When it comes to admitting the true agenda of the gay rights movement, The Advocate can be refreshingly honest. “We often protest when homophobes insist that same sex marriage will change marriage for straight people too,” says the magazine in a recent article. “But in some ways, they’re right. Here’s how gay relationships will change the institution—but for the better.” (Note: The article contains some crude language)
Anti-equality right-wingers have long insisted that allowing gays to marry will destroy the sanctity of “traditional marriage,” and, of course, the logical, liberal party-line response has long been “No, it won’t.” But what if—for once—the sanctimonious crazies are right? Could the gay male tradition of open relationships actually alter marriage as we know it? And would that be such a bad thing? With divorce rates at an all-time high and news reports full of famous marriages crumbling at the hand of flagrant infidelities (see: Schwarzenegger, Arnold), perhaps now is the perfect time for the gays to conduct a little marriage makeover.
Welcome to Queer (Roving) Eye for the Monogamous Straight Couple Lie, brought to you in part by writer Dan Savage, who coined the term monogamish to signify committed relationships in which the partners are, he explains, “mostly monogamous, but there’s a little allowance for the reality of desire for others and a variety of experiences and adventure and possibility.”
The typical response by straight same-sex marriage supporters is that while such “monogmish” relationships may be common, their committed gay friends would never dream of engaging in such infidelity. Or so they may think:
Even many gay male couples, who Savage describes as having “perfected nonmonogamy,” fear disclosing that their relationship is anything but one-on-one. Gary (not his real name) is out in every area of his life, and his family is completely supportive. “But I don’t tell my family, even my brother—who I’m incredibly close with—that I have sex outside of the relationship with Ben,” his partner of 14 years, he says. “I have never said that to him.”
Gary and Ben, who live in Los Angeles, won’t reveal their real names because Ben has a high-profile career in television. “We have too much to lose,” Gary says. “But we also don’t want people passing judgment on us.” Which is why they don’t even tell most of their friends.
Sex therapist Timaree Schmit says she can understand gay couples’ desire to conform—at least outwardly—to the kind of conventional relationship that society deems “deserving” of marriage rights. “It’s been a big part of campaigning for marriage equality to repeatedly prove the ‘normalcy’ and stability of same-sex couples. People may feel pressure to make their relationship fit into a more acceptable box.”
If only heterosexual society wasn’t so prudish and didn’t defined “normalcy” so narrowly, then gay men could truly be themselves:
Schmit says that the sexual context in which many gay men initiate relationships can smooth the way to normalizing nonmonogamy, and that’s not frequently how straight relationships kick off. “Plus, the steam room clause,” she says, referring to the one among some men in which sex at the gym does not count, “doesn’t really apply too well to straight people.”
Yes, that’s true. I have a strict rule that when my wife goes to the gym she is not allowed to have sex with strangers. I’m a bit old-fashioned that way. But perhaps I can be talked into letting go of my heteronormative hangups about monogamy in marriage:
This is where gay male couples and Savage’s outspoken role come in. “More than anything, gay marriage creates opportunities to broaden the conversation about marriage,” says Sitron. “I don’t think gay men are [necessarily] going to bring something [new] to marriage, but they are going to change the conversation about marriage.”
“I really enjoy sex, and I like looking at porn, and I like sexy guys, and I love Ben,” declares the happily committed and nonmonogamous Gary. “When [it became clear that] we could figure out a way to have all of these things together, without hurting each other, I thought, That’s a good goal.” [emphasis in original]
“A way to have all of these things together.” Sure, why not? Why shouldn’t they be able to have a marriage license that includes a steam room clause? If that is the “good goal”—the gay man’s eudemonic objective—then who are we to say that they shouldn’t have it all—even if if the “all” includes porn, a partner, and polyamorous playmates?
We’ve finally reached the point in the debate where it is no longer possible to be self-deluding about what same-sex marriage advocacy requires: If you support same-sex marriage you are tacitly endorsing non-monogamous marital relationships.
For years, heterosexual supporters of the cause were able to fool themselves into thinking that what gay rights activists wanted was parity with straight relationships. Then, when it became obvious that many homosexuals reject the “heteronormative restriction” of monogamy in marriage, the advocates proposed a two-track compromise: straight marriage would still be expected to be monogamous while gay marriage could be as polyamorous as they wanted.
But it doesn’t work that way.
There cannot be a “separate but equal” basis for “marital” relationships, with heterosexuals expected to adhere to a standard of sexual fidelity while gay couples are allowed to redefine monogamy to include polyamourous sexual escapades. The lower standard will eventually prevail, with the stricter “sex with spouse only” being a valid option, but not an ideal—and certainly not the norm. A significant percentage of heterosexual men will follow the example of their gay brethren and simply refuse to “marry” if it comes with an expectation of sexual exclusivity. After all, why shouldn’t they have the same marriage rights as gay men?
Since women have the most to lose from such arrangements, they may prefer to retain the one-man/one-woman rule. But it doesn’t matter what they want. In every struggle for expansion of man-made rights, some people win and some people lose. Straight women will simply have to accept the loss for the greater good of normalizing homosexual conduct and preferences. It’s probably best that they just keep quiet about their homophobic concerns.
(Via: FamilyScholars.org)
See Also: I, II, III, IV, and V
August 19th, 2011 | 1:20 pm
Well, really, it does make sense, you know.
What sets marriage apart from other arrangements, like unregulated cohabitation or civil unions is the rule “is est pater quem nuptiae demonstrant “, [Dig. 2, 4, 5; 1]” – Marriage points out the father. Every modern civil law code contains the provision that the child conceived or born in marriage has the husband for father.
This, in turn, rests on the obligation of fidelity between spouses and reflects the commitment made by the husband during the celebration of marriage, to raise the couple’s children.
No wonder the great French jurist, Carbonnier, declared in his commentary that “the heart of marriage is not the couple; it is the presumption of paternity,” without which marriage loses its meaning and value.
No-one will deny that the state has a clear interest in the filiation of children being clear, certain and incontestable. It is central to its concern for the upbringing and welfare of the child, for protecting rights and enforcing obligations between family members and to the orderly succession to property. To date, no better, simpler, less intrusive means than marriage have been found for ensuring, as far as possible, that the legal, biological and social realities of paternity coincide. And that is no small thing.
August 19th, 2011 | 1:46 pm
The unrecognized fact is that traditional marriage and the family has long been seen by the far left (Marxists and revolutionaries and libertines) as the primary enemy of revolution and personal freedom. It must be done away with if we are ever to achieve a society where free love and post-revolutionary communism abounds. Of course, the problem is that they think traditional marriage is artificial, unnatural and can be jettisoned with little ramifications, when in fact it is fundamentally part of the creation order, and as such will send societies reeling in despair when it is suffering.
August 19th, 2011 | 1:47 pm
Well, yeah. Anyone paying attention to the rhetoric of gay activists regarding same-sex “marriage” has already heard an earful of “Gays getting married won’t change the institution of marriage a bit and how dare you suggest such a thing you hateful bigot and of course gays getting married will transform the institution of marriage by loosening its monogamous requirement and making it better!!!”
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
August 19th, 2011 | 1:47 pm
If you read carefully, you’ll notice that there is considerable opprobrium to this from *within* the gay community (see these folks having to hide it from their friends?). It’s just not what the writer chooses to underscore. But I’ve certain see my gay coupled friends speak with a severely negative tone about open relationships. So, while Dan Savage and the writer have an agenda, it’s hardly that of the gay marriage movement, as it were. That’s like saying that Dominionists are spokespeople for Christians wanting a more robust role for faith in the public square.
August 19th, 2011 | 2:01 pm
“Since women have the most to lose from such arrangements”
Ya think? The utter demolition of the “traditional” (how did that word become a pejorative anyway?) sexual rule in the West that you had to get married to have sex, and marriage was FOREVER, has been catastrophic for women. To use the classic phrase, “Marriage ends–Women, Children, Minorities hardest hit.”
PS. To cut off the instant Pavlovian response I’m sure I’ll get–yeah, lots of extramarital sex happened before these rules were tossed out the window. So what?
August 19th, 2011 | 2:28 pm
If swinging didn’t convince the majority of straight married couples to have open marriages, then why would the relationship of gay men be more influential?
August 19th, 2011 | 2:50 pm
Adding to what R Hampton says above, according to Wikipedia, “researchers have estimated that between 1.7 percent and 6 percent of married [heterosexual] people are involved in open marriages.The incidence of open marriage has remained relatively stable over the last two generations.”
I’ll venture a rough guess that even if all the same-sex marriages that are entered into are “open marriages,” they will not equal the number of heterosexual “open marriages.” It seems to me that gay people are far more interested in imitating heterosexuals when it comes to marriage than heterosexuals are interested in imitating gay people. So even if all same-sex marriages turn out to be open marriages, why should anyone expect that to influence heterosexual marriage?
August 19th, 2011 | 2:52 pm
Liam If you read carefully, you’ll notice that there is considerable opprobrium to this from *within* the gay community (see these folks having to hide it from their friends?).
The article doesn’t expressly state, though it does seem to imply, that they were hiding it from their straight friends.
That’s like saying that Dominionists are spokespeople for Christians wanting a more robust role for faith in the public square.
The analogy is not really apt. The number of Dominionists is trivial. But according to recent studies, the number of gay men in a “committed” relationship is around 45-50%. When half of the men in a community are engaged in an activity, it is hard to say that it isn’t tolerated.
R Hampton If swinging didn’t convince the majority of straight married couples to have open marriages, then why would the relationship of gay men be more influential?
That’s a fair question. Although I hinted at the reason in my post, I didn’t make my reasoning explicit. Swinging didn’t convince the majority of straight married couples to have open marriages because it was frowned upon by the vast majority of couples.
I think the situation is different for gay couples for three reasons.
First, far more (maybe even 50%) of “monogamous” gay couples have extra-sexual affairs. The sheer number of them vis-a-vis swingers makes them harder to ignore.
Second, we’ve already reached the point where criticizing any homosexual behavior can get you labeled as a “homophobe.” Criticizing the choice of gay men to be non-monogamous will be considered anathama. Eventually it will have to be tacitly condoned, if not outright endorsed.
Third, the sexual revolution has already degraded monogamy and promoted promiscuity. It’s not like we have far to go to complete the shift. Many straight men—especially sexually enlightened progressives—will be more than happy to use the example of their “married” gay friends to convince their woman that she needs to go along with this new version of “monogamy.”
August 19th, 2011 | 3:59 pm
Why can they not admit their relationship is different in kind, and stop trying to force us to equate two things that are not like?
Too bad this side of the argument isn’t allowed to make the same accusations that the other side throws around so freely – I’d suggest that maybe some people aren’t so much pro-gay as anti-marriage.
