The Washington Post runs a weekly feature in its Sunday “Outlook” section, examining “Five Myths About” something new each week. Of course the whole point about such a feature is to have a guest writer debunk some notions that are widely believed to be true but aren’t. Therefore it isn’t surprising if someone says of an attempted debunking, “but that isn’t a myth at all–it’s true!” The weekly feature is also fairly space-constrained, so the guest debunker has to give a concentrated dose of truth if he is going to get his argument across. Either that, or he has to choose some easy targets, with the obvious risk that he will appear to have chosen straw men in which no one really does believe.
Jonathan Rauch cannot be accused of picking straw men, in his contribution from the latest “Outlook,” titled “Five Myths About Same-Sex Marriage.” But he has not delivered on the concentrated dose of the truth that this demanding format requires. Four out of his five “myths” are plainly true, completely true, unassailably true, and all Rauch accomplishes is to run aground on the hard shoals of the truth. Only one of his myths, the last one, is in any way a “myth” at all. (It’s also the one that relatively few people believe, as well.) Let’s take them each in turn.
1. Rauch’s first “myth” is that “letting gay couples get married redefines marriage.” He accepts as a “true premise” the proposition that “with few exceptions, marriage has always been about uniting the two sexes and linking mother and father to children.” But he calls it a “false conclusion” to say that changing this means that “marriage ceases to be marriage.” Why is that false? Because, Rauch says, “marriage multitasks.” It’s an institution that does lots of other things, and has various “social benefits” for those brought within its boundaries.
This is true but not exactly on point. Marriage has historically been about many things–about legitimacy of offspring, and inheritance, and the acquisition and transmission of property, and the alliances of families, and even about international relations in the case of royalty. Some feminists would even have us believe that it has been “about” the subjugation of women. We need not disagree with any of these characterizations, even the last one, in order to say that marriage has never, in any culture at any time in history, not been about “uniting the two sexes and linking mother and father to children.”
The “multitasking” description puts me in mind of the “multi-tool” many of us have in a desk drawer or a glove compartment. I have a really good one my wife gave me when I had to live apart from her in another country for several months, and might find that I needed a tool occasionally around my temporary home. (Thoughtful woman I married.) It’s an excellent pair of pliers, though not the best I own, and a good wire-cutter. It’s a serviceable jackknife, and a surprisingly capable mini-saw. Some inch and centimeter markings are etched into one handle. It is several emergency screwdrivers of inferior utility, and a not-terribly-useful file, and it will open bottles and cans. It is not a hammer at all, though you can whack something with its broader surfaces if you must. But clearly its central design structure is as a pair of pliers, with everything else an add-on that the central structure will carry, sticking out here or tucked away there.
Jonathan Rauch treats marriage the way someone would treat my multi-tool by taking it apart, discarding the central pair of pliers, observing the disassembled knife blades and screwdriver bits, and then concluding, “see, it’s still a multi-tool.” If it weren’t for the pliers, the whole would not exist. The same goes for marriage. If there were not, in every human culture, a need to connect men with the women who bear their children, and with the children themselves, marriage would not exist. Treat that central purpose as dispensable, and the institution is disassembled and shapeless.
2. Rauch’s second “myth” is that “same-sex marriage hurts children.” Once again, Rauch (to his credit) does not go easy on himself, accepting another “true premise,” this time that “other things being equal, children do best when raised by their married biological parents.” But again he claims that those of us who believe this have drawn a false conclusion, while it is he himself who commits the fallacy. He writes:
The great enemy of the traditional family in the United States today is not the desire of gay couples to get married; it is the failure of heterosexual couples to get married and stay married.
It is true that the history of modern marriage is a sorry one, with skyrocketing rates of divorce, cohabitation, out-of-wedlock births, not to mention the grim fallout of the contracepting hook-up culture, and the steadily grim abortion rates of recent decades. If men and women lived chastely, ours would be a different culture. But then Rauch claims that “what gays want to do” is to “reinforce the norm of marriage.” Even if we were to credit them with this intention (and when many leading advocates of same-sex marriage–not including Rauch, I will note–sign a statement like “Beyond Marriage,” it is hard to credit), it is hardly within the realm of what could possibly happen as a result of same-sex marriage.
Same-sex marriage advocates often ask the question, “how does it hurt your marriage [that of any heterosexual they are addressing] if two men or two women get married?” This is supposed to be a real argument-killer, because it is hard to give a good answer if one loves one’s wife or husband. It’s not as good a question as they think, since the relevant harm is to an institution, not to any particular relationship. But Rauch seems to fall into the same kind of trap that this question is intended to set. He imagines somehow that the sight of two men or two women getting married will encourage irresponsible young heterosexuals to stop hooking up, having abortions, bearing children without getting married, divorcing one another, etc. If anyone other than Jonathan Rauch believes this for a moment, I would be very surprised.
Marriage as an institution is weaker now than a half century ago. Precisely and only this weakness has made it vulnerable to a new attack in the form of the argument for redefining it (see above) to include same-sex couples. Taking a wounded institution and completing its destruction is not exactly “reinforcing” it.
3. Rauch’s third “myth” is that “a collision with religious liberty is unavoidable.” Absolutely every religious leader of any faith group that holds to the traditional, conjugal understanding of marriage believes this is true. They’re in a position to be informed about what threatens their liberty, and they have a deep interest in being informed. But Rauch thinks it is a myth. Oh wait, except he doesn’t, actually. In fact, he thinks it is “a real problem.” He just thinks it is not an “unmanageable one.” Yet he is remarkably casual about “working out the precise balance.” Probably because the folks doing the working out and the managing will be the ones with the whip hand–the authorities who have brought about the collision with religious liberty that Rauch, after all, concedes is unavoidable. That is, the enforcers of the new normal called same-sex marriage. Somehow I am not reassured.
4. His fourth “myth” is that “the entire country must have the same policy.” He cites the trivial and unimportant differences among the states with respect to consanguinity and age of consent to marry (he mentions divorce too, but just why is a mystery). Meanwhile, the most persistent argument of every same-sex advocate is that their case is exactly like the case of inter-racial marriage, against which quite a few states had laws until the Supreme Court struck them down 45 years ago. It would be nice if Jonathan Rauch were to tell them they’re dead wrong about this, and that the two cases (as I think) could not be more different. But has he ever done this? If he were telling Ted Olson and David Boies to stand down, and calling for litigation of federal claims of a constitutional right to marry to come to a screeching halt because they have no basis in the Constitution, I would believe he means this. But I don’t expect that.
Nor do I expect the advocates of same-sex marriage to support DOMA, and to pester Barack Obama to reverse his position that it should be repealed and the legal defense of it abandoned in federal litigation. If DOMA survives the current legal and political assaults on it–assaults I have never heard Jonathan Rauch denounce, but I might have missed that–then the current shaky status quo of six states-plus-D.C. can be maintained for some indefinite time. Far more likely is that we face the problem Lincoln faced with slavery: that the country must become “all one thing or all the other.” This, by the way, is the very outcome devoutly wished by every other advocate of same-sex marriage I’ve encountered. It’s just where we are, and I don’t know what planet Jonathan Rauch inhabits.
5. Rauch’s fifth myth is that “the battle is almost over.” This is the only myth that is truly a myth in his article.
May 14th, 2012 | 3:34 pm
I gather Mr. Rauch thinks “myth” means “something I disagree with”. I wonder if he thinks that’s not a redefinition as well.
May 14th, 2012 | 4:42 pm
The problem is that there are already two different definitions of marriage used in this country! One is used by pro-traditional marriage people and is more historically accurate. The other by pro-same sex marriage(SSM) people.
As far as I can tell from those SSM supporters in my circle of friends, they see marriage as not cultural or societal, but instead as something individual. Marriage pertains only to the two people involved and not the community.
On the same note, since marriage is about the two spouses and no one else, children are not considered a part of marriage . Having children is a separate enterprise resulting from but otherwise not intimately related to the relationship defined by the marriage.
Pro-Traditional marriage people need to get across the fact that their definition of marriage is different than the above. While government endorsed SSM may not force some people to change their definition of the institution, it will force others nonetheless.
Considering the disparity in marriage definition already present, I wonder if the libertarian approach is best here: The government should stop using the term marriage entirely and call all unions, hetero or homosexual, civil unions. Sacramental marriage and civil unions are then no longer conflated with one another. The definition of marriage is then safe from the changes made in civil unions.
May 14th, 2012 | 4:54 pm
Let´s see:
- Regarding 1, the question is why it is so bad that marriage gets redefined. It has been in the past, with interracial marriage or women rights issues (in the past women were completely subjected to their husbands). So what is so bad with a redefinition of marriage now?
- In relation with 2: How is that children are best raised by their biological parents? How many times biological parents mistreat or neglect to care for their children? And in a gay couple it is perfectly possible that one of the members is actually the biological parent of the children they are raising. Regarding the “weakness of marriage as an institution” it is not clear how gay marriage will weaken it more. I suspects conservatives are in denial of the real reasons behind its decline: marriage was a patriarchal institution, designed to work in a patriarchal social environment. Is not marriage that is weakened, it is patriarchy, sorry to say. Maybe that is another good argument to redefine marriage after all….
- I fail to see how allowing gay marriage collides with religious liberty (since it doesn´t imply that churches or religions that don´t recognize it are forced to practice them). On the contrary, not allowing gay marriage hurts the religious liberty of religious people and congregations who actually want to perform or have them.
May 14th, 2012 | 5:01 pm
Finally, I will like to add this: if you conservatives are so obsessed with children in gay marriages, then I guess that opens the door for the rest of us to the same. So if gay couples adopting children is bad because they will (supposedly) make them less emotionally stable or encourage them to become homosexuals themselves, can we say the same of fundamentalist parents? We shouldn´t allow religious fundamentalist to get married, since they will make their kids ignoramus or bigots, or fanatics… Ah…but then, it is the evil government getting in the “sacred realm of the family…which is only sacred as much as it is the kind of family you want to force on the rest of us. That is very nice.
May 14th, 2012 | 5:17 pm
Opponents of same-sex marriage don’t seem all to be on the same page on the matter of “redefining” marriage. It seems to me that the only reasonable position for them is that marriage can’t be redefined. For Catholics and others who believe marriage is indissoluble, divorce laws don’t “redefine” marriage as something that can be undone at will. If marriage is indissoluble, divorces don’t dissolve it. All the divorce laws in the world don’t make marriage indissoluble. Marriage cannot be changed.
But how many people who believe in the indissolubility of marriage would refuse to recognize a civil divorce? Would a Catholic organization who hires a divorced man maintain that his civil divorce is not valid and insist on providing the ex-wife with spousal benefits?
The fact is that for many religions, marriage and civil marriage are two different things. A Catholic couple who is not married in the Church is legally “married,” but in the eyes of the Church, they are not (sacramentally) married. And the (sacramentally) married, civilly divorced, and civilly remarried are legally “married,” but they are not really married. They are living in adultery in the eyes of the Church.
Cardinal Dolan the other day said, “President Obama’s comments today in support of the redefinition of marriage are deeply saddening.” This makes no real sense. The Catholic Church does not regard civil marriage as marriage. Civil marriages can be made and unmade by the state. They are not “really” marriages. However, for purposes of income tax, spousal benefits, and so on, the Catholic Church does indeed recognize them. Likewise, the civil marriage of two same-sex individuals is not recognized as a “real” marriage by the Church, but I fail to see why they can’t recognize it as a legal marriage, the same way they would recognize the legal marriages of the divorced and remarried.
It is, I think, at best inconsistent for the Catholic Church to recognize civil marriage as marriage in the case of the divorced and remarried but not in the case of same-sex couples. The “marriage” that Cardinal Dolan speaks in defense of when criticizing Obama is a “marriage” that he doesn’t actually recognize as marriage—civil marriage. The state doesn’t have the authority to join people in “real” marriage. It doesn’t have the authority to grant divorces. It doesn’t have the authority do “redefine” marriage.
I think those who oppose same-sex marriage need to recognize that the state does indeed have the power to legalize same-sex marriage, but that (from their point of view) this doesn’t change or redefine marriage, because from a religious point of view, marriage simply can’t be redefined. It is what it is, and no government can change it.
May 14th, 2012 | 5:28 pm
Rauch’s second “myth” is that “same-sex marriage hurts children.”
So same-sex marriage does hurt children? Which children?
May 14th, 2012 | 6:29 pm
Regular readers of the Post series may know it by the name ‘A liberal presents non-sequitors to five conservative straw men’.
