Wow, me too!
For me I think that history will view us in a way that you haven’t even thought about yet. The way we interact with breeding is changing in such a significant way that they might even think that the fight for the right to marry was silly because they decide that the very institution of marriage itself is silly. With the rise of the welfare state, it’s attendant problems, and a possible looming GDP collapse across the developed world due to demographic decline, such prognostications seem premature to say the least.
Come on. The desire for marriage will become obsolete, and be thought “silly”, when *love *does.
As for the OP, I assume the question refers to national law, not the states which are increasingly going that way in spite of some speedbumps. Legislation in Congress is not yet in process, but lawsuits based on the 14th Amendment are. The partisan conservative faction now with the majority on the Supreme Court can ignore the cases that will inevitably come to it, but they can’t last forever, either.
When injustice like this is allowed to happen on a state-by-state basis, then the Feds must step in and stop it. I assume you have no qualms with amendments that freed slaves or let women vote?
What is with your hostility? Gay marriage is a right and to discriminate against them is evil. History will show that prejudice against gays will be equal or worse than prejudice against blacks for exactly the reasons Revtim stated
Why does history have to show it? Why can’t you show it right now? Is the worst yet to come with respect to gay rights?
Attitudes towards marriage may change, and more couples may live together, long term, without bothering with marriage. But it’s not going to go away.
Unless our species largely abandons pair-bonding, people are going to cohabit long-term, in ways that involve a lot of sharing and joint ownership of assets, and dependence on each other’s incomes. And responsibility for offspring, when such critters are conceived.
Now, it’s possible for individual couples to each come up with their own agreements over how to deal with assets, income, and offspring during and in the event of the dissolution of their relationships. But society has a sort of standard contract for these things. It’s called ‘marriage.’ And because most people need such a contract at some point in their lives, and few will be interested in writing their own, marriage will be with us indefinitely.
No, I don’t have such problems, but there is an argument to be made that states might have gone that way anyway on a long enough timeline. Personally I think that young minority males are being locked up for drug offenses because of a one-size fits all Federal issue. I think that’s a more important issue than gay marriage. Obviously a balance needs to be struck, but I think that balance is too much toward the Federal government right now and I’m glad gay marriage is being fought at the state level. I don’t think it’s in any way hypocritical to have one opinion one way regarding what is appropriate at the Federal level and another opinion another way as to what is appropriate at the state level.
What hostility. I just made a minor jibe at someone predicting that history would view things exactly the way that he does. The fact of the matter is that marriage as it was understood 50 years ago really doesn’t exist any longer. The proliferation of single-parent households and divorces has made some serious changes to the role that marriage plays in our society. Gay marriage will change that even further. Who knows what the next step will be? I am not making a slippery slope argument here, I am just seeing a step by step process toward a world where we stop organizing ourselves around pairings.
It will eventually most likely, particularly if we socialize more. Right now marriage works because it creates a social unit useful for sharing resources. If more and more of our daily interaction with the wealth of society is mediated by the state, what purpose does marriage serve? Why should I live with my wife if I get tired of my marriage when I know that the state will take care of both of us and our children?
I think it’s highly probable that our species will start making a drastic move away from pair-bonding in this century. As it is most of the developed world is not breeding, and how that will affect GDP in twenty years will be very interesting. You’re talking about it like pair-bonding is a sure thing, and yet how many couples and individuals are there out there who never produced any GDP producers of their own but will be taken care of by socialized state welfare such as Social Security and Medicare. That’s a pretty radical departure from the traditional family structure. The traditional family structure has largely been abolished in our culture in favor of socializing the family function, so why is it so inconceivable that the pair-bonding might go away too? I think people often discount how radical our abandonment of traditional organization already is. I live more than two-thousand miles from both my parents and in-laws.
And it would be possible for a triune relationship to accomplish that as well. Also depending on how much more we socialize the family function, it might not be necessary to have co-assets anymore. I think marriage will be with us indefinitely just as the clan structure would have been with us indefinitely in the 19th century.
It does show it right now. I said history because usually that is used as the arbiter of what’s right and wrong when enough people come to accept one version.
Well then show it. Show that prejudice against gays has been equal to or worse than prejudice against blacks.
There’s the Metropolitan Community Church which was founded for gays & lesbians. Reform Judaism is pretty accepting of gays and lesbians. The MCC is very much in favour of same-sex marriage and most Reform rabbis will officiate at same-sex weddings.
I don’t think so. I could be wrong, but I thought our resident lawyers have said the FFaC clause needn’t apply to SSM. I’m open to being corrected, but I think there is more to it than you say.
Without DOMA wouldn’t the federal government be required to recognize same-sex marriages (at when dealing with couples resident in states that recognize them)?
