First, a video that made me cry. Philip Spooner, an 86 year old Maine resident, veteran of WWII, and lifelong Republican:
Next, a video that made me laugh. Roy Zimmerman and Laura Love, performing his song, “Summer of Loving”:
Finally, a question:
For those of you who oppose marriage equality, what would it take to convince you that your stance is wrong?
I ask because we’ve got Belgium, Canada, The Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and 5 US states. Same Sex Marriage has been legal in the Netherlands since 2000. We’re quickly nearing the point where appeals to how SSM will destroy society can be met with empirical evidence as to how it hasn’t. Bare appeals to tradition (in addition to being logical fallacies) hold less weight the more tradition there is behind SSM.
Because I’m serious about asking what it would take to convince SSM opponents that their stance is wrong, my normal comments policy is not in effect here.
I’m not sure people who believe something illogical are going to tell you how to make them not believe it. :/
Awesome choice of videos, Myca. I’ve loved Laura Love since I first saw her perform in 1996. An amazing voice, a kick-ass bassist, has tons of songs promoting justice & equality and all of you should buy her music & see her perform.
I think that the answer that you’ll get to your question is, “Nothing.”
Yeah, I think this is probably true … but in order to maintain the illusion of rational thought, one ought to be able to describe some sort of hypothetical evidence which might convince one to change one’s mind.
Jake, between King Missile and this, I think it’s possible that we have similar taste in music.
—Myca
Yes–that first video brought tears to my eyes.
Cool. Then here’s something I’d venture to guess that you haven’t heard that you should love – The Aquanettas. Pick up Love With The Proper Stranger. You can find it at a used CD store or online or you can buy it or the mp3 from the nettwerk store. The best unknown band I’ve listened to in years with the bonus of one of my childhood friends playing drums & singing backup.
Plus it gives me a chance to advertise more good, little known music. And I will use the smallest excuse to recommend music. For example, I’m going to see the Vaselines next week. Who ever thought I’d have a chance to do that? Buy The Way of the Vaselines, it’s the most amazing collection of songs ever put together by people who might be worse singers than I am.
Yeah, I think this is probably true … but in order to maintain the illusion of rational thought, one ought to be able to describe some sort of hypothetical evidence which might convince one to change one’s mind.
Yeah, but let’s be fair. What would it take to persuade you that your stance is wrong?
What if evidence suggested that laws banning rape didn’t actually have the effect of reducing rape, and in fact tended to produce the opposite result. Imagine that if, by legalizing rape, incidents would become less common – but the few incidents that did occur would be unprosecutable. Would that fact persuade me to support legalization? Or would I care so passionately about the symbolism that I wouldn’t be able to embrace decriminalization?
I haven’t been impressed with the rationality of the arguments against marriage equality. But I doubt that I’m greatly guided by rationality either.
Just a note — SSM has effectively been possible in loophole form in Japan for centuries, though it’s not spoken of as such. (And “openly gay” marriage is still frowned-upon.) As I understand it, the elder/higher-status of the couple adopts the younger/lower-status member into his/her family by adding their name to the family roster. They then have all the rights of any family member, just as a married partner would — there’s no difference, and no age limit on when this adoption can occur. Plus it’s ambiguous enough to prevent any embarassment; could be the elder person just needed an heir, could be they’re married, could be the younger person needed a family, nobody knows but them, and it’s nobody else’s business.
(Yes, I have learned this from manga. But confirmed it by talking with gay Japanese folks.)
A body of evidence proving that SSM is damaging to society or children would do it. I’m not for SSM just for SSM’s sake. If there were proof that SSM was tremendously harmful to people I don’t see how I could be a vocal proponent of it.
I mean, really, you think that my stance on SSM is the result of illogical, irrational feelings about it with no care or interest in real world facts? Really? I’ve been coming off that way? I’ll need to rethink how I explain myself in the future if that’s true.
Myca,
SSM opponents appear to be working with a different set of data than you, as they claim that “opposite marriage” (I think I need to adopt Miss California’s phrasing) has declined and out-of-wedlock births increased in some countries after the introduction of SSM.
nojojojo,
Gays in the U.S. have attempted the adoption route, but it’s problematic because marriage can end in divorce, whereas adoption is forever.
nobody.really,
I’m not sure why you picked something as ridiculous as “not banning rape will *reduce* the incidence of rape” when that’s clearly not been the case. There are many types of rape that only recently have been prohibited, most importantly marital rape, and their incidence did not increase with the prohibition of them although sometimes prohibition occurs only when incidence has risen. A more useful, factual example might be substance prohibitions, e.g. the overall harm caused by alcohol rose during Prohibition.
Or if you really want to be forward looking, the probability that the harms of prostitution (exploiting and trafficking of women; STDs) would decrease if it were legalized. It is in fact because I think the harms are decreased by legalization and registration that I’m barely and reluctantly in favor of legalizing and regulating prostitution. If I thought these harms would be increased by legalization, I’d happily go back to being a prohibitionist. But all the evidence I’ve seen makes me rationally prefer legalization even if it emotionally troubles me.
From PG’s first link:
No! Not … the Scandinavian path!
That graph sure as hell looked like a continuation of a pre-existing trend to me.
Oh, and that first video was awesome. “I didn’t raise three of my four children to have more rights than the other.”
So I can’t help but draw your attention to this situation that is both disgusting and, to my sense of vicious cynicism, vindicating:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/05/06/california.miss.california/index.html
To summarize: apparently Miss California (you know, the one that publically endorsed Prop 8 while trying to get the Miss America crown) thinks that, not only is it okay to discriminate, but that it’s also okay to lie in order to become Miss California.
But that’s okay, because, according to her, those exposing her lies about posing “semi-nude” at 17 are only doing it “to target her for supporting traditional marriage”. You know, ‘cuz it couldn’t POSSIBLY have anything to do with the fact that she’s FUCKING DISHONEST. (To be honest, I think this guy is doing it for the MONEY, but I’m not sure I’d be against him doing it to lambast her for her beliefs either, because, hey, SHE’S A BIGOT AND A LIAR).
Why is it okay to be a FILTHY LIAR, but not okay to be a homosexual? (Not to mention the fact that these pics were supposedly taken for a lingerie ad… AT SEVENTEEN… no… she and her bigot allies don’t see a problem with THAT…).
In my need to create metaphors, I came up with these:
It’s a little like Stalin saying: “Hey, just because I was a tyrant, a murderer, a thief, and a traitor to my friends and allies doesn’t mean that my promotion of Communism should come under fire.”
It’s like Hitler telling people: “Sure I ran my competition out of the country, and imprisoned and executed millions of Jews, Gypsies, and Homosexuals, and embroiled the entire European continent in a war the likes of which the human race had never seen, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t a good person.”
Did you just Godwin yourself?
I really wish that people wouldn’t make a big deal of the Miss California photos. Yes, I can understand (and share) the schadenfreude, but really…
I don’t think it’s wrong to pose for nude pictures.
I don’t think it’s wrong to pose for nude pictures at age 17, then regret it several years later.
It is wrong to lie when you fill out a form entering a beauty pageant, but that’s hardly the sort of sin that I find outrageous, or that I think people should be driven out of public life for.
And I do think it’s wrong for people to be shamed by others for having posed nude.
Aw, that guy in the first video was born on a potato farm in Maine! So was my father.
It’s over. It was over already, but after watching that first video, it’s beyond over. Please tell any and all to run that baby at every convenience. Get on board the SSM Train or get left behind. Heh.
First, off topic, then on topic.
Ampersand: I agree with you on this.
However, I find that I still feel a lot of anger about the pageant participant’s lie about having posed nude/barely clothed and choice to oppose SSM. To me, this situation exemplifies the social conservative movement and its inability to understand that the personal is political and its insistence on hiding basic, human truths (such as: love is good for everybody, being naked is pretty nifty, sex can be fun, etc.).
Of course supporting SSM and choosing to pose nude are not the same thing, but it still reminds me of the many times that we have seen social conservatives support policies that contradict and harm their personal lives and those they love. I still wonder how people who do this live with themselves. I imagine that there must be a significant amount of self-hate involved and, oftentimes, a lot of pressure from outside forces. Lack of understanding and fear of the unknown likely plays a role, as well.
Regarding how to get SSM opponents to support SSM: I’m not really the target audience for this since I’ve always supported SSM, but my knowledge suggests that exposure is the key here. It could be especially useful to pair this exposure with clear evidence that LGBTQ people are being hurt by being unable to legally marry and by creating a bridge that includes something familiar to the target, since they are likely to be frightened and uncomfortable with the unfamiliar and will more readily believe the stories they hear if somebody they are used to viewing as ‘normal’ endorses the story.
I think one good example of this approach is embodied in the PFLAG (www.pflag.org) organization’s speaker’s bureau which pairs straight parents of LGBTQ people up with LGBTQ people to educate and tell their stories to audiences. I know there are many other great examples of this kind of ongoing exposure work.
I don’t think there is any magic bullet here. There is no one discussion you can sit down and have with the opposition that will change all of their minds. But all of the great work that has been done so far, and continues to be done, is moving things in the right direction. I feel confident that we will continue in that direction. I think in 40 years, the kids will all think we’re crazy for talking about how SSM was such an issue.
Ampersand (and anyone else that might have taken unintended offense at my last posting):
It was not my intention to shame Miss California for posing nude. I happen to be a fine appreciator of the nude form. :) I DO NOT think that what she did wrong was the posing for the photographs.
My issue is the hypocrisy of someone that uses “traditional marriage” as an excuse to support bigotry, but thinks that lying (which, I suspect, we all agree is unethical) and posing nude (which is believed to be immoral by the same people that use “traditional marriage” as an excuse to persecute others) is “A-OK” so long as it is done by someone on THEIR side of the argument.
It’s like claiming that it’s okay for Americans to torture, but it’s not okay for anyone else. (Dammit… another simile… it’s like this situation NEVER runs out of “how fucked is this” similes).
MisterMephisto,
No, it’s really only problematic if the basis for Miss California’s opposition to SSM would also be a reason for her not to pose for semi-nude lingerie photos while a minor. At the pageant, she based her opposition in “how I was raised.” Presumably she needed her parents’ consent to do this modeling, and they were OK with it. So how she was raised was to be pro-semi-nude modeling for minors, and anti-SSM. Nothing internally inconsistent there, albeit pretty much the exact opposite of how I’d want to raise my children.
Regarding “Yeah, but let’s be fair. What would it take to persuade you that your stance is wrong?” how about:
“We’re really sorry we had to mess up one of the templates you were using to hold on to your sense of reality, but we had to do it for our own sanity. But we still really love you–would you like some cookies we just baked for you?”
