The ideal is a stable, healthy home in which the biological parents raise their healthy, stable, offspring. In other words, most families as recognized through most of this nation’s history. And I’m looking here, only, because these are the laws under which we live. Other societies can do as they wish.
Wow, I really thought I could pin you down to a clear answer instead of weasel words.
I really want to understand this. So let’s try again.
Let’s assume that you are correct: the purpose of marriage is to promote and encourage childbearing. I think this is a flawed and false premise, but I’m going with it for the sake of argument. So, to reiterate: the purpose of marriage is to promote and encourage childbearing for the betterment of society.
Let us further agree (again, for the sake of argument) that those heterosexual couples who are unable to or unwilling to produce offspring that is biologically their own are - in your own words - “outliers,” statistically insignificant. They are therefore allowed to participate in the institution of marriage because they are, essentially, harmless. They do not provide societal benefit, but they create no detriment, either.
You appear to grant that gay couples fall into the same category: essentially harmless. They do not interfere in any way with the ultimate purpose of marriage, which is to perpetuate the species and raise a new generation of human beings in a socially productive manner.
So: gays marrying does no harm to the instituation of marriage, and it makes gay couples happy. And here is the crux, the question to which I’d like a straight answer that I know I won’t receive: Given that, what possible reason is there to continue to deny gay couples the right to marry one another?
I haven’t said they’re of no relevance, I said it wasn’t required. But, when you consider, prior to events of the last forty years, that the majority of children have been raised by their parents, it’s clear to see that the normal family relationship provided the benefit. It couldn’t and shouldn’t be forced, just encouraged. Isn’t what tax laws are designed, at least in part, do do? Encourage positive behavior, discourage negative behavior. Sin taxes, anyone?
If Christopher and Barbara are married, then Christopher has a sex change operation to become Christine, are you favor of them still remaining legally married despite now being a same sex couple*? After all, they had the potential to bear children.
*Assuming Barbara’s in favor of sticking together, of course.
What negative behavior are you discouraging by not allowing same-sex marriage?
Because gay relationships do not naturally produce children. In that regard, and in an odd way, it is ‘just about sex’. Gay people can form relationships of any scope, it merely is not the same as that of marriage. It cannot be.
Seems to me most post-menopausal women are married prior to cessation, so this is not an issue. Secondly, you’re sure picking on the ladies today. How 'bout a man who’s 80 and impotent? Hows about we kick him to the curb?
And, no, I’m not serious. These are just sloppy arguments.
Maybe I’m just too wild and libertine to understand, but none of your arguments have any resonance whatsoever with me, NaSultainne. They sound like the arguments of some ancient, dusty centenarian yelling at kids to get off his lawn.
To my ears, it all comes down to “We’ve always done it this way!” Everything else is special pleading crap pulled desperately from your bag o’ rationalizations in order to support that.
I can guarantee you that I’m never going to see things your way. I can’t speak for you, but it looks like we just fundamentally disagree.
I think I’ll just sit back and let the wave of history carry me past your futile last stand on this.
So can we discuss exclusively a heterosexual couple who cannot (or chooses not) to have children versus a homosexual couple who cannot (or chooses not) to have children, so you can explain why the first has the option of marriage and the second does not, since children are now of no relevance?
As I understand it, having children does not carry any particular tax benefit or at least not one large enough to offset the expenses of raising the child. If you mean other benefits, please expand on this, and clarify what benefits a child raised by a heterosexual couple (and in fact over the last forty years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of children raised by a single parent) gets that a child raised by a homosexual couple does not. It won’t be enough that it’s self-evident to you, please explain it to me.
Next you are going to tell me that sometimes statutes are unclear, or just have multiple plausible interpretations, and that a body of law is developed (by judges no less!) explaining how those statutes are applied.
Should a woman who is in her forties (and perhaps about to enter her third marriage) be encouraged or discouraged? She’s still premenopausal, but the chances of her having a Down-Syndrome baby jump dramatically. Does this have the same “benefit to society” as a younger woman getting married?
I’ve heard this argument before, and it seems to me to contain one major flaw that never gets pointed out.
