{"id":1232,"date":"2004-11-27T00:13:11","date_gmt":"2004-11-27T08:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/11\/27\/whats-missing-from-elizabeths-argument\/"},"modified":"2004-11-27T00:13:11","modified_gmt":"2004-11-27T08:13:11","slug":"whats-missing-from-elizabeths-argument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1232","title":{"rendered":"What's missing from Elizabeth's argument"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth at the Family Scholars Blog<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n

Why am I writing this? Maybe to confuse everybody. Maybe to sort out my own feelings. Maybe to show friends like Barry that I really do have feelings. But I was happy for Kummer and his groom and, more to the point, I could see why marriage itself, and not a parallel institution like civil unions, was so different and so important.<\/p>\n

This is the problem. I’m not opposed to SSM because of the couples who want to marry. I understand their desire. I know what love is. I know what it means to want to grow old with somebody. I know the fear of being alone. <\/p>\n

My problem is that I don’t want all marriage and family law, across the nation, to be rewritten in gender neutral terms that make the law unable to affirm that children, whenever possible, need to be raised by the mother and father who gave them life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

First of all, I’m happy that Elizabeth calls me her friend – and I’m quite sure she has feelings. :-)<\/p>\n

As for gender neutral marriage, we’ve been moving in that direction for quite a long time; more wives and mothers work, stay-at-home-Dads are increasing (although still a small group), and coverture laws are an archaism. I’m curious to know if Elizabeth would like to undo any of the previous legal steps towards gender-neutral marriage, and if so, which ones.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth goes on:<\/p>\n

The larger problem with legalizing SSM is what will happen to the many children born of straight couples who would grow up in a society that is even less able (than it currently is) to affirm the importance of being raised by your own, married mother and father – with the likely result that more of them will grow up lacking that key security and being exposed to the many risks that come with it.<\/div>\n

Here’s how I’d sum up the argument in the above paragraph (Elizabeth was nice enough to confirm by email that my paraphrase is accurate):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. If SSM is allowed, society will be less able to affirm the importance of being raised by two bio-parents.<\/li>\n
  2. This will likely result in more heterosexual parents either never marrying, or marrying and then divorcing. (This is what Elizabeth means by “more [children] will grow up lacking that key security”).<\/li>\n
  3. Therefore, we should not allow SSM.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For the sake of this post, I’m going to ignore my disagreements with statements 1 and 2 (and trust me, they are legion). Instead, I want to point out that something’s missing from Elizabeth’s argument. 1 and 2 do not logically lead to 3. There’s something missing – a step between 2 and 3 which justifies the conclusion in step 3.<\/p>\n

    For example, let’s look at one possibility – let’s call it 2.5.<\/p>\n

    2.5 Whatever leads to more bio-parents not marrying, or getting divorced, should not be legal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    If we add that, then 1 & 2 logically lead to 3. 1 & 2 together establish that SSM will lead to more bio-parents not marrying, or getting divorced; 2.5 establishes that everything that leads to more unmarried bio-parents should not be legal. Once that’s established, then Elizabeth’s conclusion – that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed – logically follows.<\/p>\n

    But it’s fairly obvious that Elizabeth – like most opponents of SSM – does not really believe in statement 2.5.<\/p>\n

    After all, if “whatever leads to more bio-parents not marrying, or getting divorced, should not be legal,” then Elizabeth should logically want to refuse to legally recognize divorce. She should logically favor coverture<\/a>. She should also be against legal interracial marriage, since interracial marriages are among the most likely to divorce.<\/p>\n

    It’s safe to assume that Elizabeth doesn’t favor banning divorce, or banning interracial marriage, or bringing back coverture laws. But if Elizabeth doesn’t favor those things, then Elizabeth doesn’t beleive everything<\/i> that makes it less likely that bio-parents will get married and stay married should not be allowed by law. Which means that she can’t fill in the gap in her argument with statement 2.5, or anything like it.<\/p>\n

    I think Elizabeth must be using some method of categorization to fill in the gap in her argument. Some things – such as the Marriage Initiative, which I think Elizabeth favors – are acceptable ways of promoting marriage. Other ways – like refusing to legally recognize divorce – are not. And, in Elizabeth’s view, legally recognizing same-sex marriage falls into the “acceptable” catagory.<\/p>\n

    Putting aside the SSM question for a moment, my guess is Elizabeth’s categories look something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
    Category A – Things the government MAY NOT do to discourage unmarried bio-parents<\/th>\nCategory B – things the government MAY do to discourage unmarried bio-parents<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
    *refuse to recognize interracial marriage
    \n *refuse to recognize divorces
    \n *bring back coverture
    \n *refuse to recognize marriages of the infertile and the elderly
    \n *refuse to recognize second marriages which create stepparents (that is, non-biological parents)
    \n *throw non-resident parents into prison
    \n *refuse to recognize marriages to prisoners<\/td>\n    		*create marriage education programs
    \n *create legal benefits for married people
    \n *allow marriage to create American citizenship
    \n *use the “bully pulpit” to talk up marriage
    \n *supply free marriage counseling for couples in trouble
    \n *support research into what makes marriages strong<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

    There’s a genuine pattern here, I think. Elizabeth and others would like to use the government’s powers to make it more likely that children will be raised by their own, married, biological parents. However, there’s a general consensus – even, I think, within the marriage movement – that some ways of doing this (category A) are unreasonable and shouldn’t be pursued. No one at the Institute for American Values (Elizabeth’s employer) is suggesting that we bring back coverture or outlaw divorce, for example.<\/p>\n

    So what differentiates category A from category B? The general principle seems to be that although the government should encourage childrearing by married bio-parents, in the name of the common good, it shouldn’t do so at the expense of removing civil rights or endorsing outright discrimination.<\/p>\n

    Instead, the government is allowed to use the methods in category B: the government can cajole, the government can persuade, the government can educate.<\/p>\n

    Here’s what puzzles me: I’m sure that Elizabeth would agree that the government should be doing a lot to encourage a society in which more children are raised by married bio-parents. I’m sure that she would also agree that some means of doing this are acceptable, and some are not. I suspect that if she made a list of acceptable and unacceptable methods, it might look pretty similar to my two lists above.<\/p>\n

    It seems obvious to me that refusing to recognize same-sex marriage belongs in catagory A, similar to refusing to recognize divorce, refusing to recognize interracial marriage, and so forth. But Elizabeth must think it belongs in category B, similar to providing tax breaks and marriage education programs. And I genuinely don’t understand why.<\/p>\n

    This is, I think, the issue I’d like to see Elizabeth address – the missing piece of her argument. She clearly doesn’t favor everything <\/i>the government could do to reduce the number of divorced bio-parents – for instance, she doesn’t favor the government refusing to legally recognize divorce. So I’d like to know the rules she uses to catagorize things which are, and things which are not, acceptable ways for the government to encourage married bio-parenting; and why refusing to recognize same-sex marriages belongs in the “acceptable” category.<\/p>\n

    P.S. Many thanks to “Alas” reader Tina <\/b>for emailing me a solution to my table formatting problem!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Elizabeth at the Family Scholars Blog writes: Why am I writing this? Maybe to confuse everybody. Maybe to sort out my own feelings. Maybe to show friends like Barry that I really do have feelings. But I was happy for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}