Eve, our hostess at “MarriageDebate.com,” invites us to discuss if the same-sex marriage (SSM) debate is about homosexuality.
At the most literal level, of course, SSM is about same-sex relationships. I mean, duh. You might as well ask if a traffic light ordinance has anything to do with traffic.
But of course, Eve isn’t talking about the most literal level. Rather, she’s asking whether or not opposition to gay marriage is necessarily motivated by anti-gay bigotry.
My answer is, who cares? I think a marriage law that discriminates on the basis of sex (or sexual preference) is bigotry; whether or not the people who support such a law have bigotry in their hearts is irrelevant. I’m against bigotry in people’s policies; I don’t care what’s in their hearts.
By asking this question, Eve is encouraging ad hominem debate. Isn’t that something we’d be better off trying to avoid?
* * *
The Koufax Awards don’t have a catagory for “most outragiously stupid anti-SSM argument.” If there was such a catagory, though, I’d vote for this post on MarriageDebate, in which Ben Bateman explains that people who disagree with him about SSM just don’t love children or care about childrens’ future as much as Ben himself does.
Aside from the usual flaws inherant in ad hominem attacks, Ben’s approach also indicates an impressive failure to comprehend opposing views. (And, I add later, a bizarre unawareness that some supporters of SSM are heterosexual). My suggestion to Ben – beyond, of course, suggesting he go fuck himself – is that he read this post and explain to me how the writer doesn’t care about what happens to children.
* * *
More generally, it seems to me that SSM opponants quite commonly imply that people who disagree with them don’t care about children, or care only about whatever is convenient for adults, or short-term pleasure, or whatever.
Fine, whatever. If people stoop to that kind of argumentation, it’s their business. I think that any SSM opponant who makes such an argument, however, loses the right to act affronted when a SSM proponant accuses them of being a bigot. People who routinely accuse their opponants of having terrible motivations, ought not complain when they are accused of same.
[Edited later to correct spelling and link errors… and fix up the prose here and there.].
(Not that it really matters, but your link points to a post by Eve Tushnet, not Bateman. Bateman’s post is here.)
I think the following part illustrates best what you are saying:
“Those who care deeply about children and the survival of our culture want to preserve rules that often prevent people from finding immediate gratification, because those rules will provide our descendants with happier lives in a world that none of us will see. Those who don’t plan to be represented in that world, or who don’t care if they are, see no reason for it to limit their enjoyment of the present” (emphasis added).
Sort of by the by: I was generally an A- student in informal logic, so it may be I missed one of the many fallacies out there, but Google shows me precious few references to “ad hominon.” Ad hominem, perhaps?
Yeah, i was posting very late at night on very little sleep, and I’m afraid my linking and spell-checking suffered for it. :-)
That’s simply a bizarre argument, period. What does gay marriage have to do with immediate gratification? Can someone explain Bateman’s rationale to me? It’s not just that I disagree with his argument; I genuinely can’t comprehend it.
Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised if the explanation is simply ‘Ben Bateman is insane’.
I dunno, Amp, I can see the advantage to debating both of these points, Ad Hominem arguments or not.
First: “Do opponents of SSM oppose it because they’re bigots?”
I think it’s useful to discuss this because so many opponents of SSM believe that they’re not bigots, and that their arguments are logical, consistent, and evenly applied. A perfect example is “Paul” from the “Two Questions for Same-Sex Marriage Opponents” post. To me, at least, he didn’t seem like someone who even realized how bigoted his stance was, and his posts were a series of ever more ornate justifications for how “this group of straight folks” meet his criteria for marriage, but no gay ones do. Well, (and this may be fantasy on my part) I think that doing our best to show folks like that how their arguments always crumble into inconsistencies in the end is a good thing. I think it’s even possible that we might change a few minds among the more fair-minded. On the other hand, Paul bailed pretty quickly when asked directly to address some internal inconsistencies in his logic, so maybe not.
I would really LIKE to believe that there are opponents of SSM who oppose it for non-bigoted reasons, but thus far I just haven’t seen any. Unlike Armed Liberal, by the way, I count opposing SSM for religious reasons as bigotry . . . after all, if you want it codified into law that everyone in America must obey the strictures of your chosen faith, it seems pretty much like religious bigotry to me.
Second: “Do proponents of SSM not love children/not care about the children/care only about what’s conveinent for adults/etc. . .?”
As much as this argument is pretty silly, I think a lot of opponents of SSM believe it uncritically. I’m not talking so much about the folks who use logic and reason in their opposition, but more about the Fox-News-watching people who don’t spend too much time thinking about politics and just sorta oppose SSM because it’s “icky.” Of course, there are always demagogues posing as pundits who will make this argument with something masquerading as logic so as to further spread the slander . . . and that’s why we need to discuss it.
I think we can pretty easily show that one of the main reasons that same sex gouples are interested in SSM is because of the children, and their love for their children, and their desire to raise their children in a happy, healtrhy environment. I mean, to me it’s obvious, and there’s an awful lot of evidence around for it, so it shouldn’t bt that difficult an argument to prove. Well, if we don’t make that case, then the folks who say “pro-SSM people hate kids” are running unopposed.
It’s important to speak the truth, and it’s important to challenge unexamined assumptions.
—JRC
Amen.
Darn tootin’! Amp for President! :)
Actually, I was going to post a reply, but the question board wherein the discussion was taking place was gone by the time I got back to it.
If my argument (that marriage is based on affirmation of mutual procreation) is based on my bigotry, I DO certainly hope to repent of this one day. I want to come to the truth.
I think your accusation strikes to an important point, in any case. In all the debates Iv’e been in, I can hardly think of an instance when someone was swayed by argument or syllogism. To come to the truth requires a change of the heart and a willingness to submit to the truth. As the saying goes “a mind convinced against its will remains a doubter still.”
My view that marriage is substantially about affirmation of procreation I think is consistent: I oppose artificial birth control and I think that the seperation of sex and marriage from making babies is at the root of this debate.
In any event, before I get any farther in this question I have to understand some things that I’m not going to get here: for example, what is homosexuality (is it choice or is it predetermined? If it is predetermined, is it deficiency or a good? If it is a good, then why does it not seem to reach fulfillment in terms of itself?)
Paul,
Before you go asking unanswerable definitional questions, try answering the converse questions. What is heterosexuality? (is it choice or is it predetermined? If it is predetermined, is it deficiency or a good?
Also, what does it mean for something “to reach fulfillment in terms of itself?”
I would say that heterosexuality is some unknowable mixture of choice and predetermination (it certainly feels like a choice to me). I would say that heterosexuality is a deficiency, but not a grevious one, in that it represents a blindness to the sexual desirability of half the human race, but one only needs to have an awareness of the sexual desirability of a few people (or even just one, or even none) to have a satisfying sexual life. While it restricts sexuality as a tool for enhancing relationships to a limited portion of the population, it removes sexuality as an impediment to relationships with half the population. Does it reach fulfillment in terms of itself? I really don’t know. I suppose, since it allows for the expression of the sexual desire which it represents, that it allows for fulfillment in terms of itself. Is it a tool for ensuring procreation and the survival of the species? I suppose so, although it is rather excessive for such a purpose (most hets have sex many more times than they have children, in fact, most hets pursue methods to ensure that most of their sex acts will not result in procreation).