You say that allowing gays to marry would negatively affect the institution of marraige because marraige is set up by society as a way to promote childbearing and childrearing, and gays cannot naturally have kids. This is true. However, allowing them to marry isn’t going to mean that society produces less children, is it?
(Grrr, I’m having trouble putting my thoughts into words; I’m loopy on Percocet following some dental work.)
Let me try again. As I see it, the belief that the legalization of gay marraige would be a detriment to the traditional heterosexual childrearing familial ideal is based on two assumptions.
- The assumption that if gay marraige is legalized, a significant portion of existing heterosexual marraiges would fall apart on account of one or both parties deciding to enter into homosexual relationships instead.
- The assumption that if gay marraige is NOT legalized, gays will choose instead to enter into traditional marraiges, settle down, raise kids, and be happy.
However, both of these assumptions strike me as false. As it stands right now, individuals in committed gay relationships - the ones likely to actually get married in the first place, were it legal where they live - are currently in all liklihood living together, with no children, and not married. If gay marraige is legalized, they will get married, and live together, with no children. So, yes, they will be married without producing offspring. However, if gay marraige remains illegal, it’s not like these individuals, who love each other deeply, are going to abandon their homosexual relationships in order to enter into traditional marraiges and produce kids. Similarly, I don’t think that there are a lot of “closet gays” in existing heterosexual marraiges, either; since by definition of being gay, they are not attracted to women, it seems unlikely that more than a handful of gays would enter into relationships with and marry women in the first place.
Basically, what it comes down to is that continuing to block gay marraige is not going to create additinonal happy, traditional, mom-and-dad-and-two-kids families, and so that whole argument falls apart. On top of that, we haven’t yet discussed gay adoption; it seems to me like allowing gays to marry and encouraging them to adopt would solve two problems at once, but that’s a seperate issue. So please, explain: How exactly does allowing gays to marry threaten the traditional family unit?
No, it’s clearly an incredibly stupid, morally flawed argument. What you’re not getting is that it is identical to the argument you’re making against gay marriage. Why should we punish women who are unable to bear children by preventing them from getting married? For precisely the same reason we should punish women who are lesbians by preventing them from getting married. If you don’t think we should punish the first group, you need to demonstrate why the same reasoning does not apply to the second group. So far you have failed, rather spectacularly, to do this.
Wait, you’re saying that laws should only be passed if they benefit the majority of the public? That can’t possibly be a correct interpretation of what you’ve just posted, but I can’t see any other way to read it.
But this brings us back to infertile couples. You keep saying that its outrageous to expect the government to test if a couple is infertile before allowing them to wed, but that’s precisely what you’re arguing for when you argue against gay marriage. Gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry because they cannot “naturally” produce children. But there are just as many straight couples in the world who cannot naturally produce children, either. If not being able to produce children is a sufficient reason to bar gay couples from marriage, why is it also not a sufficient reason to bar straight couples from marriage, aside from the fact that (usually) you can’t tell if a straight couple is infertile just by looking at them?
Well, why shouldn’t we? How does your argument against letting a gay man marry not apply to letting an impotent man marry?
Anyone see a contradiction?
So do homosexual relationships. So does polyamory. So what? What does that have to do with either a lexicographical or a legal definition of “marriage?”
So are same-sex couples.
Again, this is the sheerest tautology. This particular government has proscribed only one particular definition of “marriage,” therefore that’s therefore that’s the lexicographical definition, therefore that has to remain the only legal definition. Have you thought this through at all?
I cited the Bible to show you one commonly accepted example of a lexicographical definition of marriage which is not “one man, one woman.” It’s a refutation of your attempt to argue that marrigae has only one lexicographical meaning. The fact that you didn’t mention the Bible has no relevance. It still provides an example that refutes your lexicographical assertion. I did not cite it for any kind of moral authority.
And relationships in which the woman is post-menopausal also do not naturally produce children. Why is one acceptable and not the other?
Yet, even if a woman’s first marriage is post-menopausal, society allows it. Odd, despite your belief (well, on-and-off-depending-on-the-monent belief) that society intends for marriage to promote having children.