May 14th, 2012 | 6:36 pm
Some day I’d like to write an article with the title “5 myths about the Washington Post.” (Or maybe even more than 5)
May 14th, 2012 | 7:39 pm
[...] When “Myths” are Truths – Matthew J. Franck, First Things/First Thoughts [...]
May 14th, 2012 | 7:43 pm
So same-sex marriage does hurt children? Which children?
I’ll attempt to make some sense of this question. Does same-sex marriage hurt the children that same-sex couples choose to bring into the world themselves—say, by artificial insemination, surrogacy, and so on? How can that question even be answered? For these children of same-sex couples, would nonexistence have been preferable to existence? And preferable to whom? Is there any way to compare children who have not been conceived to children who have been conceived? A child has absolutely no problems before it is conceived, and will never have any problems if it remains unconceived, so is conception undesirable, and if so, to whom? A child that has not been conceived cannot evaluate its own situation and compare itself to the child it will be after it is conceived.
Are the adopted children of same-sex couples worse off than if they had not been adopted by same-sex couples? How is there any way to determine such a thing? I am not adopted. (I know not merely because I have my birth certificate, but also because anyone who saw me with my parents would immediately have seen the family resemblance.) Am I better off than if I had been put up for adoption? How is there any way to know?
What can be known to some degree are tendencies. Rauch is being sloppy when he says “other things being equal, children do best when raised by their married biological parents.” We can make certain assessments of children raised by two married parents, children given up for adoption, children raised by single fathers, children raised by single mothers, and so on, and we can compare those groups as groups. We may find (it is not an established fact) that adopted children raised by an adoptive mother and father tend to have certain problems that children raised by their own biological parents do not have. However, if we look at individuals, it will be the case that some adopted children do extraordinarily well and some children raised by their biological parents do very poorly. You cannot look at individual children living with their biological parents and say they would be worse off living with adoptive parents, and you can’t look at adopted children and say they would be better off living with their biological parents.
There is also a question as to whether same-sex marriage, should it be approved in a particular area, will have an effect on the number of children conceived or adopted. Single parents can adopt children. Same-sex couples need not be married or even in civil partnerships to conceive children.
I don’t really see how it can be said that same-sex marriage hurts children. It may seem intuitive or obvious to opponents of same-sex marriage, but I don’t really know what a convincing argument would look like.
May 14th, 2012 | 8:33 pm
If “traditional” marriage is so bad, wouldn’t it be better to get the government out of that business? Apparently those in favor of SSM don’t think it’s bad or they wouldn’t be wanting in. I’m sure it’s not just the government benefits, though they are not infrequently noted. Just what do they think government-recognized “marriage” will give them? Monogamy? We straights make it pretty clear you kind of have to bring it with you.
My own belief is that the “opening” of government recognized “marriage” will not result in a redefinition as intended, but in the dissolution of that recognition into just that set of benefits while the rest, whatever it happens to be, will blow like dust through our fingers.
May 14th, 2012 | 11:15 pm
David, this statement of yours is not quite right:
In fact, most civil marriages are indeed valid in the eyes of the Church even if they are non-sacramental. What is necessary is that civil marriage is consistent with natural marriage. It is marriage as a natural institution which undergirds *both* civil and sacramental marriage.
Does the Church in its act as an employer “recognize” (your word) an invalid civil union as a valid marriage by granting it a certain legal status “for purposes of income tax, spousal benefits, and so on”? Clearly not. The law of the state and the law of the Church are not mingled here.
That being said, does it “recognize” an invalid civil union in some limited fashion or other by granting state-mandated benefits attached to civil marriage to persons involved in such unions? One could imagine a similar situation in sub-Saharan Africa where polygamous unions are invalid marriages in the eyes of the Church.
It’s a good question to which I don’t have a good answer. A start, however, would be to compare various invalid civil unions to marriage as a natural institution. I think there is an important distinction between invalidly attempting marriage, and not attempting marriage at all.
May 15th, 2012 | 3:19 am
Rauch’s first “myth” is that “letting gay couples get married redefines marriage.”
Well, letting gay couples get married does require that we no longer allow people to define marriage as procreative in nature, doesn’t it?
I mean, what if I wanted to pass a law that said marriage is procreative and therefore you are not allowed to believe that marriage is about love.
It is not adding a new definition in that I have a problem with. It is forbidding existing definitions.
If in fact gays really do want marriage to be procreative, then whether or not we are “redefining” marriage, we are also redefining what a family is – removing “biological kinship” as a defining characteristic and replacing it with government recognition (as in, “the government recognizes me as your mother, therefore I am your mother”).
May 15th, 2012 | 3:21 am
Rauch’s second “myth” is that “same-sex marriage hurts children.”
So same-sex marriage does hurt children? Which children?
Are you ever going to answer all the claims that have already been made?
Or are you just going to pretend you didn’t see them (or that it’s just self evident why those claims were no good)?
Who was it that said something about gay marriage relying on rhetorical tricks? Add “I don’t see you, therefore you must not have anything worthwhile to say!” to the list of rhetorical tricks.
And let me repeat the question: if it’s so obvious that genders are interchangeable, why do gays have to restrict themselves only to inherently infertile couplings – even when these preferences bring heartache to themselves and/or others?
May 15th, 2012 | 7:02 am
[...] however, the place is not a think tank but a chapel, and the important words to be uttered …When “Myths” are TruthsFirst Things [...]
May 15th, 2012 | 7:09 am
David Nickol writes:
The fact is that for many religions, marriage and civil marriage are two different things.
David, I have a plan that should solve everything. Since you say marriage has no particular meaning, then why don’t you just abandon the word marriage altogether? If it doesn’t mean anything in particular anyway, then why fight us over it?
May 15th, 2012 | 7:42 am
I fail to see how allowing gay marriage collides with religious liberty (since it doesn´t imply that churches or religions that don´t recognize it are forced to practice them)
That’s already been proven untrue.
May 15th, 2012 | 7:45 am
I’d just like to say that everyone should read David Nickol’s 7:43 post. If you agree with David Nickol then use his arguments. If you oppose the redefinition of marriage, then his 7:43 post is an excellent example of the thinking that informs our opponents.
May 15th, 2012 | 8:07 am
- In relation with 2: How is that children are best raised by their biological parents? How many times biological parents mistreat or neglect to care for their children?
Hey, look – another dishonest rhetorical trick SSM proponents use to advance their argument.
When they are talking about what they are entitled to, they use the language of “rights” and “justice” – and they are very generous to themselves in terms of what makes a thing a “right”.
But when they are talking about taking rights away from children, suddenly rights & justice isn’t enough – you have to prove serious harm is done.
A completely different standard of proof. One for me, another for you.
If we were to disallow the double standards, SSM would lose no matter which argument you went with.
Right now, every state in the USA has recognized that children have a right to a relationship with their biological parents, and this right can only be terminated under certain conditions:
- the motive for doing so is supposed to be because it is in the child’s best interest for doing so
- there is a burden of proof that must be met
- a judge must be appointed to preside over the case – for the express purpose of protecting the child’s interests.
Obviously, this interferes with what gays want.
Meanwhile, if we go by the “does harm” standard, what proof is there that gays are “harmed” by not being able to marry? Any argument that says people are better off when they marry is negated by the fact that gay couples have proven far more likely to divorce, with divorce rates well over the 50% mark. And divorce does more harm than marriage does good.
The answer to the question, “What proof is there that these children are harmed?” is to be found in the gay rights arguments themselves. If we assume that children have the same rights according to the principle of equality under the law, then the same arguments that gays rely on also prove that children have the same rights gays want for themselves:
- the right to participate in important human experiences
- the right to not be singled out as odd or weird or different by society
- the right to participate equally in that which society deems valuable
- the right to not be forced to live a lie
- the right to not be singled out for special treatment under the law
Each one of these core arguments in favor of gay marriage equally proves that children have a right to both a mother relationship and a father relationship.
Consider:
- Parental relationships are important experiences, are valued by society, and it has been demonstrated that people who do not have mothers or fathers feel out of place in society.
- It is equally demonstrable that forcing a child to pretend that he’s “got two mommies” constitutes “living a lie”, and that same sex marriage requires that the children of gays be governed by a set of laws that are different from – and clearly inferior to – the laws that govern the rights and entitlements of children born into biologically intact hetero unions.
May 15th, 2012 | 8:57 am
I am a student of Philosophy and Catholic Tradition. Being alive now and watching the actual roll out of Orweillian ‘DoubleSpeak’, should make me write down all my thoughts and observations. Perhaps it will make good reading 100 years from now; although maybe it will be reduced to fantasy. Matt Franck does a good job here trying to argue reasonably with convoluted conclusions that depend on redefining the words as you go. Good job, but few of us can unravel the arguments of DoubleSpeak so well. Screwtape is howling with glee.
May 15th, 2012 | 9:13 am
Douglas Johnson –
So, why did Amendment 1 in North Carolina ban civil unions again?
May 15th, 2012 | 10:01 am
Frank Miller, yes, the rampant use of DoubleSpeak and NewSpeak is breathtaking. it also issues from the pro-Choice crowd. Making up new meanings for words and their attendant concepts (“same sex marriage”, indeed) shows a break with reality. we are a psychotic nation.
In a comment on another FT essay (perhaps Robert George’s submission), a reader brought up Confucius’ observation of how a wise leader would restore order to a chaotic, collapsed society: rectify the names. Restore the proper meaning to words, because without that, we lose contact with reality.
Plus, one half of the country can no longer talk to or understand the other, because they no longer share the same vocabulary, values and hopes.
May 15th, 2012 | 10:02 am
I’ll attempt to make some sense of this question. Does same-sex marriage hurt the children that same-sex couples choose to bring into the world themselves—say, by artificial insemination, surrogacy, and so on? How can that question even be answered? For these children of same-sex couples, would nonexistence have been preferable to existence?
So you’re saying it’s okay to do something unethical to someone, as long as the person you intend to hurt isn’t born until after you’ve taken the action?
Let us look at the assumptions:
1. The child would not be born if it weren’t for the mom, so that gives her the right to do unethical things (because the child owes his life to her).
Except we don’t know that. If there is a God, then it is God that made the soul – and the woman only makes the body. If the woman had chosen not to make the body, that soul would go somewhere else, wouldn’t it?
And it also does not stand to reason that the choice is between either a woman being allowed to make babies unethically OR the baby isn’t allowed to exist. It seems to me more probable that if we discouraged unethical reproductive practices, the likely alternative is not that these people would choose not to have babies – but that they would instead choose to use ethical rather than unethical reproductive techniques.
2. The child does not have a right to complain about harm done him, because the harm was done before he was born.
But is it really okay to knowingly hurt someone, as long as you do it before that person is born?
If I were to rig a maternity ward with a special bomb filled with a poisonous gas that would kill all the babies (but magically leave all the nurses and mothers alive), would it matter whether I actually installed that bomb the same day I detonated it? Would I be any less guilty if I installed the bomb a full year before it was rigged to go off?
It seems to me that if this were a criminal trial (and it’s not, but if it were) the relevant factors would be the fact that harm was done, and the fact that the person who took the actions that caused harm knew it would result in harm and did it anyway.
But this leads me to…
3. does David Nickol’s argument prove that somehow it’s wrong to prohibit reproductive strategies that harm the children being created?
Seems to me the difference between a criminal trial vs. mere regulatory law is that all you have to prove in a regulatory case is that harm is done, and that the regulations in question will prevent the harm.
Whether or not the mother is or is not guilty of a crime is irrelevant. The child ends up robbed of something precious, and it’s not necessary, therefore we should do whatever is in our power to protect the child from parents who do that sort of thing.
May 15th, 2012 | 10:37 am
Ray Ingles,
Excellent question. I oppose civil unions too. States weren’t writing these civil union laws in the 1970′s. Why is that? It’s because the civil union movement is a spin-off of the movement to redefine marriage. More importantly, these laws are only being written as a stepping stone toward the eventual redefinition of marriage, or a compromise redefinition of marriage. I have never encountered someone on your side of the fence that believes civil unions should be the end game, and anyone on the fence shouldn’t be taken in by the promises that civil unions is all you want.
Make up a ceremony. Make up a word for it. Have some gay leaders like Andrew Sullivan define it and set the rules. Do I think it’ll take off? I wouldn’t think so. Why would it? It’d be an inconsequential thing. What would this ceremony be for? What would impel a gay couple to participate in it?
