Last winter Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George posted online their paper What is Marriage?, a comprehensive, accessible argument for the view that marriage necessarily involves one man and one woman. The article was an unlikely hit, climbing to become the number one paper on SSRN after being downloaded over 28,000 times.
The paper has received responses from some of the nation’s most prominent legal scholars, but one of the most provocative responses came—somewhat unexpectedly—from the managing editor of National Review, Jason Lee Steorts.
Steorts’s argument—which, Girgis dryly notes in his response, is “hard to rephrase without seeming to ridicule”—urges us to view marriage as a “maximal experiential union”, the kind of union that can be enjoyed as fully by same-sex couples as by opposite-sex couples. Girgis explains:
First, Steorts’s view of marriage as maximal experiential union misconstrues what is essential for marital love. After all, if a certain emotional state (being in love) were necessary, as Steorts suggests, then it would be impossible to commit sincerely to marriage. For this would require promising to keep up feelings, over which you have no direct control, and you can’t sincerely promise to secure what you can’t control. Moreover, true unity depends on the presence of a genuinely shared good, but feelings are inherently private. (As Steorts admits in another connection, “each of us is trapped in his own experience.”) So feelings can only give valuable texture and depth to individuals’ separate appreciations of another good, which is shared. That is why fixation on feelings can make love degenerate into selfish (even if reciprocal) gratification.
April 8th, 2011 | 4:29 pm
Matthew, you write Girgis’s tightly argued–and quite devastating–response is a model of how to debate charitably without pulling any punches, and you’re absolutely right. It’s almost surprising how thoroughly Girgis dismantles Steorts argument.
April 8th, 2011 | 5:10 pm
Sherif Girgis is brilliant.
This, coupled with the fact that he probably doesn’t shave yet, gives me hope.
April 8th, 2011 | 6:00 pm
The basic problem seems to be that some people do not want to recognize gender as a reality, nor do they want to accept that bodily reality could have consequences.
Having failed at achieving material domination over nature, they want a sort of mental domination – to make reality conform to their will simply by believing it so.
(Wish I could remember the name of the guy who said, “Reality is that which pushes back”)
April 8th, 2011 | 6:02 pm
BTW Steort’s response to Girgis seems to me to miss his point.
Or am I missing something?
April 8th, 2011 | 6:35 pm
I, too, was impressed with Gergis’s response to Steorts–except for one thing. Gergis does not convincingly answer Steorts’s point about the non-procreativity of sterile and aged heterosexual couples. Such couples can’t procreate, so in what sense do they have an orientation to procreation? Not any clear and convincing sense. So the problem remains–how do we distinguish the case of non-procreative sterile and aged couples from the case of non-procreative homosexual couples?
Gergis and his allies are unwilling to state the obvious answer: only opposite-sex couples have an intrinsic capacity to procreate. Such an answer would take them into the “forbidden” domain of a robust (metaphysical) conception of human nature and away from the strong emphasis on practical reason that is their trademark.
April 8th, 2011 | 9:58 pm
KDZ: The section of their original article that addresses that very issue starts with: “To form a real marriage, a couple needs to establish and live out the kind of union that would be completed by, and be apt for, procreation and child‐rearing. Since any true and honorable harmony between two people has value in itself (not merely as a means), each such comprehensive union of two people—each permanent, exclusive commitment sealed by or‐ ganic bodily union—certainly does as well.
Any act of organic bodily union can seal a marriage, whether or not it causes conception.” There is, as with the rest of this article, far more to their argument than this, but this is where it starts.
April 8th, 2011 | 11:04 pm
Steorts is an editor? His rebuttal doesn’t even make sense, and his complete misunderstanding of what it means for a thing to be “oriented to” (or “ordered to”) something else displays either willful misunderstanding or unfamiliarity with general gist of the argument he’s chiming in on — either way, deplorable in an editor.
April 9th, 2011 | 5:07 am
KDZ
The public, legal object of marriage is not procreation, but filiation, the establishment of a clear, certain and incontestable paternity. Hence the two maxims “Mater semper certa est” [The mother is always certain] and its counterpart, “Pater est is quae nuptiae demonstrant” [The father is he whom marriage points out]
This is why the law not only permits, but facilitates marriage in extremis. No one expects a death-bed marriage to lead to procreation.
Any attempt to exclude the sterile would involve a burdensome, intrusive and costly investigation and an upper age limit, such as that of the Lex Papia Poppaea would be arbitrary, especially given modern advances in assisted reproduction.