The only point where heterosexuality and homosexuality diverge would be on that question of procreation. Obviously, homosexuality does not favor procreation. However, since very little het sex is required to produce children, only the most obligate of homosexuals would be incapable of having children through traditional means. For those who are strictly homosexual, there are other means of procreating.
To my mind, procreation is not the primary purpose of either heterosexuality or homosexuality. Sexuality provides pleasure and intimacy. Intimate relationships may conceivably provide a decent basis for raising children, although often they provide an awful basis for raising children, since stresses within the bond between the parents can lead to the collapse of the bond, interfering in the upbringing of children. However, children do not particularly need to be raised by their genetic progenitors.
I don’t think I have met someone who opposes birth control in quite a while. What are your reasons for that? What are your reasons for believing that the act of procreation is the be all and end all purpose of life? Surely the fact that procreation was necessary for us to be here and is necessary in order that future humans will be here after us is a totally inadequate basis for considering procreation the height of human experience.
Paul, when you asked for the definition of marriage, you only accepted the one that approximated your definition. How can you expect anyone to define homosexuality for you? You might dismiss it out-of-hand, too.
And the nature of homosexuality is irrelevant, anyway, unless we agree with your definition of marriage in the first place, and I don’t. You certainly haven’t made a persuasive case for it. And I don’t see how knowing more about homosexuality will help you, anyway, since if you’re determined to equate marriage with procreation, well, obviously you’re going to insist upon heterosexual couples.
The earlier discussion is here, Paul:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/001129.html
—JRC
Per my note on http://www.amptoons.com/blog/001129.html, I am posting all of my replies here. I hope this covers everything…
“Me, I’m sticking with the definition of marriage as a legal contract. Since, you know, that’s what it is.” -Hestia
I do not argue that marriage is a legal contract, I only say that the legal aspect is the lowest common denominator. I think there was agreement on both sides that marriage is more than its legal definition.
“So, to clarify, you believe that, in an ideal world, a heterosexual couple who wishes to marry KNOWING that they’re infertile should not be PERMITTED to marry.”
“Keep in mind that in both circumstances the people becoming married WISH to have children which consist of shared genetic material, but in both circumstances are prevented by an unfortunate biological quirk. To claim that adoption legitimizes one but not the other is rank foolishness of the first order.”
“Furthermore, you still didn’t address the issue of why, according to your worldview, we would allow women past childbearing age to become married. After all, they’re no less incapable of having children than a same-sex couple. In order to avoid the “ugly and intrusive” determination of who is and isn’t past menopause, we could just set the age standard high. . .say, 65? “Women over the age of 65 should be forever prohibited from marriage.” Is that your argument?” -JRC
The difference is a matter of potentiality. The heterosexual couple has the potentiality to bring forth children, even if such is deficient, which can be due to age, injury, genetic flaw or whatever. The homosexual couple has no potentialiy to bring forth children.
Here we come to a philosophic loggerheads that I think is beyond resolution here. Modern and post modern philosophy basically reject the idea of potentiality because it is seen as some pre enlightenment mystery force that explains away what now is understood by science. A damaged acorn is no different than a stone in that neither can produce a tree.
But it is with respect to this potentiality that we really call an acorn a acorn and a stone a stone. It is the potentiality that drives the matter to its completion.
“What is heterosexuality? (is it choice or is it predetermined? If it is predetermined, is it deficiency or a good? Also, what does it mean for something “to reach fulfillment in terms of itself?””
I would say that heterosexuality is predetermined and a choice, and is a good, and is fulfilled within itself in so far as anything on earth can be. Its perfection (union and procreation) are attainable within the bounds of the two people in question.
“While it [heterosexuality] restricts sexuality as a tool for enhancing relationships to a limited portion of the population, it removes sexuality as an impediment to relationships with half the population.”
Yes, going bi definitely doubles your chances of getting a date!
I suppose I asked this of homosexuality because, if we are to look at the literature, I don’t think there is alot of precedent out there about gay marriage. I mean, OK, I have a prehistoric reading list, but I was reading the Republic recently, and its of course full of stuff about the gay liasons of the memebers of this discussion group. These men had wives and families, and yet sought this kind of personal love satisfaction seperately. The liason was even viewed as something of an ideal. So I simply wonder if homosexuality represents some kind of romantic ideal and thats it? And therefore it can’t be satisfied with what it self is in terms of defining an entire lifestyle.
“What are your reasons for that [being against artificail contraception]? What are your reasons for believing that the act of procreation is the be all and end all purpose of life?”
I am against artificial contraception because I think every sexual act should be open to children, a.c. damages women’s bodied with hormones, intrauterine devices, and the like, and natural family planning now adays is at least as evvective as any ac. The technology of nfp has kept pace with any legitimate concerns about over-population. Procreation is the be all and end all of the physical, natural life. Happiness is the be all end all of intellectual life.
Honestly, I’m not sure why proponets of gay marriage should be concerned about their cause. By all measures, they elucidate the unspoken conclusion of most people’s line of thinking and it seems more than likely that gay marriage will eventually become a reality.
Boy, I’m really encouraged to respond to the polite and well-reasoned critique of my post on MarriageDebate.com! Obviously, this is the place to converse with the real intellectual luminaries of the pro-SSM movement. Perhaps I can enjoy witty repartee like:
“My suggestion to Ben – beyond, of course, suggesting he go fuck himself”
and
“any SSM opponant who makes such an argument, however, loses the right to act affronted when a SSM proponant accuses them of being a bigot.”
I won’t waste too much time defending myself in what seems to be a den of liberal bigotry and intolerance. But I’ll observe that the above quotations are perfect examples of true ad hominem attack: They were personal insults at me rather than any attempt to refute or even understand what I had written.
My post was essentially the observation that those who plan not to reproduce will generally have less interest in the future past their own lives than those who plan to have children. I don’t see how that’s arguable as a point of logic, and the responses on this blog certainly didn’t address it.
Far from attacking those who plan not to reproduce, my point was that their desire to loosen the traditional restrictions on marriage was entirely logical given that premise. It wasn’t an attack on them. It was an attempt to understand why they seem so completely unconcerned about how the radical redefinition of marriage will affect people 50 or 100 years in the future.
It’s similar to the loosening of the divorce laws in the early seventies: The adults wanted their fun in the present, and the painful broken homes resulting from that fun would fall on somebody else far out in the future. It really sucks for the kids in the next few generations (such as myself and those my age), but if what you mainly care about is the present, then it makes perfect sense.
Ben:
But how can those adults in the 70s have “wanted their fun in the present”? After all, they had kids (you and those your age are proof of that)! So they couldn’t have had “less interest in the future past their own lives.”
Not to mention that, many homosexual couples seeking marriage DO have kids already.
So having kids seems to be an irrelevant factor here.