Protecting traditional marriage does not have to be “anti-gay”. I am perfectly capable of making a series of statements, without contradiction:
- that my religion believes homosexuality is wrong;
- that other peoples’ religions believe other things, and as we all have the right to believe what we want, they have the right to believe this;
- that I can therefore recognize gay couples as couples without believing what they believe, in just the same way a conservative Jewish person can believe that his liberal Jewish friend has the right to eat non-kosher foods;
- that marriage serves a purpose;
- that the purpose of marriage is not compatible with what gay people want;
- that gay people can find ways of recognizing, honoring, and celebrating their unions in ways that are honest rather than forcing gay people to be what they aren’t;
- that gay people can argue for the benefits they need without having to be “the same as” a married couple
The other day someone mentioned the film “Sister Act” to me, and I found myself thinking about the scene where Whoopi’s character feeds ice cream to the nuns. It made me wonder: are nuns really not allowed to eat ice cream? And it made me think: if someone takes a voluntary vow, is it really the act of a “friend” to erode that vow, to tempt them toward breaking it? Why was the vow made in the first place?
And this is what I sort of feel about the whole gay marriage debate: at what point are we making sure everyone has a right to ice cream if they want it, and at what point are we “helping” people who don’t know their lives will be better with ice cream in it? And what is the motive – genuine concern for the person with no ice cream in their life, or just acting out rage at people who don’t believe in limitless ice cream?
August 19th, 2011 | 4:40 pm
Second, we’ve already reached the point where criticizing any homosexual behavior can get you labeled as a “homophobe.” Criticizing the choice of gay men to be non-monogamous will be considered anathama. Eventually it will have to be tacitly condoned, if not outright endorsed.
Joe,
I find it difficult to understand this kind of sentiment when 29 states have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage and another 12 have statutory bans. Even Obama and Clinton campaigning for the Democratic nomination wouldn’t endorse same-sex marriage. The idea that 94%-98% of the population is at the mercy of the other 2%-4% (gay people), who are not even unanimous in their support of same-sex marriage is difficult to credit.
The idea that people are going to suffer for promoting or defending monogamy is bizarre.
I am bewildered that Conservative Christians, who all but run the country, consider themselves a persecuted minority destined for reeducation camps.
August 19th, 2011 | 4:47 pm
David Nickol The idea that people are going to suffer for promoting or defending monogamy is bizarre.
Perhaps you’re right. We never see any repercussions for speaking out against same-sex marriage. I mean, if teachers were being reassigned for Facebook comments on gay marriage or something, that would be cause for concern. But since that isn’t happening its probably nothing we should worry about. There’s no chance that we’ll be called homophobes for disagreeing with homosexual practices.
August 19th, 2011 | 5:05 pm
Joe Carter,
First, please note that I was talking about monogamy and your example is about same-sex marriage.
Second, we’ll have to wait and see the outcome of the case involving Jerry Buell, but I think this is a good commentary:
It is not merely that Buell spoke out against same-sex marriage. It’s the way he said it.
Certainly Catholics and Evangelicals, for example, have a right to say where they stand and express the differences between their religious points of view. However, would you defend the right of a Catholic teacher or say of Evangelicals (or the other way around), “They make me want to throw up. Their church is a cesspool. They’re all going to hell.” Would you want to be an Evangelical student in that Catholic’s classroom in a public school, or a Catholic in that Evangelical teacher’s classroom in a public school?
August 19th, 2011 | 5:13 pm
Here is what Buell said:
August 19th, 2011 | 5:36 pm
David Nickol First, please note that I was talking about monogamy and your example is about same-sex marriage.
About 15-20 years ago, people would have scoffed at the idea that Christians would be chastised for criticizing gay marriage. Now they are called “homophobes” for not supporting “marriage equality.”
Is it really so unrealistic to think that when non-monogamous gay “marriages” are common that Christians will be called “homophobic” for saying “that ain’t right”?
However, would you defend the right of a Catholic teacher or say of Evangelicals. . .
Hold up. That example is in no way analogous. Being disgusted by seeing two men kissing is in no way, shape, or form similar to disliking Catholics.
You are merely proving my point. For the past 2,000 years or so, Ms. Buell’s comment that she wanted to throw up after watching two men kissing would have been considered a perfectly normal reaction. Also, her pointing out that “gay marriage” is something she’ll never accept because God doesn’t accept it is also a reasonable view for a Christian to hold.
The fact that an orthodox believer like yourself thinks it is beneath the pale shows how very far we’ve come down the road to normalizing homosexuality.
August 19th, 2011 | 7:29 pm
So, while Dan Savage and the writer have an agenda, it’s hardly that of the gay marriage movement, as it were. That’s like saying that Dominionists are spokespeople for Christians wanting a more robust role for faith in the public square.
Aside from Andrew Sullivan, Dan Savage may be the most prominent journalist in the United States who makes a public point of and writes on the subject of his homosexuality. He is not a fringe figure at all (within a certain subculture).
I seem to recall a longitudinal study done some years ago on monogamy among male homosexual couplings. IIRC, such associations tend within four years to dissolve or to ditch their monogamous component.
August 19th, 2011 | 8:17 pm
Students — gay, straight or otherwise — have the right to come to school expecting a fair shake from their teachers. Can a student who makes a teacher want to vomit really expect equal treatment?
So if a law gets passed that benefits Christians, and a militant atheist wrote that the passage of the law “makes him want to vomit”, would that teacher get a fair shake on the grounds that Christians deserve better?
August 19th, 2011 | 8:20 pm
Let’s say instead that Buell finds overweight people revolting.
No, let’s make the analogy more honest.
Let’s say Buell find the passage of a law that grants explicit rights to overweight people revolting.
There is a world of difference between being revolted by overweight people vs. being revolted by a law that makes it a crime for a man to refuse to go along with a fantasy that involves pretending there is no difference between being overweight vs. being in good health.
August 19th, 2011 | 11:50 pm
That FL case is pretty shocking. Surely it can’t possibly stand up to legal scrutiny.
It should also be pointed out that apparently neither the current president or vice-president of the United States are suitable to teach in Lake County, FL. Every bit of hate spewed towards advocates for marriage should be answered by bringing up the fact that Obama and Biden are, by their own words, on our side.
August 20th, 2011 | 12:52 am
Samuel Delaney gets annoyed at students in his classes who write sad stories about characters discovering their girl/boy friends are unfaithful to them. And indeed states that monogamy is not the only game in town and you don’t get any points for pushing the monogamy button. . .
The view is out there. I wonder how much long it will take to spread.
August 20th, 2011 | 1:56 am
David, this article is explicitly wanting to redefine marriage. Even if the straights weren’t a factor, its worrisome that barely a few months after a battleground state victory, immediately come out the “monagamish” justifications. Not from the fringe, either-mainstream publications too.
The problem is that unless the gay marriage advocates roundly start condemning this to the point of not listening to Sullivan or Savage, it’s gonna get more popular. If they say it enough, people will do it.
It’s not that outlandish that it might spread farther. Its hard to keep a small, committed minority from changing things. A good example is the furry subculture: what originally formed as a movement designed to using anthropomorphic characters in comics art changed into a movement of people who wanted to BE those characters. They pretty much came to define what being a furry was: it shifted from liking Carl Banks’s Uncle Scrooge Comics or Steve Gallacci’s Albedo to making your own fursuit and doing unmentionable things.
There’s no real guarantees.
August 20th, 2011 | 2:39 am
Hold up. That example is in no way analogous. Being disgusted by seeing two men kissing is in no way, shape, or form similar to disliking Catholics.
You are merely proving my point. For the past 2,000 years or so, Ms. Buell’s comment that she wanted to throw up after watching two men kissing would have been considered a perfectly normal reaction.
Joe,
What’s interesting here is that you are misrepresenting what Mr. (not Ms.) Buell said. He actually didn’t say he was disgusted at seeing two men kiss. He was disgusted when he saw a “story about New York okaying same-sex unions.” He then says, “And now they showed two guys kissing after their announcement.” He actually doesn’t say how he feels about that. We may may reasonably assume he doesn’t approve, but he didn’t characterize his feelings about it.
I’d suggest your not-very-careful reading of his post is a result of what’s wrong with it. One is left with the impression that he finds gay people disgusting. He tells the Orlando Sentinel that is not true.
Here’s an interesting part of the story:
This is ultimately a First Amendment case, and I don’t want to prejudge it. But based on my reading of the coverage about Buell, I have no doubt that he was capable of writing about his views of the morality of same-sex marriage in a manner that would have conveyed what he believed without being inflammatory.
August 20th, 2011 | 3:05 am
David, this article is explicitly wanting to redefine marriage.
Dave,
Here’s what’s wrong with the article to the extent that I have bothered to read it.
The “open marriage” movement goes back to at least the 1970s, and gay people had nothing to do with it. Heterosexual married people were pushing the idea of open marriage before anyone ever dreamed that same-sex marriage would be legalized. The concern seems to be that gay men married to each other will have a greater influence on straight married people than the straight married people who promote open marriage. I don’t buy it.
Also, Andrew Sullivan, Dan Savage, and people who write articles in The Advocate don’t speak for all gay people. I will grant that Dan Savage is probably one of the most well known gay men to speak on the subject, but it’s not because he represents the “mainstream” gay view (not that there is one) but because he is outspoken, provocative, and sometimes even outrageous.
August 20th, 2011 | 11:07 am
What’s interesting here is that you are misrepresenting what Mr. (not Ms.) Buell said. He actually didn’t say he was disgusted at seeing two men kiss. He was disgusted when he saw a “story about New York okaying same-sex unions.”
You’re assuming that all right-thinking people share your view that there is a right and a wrong in this case.
But that is not yet established.
By the way:
If a professor says he is “disgusted”, “outraged”, or otherwise highly disapproving of evangelical Christians, does that make him unfit to teach?
“One standard for me, another for thee”
August 20th, 2011 | 11:24 am
Hold up. That example is in no way analogous. Being disgusted by seeing two men kissing is in no way, shape, or form similar to disliking Catholics.
And pretty soon it will be, “Being disgusted by seeing a fifty year old man kissing a twelve year old is in no way, shape, or form similar to disliking (being repulsed by the beliefs, actions, and existence of) Catholics.”
And “Being disgusted by seeing siblings kiss/seeing erotic behavior between parent and grown child is in no way, shape, or form similar to disliking (being repulsed by the beliefs, actions, and existence of) Evangelicals.”
Because you are assuming that the right “to be” necessarily includes the right “to do”.
What if there were an evangelical gene – one that makes people lean toward evangelical Christianity? Would they be free to behave any way they want, protected from “disgust”?
What if there were a gene controlling sexuality that made some people genetically predisposed toward being repulsed at sexual deviance? Would they have the right to be disgusted? Would they have the right to be protected from your disgust?
Disgust exists for a reason: it warns us when boundaries are being violated. It is a signal, just like anger or grief. It is a signal that should be attended to.
Those of us who like our values are simply not going to voluntarily cooperate with those of you who are insisting that your values are the only valid values. You cannot prove “scientifically” that one set of values is “better”, and you cannot achieve legitimacy through the democratic process by demonizing over half the electorate. Your view simply isn’t better, it isn’t right, and it isn’t established.