May 15th, 2012 | 10:49 am
David Nickol writes:
Rauch’s second “myth” is that “same-sex marriage hurts children.”
So same-sex marriage does hurt children? Which children?
1) Babies who were robbed of a mother or a father when a same sex couple just happened to be next in line at the state adoption agency.
2) Children who are taught in their public schools and TV programs that there is no particular connection between marriage and procreation, and the children and families labeled as bigoted for saying that’s what a marriage is for.
3) The boys who absorb the lessons of #2, like the kid on the plane here who affirmed he wouldn’t matter to his children. (See also the legitimacy rate in the black community who has already been though this horrible social experiment of separating procreation from marriage.)
4) The children of the kid on the plane who believes he won’t matter to his kids. And then his grandchildren (if there are any; probably just one) who will have absorbed the lesson for two generations now and who for life of them don’t understand why marriage even exists.
I could go on for 6,000 words and 40 or 50 more, but 4 should do it for now.
May 15th, 2012 | 10:59 am
I just want to highlight something another reader wrote. Notice how the argumentation goes when those who want to redefine marriage attempt to wrestle with the question of the children.
Does same-sex marriage hurt the children that same-sex couples choose to bring into the world themselves—say, by artificial insemination, surrogacy, and so on? How can that question even be answered? For these children of same-sex couples, would nonexistence have been preferable to existence? And preferable to whom? Is there any way to compare children who have not been conceived to children who have been conceived? A child has absolutely no problems before it is conceived, and will never have any problems if it remains unconceived, so is conception undesirable, and if so, to whom? A child that has not been conceived cannot evaluate its own situation and compare itself to the child it will be after it is conceived.
May 15th, 2012 | 10:59 am
David, I have a plan that should solve everything. Since you say marriage has no particular meaning, then why don’t you just abandon the word marriage altogether?
Douglass Johnson,
I would recommend, if you have not read it before, a paper by Robert George titled What Is Marriage? He is one of the most vocal defenders of traditional marriage on the scene, and the paper has been highly praised. I am saying, in essence, suppose we grant that Robert George is right. Suppose he has given the definition of marriage. I am asking if someone can give the definition of marriage, what sense does it make to say people are trying to “redefine” marriage?
My point, which you seem to have missed entirely, is that for people (like Catholics) who believe there is a “thing” called marriage, ordained by God, there is no way to “redefine it.” There is the option, which Catholics take all the time, of recognizing “real” marriage and a government-regulated “civil marriage” as different. In states and countries where same-sex marriage is legal, Catholics do not acknowledge that a same-sex couple who go through a legal wedding ceremony are actually married. For Catholics, or at least for Catholics who are being consistent, legalizing same-sex marriage doesn’t “redefine” marriage any more than divorce laws “redefine” marriage.
Now, the fact that Catholics can’t (or so it seems to me) meaningfully talk about “redefining” marriage does not mean they can’t oppose same-sex civil marriage. But they should be clear that marriage cannot be redefined, civil marriage can be redefined, and they oppose same-sex civil marriage (for not very good reasons, in my opinion).
May 15th, 2012 | 11:09 am
1) Babies who were robbed of a mother or a father when a same sex couple just happened to be next in line at the state adoption agency.
Douglass Johnson,
As usual, you do not address the fact that adoption agencies (including Catholic ones) routinely place children with single parents. Are you willing to condemn this practice because it deprives a child of a mother or a father? Please answer, since it makes no sense to proceed until you have taken a position on single-parent adoption.
Let me just add that you have an odd view of how the adoption process works. It is not like standing in line outside the store when the new iPhone goes on sale, and those who have waited the longest get the first phones.
May 15th, 2012 | 11:11 am
In what way does anyone suppose that inter-racial marriages “redefined” marriage? After all, an unlicensed car is still a car and an illegitimate baby is still a baby. That government by legislation declares certain marriages illicit does not mean that they are not marriages. Government began asserting control over the formation of families in the mid-late 1800s. Prior to that government consent was not required for a man and woman to marry. It has taken them only a century and a half to mess up something as old as human civilization.
May 15th, 2012 | 11:24 am
Douglas Johnson –
I want the government out of the marriage business entirely and have said so consistently. The government takes care of legal issues, and churches handle ‘spiritual’ ones. Michael PS, who isn’t a fan of same-sex marriage, has made the point here – repeatedly – that civil unions have existed stably alongside (heterosexual-only) marriage in Europe for quite a while now.
I don’t expect to get my druthers on this score. But I don’t see civil unions as a way to redefine marriage. I see it as a compromise to allow ‘spiritual’ diversity alongside some legal common ground.
Note: I’m married – to a woman! – and faithful to her, despite not being ‘spiritual’. So perhaps I’m more willing than others to see a distinction between the legal and spiritual sides of marriage – a civil union, so long as it included the legal setup I have now, would make no nevermind to me.
Now, I will grant that, if civil unions were as common here as in Europe, it would probably act to reduce the number of ‘spiritual’ marriages. But (a) I don’t see ‘spiritual’ marriage ever going away, and (b) the reduction would be due to people who already don’t take the ‘spiritual’ stuff seriously who’d opt for civil unions.
May 15th, 2012 | 11:45 am
These ideas are not my own, but from a retired professor. I thought I would share them as I think it is worth thinking about.
With respect to marriage, both homosexuals and heterosexuals have had equal protection under the law, that is, they could each marry someone of the opposite sex. Understandably, homosexuals may choose not to do so. However, neither homosexuals NOR heterosexuals had the right to marry someone of the same sex. Therefore, to allow two people of the same sex to marry does not give “equal rights” rather it redefines marriage.
May 15th, 2012 | 11:49 am
David,
My point, which you seem to have missed entirely, is that you want to say that marriage doesn’t really mean anything in particular. Since you say there is no particular definition of marriage, then why would you put up such fight for this meaningless thing?
Let me save you the trouble: You are saying that anyone who says marriage means something–for example, Christians or those fundamentalists who don’t want to separate marriage from procreation–can go there way, and you’ll go yours. The only eensy-weensy thing is that from where you sit it’s perfectly fine for the government to define marriage its way whenever it wants. Those who oppose you think our government does not have the authority to redefine the very natural rights it was created to protect.
Oh and one other little thing, you want your opinion to be given the force of law. We shouldn’t worry about that because you think Catholics and the like should still be able to talk about human history and The Declaration of Independence and stuff like that at their Bible retreats in the woods. But if there is ever a crossroads between the old-school Declaration fundamentalist types and you, you are only demanding that you have the force of law to do with them what you will.
May 15th, 2012 | 12:04 pm
Ray Ingles writes:
I want the government out of the marriage business entirely and have said so consistently.
Here’s the thing this argument always misses: the government didn’t create marriage. The President didn’t wake up one day and say “you know, I have this idea! I’m going to create this thing and I’m going to call it “marriage” and men and women will….” No.
With respect to marriage the government is BOUND to uphold the natural rights it was created to protect. Look, I even drew a picture of the idea right here. With respect to the government, marriage is a chain that retrains its reach for the total power the state always craves. You say you want “want the government out of the marriage business.” Well the only thing you need to do to pull that off is to unchain the state from the total power it craves.
If you think I’m wrong, look around. Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, President Obama and the Democratic Party in general all agree with you. Are you honestly trying to argue that this camp is about reducing the power of the state?
May 15th, 2012 | 12:10 pm
David
You write:
As usual, you do not address the fact that adoption agencies (including Catholic ones) routinely place children with single parents. Are you willing to condemn this practice because it deprives a child of a mother or a father? Please answer, since it makes no sense to proceed until you have taken a position on single-parent adoption.
I don’t know how many times I have answered this, and you have responded to my answers in the past. I advise you to start clicking through old posts. You know my answer forward and back, despite what you claim. My question is why do you ask this even after I have answered you repeated times? And don’t bother asking me where I posted this. If you want to play this game, you can do the work. Just click through the last two months of comments on First Things and you’ll find it many times.
May 15th, 2012 | 12:33 pm
Tom,
That’s well put. I’ve read it a few times this morning. I’m wondering if there is an even easier way of putting it, but I haven’t come up with anything yet. It’s the sort of argument where your opponent won’t be quite sure what you just said, but still, it’s good.
May 15th, 2012 | 12:42 pm
Ray Ingles,
My last comment to you was poorly worded (at a few places!). Let me correct just one. I meant to write the following:
Marriage, being the foundation of family, is one of the two pillars (the other being religion) to which our government is chained by unalienable right.
That chain restrains the state from reaching for the total power it craves. You say you want “want the government out of the marriage business.” Well the only thing you need to do to pull that off is to unchain the state so that it can have the total power it craves.
May 15th, 2012 | 1:18 pm
I believe marriage presupposes procreation—specifically, the institution of marriage presupposes the general fact of procreation, with procreation being understood in terms of the intrinsic (either the actual or the ideal) capacity to procreate.
Ask yourself which kinds of couples have this capacity, and then ask yourself whether it’s weird that liberals think “marriage equality” is the new beatitude.
For that matter, when will liberals apply the idea of marriage equality to bisexuals? Why are they ignoring bisexuals? If Tim and Bob have a right to marry each other, why don’t Dave, Tom, Sue and Theresa have a right to join in quadruple conjugal bliss? Why should this loving bevy of bisexuals–together for 20, 6, 4, 3, 2, and 9 years, respectively–be denied the right to affirm *their* particular sexual identity in civil marriage? On what conceivable grounds does marriage equality, just as such, deny bisexuals this important life-affirming right? Liberals cannot answer the question in any way that will not cause widespread flight from “marriage equality.”
If marriage equality promotes this kind of thing, as it logically must, then marriage traditionalists have a lot of ammunition in reserve, which they have not even begun to deploy.
May 15th, 2012 | 1:21 pm
David,
“For these children of same-sex couples, would nonexistence have been preferable to existence?’
I just don’t buy this argument. We plan for the future all the time so that we will not do harm. We wait to have children for when we’re married and settled. Pregnant women avoid alcohol and cigarettes, etc. I’m happy that I was born and am grateful for my parents, but I still wish my mother hadn’t chosen to marry an alcoholic, even though it means I wouldn’t have existed.
May 15th, 2012 | 1:35 pm
Oh give me a break. The whole press for s.s.m. isn’t really about the legal recognition of gay marriage at all. It is about supplanting one ethic with another for dominance. Gays don’t want mere acceptance. Like atheists want crosses banned on public property (and for many like the late Madeline Murray O’Hair, the banning from public display), they want the removal of any public suggestion that there is anything wrong with being a homosexual. They want anyone who overtly thinks it is wrong to be regarded as a bigot and treated as such—with all that entails: dismissal from public (and much private) employment, exclusion from much prospective employment, grounds for prohibiting the adoption of children, and other varieties of social ostracism. .
It matters little how even with good will today’s proponents of gay rights protest they would do no such thing. It is not they are untrustworthy or insincere—they most likely mean what they say. It is the “evolving” nature of liberalism itself which makes their assurances unreliable. Liberalism and liberationism knows no limiting principle: it does not say to itself “I will go this far and no further”. Those of us old enough to remember can recount the time not that long ago when gay rights proponents were outraged at the very suggestion that gay rights would eventually lead to the demand for gay marriage. This supposedly was a scare tactic invented by the Christian right to frighten otherwise rational people away from extending civil protections to homosexuals. Now yesterday’s “enlightened” opinion is regarded as insufficiently emptied of hostility toward gays. What is radical, preposterous and unthinkable today has a way of becoming perfectly reasonable to the very same people tomorrow.
In the pursuit of equality, for our present day liberationists it matters little to none what destructive effect “reform” will have on the institution of marriage nor can they predict what consequences will follow. The liberalization of divorce laws in the 1960’s was advocated in the name of compassion and self-determination; yet that compassion was absent when the suffering and misery of children appeared in grand scale in the years that followed. Unhappy children were touted as justification for divorce; but unhappy children were never cause to reconsider and reform relaxed divorce laws after the fact. (And this says nothing of the grinding and costly aftermath so many adults endure after divorce.)
The institution of marriage took a hit then and another one is pursued now. Mr. Sergio blithely trumpets that if allowing gays to marry changes marriage then as far as he is concerned marriage would be changed for the better. At best, this strikes me as Pollyannaish. If the twentieth century teaches anything, it is that “progress” is a pretty mixed bag. With the good things that may follow change, good things are also lost. Like bad money chasing out good, the bad that follows ruinous change also has a way of chasing out the good. Forgive me if I am less than enthusiastic.