The Seventies
They “had their fun in the present” in the seventies by swinging: They wanted to have multiple sexual partners and weren’t interested in how that would affect their kids. If Daddy got tired of Mommy, he could divorce her and get a new girlfriend. The children of Daddy and Mommy might not have liked it, but frankly, that was not Daddy’s problem. Daddy wanted his fun in the present, and he was told pretty lies about how kids were resilient, and they’d get over the divorce in a year or two.
I was actually quite lucky in that regard. My parents were from an older generation and never considered divorce. But I had lots of friends in college who were deeply anguished because they had grown up with only one parent. Ironically, they often were hostile towards marriage because of this, even though it was the weakening of marriage that caused the problem.
At the risk of repeating myself, I want to be sure that I’ve answered your first question clearly, Ruth. If you want your children to grow up happy and strong, you have to do more than squeeze them out, feed them, and wipe their noses. You have to practice monogamy, which is often a major sacrifice of present sexual happiness for the future happiness of your children. Those unwilling to be monogamous are enjoying current sexual happiness at the cost of future misery (or missed happiness) for their children.
Gay Couples and Children
A gay couple, under current technology, cannot produce children. They can adopt other people’s children, and that’s a very noble thing to do. (I doubt, however, that it’s quite as common as pro-gay marriage people like to pretend.)
One member of a gay couple can produce a child with some third person. The sexual orientation of the participants doesn’t really affect the irresponsibility of what they’re doing: They’re producing a child with the intention of not raising it together. They’re putting their happiness above the child’s. If Steve produces a child with Sue, the child really doesn’t care if Steve leaves Sue for Tina or for Tom. The only relevant fact for the child is that Steve and Sue will not be raising him together: “Sorry kid, present adult sexual happiness comes first. Whether you will be unhappy in the future because of our decision is not our concern.”
The problem with gay marriage has nothing to do with the precise mechanism through which gays find non-reproductive sexual pleasure. They can go for sheep or blow-up dolls; it doesn’t matter. The problem is that, in the American conception of gayness, they’re committed to avoiding reproductive sex. And if they reproduce, they are committed to pursuing sexual pleasure with a same-sex partner instead of living with the child’s other parent.
Marriage is about children. The benefits married couples receive is government recognition that the producing and raising of children is vital to the future of our society. The problem with gay marriage that it demands equality between child-producing couples and couples that obviously can never produce a child. It is a declaration that reproduction has no special status in our society. Demographically, that’s societal suicide.
Ben-
Suppose a man marries an infertile woman. He has committed himself to avoiding reproductive sex (or adultery). If they use reproductive techonologies (say a surrogate mother) he is committed to pursuing sexual pleasure with his wife instead of the child’s “other parent”.
Suppose Steve and Tom have a kid (with Sue as a surrogate mother). They raise that kid wonderfully for 10 years. Do you believe that child would rather have some stranger (Sue) there raising him than his fathers. Why would you want to break up that family? You say you’re doing it for the kid’s sake, but I’m not so sure the kid would agree.
Ben:
Well, you were the one who said that children equate a future-oriented focus. I submit that it’s not a feasible argument.
On to the seventies: lots of couples in the seventies divorced for reasons other than swinging. My own parents, since we’re using anecdotal evidence here, stuck it out miserably until they just couldn’t stand each other any more. In the mean time (10 years of my life), their monogamous marriage subjected me and my siblings to a nightly round of hiding in our rooms as my folks shouted and threw things at each other. People got divorced for all kinds of reasons and saying it was for selfish reasons is oversimplification in the extreme.
As for the thing about marriage being about children, as many people have inquired here and elsewhere, what about hetero couples who are older, otherwise infertile, or just intentionally childless? And…since we’re speaking strictly in hypotheticals here, what if Sue stays in contact with Steve and Tom? Open surrogacies, and open adoptions, are becoming more common.
I think there are two separate issues here. If you think that state benefits are to support childrens’ wellbeing, then those benefits should be tied to the children themselves. All of them…or are those children born into single (or widowed, or divorced) families supposed to pay for incidents beyond their (or possibly anyone’s) control?
Otherwise, we’ve got all of this social structure around marriage that is entirely orthoganal to children. Off the top of my head: health care (generally available through employers, invariably easier to get for married hetero couples, and it’s unarguably important for even non-parents to have access to health care); life insurance (same); in many cases, other insurance (like auto insurance) rates are readjusted when you apply as a married couple; inheritance is easier; widows get Social Security; (do widowers? not sure). Just of the top of my head. Some of these may be helpful for the kid parts of hetero married life, but they undeniably make just life easier for those people involved.
Denying that support system to people with life partners who aren’t legally allowed to get married is the equivalent of cutting them out of the citizen loop, at work and in civic life. No widow benefits; no reduced rate spousal health or life insurance; no easy inheritance (not without the effort and expense of a will).
Parentally, this lack makes homosexual parenting families’ lives even worse, since now we’re discussing at least 3 folks (partners and child(ren): no health care is a honkin big deal for kids; no life insurance leaves kids unprovided for in the worst case scenario; inheritance is all mucked up without that will; no widow benefits *or surviving child benefits* is a double whammy (surviving child benefits paid for my own SO’s college tuition). And as I said before this is with no real research, just the stuff I know about through personal contact.
So since we’ve established that the actual parenthood doesn’t confer automatic altruistic status, and since divorce and homosexual love happen for as many reasons as there are participants (if not more, really), then:
Should benefits be tied to the children?
If not, should the type of benefits listed above (insurance through employer, survivor benefits, inheritance, etc) accrue to all couples with children (and only them, but I would include glbt families in this)? If not, why not?
Should we just let everyone in on this party? Obviously your employer won’t just insure your bike buddy, but you could certainly designate someone to get your life insurance if and when it’s paid out; Social security survivor benefits could possibly also be set up to accrue to a child who’s been designated by the main accountholder (the one with the number on the account).
Should we decide to keep the system we have, which explicitly gives primacy to unchilded families (if and only if they’re hetero) over unchilded and childed glbt families?
On another note, this whole wearisome list puts me in mind that though children can be a very welcome, and in many cases defining, part of a marriage, marriage serves society in a lot of other ways than child rearing. It provides comfort, and service, and care, and love, for 2 members of society (regardless of gender), who from that connection reap stability, and acceptance, and a bit more sanity, and possibly even the ability, through economies of financial and emotional scale, to go out and do nice stuff with/for other people. Maybe they have money to donate to a good cause because they share rent; maybe one smiles back at an obnoxious co-worker even though one secretly hates him/her (but won’t one’s Sweetie love to hear later that obnoxious co-worker’s dress had cat fur pilled up all over the butt?). Maybe they’ll be able to go sit with the kids of some friends (not having kids themselves, they may be free), which friends are having a rough time and need a night alone together.
And of course each member of the partnership is also taking on domestic work that would otherwise have to be supported by employers: as 70s feminists argued, the partner doing the lion’s share of the work at home is subsidizing the other’s employer, who would otherwise have to give that employee more time off to take care of hir home life, or else pay the employee more so that s/he in turn coud pay someone to work around the house.
Marriages, and/or couples, are helpful in all kinds of ways, beneficial even, worth reward in their own right, it could be argued, whether they have children or not.