If you want to establish a new rule that says all students have the right to be taught by a teacher that isn’t biased against them, then Christians – including evangelicals – have that same right.
Your faith-based set of beliefs says one thing about sex (what it is, what it’s for, when and why and how it can and should be done), and other people with different beliefs have different values. Your argument only makes sense if one starts from the assumption that your values are better than theirs. Maybe someday if the “gay rights” question is settled, this will be the case, but until then, you are relying on an argument that takes its own conclusion as one of its premises.
To what extent do religious people have to respect the beliefs of others is naturally entwined with the question, how come it’s not reciprocal?
Or, to put it another way, if we’re all “different people with different needs”, what gives you the right to expect that I must treat your needs as important while you get to bully me for having needs that you don’t understand, respect, or approve of? What makes your beliefs specialler than mine?
August 20th, 2011 | 11:26 am
The “open marriage” movement goes back to at least the 1970s, and gay people had nothing to do with it.
This isn’t merely gay vs. straight. This is two sets of values contesting the meaning of sex, family, and love.
It’s the secular humanist vision of sex – the individual is the only social unit that matters (and even then only secular humanist individuals), and pleasure is the most important good – vs. the “traditional” view, that places sex as only one good among many, and does not assume that sexual pleasure or sexual desire is automatically more important than other priorities.
August 20th, 2011 | 1:01 pm
Joe, you obviously don’t get the new rules of engagement.
You may not, under any circumstances, conclude anything negative about same-sex relationships, even if those negative conclusions are inescapably based on facts openly offered by people in those relationships. You are an outsider and oppressor (male, heteronormative, etc.) and, by definition, you are wrong about everything.
Thus, you may not point out what is obvious to all — that same-sex “marriage” advocates and defenders have no interest in real marriage, they have always wished to destroy it so that they can erect something else in its place, something made in their own image and likeness.
August 20th, 2011 | 2:50 pm
David:
The problem is that its different now. Open marriages were seen as pure hedonism by the mainstream culture then. No one would seriously argue in the 70s that they were needed due to our biological nature or were a required part of marriage.
With gay marriages though, they are making arguments that marriage itself should change because of the specific natures of gay men and their sexual drives. This also is happening during a time where a form of village idiot biological determinism is creeping in to mainstream thought, in things like game theory.
If gay men start demonstrating and publicizing monogamish relationships, the factors are there for widespread acceptance. Well, widespread enough to make it a permanent fixture in culture or people’s minds.
As for “they don’t speak for all gay people” that’s like saying Michele Bachmann doesn’t speak for all republicans. She may not, but she speaks for enough to cause things to happen.
August 20th, 2011 | 3:30 pm
Joe Carter says: “When it comes to admitting the true agenda of the gay rights movement, The Advocate can be refreshingly honest.”
Jack Swan says: “Thus, you may not point out what is obvious to all — that same-sex “marriage” advocates and defenders have no interest in real marriage, they have always wished to destroy it so that they can erect something else in its place, something made in their own image and likeness.”
It is difficult enough to see how there can be any discussion of an issue where one side is so convinced they are right and the other is wrong that an attempt at dialog is futile. But what we have here goes beyond that. These are examples of the anti-gay marriage side not claiming the pro-gay marriage side is wrong, but that the whole gay-marriage movement is made up of liars perpetrating a fraud.
Opponents of same-sex marriage do not always agree on what the fraud is. For example, the Catholic blogger Mark Shea says, “The goal of gay marriage, as I have said many times, is to create a legal basis for persecuting and, if possible, legally suppressing the Catholic Church. That’s the goal.” That’s a different goal than destroying marriage and putting something else in its place. But it is still a denial that what gay marriage proponents actually want is gay marriage.
A similar situation would be if there were a debate on the existence of God, and the person who argued against the existence of God didn’t deal with theology at all but insisted that the person arguing for God’s existence didn’t really believe in God, he was just using the idea of God to control people who were gullible enough to believe in a Supreme Being.
Another similar situation, and I have talked to people who argue this, is claiming that pro-lifers don’t really care about the unborn. They are just men who want to control women, and women who have been brainwashed by men. It’s not about the unborn. It’s an anti-feminist plot to keep women in their place. Somewhat similarly, there are people who claim the Catholic Church isn’t really interested in the unborn, it just wants to keep its membership up by trying to make sure its members have lots of babies. (There are also people who claim the only reason the Catholic Church argues for humane treatment of illegal immigrants is because they are mostly Catholic, and the Church needs more members.)
Over on Vox-Nova, one of the contributors wrote a piece titled Is Climate Change Denial a Sin? Here is his conclusion:
The concept in all of these cases is the same. People who hold a position strongly refuse to acknowledge that those who disagree with them actually disagree in good faith. It is not enough for them to consider themselves right and their opponents wrong. They must see themselves as right and their opponents as evil.
Let me say, with little hope of convincing anyone, that many gay people actually want to get married. Many gay people who do not want to get married nevertheless believe that their friends who do want to get married should have the right to. I would certainly not deny that some gay men or lesbians (what proportion I do not know) don’t plan to have a conventional, monogamous marriage, but many of them do. The gay couple I know best who got married about a year ago is a male couple, one of whom is in his early 60s and the other is probably nearing 70 if not older. I suppose one can never be certain of anything, but I would be amazed to discover that they have not been monogamous for the past 25 or more years that they have been together, and that they intend to stay monogamous. I am quite certain they got married with no motive of destroying traditional marriage or creating a weapon with which to harm the Catholic Church.
I suppose it is really only human nature to believe the people who disagree with you can’t possibly believe what they claim to believe and are at least, in some sense, frauds. We all find our own arguments utterly convincing, even self-evident, otherwise we would change them. But I think it is really quite sad (and sometimes totally infuriating) to be in a discussion and to be told, “You don’t really mean what you say. You are a fraud. You have ulterior motives. You’re part of a plot to destroy us.” I try very hard to avoid this kind of thinking, but I do fall into it some times. But for others, particularly on hot-button topics, this seems to be the argument of first choice: “I’m right. They really agree with me secretly, but admitting they agree would undermine their agenda, so they lie. They are evil.”
August 20th, 2011 | 9:04 pm
Same-sex “marriage” proponents have never really wanted authentic marriage, because real marriage is inherently about children and monogamy — one of which is impossible for them, and the other undesirable.
The goal all along has been to convince society to give their relationships social acceptance, as if they were the same thing as authentic marriages. The falsehood is inherent in the project — calling something “marriage” which is not and never can be “marriage”.
August 20th, 2011 | 9:48 pm
This is like reading a serialization of Camus’ “La Peste.”
I know now what demons discuss at the very pit of hell, how they pass the time between scourgings.
The answer for all sane people, Christians or otherwise: ignore the gays and they will dry up for lack of attention. Let them do whatever they feel they must. (But enforce the health code with the penalty of death.)
August 20th, 2011 | 10:59 pm
the whole gay-marriage movement is made up of liars perpetrating a fraud.
That is exactly what is being alleged.
And a lot of people believe it.
After all, the people who believe gays and lesbians have a “right” to marry and found a family are comfortable with lies and frauds: just look at the lies they are willing to tell in order to perpetrate the fraudulent “my child has two mommies”. (When, of course, what the child really has is a daddy who abandoned her – one she isn’t allowed to talk about, ask about, or think about – and a person who is not genetically related to her, yet is claiming to be a “mother”, instead of the more honest ‘stepmother’….yes, these are people who, as a group, are very comfortable with fraud.)
August 21st, 2011 | 3:49 am
Blake
August 20th, 2011 | 11:26 am
It’s the secular humanist vision of sex – the individual is the only social unit that matters (and even then only secular humanist individuals), and pleasure is the most important good – vs. the “traditional” view, that places sex as only one good among many, and does not assume that sexual pleasure or sexual desire is automatically more important than other priorities.
=============
But there is also a very important distinction to be made. The word “sex” without qualification is meaningless. What social conservatives understand “sex” should mean and be and what liberals make of the word are very two different things.
Liberals emphatically legitimize all kinds of sexual pleasure, no matter how disoriented, dysfunctional, harmful or deformed. In order to do this, they construct a discourse that ignores the fact that deformed sexual desires and pleasures are produced in an dysfunctional mind. They refuse to examine or critique just what underlying psychological and emotional problems produce such desires, attitudes or behaviors.
Thus liberal ideology is the imposition first and foremost of ignorance. That is accompanied by a fanatical drive to legitimize these unexamined feelings, dynamics, and behaviors which bring about a host of deformed sexual feelings.
So it’s not merely that liberals put sexual desire (meaning something wholesome) at the top of their value hierarchy, but any all all sexual desires are revered and must be lived out, no matter how neurotic, disoriented, and harmful.
I am glad that at least some conservatives are catching up with this truth: normalizing homosexuality has little to do with homosexuality; it has a lot to do with legitimizing a much larger ideology on sexuality that is basically what liberals employ for all sexual categories (homosexuality, prostitution, pornography, promiscuity, ephebophilia, sexual harassment, etc.).
August 21st, 2011 | 6:33 am
Of the tiny minority of homosexuals who actually do want to live in an institution that arose to meet the needs of heterosexuals – then snap out of it and marry. Homosexuals discover that they’re not gay hundreds of times more often than is reported and marry have kids and get on with their lives.
Something else very eerie is going on when groups yell ‘bigot’ and ‘homophobe’ at those defending marriage and organise those prop 8 style revenge attacks.
Prof Deneen has written well about this ‘going through the state in order to be free’ mentality. http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2011/07/community-and-liberty-or-individualism-and-statism/
August 21st, 2011 | 11:44 am
Same-sex “marriage” proponents have never really wanted authentic marriage, because real marriage is inherently about children and monogamy — one of which is impossible for them, and the other undesirable.
Heterosexuals clearly don’t want authentic marriage, don’t practice monogamy, and kill more than 1 in 5 of their own children.
When heterosexuals actually do marry, half the time they call it quits when the going gets tough, and they divorce. But although there is nothing standing in the way of their getting married, they often just don’t bother:
It is a familiar figure by now to everyone who pays attention that 41% of babies conceived by heterosexuals are born out of wedlock (72% for blacks, 53% for Hispanics, 29% for whites).
Of heterosexual women with two or more children, 28% have had them with 2 or more men.
Of course, there are worse things than being born out of wedlock—like not being born at all. Heterosexuals kill, by abortion, more than 1 in 5 of the babies they conceive. From 1973 on, heterosexuals in America have killed 50 million of their own babies by legal abortions. Nearly a third of all heterosexual women have killed at least one baby by abortion by the time they reach the age of 45. Half of all heterosexual women procuring an abortion in any given year have already had one previously.
