[Another guest post, reprinted with permission from Calitics.]
Right now the Yes on 8 Campaign is telling so many lies in the service of eliminating rights for gay people that it’s hard to keep track of all of them. But I want to focus on just one lie for the moment, one from the first Yes on 8 TV Ad:
Churches could lose their tax exemptions
This is a lie. Want to know how I know it’s a lie? Here’s what the California Constitution currently says, right now, in Article I:
SEC. 4. Free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference are guaranteed. This liberty of conscience does not excuse acts that are licentious or inconsistent with the peace or safety of the State. The Legislature shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
SEC. 8. A person may not be disqualified from entering or pursuing a business, profession, vocation, or employment because of sex, race, creed, color, or national or ethnic origin.
SEC. 31. (a) The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.
The last time I checked, Catholic priests can refuse to marry a couple if they’re not both Catholic (and I assume if they haven’t completed the various sacraments and classes required). Only Mormons in good standing can even attend a Mormon wedding inside a temple, and Mormon bishops can refuse to marry non-Mormons.
So why haven’t the Catholic Church and the Church of Latter Day Saints lost their tax-exempt status in California, like Law Professor Peter Peterson says they might if gay people are allowed to marry and those churches refuse to marry them?
Because churches are private actors, guaranteed freedom of religion in the California Constitution. The elected Justices of the California Supreme Court made that very clear when they ruled, citing Article 1, Section 4 of the California Constitution, in a decision written by Republican Ronald George, that the State could no longer discriminate against gay people who wished to marry:
Finally, affording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official, or any other person; no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs. (Cal. Const., art. I, § 4.)
So the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign, and Peter Peterson acting as their spokesman, are lying. Under the California Constitution, in the very Supreme Court decision that they Yes on 8 campaign is so up in arms about, no church could lose its tax-exempt status for refusing to marry a gay couple or preaching that gay marriage is wrong.
Nothing that’s a good idea needs to be sold with a lie. Vote No on Proposition 8. Don’t corrupt our state’s Constitution by taking rights away from people for the first time in our history.
I’m contributing to the No on 8 Campaign again, because I’m sick of the lies. So should you: No on 8.
[This post is governed by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.]
I wonder if it’s a cold-blooded lie, or if it’s a lack of trust? I can remember when the whole push for gay rights started spinning up back in the 70’s and early 80’s. It was proposed then that it would lead towards gay “marriage”. THAT was countered as an absurdity by gay rights supporters, an obvious lie that was being used to dishonestly further the aims of the opposition. But now here we are. You’re quite right about what the court is saying. The question is, do you trust the court? Or, more to the point, do the supporters of Proposition 8 trust the courts to tell the truth and to intrepret the State Constitution as you present?
I would guess the answer is ‘no’. If you went out and surveyed Prop 8 supporters and asked “If Prop 8 is defeated, do you think that the Court will start making decisions based on the concept that the right to gay marriage must be promoted above the rights of other individuals or organizations”, what do you think the answer would be?
I’m not saying this as an argument to vote for or against Proposition 8. I’m saying it as an exploration of the motives of people making the claim that you are calling a lie. I won’t contest that there’s probably some people out there making that claim whose motive is truly venal. But I’m guessing that there’s a lot of people out there who read the kinds of representations to the contrary that you quote and say to themselves “Bullshit. They’re lying. Once they get this in they’ll just twist the words of the Constitution around and do what they think is right just like they did with abortion.”
And divorce. Cuz the Catholic church is totally forced to marry divorces.
I don’t give a fuck what their motives are, they are speaking in direct contradiction of facts, and using their ignorant lies to hurt others.
Some Evangelical Ministers are urging people to Vote NO on Proposition 8. Also, isn’t the parental notification initiative more important to Christians?
The problem with these slippery slope arguments, which have to acknowledge in fine print that the measure actually being voted on won’t lead to Horrible Thing but that it brings us closer to a state of affairs in which Horrible Thing could happen, is that they skip the step in which we have to accede to Horrible Thing before it does happen. For example, if you believe that the legalization of abortion will lead to the legalization of infanticide, you have to say why you think that there won’t be a continued opposition to infanticide that would prevent its legalization.
Similarly, if you believe that allowing same-sex marriage will force churches that don’t perform it to lose their tax exemptions, you have to explain why churches will suddenly become public accommodations instead of retaining their ability under federal law to be exempt from a host of anti-discrimination laws. Churches can refuse to ordain women (Catholic) and people of color (LDS before they changed this rule), and can refuse to perform marriages that are secularly legal but violate church teachings (first cousin marriages are, and second cousin marriages before 1983 were, disapproved by Catholic Church even though second cousin marriages are legal everywhere and first cousin marriages legal in many states).
Churches’ recognition of marriages is not required to track the state’s recognition of marriages. If you say Prop. 8 will change this, you should be able to explain why.
Thank you so much for the link to ActBlue, Amp. I have been wanting to contribute to the No on 8 campaign, but was frustrated because of my Canadian residential status. The No on 8 site doesn’t accept out-of-country donations and I keep forgetting to put a check in the mail. Now I have made my donation, thanks to you and ActBlue!!
Similarly, if you believe that allowing same-sex marriage will force churches that don’t perform it to lose their tax exemptions, you have to explain why churches will suddenly become public accommodations instead of retaining their ability under federal law to be exempt from a host of anti-discrimination laws.
Because leftist politicians will be elected who will put leftist justices on the Supreme Court who will then decide that previously decided questions were decided wrongly or that concepts that have been accepted for millenia (marriage is a bond of a man and a woman) suddenly are wrong or are to be redefined to suit an agenda rather than the plain meaning of the law.
Now, I expect you disagree that this is what the courts did. But this is what the people who support something like Proposition 8 think that they have already seen with this issue and with other issues like abortion.
So, allison, do you think it would be right for American conservatives to contribute to a Canadian organization trying to change a Canadian constitution?
So, Ron, do you think it would be right for out-of-state conservatives to fund an attempt to change the California constitution?
—Myca
As it happens, Ron, I am an American citizen living in Canada. I lived in California for most of my life and I have many gay friends who still live there and are directly affected by this proposition. But regardless of whether I am an American or a Californian, I feel I have a right and a responsibility to support equal rights for all.
RonF,
If you don’t like the leftist politicians, then campaign against them. If you don’t like the leftist California Supreme Court justices, vote for them to be removed when their reappointment is on the ballot. If you want to ensure that tax exemptions are preserved for discriminating churches, put THAT on the ballot — it’s just as easy to do as a measure to take away the right of same-sex marriage.
But don’t lie about what the California marriage case itself does, or that we need Prop. 8 to save tax exemptions for churches.
That’s kind of my point. People are campaigning against the leftist politicians. They just figure that the leftist politicians are lying about what their agenda is and what they’ll do to accomplish it.
I understand what you’re saying about the various provisions in the law that should stop what these folks fear from coming to pass. I agree with you that if the law is applied in accordance with the plain meaning of it’s wording and with the intent that it was created with, it would in fact block any such thing.
What has happened, though, is that the explanation “the law clearly says that you can’t do that, so it’s not a problem” no longer holds a lot of weight for a great many folks. As far as they are concerned, it no longer matters what the law clearly states. They have seen, multiple times, that courts have taken what in their opinion the law clearly states and either ignored or perverted it. Roe vs. Wade, Kelo, and now this. You may not think so, but they do. The thought process is “This is what they want. This is what they’ll do. And they won’t give a shit what the law says, they’ll just use the courts to change it.” As far as their concerned, what they’re saying is not a lie because they figure that what the law says is meaningless once gay rights advocates on the courts get ahold of it.
So if what someone really fears is chuches losing tax exemptions over discrimination — something that hasn’t happened with regard to discrimination based on sex, race, legal family status, but for some reason will suddenly happen in favor of Teh Gays, who are a much smaller minority than women, people of color, and divorced folks — why not put a measure on the ballot to enshrine churches’ freedom from taxation into the state constitution?
Ah, well, Allison, that’s a bit different then.
Because that’s only one thing among other things that they imagine will be the outcome if Prop 8 fails.
What is the full set of possibilities to fear from same-sex marriage, and this time, could there be one that actually has occurred with the progress to full citizenship of other previously disfavored groups (such as women, people of color, divorcees, children of unmarried parents, etc.)?
This is what I find peculiarly bizarre about the loss of tax exemption for churches claim — it never has happened with any other disfavored minority. It is a great deal more practical to say that if we accept gay people in our society, we will have same-sex marriage, just as after Brown v. Board, it was natural to progress toward Loving v. Virginia. But there is no historical precedent that occurs to me for a church to lose its tax exemption for its exclusion of a particular group, and indeed civil rights laws have specific carveouts from being applied to religious groups. What makes gays different?
That kind of ahistoricism makes the claim look peculiarly illegitimate. I am willing to say that if same-sex marriage is legal, the kiddies will learn about its existence eventually; families headed by same-sex couples will seep into children’s books, TV, movies etc. just as women-who-worked or blacks-who-didn’t-shuck-and-jive did. But I simply cannot think of a precedent for the claim that churches will lose their tax exemption.
The problem, Ron, is that once you go down that road, any claim, no matter how blatantly untruthful, is suddenly justified.
My standard, and it’s stood me in good stead, is that if an official campaign has to blatantly lie to make their case, that’s because they don’t have much of a case without the lies.
It was true for the war in Iraq, it’s true for the McCain Campaign, and it’s true here.
—Myca
Myca said:
But if you scream enough lies loudly enough and with enough conviction, even if people don’t believe HALF of what you say anymore, the OTHER half of what you’ve said that they don’t discount out of hand somehow resonates with a few…
It’s like monkeys and typewriters. You get enough of them together, and they’re bound to eventually produce some effect. Especially when you throw in phrases like “legislating from the bench”.
And that seems to be the “Far Right’s” approach to policymaking and winning voters these days, at least in California and on the Federal level: scream as many lies as you can, and probability dictates that a few, however ridiculous, will stick…
Oh hey, that reminds me, MisterMephisto. On Tuesday nights, I’m doing No-On-8 phone banking over in Berkeley. If you (and/or your girl) would like to join me, send me an email. There’s the lure of free food and legal equality!
—Myca
The problem, Ron, is that once you go down that road, any claim, no matter how blatantly untruthful, is suddenly justified.
I wouldn’t go that far. There are limits to how far people will consider that the courts will go in pursuing a legislative agenda. And decisions like Miller help counter the concern (although the idea that it was only 5-4 I found personally disturbing).
But there’s certainly going to be a trend towards this phenomena getting worse. A lot of it is going to depend on the decisions we see in the next few years. I found some of Sen. Obama’s statements about who he would pick for the Supreme Court worrisome. He said:
and
Now, I’m all in favor of choosing people who have a variety of experiences to the Supreme Court so that there are different perspectives represented. But consider the oaths a Supreme Court Justice takes:
Insofar as the rich and powerful pervert the legal system to prevent the law from being applied to them equally (or to cause it to be applied to others unequally) it is indeed the courts’ job to be a refuge for the less powerful. This is acting to ensure that the law is applied impartially and without respect to persons; that wealth and influence cannot buy you a shield against the law.