May 15th, 2012 | 1:43 pm
I don’t know how many times I have answered this, and you have responded to my answers in the past.
Douglas Johnson,
You have never said whether you approve or disapprove of adoption agencies placing children with single parents. If I am wrong about that, you can definitively prove it by quoting from one of your own past messages.
Alternatively, you can respond by typing a single letter to indicate your answer.
A. It is always wrong for an adoption agency to place a child with anyone other than an opposite-sex married couple.
B. There may be some circumstances where there are no married couples available, and the best home in which to place a child is one with a single parent, even though this deprives the child of either a mother or a father.
May 15th, 2012 | 1:46 pm
Douglas,
Like David, I’ve never heard you actually answer the question of single-parent adoption, and so I’d appreciate hearing the answer. Is it wrong to allow single parents to adopt children? It’s been permitted ever since adoption laws were first passed in the mid-nineteenth century.
If you think single-parent adoption is wrong, I wonder how wrong it is. Is it so wrong that it is immoral for widows or widowers who have children to remain unmarried because they are robbing their child of a mother or a father?
May 15th, 2012 | 2:02 pm
I just don’t buy this argument.
Michael,
The question I am saying is meaningless is, “Would you be better off if you had never been conceived?” It simply can’t have an answer. If you had never been conceived, there would be no you to be better off. This does not mean that there are situations or circumstances where it might be better not to conceive a child. Suppose a man and woman have had genetic counseling and know that if they conceive children, there is a very high probability that the children will have serious genetic disorders that will cause them to have short lives filled with suffering. I think most people would say the couple would be justified in not conceiving children, and many would even say that it would be wrong of them to conceive children. But suppose they did conceive a child and the child did have a serious disorder. The question that cannot be answered is whether the child would have been better off if it had not been conceived. The question contains a logical contradiction. If the child had never been conceived, there would be no child to be better or worse off.
May 15th, 2012 | 2:39 pm
Having read through all of the comments as of 1:43pm on May 15th, I believe there is a matter that has not been raised – the legal presumptions, rights, and obligations come with a legal marriage (as opposed to a religious marriage). Legal marriage is a special form of legal partnership wherein the rights and obligations are pre-packaged (differing a state-to-state basis). Most notably, it grants spouses special recognition in medical decision making, testimony during trial, assignment of spousal benefits, ownership of marital assets, and inheritance (I’m sure I’m missing a few areas).
While I assume that some same-sex couples want a religious marriage, I believe that supporters of same-sex marriage are focused on the ability for same-sex couples to obtain the rights and obligations that come with a LEGAL marriage.
Currently, an opposite-sex couple can marry if 1.) neither are already married and 2.) both can give legal consent (of consenting age). There are no financial tests, psychological exams, home studies, and no requirements regarding an express intent to procreate.
Besides simple historical inertia, what legitimate reason is there why a same-sex couple cannot LEGALLY marry provided that neither is currently married and both are of consenting age?
May 15th, 2012 | 2:55 pm
Douglas:
You say “Here’s the thing this argument always misses: the government didn’t create marriage. The President didn’t wake up one day and say “you know, I have this idea! I’m going to create this thing and I’m going to call it “marriage” and men and women will….” No. ”
I agree, goverment didn´t create marriage. The question is, why are you so obsesed then with goverment deciding who can or can not marry?
May 15th, 2012 | 2:58 pm
Ken:
“I believe marriage presupposes procreation—specifically, the institution of marriage presupposes the general fact of procreation, with procreation being understood in terms of the intrinsic (either the actual or the ideal) capacity to procreate. ”
No, it doesn´t. If it did, steryle people would be forbidden to marry and childless married couples (by will) will have their union revoked.
May 15th, 2012 | 3:04 pm
Myth #1: letting gay couples get married redefines marriage
In general, the law plays catch up with reality. Gays have already formed lifelong relationships and raised children. They are already acting as spouses and parents but with extra burdens that straight spouses and parents don’t have. These extra burdens are unjust.
May 15th, 2012 | 3:10 pm
Despite attempts in the past and present to experiment with alternative arrangements, marriage is and always will be about the joining of one man and one woman in a lifelong covenanted union for the raising of children.
Marriage is not polygamy, bigamy or some other imagined attempt at a union. Marriage is openness to spiritual, psychological and physical-sexual complementarity. It is simply and utterly impossible that two people of the same gender can be open to and capable of such a complementary relationship. Many heterosexual couples aren’t either, but then again: usum non tollit abusum.
No amount of sophistry, political wrangling or judicial activism is going to change the reality that is marriage.
When all the myopic, selfish, illusory and devious experiments fail, the institution of marriage will rise again amidst the ashes of western civilization that thought itself so divine it could redefine reality.
May 15th, 2012 | 3:53 pm
David,
“The question that cannot be answered is whether the child would have been better off if it had not been conceived.”
Ok, that works. Thanks.
May 15th, 2012 | 4:05 pm
Warren,
“It is simply and utterly impossible that two people of the same gender can be open to and capable of such a complementary relationship.”
Not true. Come to my church, and you’ll find gay couples who have been together for decades and have raised children.
May 15th, 2012 | 4:43 pm
Sergio,
No–sterile and aged opposite-sex couples have an intrinsic capacity to procreate. This is an ideal rather than an actual capacity–it’s the capacity they would actually have if their bodily organs were functioning optimally. For the elderly, “optimally” means in the span of a typical lifetime, not in their current aged state.
Same-sex couples lack an intrinsic capacity to procreate. It’s probably necessary to add that it would be utterly specious to argue that Tim and Dave can ideally procreate because Tim might “ideally” have been born a female. The far-fetched rationale of this analogy is not comparable to a rationale based on the accidental or contingent inability to procreate that infertile or aged opposite-sex couples may have.
May 15th, 2012 | 5:39 pm
Ken:
Can you explain me how an heterosexual sterile couple is not by definition (of sterile) unable to procreate?
Anyway, I fail to see why marriage SHOULD be even if it was always (which is not the case anyway) an union of two persons to procreate. People can procreate in other forms of union, or without being in one. People can form a union without any intend to procreate or can´t procreate yet still adopt children.
May 15th, 2012 | 6:00 pm
Michael and David,
Please go back through all the First Things posts of the last two months. Copy and paste all my comments into one Email. Read all those comments again. If you don’t find it, please send me the Email to an address I can give you. These shenanigans get old. If you guys want confirmation of what I wrote then do your own homework.
May 15th, 2012 | 8:27 pm
Ken makes a very good response to Sergio’s challenge regarding individual fecundity/sterility which should be highlighted. Catholic canon law on marriage is based on a claim regarding marriage as a natural institution. The state’s law on marriage used to be based on the same claim.
The nature of marriage is to be procreative; that is, the ‘normal’ outcome of natural sexual intercourse is reproduction. Sterility by defect is a deviation (and sometimes correctable through medical intervention which recognizes infertility as an illness). Sterility due to old age is not a defect but part of the natural constitution of the human being (thus artificially inseminating a 60-year-old woman is generally considered a violation of medical ethics). Therefore marriage of the aged is not a violation of marriage as a natural institution.
May 15th, 2012 | 10:59 pm
Douglas,
I’m not patient enough to read through months worth of posts, but I did read through your posts on “Kevin Williamson’s Marriage Mistakes” pretty carefully, and I’m still confused.
On May 4, you said, “Look people, the government already already decided to place kids with single parents, ipso facto there’s no reason a kid should have a mother and a father”
I take this statement to mean that you believe the government made a mistake when it made the placement of children with single parents legal.
Do I understand your meaning correctly? Is there anything I have missed?
The reason I doubt that I have you correctly is that on May 8 he asked whether Catholic Charities was “acting in the best interest of children when they placed children with single parents,” and you never answered him.
If I understand you correctly, then you would say that, yes, Catholic Charities has been wrong in placing children with single parents. But you haven’t said one way or another, which suggests that your position is different from what I’ve gathered.
Has Catholic Charities been mistaken all these years or not?
May 16th, 2012 | 7:48 am
Can you explain me how an heterosexual sterile couple is not by definition (of sterile) unable to procreate?
You mean a sterile individual?
Or do you mean a couple made up of two fertile individuals, but who – because they choose an infertile coupling – create a sterile coupling?
There’s a huge category difference there, because individuals have rights, and couples do not.
Furthermore, it is unconstitutional to discriminate against people (the ‘equality under the law’ argument), but it’s not necessarily unconstitutional to discriminate against processes or actions – one wonders if the interracial marriage argument might have turned out differently if those who oppose interracial marriage had been able to prove that racial purity was a thing Americans actually value (but, as it was, it was easy to prove that there never was such a thing as “racial purity” – even the slave owners did not see it as criminal to make half-black, half-white babies).
Gay infertility is the not physical, it is because they want someone other than the other real parent of their child to be recognized as the parent of their child. This creates a situation that is not directly comparable to physical infertility for a number of reasons.
The infertile person remains infertile no matter how assiduously he follows correct family-making procedure. That is drastically different in kind from someone who is fertile, but who simply wants to choose a different (and less healthy) process for making his family.
That is why I believe that if ‘freedom of religion’ will eventually compel us to recognize them as partners (as well as any other couplings as long as it’s sanctioned by at least one religion), we are going to need two restraints:
1) a religious constraint: if humanists have the right to believe men can be women, then other religions are going to have to have some sort of right to opt out – since otherwise it is tantamount to the government imposing humanism as a religion upon us all.
2) a benefits restraint: if non-fertile couplings want to be recognized as marriages, then one way or another we are going to restrict their access to the procreative benefits of marriage – because failure to do so would be tantamount to legitimizing adultery, fraud, and lies, and there’s no reason we have to do so.
People who want marriage to be non-procreative should have that right – but there’s no reason to make marriage inherently non-procreative for the rest of us.
May 16th, 2012 | 8:12 am
People who want marriage to be non-procreative should have that right –
Actually I shouldn’t say that, I should say “it may be that people who want marriage to be non-procreative should have that right”
May 16th, 2012 | 8:14 am
If I understand you correctly, then you would say that, yes, Catholic Charities has been wrong in placing children with single parents. But you haven’t said one way or another, which suggests that your position is different from what I’ve gathered.
Has Catholic Charities been mistaken all these years or not?
It depends on why they do it: are they placing these kids in single parent families in cases where the alternative is for kids to go unadopted, or are they treating the single parent families as equal to intact families?
May 16th, 2012 | 11:10 am
Douglas Johnson –
Adding civil unions does not destroy any ‘natural rights’ to marriage, though. Even adding same-sex marriage would not destroy any natural right to heterosexual marriage. There’s (at least one) hidden assumption in your logic there.
That’s not ‘total power’ at all. As it happens, I don’t think Catholic Charities should be forced to place children in situations that conflict with CC’s religious beliefs, either. The issues are logically distinct. Note that there are religious groups who are quite willing to solemnize a same-sex union – is the state chained from trampling on their beliefs and rights, or not?
May 16th, 2012 | 11:42 am
“It depends on why they do it: are they placing these kids in single parent families in cases where the alternative is for kids to go unadopted, or are they treating the single parent families as equal to intact families”
It’s interesting that intention matters for you in this instance. I wonder how long you would want a child to go unadopted before the child is deemed unadoptable and thus suitable for single parents and for gay parents. Would you give single parents priority over gay parents? In other words, is it more important that a child have one straight parent than two gay ones?
To use your own lingo, it is of course a “lie” to call any of these families “intact” since the child is not with his biological parents.
May 16th, 2012 | 12:15 pm
Mick Lee,
Comments like yours provide a refreshing reorientation every now and then.
Advocates of redefining marriage struggle endlessly to engineer a hypothetical of one sort or another to disprove the obvious: that marriage only exists because men and women procreate new life.
The first grade level arguments such as “what about an elderly couple, or a sterile man marries a woman…” have been answered many times, but it’s worthwhile to hear those arguments because we don’t have practice in arguing the self-evident (“…why should the government get to decide who is a woman and who isn’t???’ )
And then you get the second and third grade arguments that usually rely on some sort of sentimentality and parallels are made between defenders of marriage and racist lynch mobs. This tactic is effective on lot of folks not schooled in the argumentation and who fear the threats. As we saw in the aftermath of the California vote, these threats are often aimed at your family and your ability to earn a living. This is pure thuggery, but people tend to be afraid of thugs. It’s best to remember that folks resort to thuggery when it’s all they are left with.