Obligatory note: in no way here was my purpose to slight unmarried people, of whom I am one. Just to meditate further on the fact that the stabilities of marriage can be of the good in society, and that children may not be the only reason we want to promote marriage, when desired, for anyone who desires it.
One more thing about the seventies:
Based on a survey of my peers in jr. high/high school/college, who all had parents that divorced in the seventies, I would say that my non-scientific poll revealed that a good 75 percent of those marriages happened in the first place because of unplanned pregnancy: ‘shotgun marriages,’ as it were. This is something I’ve always wondered about. Would anyone here know whether there have been any studies tracking seventies divorce rates with sixties/early seventies ‘shotgun marriages’? bean? Trish?
Ben:
My post was essentially the observation that those who plan not to reproduce will generally have less interest in the future past their own lives than those who plan to have children. I don’t see how that’s arguable as a point of logic, and the responses on this blog certainly didn’t address it.
Congrats, you win the pseudo-intellectual logical bullshit award! Allow me to give you two examples of why people who plan have no plans on reproducing would care for the future:
1) A sense of history: knowing that whether or not one has kids time will march on and would rather not let future generations look back at our time parent with embarassment and/or disgust.
2) Other people’s kids: It’s not like the only way someone can possibly care about another person is if there’s a blood-tie. There are gay schoolteachers and lesbian social workers and gay social workers and lesbian teachers and gay social lesbian teacher workers. These are people who wouldn’t have any plans of reproducing but have quite a professional stake in the future.
Ben’s argument is one we’ve seen on an earlier thread. But made in a more roundabout & subtle way. He is saying that children are clearly & substantially better off being raised by their natural parents. Remember that one? I still believe that’s a whole lotta hooey. And I’ll continue to believe that until valid & verifiable evidence is provided to support that. Just because you, Ben, believe that doesn’t make it true.
If you want your children to grow up happy and strong, you have to do more than squeeze them out, feed them, and wipe their noses. You have to practice monogamy . . .
As someone who practices polyamory (or “responsible non-monogamy”), I’d like to ask you for some evidence for this view. No, no, no, not evidence that children are better off if their folks stay together . . . hell, I’ll even concede that . . . but evidence that parental monogamy itself is better for your kids.
If you have no evidence, or if your evidence is anecdotal (same thing) just let your dumbass claim go and refrain from discussion of things you’ve got no knowledge of.
—JRC
ps. If you seriously believe that swinging was widespread enough in the seventies or any other time as to be a major (or even measurably minor)cause of divorce, you are a monkey.
Gabriel:
Your examples with reproductive technology require a precise definition of “parent.” In my lexicon, a child’s parent is the source of that child’s genes. Over time and in most cases, that’s what’s going to matter most in raising the child. So, an “infertile” couple can have a child conceived in a Petri dish and carried by a surrogate. A gay couple cannot, until biotechology can produce eggs for men or sperm for women. Then things will get really interesting.
The debate isn’t about breaking up families. It’s about which couples deserve special recognition because of their importance to society. For centuries, the European/American answer has been that ideal procreation involves one man and one woman in a legally enforced monogamous relationship. The point of holding up that ideal and discouraging alternatives today is to provide better upbringing for the children of couples that haven’t even come together yet.
Ruth:
We could debate the seventies at length, but that isn’t really our focus, is it? Yes, the picture is more complicated it always is. That doesn’t preclude generalization.
As for the hetero infertility argument, it’s really not all that complicated. Why are infertile couples allowed to marry? Because 1) judging fertility with precision is very difficult in many cases, and 2) the ability to judge fertility at all is a relatively recent medical innovation. The law changes slowly. It wasn’t a conscious policy decision to allow the permanently and irrevocably infertile to marry. The law was written that way for entirely practical reasons.
You’re changing topics by switching from the narrow topic of marriage to the generalization that “state benefits are to support childrens’ wellbeing.” Welfare for kids is not our topic. Marriage is more indirect than handouts. It encourages the parents to lead their lives in a way conducive to good childrearing. Handing out direct benefits would lead to the many behavioral problems that we’ve already seen caused by most of the many welfare programs already in place.
I like your question: “Should we just let everyone in on this party?” Here’s my question in response: If the government can hand out extra benefits to everyone without any repercussions, why don’t we just have it print up some extra money and give everyone a million dollars in cash? Think of it! Everyone could be a millionaire! Or is it possible that giving something to everyone is the same as giving it to no one?
Your last few paragraphs are the sincere case for gay marriage: Gay couples can form relationships that look a lot like marriages. And they’re nice people. So why shouldn’t they be treated as if they’re married. Here’s a sincere answer: Marriage has a much more serious purpose than getting the chores done or validating wholesome gay relationships. Marriage is about the survival of our civilization. It’s the system that has worked over the centuries to encourage responsible childbearing, and abolishing it will have unimaginable consequences for future generations. If that hurts the feelings of some nonreproductive couples, then they’re choosing to be offended for political purposes. Nobody thought to get upset about this in the past. Consider: Where would we be today if all of Europe had adopted marriage 1,000 years ago?
Raznor: I didn’t say that those who plan not to reproduce have no interest in the future whatsoever. Overall and as a group, they have less interest in the future than those who plan to have children.
Jake: This is a new one on me. You really think that it isn’t clear that in general children are better off raised by their biological parents? You can come up with anecdotes to support that, I’m sure. I can come up with anecdotes, too, so let’s not bother. What kind of evidence would you accept on this, Jake? Self-reported happiness? Income? Education? I’m sure there is a mountain of data showing that children raised by both bio parents score better on any measure you care to name. Does anyone else agree with Jake’s argument that being raised by both parents is not generally good for children?
Does anyone else agree with Jake’s argument that being raised by both parents is not generally good for children?
That’s not what he said, so our agreement or lack thereof is pretty irrelevant. Discuss his acutal position, and we might get somewhere.
—JRC
Ben,
Please don’t mis-state what I said. I never made an argument “that being raised by both parents is not generally good for children?” as you say. What I said (and I’ll try to be clearer this time) is that I don’t believe that being raised by both biological parents is better for children than being raised by 2 (or more) non-biological parents. Or by 1 biological & 1 (or more) non-biological parents. What I’m asking for is documentation supporting your implied assertion that children are clearly & substantially better off when raised by their biological parents instead of by non-biological parents.
So, to reiterate, I am not saying that it is not good for children to be raised by their biological parents. I am asking for some evidence that children raised by their biological parents are better off than children raised by non-biological parents.
And do you seriously believe that “Marriage is about the survival of our civilization.”? Human civilization has been around for millenia. Most of those w/o marriage. And there are, and have been, many civilizations with marriage meaning something other than 1man1woman. And there are civilizations now w/o marriage. Or do you mean American civilization? Because Danish civilization seems to be doing just fine w/ SSM & adoption of children by SS couples.
I think the following paragraph of yours goes a long way towards discrediting your views:
“As for the hetero infertility argument, it’s really not all that complicated. Why are infertile couples allowed to marry? Because 1) judging fertility with precision is very difficult in many cases, and 2) the ability to judge fertility at all is a relatively recent medical innovation. The law changes slowly. It wasn’t a conscious policy decision to allow the permanently and irrevocably infertile to marry. The law was written that way for entirely practical reasons.”