April 9th, 2011 | 6:38 am
I, too, was impressed with Gergis’s response to Steorts–except for one thing. Gergis does not convincingly answer Steorts’s point about the non-procreativity of sterile and aged heterosexual couples. Such couples can’t procreate, so in what sense do they have an orientation to procreation?
Feminists have documented how women do not just lose their earnings during the years they are bearing children, specifically.
When a woman has a child, her entire career arc bends downward – she does not just lose a few years’ earnings, but loses also the future earnings that are built on and from those few years (including future promotions and future retirement).
One of the primary reasons for marriage has always been the fact that women who become mothers need taking care of – not only while they are pregnant but over the course of their whole life-span, they have a claim on society that is specific to their gender, and the rightful person to do the care-taking is the husband, because the two of them together make a family unit.
If there were some way to identify in advance which women would not have children – in a way that could be both accurate and not intrusive or abusive – then it would be justified to restrict childless couples from marital benefits (as was the case in times and places where infertility, impotence, etc. were grounds for annulment).
However, childless couples are ultimately not really gaming the system, because their situation is not the same as homosexuals, but mirror opposite: they are eligible for benefits they will not use, while homosexuals are trying to use benefits they are not eligible for
(starting with the right to found a family with someone other than the person they intend to procreate with – an imbalance of the distribution of rights and responsibilities that gives them the power to treat the other two members of the actual biological family as goods, one to be used and discarded, and the other to be traded or sold like a commodity).
What marriage is may be one question that we argue over, but state’s interest in marriage is far more visible and obvious: the state regulates the contract between two people who agree to found a family together, and when marriage benefits are upheld in their traditional way, neither men nor women are vulnerable to be taken advantage of, and the child is less likely to be abandoned by one or both parents.
Gay marriage is an inversion of that: it becomes a situation where the state is formally encouraging men and women to exploit vulnerable people, so that the biological family is broken up and “sold for parts”.
April 9th, 2011 | 6:39 am
BTW I got the quote (earlier) wrong -
It is supposed to be “Reality is that which resists”.
(And I still can’t remember who said it.)
:(
April 9th, 2011 | 7:27 pm
“Marriage is before all else a matter of the will”
True. But why person “x” and not “y”? The writer makes it sound as if there is nothing particularly unique or special about the qualities of one’s spouse that should make them want to make that commitment in the first place. Any person will do. Just say “yes” and it will all fall into place?
Does anyone honestly believe it works like that?
April 10th, 2011 | 4:10 pm
Brian,
The only part of the quote I would quibble with is the reference to “the kind of union . . . apt for procreation.” I think it’s ambiguous and equivocal. Does *union* refer to procreative sex (actual or potential baby-making) or to procreational (procreative-type) sex? Is the reference to a token or to a type? It’s not clear. Indeed, Gergis et. al. seem to equivocate between the two (this is the fallacy of equivocation). Equivocal in the same way is “acts of a generative kind.”
Consider, in a more general way, the fact that in traditional marriage there are already two separate categories of married couple, namely those whose sexual acts are theoretically capable of causing procreation but will never in fact cause procreation, and those whose sexual acts are not only theoretically capable of causing procreation but sometimes will in fact cause procreation. This is not just a difference in degree; it is two kinds of married couples. If there are two kinds, same-sex marriage enthusiasts think, why not three? The third type of married couple might be those whose sexual acts (within the bonds of commitment), although not reproductive in type, are conducive to intimate communion.
To avoid this prospect, the argument against same-sex marriage should be tied to a metaphysical account of human nature. To me, this begins with a simple human-nature capability: the intrinsic (actual or ideal) capacity of mature opposite-sex couples to procreate. This criterion of eligibility for marriage is relevant precisely because the institution of marriage presupposes the general fact of procreation. Different arguments can be erected on the basis of these two basic social facts about marriage, but the one I prefer points up the incoherence, and thus the illegitimacy, of same-sex marriage as a type of institution of marriage.
Michael PS,
I mostly agree. You are focusing, however, on the community of marriage, whereas I’m focusing on the institution of marriage, and the (causal) role of procreation within it.
You seem to imply that sterile and aged couples don’t have real marriages–they are allowed to marry only because of practical, not moral, considerations. Whereas I believe that both today and in ages past they were allowed to marry simply because they have an intrinsic capacity to procreate. As such, their marriages are morally grounded and fully real, even if lacking in a perfection of the good of marriage.