I could be persuaded to oppose same-sex marriage if I thought sex/gender was such a central, organizing principle of modern human existence that it was impossible for a same-sex couple to have a sound marriage or raise children well. Which actually is what most SSM opponents do think; they believe that husbands and fathers are all one thing, and wives/mothers all another, and you need one of each. I’m just puzzled by the occasional self-declared feminist one still comes across who opposes SSM — like, dude, isn’t this kind of gender essentialist thinking exactly what we’ve been fighting?
Ampersand: I agree, it is not wrong for her to pose nude. However, it is wrong of her to use one set of ethics to police the sexuality of others, and another set of ethics when it comes to her own sexuality.
Well, if we take her at her word, she’s not doing that. She’s not saying posing nude is okay; she’s saying she made a mistake, when she was 17.
Actually, this is something I’ve been thinking about/debating about for a while.
I’m of the opinion that it if you cannot describe hypothetical evidence that could conceivably change your mind, then you do not have the right to present evidence in favor of your position. In fact, it is dishonest to do so.
Two examples:
If a devout and outspoken conservative Catholic like Maggie Gallagher presents empirical evidence that links same-sex marriage to a decline in opposite marriage, she is engaging in a form of dishonesty. Not just because such evidence is often shoddy, but because, in her brand of Catholicism, she isn’t permitted to change her beliefs based on empirical evidence. She’s a non-materialist who is simply throwing a red herring into the debate so that she can pretend she is engaging with materialists.
Similarly, if I’m arguing with a biblical fundamentalist, and I point out that Leviticus bans same-sex relationships as well as the eating of shellfish and rock badgers, I’m being dishonest. Because it really doesn’t matter what Leviticus says: I would never find anything in that book persuasive because I believe it to be mythology. The fact that my opponent in said argument might find the book to be believable is irrelevant: if I use it as “evidence” to support my position, then I’m just jerking him or her off.
So, I have two questions. First, am I wrong to think this? And second, is “jerking him or her off” an appropriately non-sexist locution, or should I come up with something else?
To be fair, I (as a queer american) do not personally believe that any marriage should be sanctioned by our government. If someone were to ask me on the street if I supported extending marriage to people of any combination of genders I would say “of course yes”, but that always comes with the caveat of “they are already bending our societal beliefs of church and state for straight people, it’s unjust to not do the same for queer couples.”
In reality I would much rather oppose both straight and same sex marriage (though really.. why same sex? Any sex marriage perhaps?) in favor of extending civil unions to all people of all genders. Remove the religious link, replace it will pure public tax status groupings.
in order to maintain the illusion of rational thought, one ought to be able to describe some sort of hypothetical evidence which might convince one to change one’s mind.
I don’t think that it is irrational to believe that some acts are inherently right or wrong regardless of the consequences. For example many rational people believe it is be wrong to kill unwilling people to harvest their organs even if it would result in many more lives being saved.
That said I personally find SSM opponents arguments either completely unconvincing or repugnant.
Phil:
It is not inappropriate to say to your opponent: “Even by the grounds of your argument, which I do not accept, your argument is false” which translates both to “Even by materialism — which I do not accept — your argument that gay marriage is legitimate fails, because materialist studies prove otherwise” and to “Even if the bible were a legitimate way to determine social policy, it clearly isn’t something you’re seriously interested in using to determine that policy, because you only select those aspects of biblical rules which appeal to you.”
Mandolin,
That sounds reasonable. But I think that, ethically, if you’re engaging in a private or public debate, it behooves you to identify when you’re making arguments that you don’t personally find compelling.
Maggie Gallagher could say, “Look, this rather disreputable study suggests that birth rates are down in a European country that has legalized same-sex marriage. So even though I wouldn’t change my stance if the study proved exactly the opposite, I am throwing that out there for people who are swayed by evidence.” Something like that.
Phil,
Actually, Gallagher is one of those who quite often does acknowledge that she holds her stance for reasons that might not be shared by others. One sees this particularly in her posts talking about divorce, which she thinks ought to be severely limited while recognizing that this is an unpopular stance. When she writes for essentially secular outlets like National Review, she sticks to essentially secular arguments; I’m sure if she were in a theological debate she would make non-secular arguments. I consider this to be precisely what citizens ought to be doing in the public square: making arguments that are accessible to all persons, even those with different religious or political commitments, rather than arguments that can be understood only by those who already share the speaker’s idiosyncratic commitments.
What would it take to persuade you that your stance is wrong?
This is always a fair question to ask. It is incredibly difficult to put ourselves in someone else’s point of view, to assume that we are so “clearly” right and others are so “clearly” wrong that it is just mind boggling that they cannot see as we do.
My ultimate take on why marriage equality is the “correct” stance has nothing to do with logic or touching testimonials or legalities. I simply believe that the arc of history is bending that way. A momentum is building, gathering steam. People who are on the opposing end appear, increasingly, out of touch and of the past. People for marriage equality appear otherwise.
Marriage equality will prevail because it is its time.
PPR_Scribe,
But surely that could have been said at a particular moment of many things that in retrospect were mistakes. I’m sure Phil Gramm thought the arc of history was bending toward massive deregulation of the financial industry; that after several years of economic expansion and prosperity, it was the time to gut Glass-Steagall. (After all, we had in the prior quarter century deregulated other industries, most notably the transportation industry, with what generally seems to have been considered success.)
I think we have to look at why certain restrictions were made in the first place. I do agree with conservatives that someone who cannot conceive of why a rule was made should not be charged with destroying that rule (I just wish conservatives would apply that thinking to economic as well as social policy). I understand why marriage originally and for the most part has been between men and women: it was a relation for the support of children produced by sex. As humans became pair-bonded and grasped the concept of “sex makes babies,” marriage was a way to formalize the bond and to ensure support for the resulting babies. Now that people get married for reasons other than babies and people may raise children they didn’t biologically produce, however, that rationale for having only male-female marriage has become extremely obsolete.
I think one of the great things about being atheist is the need to think through all your moral/ethical positions to get to a rational such position; ie when one does not have someone else telling you what is right or wrong, you have to go through the evidence, rationally, to come up your positions.
(of course, this is also what religious people do to a certain extent too, because they all pick and choose which of their dogmatic proclamations they will follow, and which they won’t, they just don’t admit to doing so – witness any christian with a mortgage )
I’ve had to repeatedly think through and articulate why I hold a particular position, and I’ve had my position changed by well-argued alternative viewpoints. Now I’m not going to say I’m all goodness and light and have no emotional investment in my moral/ethical positions in the slightest, because that is simply not true, but I do like that my atheism lead me to think through what positions I held and why I held them.
Even as a lesbian woman, if someone presented me with the same amount of evidence as we currently have that same-sex relationships DON’T destroy society, DON’T effect “opposite-marriages”, DON’T harm children, etc, but rather showing the reverse, I’d have to say “well, this probably isn’t something we should be rushing into”. I’d still probably WANT to get married, but I’d be more reserved in my push for such.
Course, I’m luckily enough to be a progressive, so that means I have reality on my side :)
Ampersand said:
Which is fine. People make mistakes or bad choices and do things that they later regret.
But to then lie about it… and to, potentially, continue lying about it (she claims there is only one photo… while the guy that HAS the photos is promising to release another one every week) is just plain, well, stupid… but also DISGUSTINGLY unethical and hypocritical.
Not to mention that by lying, she potentially STOLE the Miss California spot from someone else who might have actually WON the Miss America title (and WASN’T a bigot).
And if we’re taking her at her word, she’s STILL saying that the ONLY reason it came out was because of her voicing her views against SSM, as if that somehow EXCUSES the fact that SHE LIED IN THE FIRST PLACE. As if being called out for being a bigot should EXCUSE her being a liar, since “clearly” she’s the victim here.
The issue that infuriates me about this (and the reason I felt it necessary to bring it up), is that this seems to be a recurring theme among the more vocal opponents of SSM. They lie, they steal, they commit adultery, they engage in closeted homosexuality, they get divorced, and then they have the unmitigated gall to condemn others for lying, stealing, committing adultery, engaging in either closeted or non-closeted homosexuality, getting divorced or not even getting married in the first place (ESPECIALLY offensive since there is nothing “wrong” with the latter 2).
Hypocrisy is the target of my loathing here. Dante cast hypocrites into the 8th Circle of Hell. I, personally, think hypocrites deserved the 9th Circle.
And though I agree that Miss California shouldn’t be punished for having made what she feels was a mistake in her youth (especially a mistake that I don’t personally take issue with), she should ABSOLUTELY be called out for being a hypocrite (because the folks that are anti-SSM for religious/traditional reasons are ALSO largely anti-sexuality) and then COMPOUNDING that hypocrisy with FURTHER hypocrisy via lying (which, as I mentioned before, everyone, including her supporters, likely admits is “wrong”).
Yes, there apparently are multiple photos from the one shoot.
I am curious to see how this will affect Prejean’s status in the anti-SSM community; if she’ll become outcast like Paula Jones when she did Penthouse, or if she’ll be deemed sufficiently repentant for her Past.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias….
Well, it looks like no SSM opponent has answered the question yet.
I think for most of them, it would probably take Jesus coming down from Heaven and basically reenacting Jack Black’s scene from “Prop 8: The Musical.” And even then, they’d probably say it was just a hoax by the liberal media.
Absolutely loved the first video, excellent choice and thanks for sharing!
Hi Myca. I’ve got two different takes for you so far. Do you want me to ask NotACookie to come here and give you his opinion? (He is likely to do it better than I can.)
My take on SSM opposition, from NotACookie, is that anti-SSM folks don’t care if we can prove the sky won’t fall. They don’t care if we can prove that children won’t suffer. Rather, people are [perhaps rightly] afraid that that SSM will [further] erode society’s gender roles.
Many people really like their d*** gender roles. They like seeing a person and saying “Male = y y and y traits” / “Female = x x and x traits”. They like their kids growing up and understanding their gender roles. They don’t like the thought that something might impede on their gender roles.
I’m not really sure how to address this issue, seeing as it has little to do with love, and more with how people want to view the world. (Also, as I’m Great and Manly and absolutely anti “sex must=gender roles”, I suspect I’m a baaaad person to argue anything at this contingent.)
I suspect NotACookie would ask you to prove that, 20 years down the line from SSM legalization, gender roles would be preserved as they currently are set.
—
I also have a different take on the issue for you, just from watching my mom. Mi madre’s old take on gay people is that they are sex-hungry perverts and will eat your children. Legalizing gay marriage legitimatizes the perversion, and then there will be lots of gay people outside your house, demanding your daughters and angels like this was Sodom. (No, really.)
This persisted for a while, despite her actively knowing quite a few gay people, and having a gay assemblyman represent her in legislature. You should have seen her good opinion of people slide when she found out someone was gay.
For her, I think her opinion changed… with television, actually. She watches so much of it. And shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy have, at the very least, changed her stereotyping from “gays will eat your children” to “gays dress better than you”. That, and I have fed her stories about when I was penniless in Canada, and how the gay men from the internet fed and housed me and we watched movies and absolutely no one hit on me, as _they are not interested in women_.
