Straw Poll
Which of the following statements is dumberer?
- Traditional marriage laws do not discriminate. Gays have the same right to marry members of the opposite sex that straights have.
- AIDS does not discriminate. Straight men who take it in the butt from other men are just as likely to get AIDS as gay men who take it in the butt from other men.
November 8th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” — Anatole France
November 8th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Both seem logical to me.
Phelps´s last blog ..Obama Doesn’t Care About Black People
November 8th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
I got to say I don’t quite understand the point here, but maybe I’m dumberer.
November 8th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Another way of putting this is a big-cat and a little-cat can go through a big-cat door, but the little cat can still go through a little cat door.
Or… if you get a pizza with anchovies and one without, the people who like anchovies get a choice while those that do not like anchovies do not.
Or, gays get to dumb-down what marriage means for there needs but heteros can not. Truth is both can de-mean marriage by considering marriage just a government welfare program to endorse their romantic needs. Its just the gays who have to.
On Lawn´s last blog ..Obama knocking men upside the head and Marriage Equality
November 8th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Both are equally dumberer.
November 9th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Like most “straw polls” it’s bad for the poll, but good for the straw – maybe.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
The first statement only misses the point but the second is entirely nonsensical.
November 10th, 2009 at 4:45 am
nk, if you think the first statement is missing the point, then you are missing the point of the statement. To expand the point of the statement: it expresses the view that marriage is a social institution with various purposes such as protecting women from sexual exploitation, preventing the most powerful men from ending up with all the women, and most importantly to provide for the raising of the children who are the natural consequence of heterosexual sexual behavior. These purposes all involve the union of a man and a woman and make no sense in the context of homosexual sodomy. Marriage is not, as the gay-marriage proponents would have us believe, just a way for the government to acknowledge that two people are living together and enjoy mutual sexual stimulation of some sort.
If a gay man wants to marry a woman and raise a family, the law allows him to do so. If he wants to engage in sodomy with another man, the law allows him to do so. What the law does not allow, and should not allow, is for him to force everyone to pretend that his relationship with his partner in sodomy is no different from the relationship between a man and woman. The two sorts of relationship are very different both in potential consequences (in the form of pregnancy) and in social value.
Living together to perform sodomy on one another has no social value at all and is not deserving of any social or government recognition at all. In fact, one of the great political mysteries of our day is why so many libertarians think the government should do so. Why in the world, from a libertarian perspective, should the government support an institution for the sole purpose of advertising ones sexual behavior?
November 10th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Marriage is a contract that society cosigns. And its reasons for cosigning or not cosigning need no reason, no more than a private individual needs to cosign or not to cosign. The law is not based on reason, it is based on experience.
nk´s last blog ..Bleach Movie 3: Fade to Black, I Call Your Name
November 10th, 2009 at 11:44 am
And Bleach Movie 3 etc. is not my blogpost. No way. Xrlq, you have a virus.
nk´s last blog ..Bleach Movie 3: Fade to Black, I Call Your Name
November 10th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
@nk,
Marriage is a specific status that society recognizes with incentives for a specific purpose.
I think marriage may have had a contract at one time (I’m aware of middle eastern customs would assign and record before the ceremony specific duties to each participant).
But seriously what other contract are you aware of that…
1) Can be unilaterally dissolved with no binding expectation for each participant, yet after dissolution are there legal expectations of both parties.
2) Holds the vows given between the participants as completely non-binding.
3) Binds third parties not present, not signed (or even co-signed) or even mentioned.
On Lawn´s last blog ..More Poll Dancing
November 11th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Joel: The point is that both sides play the same facile game of denying an obviously discriminatory impact when it suits them. Although in fairness to the “AIDS does not discriminate” crowd, they’re usually a bit less blatant about it than in my example.
NK: How is one statement more nonsensical than the other? Both are technically true, but both are meaningless because they imply that gays and straights are equally likely to engage in activities particular to one group. Not sure what’s up with CommentLuv, or why it only seems to be affecting your entries. Will look into it.