Blake,
Please see the second paragraph of my response to Michael PS. It applies to you even more so.
Gail F.,
Please see my response to Brian on equivocation.
The first five sentences of the response of Jason Lee Steorts to the criticism of Sherif Gergis are so salutary (on *one* point) that I can only attribute your claim that Steorts is either willfully perverse or inexcusably ignorant to dogmatism. Steorts, it’s true, does not peel enough layers of skin from the onion to show that ambiguity or equivocation is a problem with the Girgis et. al. argument, and he has probably never heard of the “fallacy of equivocation,” but he is basically pointing to an example of it. That’s what counts, at least according to the principle of interpretive charity.
April 10th, 2011 | 7:15 pm
I have a very basic question that I hope someone can answer. Is there such a thing as marriage? If so, with what precision can marriage be defined? George et al. say:
Does this mean that polygamous marriage (both polygynous and polyandrous) is not really marriage? Does it mean that those who marry after divorce (when the former spouse is still alive) are not married? Most states do not require a marriage to be consummated in order to be valid. If a man and a woman are legally married but do not consummate the marriage, are they not “really” married?
Are anthropologists incorrect to try to make a rather broad definition of marriage that incorporates all “marriage-like” arrangements, or should marriage be defined independent of actual human practice and then should anthropologists say who is married and who is not married rather than try to fit, say, polygamists into their definition?
George et al., as I understand it, are giving a “natural law” definition of marriage, but I believe this (from the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia) still represents Catholic thought:
One can imagine, I think, cases in which polygamy would become acceptable. Say, for example, that some disease that affected only men exterminated 95% of the male population before a cure was found. I can only imagine that under the circumstances, even those religiously opposed (I am thinking of Christians and Jews) to polygamy under present circumstances would not look to the Old Testament/Hebrew scripture and find polygamy acceptable for at least a certain period of time.
I am just skeptical about putting forth something that is the definition of marriage. Of course, I am sure all reasonable people would agree that marriage can be defined to some extent. We can all agree that a human cannot marry a tree, for example, although we don’t seem to have a problem, in science fiction, with humans marrying nonhumans (the Vulcan Sarek and the human Amanda Grayson married and their son was Mr. Spock), or in mythology with gods marrying mortals.
One more semi-random thought. I think in our current definition of marriage, the consent of both (all) spouses is essential, but it would seem for most of history and in most societies, marriages were arranged, and neither spouse (but the woman in particular) had much say in whether to marry or whom to marry.
I am just wondering if the definition of marriage in “What Is Marriage?” applies to what most of us would consider, both in history and in contemporary life, to be marriage.
April 11th, 2011 | 2:10 am
The fact that a marriage is arranged does not exclude the consent. In fact, among Muslims the girl must gave explicit consent at the wedding.
April 11th, 2011 | 7:09 am
You seem to imply that sterile and aged couples don’t have real marriages–they are allowed to marry only because of practical, not moral, considerations. Whereas I believe that both today and in ages past they were allowed to marry simply because they have an intrinsic capacity to procreate. As such, their marriages are morally grounded and fully real, even if lacking in a perfection of the good of marriage.
There are two different subjects at stake here.
You are talking about the reality of “what is marriage”.
I am talking about the state’s interest in marriage.
The two are related, but not necessarily identical.
The two obstacles I see to gay marriage from the point of view of the state’s recognition of it are:
1. that gays want to misrepresent themselves as a “family”, meaning specifically the same in kind as a biological kinship union. Gay unions may be a family in a metaphoric sense – as may be other social units that are very like a family (some close-knit church communities may be more “like a family” than some real families), but the actual meaning of the word “family” must IMO be preserved to mean biological kinship union, and marriage’s role in that kinship union must remain clear.
If our conception of marriage becomes such that “life partnership” is essential to it, and “life partnership” is defined in terms that include both spiritual and sexual concepts, then we must also recognize that there is a conflict whenever a person makes a baby with someone other than his “life partner”. There are a variety of options for how we may resolve the situation, but the simplistic and short-sighted idea of just changing the conception of what it means to have a family, or what it means to procreate, is not a good option.
