I am of the belief that the government should not be saying who is and isn't married. Marriage is a religious institution, and should be used for the religions that use that. That would also mean if a 'Church of Reformed Satanism' had a marriage, is to let them.
The problem is we have a system that looks towards 'ordained' religious positions for our tax record. So this country mixes up person rights with religious gunk.
The legal question then, after removing religious stuff: do GLBT people have the right to have a relationship respected for tax and governmental reasons? I see no justification for taking rights away because of their brain chemistry.
Marriage is not a right and it is not a default state. (Legal) marriage can only exist when a government explicitly defines the relationship and then issues privileges based on that definition. Marriage is a positive action. There is nothing to take away; gay rights activists are not just asking to be left alone, they're asking that we explicitly expand our definition to include their relationships. As above, it is not a forgone conclusion that the incentives for encouraging the citizenry to engage in permanent heterosexual relationships are applicable to homosexual relationships. It is a matter that must be considered separately.
Suppose I offer friend X twenty dollars. Now suppose friend Y also demands twenty dollars, and accuses me of violating my offer when I refuse it. That is what is happening here -- heterosexual and homosexual relationships are DIFFERENT and deserve independent consideration. Most communities have decided they want to offer an incentive for permanent heterosexual coupling; the same reasoning can NOT necessarily automatically be extrapolated and applied to homosexual coupling, just as I may offer friend X some money because he is poor or I owe him one or something like that, but that reasoning doesn't always automatically include friend Y. No right is being denied here.
Furthermore, no punishment is made due to "brain chemistry"; we are not testing individuals and discarding them based on the presence of certain biological markers (either externally or internally visible) that exist through no personal or direct fault. We are simply choosing that we do not want to incentivize, endorse, or equalize permanent homosexual coupling as we do with permanent heterosexual coupling. Such coupling is an independent affirmative action that does not involve one's brain chemistry.
I don't see why government should define marriage at all. If anything, it seems we could do with a little discouraging of heterosexual relationships.
If your religion wants to define marriage, cool. If a gay person's religion defines marriage, then that's cool, too.
But if you want special privileges from the government (like tax breaks) for your religious status, then you need to accept everybody's definition of marriage.
>I don't see why government should define marriage at all. If anything, it seems we could do with a little discouraging of heterosexual relationships.
Sure, this position can exist. It simply doesn't reflect the status quo or have much to do with whether the state should expand marital privileges to cover homosexuals. This is basically an entirely different and opposite campaign: "Stop encouraging permanent coupling all together" instead of "please give more people special encouragement to couple permanently". Also, this argument is what is sometimes meant by "gay marriage will destroy marriage" -- you're extrapolating that based on the contentious attitudes around the gay marriage debate, marriage should stop being a legal thing. This is pretty much as close as you can get to "destroying marriage" in an objective or technical sense.
>But if you want special privileges from the government (like tax breaks) for your religious status, then you need to accept everybody's definition of marriage.
wut. If religions only qualified as religious institutions if they accepted everything the government said, the only religion that would exist would be "nationalism".
Further, from the referenda that keep saying "no" to gay marriage, I think "everybody's definition of marriage" may be better aligned with the predominant religious view anyway...
Not an argument against your primary point, really just semanitcs, but: "everybody's definition of marriage", is very different than what you may suggest is more in line with "the general/average definition of marriage" If you accept "everybody's definition of marriage" You need to accept what everybody things marriage is, which does include people that think it can be homosexual in nature. While it also includes people that think it cannot be, it stands to reason that accepting most forms of marriage would be less harmful, since that government recognition of marriage doesn't mean that I, or my religion has to recognize the marriage. I will not however comment on the validity of "accepting everybody's definition of marriage" only trying to bring coherency to the discussion so that we aren't just arguing semantics.
>Sure, this position can exist. It simply doesn't reflect the status quo or have much to do with whether the state should expand marital privileges to cover homosexuals. This is basically an entirely different and opposite campaign: "Stop encouraging permanent coupling all together" instead of "please give more people special encouragement to couple permanently". Also, this argument is what is sometimes meant by "gay marriage will destroy marriage" -- you're extrapolating that based on the contentious attitudes around the gay marriage debate, marriage should stop being a legal thing. This is pretty much as close as you can get to "destroying marriage" in an objective or technical sense.
You know what, I'm not sure I see the downside there? The concept that certain people should get special privileges from the government is a concept that should be destroyed, IMO.
> wut. If religions only qualified as religious institutions if they accepted everything the government said, the only religion that would exist would be "nationalism".
You've got it backwards. Marriage started out as a religious thing, dating back thousands of years. Only recently has the government stepped in and had anything to do with it. So if the government wants to be involved in the religious matter of marriage, they need to be more accepting of other religions that may define marriage differently.
>You know what, I'm not sure I see the downside there? The concept that certain people should get special privileges from the government is a concept that should be destroyed, IMO.
The downside is that it results in overall diminished social stability and cohesion. Marriage helps families by providing heavy incentives for partners to settle their differences and stay coupled rather than get frustrated and split. It provides a foundation of stability for and an obligation to children. It protects a dependent spouse (say, a mother who chooses to stay home and care for her children instead of producing her own income) from abandonment by supplying the dependent with legal recourse for support even if the breadwinner decides to blow it. It creates a default set of conditions for emergencies, death, etc., that would otherwise have to be defined contractually. It creates a social pressure for young couples to settle down and start having children.
I understand much of this is diminishing in the face of no-fault divorce and concerted efforts to make alternate lifestyles appear glamorous or beneficial (when in reality they are filled with despair, confusion, and turmoil), but that is the promise and benefit of legal marriage.
Simply deleting the term "marriage" and making everything a "civil union" for the sake of the feelings of religious people is ultimately vain. The same net negative effects occur from the equivocation of permanent heterosexual coupling and permanent homosexual coupling. Or did you mean we should do away with any default legal benefit and do all marriage-type relationships individually through contracts, etc.?
> Marriage helps families by providing heavy incentives for partners to settle their differences and stay coupled rather than get frustrated and split
Yes, except it doesn't seem to be working.
> It protects a dependent spouse (say, a mother who chooses to stay home and care for her children instead of producing her own income) from abandonment by supplying the dependent with legal recourse for support even if the breadwinner decides to blow it
In theory yes...in point of fact, it doesn't always work out that way.
I could pick apart your extremely loose reasoning more, but let's get down to brass tacks. Your entire argument is predicated on the notion that "family" === Mother, Father, and biological children. This is patently absurd.
There are millions of infertile, adoptive, heterosexual couples who by your implicit argument don't deserve the protections and rights of marriage. However, if you expand the definition to include them, you must include homosexual couples too.
You're partially right. Marriage encourages stability. I would disagree that is the only reason for it though. More importantly what you're missing is that it's beneficial to society to have ALL families stable...regardless of whether they have biological children or not. It makes for a healthier and happier population.
>Your entire argument is predicated on the notion that "family" === Mother, Father, and biological children. This is patently absurd.
I disagree. Rather than patently absurd, I think it is a natural and biological imperative that the traditional nuclear family is ideal.
I believe that children who do not have a conventional male/female parental duality (i.e., a permanent "mother" and "father" figure that operate as the dominate force in the child's development) are instantly disadvantaged.
>There are millions of infertile, adoptive, heterosexual couples who by your implicit argument don't deserve the protections and rights of marriage.
This is false; my argument does not exclude heterosexual relationships even amongst infertile people. First, there is the possibility these persons will become fertile; we cannot say for sure that they will not. Secondly, in a home ruled by a permanent heterosexual coupling, there is both a permanent mother figure and a permanent father figure for adopted children. I believe that duality is a majorly important part of the functional development of a child, and therefore intentionally placing a ward in the home of a permanent homosexual coupling is placing them at a serious disadvantage. A home ruled by a permanent homosexual coupling by definition does not have a mother and father figure that fill their respective roles; instead, they have "two dads" or "two moms".
Thirdly, even if a heterosexual coupling can never have or adopt children, it is valuable because it promotes a tradition of stability, garnishes the minds of those who observe its operation with thoughts of elevation, unity, and eternity, and allows individuals who, normally through no personal fault, are infertile to retain dignity and honor among their peers. Fertility is a very personal medical issue and we shouldn't need to broadcast it. I would also like to establish that in this context, polygyny is rather reasonable.
This doesn't mean that mockeries of the true way, like permanent homosexual coupling, are passable; these are counterfeits, minted by confused and misguided individuals. They are no replacement for a permanent heterosexual coupling. As such, we have no interest in the government actively encouraging them and awarding special privileges to practitioners.
First, every negative thing you mention there happens all the time, and it's done by straight people in heterosexual marriages. Where's the gay connection?
All of the positive things you mention are generic arguments in favor of marriage that could be applied just as well to gay marriage. You're completely leaving out the part about why one group of people can marry, but another group can't.
Edit: Also, your Wikipedia link actually backs up my argument that marriage has historically been a religious institution, so I'm not sure what you're going for there, or how it explains why the government needed to get involved.
>First, every negative thing you mention there happens all the time, and it's done by straight people in heterosexual marriages. Where's the gay connection?
There isn't one. You asked what the downside was to deleting legal marriage entirely.
>Edit: Also, your Wikipedia link actually backs up my argument that marriage has historically been a religious institution, so I'm not sure what you're going for there, or how it explains why the government needed to get involved.