But if the structure of the law itself favors the rich and powerful, that in and of itself does not automatically comprise a violation of the Constitution. That it comprises a flaw in the law may well be; but fixing that is a legislative function, not a judicial one. To do otherwise is a violation of the principle of the separation of powers. It is the legislature’s job to determine whether the law does favor one group over another and whether or not that should change, not the courts.
Sen. Obama’s statements sound to me like he wishes to pursue a legislative function in the Supreme Court. That’s wrong. It’s arguably un-American in that the separation of powers is a fundamental principle of American government.
As JESUS said on the cross: “גוייִש משוגעת”. Please see what an Evangelical Minister has to say.
Ron, what are examples of right-wing legislating from the bench that you have found objectionable?
I ask because as far as I can tell, when right wingers say they’re against legislating from the bench, what they actually mean is that they’re against any judge ever making a decision they disagree with, but have no problem with activist right-wing courts.
To: PG
I lost the thread we were having our discussion on. Rather than go into detail here, I’ll just say I agree with almost everything you said, and I’m not convinced it is right to deny the mother-father-child model. You maintain everyone has a right to family, yet our traditions do not permit anyone to be denied one, while I see multiple avenues in yours which permit us to be denied one. You contrasted my position with the Edwards and Dan and Terry as if we’re on opposite sides, yet as I see it nothing they’ve done is out of line with our traditions, except in one particular. I’m sure we’re more in agreement than we appear to be.
We know that when a 5-4 conservative Court says that DC’s handgun ban is unconstitutional and overturns that democratically enacted legislation, RonF says they’re right to do so, even though conservative judges have criticized the decision as an instance of “legislating from the bench.”
Look, if someone has a problem with judges’ “legislating from the bench,” i.e. saying there are things in the Constitution that aren’t actually there, then they should openly oppose the idea that such things are there, and amend the Constitution to say they aren’t. I have no problem with the people who say “The CA Supreme Court got it wrong and we need to amend the Constitution to make it absolutely clear that they did” — I myself am not certain that the CA constitution has a right of same-sex marriage. However, that’s not what Prop. 8 does. Prop. 8 does not say, “Amend the CA constitution to state that no part of this constitution shall be read to support a right of same-sex marriage.” Instead, it wants to BAN legal recognition of same-sex marriage and put this ban into the state constitution.
Then the proponents of this poorly-written measure go one step further, and instead of resting their argument on the highly-plausible “the state constitution does not actually say what the CA supreme court said it did,” or the more debateable “same-sex marriage is a bad thing and we should amend our constitution to forbid it” — both of which are honest arguments about what is involved in voting on Prop. 8 — they lie about what Prop. 8 does or doesn’t do.
Seriously, if you are sincerely worried that an activist judge will take away a church’s tax exemption for refusing to perform same-sex ceremonies, how does banning same-sex marriage prevent this activist judge from doing that anyway? California includes sexual orientation in the classifications that cannot be used to discriminate in employment and access to public accommodations, and California provides domestic partnerships that are functionally very similar to marriage. Many if not most of the people who enter domestic partnerships have a ceremony and wear rings to commemorate their commitment. If you’re convinced activist judges are out to get churches, why does the state constitutional ban on recognizing same-sex marriage prevent this hypothetical activist judge from saying, “Church, you violate CA’s anti-discrimination law by refusing to perform ceremonies for homosexuals; you are discriminating against homosexuals in violation of the law. I therefore will order your tax exemption removed”?
That’s what makes me nuts about these claims. Even if I enter into your mindset that CRAZY ACTIVIST JUDGES WILL DO ANYTHING THEY WANT, that simply reinforces the fact that Prop. 8’s passage or failure is utterly irrelevant. If you believe judges have no need to base their decisions in the constitution, statute, precedent, logic, etc., then what can you do to stop them? THEY’RE CRAZY! Just impeach all these liberal judges who have absolutely no regard for the constitution and completely making stuff up. If there’s a systemic problem, propose a systemic solution instead of picking at this or that particular decision. (For one thing, it will show a lot more intellectual honesty, as otherwise there seems to be a tendency only to be concerned about the decisions that have outcomes one doesn’t like personally.)
Incidentally, RonF mentioned on another thread that he thinks people who are not elected representatives should be able to support unpopular proposals without facing threats, intimidation, boycotts, etc. I wonder what he thinks about the letters that the Yes on 8 folks are sending to businesses that donate to No on 8.
Maco,
I am not sure how much we are in agreement. I am really quite strongly opposed to the idea that genetic parenthood should determine who raises a child. This is partly because I am a strong proponent of adoption as an alternative to abortion or children raising children, and hope to adopt children myself. Your comments seem to assume that the genetic family is preferable to the family I would like to form, or that the Edwardses have, or that Dan Savage has, and I disagree with that notion. Moreover, I have seen very little logical support given in its favor.
You maintain everyone has a right to family, yet our traditions do not permit anyone to be denied one, while I see multiple avenues in yours which permit us to be denied one.
I don’t say that everyone has a “right” to family; there are plenty of family forms that involve treating people unequally based on gender, or treating children as property, or commodifying sexuality, that I don’t support. What I do maintain is that one ought to be able to articulate why a certain family type is bad. The argument I have seen most often about why families are headed by same-sex couples are suboptimal is that children in such families will not have a parent of each sex, but this argument is predicated on the belief that some set of non-physical traits relevant to childrearing inheres in having a Y chromosome, penis and testicles (or in XX chromosome, vagina and ovaries), and I do not think that is correct.
Amp, I can’t think of any such thing happening. However, I don’t pretend to have a comprehensive knowledge of Supreme Court decisions. If you have an example that you think is properly described as such bring it up and I’ll offer my opinion.
PG, I’m sure you can get some conservative judges to consider Miller legislating from the bench. But then you can get some liberal judges to consider Roe vs. Wade as legislating from the bench.
I don’t hold that overruling the legislature is automatically legislating from the bench. Legislatures have often been known to pass laws that contravene the Constitution, whether by trying to ban law-abiding citizens from owning guns or by trying to keep black people from voting. It’s entirely appropriate for the courts to invalidate a law by reason that it’s in violation of the Constitution. It becomes legislating from the bench when the Justices invent interpretations that contravene the meaning or intent of the Constitution.
And yes, I know that the meaning and intent of the Constitution is sometimes not as clear as any of us would like. But generally it is, and it’s not like the people who wrote it were silent about what they meant by it. When Supreme Court justices base decisions on “penumbras” (an astronomical term meaning ‘partial shadow’) and start redefining the meaning of the word marriage from what it meant for millenia you sow the crop of disbelief in the impartiality of the judiciary that we are now reaping.
Then, bearing the 14th amendment in mind, how can any law against gay marriage possibly be constitutional?
—Myca
RonF,
So you think Loving v. Virginia was an “activist” decision? After all, the word “marriage” doesn’t even show up in the Constitution, so how could there be a right to interracial marriage?
And you still haven’t explained the logic behind the idea that because crazy activist judges ignore the plain meaning of the California constitution, once we amend the California constitution, crazy activist judges won’t be able to ignore it anymore in order to take tax exemptions away from churches.
I’m sorry, but this makes me nuts — the meaning of marriage has changed a lot over the last several millenia and it’s ridiculous to pretend it hasn’t. The concept of marriage traditionalists want to defend today — an adult man and an adult woman of about the same age who arrange their own marriage out of love and then form an independent economic unit consisting only of them and their children — is not an old institution. There are, of course, all the things people usually mention: women as property, no divorce, bans on interracial marriage, etc., not to mention arranging one’s own marriage and the fact that, if we’re actually going to practice marriage as it was in the Bible, it could just as well be one man and two women, and the women could be sisters, and they could all be cousins.
It’s true that marriage has always been a heterosexual institution, but so what? It had always been a contract arranged by men until it wasn’t, always only between people of the same race until it wasn’t, always forever (no divorce) until it wasn’t, etc., etc. The fact is that including same-sex couples is not actually some radical departure, but a natural side-effect of our cultural decision to see marriage as a loving partnership between equals, which consenting adults arrange for themselves on their own terms (i.e. when they want to, for however long they want to, etc).
The fact is that including same-sex couples is not actually some radical departure, but a natural side-effect of our cultural decision to see marriage as a loving partnership between equals, which consenting adults arrange for themselves on their own terms (i.e. when they want to, for however long they want to, etc).
Perhaps even more importantly and less biased culturally (as legally people still can have arranged marriages that are not based on romantic love), it’s also a natural side-effect of the legal equality of the sexes. Family law used to be full of distinctions drawn based on whether one was the husband or wife, mother or father, but that no longer is true — there are no gendered distinctions left in family law, except that only men can marry women, and only women can marry men. And I have yet to hear an argument about why it makes sense to keep that one sex distinction when all the rest have gone.
This is, incidentally, an important difference between same-sex marriage and polygamy or incestuous marriage: the law retains many distinctions based on number of people, or on the family relationship between parties (see, e.g., the tax laws regarding “related parties”). Nor is there any Constitutional reason to say that one ought to be able to have three wives just as well as one, or marry one’s brother just as well as a non-relative. Nothing in the Constitution says we cannot make distinctions based on number of people or on the family relationship of people. However, beginning with the 19th Amendment our Constitution has been read to say that the state generally cannot make distinctions between the sexes. Refusing to let a woman marry a woman is a distinction made based on sex, just as refusing to let a white marry a black was a distinction made based on race.
“start redefining the meaning of the word marriage from what it meant for millenia you sow the crop of disbelief in the impartiality of the judiciary that we are now reaping.”
Ron, this is a lie. it is a lie I have pointed out multiple times on this site. It is a lie because polygamy was the standard practiced in Europe until relatively recently, historically speaking. It is a lie because polygamy, polyandry, and other marriage forms exist now, and have for centuries. It is a lie because there are forms of homosexual marriage that exist in other cultures, currently and historically.
Do. Not. Repeat. This. Lie. Again.
Prop. 8 does not say, “Amend the CA constitution to state that no part of this constitution shall be read to support a right of same-sex marriage.” Instead, it wants to BAN legal recognition of same-sex marriage and put this ban into the state constitution.
This seems almost beside the point, since either action would tell people who’ve finally had their weddings that they weren’t married after all. Happily, recent polls suggest the voters in California know this. I think Prop 8 will fail and the dodge about activist judges (elected, by the way, Ron; you seem to have forgotten that part of the post) will seem even sillier. So will many direct arguments against same-sex marriage, when the facts contradict them as well.
Seriously, dude. I’m seconding Mandolin on this. This isn’t a difference of opinion, this is repeating some made up shit that has been repeatedly debunked.
—Myca
How about good old number 9?
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
hf,
This seems almost beside the point, since either action would tell people who’ve finally had their weddings that they weren’t married after all.
The difference between the two is irrelevant for its immediate practical effect, that’s true, but there’s a significant difference in what each expresses. If you believe the CA Supreme Court read the state constitution erroneously, but you don’t oppose same-sex marriage as a policy matter, then you would promote an amendment to the constitution that clarifies that it cannot be read to give a right of same-sex marriage. You still leave the door open for same-sex marriage to be recognized, just not by judicial decision.