Even if we did end up going with that option, we should have a debate that goes into all the ramifications of what we’re proposing, and examines those consequences honestly, instead of silencing debate and pretending this is merely “just” a matter of whether you are tolerant of gays. The consequences are far-reaching, and we should understand what we’re signing before we make fundamental structural changes.
2. the second problem I have is that one group wants to impose its views of sexuality on the entire nation. The one group I am referring to is what I will call humanism and its offshoots – including Unitarian Universalism and also including “liberal” religions that have modified their original belief system to accommodate humanists (I believe such religions must rightly be categorized as hybrid, since their fundamental belief systems have sacrificed integrity in order to pursue compromise).
Humanism wants its own definitions to be taken as the one true way to view sexuality. But it is not clear to me why that is any different than any other belief-group trying to force its beliefs on outsiders, or any other belief-group trying to enshrine its unique beliefs as the law of the land.
It is a violation of religious freedom. It is one thing to say you cannot discriminate against people based on who they are (for instance, testing people to make sure they don’t have any “gay genes” would be wrong). But gays are trying to extend the definition of “discrimination” to include behaviors and lifestyles – so that people do not have a right to discriminate against others based on how they act, what their values are (and what their values must therefore lack), etc.
The right to sexual freedom must recognize abstinence, chastity, modesty, and prudence as sexual choices. Humanists wish to take away these choices.
Notice that humanists openly stigmatize “prudes” even in places where prudish behavior would be appropriate – for instance elementary and middle-school aged children who aren’t even legal to be having sex yet.
If the appetite in question were food rather than sex, the question would be, does “feeling like a second-class citizen” justify outlawing all references on food labeling that could enable people to distinguish some kinds of food as “superior” to other kinds of food? Does “feeling discriminated against” justify forcing people into hiding their kosher or vegetarian diets? Or, conversely, would it be right to outlaw barbecues because they are inherently meat-eating occasions, and that makes vegetarians feel unwelcome?
If we redraw the line so that gays have a right not only to behave as they wish, but also have a right to be treated as if their behavior were desirable and socially sanctioned, we are redrawing a line that will change the fundamental rules for what we can and cannot choose. We will be consenting to the idea that government has a right to choose our sexual values – and the principle of liberty will be replaced with the principle that the government has the right to establish one set of values for all of us.
Religious liberty becomes a secularist or humanist theocracy, which is not coincidentally something some humanists openly admit to wanting (since “being right” apparently makes it okay to proselytize or push one’s beliefs onto others, using force if persuasion doesn’t work, as long as the person doing the forcing “isn’t religious”.)
April 11th, 2011 | 7:20 am
Gian,
The fact that a marriage is arranged does not necessarily exclude consent. Among Muslims, consent of the girl may be theoretically required, but in practice, many marriages are forced, and the girls may be very young.
Here’s a quote from John L. McKenzie’s Dictionary of the Bible:
April 11th, 2011 | 7:30 am
In my message above, I failed to make a connection between marriage in Islam and marriage in ancient Israel. I have read in at least one source that consent was required from the girl in ancient Israel, but even if that was theoretically the case, one can only imagine, given the low status of women, that often in an arranged marriage, the girl had no choice at all.
April 11th, 2011 | 10:49 am
David,
I’m not necessarily disputing your assertion that marriage was without consent for most people for most of history — but I am questioning it.
You referenced Israel, and the known customs. Even granting your suspicion that female consent was not always honored, you have the problem that Israel was one teeny tiny little country. How well do their practices parallel the practices of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and other inhabited parts of the world throughout history. And you can’t necessarily use the well-known and well-documented customs of the political classes as a guide, because it’s been common in history to have different “rules” for upper class marriage than for the mass of people. Even in the heyday of marrying off 8 year old brides to powerful allies in the High Middle Ages, the vast majority of people were marrying with choice and consent, albeit not for “love” as we moderns characterize it.
And of course, Islamic and Ancient Israelite customs should not only not be confused, they should not be regarded as having any relationship or reason for comparison. Israel in that sense was extinct for six centuries before Islam came on the scene, and the ancient culture had been dispersed and contaminated to a large degree for half a millennium before that.
April 11th, 2011 | 11:08 am
I should have made clear that I was referring to the legal issue of state recognition of same-sex marriage and, in particular, to the assertion that this is grounded in civic equality.
My heads of argument are: (1) Mandatory civil marriage, makes the institution a pillar of the secular Republic, standing clear of the religious sacrament (2) The institution of republican marriage is inconceivable, absent the idea of filiation, enshrined, not in Church dogma, but in the Civil Code (3) The sex difference is central to filiation.