August 21st, 2011 | 12:19 pm
The social reality is the individual (especially a young person) needs a moral community to instruct, support, and encourage moral choices and to do what is hard. As that community fails to speak or no longer supports moral behavior–or changes its own standards, the individual is far less likely to choose what is right. When the “social ecology” changes, when it equivicates and provides allowances for some, it has an impact on the world as it is lived.
Contrary to the assurances, looser standards have effects beyond those lone individuals who initially “transgress”. If social expectations change or are conditional to those who somehow decide for themselves they fit the “conditional” bill, it is hardly unexpected that whole masses will in time see their way to doing precisely what our reformers tell us they wouldn’t do.
Couples don’t stay monogamous because it is easy or natural. They do so because there is a social network that directs, informs and expects. In an ideal world, love would be enough for two people to be committed to each other exclusive to all others. But we do not live in that world and love isn’t enough.
August 21st, 2011 | 1:30 pm
David, there’s no point in bringing out that canard. There’s also no point for Joe and the others to stretch the ideology in the article to the entire movement. It’s damning enough even if it’s the beliefs of a small elite or avant garde, because they might be able to force a change in attitudes.
Unless the gay community rises up and tells Dan Savage that his ideas about marriage are bunk, there’s a good chance through sheer repetition and osmosis people become favorable to redefining marriage. Even if you limit this to SSM only it’s going to be disastrous.
You need to worry about the SSM community more than the arguments of the anti-SSM. Right now all they need to do is sit back and watch it implode unless monogamy is upheld and monogamish is condemned roundly.
August 21st, 2011 | 3:18 pm
David Nickol – what you write is a cause for marriage renewal not redefinition and abolition. Eve Tushnet whom you’d know writes elegantly about this most important distinction.
http://www.staycatholic.com/what_homosexuals_want.htm
August 21st, 2011 | 3:58 pm
Dave,
Here’s how I see it in a nutshell. For better or for worse, sexual freedom and reproductive freedom began a rapid increase beginning in the 1960s. Gay people benefitted from this, but did not cause it. The trend continues. Now Joe and others (to vastly oversimplify) want to say that the big threat to marriage, the family, and society in general is same-sex marriage. No matter how terrible one considers same-sex marriage, it seems to me just to be a continuation of the trend toward sexual and reproductive freedom (cohabitation, divorce, out-of-wedlock birth, abortion). And for a small percentage of the population, of whom a small percentage are likely to enter into same-sex marriage. Blocking same-sex marriage is not going to block or reverse the trend toward sexual freedom among heterosexuals.
Part of Joe’s argument, to me, reduces to the ridiculous assertion that if same-sex marriage is accepted, and “monogamish” marriage is prevalent among gay men, this will set a bad example for straight men they cannot resist following, and straight men will say, “Why can’t we have what gay men have?” Of course, for the past several decades of gay liberation, gay men have been condemned for being promiscuous. Why weren’t they a bad example then? Why haven’t straight men said, “We want to be promiscuous, like gay men?” Promiscuous gay men, it seems to me, set a much worse example than “monogamish” gay men. For gay men, a move from promiscuity to “monogamish” relationships is a step backward in the overall trend toward greater sexual freedom.
I think Joe is trying to set up gay men and same-sex marriage as a scapegoat for what is going to happen anyway if the trend toward greater sexual freedom continues. I think I may have said this before, but if all gay men disappeared from the face of the earth today, it seems utterly likely that the declines in heterosexual marriage would continue at the same pace, and monogamy, to whatever extent it is in danger today, would be in the same amount of danger.
My condemnation of heterosexuals above was meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, because I don’t think you can take heterosexuals as a group, or homosexuals as a group, and claim that the entire group is responsible for anything. But all of the data is true.
So I don’t see same-sex marriage as a significant threat to anything. Gay people didn’t cause the high divorce rate, the high abortion rate, and the high out-of-wedlock birth rate, and if monogamy declines, it won’t be because of gay people.
I am reminded of a line in The Importance of Being Ernest, when Lane (the butler) leaves the room, and Algernon remarks: “Lane’s views on marriage seem somewhat lax. Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.” Joe’s position is that he doesn’t want gay people to marry and set a bad example for straight people, because straight people will inevitably follow the bad example. Why should the burden of setting a good example for straight men rest on the shoulders of gay men?
August 21st, 2011 | 4:02 pm
Funny how it is apparently illegitimate to point out any unfavorable behavior or attitudes among same-sex marriage advocates, but it’s somehow a killer reposte to fall back on the old tu quoque fallacy by pointing out the foibles of heterosexuals.
Yes, heterosexuals do not always live up to the ideals of marriage. So what? That doesn’t change the nature of what marriage is, and it is utterly irrelevant to the question of what “marriage” means (or doesn’t mean) to homosexual persons.
Try again.
August 21st, 2011 | 4:06 pm
You need to worry about the SSM community more than the arguments of the anti-SSM. Right now all they need to do is sit back and watch it implode unless monogamy is upheld and monogamish is condemned roundly.
Dave,
What if “monogamish” marriage is quite successful for gay men? What if it turns out that it’s a very good way to sustain long, stable, fulfilling partnerships? Certainly it would be preferable to loneliness and promiscuity. Why should the perfect be the enemy of the good? Also, who’s to say that “monogamish” gay marriage will not evolve into monogamous gay marriage? What if it doesn’t work, and gay men begin to value their committed relationships more than their sexual freedom? What if straight people set a good example for gay people?
August 21st, 2011 | 4:28 pm
An excerpt from America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution by Angelo M. Codevilla appears below. I think it helps to see same-sex marriage in its wider context, its promotion being only a part of a deliberate assault on traditional values and morals.
The full text of Codevilla’s article can be found here:
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print
August 22nd, 2011 | 12:16 am
Same-sex “marriage” proponents have never really wanted authentic marriage, because real marriage is inherently about children and monogamy — one of which is impossible for them, and the other undesirable.
Heterosexuals clearly don’t want authentic marriage, don’t practice monogamy, and kill more than 1 in 5 of their own children.
This is why it is important to recognize that this is not a battle between “gays” and “straights”.
It is a battle between people who want to restore what the left wing destroyed, and the left wing that is still hoping to get more destruction in.
The so-called “Sexual Revolution” has been destructive right and left – to children, to families, to men, to women. For the same left wing that cursed it upon us to now turn around and use their own destructive bad ideas as proof that we should embrace even further destruction, is … well, about what we can and should expect, actually.
After all, what has the left wing ever been? In the early Modern age they were the ones bashing in England’s monasteries. And in the 18th and 19th century they were the ones attacking and trashing some of the most beautiful cathedrals ever built, just out of hate and rage. These are people who are not just destructive, but angry at God. That is why they target whatever is most beautiful that is of God – whether it is a beautiful building or the institution of the family: they cannot co-exist with the sacred.
August 22nd, 2011 | 12:19 am
What if “monogamish” marriage is quite successful for gay men? What if it turns out that it’s a very good way to sustain long, stable, fulfilling partnerships?
If they want to create a new institution – one that meets their needs – that’s nice. Good for them, I say.
But I don’t see that it has anything to do with marriage.
August 22nd, 2011 | 12:44 am
“What if “monogamish” marriage is quite successful for gay men? What if it turns out it’s a very good way to sustain long, stable, fulfilling partnerships?”
Polygamy would be even more successful!
August 22nd, 2011 | 1:25 am
David:
Blocking same-sex marriage is not going to block or reverse the trend toward sexual freedom among heterosexuals.
It’s not sexual freedom, but the redefining of marriage. We’ve been over that enough though. The worry is that marriage will be altered in harmful ways, like allowing adultery and calling it “being monogamish.”
Joe’s position is that he doesn’t want gay people to marry and set a bad example for straight people, because straight people will inevitably follow the bad example. Why should the burden of setting a good example for straight men rest on the shoulders of gay men?
Because they are trying to introduce something to marriage which is harmful and which can spread to straights? Because gays wanted marriage equality, and equality means equality of duty as well as equality of right?
What if “monogamish” marriage is quite successful for gay men? What if it turns out that it’s a very good way to sustain long, stable, fulfilling partnerships?
I’m afraid my reply to this is going to be personal. Don’t take it the wrong way.
Are you a Christian? I mean, you can argue about gay marriage or even the recognizing of homosexuality provided they hold to biblical ideas on marriage. I don’t agree, but I can at least consent to this in theory.
You CANNOT argue for adultery (and monogamish is adultery, consent has nothing to do with it.) No matter if it does cause a measure of secular good. Even that’s doubtful: how many men have happy marriages when they see a mistress on the side, and evil doesn’t bring forth good. It’s not like the omnipresent nature of premarital sex has led to a culture of marriage.
You are essentially saying “Hey, what if God is wrong?” Even conceding homosexuality, you are saying God is wrong about adultery. there’s really no wiggle room about that sin. If you can’t hold SSM without allowing adultery, you have proven Joe’s point better than any argument he could put out.
August 22nd, 2011 | 6:26 am
You are essentially saying “Hey, what if God is wrong?” Even conceding homosexuality, you are saying God is wrong about adultery. there’s really no wiggle room about that sin. If you can’t hold SSM without allowing adultery, you have proven Joe’s point better than any argument he could put out.
Dave,
From Dictionary of the Bible by John L. McKenzie, S. J.:
From The Jewish Study Bible:
Now, it is not my intention to argue in favor of infidelity in marriage, but rather to question what it would mean to talk about whether God is wrong or right about adultery. Do you get to say that when God gave the Sixth Commandment, he actually meant something other than what the Hebrews understood him to say? You then have to contend with Leviticus 20:10, which says, “If a man commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.”
So you are on very solid ground quoting the Bible to prove that God prohibits adultery, but what exactly is adultery? It is not clear to me that the concept applies where same-sex marriage is involved. So there is actually a lot of wiggle room.
By the way, God is always right, but human beings have no guarantee of being right when they they claim to know what God “thinks.”
August 22nd, 2011 | 6:33 am
It’s not sexual freedom, but the redefining of marriage. We’ve been over that enough though. The worry is that marriage will be altered in harmful ways, like allowing adultery and calling it “being monogamish.”
Dave,
For Christians (and Catholics in particular), it is impossible to “redefine” marriage. Making changes to civil marriage laws does not redefine marriage. Sacramental marriage cannot be redefined by civil law, and sacramental marriage is significantly different from civil marriage.
August 22nd, 2011 | 6:43 am
David Nickol – what you write is a cause for marriage renewal not redefinition and abolition. Eve Tushnet whom you’d know writes elegantly about this most important distinction.
Martin Snigg,
I note that Eve Tushnet’s piece was written in 2003. What is the plan for “marriage renewal,” and how is it working out? Enacting laws establishing covenant marriage would seem to be one step toward marriage renewal, but Wikipedia tells us:
Don’t get me wrong. I think marriage in the United States is in very bad shape, and I sincerely wish something could be done about it. But it seems to me if “marriage renewal” is the goal, putting the focus on opposition to same-sex marriage is purely a distraction.