However, someone who supports Prop. 8 in its actual form isn’t just saying “No” to the CA Supreme Court’s alleged overreaching. He’s saying “No” to same-sex marriage itself. Given the number of people who hide behind claims that they have no problem with homosexuals, they just don’t like these changes to be made by the courts, it is worthwhile to distinguish between the two options. If the Prop. 8 folks were worried about activist judges rather than same-sex marriage itself, they wouldn’t have written the proposal the way they did.
PG at #29: yes, that’s a great point.
Daisy Bond,
Thanks, it is something I tend to emphasize because the one consistent correlation of attitudes I have seen among opponents of same-sex marriage is that they also believe in inherent differences between the sexes — otherwise, SSM opponents have enormous diversity of beliefs, some them even having a same-sex sexual attraction themselves. It is such a strong correlation and of what appears to be logical necessity (if anti-SSM, then belief-in-sex-differences) that it almost rises to the level of causation.
They have to believe that being a wife MUST be different from being a husband, in order to say that there cannot be two wives or two husbands in a marriage; they have to believe that being a father MUST be different from being a mother, in order to say there cannot be two father or two mothers to a child. And indeed as a social matter there might be aggregate differences between men and women. Just as, in the aggregate, mothers are more likely to have the majority of child care duties, and therefore in a divorce are more likely to receive primary custody of the child; in the aggregate, wives are more likely to have earning power less than their husbands, and therefore in a divorce are more likely to receive alimony.
However, the law is not allowed to assume that these aggregate differences apply to everyone; in each custody case, the judge is supposed to evaluate the parents to determine who would be better to continue the primary caretaker role. The law is not allowed to assume on the basis of any aggregate difference between men’s and women’s earnings in the workforce that an ex-wife is entitled to alimony and the ex-husband never is. So why does the law assume that in every marriage, there must be a husband and a wife, and in every family, there can be only one mother and one father?
It is a lie because polygamy was the standard practiced in Europe until relatively recently
How recently and how widespread was polygamy in Europe?
In any case as Daisy put it “It’s true that marriage has always been a heterosexual institution” through pretty much all cultures. And that’s the novel difference being introduced by the courts that we’re talking about here.
hf said:
I think Prop 8 will fail and the dodge about activist judges (elected, by the way, Ron; you seem to have forgotten that part of the post
Actually, what Amp said (IIRC) was that the California Supreme Court justices were initially appointed and then stood for re-election at the end of a 12-year term. I asked whether in this case any of the judges involved had ever actually stood for election and got no answer. In researching the issue myself (and if Wiki is to be believed and based on the years it said they were first appointed), 3 of them have faced the electorate once, 3 have never faced the electorate, and their current Chief Justice started out as an Associate and was then promoted and I don’t know if the promotion reset the clock on him or not.
Myca and Joe:
Then, bearing the 14th amendment in mind, how can any law against gay marriage possibly be constitutional?
How about good old number 9?
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Depends. If you view marriage as a bond between a man and a woman, then no one is being treated unequally. If you view marriage as a bond between two people regardless of their sex, then those amendments would apply.
PG:
So you think Loving v. Virginia was an “activist” decision?
Actually, I said no such thing. That’s you putting words in my mouth.
After all, the word “marriage” doesn’t even show up in the Constitution, so how could there be a right to interracial marriage?
Because there is an amendment that says that rights will not be withheld or abridged on the basis of race.
Mandolin said:
To which RonF replied:
If evidence is offered, Ron, that you are just plain wrong about this, will you agree to give up your opposition to same-sex marriage?
—Myca
RonF,
Because there is an amendment that says that rights will not be withheld or abridged on the basis of race.
1) Which Amendment is that? Before you said the 14th; I pointed out that the 14th says nothing about race. Then you tried the 15th; I pointed out that it applies only to voting rights, and the 19th Amendment is a replica of the 15th, substituting only the word “sex” for “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
2) How is a right being withheld or abridged on the basis of race if interracial marriage is forbidden — unless a right also is being withheld or abridged on the basis of sex if same-sex marriage is forbidden? After all, people of all races could get married before Loving, just as people of both sexes can get married now. They used to be restricted in the choice of spouse by race; they’re still restricted in the choice of spouse by sex.
Constitutionally, how do you draw a distinction? You seem wholly convinced that there is no constitutional right of same-sex marriage, so I simply thought based on your originalist reading of the Constitution (and God knows the Founders, and even the proponents of the 14th and 15th Amendments, did NOT favor allowing Negro men to touch white women), that you would consider Loving v. Virginia to be an incorrect reading of the Constitution. I would be interested in your explanation of why someone who has read your arguments in favor of originalism, and against SSM, should not have made such an assumption. Except of course that it’s not socially respectable to think that interracial marriage is bad — but that has nothing to do with whether it’s a Constitutionally-guaranteed right.
And since polygamy is the most dominant marriage form pre-contact, does that mean that you have no opposition to legalizing polygamy?
In any case, polygamy was a regular form of marriage in Europe a few centuries ago, and was banned top-down for reasons of simplifying inheritance law.
Huh. I had no idea. How many centuries, and where in Europe? And by “regular,” do you mean ‘approved by the legislature’ or do you mean ‘common?’
Do you happen to have an accessible source? that’s an interesting tidbit of information.
No, I don’t. It was something I got in an economic anthropology class, unfortunately.
I think it was “common” since IIRC most marriages were common rather than legal.
Actually, I said no such thing. That’s you putting words in my mouth.
So, do you consider Loving v Virginia to be an “activist decision”? If so, why, if not, why not? How do you see decisions in favor of marriage equality for people of any sexual orientation to be different from marriage equality for people of any race? (If you do: I should, I suppose first ask if you consider decisions in favor of marriage equality to be “activist”?)
NP, i’ll go look it up myself. i was just being lazy ;)
To theorize, though–if it was “common” then that might explain the antigaymarriage folks’ position a bit better. I.E. you might have Jean the Farmer with his two wives, but if society and the law are simultaneously arguing that Only One Wife Is Right And Proper, and if that holds across the rich and powerful class… would you describe that as a situation in which polygamy is or is not “OK” in that society? I suppose the real solution is to recognize that the lives and manners of many European nobility and peasantry were so different as to not really belong in the same classification. But still.
PG: Maco, I am not sure how much we are in agreement.
We agree that men, women, gays and straights are equals, that the Edwards can accept a doner egg (or sperm if the chips fell that way), that the doner is not forfeiting an obligation by it, and that Dan and Terry can have children. My only preference is Dan or Terry marry the mother and add the other polyamorously.
I am really quite strongly opposed to the idea that genetic parenthood should determine who raises a child. This is partly because I am a strong proponent of adoption as an alternative to abortion or children raising children, and hope to adopt children myself. Your comments seem to assume that the genetic family is preferable to the family I would like to form
Nothing in my set of beliefs denies adoption, and if genetic parents are truly unsuitable nothing denies removing them, and genetic parents don’t even have to be the one’s raising them, but it is where responsibility has to fall. Your need for a family didn’t begin with your desire to marry, it began when you were born, and if your parents didn’t “prefer” that the kind of family they would like to form included you, then I require them to have a better reason than a blank rejection of the heteronormative model. Family is essential, responsibility is the essense of adulthood, and adoptive parents don’t spontaneously materialize for every child that is declined by their birth parents.
I don’t say that everyone has a “right” to family
I think this is where our thought processes begin to diverge, because I think we do. I think we need to have a right to a family. That necessitates we act in such ways as guarantee that, and that begins with where we begin; with our mothers, our fathers, and us.
You mentioned being in agreement with Edwards and Dan and Terry several times as if you were all on one side and I was completely on another. Do you imagine they agree that they had no right to a family when they were born?
What I do maintain is that one ought to be able to articulate why a certain family type is bad.
Apart from models based on criminal behaviors, do you think any family model is bad? Could you articulate why it would be Bad! if I were married to four women at the same time, for instance? But if you want to know the difference as I see it, some models result in more people being entirely dependent upon society than others. The MFC model results in the fewest. Done right, it results in none.
The mother-father-child bond connects me to a family that is larger than my high school population was, and everyone in it is in some way or other a support resource for everyone else through that bond. The cumulative effect is staggering in the advantage it provides, and in it’s capacity to absorb short term or local emergencies like lost jobs, repairs, or injuries that cause economic collapse in smaller families.
I consider this slice of humanity I belong to, my family, to be humanity very nearly at its peak. We couldn’t easily be organized into any other form that gives as much advantage to as many people, for less personal cost. I’m reasonably convinced that every society on earth that has ever been at equally successful in this arena has done so through an equally specific model of family, no matter how different that model happens to be from western Judeo-Christian traditions.
I’m trying to open my mind to embrace other ideas, though because I’m not given to blind allegiance or a desire to deny you anything. I’ve been trying to think of a model of family that includes the ethic “mothers and fathers don’t have to take care of their own children or each other if they don’t want to” that can do as good a job, and I can’t think of one. I see too many people, young and old, men and women, without mothers, without fathers, without families, and I see what they need to do to live when they have nothing but their own strengths and society’s graces to depend upon. And then I see our family, and other families like ours. There is simply no contest.
The polyamorous Godmother/father is a compromise that appeals to me more than anything else. It could have answered any homosexual interests that our traditions failed to account for without axing entire branches of our family, because it joins with the essential mother-father-child relationships without replacing them.
Maco, I think I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying, but you’re placing undue emphasis on genetics. For example, if my girlfriend and I decide to have a baby using a sperm donor who isn’t going to become part of our family, we’re not so much “axing” a branch of that kid’s family as we substituting one: the child would still have two parents, two sets of grandparents, two sets of aunts and uncles and cousins, etc. What does it matter that one set comes from someone not genetically related to her, as long as both parents love her and both families form the support system you’re talking about?
I think there are many other good ways to form families, for the record. I’m just saying that, if what’s important here is the connection to a family community, it shouldn’t matter whether a child is being raised by her birth-mother and father or not, so long as the family community is formed (thereby fulfilling the child’s “right to a family”).
As for whether biological parents should be allowed to duck their parental responsibilities: I agree that responsibility is tremendously important. But the well-being of child is more important. People who don’t want to be a parents shouldn’t have to be because that allows bad parents to self-select out of children’s lives. And I don’t think setting up an adoption, for example, is an abdication of responsibility; for many people, it may be the most responsible choice they have.
Leaving a kid on a street-corner is irresponsible. Arranging for her to be placed with a family that wants her is not. Abandoning one’s child with her other parent and disappearing so as not to have to help out is irresponsible. Donating sperm to people who want a child is not. Etc., etc.
My only preference is Dan or Terry marry the mother and add the other polyamorously.
Why in the world would you want that? Assuming we’re talking about the same Dan and Terry, Dan and Terry love each other. They like and respect the mother of their child and the father, but neither of them has an intimate relationship with either biological parent. What good would a lying, adulturous by design marriage do for anyone? Except traumatize the kid and make him think that marriage was all about cold distance and only extra-marital relationships could involve love.
But if you want to know the difference as I see it, some models result in more people being entirely dependent upon society than others. The MFC model results in the fewest.
What’s your evidence for that? Most studies of lesbian and gay parents show essentially no difference in any measurable outcome between children raised by same sex couples and those raised by opposite sex couples. Some studies suggest that the involvement of more adults is better for a child, i.e. the extended family or daycare model is better than the isolated MFC model. (I’ll be happy to cite sources if you’re interested.)