DR: I have to quibble with your statement that “Living together to perform sodomy on one another has no social value at all.” Living together long term to perform sodomy on one another monogamously does have some social value, if the alternative is not living together long term, and performing sodomy on more individuals, spreading more diseases, etc. Not the same social value as a traditional marriage, esp. one with kids, but some social value nonetheless. Agree or disagree, none of your argument makes #1 any less nonsensical. Your argument goes to the question of whether the law should discriminate as between gays and straights, not whether it does.
OL: Good point, especially re the vows. The marriage itself is very binding but the vows are not. Whether you pledged to stay with your wife “till death do us part” or merely “till I get bored of doin’ ya,” the procedure for obtaining a divorce is exactly the same. And, I might add, a hell of a lot more onerous than the procedure for terminating any other contract before its originally stated term has run. I can’t think of any other contract that can’t be torn up in an instant if both parties agree (perhaps this was NK’s point about society being a party to this alleged contract?).
Also, marriage is the only “contract” I’m aware of that radically renegotiates itself every time the couple moves to another state.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:39 am
I had the conceit that I knew what goes on between a man and a woman. I have long realized that I only know what goes on with me in relation to a certain woman. And I have no clue what goes on between a man and a man or a woman and a woman.
But as far as AIDS viruses go, it’s pretty straightforward. All they want is bodily fluid to bodily fluid contact and they do not care what irresponsible persons provide them the avenue.
November 11th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Perhaps the nonsensical part comes from the implication that humans’ complex social relationships matter the whit bit least in the scheme of Nature.
November 12th, 2009 at 7:12 am
NK, AIDS does not spread equally well, nor even comparably so, by just any old “bodily fluid to bodily fluid contact.” It spreads much more effectively through the blood stream. Unless you have genital sores already (as is typical in Africa, where other STDs are far more prevalent), vaginal sex is unlikely to result in any ripped tissue or bleeding, while anal sex is virtually guaranteed to.
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November 13th, 2009 at 12:50 am
Xrql, your point about the social value of reducing the spread of diseases is well-taken, but there is no particular reason to think that married homosexuals will have fewer sexual partners than unmarried homosexuals.
As to the otherlet me try an analogy. There is a social value in removing liter along the highways. Suppose a social institution called literage grew up around this practice and the law, in response to this institution starting licensing people for literage. You don’t have to be licensed to engage in literage, but there are some minor benefits that accrue if you are licensed.
Of course, there have always been people who walked along the highway without picking up liter. Suddenly these people starting saying that since they walk along the highway just like literagers, they should be able to get those neat literage licenses and have those romantic literage ceremonies. But, they clearly and openly have no intention of actually engaging in literage. They even have a theory about how they were born without the literage gene. They want to be considered literagers by society without actually being literagers.
Is it discriminatory to deny these people a literage license or to refuse to call them literagers? They have no intention of fulfilling the function for which the literage license is given so would be not only logically incorrect but also dishonest to treat them as literagers.
Even if their theory is correct and they have some gene which makes them less interested in literage than other people, it is still not discriminatory. No privilege is denied them that is allowed to other people. It is simply a privileges that is generally available to anyone, and which they are disposed not to take advantage of.
November 13th, 2009 at 7:14 am
Of course there’s a reason to think gays who want to commit to a single partner are likely to have fewer sexual partners than those who won’t. How much of this theory will convert into practice remains to be seen, as does the question of whether marriage is the appropriate vehicle for accomplishing this, but the state certainly does have a valid interest in encouraging gays and straights alike to have fewer sexual partners.
A better analogy to “literagers” would be if some people picked up certain types of garbage that the state really cared about seeing picked up, while the non-literagers picked up other garbage that they argue the state should care about just as much. In both your hypothetical case and the real one, decent arguments can be made that the discrimination in question is justifiable. It’s silly to argue that it’s not discrimination at all. Even under Jim Crow, blacks and whites alike had the right to have light skin and send their kids to white schools. No discrimination there; it’s just that whites were more predisposed to exercise their right to have light skin.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
It’s not silly, Xrlq, it’s a serious point. One that you can’t grasp because you refuse to even acknowledge the concept that traditionalists have of marriage.