August 22nd, 2011 | 6:53 am
. . . . but it’s somehow a killer reposte to fall back on the old tu quoque fallacy by pointing out the foibles of heterosexuals.
Jack Swann,
I am not sure what your definition of foibles is but it seems to me most people wouldn’t classify a 41% out-of-wedlock birth rate, a 50% divorce rate, and 50 million abortions since 1973 as foibles!
My point is
But maybe you consider that a tu quoque argument.
August 22nd, 2011 | 6:58 am
Polygamy would be even more successful!
Sorry, Henry VIII. We don’t take advice on marriage from someone who had six wives, two of whom he divorced and two of whom he beheaded.
August 22nd, 2011 | 7:10 am
harry,
You left something out which I will put back in boldface:
America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution by Angelo M. Codevilla, Introduction by Rush Limbaugh
We do not need any lectures on traditional marriage from four-times-married, thrice-divorced Rush Limbaugh and his friends.
August 22nd, 2011 | 8:25 am
“Massachusetts has had gay marriage for years, and the sky has not fallen.” I hear this shallow comment from “gay marriage” supporters all the time. My response is usually, “Just wait. The sky will indeed be falling — very soon.”
August 22nd, 2011 | 9:24 am
“You are essentially saying “’Hey, what if God is wrong’?”
If God’s agency in creation has wired homosexuality into a portion of human beings, then it would appear that the anti-homosexual lobby may be wrong about God.
August 22nd, 2011 | 10:28 am
My response is usually, “Just wait. The sky will indeed be falling — very soon.”
David Elton,
The Netherlands has had same-sex marriage for over ten years now, so it should be a better test case for the effects of same-sex marriage than Massachusetts.
In order to have any credibility, you need to define exactly how the sky will fall and give at least a rough estimate as to when. Nonspecific predictions without any time frame are not worth the pixels they are represented in.
August 22nd, 2011 | 10:30 am
[...] Minus monogamy … isn’t something that makes [...]
August 22nd, 2011 | 10:35 am
[...] Marriage Minus Monogamy VI the fifth part of a series on marriage and monogamy in this issue highlights some of the difference between the customary definition of a “committed relationship” between two people, and that recognized in the gay community. [...]
August 22nd, 2011 | 12:11 pm
For Christians (and Catholics in particular), it is impossible to “redefine” marriage. Making changes to civil marriage laws does not redefine marriage. Sacramental marriage cannot be redefined by civil law, and sacramental marriage is significantly different from civil marriage.
The institution of marriage has certain norms.
One of these norms is the expectation of monogamy. This norm is important if you recognize marriage as an institution that supports families. Without the expectation of monogamy, marriage can no longer serve to unite families – one cannot even presume that the child of a given unit is even related to the married couple without monogamy.
Of course it is possible that the Christians can (and probably will) come up with a new word for “sacramental marriage”. That is not the problem. The problem is that these people will be punished for refusing to recognize the new adulterous relationships as being “equal to” a marriage.
In fact, they will even be punished for teaching their own values within their own family. The proselytizers who teach public schools are absolutely dying to get their hands on our kids and grandkids and teach them that “marriage” and “family” can and should be whatever they want it to be (somehow they’re a little less honest about the results: look at the sky-high divorce rates among gays and lesbians in Sweden, and the number of of children born out of wedlock, and imagine how much that would cost the government if Sweden’s demographics were the same as the US, or if the US had to offer the same levels of support to broken families as they do in Sweden!).
I have the right to teach my children and grandchildren that we are a family and our family defines itself by biological kinship. If our kids want to unite themselves with a member of the same sex, that’s fine – I will make a place for them at the table, but I won’t pretend that their union is the same as a marriage, because a marriage is linked to the act of making a family, while same-sex couplings are primarily about sex, with family lines deliberately broken, the mother(s)/father of the family’s children deliberately profaned/prostituted, and children reduced to pawns, tools, toys, or props.
August 22nd, 2011 | 12:27 pm
David Nichol
The Hebrew (and Roman and Islamic) concept of adultery is based, not on the idea of the wife as property (for a Roam wife need not be in her husband’s power (manu mariti)) but on the notion of marriage as the means of determining legal paternity. Very simply, a wife could impose a spurious issue on her husband, but the converse was not true.
If, as I think is certain, this is the origin of the obligation of marital fidelity, I fail to see on what basis it should be expected of a same-sex couple. Still less do I see why the paramour, in such a case, should be liable in damages.
Civil Unions (PACS) do not impose a duty of fidelity and they do not create a presumption of paternity, either: two sides of the same coin. Jurisprudence has added a duty of “loyalty,” a very different thing.
August 22nd, 2011 | 3:15 pm
Another tedious SSM thread, no doubt the old arguments have all been presented here so I won’t bother reading the previous comments….if I missed anything worthwhile please let me know!
But let me present something a bit different. No one knows what SSM couples will do re: monogamy. No one really knows what Joe’s wife will do regarding monogamy. Or Joe for that matter. We do have some real life tests, though, when it comes to larger groups of people than the random individual whose ideas about marriage in general or how they would behave when married may or may not be very realistic.
In the 70′s groups of people did try to pull off ‘marriage sans monogamy’. While maybe some have had some modest success with ‘open marriages’ the fact is it never caught. People for the most part either reverted to monogamy or reverted to not being married.
On a previous thread, someone raised the poor state of marriage in the US African-American community. This is quite illustrative in making some predictions. Due to high rates of incarceration among males and low tolerance to interracial dating among females, African-American woman face a very poor ‘marriage market’ with few eligeable men. As a result, their ‘terms of trade’ are stacked very much against them an in favor of males. Males, who are often less inclined to monogamy, then, have a market equilibrium with women that’s not big on enforcing norms of monogamy.
So how could this play out regarding marriage? Well there’s two possibilities:
1. Marriage remains – Women tolerate cheating men and/or affairs with other married men in exchange for marriage. In other words, ‘swingers’ from the 70′s, ‘free love’ experimenters from earlier ages finally achieve a workable, stable type of open marriage.
2. Marriage doesn’t – People don’t get married as much. Importantly, when they do, though, monogamy is expected. Cheating men aren’t tolerated but since the ‘terms of trade’ are in men’s favor, marriage is not often demanded.
As Joe and others here have pointed out in other contexts, #2 is what seems to have happened. Sub-cultures where monogamy is not valued very highly tend to be cultures where marriage is not very common. That shouldn’t be a big surprise, why?
Because structurally marriage is NOT about producing children, its about monogamy. You don’t need to marry someone to make children with them, you don’t even need to marry them to raise children. If the huge numbers of ‘baby daddys’ and ‘baby mommys’ doesn’t demonstrate that then nothing will. when you do get married, though, you are placing yourself in a very vulnerable position to your spouse.
For example, are you aware that if your spouse becomes impoverished you *must* provide for them before welfare or other services pitch in? Are you aware this can be ordered by a judge? Are you aware that you can be held accountable for your spouse’s debts? Including ones only in their name even for things that aren’t necessities like food and medicine? Are you aware that your spouse gets your estate before anyone else can? Are you aware that you cannot buy property without putting your spouse on the title unless they agree to be left off?
A spouse who has become indifferent or hostile to your welfare can, if he or she choose, cause quite a bit of harm to you. He or she can bankrupt you, indebt you, take command of your home and property, pull you off of life support, invade your financial and health privacy and more. To make someone your spouse is to extend to them a tremendous amount of trust.
Can you create and maintain such a level of trust in a non-monogamous relationship? Possibly and possibly you’ll find a spouse who is likewise able to do the same and not fall to the temptation to take advantage of such trust. More likely you won’t, though, and the average person who isn’t interested in monogamy would find it simplier and easier to just remain single.
While you may find some gay advocates who think this will happen, I’ll say wake me up when someone pulls it off. Canada’s had SSM for about ten years now, various domestic partnership schemes have been longer. The ‘swinger marriage’ remains a rare breed in the marriage ecology whether or not SSM has been adopted in a jurisdiction.
This, then, provides two causes for optimism for anti-SSM who are really concerned about monogamy (but not for anti-SSM advocates who are really more about being anti-SS rather than really caring about marriage or children or any other red herrings).
1. Monogamy is optimal to the structure of marriage. This is good news for pro-monogamites because it means that marriage’s structure is such that it favors monogamy. It’s not ‘artifical’ or something you have to ‘fight against nature’ but rather part of marriage’s optimal structure in the way making toast is pretty optimal to do with a toaster….while making scrambled eggs with it might be possible but much more difficult.
2. Demographics do not determine marriage monogamy. By Joe’s reasoning, any demographic group that happens to have a low rate of monogamy may be in danger of having marriage yanked from it. If, for example, African-Americans have a very low rate of monogamy, Joe may end up telling Michele Obama that she must terminate her marriage to her husband as being married would harm other people’s monogamous marriages. Or even more distressing, if the GOP ends up with a few more Newts and Vitters and Craigs Joe himself may find himself forced to divorce his lovely wife in order to save the marriage’s of millions of other Americans! Fortunately, even when a particular group happens to have a low rate of monogamy, there will still be some monogamy seeking people. It’s actually a good thing that such couples can enjoy the benefit of marriage without harming anyone else’s marriages.
August 22nd, 2011 | 3:52 pm
Hi, David Nickol,
You wrote:
I didn’t “leave it out.” It wasn’t on the page to which I linked. I would like to read it. Can you provide me the link to the page with the introduction by Rush Limbaugh?
As you know, or will realize upon further reflection, whether or not Codevilla, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, has something worthwhile to say is entirely independent of whether or not his thoughts are published with an introduction by Rush Limbaugh.
Do you restrict yourself to only reading essays with an introduction by people with whom you entirely agree? Are you suggesting that as a rule for the rest of us? Or is it that we should only be reading essays with an introduction by someone who holds your views? What if an introduction adheres to your views but the content of the article being introduced does not? Or vice versa? Would you approve of someone reading an essay in one of those situations?
August 22nd, 2011 | 4:29 pm
harry,
” professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University”
1. I’m not sure what ‘international relations’ has to do with marriage.
2. If I saw a book on physics by a professor emeritus of astro-physics from MIT…I’d be inclined to think it had something worth considering about physics. If I saw he had his work published with an introduction from Bozo the Clown, I might be given reason to think twice.
August 22nd, 2011 | 4:46 pm
Hi, Boonton,
You are right. There is no connection between Codevilla’s area of expertise and the institution of marriage that immediately comes to mind,
Again, Codevilla either provides some thoughtful insights in his essay or he doesn’t. One would have to first read it in order to have an informed opinion of the value of Codevilla’s ideas.
I thought his essay related to the discussion at hand rather well in that, as I said previously, it describes the larger context in which the same-sex marriage controversy is taking place, which is the establishment’s ongoing assault on traditional values and morals.