Apart from models based on criminal behaviors, do you think any family model is bad? Could you articulate why it would be Bad! if I were married to four women at the same time, for instance?
Certainly. Many things are bad without being criminal. I consider the fictional Draper family on exhibit in the TV show “Mad Men” to be a bad family model, despite being gloriously heteronormative and genetic and utterly non-criminal. It is founded in deceit and the subjugation of women.
Your question about being married to four women at the same time reminds me of a friend I had in high school (with whom I have since lost touch, sadly), who was a Filipina Muslim. I once asked her about the Koran’s giving permission for a man to have four wives, and she pointed out that the Koran also requires that such a man be capable of treating all four wives with perfect equality and feeling the same amount of love for each. She said such equality of treatment and feeling is close enough to impossible that most men would not be able to practice polygamy as it is prescribed by the Koran.
I have no idea whether this is an accurate description of ideal Muslim polygamy (just as I don’t know if I was getting BSed by the Mormon who told me that his faith believes that God has a wife but we don’t know her name because God doesn’t want us to take it in vain as we do His). But I think it’s a pretty good indicator of a difference between good and bad family models. Perhaps there is a person who can feel equal love and treat two people equally, but all the versions of polygamy I’ve ever seen seem to involve hierarchy: First Wife, Second Wife, etc. Therefore if you are like most humans in your affections, I would say it was BAD
Polygamy is also extremely ill-fitted to our existing legal system, which defaults a large number of rights and responsibilities to a spouse and doesn’t have a mechanism for saying “WHICH spouse?”
Which of your 4 wives gets health benefits through your job? Which of them makes medical decisions for you when you are incapacitated? Which inherits without paying a gift or estate tax? Etc., etc. I am not at all a family law reformer; I think our existing laws are good with the sole exception that they ought to be fully neutral with regard to sex. As noted above, they currently are neutral with regard to sex in every area except the question of whom one can marry.
“r. I.E. you might have Jean the Farmer with his two wives, but if society and the law are simultaneously arguing that Only One Wife Is Right And Proper, and if that holds across the rich and powerful class… would you describe that as a situation in which polygamy is or is not “OK” in that society?”
No, I wouldn’t, actually. I’d describe it as a situation in which it is okay.
But, the point was that there was no law arguing that anything was right and proper. The law at the time, IIRC, just didn’t give a fuck about marriage.
“all the versions of polygamy I’ve ever seen seem to involve hierarchy: First Wife, Second Wife, etc. ”
I don’t believe this is a constant throughout polygamous societies.
Mandolin,
I am mostly familiar with polygyny as it was practiced in China (where it technically was one wife and subsequent concubines), in Muslim societies and among Mormons. What were the polygynous societies that were non-hierarchical?
Also, with regard to the law’s stance on marriage in Europe during the Middle Ages and earlier, I believe marriage was under canon law and therefore was chiefly a religious affair.
Daisy Bond: if my girlfriend and I decide to have a baby using a sperm donor who isn’t going to become part of our family, we’re not so much “axing” a branch of that kid’s family as we substituting one: the child would still have two parents, two sets of grandparents, two sets of aunts and uncles and cousins, etc.
Granted. But in this case you are assuming two of everything. Our traditions require two of everything. Do yours? Do they require one? I believe it is proven daily that we orphan more easily than we adopt, so my feeling is there will be more straight abdications than equally effective substitutions like yours, not only of children but of single adults and elderly.
Dianne: Why in the world would you want that?
I don’t want it Dianne, it is a theory I’m chewing on that might bridge what I see as an other irreconcilable gulf. I guess you are opposed to polyamorous unions? I can’t say I blame you, but where did you get lying and adultery and frigid parenting from? I didn’t suggest that.
Dianne: What’s your evidence for that? Most studies of lesbian and gay parents show essentially no difference in any measurable outcome between children raised by same sex couples and those raised by opposite sex couples.
My evidence is that my family follows those traditions and in no one in it is orphaned or alone. I also find that it so happens no one could ever be orphaned or alone except by violating our traditions. I do strongly admire this about it.
The question is not whether there’s an overwhelming difference between two men, two women, and men and women as custodians of children, it is the difference between the genetic basis and the free association basis as the foundation of family. The genetic basis is impartial, it is common to us all, it connects us to the same roots, and most of us feel strongly about our direct kindred, even gays and lesbians, strongly enough to make sacrifices for that we wouldn’t for anyone else, to help them more than we would anyone else. This is a good basis.
I would like evidence of your point of view. I would like to learn about a free association model of a family that has achieved what mine has in terms of total inclusiveness for men, women, and children, and the old and young. A short-period biography of two exemplary non-biological parents who adopt a ten year old child isn’t good enough. A culture that has made a practice of non-genetic free association families for an extended period would be very interesting to me, preferably one that has endured a while, a century at least.
Dianne: Some studies suggest that the involvement of more adults is better for a child, i.e. the extended family or daycare model is better than the isolated MFC model.
I buy that. But “the isolated MFC model”, Dianne? My family is huge, precisely because of the MFC model. What makes you think an SSP model can’t be isolated?
PG: Many things are bad without being criminal. I consider the fictional Draper family on exhibit in the TV show “Mad Men” to be a bad family model, despite being gloriously heteronormative and genetic and utterly non-criminal. It is founded in deceit and the subjugation of women.
That’s a crazy show. I’ve just started watching it and it’s outdated ethics about sex and race are such a slap in the face. I don’t know how it turns out for the Drapers in the and I’m watching the show with fascination to find out how they handle it (I expect it won’t turn out well) but the Draper’s are not the model.
The model is fine. The Drapers are what their culture made them, and they are helping one another on a daily basis. If they broke up, what is more likely, that another better man will step in to pay the bills, or take over her chores so she can get a degree, or that she will become something like her friend, the single mom with the voyeuristic “can I have some of your hair” son? Will a liberated woman teach Dan enlightened ways and give him a chance at genteel old age with another family in the distant 2000’s, or does he deserve to sink into whiskey bachelorhood until he eats a gun because he’s never known equality with women?
Maco,
The model is fine. The Drapers are what their culture made them, and they are helping one another on a daily basis.
The deceitful, woman-subjugating, emotionally-abusive model is fine, so long as Don brings home the bacon and Betty doesn’t set the kids on fire? Hoookay.
The social condemnation of the single mom isn’t because of her selfishness or failure to connect with her son; it’s simply and solely because she is a DIVORCEE. I think it is entirely appropriate for us to judge one another based on how we treat each other and those in our care. However, to judge someone for leaving her husband — when for all the neighbor ladies know, he was abusing her, but hey that’s OK so long as someone was bringing home that bacon — is infantile. “Oh no, she’s not living in the approved model! Who cares why she isn’t, the important thing is that she has failed the traditional family.”
Which is, in fact, precisely the model Maco is advocating, whether he realizes it or not. Tradition uber alles.
—Myca
PG: The deceitful, woman-subjugating, emotionally-abusive model is fine, so long as Don brings home the bacon and Betty doesn’t set the kids on fire? Hoookay.
No, the mother father child model is fine. Deceit, subjugation, emotional abuse and criminal insanity is a problem that can occur in any family, but a large family can compensate for an individual’s failings. Betty’s kids will have Dan if she goes nuts. If the Divorcee goes nuts, her son endures it alone.
Myca: Which is, in fact, precisely the model Maco is advocating, whether he realizes it or not. Tradition uber alles.
I am not advocating the attitudes and behaviors of Mad Men, Myca. My traditions require that I not be an alcoholic womanizer.
Maco, if the point is granted, then what are you complaining about? Some 5% of the population forming same-sex unions that substitute not-genetically-related family communities is not a threat to the traditions you hold so dear. In fact, it has the potential to bolster them, since children will inevitably be orphaned and same-sex couples are probably more likely to adopt.
Again, that is not to say that agree that those traditions are the best or only way — only that monogamous same-sex marriage is just about the last thing in the world that is weakening them. Which happens to be the reason that some queers (and others) are not advocates of any form of marriage, same-sex or otherwise.
And to add to Myca at #57: all traditions sometimes fail. There will always be breakdowns. A strict traditionalist stance may have its uses, but it also, at best, marginalizes those who are affected by breakdowns in the system (by getting divorced, or being queer, or having a parent die, etc). The best stance, in my opinion, is one that respects and allows a wide variety of family structures, in order to meet the needs of the greatest number of people. One size does not fit all and shouldn’t have to. The point is not letting adults get out of their responsibilities, it’s letting people make the best, most responsible decisions they can based on the multifarious realities of their respective lives. Advocating strict adherence to mother-father-children (plus extended family) as the best or only way to form families inevitably requires asking (or forcing) people to stay in abusive marriages, and children to stay to with abusive, negligent or incompetent parents, and people to continue destructive relationships with dysfunctional relatives, and the much more mundane case of staying in a situation of slowly creeping unhappiness and resentment. Personally, I’d take the struggles of a loving single parent over most of those situations.
But in this case you are assuming two of everything. Our traditions require two of everything. Do yours? Do they require one?
Why are you asking me this? Does my cultural heritage have any bearing on my point?
Are you seriously this bad at reading comprehension? I find that staggering.
—Myca
Maco,
Betty’s kids will have Dan if she goes nuts.
We’re talking about the same Don who wanted to run away with Rachel and abandon his children, right? The same Don whom the show had in California for the last few episodes while his children wondered where he had gone?
My traditions require that I not be an alcoholic womanizer.
1) That’s irrelevant to the point Myca was making, which was that the social tradition depicted in “Mad Men” prioritizes retaining the heterosexual parenting model, regardless of the abuse that may be occurring within the marriage. Divorcees are Bad Women regardless of the circumstances of divorce.
2) I think I am finding your concept of “tradition” to be what I normally would call “basic decency and morality.” “Tradition” can involve just about anything; my paternal grandfather was mildly abusive and an alcoholic. I’m very grateful that my father chose not to continue that particular “tradition.” I’m very grateful that *I* could avoid the cultural tradition of arranged marriage, particularly at a young age; my maternal grandmother married at 15. I think arranged marriage worked quite competently for what it was intended to achieve, which is high levels of procreation, the retention of property among the monied classes and the continuation of a patriarchal, male-dominant, female-subjugating society. It also tended to create highly stable marriages. While I also would like a highly stable marriage, I don’t aspire to the other achievements of arranged marriage.
Similarly, a restriction of marriage solely to opposite-sex couples simply reinforces the idea that marriage and parenting are gendered matters and that there is something peculiar to “mothering” and “wiving” that only women can do and to “fathering” and “husbanding” that only men can do. Because I do not want to uphold and reinforce such gendering of the tasks and roles performed within families, I oppose gender-based restrictions on marriage.
Also, why is there so much rhetoric about how “traditional marriage” will be gone if there is same-sex marriage? I have what I suppose the anti-SSM folks consider a “traditional marriage” (although it’s a pretty recent tradition, because my marriage is interracial, inter-religious, to someone who doesn’t even HAVE a caste, with neither party defaulted based on sex to the role of breadwinner or homemaker). I still will have my “traditional marriage” even if other people have other kinds of marriage. I didn’t have less of a Hindu wedding simply because other people have Christian/ Buddhist/ Shinto/ civil weddings.