But your analogy is better than you think. If you let blacks go to white schools, then they wouldn’t be white schools any more, would they? In the case of white schools, that’s a good thing. In the case of marriage it is not.
In my view, gays don’t want to get married at all. They want a license, they want to get together with a partner and have a ceremony. They want people to refer to them as a married couple. They arguably want to live together and only sodomize each other and not others. But none of that makes a marriage. They want the appearance of marriage without an actual marriage. An actual marriage involves a man and a woman.
If back in the 40′s a black man wanted his son to go to an all-white school on the grounds that just being all-white made a school more prestigious, then even if the law did not prevent it, it would be logically impossible. It is not possible for a black kid to go to an all-white school because as soon as the black kid enters, it’s no longer an all-white school.
Similarly, even where the government does license gay “marriage” it still isn’t a marriage; it is a farce.
As to your social-value argument: two gays can live together and be faithful to one another just like a heterosexual couple can. I doubt that the marriage ceremony makes much difference to their behavior in either case. There once was a time when there was social pressure not to commit adultery, but that time is no longer. In modern Western society, marriage no longer serves the function of enforcing faithfulness. It is entirely up to the ethics of the individuals.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Just a few thoughts…
re: school analogy;
If you ask me, a school that is built on the premise that its students cannot integrate with another group of students in any meaningfully scholastic way, is more like a homosexual relationship.
The premise of the school’s existence is their own specific (and personal) intolerance of an entire physical classification of people.
In that analogy, an one might argue (and they did back then) that all white school can exist in an integrated school district, as long as it is sufficient that the district is integrated. In fact, one might note it can only then be institutionally integrated along the lines of mutually allowing the intolerant (segregated schools) and tolerant (integrated schools).
That is essentially a argument about what level integration is supposed to occur at, or a scope of integration argument. I see no reason that we cannot discard that scope of integration argument from the same-sex marriage advocates the same way we dismissed it in Brown v Board of Education.
re: social value;
As far as the present day, I see a need for marriage equality. For me marriage equality is the equal recognition of rights and responsibilities of each gender and the child they potentially create and raise together. It is a procreative unit, the two genders and the potential outcome, and each in that enterprise should be equally held in recognition.
I see that need so clearly that I cringe at the thought of making that pursuit subservient to interests of those who personally have a pursuit of intolerance at heart.
That doesn’t mean any ill will or harm towards GLTB members. I want to see them recognized for the mutual respect and trust they show with each other. I hope it does make them more stable in their relationships. I think there is a good interest in recognizing mutual respect and trust with someone.
And I don’t see them as the only takers at the free-association reciprocal beneficiaries table, but that is a discussion for another day.
On Lawn´s last blog ..More Poll Dancing
November 13th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Doc:
Did I say silly? I meant to say beyond silly, as in beyond silly to argue that I “refuse to acknowledge” the traditional concept of marriage, which I’ve been espousing for years. What is silly is fixating on the word “discriminate” as though it were an inherently bad thing. All laws discriminate; the question is which discriminations are appropriate and which ones are not. Decent arguments can be made to the effect that the discrimination inherent in the traditional definition of marriage reasonable. Only sheer stupidity can underlie the claim that such laws don’t discriminate at all. Of course they do! They discriminate not only against gays, but also against the monogamous, and even against those predisposed to pledge monogamy before God and everyone rather than quietly practice it on their own. And speed limits discriminate against those predisposed to speed. Etc. Arguing that laws do not discriminate is a non-starter. The real argument is over where the state should vs. should not discriminate.
Sillier still is your argument that “even where the government does license gay marriage’ it still isn’t a marriage.” As a religious matter, marriage is whatever the tenets of your religion say it is. As a legal matter, it’s whatever the law says it is. Nothing more and nothing less.