August 22nd, 2011 | 4:49 pm
Do you restrict yourself to only reading essays with an introduction by people with whom you entirely agree?
harry,
No, as a matter of fact, I make a point of reading the works of people I am quite sure I will disagree with on most matters. And once in a blue moon I find that someone like George Will or even Charles Krauthammer hits the nail on the head, and I am amazed to agree with them. There were things I agreed with George Bush on! But I don’t read people I don’t respect, and if I don’t know anything about someone other than that person’s work is endorsed by someone I disrespect, I don’t read it. An endorsement by Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, particularly if solicited (as a book introduction must be) is something I take as a warning sign. And it doesn’t necessarily just apply to right wingers. Endorsements by Shelby Spong or Bill Moyers and pretty much in the same category.
I see Limbaugh has written introductions to Pimps, Whores And Welfare Brats—The Stunning Conservative Transformation of a Former Welfare Queen and Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America. Why any serious person would allow Rush Limbaugh to write an introduction to his or her book is beyond me.
How can an author pretend to write seriously about marriage and then include an introduction by Rush Limbaugh in the book? And it has a blurb on the back by Michel Bachmann, too. This does not mean it’s not a fine or even brilliant book. It’s just that based on these endorsements, I presume against it until I know more. If endorsements mean anything at all, they have to cut both ways.
August 22nd, 2011 | 4:59 pm
No one knows what SSM couples will do re: monogamy
Yes, we do: they have already announced that they do not intend to respect the boundary between parents vs. stepparents.
They are already demanding/claiming the right to use adultery as a reproductive strategy.
It’s part of the whole set of lies that go into the “two mommy fantasy”.
August 22nd, 2011 | 5:06 pm
It’s not sexual freedom, but the redefining of marriage. We’ve been over that enough though.
Yes, gay rights arguments rely on willfully ignoring what they cannot rebut.
I have wondered in the past how a group that cares (?) so much about “dignity” and “not living a lie” can handle being reduced to such tactics.
August 22nd, 2011 | 5:12 pm
Here’s how I see it in a nutshell. For better or for worse, sexual freedom and reproductive freedom began a rapid increase beginning in the 1960s. Gay people benefitted from this, but did not cause it. The trend continues. Now Joe and others (to vastly oversimplify) want to say that the big threat to marriage, the family, and society in general is same-sex marriage.
Yes, the abandonment of social values in favor of individual desires and narcissism has reached its limit.
Your argument basically amounts to, “everyone else is corrupt, so what harm will it do to institutionalize corruption?”
The fallacy is twofold: not everyone is corrupt, and even if corruption were more widespread than it is, it does not mean that corruption is harmless or should be institutionalized.
The sexual revolution has been destructive, but that in itself does not justify expanding the sexual revolution so that it will finish off the demolition of what it has already damaged.
If marriage were so worthless as that, then it could not be argued that we are depriving gays of something by not allowing them to participate in it. If marriage were truly destroyed, gays wouldn’t care about it. It would be an obsolete thing, not something worth spending so much treasure on.
The other problem with this argument, of course, is that it’s irrelevant: it does not address any of the actual stated objections to gay marriage.
August 22nd, 2011 | 5:27 pm
Because structurally marriage is NOT about producing children, its about monogamy. You don’t need to marry someone to make children with them, you don’t even need to marry them to raise children.
You don’t need a contract to buy a car, either, but you’re a fool if you buy a car without a contract.
And for exactly the same reasons – only magnified exponentially – you’re a fool if you have a child without a marriage contract.
Marriage exists because without it, men are vulnerable to manipulation, women to exploitation, children to abandonment, families to fraud and power struggles, communities to disintegration.
August 22nd, 2011 | 5:39 pm
Marriage exists because without it, men are vulnerable to manipulation, women to exploitation, children to abandonment, families to fraud and power struggles, communities to disintegration.
Very nicely put . . . except I don’t think marriage prevents any of those.
August 22nd, 2011 | 6:07 pm
David:
So you are on very solid ground quoting the Bible to prove that God prohibits adultery, but what exactly is adultery? It is not clear to me that the concept applies where same-sex marriage is involved. So there is actually a lot of wiggle room.
So you are positively saying extra-marital sex is not only good so long as the person the married does it with is unmarried, you think a scriptural case can be made from it? And you think anti-ssm are wrong to be worried about redefining marriage when a nominal Christian claims this?
I don’t thing your exegesis is right though. For one thing, it’s completely irrelevant even if 100% true-fornication in the Bible is cause for divorce, and is just as bad a sin:
“For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God” Eph 5:5
I think that concept at least is very clear. I’d argue more but I think we are going to bust the comment boxes doing so.
For Christians (and Catholics in particular), it is impossible to “redefine” marriage. Making changes to civil marriage laws does not redefine marriage.
But isn’t this what you are trying to do with SSM? I’m not getting the sense you are arguing this solely on a secular basis and would roundly insist that true marriage is only a man and a woman in perfect fidelity.
Marriage can be redefined because Christians in practice can do so, or even in the RCC’s case, make a new tradition or interpretation of one. Homosexual relationships at all being ordained is an example.
Todd:
If God’s agency in creation has wired homosexuality into a portion of human beings, then it would appear that the anti-homosexual lobby may be wrong about God.
Problem with that is everything else starts to crumble too. You’d be back at God being unknown, and keep in mind that means there is no real reason why we are right about needing to love one another. Christianity manages to keep a lot of things in check. Weaken it beyond a certain point and you may not like what comes to replace it.
August 22nd, 2011 | 6:23 pm
Boonton:
The problem is a variant of 1. You are using two extremes, but the reality may be different. Like in the movie Hall Pass:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvqbOPX3wBs
It doesn’t have to be pure swinging hedonism-just the idea that every man should have a girl on the side when he needs, or that women should get a week off from fidelity to go wild.
I think that monogamy can be irreparably damaged by that, and this article is a step in how we need to be worried about it. It’s not even pro-or anti SSM any more. You can be pro-SSM and be worried about this mindset taking root.
August 22nd, 2011 | 6:47 pm
Blake
You don’t need a contract to buy a car, either, but you’re a fool if you buy a car without a contract.
Actually you do. You may be able to do a verbal contract…even an implied contract as opposed to a written one but you can’t
In regards to having kids and marriage, whether its irrelevant to the actual structure of marriage in relation to deep trust. As serious as raising kids is, you put your life on the line with your spouse in a way that goes beyond kids with marriage.
August 22nd, 2011 | 7:18 pm
Very nicely put . . . except I don’t think marriage prevents any of those.
No – marriage does not guarantee that none of these things will happen.
It also does not promise that unicorns will make the seas stop rising. But they do have their place in preventing the known risks of having children outside of wedlock.
The risks for children are especially vulnerable: children are far more likely to be abandoned by one or both parents if the parents aren’t married. But, then, seeing as how gays rely on abandoned children for their personal use, gay rights advocates might count that as a plus.
August 22nd, 2011 | 7:20 pm
For example, are you aware that if your spouse becomes impoverished you *must* provide for them before welfare or other services pitch in? Are you aware this can be ordered by a judge?
Of course the judge should order a spouse to care for a spouse!
Marriage is not a union between two able-bodied, economically independent adults. When people successfully enter into a bond, a link, and make a family, they become “enmeshed” (to use the liberal psychologists’ term for it, even though the liberal psychologists view this as a derogatory thing).
That means that they are no longer two distinct individuals, but one unit – a family.
Think about terms such as “head of household”, “breadwinner”, “caregiver”, “homemaker” – these categories and legal concepts would be oppressive if we were describing two independent, non-interconnected individuals. But they are not here because anyone is being oppressed. They are here because they are tools that families use.
Men and women cannot split reproductive costs equally. That is why women have a claim on the man who is obliged to support her. Because she has borne the bulk of the economic, social, and emotional costs of bearing children.
That’s part of what makes a man-woman coupling unique.
If man-woman coupling weren’t unique, then nobody would need any governmental regulation or benefits. There would be no contract involved, no need for a license, no need for norms or any other institutional supports, and no need to care about adultery.
Gays need marriage about like a little sister needs a jock strap – just because your older brother has one does not mean there’s any serious inequality going on here.
August 22nd, 2011 | 10:23 pm
Dave ‘Dblade’
You are using two extremes, but the reality may be different. Like in the movie Hall Pass:
Do you find it somewhat ironic that I used, as my examples, real life cases while you use as your example a comic movie? Do you find it even more ironic that while submitting a slapstic fictional movie as evidence you chide me for being ‘extreme’?
Blake
Men and women cannot split reproductive costs equally. That is why women have a claim on the man who is obliged to support her. Because she has borne the bulk of the economic, social, and emotional costs of bearing children.
Only problem, the requirements of mutual support in marriage are:
1. Not contingent on having children. If Donald Trump’s wife shows up on the foot stamp line, the state may order Trump to pay for her food…even if she has not produced any children from him…even if she willnot or cannot produce children for him.
1.1 Note it is also not contingent on actually bearing the children. If a child comes to a marriage through adoption or even a surrogate, there is no decrease in the mutual obligation of spouses even though you might argue the woman ‘got a pass’ on some of the physical costs of reproduction.
2. Not based on being female. If Sarah Palin’s husband shows up on food stamps, she may be required to support him even though his share of ‘reproductive costs’ comes nowhere near her’s. Your theory sounds good until you actually try to subject it to a modest dose of reality.
Dblade
I think that monogamy can be irreparably damaged by that, and this article is a step in how we need to be worried about it. It’s not even pro-or anti SSM any more. You can be pro-SSM and be worried about this mindset taking root.
In essence this is an argument about whether monogamy is a good idea, not what SSM will ‘do’ to monogamy. If monogamy is an outdated idea, an idea more fit for harsh enviroments, an unnatural idea, etc. it is my opinion that rather than take the monogamy out of marriage most people would simply respond by dropping marriage. I presented two bits of actual observation that seem to reinforce the assertion that when monogamy declines, its marriage that declines with it rather than monogamous marriage. Therefore it would be reasonable to suspect that married gays would either become more monogamous or unmonogamous gays would not bother with SSM even if it was available.
But there’s a bit more. Structurally marriage is not very friendly towards non-monogamous arrangements. As I pointed out, you are more or less putting your whole life in your spouse’s hands, in some cases literally (see Terry Schiavo). You may trust your one night stand enough to have some fun in bed with, will you trust giving them your check book? PIN number? That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to marriage. I’m not saying its impossible to have a non-monogamous marriage that’s long term and stable, I’m being very conservative about that, I’m saying its obviously going to be very difficult and require an exceptional degree of trust between two people and an exceptional ability NOT to take advantage of things.
So let’s make things simple, please dispense with the endless red herrings over and over again. Let’s talk about only this one aspect of SSM to try to stay on the thread’s topic. Don’t worry, Joe seems incapable of going a week without talking about gays or gay marriage so if we don’t retread some of the same old same old on this thread you’ll certainly get many more chances to do so.