There’s that reading comprehension I was looking for, PG!
The point, Maco, is that variations from tradition are inevitable, and giving those variations second-class status just serves to stigmatize the people involved … adults and children alike.
This is what was happening on Mad Men. This is what I was (clearly) referring to.
Right now, we have divorced parents, interracial marriages, interfaith marriages, single-parent families, gay parents, stay-at-home dads, families in which the woman is the primary breadwinner, families in which there is no primary breadwinner . . . we’re awash in variations from the mythic ideal. These families already have kids.
Whether you think those family structures are a good idea or not is beyond the point. They exist. They have kids. Now the question is what to do about them.
I favor endorsing the creation of families. I think families are a stabilizing influence on our society. I believe that families are founded on love. When a family already exists, and is already founded on love, I think that the bare minimum we can do is offer it legal and social recognition.
Therefore, I support same sex marriage.
It’s pretty simple.
—Myca
Thanks for the discussion Daisy, Myca, PG. I’m going to think about everything you’ve said before replying because you all make points and I’d like to answer them carefully.
PG, I’ve seen four episodes of Mad Men. I don’t know what Don does or doesn’t do. So far I only see a couple who’ve done nothing unredeemable. More on the how the fictional Draper family justifies or disproves our respective viewpoints later.
Myca, sorry for the misunderstanding.
Daisy, no time, but I will get back to you.
I want to go back to the courts briefly, because skimming through I can’t tell what the Maco dispute has to do with anything.
Let’s see if we can figure out what it means to follow the Constitution and not legislate from the bench. It can’t actually mean following the words as written. Even if you agree with me that we should find all obscenity laws unconstitutional, this approach would also legalize fraud and tell us that people in jail have the right to bear arms.
So maybe we should try looking at the original context of the Constitution. (At this point we can ignore the fact that different Amendments had different contexts.) And sticking with original intent would decrease the power of the Supreme Court, but not in the way you might think. According to Mr. Amar in America’s Constitution: A Biography, the founders originally intended all of us individually to interpret the Constitution as seems best to us. Admittedly, they thought we’d exercise this power mainly through juries and through the state governments, but the existence of a standing army for the federal government makes some changes necessary. And I choose to interpret the Constitution through the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which tells us that government exists to protect our individual right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If we bring the dispute over same-sex marriage back to these principles, it seem to me that there is no dispute.
The discussion with Maco regarding family structure began in a different thread.
Also according to Mr. Amar, the 14th Amendment fundamentally altered the Constitution, the relationship between the federal government and the states, and the assertion of rights by citizens.
And I choose to interpret the Constitution through the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which tells us that government exists to protect our individual right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If we bring the dispute over same-sex marriage back to these principles, it seem to me that there is no dispute.
The Declaration says that governments are formed to secure our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So long as the government does not actively impede people from pursuing happiness through same-sex coupling, why is it required that government give legal recognition to same-sex unions in order to secure the pursuit of happiness? If your sole lodestar is “pursuit of happiness,” then we really do go down the slippery slope of “being married to my dog would make me HAPPY.”
PG: I don’t know what the phrase “married to my dog” even means, and neither do you. But If I had to guess, I think that legalizing human-dog marriage would require changing the consent rule that protects real people in the here and now. That rule certainly does go back to the rights I mentioned from the Declaration. Frankly, I don’t know why you brought up this silly old scenario.
hf:
Marriage to your dog would entail a legal commitment to your dog different from that of ownership. If you died intestate (without a will), your dog would inherit your estate and not have to pay estate tax. Should I lay out everything that “marriage” currently means under U.S. law?
You are asserting a right to any marriage that makes you “happy.” I am pointing out that people’s happiness can include a lot of things that the government justifiably doesn’t want to get into recognizing (incest, bestiality, etc.). Rather than going into “pursuit of happiness” claims, I prefer to stick to recognizing constitutional rights, such as the right to have the state treat you equally regardless of race or sex, and pointing out that barring me from marrying someone based on her race or sex is a violation of that recognized right.
1. You can’t explain one legal paradox with another. And yes, you’d have to spell out what every single effect of marriage would mean if applied to a dog (hospital visitation rights?) before your analogy could have any meaning.
2. Equality and constitutions exist for the sake of those individual rights.
1. I don’t know what you mean with the paradox. Why couldn’t there be hospital visitation rights with a dog? Yes, someone would have to bring the dog to visit you, but that would be true if you married someone who then had a horrible accident or illness that reduced their mental capacities roughly to those of a dog. Again, if the government is obligated to recognize as marriage whatever relationship makes you “happy,” what’s the problem with marrying a dog?
2. Equality is a good regardless of the set of rights one is guaranteed. The two are connected but neither presupposes the other. If the government decided that it wasn’t going to recognize any marriages legally, then one could say there had been a loss in rights but there was no loss of equality. I prioritize equality over rights, in part because in a democracy, rights will tend to follow from equality.When the government is required to treat everyone equally, the majority will institute rights that then will be applied to all. When the government has to recognize rights but only for certain groups, “discrete and insular minorities” will be permanently excluded.
Another day, another round of bigoted comments on some local politics sites. One guy’s up in arms over too many gay movies, thinks gays and lesbians should remain under the radar and not be flamboyant and then states he’s impartial on 8.
Then there’s the gays equal pedophiles and the arguments that if gays and lesbians are allowed to marry, barn animals will be next. In other words, nothing terribly original in their attempts at arguments. Much more in scare ads on radio and television and not many No on 8 ads lately.
Daisy: The best stance, in my opinion, is one that respects and allows a wide variety of family structures, in order to meet the needs of the greatest number of people. One size does not fit all and shouldn’t have to. The point is not letting adults get out of their responsibilities, it’s letting people make the best, most responsible decisions they can based on the multifarious realities of their respective lives.
Well Daisy, you say you don’t want to let adults out of their responsibilities but I presume you agree they have a right to get out of them if they are overwhelmed. Our family is very large. We don’t get overwhelmed easily, and it is essentially riddled with subgroups of young, old, men, women. Within it, we float around and share a lot of responsibility in very flexible ways. I see it as one size does fit all, actually.
Daisy: Advocating strict adherence to mother-father-children (plus extended family) as the best or only way to form families inevitably requires asking (or forcing) people to stay in abusive marriages, and children to stay to with abusive, negligent or incompetent parents, and people to continue destructive relationships with dysfunctional relatives, and the much more mundane case of staying in a situation of slowly creeping unhappiness and resentment.
You mention “forcing people”. It would be more accurate I think, to say that what we were given without asking, we are expected to give back without being asked.
Incompetence, negiligence, abusive, dysfunctional; these are subjective terms. I guess you must mean dangerously so, and I grant that, but we are all imperfect. The word Family implies tolerance, a willingness to guide someone away from a wrong course, restore functionality to those who have little, and stand by them through their difficulties. I feel certain that our tendencies toward incompetence, neglect, abuse and dysfunction are diminished the greater the involvement of our families in our lives.
Daisy: Why are you asking me this? Does my cultural heritage have any bearing on my point?
I was actually referring to your personal beliefs, your “culture of one”. You strongly implied you believed marriage was a joining of two families, in a covenant to raise children together. I respect that perspective, and it carries weight with me in the SSM debate, but I was wondering if it was what you actually believe.
PG: “Mad Men” prioritizes retaining the heterosexual parenting model, regardless of the abuse that may be occurring within the marriage. Divorcees are Bad Women regardless of the circumstances of divorce.
I can’t speak authoritatively on what abuses Don inflicts on Betty, but I haven’t seen him do worse than be a flawed 60’s man, and his choices don’t change whether it was right for Don and Betty to try to make it work together. As for the divorcee, a culture that believes parents have an obligation to their children, sees few good reasons for anyone not taking care of their children. Unless the reason is above reproach, like a natural death, some suspicion is inevitable. The only way for a single mother who won’t discuss her reasons wouldn’t be analyzed is if the culture she exists in already sees it as natural for men not to be involed with supporting their children and their mother, and such a culture has a drawback or two of its own, such as producing men that freely choose not to get involved in supporting their wives and children. A lesser evil, I think.
PG: I think I am finding your concept of “tradition” to be what I normally would call “basic decency and morality.” “Tradition” can involve just about anything
That is largely what our traditions are based upon, but assuring protection for us requires us to be more than basically decent and moral, it requires that someone accept accept personal responsibility for us, and us responsibility for others. Not just the ones we happen to like, at times that happen to be convenient, that won’t account for everyone, but that is where our traditions excel. We have outgrown the husband’s briefcase and the wife’s apron as traditions. We should not outgrow our right to our place within it, or our acceptance of others that are as deserving to be within it.
PG: Also, why is there so much rhetoric about how “traditional marriage” will be gone if there is same-sex marriage?
I think the nexus of this problem is not the kind of chapel or wedding dress or specific vows you speak, it is that most culture’s traditions try to protect people by defining a spot where they belong, and are entitled to be, unless they do something bad enough to forfeit it. I see family starting to be defined by what we want, not what objectively is, and you don’t have to do something wrong to be denied it, you just have to be “not what someone wants right now”. Your protection and your place therefore become subject to other’s desires, instead of an intrinsic right.
PG: Similarly, a restriction of marriage solely to opposite-sex couples simply reinforces the idea that marriage and parenting are gendered matters and that there is something peculiar to “mothering” and “wiving” that only women can do and to “fathering” and “husbanding” that only men can do. Because I do not want to uphold and reinforce such gendering of the tasks and roles performed within families, I oppose gender-based restrictions on marriage.
I admire your egalitarian position on gender roles, but the mother and father union is not really about gender roles. I think father is father like brother is brother. You can’t help it, but unlike brothers, husband and wife are not family from birth. The marriage is a necessity to acknowledge that non-family has become family.
Myca: The point, Maco, is that variations from tradition are inevitable, and giving those variations second-class status just serves to stigmatize the people involved … adults and children alike.
That’s only a problem depending on what you mean by inevitable and by stigmatize and tradition. As PG mentioned, traditions can mean anything. Regarding my son, the only tradition I am concerned with is the one that says we are family. Denying him is not inevitable, and if I did deny him I should be stigmatized.
Maco,
You seem to make a lot of assumptions, such as that emotional abuse, disrespect, a lack of respect for medical privacy, and adultery that potentially may bring STDs into the marriage all are insufficient reasons to end that marriage instead of trying to make it work. I’m married, and I am doing my best to make it work, but I don’t think that marriage entails taking everything someone throws at you in an effort to “make it work.”
The threat of divorce is the ultimatum for forcing a misbehaving party to do better; once you remove that threat legally, or make divorce so socially disapproved that one would be almost as unhappy divorced as married, there’s no reason for the emotionally abusive adulterer to change his ways. Why should he? He can disregard another person’s feelings and ‘ho around with other women without facing severe consequences. He has an “intrinsic right” to be husband and father.
You also assume that divorce necessarily entails “not taking care of their children.” I am shocked that your acquaintance is so limited that you don’t know any divorced parents who continue to take very good care of their children.
most culture’s traditions try to protect people by defining a spot where they belong, and are entitled to be, unless they do something bad enough to forfeit it.