It is very notable that the civil codes of most countries nowhere give a formal definition of marriage. However, a long succession of commentators have found a functional definition in Article 312 of the Code Civil, which has passed into most European codes – “The child conceived or born during the marriage has the husband for father” ; itself deriving from the Roman maxim, “Pater set is qui nuptiae demonstrant.
In other words, the (legal) institution of marriage entails consequences with respect to filiation that the other forms of union do not. Moreover, no one, to my knowledge, has been able to any other significant difference at all, in the laws governing cohabitation and civil unions on the one hand and marriage on the other that does not logically derive from this presumption.
As to the role of consummation, I fear that the learned authors of “What is Marriage” fail to observe the distinction between the perfection of a legal act and the fulfilment of obligations which that act creates. We only blur this distinction by talk about “consummation.” A marriage is a marriage, and it cannot become more of a marriage than it already is. This applies yet more forcefully to procreation.
April 11th, 2011 | 11:29 am
Pentamom,
I hope you read the Unicef article I linked to. If child marriage—which is close to being synonymous with forced marriage, since many of the girls are too young to consent—is as prevalent as it is today, it is difficult to imagine it was not even more prevalent historically.
Forced marriage (among immigrants) was such a problem in the UK that the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act of 2007 was passed.
I mentioned arranged marriage and forced marriage in Islam because Gian brought it up. I should have put the quote about ancient Israel in a different message. My point in bringing it up is that this is that so much of the discussion of marriage today is about Judeo-Christian ideas of marriage, and the arranged marriage of Israel was basically what Jesus was talking about when he discussed marriage. Almost everything in the paragraph I quote is foreign to our idea, particularly the idea of marriage being a contract between the parents of the bride and groom.
My basic question about the Robert George definition of marriage is how much stock we should put in a purely abstract definition of marriage as opposed to actual marriage practices down through the centuries and current marriage practices today. Robert George’s definition of marriage, as I understand it, doesn’t allow for divorce. And yet in the United States and most places I can think of, divorce and remarriage is permitted. Divorce in ancient Israel was (for the husband) as easy as writing a note.
April 11th, 2011 | 11:39 am
It may be “difficult to imagine,” but do you know?
Cultural conditions change over time, and not always in a positive direction. I wouldn’t ever make any assumptions that things must always have been a certain way most places, just because it is a big problem some places, now.
April 11th, 2011 | 11:41 am
BTW, there’s nothing in George’s definition that requires mature consent apart from parental instigation. Remember that “arrangement” and “consent” are not exclusive concepts. Nor does commitment inherently require prior consent to making the commitment.
April 11th, 2011 | 11:55 am
David,
“I have a very basic question that I hope someone can answer. Is there such a thing as marriage? If so, with what precision can marriage be defined?”
I think that, as you suggest, any definition would have to be sufficiently broad to encompass the variety of practices found across history, but the definition would then need to be understood biblically.
A simple definition of marriage would be that marriage creates a new family out of existing families in order to provide love and support (both emotional and material) for the married partners, the extended family, and any of children attached to that family.
The purpose of marriage is revealed in both creation accounts. In both, we are born to rule over this planet as God rules over creation. The first account describes men and women created at the same moment in order to rule, but the second account seeks to explain why humans are two rather than one. It tells us individuals are essentially lonely and require a helper, and thus Eve was created out of Adam.
The second account also presents itself as a just-so story: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife.” We leave the family we were born into to start a new family. The creation of a new family out of the old is the mystery that the second creation account seeks to explain. Individuals are lonely and need help in order to rule. Finding your helper breaks the old social order and creates a new one by forming a new family out of the old. Children come next, serving the commandment to multiply our rule across the face of the earth.
But we don’t live in Eden; we live in a broken world instead. And thus, some people are infertile, and some don’t find a first helper until after the childbearing years, or a spouse dies and a second helper is found. We no longer allow men to divorce an infertile spouse, and we allow the aged to marry because we recognize that the first purpose of marriage is to end loneliness and thus provide the help we need to rule the earth.
Homosexuality is also part of our brokenness, and Christian tradition is quite clear that homosexuality is a sin. Any change in the church’s teaching on homosexuality must come slowly, with great deliberation, and with even more prayer and study. In the twentieth century, our understanding of human sexuality has changed. For centuries, the church believed that homosexuality was merely a sin, and sinful inclinations can be transformed by faith. Thus, homosexuals were urged to repent and marry.