Structure is not related to purpose. Mr. Charles M Toast may have invented the toaster in 1872 intending to find a way to boost bread sales at his little NYC shop….which sold bread that was a bit too old which you may notice less if you toasted it first. But today you can use a toaster to make pop tarts! The time may indeed come that 98% of toasting will be the toasting of pop tarts, begals, and other non-toast toasting. The toaster will then be used mostly for a purpose different than its intended purpose, but not unsuitable for its structure. What about using a toaster to make scrambled eggs? Well like I said it may be done….perhaps some geeks who are into ‘extreme toasting’ have already done it. But we can see how the toaster’s structure is quite unsuitable for scrambled eggs in a way that it is not unsuitable for pop tarts, begals or plain old toast.
OK so Joe’s argument is that gays deeply committed to non-mongamy will establish non-monogamous marriages. I’ll shrug and say perhaps. But then Joe will claim that gays are already not very monogamous* so then what? If maybe 2% of marriages are made up of non-mongamous SSM ones why would that be any different from the 2% of straight marriages that are made up of ‘swingers’ for whom the 70′s will never die? Joe will say that non-monogamous marriages will set a ‘norm’ of that will increase the rate of non-monogamoy….more importantly the rate of non-monogamy in marriages (It can’t increase the rate of non-monogamy unless Joe wants to argue that gays who are in SSM will for some reason become less monogamous than gays not in SSM). Now the game is, IMO, really revealed…..
Structure, I think I’ve more than established both by observation and examination of how marriage ‘works’ that its a monogamy friendly institution and a non-monogamous challenged one (like the toaster is a pop-tart friendly machine, scrambled egg unfriendly). So the link is pretty clear to me. The question then is:
Do you have any faith that monogamy is valuable?
I do so I’m not really getting all too worked up at the idea that some gay people may think they may discover the secret to ‘non-monogamous marriage’. First, they will hardly be the first to do it. Second, even if they pull it off it won’t be any big deal. Like the geeks who prove you can make scrambled eggs with a toaster, you’re not going to change the fact that just because you can do it in principle that it makes sense to do it on a mass scale rather than as a novelity. So either way then its a win-win. If monogamy is valuable in itself, people will do it gay and straight. If it isn’t then why fight for it? Problem solved. No need to thank me.
August 23rd, 2011 | 4:50 am
Booton
Ethnographic studies show that, world wide, polygamous cultures are more common than monogamous ones. Of course this does not mean that most marriages are actually polygamous, but that all marriages are, by law and custom, potentially polygamous.
This would seem to undermine your contention.
But note that, whilst polygyny is commonly approved, polyandry is vanishingly rare and almost always takes the form of fraternal polyandry.
This would seem to support my claim that marital fidelity is closely linked to questions of paternity, both in terms of obligation and descent. Both the doctrine of the jurists and the jurisprudence of the courts relate the wife’s right of action against her husband’s paramour to the husband’s potential liability to any children she may have and the risk she poses to the family assets. That is why gifts to her out of his inherited assets can be reversed.
August 23rd, 2011 | 10:13 am
Michael PS
I don’t know if you’re correct that polygamous cultures are more common than monogamous ones. I suspect if it does it does so only by ‘counting cultures’….in other words counting some obscure tribe of less than 1000 members that has polygamy as ’1 for polygamy’ and counting the Roman Empire as ’1 for monogamy’. In terms of sophisticated legal systems as developed by advanced economies, monogamy has almost exclusively dominated.
This would seem to support my claim that marital fidelity is closely linked to questions of paternity,…
Sure it is, but that doesn’t address the point I raised about marriage and monogamy. Structurally, marriage is not very friendly to non-monogamy. Paternity is not, though, part of this mix. A man in any type of relationship with a woman has always had to contend with the theoretical possibility that the child she bears may not really be his. This remains true whether or not the relationship has a marriage certificate attached to it (but note that DNA testing nowadays has more or less eliminated the need to live with uncertainity). If fatherhood is your agenda, a committment to monogamy by at least the woman you’re with is in your interest for obvious reasons.
Both the doctrine of the jurists and the jurisprudence of the courts relate the wife’s right of action against her husband’s paramour to the husband’s potential liability to any children she may have and the risk she poses to the family assets.
I’ll caution you against assuming French Law is the core of all civilized thought on the matter….. In the US I believe there is no distinction between children. You are required to provide for all your children whether or not they were born in wedlock. A woman can’t sue to stop her husband from paying for the children he makes with a mistress on the grounds that only the legitimate children have rights to ‘family assets’. Likewise in the US one is not obligated to pass down their assets to their children, legitimate or not. One is only required to provide for the needs of minor children. You are free to write adult children out of your will and leave your estate literally to a dog if you wish. Again French law may be different here, but then France is a country with a heritage of royality and inherited titles….something the US never adopted.
August 23rd, 2011 | 10:40 am
It seems to me that infidelity within marriages of couples past their childbearing years or couples who are otherwise incapable of having children is considered just as serious an offense as in cases where all the parties are fertile. So perhaps the demand for fidelity within marriage had its origin in a desire for certainty about the parentage of offspring. However, it became a thing in itself. Anything I have read about same-sex couples who have open relationships indicates that a relatively strong “instinct” of sexual jealousy and feelings of betrayal when a partner has sex outside the relationship still exist when there is no possibility of children. So in some sense, monogamy or fidelity is “natural.” That does not necessarily mean it is good, or that those who make a concerted effort to overcome such feelings are immoral.
August 23rd, 2011 | 11:18 am
It seems to me that infidelity within marriages of couples past their childbearing years or couples who are otherwise incapable of having children is considered just as serious an offense as in cases where all the parties are fertile. So perhaps the demand for fidelity within marriage had its origin in a desire for certainty about the parentage of offspring. However, it became a thing in itself.
You sure have a funny way of looking at things. You don’t count the way nature actually does things; you count the way nature would do things if nature met some artificial (Enlightenment-based) standard of how “rational” beings ought to act.
Which is why Enlightenment-based projects keep failing and failing and failing: their economic models fail to predict actual behavior, their social models fail to solve actual problems, and every failed model instead does harm instead of good by introducing “unintended consequences” – because your models are built on your own artificial (and incorrect) model of how things ought to work, instead of how they do.
What you’re missing is one of the rules about how things actually work and also a related concept known as “integrity”.
The either-or mistake is a failure to recognize that there is a category of thing in nature that does not operate on a case-by-case basis, but an either-or one, because the either-or rule is more biologically efficient. When you meet a disturbing person on the street, you do not stop and spend an hour analyzing him to verify whether he is crazy or dangerous; you treat all disturbing people as potentially dangerous and you avoid interacting with him. Your brain does this automatically because, first, the risk of being wrong is great, but also – and equally important – there’s no harm to you if you’re overly cautious. If he’s not dangerous, you still lose nothing by failing to make his acquaintance. (He might lose something, but that’s not your problem.)
This is a rule found repeatedly throughout nature, and it exists in cases where certain circumstances make it the more logical, more efficient way to do things. There is much to lose and everything to gain if we set up the rules so that we evaluate each couple and apply this law but not that law to them.
There simply is no reason why we should expend huge resources to examine citizens for the purpose of classifying them into “fertile” and “infertile” categories – there is no benefit, because the number of infertile people who are trying to fraudulently pass off someone else’s child as their own is not a problem (or at least it hasn’t been – with new technologies, I have no doubt that this issue not only should but will come under discussion).
Not only is there nothing to gain from such a law, there is in fact something to lose. By having one set of rules – in this case, the rule being that all married people shall be faithful to each other – you gain the benefits of “integrity”, as well as gaining the benefits of stronger commitments, greater loyalty, and greater trust.
August 23rd, 2011 | 11:22 am
This would seem to support my claim that marital fidelity is closely linked to questions of paternity, both in terms of obligation and descent.
Whatever the reason why marriage came into being (and everyone who isn’t blinded by covetous ideological desire can see that the evidence overwhelmingly supports your assertion), an equally important question is this: if marriage is important to us, why is it important? What does it do?
The reason marriage is important is because it helps intact families stay intact.
The entire “gay marriage” argument necessarily relies on ignoring the well-being of children – refusing to acknowledge the conflict between what the adults want vs. what children need – justifying, minimizing, and even outright denying the harm that is done to children when sexual desires are prioritized above the concerns that traditionally protect and nurture both children and family units.
August 23rd, 2011 | 11:50 am
The legal presumption of paternity in marriage is only a benefit to children, not adults. If you really think about it, its actually a disadvantage to marriage. It means if you are a man you may be forced to provide for a child that isn’t yours simply because you married a woman who is unfaithful to you. At least with a non-married relationship such a woman would have to prove your paternity.
More importantly, as we learned on previous threads the assumption of paternity has been greatly relaxed with DNA testing. If a man has an affair with a married woman and she has a child, he can be named the father if he petitions for it. Likewise a wife may petition for her husband NOT to be named the father of her child if she has had an affair. And again today, in the US at least, a husband can deny paternity of his wife’s child. At no point did anyone object to these adjustments to the possibility of DNA testing* by raising their hand and claiming that ‘obviously’ any such policy would strike at the philosophical or legal heart of marriage.
* In fact, this was even possible before DNA testing in cases where there was clear proof that the husband was not the biological father. For example, if the wife conceived when it can be proven the husband was away or if the husband could be proven sterile paternity could be contested and denied.
August 23rd, 2011 | 11:57 am
Blake
The reason marriage is important is because it helps intact families stay intact.
Define family here please. Previously here you’ve asserted that a couple, upon getting married, becomes a new family. But what is interesting is that you did not condition that upon the creation of children. If creating children is not necessary for a family then marriage’s ‘helpfulness’ in keeping families intact extends to childless families as well as those with children or those with the potential for children.
Guess what, your logic leads right into SSM.
If your definition of family is contingent upon children, then there is no logic to marriage’s lifetime and mutual committment clauses. There is no need for Donald Trump to keep his current wife off of food stamps as all his children are adults now and he has none with is current wife, for example. Yet tradition and law have never asserted anything like that.
Even more damming to your argument is the question of why or how is marriage helpful to families staying intact? It’s helpful because its a monogamy friendly institution and a non-monogamy unfriendly one. You’ve landed right smack in the middle of my camp here.
August 23rd, 2011 | 12:49 pm
Even more damming to your argument is the question of why or how is marriage helpful to families staying intact?
It’s only damning if you pretend not to see the evidence.
Fortunately for the rest of us, the pile of evidence is growing higher and higher.
Actually the evidence has been on display for a long time, it’s the documentation that is still growing.
Marriage is causally related to good outcomes.
Lack of marriage is causally related to bad outcomes.
It is true that fewer of us have used the tools since you people started promising a world of Utopian happiness if we threw away obligations and responsibilities and instead started worshiping our crotch. But those of us who still do use marriage correctly are still getting the results promised, so please stop trying to break it.
August 23rd, 2011 | 1:01 pm
If your definition of family is contingent upon children, then there is no logic to marriage’s lifetime and mutual committment clauses.
Please read the comments I’ve already made.