You said that "only recently" had governments started supplying benefits to married persons. This is false. As Wikipedia shows, there was legal recognition in various jurisdictions from ancient times. If you mean to say that there are few instances of purely secular marital law until recently, then sure, but also note that until the American Revolution there were few states without an officially-sanctioned state religion, so the religious tradition and the enforceable legal body may not be separate. Israel, for instance, enforced law related to marriage; adulterers were prosecuted, etc. etc. Likewise throughout history. Here's a whole page on "Ancient Greek Marriage Law", indicating non-recent legal recognition of marriage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_marriage_law
> > First, every negative thing you mention there happens all the time, and it's done by straight people in heterosexual marriages. Where's the gay connection?
> There isn't one. You asked what the downside was to deleting legal marriage entirely.
So there's a downside to deleting legal marriage entirely. So there must be some smaller downside to disallowing it partially. Why are you for that downside?
Because I don't believe homosexual coupling is good (for reasons listed elsewhere in this thread), so I don't believe that the government should promote it. As I stated originally, it's not a forgone conclusion that the reasons we want to promote heterosexual coupling are not necessarily applicable to homosexual coupling.
I do believe that heterosexual coupling is good, and I believe that it's good for the government to accept that marriage is a near-universal practice and its implementation may be codified officially in law and modified by nuptial contracts where applicable rather than leaving the whole thing blank, waiting until a legally illiterate spouse because widowed and/or abandoned, and leaving that person with no recourse against the abandonment and/or death, mechanism to gain control of shared property, etc. I think it's debatable whether the government should be in the business of providing less crucial incentives, like tax breaks, or whether that operates best as a non-governmental function.
> Suppose I offer friend X twenty dollars. Now suppose friend Y also demands twenty dollars, and accuses me of violating my offer when I refuse it
That's a false analogy. The government has a different responsibility to it's citizens than you would have to two of your friends. You are free to treat your friend differently based on any arbitrary criteria you choose...it's a relationship that is an extremely poor model for understanding how government works. The fact that you would bring something like that up, does not bode well for your argument that your ability to reason is intact.
The Government has a responsibility to treat all of it's citizens exactly the same. If it treats one group differently it has to have some pretty solid reasons. In the United States, the "default action" is that you are free to pursue your life as you wish unless the state has a compelling reason to stop you...furthermore if the Government extends some privilege to some ALL must have the opportunity to pursue it, if only in theory.
> There is nothing to take away; gay rights activists are not just asking to be left alone
This is extremely specious reasoning. By that rationale many atrocities of history are justified...the slaves wanted us to expand our definition of "human" and "free man".
> Furthermore, no punishment is made due to "brain chemistry"; we are not testing individuals and discarding them based on the presence of certain biological markers (either externally or internally visible)
This is based on an extremely dubious and narrow definition of "punishment".
> We are simply choosing that we do not want to incentivize, endorse, or equalize permanent homosexual coupling as we do with permanent heterosexual coupling.
Yes precisely. Except the government can't just randomly decide to "incentivize" one life style over another for no particular reason. We "incentiveize" a murder-free life style because it's necessary to have a functioning society.
There's absolutely no evidence that homosexuality is harmful to individuals or society at large. There's no reason to actively discriminate against it, which is what is going on.
At some point in time, some group of people sat down and decided marriage was between a man and a woman...that was an act of actively discriminating against another group of people. It's natural that it takes an action to rectify it....just as slavery couldn't be stopped by all the white people suddenly deciding to be nice to black people.
The sorry state of marriage rights in this country exists only by virtue of how indifferent and ignorant the general population is. The good news is that just as we look back in horror at the times we burned people at the stake, the people of the future will look back at the time we finally started to respect people's personal lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, they will probably be seeking comfort from some new horror.
>That's a false analogy. The government has a different responsibility to it's citizens than you would have to two of your friends. [...] The fact that you would bring something like that up, does not bode well for your argument that your ability to reason is intact.
It's a narrow analogy meant to illustrate one specific point. It is reasonable to say that the analogy is not applicable to a government because it has an obligation to treat citizens legally (meaning that everything offered to one group must be offered to another), but this hardly seems a universally settled question. If we follow it, why are veterans given special benefits (because we "owe them one", as stated in the analogy for Friend A), and less justifiably, why does affirmative action exist? What about federal contracting quotas for minority or women-owned businesses? etc.