You seem to be saying that SSM shouldn’t be permitted but infertile marriage should because that’s the way the law was written. Why can’t we re-write the law to prohibit the permanently & irrevocably infertile to marry? Just like you would like to re-write the law to define marriage as 1man1woman. Here’s what we can do: “Marriage shall be defined as the union for purposes of possible procreation between 1 fertile man and 1 fertile woman.”
Good luck with that.
It’s about which couples deserve special recognition because of their importance to society.
Amusingly, this is the opposite of the anti-gay marriage claim that “Homosexuals just want special rights!”
Marriage is about the survival of our civilization.
No no no: pizza is about the survival of our civilization. If we didn’t have pizza, I swear to God we’d all just keel over and die. Seriously. We totally would.
Overall and as a group, they have less interest in the future than those who plan to have children.
I posit that people who don’t have children have more interest in the future, because they choose not to inflict potentially evil individuals on society. If you don’t have a kid, you can be pretty sure he won’t turn out to be the next Hitler.
Ben, you write:
In my lexicon, a child’s parent is the source of that child’s genes. Over time and in most cases, that’s what’s going to matter most in raising the child. So, an “infertile” couple can have a child conceived in a Petri dish and carried by a surrogate. A gay couple cannot, until biotechology can produce eggs for men or sperm for women.
While I strongly disagree that genetics is what is important in making a parent, your “infertile” argument still only applies to a couple capable of producing eggs and sperm. Suppose a woman has had her ovaries removed. For a man to marry her he is, as you say “committed to avoiding reproductive sex” and “pursuing sexual pleasure” with her instead of whom you consider the child’s parent. As Jake noted, perhaps you would like to prohibit the man from marrying her, but most people would not.
You also write:
The point of holding up that ideal and discouraging alternatives today is to provide better upbringing for the children of couples that haven’t even come together yet.
Is that your view of marriage? That it is a signal for the “right” way to raise a child. Do you believe marriage does anything to help the children of that couple? Or do you believe that as long as a couple is monogamous and raising their own biological children it doesn’t really matter if they marry? Also it seems that you view that the prohibition on marriage for same-sex couples is designed to discourage them from raising children in a less than ideal manner. Can we ban other couples from marriage if we feel that they won’t provide an ideal environment for their children?
Ben wrote: But I’ll observe that the above quotations are perfect examples of true ad hominem attack: They were personal insults at me rather than any attempt to refute or even understand what I had written.
I know this is a digression, but I have to point out that you (Ben) don’t seem to know what “ad hominem” means. You’re making the common error of assuming that the terms “ad hom” and “personal insult” are interchangable.
You’re quite correct that I leveled “personal insults at [you]” that were not attempts to refute what you had written. However, that means that what I wrote wasn’t an ad hominem. By definition, ad hominems are personal insults used to refute an opposing argument.
So when you say (in essence) “people who disagree with me are selfish pleasure-seekers who don’t care about children, therefore SSM should be opposed” that’s an ad hominem. You’re using disparagement of people who disagree with you to refute a policy you oppose.
On the other hand, when I told you to go fuck yourself, that was only an insult. I didn’t say or imply “Ben should go fuck himself, therefore SSM is justified,” which is what I would have had to say for it to be an ad hom.
I did insult you – and, frankly, I still think you deserved it. To argue that people who disagree with you on a policy point must love children less than you do is disgusting.
But although I insulted you, I didn’t write an ad hom. Let’s keep our terms straight.
* * *
You still haven’t addressed some of the problems with your argument I pointed out in my post. First of all, some SSM folks do have children – as I pointed out by linking to this post. Your idea that lesbians and gay men don’t have or forsee having children is untrue.
Second of all, not all supporters of SSM are gay. Some are straight; some are straights with children. So it obviously is not the case that being a straight couple with children will lead to opposition to SSM.
Third, some opponants of SSM are folks who don’t have children and may not expect to have children.
In short, the connection you assume – between lack of childrearing and support for SSM – doesn’t appear to exist in real life.
Jake: There’s plenty of evidence on the benefits of being raised by both bio parents, but I know from experience that trying to convince libs of something they don’t want to believe is usually a Sisyphean task, because they always find something wrong with whatever evidence you happen to have. (The usual last resort is, “Well, that data was collected by a conservative group, and you know what scumbags they are.”) So I’ll throw back the challenge: You show me some data that ought to show a difference, but don’t.
Marriage is about the survival of our civilization, not human civilization in general. Don’t confuse them. If one culture isn’t willing to reproduce, in time it will be replaced by another culture that is willing to reproduce. It’s already happening in parts of Europe, where the natives stopped replacing themselves years ago, and now they’ve got a significant Muslim population that is breeding rapidly. Does anyone want to lay odds on when Sharia will be the law of France?
On the infertility issue, it seems I wasn’t clear, so I’ll lay it out in greater detail: The problem with screening out the infertile is a practical one, not a legal one. Imagine the counter in the county clerk’s office where they issue marriage licenses. An opposite-sex couple walks up and requests one. How hard would it be to know for sure whether the couple was genuinely incapable for all time of producing a baby? Does the clerk have to put on some latex gloves and give the woman a pelvic exam? Does the clerk have to require a semen sample from the man and wait for lab results? Except in extreme cases such as total castration or hysterectomy, it’s impossible to know for sure whether an opposite-sex couple can produce a baby. And those extreme situations are so rare that the effort wouldn’t be worth the benefit.
It’s totally different when two men walk up to the same counter. The clerk doesn’t need a pelvic exam or a sperm sample to know whether they can produce a child. Without any complex examinations, the clerk can tell on their sex alone that they don’t have the basic plumbing to produce a child. There is no doubt on this question, no gray area. They are absolutely, unquestionably infertile.
From that perspective, I don’t see how there can be any comparison between infertile hetero couples and gay couples. A hetero couple usually discovers any fertility problems long after they’ve married, and after years of fertility treatments. And even then there’s usually some chance that a medical breakthrough or experimental treatment will provide new hope. I’ve heard stories of couples that try fertility treatments for years, finally give up and adopt a child, and then conceive once the pressure is off. Infertility in opposite-sex couples is usually a very complicated thing. Infertility in gay couples is not.
Gabriel: Applied across an entire society, marriage is the best way to raise children. We’re talking about large-scale rules, not individual situations.
The prohibition on same-sex marriage is not to discourage them from raising children. It is to encourage hetero couples to raise children under ideal circumstances. Handing out the benefits of marriage to couples who obviously cannot produce children cheapens those benefits, just like printing extra money to try to make everyone rich. Marriage is a policy statement that child-producing couples are especially important to society. Gay marriage is the negation of that policy statement.
Ampersand: Ad hominem literally means “at the man.” M-w.com defines it as “marked by an attack on an opponent’s character rather than by an answer to the contentions made.” Calling me a bigot was most definitely an ad hominem response.
You misunderstood my post on marriagedebate.com. I’ve already explained my views in great detail here, and they are quite obviously not what you’re accusing me of. If you want to close your eyes, put your fingers in your ears, and hurl insults and profanity at your imaginary bogeyman of a conservative, go right ahead. Surprisingly, many visitors to this forum are more polite and mature than the moderator.
Ben,
It is not up to me to disprove your assertion. It is up to you to prove it. I will happily look at any studies that you can provide. If I am unsatisfied with them it is up to me to refute them. Either by means of conflicting studies or by showing severe flaws in the means of gathering data or interpreting data. I don’t need to prove anything to you. After all, you are trying to get me to agree with your assertion.
Aside from that I find your logic to have fatal flaws in it. I’ll try to list simply & clearly the problems that I find.
1) “…I know from experience that trying to convince libs of something they don’t want to believe is usually a Sisyphean task, because they always find something wrong with whatever evidence you happen to have.”
If that’s the case, why even bother expressing your opinion here. This is a cop out. Present your evidence first and see if people are willing to evaluate it.
2) “Does the clerk have to put on some latex gloves and give the woman a pelvic exam? Does the clerk have to require a semen sample from the man and wait for lab results?”
Yes. Yes they do. In some states prospective spouses must undergo a medical exam & wait for test results before a marriage license will be issued. I believe that Massachuesetts is one of these. It was 10 years ago.
3) “The prohibition on same-sex marriage is not to discourage them from raising children.”
Even if I believe that this is true and that is not the intent, that is the effect.
4) “Handing out the benefits of marriage to couples who obviously cannot produce children cheapens those benefits, just like printing extra money to try to make everyone rich.”
That’s just a terrible analogy, come up with a better one. The reason that it is terrible is that when everybody has the benefits of marriage that it in no way lessens the beneficial effects of those resources in the production (or raising) of children. Perhaps I’m just not seeing what you’re saying. A specific example of how this “cheapening” in any way effects the production or rearing of children might help me understand what you mean.
5) “It is to encourage hetero couples to raise children under ideal circumstances.”
And what about children who cannot be raised under ideal circumstances? The ones who have one or both biological parents die or the ones given up for adoption? Or the ones removed from abusive homes? Shouldn’t we encourage other ways of raising children as close to ideal circumstances as possible?
I realize that we are diametrically opposed on this issue and that you view me as a liberal who will “always find something wrong with whatever evidence you happen to have”, but if you produce no evidence then you need to view me as a person who thinks that you’re spouting utter nonsense. Why should I believe that biological parents have a clear & substantial advantage in child rearing any more than I should believe in the Easter Bunny if you can provide no evidence. You seem to be saying that I should provide evidence that the Easter Bunny don’t exist. A negative doesn’t need to be proven if there is no evidence for the positive. That’s just a basic thing.
As to the survival of “our” culture. How old would you say that “our” culture is? What year did it begin? Because I see some significant differences between the culture in which I grew up & the culture in which my parents grew up. Culture is not a static thing (thank god). I don’t find the culture of my childhood remotely like that of early 20th century culture (to say nothing of 15th century culture). And what if I want to raise my children to have cultural values much different than “ours”? Certainly the benefits of marriage promote that over some same-sex couple. But I’ve gone on long enough.
Your mis-stating of my position earlier on such a basic issue, in a manner so clumsy that someone else pointed it out before I did does not put you in a good light.
So, as they say, shit or get off the pot. Show me the money. Provide some evidence. I’m giving you a shot. But if it is shoddy evidence I will point it out, so make sure the studies you provide are peer-reviewed at the least please.
One last thing:
Ben, you keep making sweeping statements like, “Applied across an entire society, marriage is the best way to raise children,” as if they were self-evident truths. I’ve got news for you… they’re not. Can you provide an factual evidence that this is true? If not, don’t be surprised when people disagree with you. Opinions are not facts any more than fish are horror films.
It’s already happening in parts of Europe, where the natives stopped replacing themselves years ago, and now they’ve got a significant Muslim population that is breeding rapidly. Does anyone want to lay odds on when Sharia will be the law of France?
Ben Bateman, please do not try to talk about situations you ignore.
What exactly do you mean by “the Muslim population” in France? Maghrebins (which include many non-Arabs, aka Kabyles or Berbères), Arabs “in general”, Sub-Saharian Africans, Pakistanis, Turks, Europeans converted to Islam?
In case you are going to answer “all of them”, let me tell you, for your information, that the Maghrebins, who are the most numerous, are majoritarily French citizens. Therefore, they belong to the “natives” you are talking about. Denying them equality with the White Catholic Frenchs you probably had in mind is simply insulting. Only Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has been condemned several times for “incitment to racial hate” talks like this here (I live in Paris). Yeah, verily, “rapidly breeding Muslim population” is a fantasy of the French neo-fascist far Right.
France (still) has a strong tradition of secularity that excludes any religious reference from the legal system. This is one of the few places I know (and I do know some around the world) where you can openly call yourself an Atheist, or no matter what your ethnic origins are. Actually, official statistics based on ethnicity and/or religion are illegal here. Believe it or not, a French citizen of Arabic origin is free to define him/herself as a non-Muslim without it affecting his/her connection with a certain cultural environment that is certainly not restricted to religious components (what with language, artistic tradition, etc.). He/She can even rightly decline answering any question about his/her assumed “faith”.
Have you heard about the law that is going to be voted to ban the so-called Islamic veil (hijjab) from public schools and administrative offices (I have mixed feelings about it, but that’s off topic)? Shari’a is not going to be the new law in France any time soon, whatever Oriana Fallacci, the Front National, and the Parti des Musulmans de France (an extremist Islamist organisation militating for sexual segregation) may declare.
…where you can openly call yourself an Atheist, or no matter what your ethnic origins are.
To complete as follows:
where you can openly call yourself an Atheist, or say you’re indifferent to religion, no matter what your ethnic origins are.
Ben said “It’s totally different when two men walk up to the same counter. The clerk doesn’t need a pelvic exam or a sperm sample to know whether they can produce a child. Without any complex examinations, the clerk can tell on their sex alone that they don’t have the basic plumbing to produce a child.”
Unless of course one of them is a transman. I’ve read of several cases of a gay transman being impregnated by his partner, so it is possible. And once the hormones kick in, you can’t tell a transman from a natural born male.
All studies have flaws; both liberals and conservatives play the “find the flaw in the study” game. The only thing to do is to try and keep ourselves honest, by applying the same standards to evidence supporting our positions as we do to evidence that goes against our positions.
Anyhow, for links to studies showing that that children raised by lesbian couples don’t have worse outcomes than children raised by heterosexual couples, please see my earlier post on the subject. The research is not perfect; but what research exists universally fails to find that children are harmed by being raised by same-sex couples.
Ben, I am very disturbed by this paragraph: “Marriage is about the survival of our civilization, not human civilization in general. Don?t confuse them. If one culture isn?t willing to reproduce, in time it will be replaced by another culture that is willing to reproduce. It?s already happening in parts of Europe, where the natives stopped replacing themselves years ago, and now they?ve got a significant Muslim population that is breeding rapidly. Does anyone want to lay odds on when Sharia will be the law of France?”
Support for sharia law is ideology, not genetics; it is taught, not bred. I think it’s important, intellectually, to keep the two distinct.