And I must once again ask that you stop misrepresenting my position: unless there are multiple people posting under your name, you know perfectly well I am not saying marriage includes an obligation to have children.
When the state issues licenses – whether it’s for founding a family (marriage), hunting, fishing, or driving a car – the standard that is used is that the person (or in this case couple) applying for the license must meet reasonable qualifying criteria. But being in possession of a license does not mean you are legally obliged to shoot or drive anything, nor does it mean you are obliged to found a family (or even get married for that matter).
August 23rd, 2011 | 1:01 pm
The legal presumption of paternity in marriage is only a benefit to children, not adults. If you really think about it, its actually a disadvantage to marriage. It means if you are a man you may be forced to provide for a child that isn’t yours simply because you married a woman who is unfaithful to you.
This is why monogamy is important – and why there have traditionally been laws criminalizing adultery.
August 23rd, 2011 | 1:08 pm
There is no need for Donald Trump to keep his current wife off of food stamps as all his children are adults now and he has none with is current wife, for example. Yet tradition and law have never asserted anything like that.
Actually that is not the case.
Women bear the brunt of the costs of childbearing. They don’t just lose a few dollars during the years they are having children – their entire career arc is lowered, and they have less money to retire on.
This has all been well-documented (ironically, much of the work has been done by left wing feminists trying to figure out why single parenthood isn’t working out very well for women).
Again, I repeat: if men and women were able to split the costs of having children equally, then an institution such as marriage would not be necessary. There would be no need for laws, norms, customs, and legal regulations protecting and negotiating the partners as they navigate through tangled issues involving who has the right to expect what of whom.
But that is not an option between men and women, which is what makes their coupling unique – and why they need an institution that is peculiar to their unique situation.
August 23rd, 2011 | 1:12 pm
Booton
Three obvious examples of polygamous systems are Islamic (with a highly developed system of jurisprudence) and traditional Hindu law (although this varied between castes) and China had a recognized system of concubinage. In addition, polygamy is the rule rather than the exception in sub-Saharan Africa. Add to that many communities of Mizrahi Jews. Of course, I accept that, in polygamous societies, most marriages are not polygamous, but all are potentially so.
Western marriage law is the product of the confluence of two monogamous systems, Roman and Christian.
Of course a wife cannot prevent her husband supporting her paramour’s children, but she can claim a reparation in damages from her for patrimonial loss arising from that liability.
She cannot prevent her children receiving their reserved share of his estate (if her husband acknowledges them) but she can assert her own usufruct over their shares, if she survives him.
August 24th, 2011 | 5:18 am
Blake
Even more damming to your argument is the question of why or how is marriage helpful to families staying intact?
It’s only damning if you pretend not to see the evidence.
Disconnect here Blake. I’m not saying marriage doesn’t keep families intact, in fact I’m saying just the opposite! That it does! The question is, pay attention, how does it do this? Magic? No, marriage is, as I pointed out, monogamy friendly because it requires you to put a huge amount of trust in your spouse by giving your spouse a very large ability to wreck all types of havoc on your life. Most people (but I’ll avoid saying all) cannot maintain this type of trust while also tossing possible sexual jealousies into the mix.
It is true that fewer of us have used the tools since you people started promising a world of Utopian happiness if we threw away obligations and responsibilities and instead started worshiping our crotch.
Who are you talking about? Not me, not David here. Who made you this promise when? Are you carping about something you read in your dad’s Playboy 30 years ago? Instead of prattling on about the Enlightenment, why don’t you work on answering the questions you are asked about your arguments. For example, my question to you on how you define family.
Paternity
This is why monogamy is important – and why there have traditionally been laws criminalizing adultery.
This doesn’t shed much light on marriage, though. In the pre-DNA world, proving adultery was generally almost as tough as proving paternity. This was why the law specifically made it harder, not easy, for a husband to challenge his wife over whether or not he was the father of her kids. The courts did not want to get into trying to figure out who lied in a ‘he-says, she says’ fight. So the ability to press a claim that your wife was unfaithful could not be made absent overwhelming, undeniable evidence.
Donald Trump
Women bear the brunt of the costs of childbearing. They don’t just lose a few dollars during the years they are having children – their entire career arc is lowered, and they have less money to retire on.
You’re just repeating yourself yet again. The mutual obligation the law puts towards spouses runs independent of gender. Sarah Palin is just as responsible for providing for her husband as Donald Trump is for his wife even though she is the one who ‘bore the brunt of childbearing’.
Michael PS
Three obvious examples of polygamous systems are Islamic (with a highly developed system of jurisprudence) and traditional Hindu law (although this varied between castes) and China had a recognized system of concubine
Islam has two different mindsets on this. One is that polygamy is indeed allowed. The other is that the Koran’s injunction is that its only allowed if the man treats all wives equally. Since this is nearly impossible for any normal man short of some type of saint, it is practically not allowed except in notable circumstances such as a surplus of widows in a time of war. Most Muslims I have randomly meet come from cultures where a man with multiple wives would be considered something of a joke, as a Christian might view a fellow Christian who insists on wearing a tunic and growing his hair and beard in the manner of how Jesus is often depicted.
Wikipedia defines concubine as “the state of a woman or man in an ongoing, usually matrimonially oriented, relationship with somebody to whom they cannot be married, often because of a difference in social status or economic condition.” While it may appear polygamous I don’t think it is in the sense that concubines are considered married. In fact, it seems essential to the concept that they are NOT married. Anyway, the structure of marriage I’m talking about is the structure as is established by the legal and social systems of the developed world over, say, the last two hundred years. Whatever legal status concubines may have had, Mao stamped it out in his revolution. They exist today ‘off the books’ so to speak. In present day India polygamy is illegal for Hindu’s (but not for Muslims and Buddhists).
Of course a wife cannot prevent her husband supporting her paramour’s children, but she can claim a reparation in damages from her for patrimonial loss arising from that liability.
If I take you right, then, Arnold’s wife has the right sue the maid on the grounds that the payments Arnold has made to the help care for the maid’s child (which we all know now is actually Arnold’s and not the maid’s husband’s) have decreased the estate that she or her children would have inherited eventually from Arnold. I believe under American law this would not be possible. The American view is basically you take your husband for better or worse, richer or poorer, and if he ends up poorer because he can’t keep himself from making kids left and right well you just have to live like that. There is the ability to sue the maid for ‘loss of affection’ , which isn’t used much these days. Interestingly that concept is centered not on damage to the children of the marriage but on the damage to the emotional bond between husband and wife supposedly harmed by the mistress’s ‘seduction’ of the husband.
August 24th, 2011 | 7:41 am
“Problem with that is everything else starts to crumble too. You’d be back at God being unknown, and keep in mind that means there is no real reason why we are right about needing to love one another.”
This would be true if the Church’s only resource were rationalism.
On one hand, it is true that the physical world informs human beings of certain truths. On the other, religious people are formed in a substrate of discernment: a combination of many angles where we find the grace of God.
If homosexuality is wired into a minority of human beings, it will eventually be like the rational demolition of creationism. While there are still important lessons of faith to be gleaned from the myths of Adam, Eve, and six-day creation, the factual representation of the sun revolving around the Earth, and all the artificial construction around that would have to fade.
Loving one another was not only an explicit command of the Lord, but it was one in which he gave an incarnational and sacrificial example. Can you cite Jesus on homosexuality?
“Christianity manages to keep a lot of things in check. Weaken it beyond a certain point and you may not like what comes to replace it.”
War, terrorism, predatory business practices–I already don’t like a lot of what has replaced a Christian ethic in the West.
August 24th, 2011 | 1:32 pm
It is true that fewer of us have used the tools since you people started promising a world of Utopian happiness if we threw away obligations and responsibilities and instead started worshiping our crotch.
Who are you talking about? Not me, not David here. Who made you this promise when?
Reference is to the Sexual Revolution.
Gay marriage is part of a larger movement: the movement toward individual self-fulfillment, and the promise that total individual self-fulfillment is somehow not in conflict with marriage.
You can too have a family and all that goes with it without sacrificing anything. Obligation is for…well, everyone but you!
August 24th, 2011 | 1:46 pm
Booton
Your acquaintance amongst Muslims obviously does not include those from the Maghreb, where only Tunisia has actually abolished the practice.
It is sufficiently common amongst immigrants in France to have given concern to the authorities.
The custom is widespread, with between 40 and 50 countries including it in their civil codes, it is very ancient, attempts to abolish it meet with stiff opposition, even in countries where actual practice is rare (as in Egypt) and attempts are being made to introduce it in a number of others, where it is not currently permitted, notably in the Central Asian republics.
The actual incidence of polygamous marriages is far less important than the number of countries in which monogamy forms no part of the legal concept of marriage, reflecting, one must assume, social attitudes.
How do you account for that?
August 24th, 2011 | 9:35 pm
Reference is to the Sexual Revolution.
Errr no you said ‘you people’ made a promise of something to you that’s been broken. You made a charge support it with specifics. Who promised you? What did they promise? When did they promise it and how has it not been delievered to you?
Michael PS
The actual incidence of polygamous marriages is far less important than the number of countries in which monogamy forms no part of the legal concept of marriage, reflecting, one must assume, social attitudes.
Aye but what social attitudes? I suspect most simply consider it self-enforcing. As I pointed out, you very nearly hand your life to your spouse and sometimes literally do so (see Terry Schiavo). Can you trust your spouse to take this power and use it in a manner that is not harmful to you if you’re not sexually monogamous to her? Would you not be tempted to use your power over her as revenge if you discovered she was not monogamous to you? Perhaps, as I’ve stated, some people are able to tame and contain sexual jealously enough to make this not an issue. Perhaps others are able to overcompensate in other ways to ‘balance’ out infidelity in marriage. For the most part, though, I suspect monogamy is a less expensive way to ‘stalemate’ the mutual standoff spouses have against each other.
While polygamy may be interesting to discuss, I don’t think it alters the issue greatly. I suppose we could ask if polygamy structures around the world offer incentives to fidelity or not. To me that’s a question of limited relevance here since even societies that have polygamy still only see it practiced by a minority of the population.
August 26th, 2011 | 1:25 pm
Polygamy is a misnomer for the type of relationship addressed in this article. We’re talking about emotional monogamy with polysexuality. In other words, the marriage itself is the emotional, financial, and social relationship. Polysexuality and emotional monogamous marriage can coexist in one relationship very happily as long as both partners are fully aware of everything that’s happening. I want to wake up with the same person (and only one person) every morning, but I might want to go to go to bed with different ones now and then. As long as my partner knows about that, and knows who and when, he can enjoy it with me instead of experiencing emotional trauma. This concept is incomprehensible to most people because they’ve been socialized to think of relationships as territorial and proprietary. It’s possible to love someone more than anything and also experience arousal rather than jealosy when they have sexual experiences with others. In fact, many of those who have experienced this lifestyle would say it’s the ultimate experience in intimacy with your partner and in pure human sexuality, all in one intoxicating, delightful package.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact