. I give him the benefit of the doubt by asking the masses here what he might have been hinting at. Because, this being the subject of increasing local politics, and increasing media attention outside the area, it is likely to come up again sometime.

Well, maybe, but a good argument would seek agreement on definitions before building assumptions and agreeing on assumptions etc. before moving on to the logic.

On this he and I appeared to agree: That any rational (and fair! he claimed fair too!) argument would be free of any religious claims direct or indirect, and would fail should any fallacies be identified (although of course if the fallacies could be corrected, then fine, take another swing at it) among other things.

My suggestion to him was that his side has had ample time and money to have worked through such an argument, and I would simply like to see it. That appears to be too much to ask, yet he claims he can make it over time.

Tomorrow (Tues) is the next Council meeting, I suppose he will be there claiming how unreasonable I am in not letting him be my spokesperson. :rolleyes:

Still, this is important to nip in the bud, because whether he is correct or not in whether such an argument exists pales next to the reasons to not get drawn into a heated public debate with a frail man in his mid 80s.

Right. I am currently quite satisfied with the way this long term campaign is going, I don’t need this guy to hijack it when he isn’t on our side. But it would serve my purpose to give him every chance to put up or shut up, knowing that the former is not possible.

7

I don’t think that rational really comes into the equation on something like gay marriage.
It’s all a matter of personal opinion.

8

I don’t see how this can truly be answered factually, so let’s visit IMHO, where you can still get factual answers and opinions as well.

samclem Moderator, General Questions

9

That is not true at all IMHO since that is where we are now.

The pro-SSM argument is eminently rational. Read the majority opinion in In Re Marriage Cases from last summer’s CA Supreme Court ruling for a good example, although far from the only one.

The anti-SSM argument is in my experience always non-rational, wrapped up in religion and/or some vague undefined imagination of “tradition”. Yet it is often, as is the case here, accompanied by a claim that the reasoning is in fact rational ad free of fallacies.
Of course anyone can make that claim, but I just want to use the power of the SDMB board, with its many wise members with varying opinions and reading lists, to find out f someone has actually tried and perhaps succeeded in actually putting forth a truly rational argument in the pile of unjustified claims. A needle in a haystack as it were.

10

You are acting as if someone must have an argument based on logic to support a policy position, but that just isn’t necessarily the case. Some people just simply don’t want the state to allow gay marriage, and the proposition process gives them the ability to vote for their preference. It doesn’t matter why they have that preference or how they developed it.

11

The gays will force your children to be gay, and will use your tax dollars to enforce gayness in schools.

12

So what?

If my town gives me the ability rto vote on when city parks close at night, I can vote for 7:00 and you can vote for 7:30 and neither one of us owes the other a logical and fallacy-free explanation of our vote. We each have a preference, and the one that gets the most people to agree wins.

I realize that you believe that SSM impacts people’s rights and therefore should not simply be decided based on people’s preferences, but so far that view has not prevailed in many jurisdictions (so SSM is still just a voting issue in such jurisdictions).

Also, I shouldn’t really have to say this, but the SDMB being what it is, I’ll add that if I were given the oportunity to vote for SSM then I would do so.

13

Park closing times are not the same thing.

As you noted it is about people’s rights. That demands a bit more than when the park should close.

A rational, fallacy-free argument is precisely what is needed from the pro-Prop-8 crowd. If this ever gets to the SCOTUS as an Equal Protection case then they will apply at the least a Rational Basis test. That is pretty easily passed for the state but they still need to proffer a rational basis for the law. If they cannot even do that much then they lose.

Now, the Rational Basis test as it stands is rather easy for the state to pass and it has been suggested the court might adopt something a bit more stringent like a “rational basis plus” test which sits somewhere between Rational Basis and Intermediate Scrutiny (which is what is applied to gender discrimination).

14

I’m with those who say it can’t be done. I don’t think there is a rational and fallacy free case for or against the 55 mph speed limit, the .08 BAC level, or the Earned Income Tax Credit, let alone something as personal as marriage. Policy is too much about values for any arguments to be rational and fallacy free. Not that there’s anything wrong with chipping away at the other side’s fallacies, but standards of truth and rationality will never be 100% clearcut.

15

I think you mean “it should be about people’s rights.” In those jurisdictions where a gay person does not (currently) have a right to marry, then it’s still just a voting issue, meaning that people can express their preferences no matter what those preferences are based on.

IOW, I am using the term “right” in the sense of a legally enforceable obliagtion for the state not to do something, whereas you seem to be using it in the sense of a person’s natural human rights.

16

Where is the California Bible Belt?

