It’s not “emotionalism” – it’s learning. In order to make real-world policy for couples, I’d need to talk to some of these couples.
This would be great for hypothetical arguments. I’m fine with that – a mental exercise into which we would imagine what kinds of policies work best for all kinds of hypothetical couples.
But when comparing hypothetical policies for hypothetical couples to real-world policies for real-world couples? No. Can’t compare fictional, maybe-they-exist, maybe-they-don’t couples that, if they exist, haven’t said a word, to real-world couples who have spoken out by the thousand.
Why would close relatives need to get married? Marriage creates a legal recognition of kinship – close relatives are already kin.
Would it be for the tax benefits? Or do you believe that the primary intent of marriage is to legitimatize a sexual relationship, and not the inheritance, property rights, insurance benefits, and etc?
I do not see what legal inequity consanguineous marriage would be intended to remedy, but again, I am open to hearing their arguments, as I am certain I am overlooking something simple.
A man and woman have a one-night stand. The woman gets pregnant, but doesn’t know the father’s last name and doesn’t really care to track him down.
25 years later, the daughter (Tallulah) falls in love with John, an older man. Her mother has since died, and nobody knows that the two are father and daughter, including the couple, but the deceased mother’s best friend is suspicious, and pushes Tallulah to get a DNA test. They do, for laughs, and find out the truth. Tallulah and John still want to marry. Friend is horrified. Should they be allowed to marry? Should potential children come into the decision?
I would say no, they shouldn’t be allowed to marry, but in this admittedly extremely unlikely case I can’t think of a good reason, since it is clearly not a situation of grooming or abuse.
I would say yes, they should be allowed to marry, even though I personally would be incredibly horrified and can’t imagine even considering marrying a relative. I have a very strong incest ick reaction.
I can only speak for myself, but I am far from perfect in terms of empathy and understanding of other people. I know there’s times in the past when I think I’ve thought of a way that would solve a difficult problem for people - only to discover that actually my lack of personal knowledge, or my misunderstanding of what I do know, or my lack of direct experience with the practical side of matters, sums up to solution that not only doesn’t solve the problem, but could even make things worse.
Reading and comprehending, empathy, and imagination are a good start, and perhaps there are people out there so good at that they don’t need to listen to the people concerned. For myself, I know that I’m not so good at that that I’d be willing to come to some conclusions or even just proposals without talking to the people who this would actually concern. And I don’t think something that, at the end of the day, is a reasonable fact-finding idea, should be mocked.
If I were to speculate to motives, I’d probably suggest the incest question is just a cop-out wrapped up to make SSM opponents look relevant. But I won’t speculate to motives; rather, I’ll address the strengths and weaknesses of the argument.
And the weakness of this analogy is the strong dynamic of encouraging abuse of minors inherent in legalizing incest marriages between parent and child. Pointing out that there are other ways to abuse children is not a persuasive rebuttal to this argument.
But should that “ick” reaction let you tell them that they’re not allowed to get married?
I acknowledge that many people have an “ick” reaction to the thought of two men getting married, but I just don’t recognize that as a valid objection to their marriage.
About the polygamy/polyandry question, we know how marriage works between two people. We have a huge amount of social institutions and case law. What happens to their property when one of them dies? Who gets to approve medical treatments in case one of them is incapable? When they want to dissolve the marriage, how should that work?
We have standard answers for all kinds of questions like this, and none of it is different if the two people in question are the same sex. There is no special work that has to be done, just change the rule we’ve historically had that marriage has to be between two opposite-sex people.
On the other hand, marriage between more than two people involves all kinds of issues that we don’t have standard answers for. You can’t just say “OK, three or more people can get married” and know how that’s supposed to work.
I’m fine with three or more people getting into a legal contract where they share resources and designate responsibilities, but all those have to be defined. With couple marriage, all that is already worked out. If someday we work out rules for plural marriage, then we can have that, but we aren’t anywhere close to that point yet.
You biggest problem is you have not properly identified the states arguments. There is inevitably more than one rationale expressed in a legal brief and you have over-simplified things. I intend to wait and see how the state develops its case and defines its interest in regulating these different kinds of marriage before I decide if the case is compelling enough. It is logically inconsistent to assert that because states cannot come up with a compelling interest in regulating the genders of licensees, states will be unable to come up with a compelling interest in regulating multi-party or familial marriages. The arguments will be very different depending on the social or practical problems they might produce.