The David Nickols of the world read every comment looking for the 1% of the post around which he can steer the entire argument down yet another alleyway in his labyrinth. The arguments aren’t hard to answer but that’s not the point. The point is to get as many of his opponents as possible debating some case in, say, 16th century Spain where the local Cardinal referred to an article of Canon Law written during the Western Schism, referenced in a letter to Rome regarding a couple who…blah, blah, blah…as if the whole argument now comes down to what he says about that particular angle. The point isn’t to win that argument; it’s just to get you lost inside it somewhere.
It’s times like that when everyone can use a good slap out of the deconstructionist labyrinth. “Oh, give me a break!” is well put.
May 16th, 2012 | 1:41 pm
Sergio,
“Can you explain to me how a heterosexual sterile couple is not by definition . . . unable to procreate?”
Yes. By definition they can’t actually procreate, but by definition they can ideally procreate—that is, they could do so if their bodily organs were functioning optimally, as they are meant to function. Such couples have an intrinsic capacity to procreate—by definition.
Your second point, an extremely common one, amounts to the claim that opponents of same-sex marriage are committing the genetic fallacy. Your claim is essentially that the origin of marriage (as procreative) does not tell us anything about the true nature of marriage. The genetic fallacy involves the illegitimate conflation of the nature of a thing with the origin of that thing—in this case, marriage. My response is that the genetic fallacy is not pertinent in this case because the conditions that make marriage procreative in its origin still apply, and make those conditions (or that precondition—procreative capacity) constitutive of marriage. Humans being what they are, and society being how it is, marriage remains definable as a procreative institution, today as much as yesterday. Only if human nature or the requirements of social order changed fundamentally in some morally relevant way would this not be true. Basically, to make the genetic fallacy “work” in the same-sex marriage context, you will have to claim that the 1960s sexual revolution fundamentally changed human nature in a way that is relevant to the meaning of marriage. Forgive me if I am deeply skeptical of your chances of making good on any claim of that kind.
May 16th, 2012 | 1:56 pm
It’s interesting that intention matters for you in this instance
It’s not a matter of intention.
It’s a matter of following the child’s best interest standard.
If it is a choice between a single parent vs. foster home, all other things being equal, the single parent is more in the child’s best interest.
But if it is a choice between a single parent vs. being adopted by an intact family, then, all other things being equal, the intact family is superior.
I would very much prefer that singles not be allowed to adopt at all, simply because it seems self-evident to me that anyone who is genuinely ready to provide for a child should start by providing a complete and intact home. However, it seems we have “unadoptable” kids who are forced to settle for substandard homes. I would class both gay couples and single parents as substandard homes.
It is simply not true that having a same-sex parent doesn’t matter. It does. It is equally true that having an opposite-sex parent matters. Neither one of these relationships is irrelevant, disposable, expendable, or unimportant. Any parent who tries to argue otherwise is demonstrating a certain lack of maturity and/or commitment. Any parent who forces their kid to argue otherwise is IMO guilty of emotional abuse.
May 16th, 2012 | 2:05 pm
To use your own lingo, it is of course a “lie” to call any of these families “intact” since the child is not with his biological parents.
Yes, but we have a sort of honorary thing where we count such lies as “not lies” because doing so is in the child’s best interest.
It is the basis of adoption that a child who needs a home may be adopted and the lack of a biological bond is to be compensated for. We all do what we can to help with this compensation process out of compassion and good will, in order to bolster the legitimacy of the bond because we recognize a certain “weak link” there that requires bolstering.
There’s a weak link because family is made up of three types of bond – biological kinship, legal recognition, and love/affection. Kinship is the strongest bond, so in cases of adoption, there is a vulnerable point. Our culture is such that we justify white lies in the name of compassion, and so we speak of an adopted family as if it were indistinguishable from a biological family, even though it is understood that the child of this union may someday need to search for his own real biological truth.
Gay marriage relies on exploiting this entire phenomenon for purposes that are not about the child’s best interest – that are, in fact, in direct conflict with a child’s best interest.
Gay marriage requires an argument that basically minimizes the loss of adopted kids as a class, then proposes extending those “losses-that-don’t-exist.”
It’s important to recognize that adoption derives its legitimacy from the fact that it is about helping a needy child. (“How can anyone hate an institution that is about helping orphans?”)
But gay marriage is not about helping needy children – however much SSM advocates try to appropriate that language (and they do), the truth is that SSM is about using children to help needy grownups, and if children benefit at all, it’s only (co)incidentally.
May 16th, 2012 | 3:54 pm
Blake –
Regarding your statement:
“It is simply not true that having a same-sex parent doesn’t matter. It does. It is equally true that having an opposite-sex parent matters. Neither one of these relationships is irrelevant, disposable, expendable, or unimportant. Any parent who tries to argue otherwise is demonstrating a certain lack of maturity and/or commitment. Any parent who forces their kid to argue otherwise is IMO guilty of emotional abuse.”
Can you elaborate of what a kid is forced to argue?
May 16th, 2012 | 4:28 pm
Ken’s “ideal rather than an actual” distinction of why infertile opposite-sex couples are morally different from same-sex couples is a most tortured and twisted bit of reasoning.
If marriage is reserved for procreation, “ideal rather than actual” is a distinction without meaning.
In civil, secular society, the ability or intent to procreate has never been a test or pre-condition for the issuance of a marriage license.
May 16th, 2012 | 4:30 pm
Can you elaborate of what a kid is forced to argue?
That there is no harm and no loss in having “two mommies” instead of having a mother and a father.
This is problematic in at least two senses.
First, because it requires denial of the child’s loss. Having a relationship with a father (or mother, whichever is the missing parent) is a valuable thing, and its loss is not harmless. But the “two mommy” myth requires that everyone – including the child, but also everyone else – to play along with the fantasy that this relationship is not important, and its loss is not a loss because the child is adequately compensated by having a ‘second mommy’.
It’s not even clear that having a ‘second mommy’ is a good thing. Our culture flirted with the idea of “open adoption” at one point in time, but the idea has not caught on because it turns out that “having two moms” can make both mothers and children feel like they’ve got two half-moms, and there are all kinds of problems with that. So we’ll see – when you “loving” parents have done enough experimenting on your kids, we will see whether the harm that looks likely is in fact forthcoming.
But there’s a second problem with the whole “two mommy myth” demanding that kids pretend they “don’t mind” not having a dad. And that’s the taboo that is put in place. Why does the child have no dad? The child is not allowed to speak openly about this, but it’s pretty obvious that the reason the child has no dad is because his “loving” mother simply decided he could do without a dad, because she doesn’t care.
And that may be even more toxic than the lack of a dad – the part where the child has to somehow reconcile the idea that his mother (or father) is supposedly “loving” with the reality that the mother (or father) has behaved in a way that is the exact opposite of what most people think of when they think of “love”.
“Love is not selfish…..love is kind….”
May 16th, 2012 | 4:47 pm
Blake –
I scrolled up and found your comment on items a kid (of a same-sex couple) would be forced to argue.
You wrote that a child has the right to participate in important human experiences, not to be singled out as odd or weird, not to live a lie, and not to be singled out for special legal treatment.
You argue that same-sex couples should be prevented from having children because they are incapable to ensuring these rights are upheld. That the very fact the couple is same-sex is prima facie evidence of that inability.
It would seem, then, that in a just society, all prospective parents should be held to the same standard to those failing, be prevented from becoming parents.
Should an intinerant alcoholic man and an intinerant bi-polar woman be permitted to have children? Does their heterosexuality inherently confer to their children the ability participate in important human experiences and not to be singled out as odd or weird?
May 16th, 2012 | 5:01 pm
Blake,
“If it is a choice between a single parent vs. foster home, all other things being equal, the single parent is more in the child’s best interest. But if it is a choice between a single parent vs. being adopted by an intact family, then, all other things being equal, the intact family is superior. I would very much prefer that singles not be allowed to adopt at all, simply because it seems self-evident to me that anyone who is genuinely ready to provide for a child should start by providing a complete and intact home. However, it seems we have “unadoptable” kids who are forced to settle for substandard homes. I would class both gay couples and single parents as substandard homes”
The question really boils down to your phrase, “all other things being equal.” How much do things have to be unequal to make a single person or a gay couple the better parents?
My mother-in-law raised three children by herself and was extraordinarily successful—only one of her children votes Democratic (that would be my wife). The other two children have values.
But your adoption agency wouldn’t have placed children with my mother-in-law; it would have placed them with me and my wife, who will surely turn those children into humanist thugs.
There’s enormous hubris in thinking that singleness by itself or sexual orientation by itself tells us much about someone’s parenting ability.
A couple of years ago, the most conservative wing of my family fought hard to persuade my cousin to relinquish her baby because she was a single mother. This wing of my family has swallowed the conservative argument against single motherhood so completely that they tried to part mother from child. They were acting like those crisis pregnancy centers that promise to help single mothers avoid abortion only to force them into giving up their babies for adoption.
“It is simply not true that having a same-sex parent doesn’t matter. It does. It is equally true that having an opposite-sex parent matters. Neither one of these relationships is irrelevant, disposable, expendable, or unimportant. Any parent who tries to argue otherwise is demonstrating a certain lack of maturity and/or commitment.”
You’re absolutely correct. It matters a great deal whether the parents are straight, gay, or single. It also matters whether they are alcoholic, immature, selfish, nurturing, supportive, prudent, dedicated, etc.
As far as I can tell, no one on this thread is arguing that biological ties and orientation don’t matter, but plenty seem to be arguing that the content of the character of individual gays and gay couples doesn’t matter.
May 16th, 2012 | 5:03 pm
Anyway, I fail to see why marriage SHOULD be even if it was always (which is not the case anyway) an union of two persons to procreate. People can procreate in other forms of union, or without being in one.
Perhaps you’re unaware that having kids out of wedlock is associated with a host of social ills – starting (but certainly not ending) with poverty.
The real question is what need we have for marriage at all, if marriage is not procreative. Why should two able-bodied grownups have the right to mooch off each other and/or their employers and/or taxpayers, if neither one is sacrificing career “opportunity cost” to stay home and build a future generation of workers/taxpayers?
Raising future citizens is a lot of work, and it costs a lot (as has been well-documented by left wing feminists). But this sacrifice is not one that is shared equally between the two people who make babies. Women bear an overwhelming share of the financial, social, economic, and emotional burden.
This is the only reason I can see why marriage is actually useful as an institution: it provides all manner of supports that protect both men and women (and, of course, the baby) from all the things that can and do routinely go wrong when people make the huge mistake of having kids out of wedlock.
So why should we give you generous tax subsidies and benefits for starting a family, if you’re just going to hire some rent-a-womb out of the Handmaid’s Tale, exploit her, throw her away, and then give those benefits to someone other than the one you made the baby with?
You want to dissociate the benefits of kinship from the obligations of kinship, but if there’s no obligation, there’s no reason why you need or deserve or should have benefits.
May 16th, 2012 | 5:12 pm
It would seem, then, that in a just society, all prospective parents should be held to the same standard to those failing, be prevented from becoming parents.
Should an intinerant alcoholic man and an intinerant bi-polar woman be permitted to have children? Does their heterosexuality inherently confer to their children the ability participate in important human experiences and not to be singled out as odd or weird?
No, the right to have children has been deemed a basic human right, and I do not contest that, I accept it as fair.
But there is no right to another person’s child – only to your own.
All children are born with a natural right to a relationship with their own family. This is a legally recognized right already, right here in the US.
There is one circumstance only when it is recognized and legitimate to break that bond, and that is when doing so is in the best interests of the child.
This is important, because it’s the source of the legitimacy of adoption. The best interests of the child. Not the people who want that child.
Furthermore, the child also has a right to expect the judge that oversees his custody will make rulings based on the child’s best interest.
That means if there is a conflict between what is best for the child vs. what’s best for (or desired by) the parent, the judge is morally and legally obliged to rule in favor of what’s best for the child.
Failure to do this – to guard the child’s interest in custody proceedings – is a human rights violation (specifically: the right to “freedom from exploitation”).
Adoption is not about the right of gay people to have a child, or to have an experience. It is about the right of a child to have the best home society can provide for that child.
The minute you cross that line – that is, you prioritize the desires of the parent over the well-being of the child – what you are doing is not adoption, but human trafficking (the buying and selling of human beings for reasons relating to the desires and wishes of the buyer).