Who, exactly, is the “our” in “our civilization?”
So if the idea is to breed like rabbits before the Great Brown Hordes can overwhelm our society and force their barbaric ways on us, why not allow polygamy?
Jake, you seem to misunderstand the purpose of this conversation. It started with our moderator saying some very nasty things about me and completely misrepresenting my views. My main goal is to defend myself from this vicious attack. Some secondary goals are:
1) to clearly articulate my views,
2) to perhaps convince you that my views are internally consistent, even if you disagree with the premises,
3) to expose some libs to real conservatism instead of the warped version that they are so often given, and
4) to remind myself what it’s like to argue politics with some staunch libs.
I’m under no illusion that I can convince you to adopt my political views. The real question here is whether our moderator was correct in calling me a bigot who should “go f*ck himself.” I’ve written hundreds of words here to explain my views in detail, but he stands by his original insult and repeats his misrepresentations of my views.
I leave it to you to determine who the bigot is.
Ben:
Applied across an entire society, marriage is the best way to raise children.
If that’s true then why do you want to prevent couples raising children from marrying. You are denying people the ability to raise children in the manner you yourself admit is best. That’s harming children and it’s rather selfish.
The prohibition on same-sex marriage is not to discourage them from raising children. It is to encourage hetero couples to raise children under ideal circumstances
How does stopping one couple from marrying encourage another to marry. On the contrary, if you feel it’s okay, in fact desirable, in fact mandatory, for same-sex couples to raise their children outside of marriage you seem to be sending a pretty clear message that marriage is unimportant in raising children. (If it were important you would want them to marry). A hetero couple then is less likely to consider it desirable to marry before having children.
Handing out the benefits of marriage to couples who obviously cannot produce children cheapens those benefits, just like printing extra money to try to make everyone rich.
I’ve heard this argument before, and I find it amusing. Printing extra money increases the money supply thus devaluing the dollar. That economic mechanims will happen with any limited commodity in a marketplace. To apply this to marriage is absurd. You can’t buy or sell a marriage on the marketplace. If somehow additional marriages did decrease their “value”, because they weren’t so rare, the same effect would happen if an additional straight couple were to marry. Every time another couple married (straight or gay) my marriage would be worth less. I guess I should try to discourage others from marrying.
Marriage is a policy statement that child-producing couples are especially important to society. Gay marriage is the negation of that policy statement
By that logic any couple who marries without producing a child is negating your policy statement. We shouldn’t recognize a marriage until a child has been produced. To do otherwise would be to improperly reward non child-producing couples.
Hey Ben: Do you believe that women over the age of 65 or 70 ought to be prohibited by force of law from marrying?
Your answer to that question gets to the heart of three issues:
1) Are your arguments internally consistent?
2) Are you a bigot?
3) Should you go fuck yourself?
I eagerly await your answer.
—JRC
Ben, I didn’t say you were a bigot.
By the way, I read conservative views all the time – I read many conservative blogs regularly, as well as magazines like The Weekly Standard. Don’t assume that because I don’t respect you, it must follow that I don’t respect any conservatives at all, or that I assume that what I say about you applies to all conservatives. You are not representative of all conservatives.
Now, let’s look at your argument:
As I understand your current argument, you’re suggesting that there is an extremely high degree of overlap between two groups of people: “those who plan not to reproduce” and “those who support SSM.”
I’m saying that there is actually a very low degree of overlap between these two groups. Many supporters of SSM (both straight and gay) either already have children, or forsee having children in the future. Since the overlap you suggest doesn’t exist in real life, your argument doesn’t hold water.
At this point, I feel like I’ve said this two or three times, and you’ve never really rebutted it.
Regarding my original assessment of your views, I see no reason not to stand by them. Your original post – which you’ve backed down from substantially in this discussion – described the two sides of the debate as “Those who care deeply about children” versus “Those who don’t” because they won’t be “represented” in the future by children (or will, but don’t care about what happens to those children).
If that’s not what you meant, then your own writing is at fault for not making your position clear.
Let’s settle this with a simple quiz, Ben. Please choose which of the following statements you believe:
A) “I, Ben Bateman, believe that in general those who favor same-sex marriage care about children substantially less than those who oppose same-sex marriage.”
B) “I, Ben Bateman, believe that in general those who favor same-sex marriage care as much about children as those who oppose same-sex marriage.”
If option A is a fair statement of your views, then I stand by my post. If option B is a fair statement of your views, then I’ll gladly apologize for telling you to fuck off. (No joke, I’m being sincere.)
Which is it, A or B?
Suddenly I understand the confusion. It all makes so much more sense now. You’ve never had kids, have you?
See, my first child was born when I was a teen, so I’ve been a parent all of my adult life. Until now, I’ve never really thought about how differently someone would view children if they hadn’t had kids yet, or planned to never have kids.
When you’ve never had kids, it’s easy to love them in the abstract. I imagine that it’s a kind of goodwill towards them. Good people should love children in general like they should love kittens, puppies, and Bambi.
But when you have a child of your own, the feeling towards that specific child is quite different. It’s a fierce, primal love, the kind of feeling that a mama bear is experiencing when it rips a hiker to pieces for approaching her cub in the woods. It’s a completely selfish love, a desire to focus on and nurture that specific child–your child. It’s a sentence that comes to mind unbidden when you see your child in danger or distress: My Child Will Live!
That love is only an instinct, and the specific intellectual form it takes varies wildly from person to person. A woman may be completely devoted to her baby, but may still move in with a man she knows is subject to violent rages. She either doesn’t see or chooses not to see that she is putting the baby she loves in danger.
I don’t know how to explain that overpowering urge to someone who has never held his own child. Maybe you experience something like it with younger siblings or relatives, I don’t know. You can probably get pretty close if you adopt at a young age.
The point of marriage, from one perspective, is to channel that blind urge and show people how to use it productively. It says to a young woman dreaming of having a baby: Here is the best way to actually get a happy, healthy baby. It bridges that gap between emotion and intellect. Or, to be more precise, marriage is an essential component of the societally recommended package of behaviors.
Anyway, I’m rambling a bit. To turn to your post: I don’t think I’m backing off of my original post. And on your quiz, it depends on what you mean by “love children.” If you’re talking about a generalized I’m-a-good-person, aren’t-they-cute love of children, then there’s probably little difference between the groups. In fact, I doubt you could find any significant group of people who don’t love children in that sense.
But that isn’t the love of children I was talking about. I was talking about the primal, possessory love of specific children, which can subsequently generalize out a bit to other children within the culture. It may be possible to experience that emotion without having your own child, but that would be rare. And people differ to the extent that they heed that emotion and turn it into concrete thoughts and actions. Daddy may love his little girl, but he also wants to leave her mommy for his new girlfriend. When love of offspring meets the joy of sex, the outcome is often uncertain.