Over the course of twentieth century, however, Christians began to realize that homosexuality was not merely a choice or a sinful desire. Its roots were deeper, perhaps something biological. As the church has changed its understanding of homosexuality, it has changed its advice. It now recommends that homosexuals pursue chastity and realize that God has given them a great cross to bear.
Some Christians and some Christian churches, however, have gone further. They have recognized that homosexuals are not necessarily as broken as has been supposed. Homosexuals have made good citizens, excelling in every field of human endeavor, and more importantly, they have created lasting unions and raised healthy families. This recognition has meant that civil marriage seems appropriate, but civil concerns are not Christian concerns, and Christian morality requires a higher standard to be met. A Christian marriage would require that the union be a couple and no more than that, that the couple be sexually faithful to each other, and that the couple raise any children in the faith while practicing it themselves.
This last sentence is especially important because the gay rights movement has in general subscribed to the hedonism of the sixties out of which it sprang, and monogamy has been redefined for some homosexuals as including extramarital affairs. As psychology as well as the church teaches, sex is never casual, never without consequences. Sex creates a union and an intimacy that must be respected through fidelity. A Christian church that accepts homosexual marriage needs to pay even greater attention to the meaning and purpose of marriage, which has never been about merely personal gratification.
April 11th, 2011 | 12:19 pm
The RCC is of course free to argue what marriage is and is not. Howwever, the United States is not a theocracy. The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law for all citizens. Gay Americans as citizens are entitled to that equal protection. It is unconstitutional for gay Americans to be denied the right to marry.
No religious organization need be compelled to marry people it does not wish to marry. But neither should the RCC seek to impose its beliefs upon this nation.
April 11th, 2011 | 12:20 pm
Pentamom,
You say: “BTW, there’s nothing in George’s definition that requires mature consent apart from parental instigation.”
If you read “What Is Marriage?” you will note that these are the opening sentences:
Certainly arranged marriage does not preclude consent, though it by no means necessarily includes it, even where in theory the bride or groom has a right to refuse. I have given you evidence from the UN about forced marriage in a number of countries. And there is even a problem with forced marriage in the UK. I really doubt that it is a recent development, but if you don’t wish to make the same assumptions as I do, I have no problem with that.
April 11th, 2011 | 12:37 pm
Homosexuals have made good citizens, excelling in every field of human endeavor, and more importantly, they have created lasting unions and raised healthy families.
Of course, the definition of what constitutes “healthy” had to be changed.
April 11th, 2011 | 3:12 pm
Lisa Kaiser’s argument from equal protection to same-sex marriage really begs the question.
The counter-argument can be seen in the approach of the French courts who said of the requirement of a difference of sex that its “specific and non-discriminatory character was the result of the fact that nature had limited potential fertility to couples of different sexes… Clearly, same-sex couples whom nature had not made potentially fertile were consequently not concerned by the institution of marriage. This was differential legal treatment because their situation was not analogous”
In other words, the argument from equality must demonstrate, rather than assume, that the situation of a same-sex and an opposite-sex couple is sufficiently analogous to make different treatment in this matter of marriage unjustified.
It is significant that, in a country so committed to the principle of laïcité as France, no one has suggested that these views, shared by both the Court of Cassation and the Constitutional Council, are either the result of religious convictions or an attempt to import them into their interpretation of the Code.
April 11th, 2011 | 3:34 pm
David, I’m not entirely understanding your point about forced marriage.
It exists. It has always existed. Yes.
Has it been *both* widespread *and sanctioned* enough to make George’s definition anachronistic or parochial? That is the question. It’s fine to find it plausible that what’s happening now “probably” happened in the past; I’m not sure that without evidence, such a speculation is a sufficiently strong assumption on which to judge George’s definition. “I think it’s probably likely that it was that way” hardly constitutes a compelling grounds for criticism, unless you have some more solid grounds.
That said, yes, you’re entitled to your assumptions as well.
April 11th, 2011 | 5:10 pm
Pentamom,
Briefly, I find that in “What Is Marriage?” George’s arguments appear (to me, anyway) to exclude all kinds of arrangements that, say, anthropologists would classify as marriage. His description of “conjugal marriage” also has little to do with the reality of legal marriage in the United States or elsewhere.