May 16th, 2012 | 7:53 pm
Marriage is not “reserved” for procreation, to use Rob’s word, if that means procreation is a necessary condition, or sine qua non, of marriage. But if procreation is the raison d’ etre, or the rationale, of marriage, then, yes, procreation is “reserved” for marriage. In saying marriage presupposes procreation, I’m not saying that procreation is a necessary condition of marriage, but (more broadly and flexibly) that it’s the rationale of marriage. That’s a distinction with a difference.
If you like, forget about actual versus ideal capacities and just ask whether it is true that opposite-sex couples all have an intrinsic capacity to procreate. To me that means: The capacity they have or would have if their physical capacities are not in any way impaired, or adversely affected, by poor health or senescence.
Talk of an “ideal capacity” can easily be ad hoc, but as I use the term it is not–it simply is a way of describing a universally understood experience of humans, for whom malfunctions of various kinds are common and explicable. It’s the common and explicable element that removes the suspicion of ad-hocness in the case of (ideally procreative) sterile and aged couples of the opposite sex.
I was a little too brusque in my reply to
Sergio. But I trust he sees the point I was making.
May 17th, 2012 | 4:25 am
As far as I can tell, no one on this thread is arguing that biological ties and orientation don’t matter
Gay marriage necessarily requires that we pretend biology doesn’t matter, as long as gays argue that they are “entitled” to be treated as “equal” to hetero unions, even though they are not equal. It is impossible to both recognize the superiority of the intact family and recognize gay-headed families as equal.
It is equally impossible to both recognize the “child’s best interest” standard and recognize the gay fantasy-family as equal to a real family, because the “two mommies” myth involves forcing a child into emotionally abusive situations, and therefore violates the idea of the child’s best interest.
It has nothing to do with being gay. It has to do with the decision to prioritize one’s own ego/desires/political agenda/sexual needs over what’s best for one’s child. The only way in which this has anything to do with homosexuality is that gays are making an argument that only makes sense if we accept that somehow, being gay makes it okay to deliberately do bad things to your kids.
but plenty seem to be arguing that the content of the character of individual gays and gay couples doesn’t matter
Gays who force their children to pretend to “have two mommies” are bad people and are unfit to be parents.
That’s not because they’re gay, it’s because their behavior reveals that the content of their character is lacking – specifically, lacking in ethics, and lacking in maturity.
Ethical gays can and do recognize that just because they don’t need or want a member of the opposite sex in their life, does not mean they can make the same assumption about their child. A growing number of gays are arranging “coparenting” situations with members of the opposite sex.
But gays who cannot distinguish between their own needs vs. their kids’ needs are simply not ready to be parents, and should be recognized as unfit parents. The whole “two mommies” fantasy needs to be recognized as a form of emotional abuse.
May 17th, 2012 | 6:33 am
Ray Inglis
I believe that civil unions work well and are popular in Europe, because they were primarily designed as an alternative to unregulated cohabitation, rather than to marriage. Accordingly, they are open to all couples, regardless of gender. In France, although no official statistics are kept, it is estimated that about 90% of PACSes [pacte civil de solidarité = Civil Solidarity Pacts] are between opposite-sex couples.
They are still popular in Belgium and the Netherlands, both of which have introduced SSM and, once again, they are mainly used by opposite-sex couples.
Remember, testamentary freedom is very limited in most European countries, which is why the adoption of adults remains an important legal institution.
May 17th, 2012 | 10:02 am
“Regarding 1, the question is why it is so bad that marriage gets redefined. It has been in the past, with interracial marriage or women rights issues (in the past women were completely subjected to their husbands). So what is so bad with a redefinition of marriage now?”
Sergio,
You offer a strawman with interracial marriages. And by marriage, I mean the “Sacrement of Holy Matrimony (the making of mothers)”. The Church never had a prohibition against interracial marriage. Secondly, God defined Marriage, not Man. The Church’s teaching never changed in this repects despite changes in the laws concerning women.
May 17th, 2012 | 10:06 am
“As usual, you do not address the fact that adoption agencies (including Catholic ones) routinely place children with single parents”
David,
The operative word you used is “routinely”. I beg to differ. It is rare for adoption agencies (esp Catholic ones) to place children in single parent homes. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen; but, it is quite the exception when it does occur.
May 17th, 2012 | 11:14 am
Blake wrote: “Gays who force their children to pretend to “have two mommies” are bad people and are unfit to be parents. That’s not because they’re gay, it’s because their behavior reveals that the content of their character is lacking – specifically, lacking in ethics, and lacking in maturity.”
Blake’s underlying assumption is that intolerable harm is caused if a child must pretend that he or she is the legal child of parents with whom there is no genetic connection.
If we were to extend this argument out consistently, then no orphaned child could be adopted by any couple (same or opposite-sex) with whom he or she does not share a genetic connection.
In a no-genetic connection adoption, why is opposite-sex parents preferable to same-sex parents assuming all other factors are equal (no expressed preference by the child, age of parents, parental income, desire to be parents and to adopt, location of home, features of home, school district, etc).
May 17th, 2012 | 11:19 am
Blake,
I don’t know if this thread is still alive, but I wanted to highlight something you wrote:
1) a religious constraint: if humanists have the right to believe men can be women, then other religions are going to have to have some sort of right to opt out – since otherwise it is tantamount to the government imposing humanism as a religion upon us all.
Putting aside marriage for a moment, it seems to me we’d have a profoundly more educated populace if we started referring to secular humanism as a religion. It orients itself around ultimate beliefs, albeit beliefs I do not share.
President Obama wrote in his autobiography that it is incumbent upon religious believers to translate what they want into “universal terms” that do not rely on religious belief. In other words, if Christians want to give a reason for something, the reason has to be valid for the atheist for it to be legitimate. The atheist, on the other hand who comprises a few percent of our population, never needs to translate his reasoning into Christian, Jewish or any other terms other than his own (Christians which are nominally still the vast majority of the country).
The trick here is treating the materialist philosophy of secular humanism as if it constitutes a universal truth (i.e. a religion), and yet somehow that claim is separate, before, and above all religions. Without even debating a secular humanist on a specific point, we can do away with so much chicanery if we started referring to it as a religious belief, which it certainly is.
May 17th, 2012 | 11:42 am
Blake wrote: “The real question is what need we have for marriage at all, if marriage is not procreative. ”
Marriage confers a whole set of rights that have nothing to do with procreation (medical decision making, assignment of spousal benefits, ownership of marital assets, and inheritance). This is why same-sex couple are seeking legal marriage.
“Why should two able-bodied grownups have the right to mooch off each other and/or their employers and/or taxpayers, if neither one is sacrificing career “opportunity cost” to stay home and build a future generation of workers/taxpayers?”
Two grownups mooch off of each other because they want to (it’s call freedom). As for mooching of their employers and/or taxpayers, generally, one-income couples (by choice) do so because they ARE building a future generation of workers/taxpayers.
“So why should we give you generous tax subsidies and benefits for starting a family, if you’re just going to hire some rent-a-womb out of the Handmaid’s Tale, exploit her, throw her away, and then give those benefits to someone other than the one you made the baby with?”
The dependent tax deduction (the generous tax subsidies and benefits) is attached to the child for the purpose of off-setting the costs of raising and supporting the child. The “rent-a-womb” that is “thrown away” is, by definition, not raising or supporting the child and therefore doesn’t incur those costs that need off-setting.
May 17th, 2012 | 12:04 pm
Blake –
In the interest of doubling my chances of finally getting a reply from you, I’ll repeat something I posted on the last thread:
How about kids who witness on Youtube? Think their parents decided how they’d feel about Jesus before they were born?
Guess we’ll never know about those youth evangelist campaigns, either. For the same reasons, right?
Y’know, you’ve brought up the ‘parentification’ thing before. And I’ve asked you a question – in fact, twice before. Somehow you never responded.
You take the evidence of (a tendency for) greater maturity among children raised by same-sex couples as evidence that they are ‘parentified’. Yet, there’s similar evidence of (a tendency for) greater maturity among children that are homeschooled. (E.g. http://learninfreedom.org/socialization.html or https://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000000/00000068.asp )
So, my question to you: Are homeschoolers emotionally abusing their children, too?
I’d appreciate an answer. Pretty please.
Speaking of evidence and unanswered questions. Once upon a time I asked you: I’ve asked you to provide evidence that such kids have to ‘pretend’ [that they don't feel grief about being raised by same-sex couples], but none was forthcoming. It seems the main support for that was your vigorous assertion of it. So, let’s turn it around. What evidence would persuade you that a particular kid wasn’t pretending?
I’d love to hear your answer to that one, too.
May 17th, 2012 | 12:44 pm
“Putting aside marriage for a moment, it seems to me we’d have a profoundly more educated populace if we started referring to secular humanism as a religion.”
Brilliant idea. In order to better fight the “redefinition” of marriage, just redefine “religion.” If that works for you, go for it.
May 17th, 2012 | 2:49 pm
I’ve been thinking about Rob’s description of an ideal capacity to procreate (as applied to aged and infertile opposite-sex couples) as “tortured and twisted logic.” The description didn’t exactly sting—I think it is clearly wrong (and no real argument accompanied the conclusory judgment)—but I wondered why he, or anyone else, might think that. It may help to put the idea of an ideal capacity to procreate in broader perspective.
The continuum of intrinsic capacity runs from the potential to the actual. An ideal capacity is somewhere in the middle. It’s not merely a potential capacity, but it is also obviously not an actual capacity. An ideal capacity to procreate is partly definable as a blocked capacity, a capacity limited by external conditions (physical infirmities). By comparison with aged and infertile couples, who do have an ideal capacity to procreate, a pre-pubescent “couple” (or male-female pair) do not have an ideal capacity to procreate. They do, however, have a potential capacity to procreate.
Another distinction that may be helpful is the difference between “theoretically” and “potentially”–or more precisely, “potentiality.” Theoretically, Tom—who is Bob’s partner—could have been born a woman, and in that (sophistical) sense, Tom and Bob have an *ideal* capacity to procreate. But potentiality is not like this. In any philosophically coherent sense of potentiality, Tom could not have been born a woman. That’s why the claim that Tom and Bob have an ideal capacity to procreate–similar to the ideal capacity of aged and infirm opposite-sex couples–is ad hoc.
So, there is a fundamental difference between opposite-sex and same-sex couples. We are able to reasonably say that some couples who are unable to procreate can get married, and other couples who are unable to procreate can’t get married. It depends entirely on what kind of unable-to-procreate couples they are. To ignore this fundamental difference is to run roughshod over reality. To then proceed to enshrine the denial of difference in law is pure folly, and trivializes the intellectual integrity of the law.
May 17th, 2012 | 5:23 pm
Ray Ingles,
With regard to your last question, I thought this might help. In this case Rosie O’Donnell admitted that what was best for her son would be to be raised by a mother and father but, she explained, he doesn’t have a father because that wasn’t her preference. I hope that helps.
The following is from an interview with Rosie O’Donnell by Diane Sawyer:
In an interview with Diane Sawyer in 2002, Diane asked if Rosie’s son, Parker, ever asked about his father. Rosie responded, “Of course he has. He’s a six-year-old boy. He says, ‘I want to have a daddy.’” Diane then asked Rosie, “And what do you tell him?” Rosie answered, “I said, ‘I can imagine. That would be great.’ And would it be easier for them if I were married to a man? It probably would. But as I said to my son, Parker, ‘If you were to have a daddy, you wouldn’t have me as a mommy because I’m the kind of mommy who wants another mommy.”
May 17th, 2012 | 5:57 pm
As a follow up to my last comment, this is interesting.
By the way, doesn’t the “serve me” quote go perfectly with what she said in 2002?
May 17th, 2012 | 8:28 pm
Rosie answered, “I said, ‘I can imagine. That would be great.’ And would it be easier for them if I were married to a man? It probably would. But as I said to my son, Parker, ‘If you were to have a daddy, you wouldn’t have me as a mommy because I’m the kind of mommy who wants another mommy.”
Parents give this kind of answer all the time. My children wish they hadn’t been adopted. My aunt’s children wish they hadn’t been raised overseas. I wish I hadn’t been raised by an alcoholic. None of these are trivial issues. All of these choices left the children feeling a permanent lack and wondering what if. Each of them involved a choice by parents to follow their desires.
Emotionally intelligent parents know there will be a lack and find ways to fill it. The gay parents I know have surrounded their children with opposite sex role models.
May 18th, 2012 | 12:55 am
Emotionally intelligent parents know there will be a lack and find ways to fill it. The gay parents I know have surrounded their children with opposite sex role models.
Then they know what they did was wrong.
People who do what they know to be wrong – then justify and excuse – are IMO far more guilty than people who do wrong out of ignorance.
There was never a shred of proof that they could do what they are doing without harming the children, but they went ahead anyway and sought to manufacture “proof” after the fact.
No justification can turn such people into “good parents” or even good people.
This behavior has nothing to do with being homosexual. It has everything to do with being an unethical, dishonest, selfish person.
May 18th, 2012 | 1:00 am
Rosie answered, “I said, ‘I can imagine. That would be great.’ And would it be easier for them if I were married to a man? It probably would. But as I said to my son, Parker, ‘If you were to have a daddy, you wouldn’t have me as a mommy because I’m the kind of mommy who wants another mommy.”
But Parker does have a daddy. He is just not allowed to know that man.
And the reason he has to pretend that man is irrelevant (whether he wants to or not) is not because his mommy is the kind of woman who wants another mommy – but because his mother simply does not love him enough to separate her own wants and needs from his. Instead, she assumes that whatever she wants is good enough for him – without really caring if that’s the case.
Or maybe she’s too immature to even realize that projecting your own feelings and needs onto another person doesn’t work. Children are naturally selfish; they naturally assume that everyone they meet cares about what they want, and they aren’t even really very aware that other people can have feelings and wants and desires that don’t happen to be all about them.
May 18th, 2012 | 1:11 am
So, my question to you: Are homeschoolers emotionally abusing their children, too?
I’d appreciate an answer. Pretty please.
My answer is that red herrings are logically a fallacy, so even if you could prove that homeschooling was abusive – and even if I graciously overlooked the difference between the two burdens of proof – it would not change the outcome of my argument.
It would not follow that if we established homeschooling to be abusive, that therefore what gays are doing is any less abusive.
The logical conclusion would not be that we should permit gays to do what they are doing, but rather that we should stop or restrict homeschooling parents from doing what they are doing.
In case you don’t know what I mean by “difference between the two burdens of proof”, I am referring to fact that you are illogically conflating two categories into one.
An adult who wishes to adopt a child not his own has the burden of proof of showing that this adoption is in the child’s best interest.
An adult does not have a similar burden of proof with regards to proving he should be allowed to parent his own biological child. The burden in this case works the other way: anyone who wishes to restrict the parent’s right to make decisions has the burden of proof.
May 18th, 2012 | 1:28 am
Legal marriage is a special form of legal partnership wherein the rights and obligations are pre-packaged (differing a state-to-state basis). Most notably, it grants spouses special recognition in medical decision making, testimony during trial, assignment of spousal benefits, ownership of marital assets, and inheritance (I’m sure I’m missing a few areas).
While I assume that some same-sex couples want a religious marriage, I believe that supporters of same-sex marriage are focused on the ability for same-sex couples to obtain the rights and obligations that come with a LEGAL marriage.
These rights are traditionally reserved for kin because they go together with the responsibilities unique to kinship.
Traditionally, only kin had access to you in the hospital because it was assumed that you were their business: they would be the ones paying your bills and they would be the ones making decisions on your behalf. It might be ‘progress’ to enable people to choose whom they want visiting them in the hospital and making decisions on their behalf – but what the left regards as ‘progress’ is invariably based on separating the rights from the responsibilities: you may want the ‘right’ to visit your friend in the hospital, but you want the government to pay your friend’s hospital bills.
Can gays be kin? Not if marriage is “inherently not procreative”. That procreative aspect of marriage (the one that does not exist, because if it existed it would prove that there is nothing discriminatory about restricting marriage only to legitimate procreative couplings) is also the basis of the claims to kinship that underlie those rights.
Because being kin to someone entails obligation. For instance, traditionally, if you wanted to make a family with another person, you owed it to your family, their family, your child, and the other person to honor, respect, support, and care for that person.
A family is a situation where “two becomes one” – that is, two distinct identities both submit to one higher shared identity. This is why spouses are exempt from certain types of testimony: because you cannot argue against yourself.
And this could theoretically apply to gays, as well, if they want to be granted the legal rights that couples enjoy. But it can’t apply to gays – at least not without doing damage to the institution of marriage (and the institution of family, and everything that is affected by these two institutions) – if gays are not willing to accept the obligations of kinship as well as the rights and privileges.
The obligations and the rights have to go together. Gays have to stop flip-flopping back and forth, trying to make a non-procreative union equal to a procreative one (except when it’s not), because this flip-flopping amounts to cherry-picking: they are trying to be equal in terms of the benefits they get, but not in terms of the responsibilities they shoulder.
May 18th, 2012 | 1:36 am
A family is a situation where “two becomes one” – that is, two distinct identities both submit to one higher shared identity.
Incidentally, this seems to be the key both to understanding the difference between left and right visions of marriage – and also why gays and lesbians are so much more likely to break up than the sort of religious people who attend church every week.
The left seems to have no problem describing women in conflict with or being oppressed by their husband or their kids – or other examples of how family is oppressive – and by “oppression” they seem to mean precisely this quality of submission to a higher identity: the family identity interfering with the freedom of one’s own individual identity, or the family seeking to make you care about its needs before your own.
The right seems far more inclined to describe the same situations, not as “oppression” (a victim being oppressed by family members) but as “poor management” (the victim being a victim of her own lousy choices and/or lack of self-care skills, communication skills, parenting skills, or whatever skills she needed to develop but did not). The rightful cure is not to flee, but to become better at managing problematic situations.
In one vision, family is a thing in conflict with an individual; in the other, the relationship between family and individuals is more like the relationship between a body and its organs.
May 18th, 2012 | 1:41 am
“Putting aside marriage for a moment, it seems to me we’d have a profoundly more educated populace if we started referring to secular humanism as a religion.”
Brilliant idea. In order to better fight the “redefinition” of marriage, just redefine “religion.” If that works for you, go for it.
Did you know that there is a growing number of humanists who want their beliefs recognized as a religion?
It has all the hallmarks of a religion. In fact, you don’t have to change anything except the name in order to turn humanism into “Unitarian Universalism” – a recognized religion that holds as its core concepts all the same articles of faith that humanism does.
The problem is, humanism (like all new religions?) wants to present itself as THE truth – not as just another explanation that claims toward truth but as the single, sole, self-evident explanation that negates the need for any other.
And for awhile it was able to do this. But gradually more and more people have become aware that it can only do this by accepting certain articles on faith – it is self-evidently true if you accept that the materialists are right about the nature of the universe, for instance.
We are seeing history: the humanist balloon is deflating, and it’s not going to be that long (historically speaking) until humanism is recognized as just another religion.
(Which will probably be when a new paradigm bursts onto the scene, claiming to be THE one true explanation for everything that both traditional Christians and traditional humanists supposedly don’t “get”.)
May 18th, 2012 | 1:54 am
Emotionally intelligent parents know there will be a lack and find ways to fill it. The gay parents I know have surrounded their children with opposite sex role models.
By the way, do you have any studies proving that having opposite-sex role models negates the damage done to fatherless children or motherless children?
We have a great deal of literature demonstrating that fatherlessness and motherlessness (and being minus a same-sex parent and being minus an opposite-sex parent) has a negative impact on children.
Gays claim they have proved that their kids “aren’t harmed”, and I see they have come up with studies establishing that the children of gays are just as likely to have good grades and lots of friends in their teenage years. But since they are claiming their kids “aren’t harmed”, that suggests they have tested all the variables – not just a few rather irrelevant variables.
So I am curious as to what the basis of your suggestion that somehow motherlessness stops becoming a problem for a daughter if the daughter has “role models”.
I know a girl who was motherless, and she had a role model. But then her family moved when she was 15. An unrelated female is not the same as a real mother.
I think it has been established that nothing can take the place of a mother.. So I’m curious what makes you think that simply surrounding a child with “role models” makes a difference.
I’m sure David Nickol would like your response to include peer-reviewed links.
May 18th, 2012 | 10:02 am
Douglas Johnson –
Well, that doesn’t quite address the question I put forth. You’ve found an example of a kid who wanted to have a daddy, sure. Blake, on the other hand, considers this a universal trait of all children raised by same-sex couples – and, indeed, a source of continual torment for all of them.
My one main question is, how could that more sweeping assertion be tested? Could it be falsified? If so, how?
May 18th, 2012 | 10:12 am
Blake –
You seem to be (clumsily) dodging the question. I’m not trying to say, “If homeschooling is abusive, then ‘what gays are doing’ is not abusive”.
Instead, I’m pointing out that “If evidence of greater maturity is a sign of abuse in same-sex parenting, then it is also a sign of abuse in homeschooling.”
Now, you can claim that there’s a difference in the burden of proof, and that the ‘negative evidence’ of harm in homeschooling doesn’t meet the level necessary to ‘convict’ it… but you simply cannot argue that it’s negative evidence in one case and totally irrelevant in another.
So, a yes-or-no question: Do you think the evidence that homeschooled children exhibit higher levels of maturity is an indication that they are ‘parentified’? (Bonus question: why or why not?)
(You also completely skipped the question about how you might decide that some particular kid wasn’t ‘harmed’ by same-sex parenting, btw.)
May 18th, 2012 | 11:00 am
We have a great deal of literature demonstrating that fatherlessness and motherlessness (and being minus a same-sex parent and being minus an opposite-sex parent) has a negative impact on children.
Blake,
One of the many problems with your argument is that what you say is not precisely true. Let’s suppose that a study finds that school children living in single-parent homes have 10% lower grades than students living in two-parent homes. You want to say that living in single-parent homes “has a negative impact on children.” But that is not precisely correct. It does not mean, for example, that the student at the top of the class won’t live in a single-parent home.
The United States has one of the highest rates of prostate cancer in the world. Japan has one of the lowest. That doesn’t mean American men should move to Japan.
It is not practical or desirable to let statistical risks determine everything you do. If you’re taking the family to Florida for a vacation, it is safer to fly than to drive, but you may very well choose to drive for any number of reasons, even though you’re putting your family at an increased risk of death!
Certainly those who handle adoption placements should be aware that—all things being equal—a married couple may statistically be the better choice than a single parent. But all things are never equal.
At age 25, a woman’s risk of having a baby with Down syndrome is 1 in 1,250. At age 35, her risk is 1 in 400. But would you argue that 35-year-old women should not have babies because they have three times the risk of having a Down syndrome baby than a younger woman?
May 18th, 2012 | 12:00 pm
David Nickol,
Let’s suppose that a study finds that school children living in single-parent homes have 10% lower grades than students living in two-parent homes. You want to say that living in single-parent homes “has a negative impact on children.” But that is not precisely correct. It does not mean, for example, that the student at the top of the class won’t live in a single-parent home.
If we knew that single parenting resulted in 10% lower grades on average, then what would it matter if the smartest kid in the class happened to have a single parent? I’m surprised even you are making this argument.
But let me stop myself there because your point and the point I just made are pointless distractions.
It doesn’t make a difference even if you produce a study proving Freud correct beyond any doubt: that all children will be mentally better off in whatever test you provide them if they are taken from their parents and placed in government run sex camps.
When I argue what is best for the child I’m not talking about what environment will give him the best SAT scores. I don’t care if the environment I advocate is overall the best for test scores; that doesn’t mean it’s right. I can’t imagine the morality of deciding the fate of a child based on his demographics’ performance on a test.
From Rosie O’Donnell who put her interests ahead of what she thought was in the best interest of the child she adopted, to the Iowa Supreme Court who declared that the child’s need for a mother and father are based on nothing but “stereotype,” the question of “what’s best” comes down to the natural right claim of a child to his own mother and father.
Tests and studies can be useful, but it’s quite evil to use them on questions of natural right. This is what Whittaker Chambers was talking about when he wrote:
May 18th, 2012 | 12:29 pm
Ken –
I apologize for the “tortured and twisted” remark. That may have been an epistolary flight of fancy. My fundamental argument is that being unable, “intrinsically,” to procreate and being unable, but “ideally able”, to procreate is a distinction without a difference. The path that you went down to prove the difference seems, at best, a semantic one; Foucault would be proud.
I submit that there is an analogy to illustrate the problem with the procreation as an intrinsic part of marriage argument. Let us equate marriage (a legal right) to voting (a legal right). Both have pre-qualifications for exercising. For marriage: not already married; of legal age; giving consent. For voting: citizenship; of legal age; residency. In the decades following the American Civil War, many southern states implemented a reading test for voting. It was argued that a voter should be informed and that reading was an intrinsic part of being informed. It seems a reasonable and sensible. The practical effect, as intended, was that many blacks, who were citizens, of legal age, and were residents, were barred from voting because they could not pass the reading test. White voters were, however, not required to take the reading test.