So here’s a shot at the statement you want, and maybe on this basis you’ll decide to hate me and issue some more profanities in the way that I’ve come to expect from liberals who usually claim to be beacons of tolerance and diversity against intolerant and narrow-minded conservatives:
SSM opponents are more likely than proponents to have 1) experienced this intense possessory love of their children, 2) turned that instinctual emotion into concrete thoughts and actions designed to promote the happiness of their children in the future, 3) devoted a significant portion of their lives to promoting that happiness, and 4) given up a significant portion of their present happiness to promote that happiness.
If you want to hate me for that, knock yourself out. I don’t care: I now have the benefit of a new insight into what makes the anti-SSM crowd tick.
I don’t know why I’m bothering to respond since Ben never actually responds to direct questions. But I’ll give it one last go & then give up on the guy as someone who is being intentionally obtuse in order to maintain a beloved prejudice.
In your first sentence you make the same sort of unsupported (but wholeheartedly believed in by you) statement that you take as self-evident. Can you tell that NOT ONE of us has had children by that special quality that only parents have?
Then you go on to say, “When you’ve never had kids, it’s easy to love them in the abstract. I imagine that it’s a kind of goodwill towards them.” You imagine? Can’t you remember a time before you had children? And you’re wrong about this. I’m perfectly capable of that fierce love for chilluns that are not my own. As were my parents before me.
What really bugs me about you is that you refuse to offer up any supporting evidence for your cause. You fob off the request by saying that your opponents will disregard it anyhow. Which leads me to believe that you have no actual proof of your assertions. If you want to admit that and go on to say that regardless of any evidence, or lack of same, that that is what you believe. That that is your faith. Fine, I can understand that. But you don’t seem to have the courage of your convictions.
In answer to your question: I am beginning to believe that our moderator was correct. That you are, in fact, a bigot. As to fucking off. Well, that’s his feeling & I begin to understand why he wrote that.
Anytime anybody asks you a direct question, you refuse to answer. You intentionally mis-state your opponents writing. You go off on tangents instead of responding to what is written. After a while a commentor could begin to feel the same way as our moderator.
After reading your increasingly facetious & condescending & avoiding posts I begin to believe that you are a bigot. And, since you refuse to contribute to an actual dialogue, I wouldn’t mind if you were to toddle off.
(Please notice that I say that “I begin to believe that you are a bigot,” not that you are a bigot. If you’d just respond to questions about apparent flaws in your logic I probably wouldn’t feel this way.
And since I know that you’re going to ask what you haven’t answered, here are a few of the questions that I never got answers to. Remember any of these?
What I’m asking for is documentation supporting your implied assertion that children are clearly & substantially better off when raised by their biological parents instead of by non-biological parents.
Why can’t we re-write the law to prohibit the permanently & irrevocably infertile to marry? Just like you would like to re-write the law to define marriage as 1man1woman.
A specific example of how this “cheapening” in any way effects the production or rearing of children might help me understand what you mean.
And what about children who cannot be raised under ideal circumstances? The ones who have one or both biological parents die or the ones given up for adoption? Or the ones removed from abusive homes? Shouldn’t we encourage other ways of raising children as close to ideal circumstances as possible?
As to the survival of “our” culture. How old would you say that “our” culture is? What year did it begin?
you keep making sweeping statements like, “Applied across an entire society, marriage is the best way to raise children,” as if they were self-evident truths. I’ve got news for you… they’re not. Can you provide an factual evidence that this is true?
When you actually answer questions, rather than going off on some tangent that generates more questions, I’ll take you seriously. And I’ll be more than happy to have an actual discussion of the issue. Until then you’re just a member of the sad group of the intentionally ignorant.
Well, this was interesting and it gave me some new perspectives.
First, most of the gay couples I have known fall into one of two groups.
(a) those who fit Ben’s stereotype of living to indulge themselves and disinterested in children in the concrete.
(b) those who have children and who are passionate about them.
There are vividly different perspectives each will generate.
More generally, it seems to me that SSM opponants quite commonly imply that people who disagree with them don’t care about children, or care only about whatever is convenient for adults, or short-term pleasure, or whatever. fits the first group. They are looking for what is convenient for them and for what benefits them in their short term decisions. Most have had sexual encounters with more than one sex but have developed a current preference, subject to change.
The second group is different.
But what struck me for the first time is that the claim that homosexual unions are perforce sterile is simply not correct. Many engage in either sperm donors or spare wombs to generate children that they raise.
Marriage is an institutionalization of a religious rite. It has concrete economic and religious roots that are founded in a time when people did not stay married (on the average) much longer (or at all longer, on the average) than they do today, though death ended marriages rather than divorce.
The real question is whether all religious preferences should be accepted, polygamous, polyandry, homosexual, etc., or not.
The other question is what method should be used to enforce such preferences and choices, especially since what is being proposed is an alteration of the social compact based on faith (faith that belief in ssm is right today just as for the last several thousand years it was wrong. Of course, we always know that we are right today, correct? American liberals are always right, everyone else is just blinded and there is not value in experience — the same experience that taught that there was spontaneous generation, that sight came out of the eye and that democracy is a good ting).
You can tell I’m still not convinced, but I’m aware that the reasons I’m not convinced are just as easily wrong as right in many ways.
Ben:
Here’s why I believe you’re a bigot:
It’s already happening in parts of Europe, where the natives stopped replacing themselves years ago, and now they’ve got a significant Muslim population that is breeding rapidly. Does anyone want to lay odds on when Sharia will be the law of France?
Besides winning the pseudo-intellectual logical bullshit award, you now win the needlessly racist/xenophobic award.
(and as a side not, you rock Jimmy! I keep forgetting that English is your second language. You remind me of it once in a while with your posts, at which point I start noticing minor grammatic errors, but overall your writing is so fluid and just damn good I usually never notice anything wrong with it. you go man)
How we know Ben should go fuck himself:
Suddenly I understand the confusion. It all makes so much more sense now. You’ve never had kids, have you?
After your fucking self-righteous tantrum about being the butt of a few insults you have the gall, the gall to give us this patronizing bullshit that we’d understand if only we had kids. Well, to borrow a phrase from South Park, fuck you. Fuck you right in the ear.
Hey, thanks for the nice words, Raznor! I’m sincerely touched.
Ben,
I have a child. I waited until I was old enough, financially secure enough and had a partner I can share my life with. My husband is a wonderful father. Together we parent our child by choice. (I say this so you can’t just dismiss me as you have tried to dismiss everyone on this board.)
I am a liberal democrat; my husband is a republican.
We both believe that same sex marriage is commonsense; it is legal and moral. We both believe that your arguments and the others about how children should only be raised by biological parents and that marriage is about children is crap.
Your arguments about children and the sanctity of the role of marriage in the raising of children is doublespeak. What you really want to say is that you believe homosexuality is wrong, so why don’t you just say it. Be honest with yourself and the rest of us and stop disembling with your flawed arguments.
Respectfully,
Sam
I think this thread might be dead, but just to be on record, in case:
Ben Bateman claimed that parental love is an instinct, and I’d just like to point out that that position is full of crap. Parents don’t automatically love their children. Some parents resent their children. Some parents just find their children to be a slightly annoying burden.
I hear this argument a lot, in slightly altered form, i.e. mother-love is an instinct. People who claim that can never satisfactorily explain why my mother was the abusive parent, instead of my father.