Yes, but those “spots” often are severely constraining on the people assigned to them. What you speak of is exactly what a caste system entails: a socioeconomic spot where a person belongs and is entitled to be unless s/he does something bad enough to forfeit it. Such a system stifles both the overall productivity and innovation of a society, as well as reducing the agency of the people within it.
but the mother and father union is not really about gender roles
If wife-husband and mother-father are not gender roles, then why can’t they be filled without regard to gender? Why can’t the male-male or female-female couples marry, and parent children?
Maco Said:
This is an interesting line, in that it indicates a lot about where you’re coming from. Let’s take it apart.
What you’re saying here is that unless the culture sees it as, “natural for men not to be involved with supporting their children and their mother,” then it’s normal for a divorced mother to fall under suspicion.
In other words, if a man is not supporting his family, the woman who is, is suspect.
Yes. Thank you for articulating so clearly why we think your view of a social ideal is bullshit.
—Myca
PG: I don’t think that marriage entails taking everything someone throws at you in an effort to “make it work.”
I meant in the beginning I think Don and Betty were right to try to raise their children together in marriage, as opposed to Betty choosing to, say, be a single mother.
PG: You also assume that divorce necessarily entails “not taking care of their children.”I am shocked that your acquaintance is so limited that you don’t know any divorced parents who continue to take very good care of their children.
You can cease to be shocked, but divorce doesn’t necessarily entail taking care of them either, PG. We’re not just talking about divorce we’re talking about whether the mother and father were ever obligated to take care of them in the first place, because if they are then the parent slots are pre-booked and you actually need a reason why they should be removed. If they aren’t obligated, then in addition to opening up SSM models, it opens up single-parenting models and zero-parenting models.
PG: Yes, but those “spots” often are severely constraining on the people assigned to them. What you speak of is exactly what a caste system entails: a socioeconomic spot where a person belongs and is entitled to be unless s/he does something bad enough to forfeit it. Such a system stifles both the overall productivity and innovation of a society, as well as reducing the agency of the people within it.
I don’t know what increase in productivity and innovation can come having only one parent or no parents. The kind of innovation that comes of from having fewer supporters often leads in unhealthy directions. It is need that drives much of the crime in our society.
I feel that my enormous family’s support has caused my productivity to explode compared to what I would capable of as an orphan or a single man or an aged old bachelor, and enhances my agency by showing me the direct correlation between their action and my benefit, and inspiring me to act similarly.
PG: If wife-husband and mother-father are not gender roles, then why can’t they be filled without regard to gender? Why can’t the male-male or female-female couples marry, and parent children?
Because I want everyone to have a family. When the genetic bond is our model, as it is with us, it connects all of us. If we prefer that we choose anyone we want, and reject anyone we don’t want, I feel we will not all have one. We will never all have one.
If you would raise a daughter differently from a son, with different career training, different encouragement or different attitudes, that would be a gender role. What SSM appears to do is similar to looking at a daughter and saying “No, I’m more comfortable with boys so I want a boy” and swapping her out for a boy. That is not eliminating a gender role that is displacing someone from a family they are entitled to.
Myca: In other words, if a man is not supporting his family, the woman who is, is suspect.
Yes. Thank you for articulating so clearly why we think your view of a social ideal is bullshit.
Saying it that clearly required you to take apart my words, remove a few, and put them back together in a different order.
I don’t think the woman is suspect and the man isn’t. We were speaking of the Divorcee on Mad Men, who happens to be a woman. I think suspicion is normal when an important custom is broken and they won’t say why.
Suppose your sig other defied the normal custom of not going on date-like outings with someone else, and wouldn’t tell you what was going on? I would understand if you became suspicious, the same way I understand the housewive’s suspicion of a possible siren in the midst, while disapproving of their acting on that assumption.
I’m not sure, but I think if Mad Men has a moral it is “watch what happens when everybody does everything wrong”, bookended by smoking like chimneys and jumping off office buildings. The Divorcee’s rough treatment by the wives’ is just one of those.
We’re not just talking about divorce we’re talking about whether the mother and father were ever obligated to take care of them in the first place, because if they are then the parent slots are pre-booked and you actually need a reason why they should be removed. If they aren’t obligated, then in addition to opening up SSM models, it opens up single-parenting models and zero-parenting models.
Please point out where I’ve ever denied that the people who choose to bear children are not obligated to care for those children until/unless they find someone who is willing to take over and who is thought by the original caretaker to be better able to fill that role. I guess I am fundamentally puzzled by your focus on genetics as the locus of family, and your idea that therefore SSM is as bad for children and family structure as “zero-parenting” models are. If a woman who does not want to couple off with a man but does want to have children can couple off with a woman instead, then her child will have MORE family, not less.
When the genetic bond is our model, as it is with us, it connects all of us. If we prefer that we choose anyone we want, and reject anyone we don’t want, I feel we will not all have one. We will never all have one.
When I put forward the examples of the Edwardses and Dan Savage’s family as families where a parent didn’t have a genetic bond to offspring, you dismissed the idea that you were in any way in opposition to those families. Yet you keep talking about how if we legally allow people to form families without a genetic bond, this will lead to displacement, to some people not having a family. First, there were people who didn’t have family long before assisted reproduction or acceptance of homosexuality; spouses and parents died or disappeared, and the law couldn’t prevent death or do much about disappearance.
Law that is willing to recognize non-genetic family models actually has opened up much more possibility for people who otherwise would be family-less to have family. The widow with a child can remarry and have her new husband adopt her child and become its non-genetic father; the woman who is not attracted to men can form a family with another woman. I’m very puzzled as to why you think the genetic-only model has been effective in guaranteeing family for everyone. It hasn’t.
PG Said:
This paragraph, right here, is what I don’t understand about your position, Maco. We want more families, stable families, and more stable families. It seems pretty intuitive that an ideological allegiance to genetics shouldn’t trump that.
—Myca
Well Daisy, you say you don’t want to let adults out of their responsibilities but I presume you agree they have a right to get out of them if they are overwhelmed. Our family is very large. We don’t get overwhelmed easily, and it is essentially riddled with subgroups of young, old, men, women. Within it, we float around and share a lot of responsibility in very flexible ways. I see it as one size does fit all, actually.
That’s lovely for you. What about people who don’t have an enormous network of loving relatives?
I get that you have this very supportive, successful, traditional family. I get that that works great for you. I’m don’t get you’re insistence that it works well for everybody. I don’t get your insistence that it should work well for everybody.
It doesn’t work well for everybody. My concern is not with finding the most ideologically coherent logic for family, but with ensuring the best environment for families of all structures to thrive.
I don’t have a family like yours, for many reasons. (The Holocaust, the problematic lives of immigrants, the gulfs between people who do not share a culture, etc.) I have a small but wonderful immediate family, and I have a group of non-relatives who I love like family and for whom I would do anything. We do our best to love each other and live well. I love these people — my parents, my brother, my two best friends and girlfriend — more than I love myself. I have been my happiest and my saddest with them; I have had, with them, the most beautiful and the most horrifying and traumatic experiences of my life. I would kill for them, I would die for them, I would raise their children, I would want my (future) children to be raised by them if I died. What else is family but that?
Incompetence, negiligence, abusive, dysfunctional; these are subjective terms. I guess you must mean dangerously so, and I grant that, but we are all imperfect.
I do mean dangerously so. Much of the worst abuse experienced by human beings happens within the family model you’re describing. You note the advantages of minimizing the amount of control people have over their family structures — that is one of the disadvantages, and it is a very serious one. (Edited to clarify: I don’t meant that family structures based on genetics are more prone to abuse, but that traditionalism that bans or discourages changes to family situations, whatever else it might do, stops people from getting out of abusive relationships.)
I was actually referring to your personal beliefs, your “culture of one”. You strongly implied you believed marriage was a joining of two families, in a covenant to raise children together. I respect that perspective, and it carries weight with me in the SSM debate, but I was wondering if it was what you actually believe.
Well. That’s more or less what I believe for myself, personally — what my marriage will mean to me when I marry. I don’t really have a position on what marriage should mean for other people.
I do believe that people in the US (where I live — and elsewhere, I’m sure, but I can’t speak to it) are, overall, incredibly starved for community. I believe that the formation of supportive, committed communities is necessary to our well-being and even survival. But I don’t think mandating anything is the right way to do that, necessarily. I think we should come at the problem from the other side, by supporting, respecting and strengthening all loving families/communities as they organically occur, whether they’re founded in genetics, love, mutual beliefs, etc. The point, for me, is more family and community for more people — not so much how we get there. And I trust individuals to get themselves there: to make their own decisions and set up their own lives.
We must, of course, protect those who are vulnerable (children, the elderly, etc). But I think that, given the resources they need, most people will do their best to do meet their obligations and do right by their families. Those who won’t probably can’t be forced to, and as I said at #47, I’m not sure that forcing them would accomplish what we want to accomplish. On that note, PG and Myca’s points at #77 are right on.
What’s interesting is that, as Andrew Sullivan has noted from time to time, this is an essentially conservative thing we’re talking about … increasing the stability of families and relationships by encouraging the legal recognition of certain responsibilities and privileges. It’s not consequence-free sex, it’s not abdication of responsibility, it’s not promiscuity, it’s not free love … it’s an embrace of responsibility and commitment.
In a sane world, one in which ‘conservative’ meant something more than ‘you better do what my god fucking tells you to do‘, conservatives would be all in favor of this.
—Myca
PS. Oh, and by all means, I’m entirely in favor of consequence-free sex, promiscuity, and free love. I just recognize that conservatives traditionally aren’t.
Finally, some No on 8 mailers to balance out the massive radio campaign to “protect marriage and our children”. It’s still too close to call although on Prop. 4, the gap is closing on its lead. I’m hoping both sink to crashing defeats. If not, then I’m losing more faith in my state.
There’s a lot of bad propositions this year including two “tough on crime” bills one of which (prop. 9) almost certainly is unconstitutional. I’m still going through the massive list of them before Tuesday.
Here’s hoping that all the “No on 8” people go to the polls and here’s hoping it’s enough.
Many churches deserve to lose their tax-exempt status.
When their mission moves from “spiritual education” to “political reform” AND when a church uses its resources to change laws to promote its own religious agenda is when that church should no longer be tax free.
Political activists are NOT tax exempt, and it’s high time these religious zealoted institutions which are anything but spiritual pay their share of taxes. After all, if it looks and quacks like a duck – why would we think it’s anything but?
SanFranJeff,
The IRS distinguishes between political activity (supporting the election of specific candidates) and legislative activity (supporting the passage of specific laws). The first is absolutely prohibited, which is why it was so questionable for Palin’s pastor to talk during a sermon about the presidential debate in 2004, and about how people voting for “this particular person” were going to hell. The second is permitted so long as it doesn’t take the form of too much direct lobbying. It is entirely OK for the Quakers to organize anti-war protests through their church, because pacifism is part of their religion. They would endanger their tax-exempt status if people gave testimony during Meeting about the necessity of voting for one candidate or another.
I think this draws an appropriate line, because I think the spiritual is connected with the practical. Churches should be active in encouraging policies that align with the church’s beliefs, even when those policies are ones with which I disagree, like trying to ban abortion or same-sex marriage. I would not have wanted the churches that encouraged the abolition of slavery or that promoted the civil rights movement to have lost tax exemptions.