At least you’ve finally recognized the problems with your arguments.
Why? What is the purpose of marriage, as far as the state is concerned? Just two people (or howevermany) just setting up housekeeping? Nothing more important than that? And the fact that the large majority of marriages have children is just, I don’t know, pure luck? C’mon.
Good. It’s a purpose, not the *only *purpose. As I believe I said already, if marriage, i.e., a couple in a stable relationship, was the only purpose, there’d be no reason to deny *any two people *anywhere the option of marriage. But society would die if that were the sole purpose and end use of marriage. But you’re not really arguing that, are you? Because if you were, you’d be arguing on behalf of any and all two-member couples the right to get married. But, again, you’re not. You’re arguing that two same-sex people involved in a sexual relationship deserve marriage. So, you’re already drawing lines as well. Glad to see I’m not the only one.
Let us further agree (again, for the sake of argument) that those heterosexual couples who are unable to or unwilling to produce offspring that is biologically their own are - in your own words - “outliers,” statistically insignificant. They are therefore allowed to participate in the institution of marriage because they are, essentially, harmless. They do not provide societal benefit, but they create no detriment, either.
Close, dang, we’re almost there and I’m running out of time here. Here’s the distinction. We cannot, you, me, the chair and the desk, presume to know, in advance, which couples will and which couples will not have children. Some will choose to, some will choose not to. Some will be fertile, some will not. Some will face illness, death, or other situations unique to their lives. Now, of all these combinations, it must needs be, in order for the society to continue. a smaller number who do not have children, yes? These I would term harmless, for the following reason. Some of these people will find themselves moving into the larger group, even those couples who may not initially intend to have children. Again, this is correct, is it not? Therefore, it costs society little to encourage the partnership which will, all things considered, bear children.
I’m trying to be as clear and precise as I can. It does me no good to dance around the issue, and I regret if it seems that way. Marriage is a societal recognition; happiness has little to do with it. As others have pointed out, marriage has, in times past, been accomplished to form alliances and prevent war. I don’t argue happiness in either direction, let it be noted.
As to gays, because they lack the fundamental essence of biologically producing their own children, they do not meet this standard. Pretend, for a minute, that no gay couple had children, either from previous marriages or through adoption. Absent that, what benefit does gay ‘marriage’ offer the state? Very little. It, contrarily, would have likely offered more prior to the easy-breezy marriage turnstile we’ve adopted since the 70’s, but that’s another debate. It then, as I mentioned previously, becomes merely a sexual relationship, which marriage is encouraged not to be.
Again, I’m arguing that gay relationships do not offer the state the benefit of a presumption of childbearing. They cannot do so. So, no marriage.
Gay? Want to set up your household with a partner? Go for it. Sign whatever papers you need to, consult lawyers if and as necessary. You’re good to go. What you are not, is married. Marriage is necessary to society, gay relationships are not.
The only thing close to a legitimate argument, in my mind, is the terror that such laws would force church-based groups to treat gay married couples the same as hetero married couples, when such treatment is against the church’s policies. The example given in a chat yesterday at the Washington Post, was in Massachusetts, a Catholic-based adoption group was forced to disband in that state. They would not place children with gay couples, the state said “if you discriminate, we can’t give you funding”, they couldn’t make it without state funding, so had to close.
Of course, my take on that is that any group is allowed to discriminate all they want (absent protected classes, which homosexuality ain’t), if they’re not using government funds to do it.
Tax laws that encourage marriage and childrearing, by default, discourage its opposite. Someone is paying the higher taxes as a result, yes? There’s no way to promote without, in some respect, discouraging something else.
Sounds like an unfortunate but logical consequence of equality to me. Note, please, that a “church-based” organization is different from “a church”. Churches would, indeed, be exempt from any of these laws, in hiring, at least. But if you are providing a public service, regardless of your religious leanings, you may not discriminate based solely on your religious prejudices and still receive government funding. Period.
That is NOT an undue burden. It is equal protection.
No, I don’t think so, but also I don’t think that the lack of gay marriage is even on the same scale.