Mom: “They’re like girlfriends! :D”
(OK. Baby steps, Mom. Let’s not get started on what you think about lesbians right now.)
I guess the point of this story is not to try to identify the one argument that will *poof* make SSM OK for everyone in the US. Rather, we should keep trying, and remember that it’s a long, hard battle, and there probably isn’t one answer that’s suitable for everyone.
A very special comment on the Miss California controversy:
God Jesus fucking monkey Christ I don’t care.
Please let’s not talk about it in this thread any more.
—Myca
A quick thought: I suspect it is very hard for someone currently opposed to marriage equality to visualize changing their mind. But at the same time a lot of people have changed their mind, a great many of them recently – supporting marriage equality where they opposed it before. So maybe it would make more sense to start a thread asking people who once opposed marriage equality but now support it why they changed their minds.
Now that people get married for reasons other than babies and people may raise children they didn’t biologically produce, however, that rationale for having only male-female marriage has become extremely obsolete.
Yes, but also “pair bonding” has become obsolete in many societies–at least pair bonding for life. Why not go to a system where people could legally and openly marry more than one person at a time. It could be argued that we have a de facto system such as this in place now, where divorced couples can remarry but often continue to share parenting and financial responsibilities and may interact socially as well. Why shouldn’t someone challenge the “only 2 people at a time” rule? Especially for the reasons that are often cited for marriage equality for gay men and lesbians?
I think this is not the case because the time is not right for such a legal movement. It may never be, but certainly that will not be because 2-people marriages are more “natural” or more “right.” We could even think of circumstances where allowing more than one spouse would actually be better legally and socially for children and women, for instance–or at least, that it would not be damaging or any more damaging than divorce/remarriage.
I maintain that the primary reason why marriage equality will prevail is because we have reached or are nearing a “tipping point” of sorts. We will not, as a nation, be out in front on this issue, and any state that takes it up will not be the first to do so, either.
Arguments that rely on “logic” to convince detractors will not work. What may is personal, first-hand experience as well as being in an environment where increasingly there is acceptance of such arrangements. What may work is values arguments that combat other values arguments.
Whether or not other social movements “in retrospect” are (now considered) “right” or “wrong” is not the issue, really. Once a movement gains a certain momentum, it is generally difficult to stop it, and that is what I think is happening now with marriage equality initiatives.
PPR_Scribe,
Which societies? Over half of Americans who get married remain married to their first spouse until death does them part. (The “almost half of all marriages end in divorce” statistic comes from serial divorcers.) Most Americans get married at some point in their lives. With the legalization of SSM, more people can marry the person they want to marry; and with greater acceptance of homosexuality, fewer homosexuals will be pressured into marriage with heteros and then end up divorcing.
So I expect that traditional marriage (in the sense of lifelong pair-bonding) will only become more entrenched with the legalization of SSM, not less so. Indeed, this is why the most radical folks in the LGBT rights movement are distressed by the emphasis on marriage: they don’t want to make marriage a more generally accepted institution. It’s also why conservative gays like Andrew Sullivan are much more obsessed with gaining marriage rights than with, say, including sexual orientation in anti-discrimination law.
Uh, which reasons are those? That the sex of the person you want to marry shouldn’t be an impediment to your marrying that person?
Agreed re: momentum for marriage equality, but it seems rather unprincipled and opportunistic to say that SSM opponents should change their position simply because the momentum is against them. Even when momentum is against you, if you believe that you are fighting for what is right, you should keep trying to stop the wrong.
Why should just two people marry if “making a baby” is no longer the main reason for marriage? Or, if research reveals that children growing up with multiple loving parents (e.g., blended families, open adoption, etc) fare at least as well as other children? Or, if all adults who are party to the practice are consenting?
The idea that most people marry and marry for life is pretty foreign to many, many people. For example, Black women with college educations have lower marriage rates. And the only statistics we have for “married until death” folks are for people who married in a very different time. (We’ll have to wait a while to see if younger cohorts of folks stay together until death do them part.) And I fail to see why marriages between gay men and lesbians would be much more (or much less) stable than marriage between hetero men and women such that the overall statistics for marriage as a whole would change. Additionally, I fail to see why “marriage until death” is even a goal, especially as many people live well into old and even old-old age.
But regardless of whether or not you buy the idea of de facto multiple spouses being prevalent, certainly you can see that an argument can be made that it does exist.
Your last point I agree with 100%–I am not out to change marriage equality opponents’ minds. I generally do not engage in debates with folks who are against it. I am all for “outreach” and the like, but I generally feel that progressives do ourselves a disservice by focusing on “logic” arguments. The original question was: What would it take to change minds? I think folks will change their minds only if they want to or are ready to–largely because of personal experience or a different view of how values they already hold line up with values articulated by marriage equality folks.
I don’t think disagreement is a matter of people being “stupid” or “not getting it.” Besides those who are just bigots (and there are plenty of those) other people disagree because they feel that gay marriage conflicts with their values.
I think a lot of panic on the right is due to an increasing recognition that they may be on the wrong side of history on this one. I think people who want to see marriage equality become law need to keep chipping away, keep moving forward. A lot of time is wasted, IMO, by engaging in war of words with people who are unlikely to change their minds.
PPR_Scribe,
Why should just two people marry if “making a baby” is no longer the main reason for marriage?
Because they want to make a lifelong commitment of mutual support, particularly a commitment that includes raising children together? And our existing legal structure isn’t set up for that to include more than two people at a time? (I’ve had lengthy discussions on this blog already about the manifold ways in which family law already is set up to be gender neutral and thus accommodates SSM without change, but is not set up to be number neutral and thus would need to be changed a great deal to accommodate polygamy. Elusis in that comment thread also made a reasonable point about the tendency to push poly concerns into so many discussions of LGBT rights.)
Or, if research reveals that children growing up with multiple loving parents (e.g., blended families, open adoption, etc) fare at least as well as other children? Or, if all adults who are party to the practice are consenting?
I’m not sure what you mean by “parents” here. Open adoption =/= having more than two legal parents. So far as I know, no state law permits a child to have more than two legal parents at a time. For a child to be adopted by a step-father, for example, the bio-father must give up his rights. Sperm donors, surrogate mothers, and women who have their children adopted even in open adoptions have no legal rights as parents, though they might make a contractual provision outside family law that in exchange for reproductive services grants a certain amount of contact with the child.
Black women with college educations have lower marriage rates.
Than who? And all the black women with college educations whom I’ve met and discussed marriage with (seriously, ALL of them) would like to get married and remain married to one person until they die. This is an aspiration for them. I never have met a single one who has looked upon serial divorce, or polygamy, or anything else other than life-long pair-bond as the optimal situation. The fact that some group of people have difficulty finding a life-mate doesn’t mean they don’t want one. My older sister hasn’t found hers, but she’d laugh (rather bitterly) if you used her as a statistic for how lifelong pair-bonding is somehow obsolete. The problem isn’t that there are so many people to whom these unmarried women want to make a commitment and who return the feeling; the problem is that there aren’t any.
And the only statistics we have for “married until death” folks are for people who married in a very different time.
And yet divorce rates seems to be decreasing slightly, not increasing.
And I fail to see why marriages between gay men and lesbians would be much more (or much less) stable than marriage between hetero men and women such that the overall statistics for marriage as a whole would change.
First, I was pointing out how the social acceptance of homosexuality would greatly decrease marriage between someone who is a closeted homosexual and someone who is heterosexual, marriages which in the last 30 years or so often have ended in divorce once the closeted person can’t bear it anymore. I don’t think we’re going to see nearly so many of those divorces 2020-2050.
Second, lesbian and gay marriages may be more stable because they won’t be having shotgun marriages (i.e. no one getting married just because somebody got knocked up). Because gay men particularly won’t have to deal with the biological clock at all, they can wait longer to get married (hetero people mostly expect that they’ll be able to have a wholly genetic family; homosexual people expect they’re going to need turkey basters, surrogates or adoption), and people who marry at a later age have lower divorce rates. The longevity of marriages between two kids who got pregnant and married at 17 is not great compared to that of the general population.
Additionally, I fail to see why “marriage until death” is even a goal, especially as many people live well into old and even old-old age.
Because many people want to grow old with a particular person with whom they have a shared life history. I get something out of being around my sisters that I don’t get with any other female friend. They have been there for everything; they know every part. A spouse is a family member too, and one with whom you have committed to spend old age (as opposed to getting together a few times a year). For some people this is a horrifying prospect, to spend so much time with one other person, but for a lot of folks it’s a really nice, reassuring thought. There’s a reason so many romantic songs refer aspirationally to growing old with someone, and so few to finding someone new every ten years.
I agree heartily with PG, and would add that not only is the two-party contract deeply entrenched in family law, it is deeply entrenched in all law. (also, as a footnote, I think “marriage used to be about making babies” is simplistic to the point of absurd. People have always gotten married for varied reasons).
It seems to me it is hard enough to achieve equality and balance in two-person contracts and two-person relationships. It is so much harder to achieve real equality in a three-person contract or relationship as to approach impossible, in my view. Just approach- I’m quite willing to believe that someone has achieved it somewhere. There have been scads of three, four, and more-person marriages throughout history and that exist currently. But how many of those have been equal in all ways? There’s the common one man marries several women; but the women are not married to one another, and I don’t think I need to cite anything to convince the readers here that those are not usually balanced power arrangements. In Nepal, there is polyandry, where one woman marries two or more men, usually (always?) brothers. But in that case, the brothers line to marry the woman second and further down the line often choose monasticism instead. It’s like the system of primogeniture, where the younger brother goes off to seek his fortune because he’s in unequal status with his older brother and has nothing to gain by trying to fight the power. I hear tell that there are polyamorous relationships now in the US that work well, but I’ve never encountered one in person or in anecdote that was intentionally and successfully equal to all three or more parties, and intended to be permanent. An intention to be permanent is a fundamental element of marriage. I’ve certainly heard of other traditions- where people get married for a year and renew their vows every year, until they die or decide otherwise, but that’s very different from permanent marriage, which, as far as I know, always requires a legal determination of property, rights, etc., at its end. Many states have a legal structure called domestic partnership that could serve those who wish to be “married” on a temporary basis.
Equality is not only important to me, it’s important in the law as well. In non-marriage contracts, if the contract has been written to substantially favor one party over another, a judge will throw it out if contested. And do I need to argue the point that unequal power in intimate relationships is a formula for abuse?
For all those reasons, I see legal plural marriage as a non-starter, despite the trios who have made it work for them personally. And I’m a SSM advocate, but one of the things I hear from the other side is “where will it end?” I don’t know how much this is a sincere concern versus an argument ad absurdium, but if we could firmly say where it will end, perhaps that would comfort some opponents- I don’t know.
Thanks for digging up my comment, PG. I was dreading having to do it, and it seems here we are again. Your “the law is set up for two people of indeterminate gender but not for multiple people” argument has been really helpful to my thinking and conversations elsewhere.
not only is the two-party contract deeply entrenched in family law, it is deeply entrenched in all law
In the past, many things that have been “deeply entrenched” in law have been overturned.
Back to the original question: Many of the opinions here about legalized poly marriage between consenting adults sound very conservative and “traditional.” What would it take for you to change your minds?
Elusis,
Thanks, I’m glad it has been of use!
PPR_Scribe,
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. What I’ve discussed, especially ad nauseum in that thread I linked (did you read it?), is that the law as it currently stands is gender-neutral with regard to family law. If you read the law and substitute the word wife for husband and vice versa, you’ll find few if any differences in the law’s meaning, because differing legal treatment based on sex is generally deemed un-Constitutional (and some states have state-level Equal Rights Amendments that make it explicitly unconstitutional to distinguish on teh basis of sex).
Persnoally, I’m open to the possibility of creating a new legally recognized relationship that’s compatible with having multiple parties, or with essentially revolutionizing the marriage laws to make marriage number-neutral, but it’s starting to drive me crazy that people think you can get to legalized polygamy as easily — on a purely practical, how-much-do-we-rewrite-the-law basis — as we can get to legalized SSM. People like Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent a f***load of time identifying the ways in which laws were not gender-neutral, and then working to make them so. There has not been a similar project by folks who want to make the law number-neutral.
PPR Scribe,
What would it take for you to read the comment of mine that PG mentioned, and consider its points rather than being another example of how poly activists derail gay marriage discussions?
The original question in this post was this:
My very first response was this:
I maintain that it is difficult for folks who are against legal same-sex marriage to “see our side” because it is against what they see as right and traditional in both legal/social history and their own value system. Arguments that try to point out how they are wrong will do little good. But, I also think that the same-sex marriage equality movement will go forward with or without these folks. Agree or not, I see a certain momentum building that I think will be hard to stop, barring some huge unforeseen snafu.
When I mentioned poly arrangements it was to say
To which there were then comments that focused on exactly why such arrangements are not right or traditional or easy to enact legally or not widespread or not in keeping with “most people’s” ideas and values about love and partnership, and so on.
I do not think the time will be right for widespread legal poly arrangements because too many people are against it for these very reasons and I do not see a shift happening as it has for same-sex marriage equality. But I do think that our reactions to poly arrangements can answer our own questions about why the opposition to gay marriage seems to us so resistant to changing their minds.
It is unfortunate that an attempt at self-reflection is seen as derailing.
For the record I have read your previous comment, and thought it very well thought out and reflective. As an African American woman, I particularly appreciated your statement that your issues with poly-LGBT marriage comparisons are similar to some African-American objections to LGBT causes equating themselves with the Black Civil Rights movement. (Although I might object that the movement is now somehow over as of the 60s!)
I have found many of the comparisons between LGBT marriage equality and, say, laws against interracial Black-White marriage simplistic atbest and spurious at worse. But a startling similarity between Black Civil Rights movements in previous decades and this current marriage equality battle is the way in which leaders in both cases have been very protective of projecting just the “right” image and not letting in too many undesirable people and issues (e.g., poly issues, trans issues, sex work by LGBT, etc) lest the movement as a whole suffers. I call it the Claudette Colvin Phenomenon.
I find this interesting, and wish that more marriage equality activists seemed willing to explore that history and parallel.
Er, what do poly issues or sex work by LGBT have to do with same-sex marriage? (I think SSM advocates mostly have been fine with trans issues — if nothing else, transfolk provide the point that we already have same-sex marriage in many states that think they’ve prohibited it, but do recognize sex change.)
It comes across as derailing for you to frame “marriage equality,” which the original post made clear refers to the law as it is in Belgium, Canada, The Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and 5 US states (none of which, AFAIK, recognize poly marriage), as referring to some giant umbrella of “everyone should be able to marry without restrictions of any kind whatsoever!” It’s derailing when the adult incest advocates do it; it’s derailing for poly advocates to do it.
I have found many of the comparisons between LGBT marriage equality and, say, laws against interracial Black-White marriage simplistic atbest and spurious at worse.
They may be “simplistic,” in that they fail to acknowledge that anti-miscegenation law was overtly based in maintaining racial purity, whereas bars to SSM are rarely articulated as being for the purpose of maintaining sex roles, but I don’t see why they’re so spurious. The U.S. Constitution and many state constitutions prohibit distinguishing between people on the basis of race or sex except where there is a compelling justification for doing so. In Perez v. Sharp and Loving v. Virginia, the courts found that there was a lack of compelling justification for limiting marital partners to people of one’s own race. In the state court decisions that have legalized SSM, the courts have made similar findings that there is lack of justification for limiting marital partners to people of the opposite sex. Why is this “spurious”?
People like Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent a f***load of time identifying the ways in which laws were not gender-neutral, and then working to make them so. There has not been a similar project by folks who want to make the law number-neutral.
And the laws can never be made number-neutral. They can be made inclusive of more numbers — numbers like 3, 4 and 5 — but there will have to be some restrictions. The bond between two people in love (and/or the rights and responsibilities of two people who are married) is (are) fundamentally the same regardless of their sexes; I’m more than willing to believe that some people can sustain multiple such bonds at once, or that such a bond could exist amongst a group of people. But a union between one man and 100 women, or the union of 50 people in a group marriage, is a totally different animal.
I don’t think that people are actually advocating legal 100-person marriages — I’m just pointing out that “number neutrality” doesn’t make any sense as a goal. Could entire towns get married? If so, marriage becomes truly meaningless. Where, then, will we place the limit? The limit is currently two — I’m open to moving it, but to where, exactly? At what point are we willing to draw a line? The question of poly marriage opens up a lot of organizational questions that same-sex marriage just doesn’t. SSM is literally just a matter of making the paperwork say “Partner A” and “Partner B” (or whatever) instead of “Husband” and “Wife.”
Once again, I’m not at all opposed to polyamory, group marriage or legal recognition of such arrangements. Just, making laws sex-neutral is good policy; trying to make marriage laws number-neutral is absurd. We can make them more number-inclusive, but never neutral — and doing so is a complex task that involves a lot of structural changes.
I’d love to read any serious proposals about what those changes should be, why, and how to create them, if anyone has a link. I’ve never seen such a proposal.
That’s incredibly nasty. It’s a “box turtle” comparison. Consenting adults =/= animals, objects, or children.
There’s a lot of anti-poly bigotry on this thread, and it makes me sad. As for whether or not it’s derailing, do you know who should make that call? The poly activist whose post we’re all commenting on (and whose identity people are quite willing to be nasty toward, apparently). I’m emailing him now.
Ahh, dammit.
Okay, I’ve been absent from this thread for a while now, so it wasn’t until I got the note that badness was going down that I came back.
First a couple things:
• Comparing polyamory to incest is uncool. If you do it, I am likely to respond the same way I would respond to comments linking homosexuality and pedophilia. Seriously. No.
• The drift towards discussions of polyamory here can’t be blamed on one person, and I am extremely suspicious that anyone who does that is doing it because it’s easy to scapegoat the outsider. Cut that shit out.
Now. When it comes to mixing of discussions of LGBT issues, Poly issues, and issues of race, I am of two minds.
On the one hand, I do think that co-opting the struggles of others is insensitive and inappropriate. The struggle for marriage equality is not ‘just like’ the civil rights movement.
On the other hand, I am not opposed to drawing analogies where they are appropriate. One area in which I think that they can be appropriate is where we’re discussing two like things. Discussing, for example, whether the state ought to prevent consenting adults from legally marrying. In that context, invoking Loving v. Virginia in a discussion of same sex marriage seems appropriate. I did it at the top of this very post, we’re over 50 comments in, and nobody has complained. Also, Mildred Loving agrees, and draws the parallel herself.
Similarly, saying, “I’m poly and you just wouldn’t believe the oppression I face every day,” in a discussion of, say, the death of Matthew Shephard, is piggybacking, rude, bigoted, and generally a punkass thing to do.
Saying, “actually I sure hope some day I’ll be able to marry the people I love,” in a discussion of whether or not people are going to be able to marry the people they love? Well, that sounds appropriate to me.
Furthermore, although I do think that there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to do it, I think that some of the objections to linking SSM to interracial marriage are rooted in homophobia. It’s the, “ICK! We’re nothing like those awful people,” argument, basically. Similarly, I think that some of the objections to linking poly marriage to SSM are rooted in bigotry.
As PPR_Scribe said:
Literally every poly person I know supports same sex marriage.
Literally none of them believe that it’s important or worthwhile to push for legal poly marriage right now.
Unless I’m reading PPR_Scribe wrong, that seems to me that that is roughly her position. Perhaps we could all bear that in mind.
Many poly folk (like me) specifically don’t want to push for poly marriage because they fear it may harm the SSM movement. That’s how committed to ‘pushing poly concerns into LGBT issues’ we are . . . we’re so damn committed to piggybacking that we’re cool sacrificing our issues for someone else’s issues. I talked about this a bit in my comment #68 in that thread.
I’m fine with poly marriage remaining illegal for the foreseeable future. I think that it’s dehumanizing and bigoted to insist that poly folk pretend that there’s no connection, though, or that none of the arguments for the one might apply to the other.
—Myca
Which part of “adult incest” involves children or animals instead of (at least nominally) consenting adults? People go to prison for adult incest; they bear burdens well beyond a lack of marriage recognition. Why are they the beyond-the-pale group? If what matters about the big tent of all forms of marriage equality is just love among consenting adults, plenty of them fit the bill. Why are they the lepers, such that referencing them in comparison to pro poly folks is like comparing homosexuals to pedophiles?
“Dehumanizing?” “Bigoted?” What happened to our ability to “dislike” something?
I’m not sure how I feel about poly marriage–it’s certainly not for me, but I am far from believing that it will create widespread societal problems.
But unlike the gender to which one is attracted, I have not read any evidence that polyamory is uncontrollable, and/or genetic in nature. As such, I treat it like a choice. And I should–do–have the right to dislike that choice, without it being referred to as “bigotry.” The belief in or practice of polyamory are not essentially different from a belief that abortion should be illegal; they’re just at opposite sides of the political spectrum.
So just as it is neither “dehumanizing” or “bigoted” to dislike fundamentalist anti-evolutionist Christians, it is not “dehumanizing” or “bigoted” to dislike people who believe in polyamory, or anything else.
Just because a position is important to someone doesn’t make opposition to that position bigoted. Just because the position is held by a human (aren’t we all human, including plenty of people we dislike and oppose?) doesn’t make opposition “dehumanizing.” The language is getting way, way, out of hand.
Also, I thought the comment @ 41 was rather clearly where the discussion of polyamory got started in what I had thought was a post asking what would change people’s minds about SSM: “Why not go to a system where people could legally and openly marry more than one person at a time.” By comment 47, PPR_Scribe was changing the OP’s question to: “Back to the original question: Many of the opinions here about legalized poly marriage between consenting adults sound very conservative and “traditional.” What would it take for you to change your minds?”
As I thought I had stated at length in that “Metal Fever” thread, and have reiterated here, I am open to legalizing polygamy. The fact that my reasons for supporting SSM (which are essentially second-wave feminist ones about not entrenching sex distinctions in the law) wouldn’t apply to polygamy means I’m bigoted?
Also, if your reasons for supporting SSM boil down to “consenting adults who love each other should have their relationship recognized with the word ‘marriage,'” what is with all this hating on consenting adults who love each other and happen to be closely related? Why do y’all feel comfortable comparing them to pedophiles, zoophiles, and other people who sexually molest entities incapable of consent?
Nothing. Reread the section in question. What I wrote was:
I’m not saying that ‘opposing poly marriage’ is dehumanizing and bigoted.
I’m saying that ‘insisting that poly folk pretend that the issue does not exist and refuse to mention it, even in passing, and certainly never point out any similarities to any other issues or arguments, lest they get their icky poly cooties on legitimate issues’ is dehumanizing and bigoted.
Fear not, you are free to have your own opinion. I’ve never claimed otherwise.
—Myca
Re: Incest
My main issue is that according to all the research I’ve seen (which is: Not Much) the overwhelming majority of adult incest relationships originate as child molestation, and then the child in question gets older.
I have no problem with related adults gettin’ it on legally. I have a huge problem with legitimizing child abuse.
If a law could be crafted that would do the first while avoiding the second, I’d be all for it. If there’s good evidence that contradicts my view in the first paragraph, my opinion would likely change.
As it stands, adult incest is awful close to not-adult incest, and comparing polyamory to adult incest is awful close to comparing it to not-adult incest. It’s a legitimate comparison if you believe that the overwhelming majority of polyamorous relationships originate as nonconsensual sexual activity, but I don’t, and I find the comparison offensive.
—Myca
I don’t think you are really looking at the effect of your words. You’re throwing around ‘dehumanizing and bigoted’ too darn freely, and you’re pretending that doing so is a neutral act.
Since you are clearly too intelligent to do this without intent, and since you frequently do this when defending your own point of view, I can only conclude that you are deliberately using inflammatory language in an effort to, er, “dehumanize” or perhaps “other” your political or logical opponents. I find that annoying as all get-out. You’re perfectly capable of arguing without that sort of terminology; why don’t you do so?
ETA: Let’s say that I say “You are welcome to participate in this discussion on _____, whoever you are. But your views on polyamory are neither relevant to or welcome in the discussion.”
From your point of view, that is “dehumanizing” and “bigoted.” But that’s ridiculous. Go ahead and replace “polyamory” with anything else (that tactic works fine in this context) and you probably wouldn’t be defending it. IOW, you’re only using those terms because it happens to be attached to something you like.
Sailorman, since you either did not read my initial post to determine how I was using those words or did not understand my meaning* before flipping the fuck out, I will explain again.
Holding opinions I do not share is neither automatically dehumanizing nor automatically bigoted.
Insisting that people (whether they be poly advocates, gay rights advocates, racial equality advocates, etc.) never discuss or advocate for issues affecting them, even in passing (which was clearly the situation in comment #41), is both dehumanizing and bigoted.
Dehumanizing:
It’s dehumanizing because it says, “you are not allowed to posses and discuss concerns about your own equality. Any reference to these concerns is inappropriate. Your interests don’t count. You have no legitimate interests.”
For someone to argue against same sex marriage = not dehumanizing!
For someone to insist that Andrew Sullivan should never argue for same sex marriage, or make reference to it, even in passing = dehumanizing!
Bigoted:
The definition of bigoted I’m using is: ‘expressing or characterized by prejudice and intolerance.’
Now, I do think that in most cases, opposition to SSM is bigoted. I believe that it’s rooted in prejudice. I also think that in many (though probably not most) cases, opposition to poly marriage would be bigoted.
It’s certainly possible in both cases to have legitimate, non-prejudiced concerns about negative effects on society from either sort of marriage, and as long as those concerns take into account the personhood and inherent equality of gay folks and poly folks, I don’t think that opposing either one is necessarily bigoted.
In the specific case we’re talking about, though, part of what bothers me is that the argument seems to be that poly folk have no right to advocate for or even discuss their own equality. That’s bigoted.
—Myca
* I’m basing this on your comment #56, in which you seem to be arguing that using the words dehumanizing and bigoted towards those holding a counter opinion is inappropriate. I did not use the words dehumanizing and bigoted towards those holding a counter opinion. Thus there seems to be a misunderstanding, in that you spent a comment arguing against something I did not say.
Myca Writes:
May 13th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Sailorman, since you either did not read my initial post to determine how I was using those words or did not understand my meaning* before flipping the fuck out, I will explain again.
Holding opinions I do not share is neither automatically dehumanizing nor automatically bigoted.
No, that is not what it says at all.
First, w/r/t concerns: You can possess any concerns you want. nobody gives a shit what you think inside your own head (why are you bringing that up, other than in a straw man attempt to justify your use of “dehumanizing?”)
Next, w/r/t equality: Just because you think something is an equal rights issue and/or affects your equality doesn’t make it so. If polyamory is a choice (want to argue that it isn’t?) they have the exact same package of rights as I do, which does not include the right to do anything the fuck they want and have the state endorse it. If polyamory is not a choice and is genetically determined, then there’s a problem.
For someone to argue against same sex marriage = not dehumanizing!
For someone to insist that Andrew Sullivan should never argue for same sex marriage, or make reference to it, even in passing = dehumanizing!
Bigoted:
The definition of bigoted I’m using is: ‘expressing or characterized by prejudice and intolerance.’
Now, I do think that in most cases, opposition to SSM is bigoted. I believe that it’s rooted in prejudice. I also think that in many (though probably not most) cases, opposition to poly marriage would be bigoted.
It’s certainly possible in both cases to have legitimate, non-prejudiced concerns about negative effects on society from either sort of marriage, and as long as those concerns take into account the personhood and inherent equality of gay folks and poly folks, I don’t think that opposing either one is necessarily bigoted.
In the specific case we’re talking about, though, part of what bothers me is that the argument seems to be that poly folk have no right to advocate for or even discuss their own equality. That’s bigoted.
—Myca
* I’m basing this on your comment #56, in which you seem to be arguing that using the words dehumanizing and bigoted towards those holding a counter opinion is inappropriate. I did not use the words dehumanizing and bigoted towards those holding a counter opinion. Thus there seems to be a misunderstanding, in that you spent a comment arguing against something I did not say.
Okay, this makes much more sense.
I don’t actually think that that’s dehumanizing or bigoted. We do it all the time.
BUT! That’s not what happened here.
Generally a post’s author sets the terms of discussion. I did so, and one of the items in my post specifically drew a parallel between interracial marriage and same sex marriage.
In post #41, in passing, in order to make a larger point about SSM, PPR_Scribe talked about poly marriage to draw a parallel between poly marriage and same sex marriage.
The conversation then turned to poly marriage, mostly because PPR_Scribe and PG were going back and forth about it. No problem there.
The problem on my end, came when accusations of derailing came into the picture . . . as in, “invoking the parallel is inherently inappropriate, and poly advocates do it all the time, and they never should.” Since the direction the discussion took did not seem inappropriate to me, and in fact seemed perfectly in line with my original post, this bothered me.
It bothered me a little extra because often the way in which polyamory enters the discussion is that some SSM opponent will make the slippery slope, “SSM will inevitably lead to multiple marriage,” argument, and some poly person says, “Wait, why is that bad,” and gets creamed by people saying, “stop derailing!” As in: “stop defending yourself. You have no right to say that there’s nothing wrong with what you’re doing.”
There’s nothing wrong with setting the terms of a discussion.
I do think that there’s something wrong with attempting to shut out and shut down discussions of issues that you’re opposed to in a context in which the person who set up the terms of discussion does not object.
There’s a difference in other words, between saying, “This is a website for discussion of feminist issues. Please leave LGBT issues at the door,” and someone showing up here and yelling about how discussion of LGBT issues is derailing.
—Myca
No, that is not what it says at all.
First, w/r/t concerns: You can possess any concerns you want. Nobody gives a shit what you think inside your own head (Why are you even bringing that up, other than in a straw man attempt to justify your use of “dehumanizing?” has anyone suggested that you should not, personally, think certain things?)
Next, w/r/t equality: Just because you think something is an equal rights issue and/or affects your equality doesn’t make it so. If polyamory is a choice (want to argue that it isn’t?) they have the exact same package of rights as I do, which does not include the right to do anything the fuck they want and have the state endorse it. (ETA: Their choice of polyamory is restricted. Others of my preferences are restricted. This not being one of those super-issues like bodily autonomy, the mere fact that their choice happens to involve emotional and/or physical partnership does not automatically convert it to an equal rights issue; it’s not materially different from all my other choices like “shop naked” which are equally restricted.) If polyamory is not a choice and is genetically determined, then there’s a problem, just like there is with SSM. See the difference?
Finally, w/r/t “your concerns don’t count; you have no legitimate interests:” Er, so? IIRC, you commonly make judgments on whether arguments are legitimate or not. (hey, you even did it in this very post!) If you’re going to be allowed to argue that a concern IS legitimate, then, duh, people can argue that a concern is NOT legitimate.
But of course, SSM /= polyamory, and that’s the whole problem. You’re making an a priori argument.
See, look:
For someone to insist that Andrew Sullivan should never argue for same sex marriage, or make reference to it, even in passing = dehumanizing!
For someone to insist that Newt Gingrich should never argue for covenant marriage, or make reference to it, even in passing = not dehumanizing!
For someone to insist that Newt Gingrich should never argue against abortion rights, or make reference to it, even in passing = not dehumanizing!
For someone to insist that you should never argue for polygamous marriage, or make reference to it, even in passing = not dehumanizing!
Ah, OK then.
So if–hypothetically speaking–people here were discussing the members of the False Rape Society or were referring to certain groups with dislike, you would use the word “bigoted” to refer to them?
I haven’t seen you do it yet, though maybe I’m missing something. Maybe that’s because you are leaving the important modifiers out. Here, I’ll insert it:
‘expressing or characterized by unwarranted or unjustified prejudice and intolerance.’
See the difference? If–as you claim–you are willing to listen to counter arguments, then you should not be using this term.
OK. I think your concerns are not legitimate. And bigoted against people like me, because you are trying to keep my views out of the conversation by the use of inflammatory language.
See how ridiculous this is? You are making your argument using conclusory terms like “legitimate” and “bigoted.” If that’s the conversation you want to have, don’t bitch if you get turnaround. It’s fair play.
No RIGHT to? I don’t think anyone has said that. I sure as hell haven’t; I’m a huge First Amendment fan.
Discuss away; advocate away. But just like poly folk have the right to try to discuss what they want, I have the right to either try to tell them to shut up, and/or to ignore them.
You are confusing “right to advocate and discuss” with “right to demand that you are listened to and heard.” They are most assuredly not the same thing.
PS: And if every time someone tries to link feminism and LGBT issues, they’re met with a chorus of ‘that’s derailing, and it’s inappropriate to bring it up,’ then I don’t think it’s unreasonable to surmise that the problem is homophobia.
Let me put it this way: If someone says, “I favor same sex marriage because I am a feminist, and I believe that marriage ought to be gender neutral,” I think that they’re unlikely to get swatted for it.
If someone says, “I favor same sex marriage because I am poly, and I believe that people ought to be allowed to marry the people they love,” I think it’s likely that there will be both cries of, “they’re nothing alike,” and cries of “stop derailing!”
Considering that, way back in comment #41, PPR_Scribe was bringing up polyamorous marriage solely to make a point about same sex marriage, and considering what followed, well . . . that’s where my problem lies.
Playing thread moderator in a thread that is not your own in an attempt to shut down discussion of issues you would rather not have discussed is VERY different from setting the terms of discussion initially.
No, you don’t.
Not in my thread.
GYOFB. You can set the terms of discussion however you like there.
That’s my point.
Not at all. I had no problem with people either A) ignoring the reference to polyamory in post #41 or B) arguing against PPR_Scribe’s point. Either is fine. What I have a problem with is C) claiming that making the reference is an inappropriate derail.
A & B are where “listened to and heard” would live.
C is where “stop talking” resides.
—Myca
I am not sure to which research you’re referring, so I’ll pass on the empirical question for now. But legalizing behavior between adults is =/= legalizing behavior between an adult and child or child and child. Your own reference to homosexuality versus pedophilia makes that quite clear. Plenty of SSM opponents and general homophobes will try to claim that acceptance of homosexual adult relationships will legitimize pedophilia (and indeed the LGBT movement has not been 100% perfect in exclusing the NAMBLA types, a fact that their opponents have continued to drag up).
Your statement,
is not that different from the folks who say that legalizing same-sex sexual activity and marrige will “legitimize” pedophilia. I’m puzzled as to how someone who can see why it’s problematic to make that slippery slope argument about homosexuality –> pedophilia has no problem making it about adult incest –> child incest.
Why do you believe that allowing two adult siblings or two adult first cousins to marry would “legitimize” child incest any more than allowing two people of the same sex to marry would “legitimize” pedophilia? I can’t say that I’ve noticed a significant difference in child incest rates in states that allow first-cousin marriage versus those that don’t, which would seem to be an empirical indication that allowing adult incest doesn’t equate with legitimizing child incest.
Do you find it inherently offensive for me to believe that the majority of polyamorous relationships (and I include polygamous ones) did not originate with the full and free consent of all parties? I look at where polygamy is either legal or socially accepted today — certain Muslim societies, parts of Africa, fundamentalist Mormons, etc. — and compared to their neighbors those folks don’t consider women’s consent to be all that important.
So if we’re going to take this out of the realm of competing beliefs about something that can be empirically proven, would you still consider it offensive to make the comparison if I could empirically show that the same percentage of hetero poly relationships arose from situations of dubious consent as the percentage of hetero adult incest relationships that arose from sex between an adult and child under the age of consent?
(I can’t make a fair comparison that includes same sex poly or incest relationships because those are both so small in number and so disapproved that I doubt I could find any significant statistics or study on the matter.)
Yup. Which is fine by me:
1) They’re alike, but not in the ways that make SSM marriage support so important;* and
2) IMO, because of that, it’s derailing.
SSM can be–should be–framed as a gender issue. Poly marriage is more generally framed as a “let the people do what they want” issue or a “governments should not restrict unless they have to” issue. In a variety of ways, they are nothing alike, and it is (ahem) perfectly legitimate to refer to it as a derail and ask that the comments stop.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Is THAT what this is?
The whole time here I’ve been thinking that you were trying to make some logical or moral argument which was somehow based on something other than What Myca Thinks, and now you’re switching into “my blog, my thread, my rules” mode? Rocks fall, everybody dies?
Sure: Your blog, your thread, your rules. By all means. I’m perfectly capable of following any rules you want–go ahead and set a “no anti-poly comments in this thread” rule and I can follow it perfectly. I’ll assume you’re doing so here, for this thread.
But it’s a load of BS to pull this and still claim you’re objective, and you damn well know it.
Myca @ 63,
Could you point out where someone actually said this? Because I don’t think the word “derail” was even used until PPR_Scribe decided to turn your OP question of “what would change a SSM opponent’s mind” to “what would change a poly marriage opponent’s mind” (when no one had even said she was a poly marriage opponent; only explained how SSM and poly marriage might be distinguished). Who said that invoking the parallel was “inherently inappropriate,” or that it’s done “all the time,” and that advocates “never should”?
I am sorry if I have insulted you, as I did not intend to do so, but I do not like being straw-manned.
Wait, so making a fair attempt to discuss a not-quite-on-topic point that someone raised (my posts at 42, 44, 48, in which I engage PPR_Scribe’s claims), and then seeing that the person turns a question raised in the OP about SSM into a question about poly marriage, and saying that such a re-framing of the term “marriage equality” feels like a derailment of what the OP purportedly was about with its specific reference to “marriage equality” as it exists in places that accept SSM but not polygamy… is “playing thread moderator in a thread that is not your own and attempting to shut down discussion”?
OK, I’ll keep that in mind for the future, bite my electronic tongue and wait for the person who wrote the OP to guide the discussion instead. I had gotten the impression from dozens of other threads that the OP author quite often isn’t hanging around watching the thread. Indeed, that Mandolin had to email you for you to be aware of where the discussion had gone in this very thread indicates that you’re accepting a certain amount of liberty in what might be discussed here so long as it is within the bounds of the moderation policy’s requirement to treat other posters with respect. I had not intended with my remark that it was derailing to reframe “marriage equality” to refer to all marriage options to be disrespectful of PPR_ Scribe and I apologize if it was indeed disrespectful.
Sailorman:
Well … yeah. I’m not sure why you find it so unreasonable that a post’s creator ought to be the one to set the terms of discussion.
Sailorman:
Think of it as, “you don’t get to promote yourself to moderator just because you really really want to and think that polyamory is icky and stupid.”
RonF also doesn’t get to promote himself to moderator just because he really really wants to and think that homosexuality is icky and stupid.”
The ‘sperm and eggs’ guy doesn’t get to promote himself to moderator just because he really really wants to and think that artificial insemination is icky and stupid.”
Antifeminists don’t get to promote themselves to moderator just because they really really want to and think that gender equality is icky and stupid.
As Mandolin said at Post #53:
Calling things derails because you don’t like them is uncool.
Sailorman:
You consistently have a problem with your reading comprehension, Sailorman, and this is no different. Once again, for the cheap seats: I have no problem with people arguing against poly marriage. I am not setting a “no anti-poly comments in this thread” rule, and in fact, I agree with many of the comments arguing against poly marriage.
My problem (and reread this sentence several times please. Then do it again.) is with calling any reference to poly issues a derail. That’s a problem for me because I do see the parallel, and since it’s my thread, it’s not a derail.
—Myca
I disagree. SSM (marriage equality) should not be framed as a gender issue. In my mind it is framed in opposition to that. Gender should not be an issue wrt marriage. Once you frame it as a gender issue you legitimize the wrong side, the side that says, “men and women are essentially different.” I am for SSM, in large part, because SSM is another step towards eliminating gender roles.
Sure, poly marriage is different from SSM in a whole host of ways. But SSM and inter-racial marriage are also different in a whole host of ways and that doesn’t generally stop us from drawing some comparisons between the two. Given that in this case the comment from which the rest of this derives was actually substantially related to SSM, I don’t see the problem.
Jake,
I think SM meant to say it’s a gender equality or gender non-discrimination issue, as otherwise his comment doesn’t make much sense.
My opinion is that there is way more similarity between SSM and interracial marriage on a legal basis, than there is between poly marriage and any other kind of marriage that’s been brought up thus far. If what we’re talking about is changing the law, that greater level of legal similarity has significance.
Race is generally not a permissible basis for legal distinctions; sex is generally not a permissible basis for legal distinctions. If you read the tax code, for an example of something relatively dull and uninvolved in the culture wars, references to race or sex of taxpayers are very, very rare (the only ways in which I can think of their coming up would be possible tax breaks for companies that make an effort to subcontract with woman- and minority-owned businesses).
Number of people, family relationship, age of parties, etc. are all permissible bases for legal distinctions. Maybe that will change, and tax law no longer will have the concept of related parties, and I’ll be able to do some fantastic tax shelters using family members and screw the feds out of lots of revenue, but it’s certainly not how the law functions now. As Daisy perceptively pointed out, it’s probably impossible to make the law “number-neutral”; at best, it can accept a larger number of parties to certain contracts than it currently does.
Oh, I totally agree.
The gap between the ease of changing laws to favor SSM and the ease of changing them to favor poly marriage is one of the reasons I think that the former is important right now and the latter isn’t.
I just don’t think that pointing out the similarities is a derail, and like Jake said, considering that “the comment from which the rest of this derives was actually substantially related to SSM,” etc, etc.
—Myca
Myca,
If all you wanted to do was to discuss those parallels, you could say so. No need for the “bigoted” bullshit–just say “whether or not you think it’s a derail, it is open for discussion in this thread.” Just like many other mods say straight up “whether or not you think __ is relevant, please do not discuss it in this thread.”
Want to be SuperModerator, and neverever have one of us low-level posting-only peons tread on your turf? Want to get offended when one of is thinks something is a derail? Do your job. Make it clear what you want.
But you didn’t say anything, at least not with your Mod hat on. You didn’t do the supermoderator job. You didn’t order people to discuss (or not) certain things; as PG pointed out, you didn’t even monitor your own thread.
Instead, you participated in the thread, raised arguments, didn’t do very well, and only then pulled the “I am Mod, her me roar” card.
And as with your ridiculous “bigotry” definition, you’re leaving out something important:
and since it’s my thread and I have now announced that I expect it to be discussed and that it’s not a derail, it’s not a derail for this thread.
I mean, how the fuck are we all supposed to distinguish between “Myca disagrees, but it’s OK to post my opinion anyway” and “Myca disagrees, and because he is the Mod I must back down and/or not post in a manner which does not comport with Myca’s opinion?” How, unless you explicitly say so?