Been reading a lot of speculative fiction, have you?
Pair-bonding, and marriage, will go away when the desire to raise children goes away. Entirely. From the species. Prior to that, some percentage of parents are going to want to stick to a model that lets them stick with their kids and raise them for a while.
And let’s keep in mind the impact that people who have no kids have on the instincts and inclinations inherited by the next generation.
Might divorce after the kids leave the nest go up? Maybe, but at this point I kind of doubt it. For centuries there was an artificial pressure to stay married, but divorce has been pretty acceptable for a number of years now, which allows us to approach a new equilibirum, based on factors independent of that pressure. And as I seriously doubt that everyone would get divorces if they thought they could get away with it, I think it’s inevitable that the level of increased divorces will plateau before marriages disappear from the earth.
Same-sex marriage is also recognized in Connecticut, Massachusetts (and has been since 2004), New Hampshire (as of January 1), and Vermont. So far there still hasn’t been a popular vote that’s come out in favor of marriage, but SSM came about in Vermont and New Hampshire through the ordinary legislative process, not judicial action. (Even if you regard same-sex marriage as being an issue of basic human rights and thus have no problem with it being implemented by the courts, it’s still encouraging to see elected representatives doing the right thing on their own.)
The vote in Maine is disappointing as hell, but I pointed out a year ago that exit polling information consistently shows older people are more likely to oppose gay marriage (and similar gay rights issues like gay adoption) while younger people are more likely to support gay rights. I would be willing to bet the referendum in Maine (which was a fairly close vote) shows the same pattern.
And I don’t think that’s a question of age alone, the way one might imagine people being more likely to support (say) lowering the drinking age when they themselves are 19, but then those same people turning around and opposing lowering the drinking age 20 years later when their own children are approaching 18. I think it’s a true generational shift, and that today’s young adults will still be more friendly to gay rights even when they’re senior citizens, just as aging baby boomers have never shown any inclination to turn around and support segregated water fountains. And I think future generations will find opposing gay marriage somewhat incomprehensible.
Quoth mswas:
That would require a fundamental change in our physiology and genetics of a sufficient magnitude that we’d no longer be the same species. So, no, our species won’t make a drastic move away from pair-bonding.
I am a 64-year-old gay man. It wasn’t that long ago when I was sure there wouldn’t be same-sex marriage anywhere, in my lifetime. In fact I didn’t even foresee the issue taken seriously enough for people to take sides.
I recently saw a rerun of an old “Golden Girls” episode in which Blanche’s gay brother announces that he wants to marry his boyfriend. The audience cracked up, as if this were the most ridiculous thing they ever heard . . . something they couldn’t possibly take seriously, as if the guy wanted to marry his goldfish.
That show was only 20-odd years ago, but the audience would respond very differently today. Things are definitely changing, and they are changing fast.
And yet…about 1/3 of all households are single-parent households and only eight percent live in a household that included a grandparent.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/families_households/009842.html
Living in tribal packs is also a part of our physiological condition and yet only 8% of kids live with a Grandparent. I am certain that the rest are living out their normal biological condition of a condo in Boca or an assisted living facility far away from their family members.
begbert2 People in the West aren’t really breeding. Even nations with pro-natalist policies are still finding themselves just a smidge below replacement rate. In my speculative fiction that I read over at the CIA’s website they report that Germany’s TFR is only 1.41. One needs not be a prophet to see that already people with the wealth and the means to do so abandon the natural pair bonding scenario as quickly as they can.
Besides this is about gay marriage, arguing for biological drives when discussing gay marriage is beyond silly. If one is gay the pair-bonding is meaningless as any attempt to have children will be acquired by artificial means, therefore the number involved in the bonding is essentially meaningless.
Absent social pressures to conform to societal norms, monogamy will simply go away. It’s an artificial construction.
AMEN!!!
You know…a hundred years ago the debate was over whether or not deaf and hard of hearing people or other people like that should “marry”
Five. Ten years on the outside. Most people really don’t give a shit.
I don’t think anyone’s taken a stab at this question, so I’ll try my hand.
The short answer is YES, there are gay people against gay marriage. However, in my experience, there are two types of queer people in opposition to marriage. One are the self-hating queers; those that are still under influence of religious indoctrination or those that come from heavily conservative backgrounds. Second, there are queers who are opposed to personal same sex marriage; these individuals feel like ‘marriage’ is a heterosexual institution and want no part of a process that ritualizes gender roles and responsibilities, or that don’t want some of the legal ramifications that automatically come with marriage (like powers of attorney, inheritance, or child custody). However, these individuals generally support SSM in general as a matter of equality, but do not desire one for themselves.