There are many cases where a distinction between groups is reasonable, despite your assertion that the government is obligated to treat all citizens identically. This applies even less to same sex marriage, though, because there is no inherent classification based on unchangeable effects or attributes. Sexual orientation does not enter into it; the government refuses to sanction or endorse same sex marriages for anybody. If I take another male to the marriage office, they will deny me based on my action, regardless of whether I have a natural sexual attraction to that person or not; I do not qualify for marriage because I have not met the defined requirements for the benefits the state has offered, not because I am a member of a certain biological group (as occurs in race, age, or sex discrimination). You do not have to try to marry someone or gain a governmental endorsement on your relationship just because you have a sexual attraction to that someone.
>This is extremely specious reasoning. By that rationale many atrocities of history are justified...the slaves wanted us to expand our definition of "human" and "free man".
No, if we did not have a special classification for "blacks" / "slaves" in the slavery era they would have existed as free men and there would be no force that could compel them to obey someone who claimed to be their master. This is what a natural right is: something that exists naturally and cannot be given by any entity; it can only be abused or protected. Self-direction is a natural right. Special endorsement, licensure, and privilege granted by the government to participants in a certain interpersonal relationship in exchange for certain social commitments ("we promise not to break up", etc.) (that is, marriage) is not a natural right; it is, in fact, something that can't even exist without the exercise of some fundamental criteria.
>At some point in time, some group of people sat down and decided marriage was between a man and a woman...that was an act of actively discriminating against another group of people.
You presume that the originators of marriage meant it as an arrangement between any two adults. It was not conceived as "let's make this agreement for any grown-ups that want to live together ... except gay people, because they're yucky". In the first place, the concept of marriage was a gift from God to mankind. That is where the idea originated (just as the idea of the existence of God was given to mankind as a gift from God, and passed through the generations by our fathers).
Legally it is conceived as a mechanism to promote general social cohesion by providing stability and legal recourse for nuclear families. Homosexuality itself is contrary to this cohesion, so it is counterproductive to extend marital benefits to homosexual couplings.
>There's absolutely no evidence that homosexuality is harmful to individuals or society at large. There's no reason to actively discriminate against it, which is what is going on.
I disagree that we are "actively discriminating". I see it as not just not giving into spurious political and ideological demands without basis. Even if a person believes that permanent homosexual coupling is a fine and good course, this is not in itself an argument to give special privileges to its participants.
>It's natural that it takes an action to rectify it....just as slavery couldn't be stopped by all the white people suddenly deciding to be nice to black people.
Except that if all the white people actually had decided to "start being nice", where "nice" means respectful of natural rights to autonomy, there really wouldn't have been any more slaves. All of the masters would have let them go and not exercised any compulsion on them anymore. Even if the books still said a person could do this, there would effectively be no slavery in your hypothetical where all the white people decide to be "nice".
Gay couples will gain no extra privilege, endorsement, or promotion from the government even if "all the straight people start being 'nice' to the gay people", where an analogous meaning of "nice" is applied (i.e., 'left alone', not 'given whatever they ask for').
>How dare those gays demand to be treated like everyone else? How very dare they?
Everyone else is treated this way. I cannot take another man and try to marry him. In the government's eyes, same-sex partners simply do not qualify for the benefits provided by marriage. It is the same as attempting to apply for welfare while making $250k/yr, or whatever; it's nothing personal or discriminatory to an unchangeable attribute of my biological makeup, the government just has not decided it is in its interest to give money out to people who make $250k/yr. Likewise, the government has not decided it is in its interest to grant privileges to permanent homosexual couples.
As I have stated elsewhere, this is fundamentally different from denying any privilege simply due to an external, unchangeable physical attribute like ethnicity; if no black people could get any welfare, that would be bad, but because it takes positive action, intent, and forethought to make $250k/yr (even if it is just in claiming the cash offered via inheritance, etc.) or to bring another person of the same sex and request a marriage license, these are valid points of "discrimination". All citizens are being treated equally; no one is allowed to qualify for a marriage license with a same sex partner, regardless of any other consideration, just as no one is allowed to qualify for welfare with a $250k/yr salary.
Any argument in favor of gay marriage must establish why it is in the the state's interest to grant privileges to permanent homosexual couples, just as any claimaint who wants to gather welfare despite his $250k/yr salary must establish why it is in the state and/or community's interest to give him that welfare.
You can pretend that homosexuality is a conscious choice akin to earning more money than someone else, it just increases the pity I feel for you.
Luckily, you're on the losing side of the trend, as more and more states and countries in the world pass laws that promote equality.
I shall now let you have the last word. Have a lovely life, and try to find a way to eradicate that hate you have in your heart - it's the Christian thing to do.
The problem is we have a system that looks towards 'ordained' religious positions for our tax record. So this country mixes up person rights with religious gunk.
The legal question then, after removing religious stuff: do GLBT people have the right to have a relationship respected for tax and governmental reasons? I see no justification for taking rights away because of their brain chemistry.