Again: Your post, blog, yadda yadda, do what you want, and all that. But you’re trying to hide behind some sort of general rule, and it ain’t working. You keep trying to use objective language (“it is not” a derail) instead of subjective language (“I do not think this is a derail”) and that’s not working either.
Oh, and as for this:
If you’d like to have a reading comprehension war, I’m game. But there’s no fucking way that I am going to sit here, read your inane arguments full of conclusory statements, have you quote me and then–after all that–accuse ME of having bad reading comprehension.
Look here:
See that ? Do you see me quoting your position? Do you see me making a statement which is attributing a particular position to you?
no?
Good. Because it isn’t there. What is there, in all the is (1) a statement of my ability and willingness to follow rules; (2) an example of a rule I would be willing to follow; and (3) an offer to refrain from commenting against polyamory in this thread.
Do you see a “you said ____” in there? No? Guess you failed the reading comprehension test; your accusation is wrong. Should I be expecting an apology for that ad hom?
And as for the validity of the assumption: Yup, I assume you’re against people arguing from an anti-poly stance. I assume that because your words belie your claim: you say here that you’re OK with it, but you use terms like “bigoted” and “illegitimate” and “dehumanizing” to describe your opponents. You also apply standards to anti-poly folks that you do not apply elsewhere, as described above.
So my conclusion–from the cheap seats–is that it seems from my perspective that you’re trying to defend your position, and you’re losing, and you’re pissed about it. My belief is that you would be happier if the thread were pro-poly than not. And my final conclusion is that you are arguing weakly, and are relying on your moderator power to do things like insult my reading comprehension, even though you sure as shit wouldn’t take it yourself. That is pitiful.
Yes; I thought that was clear though obviously it was not. Thanks, PG, for clarifying.
I just want to say, that as the person who wrote the comment elsewhere about poly derailing of SSM discussions, I do not think poly relationships are “icky,” “stupid,” or any of the other rather outlandish terms that are getting thrown around. I am supportive of poly relationships, for the record.
As a white person who considers myself very supportive of people of color and racial justice, I have learned over time (through trial and error) that it is possible for me to be both anti-racist, AND to derail conversations about race and ethnicity, either by turning the topic to another oppression that I am more comfortable talking about, or by focusing on my experiences of race and ethnicity as a white person. It is endlessly easier to put myself at the center than for me to allow POC to be at the center of discussion, and to consider carefully what impact my words might have on the direction of a conversation, the amount of energy devoted to aspects of that conversation, etc. before injecting my voice.
This has been a hard lesson to learn because at times it means I have to make the choice not to speak, or at least to change what my initial impulse was to speak about, because the larger impact would re-inforce the very system of power and privilege I’m supposedly interested in undermining.
My comment on the other thread was written out of YEARS of frustration, hurt, and anger after watching the same processes happen over and over again when SSM discussions get turned into “but what about poly?” discussions. I think I articulated pretty carefully what I see as the problems with that dynamic, without saying “NO ONE who is poly has EVER done ANYTHING for the cause of SSM!” or “ICK! We’re nothing like those awful people!” or any other extremist position.
My point is that the urge to pop up and say “yeah, I also hope some day I’ll be able to marry the people I love!” can seem very benign to the speaker, but have a derailing effect, particularly in aggregate and in the echo chamber of the Internet, just as saying “yeah, as the girl child of a single mother, I’ve experienced the tyranny of low expectations too!” to a room full of POC talking about racial bias in education might seem like an attempt to promote solidarity but actually re-creates a dynamic in which everything always has to be about the experience of white people.
And while I’m pro-poly, I’m also waiting for some of those critical conversations I mentioned in my elsewhere comment to take place, but without much expectation, because of the massive amounts of privilege I see in the poly community that disincentivize doing so. I would love to be pleasantly surprised, but in the meantime, further claims of “poly people support SSM; we just want to be able to talk about how our needs are similar!” just run that same rut deeper into the ground.
Sailorman: you’ve gone way over the line, and I think if you’re honest with yourself and cool off for a couple days, you’ll see it. Not only have you attempted to defend setting yourself up as a moderator in the thread (which you actually didn’t do until other people were told not to), but you’ve been personally insulting to Myca.
You’re not welcome in this thread anymore.
That makes much more sense to me. I was wondering how SM could have such a different idea than me on that.
I understand your point, Elusis, and I think that in a lot of situations, you’re right.
I’ve had those same conversations among poly groups that start and end with how the lack of poly marriage is the worst thing in the world, and yes, I’ve seen poly concerns sidetrack/piggyback on gay rights discussions, the same way that I’ve seen LGBT concerns sidetrack/piggyback on racial justice discussions.
So I totally am with you on the general point, I just disagree on this case.
As I said back in post #65:
The difference between those two reactions is where I think the prejudice lies. I have a hard time seeing that one is inappropriate derailing but the other isn’t.
Maybe they both are, in which case the question is why is the second statement singled out?
Maybe they neither are, in which case what’s the problem?
Now Sailorman’s statement earlier, and PG’s statement in the other thread is basically that “I’m a feminist” is a valid reason to support SSM, and “I’m poly” isn’t, necessarily. Maybe this is true, maybe it’s not … I’m not going to argue it right now, but what is true, is that regardless of anyone’s opinion of the validity of the statements, when they’re offered as personal reasons for an opinion, they’re certainly valid as that. Whether you happen to disagree with someone’s motivation or not, doesn’t make it more or less ‘their motivation.’
Anyway, that was kind of a digression, Elusis, and as I said, I really do understand your reaction, it’s just that it feels a little knee-jerky to me.
—Myca
Myca,
Just to clarify, I don’t support SSM because I label myself a feminist; I support SSM for what is conveniently categorized as a second-wave feminist rationale, i.e. gender neutrality in the law. People can favor gender-neutrality without identifying as feminists. And feminism is a far more abstracted label in any case than being poly; I can do just about anything sexually — asexual, bi, lesbian, BDSM, vanilla, monoamory, polyamory — and be called a feminist, whereas being poly specifies an interest in a particular kind of relationship. If I tell you I’m a feminist, that tells you nothing about my sex life and relationships; if I tell you I’m poly, I’m talking about actions and not just beliefs. So any paralleling of “I believe X because I’m a feminist” and “I believe X because I’m poly” isn’t going to work well. They’re too different in what they’re categorizing: beliefs versus actions.
Gender neutrality in the law is a principle of far more wide ranging significance than just in family law (and family law has been one of the last holdouts against such neutrality, with a couple of points like citizenship of a foreign-born child based on parent’s U.S. citizenship, or who can marry whom, still to be changed). I’ve never heard of a general principle of “number neutrality” in the law that’s supported by poly advocates; their concern is solely with family law. If it’s not “number neutrality,” I’m not sure what is the underlying principle behind “I support SSM because I’m poly.”
Particularly given the level of antagonism expressed toward adult incest by Mandolin and yourself, which would seem to obviate the possibility that the principle on which you’re relying is one of social libertarianism while simultaneously requiring government intervention to the extent of recognizing certain relationships.
You don’t seem to be saying, I want the word marriage to be used for government recognition of all relationships wherein the participants desire that word to be used and the participants are adults who have given legally sufficient consent. With adult incest, you’re drawing a line of if most of these relationships arose from non-consensual activity with a minor, then categorically all of them should be legally forbidden, including those that feature family members who’d never even met until they were both above the age of consent.
Also, while you and Mandolin take great umbrage at having poly relationships treated as the OMG SO BAD thing, y’all don’t seem to have a problem putting adult incest into that vile-bottom-of-the-slippery-slope, how-dare-you-compare-what-I-do-to-what-they-do place, based on your assumptions of how adult incest relationships must have begun with child molestation.
When I read your post, I saw the word incest, and didn’t see the modifier “adult.”
We do, periodically, get people ’round here arguing the goodness of adult-child incest, and we do also, periodically, get people ’round here arguing that LGBT is effectively equal to adult-child incest. Not having seen the modified “adult,” I responded in that context.
If I’d processed the modifier, I would have responded differently (as adult-adult incest happens to be one in a large sea of things I can’t be arsed to have a particularly vehement reaction). Sorry about that.
PG:
As I said above, I am 100% ready to change my stance if anyone is ready or able to present any evidence that this is not the basis of most of these relationships. All I’ve got is something I mostly remember from a sociology class I took a while back, so really, I completely welcome evidence.
PG, a while back:
I don’t have any problem with first cousins marrying, or siblings, or parent and child, on its own. I don’t believe that any of those, on its own would legitimize child rape.
What I do believe is that, like I said, in the majority of cases, what you have is a situation where it’s, “I started having sex with my brother 5 years ago, but now I’m 18, and he’s 25, and we’re going to get married!” And I’ve had Mary Kay Letourneau thrown in my face too many times to think that later marriage doesn’t make child abuse somehow ‘okay’ in the eyes of a lot of people.
PG, a while back:
I do find it offensive, because of the conflation of polyamory and polygamy, but I understand why you might believe them to be roughly the same thing.
PG:
I don’t believe this to be true. I’m poly, and I am currently in a monogamous relationship that is likely to remain monogamous for the foreseeable future.
You might want to check out Polyamory 101, which, though it doesn’t get into the core beliefs too much, does have some stuff that might be useful.
Suffice it to say, I think that both polyamory and feminism have certain core beliefs, and that they both are philosophies of action to the degree that certain actions flow from those core beliefs. Polyamory isn’t just, “dating a bunch of people.”
—Myca
Actually . . . wow, I completely see where you’re coming from, PG. Wow. Seriously, I get it. (I think)
Incest doesn’t have an attached philosophy. It’s a description of the kind of relationship you’re having. I can’t be ‘incestuous’ and not in a relationship with a relative., and if I am in a relationship with a relative, no matter what I believe or how I go about acting in the relationship, it’s incest.
You think that polyamory works pretty much the same way, right?
(Totally not trying to put words in your mouth. Not assuming that this is what you think. Asking, because it would make some things clearer for me.)
—Myca
Myca,
I don’t have any problem with first cousins marrying, or siblings, or parent and child, on its own. I don’t believe that any of those, on its own would legitimize child rape.
Really?! Why? What is marriage, then?
I can see first cousins, sure; siblings is a major stretch, but, parent and child? How does parents marrying their children not legitimize child rape? We’re not going to desexualize marriage anytime soon (is that what you’re advocating?), and parents having sex with their children is obviously wrong.
Have I somehow horribly misread you? Because I just suddenly gained some sympathy for the “destruction of marriage” slippery slope arguments.
Just that on its own, I see no problem with a 45 year old parent and a 30 year old child who don’t have a history of sexual abuse marrying.
I can conceptualize a situation where that would be not fucked up.
Maybe a father who left before a child was born, and met her once she was an adult, or if the child was given up for adoption or something or something. There are theoretical ways to make it theoretically okay.
In that sterile, perfect, theoretical laboratory case, that is.