He says in the paper
In my own biased way, I read that as saying, “We have put up with every other assault on marriage, but the one thing we can’t stand for is gay people being allowed to marry. From no-fault divorce in all 50 states, to a 50% divorce rate, to a 40% out-of-wedlock birth rate, to 28% of women with children having had them by two fathers—all that is bad enough. But gays being allowed to marry? Never!”
April 11th, 2011 | 7:58 pm
Or you could read it like this:
We’ve inexcusably allowed things to get this bad. It’s too late to turn back the clock and pretend these things didn’t happen, though that doesn’t mean we can’t work on improving things. But that’s no reason to destroy the last remaining shred of marriage just because it’s gotten to this point.
April 12th, 2011 | 6:09 am
I don’t understand the reasoning that freely admits that the sexual revolution has caused all sorts of harm but concludes from this that therefore we should just accept that there will be harm, and therefore embrace causing more harm as inevitable, just, and right.
Ever been in a car with a driver who will not turn around as a matter of principle?
April 12th, 2011 | 12:45 pm
Marriage is about insurance benefits, immigration law, pensions, tax benefits, social security, and other legal and civil protections.
Why is marriage about legal and civil benefits? Because religious conservatives turned it into that by demanding benefits for married persons at the expense of single persons. You can be married without a church, therefore marriage isn’t religious. You can be married if you are infertile, therefore marriage isn’t about child creation. There is only one reason to deny marriage equality for Gays and Lesbians. Bias.
Furthermore, religious political conservatives have done just about everything in their power to deman straight marriage on their own. Might I cite Donohue (of the Catholic League), Gingrich (three marriages – mucho infedility), Trump, Maggie Gallagher Srinav (child born out of wedlock). Should Newt’s childless third marriage (which I believe started with adultery with an employee) be annulled by the state? Why not start punishing straight conservatives who violate your religous laws? Otherwise its just about abusing Gays only.
To the commenter that stated that employers should be able to fire all openly Gay people, should Gay people be able to fire all openly religious people? Please try to answer that without resorting to dominionism or the Bible. Remember we are talking about secular law. And to those of you who wish to quote the Bill of Rights as some license to allow anyone to do anything just so long as the discriminator or actor says that their personal ‘religion’ requires it, then please tell me how you would square that with not allowing effective Sharia from persons who believe in strict Islam, or Wiccans, etc.
April 12th, 2011 | 1:12 pm
Tom wrote, “Marriage is about insurance benefits, immigration law, pensions, tax benefits, social security, and other legal and civil protections.
Why is marriage about legal and civil benefits? Because religious conservatives turned it into that by demanding benefits for married persons at the expense of single persons.
Now go the rest of the way.
Why do these benefits matter?
Because men and women cannot split the biological, economic, or social costs of procreation equally..
Marriage may or may not involve the union of like souls, but the state’s interest in the institution is 100% linked to the enforcement of contracts – specifically, the contracts governing and enabling procreative functions: contracts between the two people who make a baby together, and contracts between the procreative couples and the institutions that support, nourish, and, yes, regulate them.
April 12th, 2011 | 3:19 pm
Blake,
And yet we now have 40% of children born out of wedlock, many of whom are living with parents who do not choose to get married. We then also have childless couples getting largely the same breaks as married couples with children. If the goal is to ease the burden of caring for children, why not give benefits based on whether or not (or how many) children a person (or couple) has rather than give the benefits only to those who are legally married.
Society may have an interest in giving couples an incentive to marry, but when we have a 40% rate of out-of-wedlock births, isn’t that punishing 40% of children because their parents did not choose to marry? It’s not the fault of the children.
April 12th, 2011 | 5:24 pm
Blake writes: “Of course, the definition of what constitutes “healthy” had to be changed.”
How about this: children of gay parents have about the same educational achievements as those by heterosexual parents. Given a psychological study, “researchers [also] found that the children of gays and lesbians were virtually indistinguishable from children of heterosexual parents.”
Boys raised by two women were actually less likely to be promiscuous as adults than when raised by heterosexual parents. Children raised by gay parents were no more or less likely to be gay themselves.
Numerous studies have shown that children of gay parents fared as well psychologically and intellectually as those raised by their heterosexual counterparts. Go look them up.
Now, if you want to insist that children of gay parents are being held to different standards than those of heterosexual parents, please provide the evidence.