17

I heard an interesting argument from my friend yesterday, but it approaches the issue from an oblique angle and isn’t really concerned with gays at all. It’s not really a pro-Prop 8 argument as an anti-SSM argument in general, but I thought it was interesting enough to put out here.

She doesn’t want to allow SSM because to her, marriage is about kids. She derives this from looking across a breadth of cultures and seeing that many of them put offspring first and foremost in the purpose of a marriage, to the point where divorce is pretty much a guarantee if either partner turns out to be sterile.

Basically, if you’re getting with someone to produce kids, then you can be in a marriage, but for any other purpose you should have a civil union. What’s new to me is that she’s consistent enough on this that she doesn’t think a sterile man or woman should be able to enter into a marriage either. Marriages would effectively be civil unions, just with the added bonus of being able to produce kids. Since same-sex couples can’t produce kids, by default they wouldn’t be allowed marriage, but for once it’s not based on them being gay.

Where most people would find this situation problematic because it allows legislation to screw civil unions, she actually wants to screw marriages by making it harder to get the license and therefore produce kids. Yeah, she’s one of those “stupid people shouldn’t breed” sorts.

When I brought up the common counterpoints, she did admit that adoption is a problem in her scenario, as is the fact that marriage and civil unions would have to be substantially reworked in order to make her plan viable, including but most certainly not limited to the Full Faith & Credit clause. That’s as far as we got, because I didn’t want to debate too in-depth.

Honestly, I know it would never fly, because it involves changing the current basic concept of marriage in American society and you know the majority of Americans wouldn’t go for it. But it is the first viewpoint I’ve seen that can’t quickly and easily be boiled down to discriminating based on sexual preference.

18

I am not quite convinced this is what you want, given that you later say

but in the interest of good faith, here goes for a couple of pro-prop-8 arguments I find understandable even if I don’t find them “fallacy-free.”

I know a lot of pro-Prop-8 people because I am Mormon, and my observation is that the particular people I know, at least, are working from a very different definition of marriage than the anti-Prop-8 people. (Rand Rover and Whack-a-Mole have also touched on this, and while I was writing this Bosstone did as well.) My observation is that anti-Prop-8’ers generally think that marriage is about love and that people who love each other ought to have a right to get married, whereas pro-prop-8’ers (especially Mormons, who are basically taught this as theology) are much more likely to think that marriage is about taming heterosexual sexual instincts and raising families, with love being a relatively minor though desirable positive side effect. Therefore it can be difficult for the pro-prop-8’er to understand the arguments for why gay marriage should be legal, because they are working from an entirely different viewpoint in which the whole concept just doesn’t even make sense. (This is, of course, not to say that gay couples can’t raise families as well, and actually I recommend stressing that as good tactics; I am simply saying that this is not the primary focus of the emotional argument.)

(Note that this argument was probably a pretty good one 100 years ago-- and note, concurrently, that no one was even thinking about gay marriage 100 years ago-- because I think marriage had a much stronger component of that then. Currently the argument has a major problem: that of birth control. Because of reliable, widely-available birth control, marriage is today, to the average person, much more about romantic/sexual partners now than about providing for the inevitable results of heterosexual sex. This is, in my opinion, also a good response to the argument of “Why should we change the definition of marriage when it’s always been done this other way?”)

One argument that you may not find entirely rational, and which is based on religion, but one I rather understand as a Mormon, is that religious pro-prop-8’ers (not all of whom were anti-gay-marriage) were worried about curtailment of religious freedom. This may have been a misperception/misinformation/misunderstanding sort of thing, but it was not helped by the marches on Mormon temples after Prop 8 passed, and indeed IME those protests were instrumental in turning a lot of previously-anti-prop-8 Mormons (yes, a number of them did exist) around. (I can just about guarantee you that had Prop 8 failed, Mormons would not be demonstrating, and if they did, they would do it without insults, and probably with flowers and cookies.)

19

Orange County.

20

It may be a fear but it is an irrational fear.

No one anywhere I have seen have suggested that if SSM became legal that would obligate the Mormons (or any) religious group to perform SSM marriages. They remain private institutions and can decide for themselves who they want to marry. No one has a “right” to have it performed in a particular church/temple/whatever. A SSM couple can either find a religious group amenable to marrying them or just go to see a judge. If their particular religion is opposed to SSM then that is something that person needs to think about.

I am surprised the Mormons were surprised they ended up with a lot of angry people marching outside their temples. The Mormons actively worked to restrict rights from those people and those people were understandably cheesed off by that. More, the Mormons inserted themself in a big way into an issue in a whole other state. Yes there are Mormons in California but a huge amount of support came from Utah. If a group largely based in Mississippi worked to (say) see that your kids were taught Intelligent Design in your school in (pretend) Illinois I bet you would see it as none of their business.