My point is that the sterile, perfect, theoretical laboratory case isn’t really what we’re talking about, and that in the real world, it would end up legitimizing child rape too often for my comfort.
—Myca
Ah, okay — thanks for clarifying. I can’t really make it seem not fucked up to myself even in that perfect, sterile situation, but I certainly agree with your point about how it would play out in the real world.
Myca,
You’re correct that my understanding is that polyamory is a practice, and that polygamy is what you would like to see accepted — you would like for the government to provide marriage recognition to polyamorous relationships, just as I would like for the government to provide marriage recognition to same-sex relationships. My understanding is if anything reinforced by the URL you provided:
If you’ve been using the word poly all along to signify only the philosophy and not the practice, then yes, we’ve been misunderstanding each other, but it looks like your own preferred sources would consider my understanding an reasonable one as well. If you could clarify why you think legally-recognized-as-marriage polyamory is completely distinct from polygamy, that would be helpful, because the linked site doesn’t do make such a distinction. (I’m also confused about what’s wrong with the word “spouses” such that they came up with “spice,” but I probably should ask them about that.)
Except Letourneau went to prison for 7 years and is a registered sex offender, which means she’ll never again be able to work in her chosen career (teaching) and that she has to report where she lives to the authorities every three months, and in several states will have to inform her neighbors, and will have a sign posted in her yard notifying people that a sex offender resides there. Most people don’t consider penalties of that magnitude to indicate “legitimization.”
I would think the same would be true of legalizing adult incest marriages: so long as the sexual relationship is found to have begun when one party was under the age of consent, and the statute of limitations hasn’t expired, then the older relative is going to prison for having committed statutory rape. The current criminalization of adult incest is not dependent on the relationship having begun when one party was underage; it applies regardless of how old the parties were when they began having sex.
People who victimize the children in their families by molesting them when they are underage generally are pedophiles; they aren’t particularly desiring this child, but the child is the closest and most accessible one. Once the child is an adult, the pedophile isn’t interested anymore. When I was volunteering as a child advocate, we learned about the kind of situations that can give rise to sexual abuse of children by family members, and it mostly has to do with opportunity and a lack of appropriate separation between adults and children. That’s quite different from two related adults who believe themselves in love with each other and who will happily consent to marrying one another.
Ah, I’ve certainly not been using ‘polyamory’ to signify the philosophy alone, but my use of the term includes the philosophy as well as the practice. Someone who’s ‘dating a bunch of people’ or ‘sleeping around’ or ‘gathering a harem of underage fundamentalist Mormon girls’ is not polyamorous.
—Myca
Certainly, and though I think some of those measures are draconian, I’ve heard the argument made fairly often that she was ‘vindicated’ by the marriage, and ought to have received no punishment, because, “After all, it’s obvious that they really love each other.”
I think that this is because the popular image of child molestation is one of obvious abuse and rape, and that the American public tends not to ‘do’ nuance well.
—Myca
Myca,
Sure, there’s a common sentiment that marriage makes everything smoothed out and OK. That’s why there was sympathy for that guy who took a pregnant 14-year-old across state lines so they could get married in a state that permits 14-year-olds to do so, but still got prosecuted in their home state. The attitude of those who sympathize is that he stepped up and did the right thing and made an honest woman out of her. And yet he still got prosecuted and did time in prison.
I’m less concerned about social approval and disapproval — even if adult incest receives legal protection, it’s still going to squick some folks out, just like SSM or poly(amory/gamy?) — than whether someone’s going to jail.
The reason, by the way, that I emphasize this about the philosophy is that there’s a reason I’ve been framing the hypothetical as, “I am in favor of SSM because I am polyamorous,” and not, “I am in favor of SSM because I am polygamous.”*
Since polyamory has an attached philosophy and set of teachings (though, like feminism, there are many things that people don’t agree on), it is not nonsensical for it to influence one’s political opinions.
Which takes us back to what I was saying in post #80, about the difference between, “I favor same sex marriage because I am a feminist, and I believe that marriage ought to be gender neutral,” and, “I favor same sex marriage because I am poly, and I believe that people ought to be allowed to marry the people they love.”
—Myca
*FTR, neither is true of me. I favor SSM, feminism, and poly marriage (as well as a host of other issues) because I believe in the inherent equality, worth, and dignity of all people.
Right. And while I may not agree with everything laid out in The Ethical Slut (I’ve never read it, but have had it summarized for me), I do find that I have a number of points in common with poly philosophies. At least as many as I do with traditional monogamous philosophies. So, even though my marriage is monogamous, because neither of us is poly if one considers polyamory an orientation (and I do), we still try to share some poly philosophies. Like, for instance: our marriage is not based around sexual fidelity. It’s based around other things. Sexual fidelity is incidental, compared to love, companionship, support, and other things like that.
And since I think sex (and certainly sexual fidelity) is one of the lesser parts of a marriage — something which I could say I derive from poly philosophy, or some kinds of poly philosophy — I could say that such a philosophy is what drives me to accepting gay marriage (who cares who’s putting what where, when sex is not the major force gelling marriages?), polyamorous marriage (who cares how many people put what where…?), and feminist marriage, among other things.
(Those are some of my reasons for supporting non-traditional marriage, but not all of them.)
“I favor same sex marriage because I am poly, and I believe that people ought to be allowed to marry the people they love.”
Because you’re polywhat, though? That’s what is quite confusing here; you’re using only part of a word and leaving the rest to be filled in by others. If you favor SSM because you are polyamorous but not in favor of polygamy, then it doesn’t follow that you believe people ought to be allowed to marry all of the people they love and the quoted statement is not logically sensible. If there’s a difference between favoring “poly marriage” and favoring “polygamy,” I’d appreciate an articulation of that difference, because I’m getting confused to the point of incoherence and the Poly 101 definitions you linked have done nothing to clear up what it is that I’m misunderstanding.
Also, when you say “polyamory has an attached philosophy and set of teachings,” does that mean that someone has to adhere to a certain set of beliefs in order to qualify as polyamorous? He can’t just practice polyamory in the sense of maintaining multiple committed relationships at one time? I guess I don’t see how being polyamorous necessitates a developed philosophy any more than being homosexual or bisexual or incestuous does. Feminism, Marxism, queer ideology all have specific (though internally varied) critiques of the overall structure of society. They will have critiques not just of marriage but of many other aspects of life. I don’t understand how polyamory falls more into that type than it does into adult-incest (which also can come with a philosophy about why society is wrong to disfavor a particular relationship and how such relationships can be carried out ethically, but is unlikely to have any further reaching critiques than that).
Mandolin,
One can oppose poly marriage, at least if it is at all like polygamy, based not on who puts what where, but who has what set of responsibilities to whom and receives what kind of recognition from the state. If we remove all prohibitions on adultery, there’s no block to people’s getting married and still having sex with whomever; what would require a huge change would be having multiple people in a marriage. I am betting there are some people who are polyamorous but who aren’t interested in fighting for poly marriage (even after SSM is won) because they don’t want to have multiple legal commitments.
And I guess I don’t understand why not basing your marriage solely on sexual fidelity is inherently poly philosophical. Given that lots of people keep their marriage going after sexual infidelity, and even have open marriages where either or both party is free to have sex, but don’t necessarily identify as poly nor have they read anything about being poly, I think not basing your marriage on sexual fidelity might be an idea that wasn’t originated in poly philosophy. (Who would be considered among the founding thinkers of poly philosophy? I could estimate from there when the philosophy originated and the extent to which people already had tried having marriages not based on sexual fidelity prior to it.)
OK, I don’t think this conversation is going to continue to be useful, because it seems to me like you don’t really know much about polyamory, PG. Particularly since you don’t seem to know things like that it’s referred to by shorthand as “poly” (which polygamy is not). Also, you keep condensing it with polygamy in other ways.
I’m not pulling 101 “go educate yourself” on you, exactly. But I am not the person most qualified to give you a polyamory 101, so I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to do so. However, I just don’t think it’s going to be productive to discuss the topic with you while you keep condensing it with polygamy.
To steal someone else’s signout: peace.
Mandolin,
I think I grasp that polyamory is not synonymous with polgamy — after all, I know people who are in polyamorous relationships, but I don’t know anyone in a polygamous marriage.
What I don’t understand, and what my reading so far has not made clear, is the distinction between polyamorous marriage and polygamy. Everything I’ve seen thus far treats “poly marriage” and “polygamy” as essentially synonymous (and both are equated with “group marriage” or “plural marriage”).
The entire conversation that I was having with PPR_Scribe, inasmuch as it related to poly folks, had nothing to do with the practice of polyamory-without-polygamy. In particular, there was no suggestion of derailment until PPR_Scribe took the question Myca posed about SSM and applied to to poly marriage (which, given the use of the term by the reference website that Myca did provide and in which I read extensively, does seem to denote the same legal structure as polygamy, but is preferred to the word polygamy because “polygamy” has negative connotations).
Yeah, PG, I think I’m going to second Mandolin here. Some of your responses don’t seem to ‘get’ what we’re talking about.
The only additional clarification I really have to offer is that when I talk about the philosophical backing behind polyamory, I’m talking about why it makes the statement, ““I favor same sex marriage because I am poly(amorous), and I believe that people ought to be allowed to marry the people they love,” not a non sequitir. As for the theoretical difference between polyamory, polygamy, etc, I’m not going into how that would relate to a theoretical legal framework.
My point is not the rightness or wrongness of legal marriage to more than one person. I’m just talking about why mentioning polyamory is no more a sidetrack than mentioning feminism.
—Myca
Myca,
I don’t think a failure to “get” something that people are refusing to discuss is much of a failure on the part of the person who isn’t “getting” it. I did not come into this discussion knowing that there was a difference between polygamy and polyamorous marriage. I’m guessing, from your and Mandolin’s refusal to say what the difference is, that there must be one but it’s one that every individual must figure out for herself. That’s certainly not a useful or productive way to have a conversation, so I’m out of the thread until I can find a source that does explain.
I probably shouldn’t even weigh in on this, but I think it’s perfectly fair not to want to use the word polygamy to describe polyamorous marriage, even if etymologically, it would be the right word. I think it goes beyond negative connotation to the point that polygamy describes extremely patriarchal relationships that are not between equals. Especially because I strongly suspect the family law around polygamy in the countries that have it is not the family law of relationships between equals.
There are all sorts of examples in English where a word has an etymological meaning that is basically one thing, but an actual meaning in the living language that is simply something different (anti-Semitic – sure, not all Semites are Jews, but it means anti-Jewish prejudice, retarded – yes, it means delayed or slow in ANY sense, but the first thing anyone will think of is someone with a developmental delay).
Even though the dictionary definition of polygamy is the neutral idea of plural marriage, I think it’s fair for people who are polyamorous to say that word polygamy as it functions in contemporary English does not describe what they mean when they imagine polyamorous marriage.