April 12th, 2011 | 6:52 pm
How about this: children of gay parents have about the same educational achievements as those by heterosexual parents. Given a psychological study, “researchers [also] found that the children of gays and lesbians were virtually indistinguishable from children of heterosexual parents.”
That’s not even an accurate representation of what they found.
But it doesn’t matter, for three reasons.
The first is because the methods are flawed. They use self-selecting gays whose children have strong incentives to score the “correct” ways, evaluated by strongly biased researchers, and they failed to adequately account for the incentives and biases involved.
I mean, every single child studied is, by definition, a child raised by a gay or lesbian person who had no reason to suppose that motherlessness or fatherlessness would be harmless, but did it anyway. These are people who were willing to use these kids as experimental guinea pigs. That’s a pretty strong indicator that these kids might be under pressure to test a certain way – and yet every study I have seen not only fails to adequately address this concern, but appears to be relying on it (i.e. taking advantage of “self reporting” and so on).
The second reason is because even if the studies were valid, they’re inadequate. Even if good grades did equal good parenting in a simple, straightforward relationship, the problems motherless or fatherless children are known to have are not necessarily linked to grades, or achievement, at all. There are no studies dealing in-depth with far more relevant issues, for instance things involving identity and taboos, communication and relationship abilities re: same and opposite sex relationships, and so on.
Of course the third reason it doesn’t matter is because even if you could prove they were happy and well-adjusted, that doesn’t change the fact that the real question is whether their rights are being violated.
Is adoption primarily about finding the best possible home for a child who is orphaned or abandoned? Or is adoption primarily about finding children for affluent couples who want a baby but don’t want the inconvenience of actually having to do right by that baby’s mother or father?
If a conflict exists between what a child has reason to value vs. what a parent values, whose values are to be prioritized?
April 14th, 2011 | 2:23 pm
It would be a serious mistake to ignore the problem of ambiguity at the heart of the George/Gergis argument against same-sex marriage. “Generative acts” and “acts of a generative kind,” as typically used, are ambiguous. When the ambiguity is introduced into the premises and conclusion of the argument, it becomes the fallacy of equivocation. Think about it in terms of tokens and types. (A token is an instance of a type.) The token—an act that potentially or actually leads to procreation—effectively brackets out both homosexual couples and sterile and aged heterosexual couples. The type—procreative-type acts–brackets out only homosexual couples.
It would be absurd to refer to reproduction as a type without making any room for instances of reproduction—and, unfortunately the instances (tokens) say one thing about sterile and aged heterosexual couples (“they don’t belong here”), while the type says another thing (“they do belong here, but homosexual couples don’t”). The George/Gergis argument assumes, as it must, the existence of acts that are potentially or actually procreative, but the argument can’t stop there (or it would be self-defeating), thus the need for “acts of a procreative kind.” The George/Gergis argument trades off on the viability of the tokens for the feasibility of the type—or, more simply, on the ambiguity of the phrases “generative act” and “act of a generative kind.” The result is an argument bedeviled by the fallacy of equivocation.
April 15th, 2011 | 2:01 pm
Not all fallacies are equal. Some fallacies are devastating to an argument, but not this one. The fallacy of equivocation merely spotlights weaknesses in the argument—it doesn’t necessarily amount to a refutation. Unfortunately, in this case that’s enough to push judges in a decidedly liberal direction. Some judges may think the inability to convincingly explain the differential treatment of homosexual couples and sterile and aged heterosexual couples is an invitation to use heightened scrutiny as the standard for judging anti-SSM legislation. Other judges may think it means that a rational-basis test (i.e., minimal scrutiny) should be applied in the context of a presumption of discrimination against homosexuals.
Either way, the defenders of traditional marriage are in trouble—and unnecessarily so. For there is an alternative criterion of marriage eligibility, and it successfully explains why homosexual couples and sterile and aged heterosexual couples are different. Namely, the intrinsic (actual or ideal) capacity to procreate. This criterion can presumably be incorporated into the new natural law argument, at the point where human nature—and its capacities and inclinations—informs practical reason. Or it can be used in an entirely different kind of anti-SSM argument, which is what I happen to prefer.
The idea of “acts of a generative kind” was originally used by G.E.M. Anscombe as a standard for evaluating the (im)morality of contraception. In the quite different context of marriage, it would work perfectly fine if sterile and aged couples are not allowed to marry. Needless to say, that is not an option.
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