Marriage grants special legal rights and responsibilities to two consenting adults who make a lifelong commitment to each other. Banning incest says that for reasons both biological and psychological, there is a small group of people you can’t consider as marriage partners. Banning same-sex marriage says that the 3% of people who are homosexual cannot marry anyone in the entire world whom they could possibly be attracted to and actually want to marry. That’s how I justify my own conflict of supporting SSM, but opposing incestual marriages.
Polygamy is a completely different relationship from monogamy. I don’t see a conflict between supporting SSM monogamous marriages, but opposing polygamous marriages.
I agree these are three very different animals here and I prefer to look at them independent of each other and try to see how the old arguments stand up to 21st century American scrutiny. This just is not the same cultural and legal world as it was in 1970 or 1950 or 1876. While I am not arguing in favor of either. it is time to press the refresh button on the standard chestnuts and see if the fears and worries of yesterday still apply with modern American society and modern social and biological science.
Will you give me a run-down on those reasons both biological and psychological to oppose familial marriage?
Will you tell me why you oppose multi-party marriage, or more accurately why you think states should ban multi-party marriage?
Hmm. According to this reasoning, wouldn’t interracial marriage be bannable, so long as there are a sufficient number of members of each race for someone to choose from?
Some people are only attracted to one particular racial group (or a few particular groups), so you can’t simply tell them to find a partner within another group.
I’m not at all attracted to people of my racial group, so if you banned interracial marriage I wouldn’t be able to get married.
Really? OK, there are genetic issues with close relatives procreating. That’s the biological. There are issues of mistaking familial love with romantic love, and issues of people abusing positions of authority. That’s the psychological.
I didn’t say I oppose multi-party marriages, only that I don’t think opposing them while supporting SSM represents any kind of logical conflict. I do think multi-party marriages would be more legally complex. I should be able to petition my foreign-national spouse to live in this country, but that’s one person, not as many as I choose. I can also transfer property at my death to one person without estate taxes, but not as many people as I choose. If polygamy were limited to n number of spouses, those issues would be lessened.
Well, banning incest really only makes a small number of exceptions to the group of people you would be allowed to marry. For me that would be eight people, I believe. Eight out of seven billion, and there’s justification for this ban. If I couldn’t marry outside my race, then that would eliminate the majority of the world’s population, including the woman I actually did marry, all with no justification. Therefore, I don’t think opposing incestual marriage while supporting interracial marriage is logically inconsistent.
I think I can’t quite get behind “Well, you can’t marry that person, but that’s not unfair because you can marry lots of other people.” It suggests a sort of interchangeability about people.
Maybe this is a better comparison: If there were no exclusively SS oriented people but still were bi people, would you say “No SSM, because you can always find someone of the opposite sex to be attracted to”?
Really? OK, there are genetic issues with close relatives procreating. That’s the biological. There are issues of mistaking familial love with romantic love, and issues of people abusing positions of authority. That’s the psychological.
We can take care of the biological fairly quickly. A license to marry has nothing to do with a license to have babies. I doubt denying a license will do much to increase or decrease sexual activity in this population. Govt has never been sufficiently interested in this issue to worry about any other population ‘procreating’, including people with tons of genetic markers to deny marriage licenses. We can now set a measurable standard risk for any pair of licensees expressed as a percentage and require any couple to get a genetic screening for congenital defects and if the risk is too high for Downs, or sickle cell or hemophilia etc, then we deny to that specific couple. . We are then measuring true risk before denial of a license, rather than denying a license based on a suspect class. We don’t do that because normally we think govt should mind its own damn business about who should or should not have kids and not get in the business of using public policy to direct these choices. When states have tried to deny marriage licenses to people with developemental delay, they used capacity to consent concerns rather that than what- kind -of droopy-eyed- grotesques- will- you- two- begat arguments.
the pschological issues and the abuse issues are more difficult to get at. I think its simply a matter of proving through modern clinical data and research that these worries stand on solid ground rather than assumptions based on a prejudices and stereotypes going back eons. I just have not seen any data on how real and relevant these are now.