OL:
Here’s where the analogy between single-sex marriage and single-race schools breaks down. No one advocates gay marriage to the exclusion of straight marriage. A law allowing people to marry members of their own sex but not the other would indeed be analogous to a law prohibiting the races from mingling, but by that reasoning, a law requiring people to marry the opposite sex is akin to reverse discrimination, forced busing, and all those other policies aimed at forcing the races to intermingle whether they wanted to or not. Not as bad as forced segregation in my book, but hardly exemplary, either.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
You forget that married couples automatically have spousal benefits such as health insurance, rights to decide health procedures for each other, even deciding if and when to pull the plug. (The law said Michael Schiavo was the decider about Terri, remember?) The spouse gets to decide funeral arrangements and has inheritance rights.
Same sex couples living together have none of that. (Families of homosexuals have even prohibited the partner to come to the funeral; hospitals won’t let them visit in intensive care.) If there are children, the partner can’t operate as a parent either.
Same sex relationships, just as heterosexual marriages, are not always only about sexual relations.
November 21st, 2009 at 6:53 pm
The dumb belief is that by labeling a rule a “discriminatory” it somehow negated the logic of the rule.
Akin to the dumb statement:
“anybody can operate on a human being provided they are a licensed doctor”
Discrimination, I tell you!!!
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:05 am
I’ve been out of town, but in case you are still reading this thread, Xrlq, you say, “…the traditional concept of marriage, which I’ve been espousing for years” but then you contradict yourself: “As a religious matter, marriage is whatever the tenets of your religion say it is. As a legal matter, it’s whatever the law says it is. Nothing more and nothing less.”
That is not the traditional concept of marriage. The traditional concept of marriage is that a man marries a woman and the two of them begin to create a family. Religions and laws merely codify and formalize a pre-existing institution. Neither religion nor law has any more power to change marriage into something else than they do for any other part of basic human nature.
The state can’t legislate that not defending yourself from a burglar is courage. It can’t legislate that when it taxes you and gives your money to Democrat client groups, that you are being charitable. And it can’t legislate that if two dudes take marriage vows that they are then a real married couple.
As to your point about the literal meaning of “discrimination”, yes, I got that. It’s sort of like mocking someone for saying that the sun moves through the sky, because in a pedantic, absolutist sense, it is not the sun that is moving but the earth.
November 23rd, 2009 at 6:48 am
There is no contradiction in endorsing the traditional definition of marriage, on the one hand, nad recognizing that the legal or religious definitions may differ, on the other. Most religions do define marriage in the more or less traditional way; a few do not. Most states define marriage in the more or less traditional way; a few do not. There is no contradiction in advocating X while acknowledging the law may advocate X’, any more than I am contradicting myself if I simultaneously (1) advocate a flat tax while (2) recognizing that under the Internal Revenue Code, as currently written, we don’t have one.
November 24th, 2009 at 12:06 am
I didn’t mean that you contradicted yourself in that way. What I meant is that you said that you acknowledge the traditional idea of marriage and then you show that you do not acknowledge it because you think that marriage is defined by religion or law. I mean “acknowledge” as in “recognize what the other person means by the term and understand it in that sense when the person uses the term”. It has nothing to do with advocacy, just simple reading with charity and comprehension.
When someone says that the law does not discriminate against gays (and by the way, “discriminate against” means something different from “discriminate among”) in the definition of marriage, they are relying on a definition of marriage where marriage is not defined by the law. Anyone who wants to get married can get married. No discrimination. What the gays want to do is not get married. They want to do something different and they want the law to pretend that what they are doing is getting married. This argument is perfectly coherent and reasonable once you acknowledge the way that it uses the word “marriage”.
As long as you continue to insist that marriage is an arbitrary construction of the state, then, of course, the argument makes no sense. But you are mocking an argument that you don’t understand.