I just find the argument that churches will lose their tax exemption for engaging in discrimination to be so many different kinds of stupid that I think people who make that argument either haven’t really thought through it, or are intellectually dishonest (i.e. they know perfectly well that the argument is ahistorical and internally inconsistent but will promote it anyway).
Dear PG,
I didn’t suggest that any church should lose its tax exempt status because of their discriminatory views (if that were the case – most churches would lose their tax exempt status). I’m saying any church that changes its mission from spiritual education to political activism should lose their tax exempt status.
When churches are utilizing their resources “to change laws” to reflect their discriminatory views, they are serving as lobbyist and political activists — and those are NOT tax exempt functions under the IRS code.
Attaching God’s name to any one cause, or any one group, shouldn’t automatically make that group tax exempt. There are thousands of churches in California, many of which have very dubious missions. Many don’t hold regularly scheduled masses or meetings — but certainly appear front and center when it comes to stripping gays and lesbians of their civil rights, while quoting Leviticus 18:22. One has to wonder what the real deal is?
When churches are utilizing their resources “to change laws” to reflect their [ ] views, they are serving as lobbyist and political activists — and those are NOT tax exempt functions under the IRS code.
Again, I look at the churches that support the abolition of slavery and segregation, and say that we should be cautious of declaring that any church that engages in political activity should not be tax exempt. We can’t base the tax regulations on whether the church’s political activity is one you and I approve.
PG: Please point out where I’ve ever denied that the people who choose to bear children are not obligated to care for those children until/unless they find someone who is willing to take over and who is thought by the original caretaker to be better able to fill that role.
I believe you require the M&F of a child to find someone willing to take over before you will allow their abdication, but if they don’t have to acknowledge they are the M&F, what good is that?
PG: I guess I am fundamentally puzzled by your focus on genetics as the locus of family
What would make a better locus? Religion? Money? Sex?
PG: If a woman who does not want to couple off with a man but does want to have children can couple off with a woman instead, then her child will have MORE family, not less.
It is if she couples off and keeps it at all. Do you require her to couple off? Do you require her to keep it?
PG: When I put forward the examples of the Edwardses and Dan Savage’s family as families where a parent didn’t have a genetic bond to offspring, you dismissed the idea that you were in any way in opposition to those families.
Not entirely true. I’d rather Dan and Terry had not broken the blood bond.
The Edwards added something to their genetic tree. Adding a non-genetic member is an entirely different animal than replacing or removing a genetic member like the child’s mother. You persist on seeing them as equivalent, but they are like night and day in meaning.
PG: Yet you keep talking about how if we legally allow people to form families without a genetic bond, this will lead to displacement, to some people not having a family.
No, breaking the genetic bond will lead to displacement and not having a family. If the formation rate of non-genetic bonds promised to equal or exceed the break rate of genetic bonds I wouldn’t have a problem with it, but I think you know that is absurd. If broken families were so apt to reassemble into equally good patterns we would never have even started this conversation.
PG: The widow with a child can remarry and have her new husband adopt her child and become its non-genetic father
Widows were once encouraged to remarry. We decided that was wrong, remember? Nor do we pressure them to marry the first time, heterosexually or otherwise. Again, forming is hard. Breaking is easy. Not reforming is the norm.
PG: the woman who is not attracted to men can form a family with another woman.
You suggest she can’t form a family if she lacks sexual attraction. I like sex but I didn’t marry for it. We can lose our sexual interest in anyone, including members of our preferred gender. What then?
PG: I’m very puzzled as to why you think the genetic-only model has been effective in guaranteeing family for everyone. It hasn’t.
And democracy isn’t truly representative. The best way is never perfect, PG. It tends to fail as the result of accidental death, immoral or criminal conduct, or believing, as you do, that we are not related to our relatives. Anyone who prefers jail or the ground to their family are probably better off being out of it. People who believe like you I tend to get into long discussions with on feminist blogs trying to figure out why they think their way is less subject to failure.
Myca: what I don’t understand about your position, Maco. We want more families, stable families, and more stable families. It seems pretty intuitive that an ideological allegiance to genetics shouldn’t trump that.
It seems pretty intuitive to me that if the bonds between us break more often than they form, society will tatter like an old shirt. Do you believe that when we shirk the unbiased and natural connection between being related and being relatives, that equally good, equally numerous, equally stable bonds will form at the same rate if only we make them legal enough? That seems very counter-intuitive to me, and is not the human race I know. Look at people on the fringes of this world, Myca. Designer families aren’t going to save them, but our traditions haven’t let anyone go fringe.
Daisy: That’s lovely for you. What about people who don’t have an enormous network of loving relatives?
They are at greater risk than I am. That is what concerns me.
Daisy: I love these people — my parents, my brother, my two best friends and girlfriend — more than I love myself. I have been my happiest and my saddest with them; I have had, with them, the most beautiful and the most horrifying and traumatic experiences of my life. I would kill for them, I would die for them, I would raise their children, I would want my (future) children to be raised by them if I died. What else is family but that?
That’s beautiful, Daisy. I will not diminish your relationship with your friends and girlfriend but your friends are free to leave you in a way your parents and your brother aren’t. They are free to grow, develop other interests and relationships, travel and form families, and if they are unable to assist both you and their families, they can choose their own families, without having it held against them as a betrayal of you.
I don’t mind you calling them family. It is a terrific honor and speaks very well of them, but it is an honorific. If they are literally family, yet can do those things, then that is what the meaning of family becomes; someone you may love and who may love you, yet who can leave, form other bonds with other people, and put those people ahead of you. I want your true family, legally and morally, to be that which cannot put another ahead you, regardless of their approval of you. That is what family means to me.
If you marry your G/F, I do not accept you are family because of the law. I accept you as family if you feel this way about each other.
Daisy: I do believe that people in the US […] are, overall, incredibly starved for community. I believe that the formation of supportive, committed communities is necessary to our well-being and even survival.
As do I.
Daisy: … by supporting, respecting and strengthening all loving families/communities as they organically occur, whether they’re founded in genetics, love, mutual beliefs, etc. trust individuals to get themselves there: to make their own decisions and set up their own lives.
If you trust this, why should the US be starved for community?
My belief is that all stable families, and all enduring cultures, require and assume cyclical obligation and reciprocation, and acceptance that who is, is. If it begins with mutual beliefs, love, or approval and not the beating heart, then family ends when the mutual belief, the love or the approval ends, and those sound like friendships and love affairs. Important, but not community.
I didn’t love my father’s grandfather. I never knew him. From what I know of him, I would not share in a lot of his beliefs. I may very well have disliked him a great deal. He may have been a law-abiding man measured by the standards of his time, and a criminal measured by ours. He is still my great grandfather, I benefit from his hard work breaking ground on this continent, through his son and through his son’s son, and it passes through me to my own children, because of me.
This, to me, is why we have culture, community, and history.
Maco,
I believe you require the M&F of a child to find someone willing to take over before you will allow their abdication, but if they don’t have to acknowledge they are the M&F, what good is that?
But the person in custody of a child at birth does have to acknowledge that custody. It may be removed from her by the state if the state deems her unfit, or she can transfer it to another person, but I never said that the woman who gives birth to a child SHOULD NOT be legally responsible for caring for that child until she transfers that responsibility to someone else.
What would make a better locus?
Commitment and law. I commit to my spouse, who is not genetically related to me, nor are my in-laws. A woman who gives birth by that act commits to caring for the child unless/until another person who is willing to make the commitment takes over. The law sensibly recognizes that commitment is more important than genetics; if a man has acted as the father of a child, and later finds out that he isn’t the genetic father, the law does not release him from the commitment he made. Your focus on genetics would.
It is if she couples off and keeps it at all. Do you require her to couple off? Do you require her to keep it?
As noted repeatedly above, I require anyone who has custody of a child to care for her unless/til the custody is transferred to another person who will do so. I don’t require coupling off, but I do permit same-sex coupling off as an option with the same legal recognition as opposite-sex coupling off. How about you, do you want to legally ban unmarried women from having or adopting children?
Not entirely true. I’d rather Dan and Terry had not broken the blood bond. The Edwards added something to their genetic tree. Adding a non-genetic member is an entirely different animal than replacing or removing a genetic member like the child’s mother. You persist on seeing them as equivalent, but they are like night and day in meaning.
How should Dan and Terry have avoided breaking “the blood bond”? They had an open adoption in which their son knows his genetic parents — parents who did not feel capable of raising a child and probably would have chosen abortion if the option of transferring the responsibility to another couple hadn’t been available.
The Edwards did remove a genetic member from their child’s family. The eggs almost certainly came from an anonymous donor, as most ova used in assisted reproduction do, and the child never will know the genetic mother.
No, breaking the genetic bond will lead to displacement and not having a family. If the formation rate of non-genetic bonds promised to equal or exceed the break rate of genetic bonds I wouldn’t have a problem with it, but I think you know that is absurd. If broken families were so apt to reassemble into equally good patterns we would never have even started this conversation.
But why do these bonds have to be set in opposition to one another? Why does it threaten your “traditional” family for Daisy to have her family? Why can’t y’all’s families co-exist in a society that welcomes both kinds? Genetic families aren’t always good ones, so it’s better, while accepting functioning genetic families, to also accept functioning non-genetic families. If only the genetic families are acceptable, then people are locked into them regardless of how poorly they function.
Widows were once encouraged to remarry. We decided that was wrong, remember? Nor do we pressure them to marry the first time, heterosexually or otherwise. Again, forming is hard. Breaking is easy. Not reforming is the norm.
Um, widows in YOUR tradition may have been encouraged to re-marry. I’m grateful that my Hindu grandmother was widowed in the century after burning widows alive became illegal. Again, some of us don’t see tradition as an unlimited boon. Like the caste system, suttee ensures certain kinds of stability — the burned-alive widow is no threat to the inheritance system and a new husband won’t have to be found to provide for her and keep her from being a sexual threat to the wives. At least in my grandmother’s generation, though widows were permitted to inherit and not get burned alive, they still weren’t encouraged to re-marry. Who in your Western culture decided that widows getting remarried was wrong? And where the heck do you live that there’s no pressure on women to marry, and can my 30-year-old unmarried sister move there?
You suggest she can’t form a family if she lacks sexual attraction. I like sex but I didn’t marry for it. We can lose our sexual interest in anyone, including members of our preferred gender. What then?
Interesting — so if you had a same-sex attraction, you would feel compelled to form a heterosexual marriage, comforting yourself with the thought that you might lose your homosexual interest? It seems very silly to me to push people into marriages with people in whom they categorically are sexually uninterested. Although given your advocacy of sex outside marriage above, I suppose this makes sense. I’m just rather backwards in such matters and still believe that people ought to be sexually monogamous.
PG: But the person in custody of a child at birth does have to acknowledge that custody. It may be removed from her by the state if the state deems her unfit, or she can transfer it to another person.
You could be describing my obligation to an infant I find on my doorstep. Can’t we require better of the people who created it?
Me: What would make a better locus [than genetics]?
You: Commitment and law.
Who will the child commit to if her natural parents elect not to commit to her? We require commitment and the support of law, but we require it from two, for children, prior to birth, or there’s no birth.
PG: if a man has acted as the father of a child, and later finds out that he isn’t the genetic father, the law does not release him from the commitment he made. Your focus on genetics would.
Some commitment!
PG: But why do these bonds have to be set in opposition to one another? Why does it threaten your “traditional” family for Daisy to have her family? Why can’t y’all’s families co-exist in a society that welcomes both kinds?
We can co-exist, I just think it is likely that ours have the economic advantage. The weathering influences of life hit us all without prejudice, but those with fewer resources will be harmed more by them, and recover more slowly from them.
PG: Um, widows in YOUR tradition may have been encouraged to re-marry. I’m grateful that my Hindu grandmother was widowed in the century after burning widows alive became illegal. Again, some of us don’t see tradition as an unlimited boon
I am glad for your grandmother too. Yikes.
Who in your Western culture decided that widows getting remarried was wrong? And where the heck do you live that there’s no pressure on women to marry, and can my 30-year-old unmarried sister move there?
The pressure is considered wrong, not the remarrying. It is seen as a kind of oppression to pressure, but I disagree with that perspective. Pressuring to marry is natural, like pressure to get an education, because family is an advantage.
Your sister might like the pacific northwest. Open minded. Beautiful. Not too hot. Does she like rain?
PG: Interesting — so if you had a same-sex attraction, you would feel compelled to form a heterosexual marriage, comforting yourself with the thought that you might lose your homosexual interest?
No, I feel compelled to honor my father and mother, and my wife and children. I have had other loves that are a part of me. I feel other attractions. They don’t change who my family is, so why should one more change it? If I had one I’d file it under “the one million things I can’t have” and live with it.
PG: It seems very silly to me to push people into marriages with people in whom they categorically are sexually uninterested.
If I thought marriage was just a sexual relationship I would agree. But when I think of all the things my family is and means, thinking it could hinge on my libido makes me feel like I’ve discovered a revolutionary new kind of ignorance.
Although given your advocacy of sex outside marriage above, I suppose this makes sense. I’m just rather backwards in such matters and still believe that people ought to be sexually monogamous.
Are you referring to the polyamorous marriage we discussed? That was a modified three way marriage with three way consent. I admit it is an unproven model and if the wind tunnel shreds the test vehicle I won’t be astonished, but it wasn’t sex outside of marriage I was proposing. I also believe in monogamy.
Maco, I don’t know if you saw Ampersand’s request for anti-gay marriage bigots to refrain from posting for several days, but I believe that it applies to you, so you might want to back off until we’ve cooled down from the Prop 8 victory. I’m not really in the mood to be nice to people who don’t believe that gay and lesbian people deserve equal rights right now.
Also, you said:
If you ever use the phrase ‘designer families’ in this way again, you’re banned. It’s out of line and offensive.
We’re talking about loving, committed, normal families, just like any other. Having two moms or two dads doesn’t make it some kind of sham, pretend, or ‘designer’ family.
—Myca
Maco, I just saw your last reply to me. I don’t know whether it’s kosher for me to respond while you may or may not be able to respond in kind. Myca?
Right this minute, though, because it’s sort of the whole point of this conversation. I don’t know what your specific tradition is, Maco, but in general:
Look at people on the fringes of this world, Myca. Designer families aren’t going to save them, but our traditions haven’t let anyone go fringe.
YES THEY HAVE.
Why do you think alternative families exist in the first place? Did you think we were just lazy or picky or vain? People create new family models because the old ones have failed us.
Maco,
If you think you have custody of an infant you find on your doorstep, you might want to read up on family law before you opine on it at great length. That’s not how custody works; it is distinct from whoever has physical control of a child at a given moment. Custody is a legal relationship of rights and responsibilities, and at birth it is in the hands of the birth mother and a participatory (assumed to be) biological father. The state can take custody upon itself if it deems them unfit; they can voluntarily choose to turn custody over to other parents, if the state deems those other parents to be fit. Dan Savage and Terry could not have custody of their son by the birth mother’s dropping the newborn at their door, although that method certainly would have saved a lot of time, money and trouble.
Who will the child commit to if her natural parents elect not to commit to her? We require commitment and the support of law, but we require it from two, for children, prior to birth, or there’s no birth.
I have no idea what you’re talking about here; I’m afraid you’ll need to be more specific in your use of terms. If a woman becomes pregnant and does not have an abortion, she is held to have committed legally to the care of the resulting child unless/til the state deems her unfit and takes away her custody, or she finds other fit parents and relinquishes custody to them with state approval. If she became pregnant by having sex with a man, the law will force him to pay support for the child unless the woman refuses such support and is economically capable of supporting the child alone. (If she needs state assistance, the state will collect from the man to reimburse its welfare costs even if the woman doesn’t want that.)
Some commitment!
That’s not much of a counter-argument to my statement that your genetics-based notion of family releases a non-genetic father from all obligation once he discovers he’s not the genetic father, whereas my law&commitment-based notion of family requires that he maintain commitment.
We can co-exist, I just think it is likely that ours have the economic advantage.
Sure, but by arguing against allowing Daisy’s family to have legal recognition, your estimates about probability of economic advantage are being put forward as sufficient reason for the law to discriminate against her family. That’s not much of a rational basis for a discriminatory legal regime. Can you show me statistics that indicate families headed by same-sex couples have lower incomes on average than families headed by opposite-sex couples?
Pressuring to marry is natural, like pressure to get an education, because family is an advantage. Your sister might like the pacific northwest. Open minded.
My husband thinks that the pressure to get an education in my family is unnatural and inappropriate; he’s an Oxford/Ivy-educated, but he doesn’t like that everyone in my family seems compelled to get at least a master’s degree. When I was railing against a family friend who was living off his parents’ money after getting the education and training to be a doctor, my husband defended him on the basis that perhaps the friend had been pressured into medicine and didn’t really want to do it. I find among the children of U.S.-born parents, there isn’t a lot of support for the same pressure to get an education that I see among the children of immigrants. American culture seems devoted to the idea that one ought to do what “makes you happy,” and that that is more important than a job that will ensure you can marry, educate your children and support your parents in their old age. (Don’t get me started on Americans’ disinclination to have elderly parents in their children’s homes.) There are differences of opinion on what kinds of pressure are good pressure.
And I know women in their late 20s and early 30s who live in the Pacific Northwest, and they certainly seem to feel pressured to get married — by their families, their married friends, a culture of femininity that posits heterosexual marriage as the universal happily-ever-after. (Have you seen the media that’s directed toward women?) You must live in a different enclave than these women. Is there less of this outside Seattle, Redmond and Portland?
They don’t change who my family is, so why should one more change it?
Perhaps I should restate my question. If, from the beginning of your life, your only sexual attraction has been to people of the same sex, would you feel compelled to form a heterosexual marriage with someone to whom you feel no sexual attraction, comforting yourself with the thought that you might lose your homosexual interest? That is, your family would not include ANY desired sexual relationship.
You said earlier, My only preference is Dan or Terry marry the mother and add the other polyamorously. In other words, you are advocating that they form a marriage that has absolutely zero sexual desire within it, and pursue sexual desire outside the marriage (polyamory =/= polygamy).
Okay, PG responded, so I will, too. Sorry for the length.
Maco:
Not entirely true. I’d rather Dan and Terry had not broken the blood bond.
The Edwards added something to their genetic tree. Adding a non-genetic member is an entirely different animal than replacing or removing a genetic member like the child’s mother. You persist on seeing them as equivalent, but they are like night and day in meaning.
Eh?
I understand this distinction in theory — adopting a child is totally different from putting an ailing parent on the street, obviously. But your reasoning here makes no sense. Why is adoption “breaking the blood bond” but using someone else’s genetic materials (eggs or sperm) is not? In both cases, one or both genetic parents don’t participating in raising their child. In both cases, the genetic parents agree to this arrangement. In both cases, children are raised by families who want them. What’s the difference?
Also, unlike the Edwards family, a couple like Dan and Terry didn’t go out to try to find a woman to make a baby with — they went out and found a baby that already existed (in utero or otherwise) and that needed parents and a home. They then added that baby to their family. If they hadn’t done so, the baby would have no family. Not to get melodramatic here, but how can you possibly object to babies getting loving families?
A percentage of babies will always be orphaned or unwanted — how do you suggest we cope with this? Would Dan and Terry’s son be better off with his homeless teenage mom who was adamantly unprepared to raise him?
Also, are you against straight couples adopting, or just gay men? Are you in favor of lesbians using sperm donors, or only straight couples? (I assume using donated eggs and donated sperm are morally equivalent.)
Daisy: That’s lovely for you. What about people who don’t have an enormous network of loving relatives?
They are at greater risk than I am. That is what concerns me.
Indeed. What do you suggest they do? I suggest they do their best to form a family in a way that works for them. You suggest they… Should have had a better genetic family in the first place?
I will not diminish your relationship with your friends and girlfriend but your friends are free to leave you in a way your parents and your brother aren’t. They are free to grow, develop other interests and relationships, travel and form families, and if they are unable to assist both you and their families, they can choose their own families, without having it held against them as a betrayal of you.
Not really, actually. But then, you don’t know my friends. You don’t know my family. Why do you think you know how life is for us? What works for us?
I don’t mind you calling them family. It is a terrific honor and speaks very well of them, but it is an honorific. If they are literally family, yet can do those things, then that is what the meaning of family becomes; someone you may love and who may love you, yet who can leave, form other bonds with other people, and put those people ahead of you. I want your true family, legally and morally, to be that which cannot put another ahead you, regardless of their approval of you. That is what family means to me.
If you marry your G/F, I do not accept you are family because of the law. I accept you as family if you feel this way about each other.
That’s what family means to me, too. So, operating under that premise, a few questions:
Do you have any reason to believe state is less likely to arise between a same-sex couple than a straight couple?
Do you think it’s impossible for that state to arise amongst unrelated, unmarried people? What if my friends and I feel this way about each other?
If you trust this, why should the US be starved for community?
Our society is dysfunctional in many ways. I don’t think a reversion to strict traditionalism is the way to fix this. If our traditions were so great, I don’t think we would ever have abandoned them.
PG: It seems very silly to me to push people into marriages with people in whom they categorically are sexually uninterested.
If I thought marriage was just a sexual relationship I would agree. But when I think of all the things my family is and means, thinking it could hinge on my libido makes me feel like I’ve discovered a revolutionary new kind of ignorance.
I could not live as a man’s wife. I adore many men, but every fiber of my being cries out that such an arrangement is wrong. It’s not just my libibo. It’s who I am, at every level, down and through my soul. If forced to live in a system in which everyone must be in a straight marriage, I would a) kill myself or b) live, somewhat miserably, as a man. Do you recommend I do this? If so, maybe you should try living as man’s wife for a few years first: test the waters for me. (And before you object you’re already married, consider that I have a life that’s already well in progress, too.)
How included and supported would someone like me be in a family like yours? How included would I be by your traditions?
My sincerest apologies. People of strong beliefs butt heads and believe it or not, I have been moved by your arguments.
Myca: I retract that phrase.
PG: Thank you for your patience. Something about this subject does vex me, I admit, though not homosexuality. Your willingness to discuss it without beating me over the head with accusations has been appreciated.
Daisy: although smaller, your family sounds like mine, and your values are like mine. If I am wrong then I hope I lose, even if I never understand why, for I wish you every happiness.