November 24th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
With all due respect, Doc, if you *don’t* think marriage is defined by religion or law you are not playing with a full deck. What the hell else could it be defined by? Tradition? Well, traditions are no more immutable or no less arbitrary than laws and religion are. If anything, our nation’s traditions have changed a hell of lot more than either our religion or our laws have. It’s all well and good to argue what marriage *should* be, but to pretend that it *is* anything other than what your church and/or state say it is is pure fantasy.
If/when you return to earth, where legal marriage is a construct of the state and ceremonial/religious marriage is a construct of religion, we can resume our discussion as to what the definition of a marriage ought to be. But there can be no reasonable debate as to what it *is.*
November 25th, 2009 at 2:57 am
OK, so then you are mocking people for using a different definition of marriage than you use.
I’m pretty sure that you aren’t interested in reading an argument about the nature of marriage as an extension of the nature of men, women, and societies, and I know I’m not interested in writing one, so I’ll just note that there is an alternative to “defined by the state” and “defined by religion” and that this alternative is not just tradition, it has strong philosophical roots dating back at least to Aristotle.
You can mock it, but with all due respect, I’ll suggest that you don’t understand the viewpoint well enough to justify your judgmental attitude towards it. And this is true whether the viewpoint is correct or not. Someone can be wrong without being mock-worthy.
November 25th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Close. I’m mocking people for using made-up definitions of a word that are shared by no one, and which they themselves haven’t even articulated. There is no such thing as a “marriage” in nature. States have the concept, and religions do, too, but once you reject both without offering a credible alternative in their place, you might as just say that marriage is whatever you say it is, because you said so. And that is indeed mock-worthy, whether it is right on the substantive issue or not.
Let me ask you this: if a man and a woman do all the things that you think constitute a “marriage,” but never jump through the hoops needed for it to constitute a “marriage” under the laws of their state of domicile, are they “married?” And if so, why?
November 27th, 2009 at 11:12 am
I think I’m going to weigh in on this also.
Doc, for how much I’m in your camp on this, the definition of marriage is not fixed. But, that is the problem. Since it is fluid, it can change and as society adopts other definitions it undermines the ability to recognize and protect waht real marriage was meant to protect.
I’ve argued with many people (xrlq not among them) which try to wedge that if anyone things marriage means just “two people” (or what I call neutered marriage) then it means that for everyone. Given their stance I can understand the need to hunt that down on the individual level. But I don’t think that is neccessary, nor proper.
Because, given the fluidity of what marriage can mean and the potential each definition has to inspire different behaviors, I think it is important to concede the fluidity and even ambiguity and then argue in why marriage needs to mean what you expect it to mean.
A good example of that exchange was when I was arguing with the Sci-Fi author John Scalzi.
In the end, the fact that the Dictionary recognizes two definitions worked against his own argument (and consequently, I feel, yours as well). Sure it showed how incompatible the definitions are, but it also showed they both exist.
Having conceded that the debate is on the merits of each definition, and not our own ability to dismiss the other, I’ve found an easy win every time.
Marriage as it stands now, or at least as I see it in its most inspiring form, is to ensure equality. It is to ensure the equality of each member of a procreational unit, the man the woman and the child they potentially have together. Primarily it is the child who’s considered last in the debate, and they should be considered first.
Children benefit the most from seeing the two identities who combined to create their own, love, honor, respect, and cherish each other. It teaches personal responsibility, tolerance and the ability to share power with influence — the most noble self-governing principles we can have if you ask me. They learn their own heritage and link to the past (which in turn teaches a respect for history).
While there are many ways to try to provide most of that outside of a marriage, there is no way to provide all of that.
Now, perhaps it is because I’m a pragmatist rather then a logical disciplinarian that I take that platform. But since I see marriage as something that needs a sort of revival among all of society, I’m happiest choosing the dualing grounds such that it requires me to extol the virtues of real marriage. Nothing shows what we are losing with neutered marriage more then showing what is protected and recognized by real marriage.
On Lawn´s last blog ..Crossing Party Lines: Marriage in North East