If this analogy was too obtuse, allow me to clarify. There is a legal right (marriage) that has certain pre-conditions (not being already married; of age; giving consent). There is a certain group of people (same-sex couples) that would like to avail themselves of this legal right. When they attempt to do so, however, a new pre-condition is imposed (the ability to procreate). But the new pre-condition is not uniformly imposed (infertile opposite-sex couples are not required to prove fertility). Where is the ethical consistency?
May 18th, 2012 | 1:21 pm
Douglas Johnson –
Er… not established by the quote you provided. “In the best interest of the child she adopted” (your words) does not automatically map to “easier” (her word). Often it’s not the same thing at all.
May 18th, 2012 | 1:34 pm
Blake,
“Then they know what they did was wrong”
Only if you think I was wrong to adopt my children, my uncle was wrong to serve overseas, and my mother was wrong to marry an alcoholic.
“This behavior has nothing to do with being homosexual. It has everything to do with being an unethical, dishonest, selfish person”
Have you raised any children?
“But Parker does have a daddy. He is just not allowed to know that man”
We agree on this issue, but I don’t know whether Parker knows his father or not. Either you do know or you presume you know.
“These rights are traditionally reserved for kin because they go together with the responsibilities unique to kinship. Traditionally, only kin had access to you in the hospital because it was assumed that you were their business: they would be the ones paying your bills and they would be the ones making decisions on your behalf.”
Ah, finally, we get to the core of marriage, which is the change in a person’s first loyalty. When someone marries, his first loyalty is no longer to the parents who raised him; it is to his wife: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife.” Although you are biologically related to your wife, she comes before your birth family.
This reorientation of loyalty is at the core of all the privileges and benefits that come to spouses. As you would put it, it is a “lie” to pretend that these privileges and benefits come from procreative potential rather than from someone’s declaration that the end of their loneliness and that their help now comes, not from their birth family, but from someone who once lay outside the family circle.
“you may want the ‘right’ to visit your friend in the hospital, but you want the government to pay your friend’s hospital bills”
That kind of characterization is merely bigoted.
“A family is a situation where “two becomes one” – that is, two distinct identities both submit to one higher shared identity. This is why spouses are exempt from certain types of testimony: because you cannot argue against yourself”
Meet a gay couple that has been together twenty or thirty years, and you’ve described them perfectly.
“gays and lesbians are so much more likely to break up than the sort of religious people who attend church every week”
Unless they go to church every week the way they do in my congregation.
“The right seems far more inclined to describe the same situations, not as “oppression” (a victim being oppressed by family members) but as “poor management” (the victim being a victim of her own lousy choices and/or lack of self-care skills, communication skills, parenting skills, or whatever skills she needed to develop but did not).”
Which is why it took the right so long to recognize marital rape as rape and to recognize family disagreements that left broken bones as assault and battery.
“Did you know that there is a growing number of humanists who want their beliefs recognized as a religion?”
They’re wrong. It’s not one.
“We have a great deal of literature demonstrating that fatherlessness and motherlessness (and being minus a same-sex parent and being minus an opposite-sex parent) has a negative impact on children”
Ah, we get to have this conversation again, do we? You are describing children produced by surrogates, not children who are the product of previous marriages and not adopted children. If you don’t like surrogacy, argue against that. Don’t keep dragging it into this debate as if it represented all gay families. Every time you do so, you distort the conversation. Or as you like to put, you are being “dishonest” and “lying.”
“I think it has been established that nothing can take the place of a mother.”
Which is why you would force widowers with young children to marry and are in favor of lesbians marrying and not gay men.
May 18th, 2012 | 1:35 pm
Douglas Johnson,
I was responding to this comment by Blake:
May 18th, 2012 | 2:04 pm
Rob,
Of the preconditions of voting that you named in your analogy, only citizenship is constitutive of voting (or the right to vote). Similarly, procreation is constitutive of marriage. It is not something “added on” to marriage. Of course, women were full citizens (in the political sense) for a long time before they were allowed to vote. But no one who is not a citizen can vote—that is the point. Citizenship *constitutes*the right to vote, just as procreation constitutes marriage. The analogy aside, maybe the following will help—it is not semantics, but a description of reality. (Foucault doesn’t know anything about that.)
The constitution of persons is such that they have certain innate capacities. These capacities are bound up inextricably with the identity of individuals. The intrinsic capacity to procreate is a facet of individual identity—when they are joined together as couples, individuals of the opposite sex have an intrinsic capacity to procreate.
That’s one side of the coin. The other side is that the institution of marriage is a set of individual practices in which individuals are “ordered” as couples. These particular practices are comprehensible only in light of the marriage institution, and its nature and meaning. Marriage *means* nothing coherent aside from procreation. Procreation is the formal cause of marriage—what gives it its form. To put it differently (and more “modernly”), marriage *presupposes* the general fact of procreation—it assumes couples entering it have an intrinsic capacity to procreate. The set of practices that comprise marriage (a trans-historical core of practices) don’t make sense apart from the general fact of procreation. Apart from the singular role of procreation within the institution of marriage, marriage would be an underdetermined set of practices. It would be indistinguishable from, and no more culturally privileged, than, mere cohabitation.
Incidentally, I take the view that the natural rival of procreation is commitment. For various reasons, I think commitment underdetermines marriage (that is, doesn’t explain what causes marriage to exist institutionally or as a social practice), although commitment may nicely explain the social institution of cohabitation.
Because they have an intrinsic capacity to procreate, infertile couples do not have to prove fertility. They are the *kind* of couples whose constitution, as united persons, is apt for marriage. There’s no “ethical inconsistency” in allowing them to get married while not allowing intrinsically infertile couples to get married.
May 18th, 2012 | 2:58 pm
Blake –
I’m sure there are some. It’s a big world. What’s the evidence that the number is “growing”, though?
May 18th, 2012 | 4:09 pm
Ken –
Let me try to address you argument to two ways.
The first way, my position is that the ability to procreate has never been a legal pre-condition to civil marriage (whereas – not being already married; being of legal age; and being able to give legal consent are legal pre-conditions). The ability to procreate has not even been a pre-condition to Catholic marriage – but this point is being made merely for emphasis. To say that a same-sex couple cannot legally enter into a civil marriage because they have no intrinsic ability to procreate seems plainly “added on.”
Can you square the circle on why government should establish a new legal pre-condition which bars same-sex couples from civil marriage while permitting infertile opposite-sex couples the same?
The second way, let’s continue using the marriage/voting analogy. You argue that to vote requires citizenship and to marry requires the actual, innate or ideal ability to procreation. I will stipulate to that for the purposes of this discussion. To balance the analogy you would need to state that the right to vote requires actual, innate or ideal citizenship. Examples of innate or ideal citizenship would be:
1) If my two sets of grandparents had not emigrated from Germany, I would be a German citizen today.
2) I was an American citizen before I moved to Singapore and renounced my American citizenship.
If we were to apply your construction regarding marriage to voting, both people in the examples above should have the right to vote in their “countries of origin.”
For rights requiring a specific status, how can that status be anything but actual?
May 18th, 2012 | 5:15 pm
David Nickol: you did a good job rebutting the straw man argument I didn’t make. Now would you like to rebut the data found in the book I linked?
May 18th, 2012 | 5:16 pm
Ray Ingles: I am not dodging the question so much as refusing to answer it altogether, until and unless you do a better job of explaining what it has to do with the point.
May 18th, 2012 | 5:24 pm
David Nickol: re: ‘all things being equal’, it is true that all things are not always equal. So in specific cases – individual circumstances (rather than category distinctions) – where we have a choice between ideal gay parents vs. drunken, abusive hetero parents, the gay parents might be the better placement, even though they are still providing a substandard home and are doing so through their own lack of interest in providing properly for the child. Ultimately, your dodge fails to explain why, if they are so “loving”, they are projecting their own needs onto the child, instead of recognizing that their needs are in conflict with the child’s needs and that they owe it to the child to separate his needs from theirs. It’s also worth noting that there’s no reason to believe that gays are less prone to drunkenness or abuse than the general population – available statistics suggest gays are more, not less, likely to be involved in domestic violence, adultery, divorce, etc. – so I don’t know why gay rights activists always try to rig the arguments such that ideal gay couples are contrasted against abusive heteros.
May 19th, 2012 | 9:19 am
Blake,
“available statistics suggest gays are more, not less, likely to be involved in domestic violence, adultery, divorce, etc. – so I don’t know why gay rights activists always try to rig the arguments such that ideal gay couples are contrasted against abusive heteros”
You think like a social scientist and social engineer. You are all about statistics and like outcomes. Christians, real conservatives, and even your dreaded humanists have always tried to recognize the variety and unpredictability of human life. This is especially true about the family. A lot of good children come out of what statisticians call “substandard” homes. A lot of lousy children have come out of the home you call “standard.”
To run a business or to build a home, you have to have a license and inspections, but Christians, real conservatives, humanists, and even your dreaded liberals have all insisted that the government stay away from families. No licenses, no inspections.
So the point is not that “ideal gay couples” are better than “abusive heteros.” Reread my comment, and you’ll see that I never came close to suggesting that. The point is that you are using statistics to justify gross generalizations rather than looking at individual couples and individual families.
The gay families I know are so very strong because they participate in a serious church community where we live and worship quite intentionally. The promise of Christianity lies not in its congruence with statistics but in its faith in grace acting on individuals.
May 19th, 2012 | 9:28 am
Blake,
“Ultimately, your dodge fails to explain why” and “I don’t know why gay rights activists always try to rig the arguments”
I hope you have been reading the exchange between Ken and Rob on this thread. They have been writing back and forth for quite some time now, and their exchanges have been respectful and clarifying. There are no accusations that someone is “dodging” something or “rigging” arguments. They are aware of the fact that they come from different definitions and assumptions, and they are trying to use logic to clarify the issues.
If you would dial back all of the bile and accusation, and if you would be more precise in your definitions, then you would generate a lot more light instead of all this heat.
By the way, Ken, welcome back. Last time I heard, you were taking a break to work on some environmental issue. How did that turn out?
May 19th, 2012 | 9:39 am
Ah, Blake. Matthew 13:13 has never seemed more apropos.
May 19th, 2012 | 11:49 am
Blake,
Great series of posts. By the way, a good friend of mine has a talk radio show in one of our nation’s largest metropolitan areas, and he also is often a guest on a nationally syndicated show in town. We have discussed some of your posts and I thought you might like to know that some of what you are posting in the comments section of First Things ends up hitting a major national audience, and not just the handful of folks commenting here.
May 20th, 2012 | 7:49 pm
The following is from William Voegeli’s “Never Enough.” Speaks for itself:
And then a little further on:
May 21st, 2012 | 3:26 pm
If procreationless marriage is an instantiation of marriage, as I assume it is, does this mean that marriage cannot be fundamentally a procreational institution? The answer is surely “no.” You don’t have to be a metaphysician—familiar with the ins and outs of universals and particulars—to know this. You only have to accept the idea that the sum of a thing may be greater than its parts.
What this seems to mean is that we should be at least social-science antireductionists. If that’s so, then a very telling philosophical difference between the supporters and the opponents of same-sex marriage is that only the latter are consistent antireductionists, in the social sciences as well as in the physical sciences. Antireductionism explains the belief of defenders of traditional marriage that marriage, a fundamentally procreational institution, can nevertheless have procreationless instantiations—Bob and Sue’s infertile marriage, or Linda and John’s childless-by-choice marriage.
The defenders of traditional marriage thus have a strong interest in making it clear when they are talking about marriage writ large (the *institution* of marriage) as opposed to marriage writ small (Bob and Sue’s or Ron and Carol’s marriage, and all other individual marriages). And supporters of same-sex marriage have an equal interest in fudging this distinction between the institution of marriage and particular instances (“examples”) of marriage.
Incidentally, I no longer am sure of a distinction I made in my May 16 comment—the distinction between *sine qua non* and *raison d `etre* with respect to the connection between marriage and procreation. As a result, I find myself doubling down on the distinction between marriage writ small and marriage writ large. That distinction, in turn, leads to the idea that the defenders of traditional marriage are philosophically motivated by a profound form of social-sciences antireductionism, whether or not they are aware of it. And the supporters of same-sex marriage—also whether they are aware of it or not—tend to assume the falsity of social-sciences antireductionism. The supporters of same-sex marriage, that is, are assuming that what is sometimes the case with marriage writ small (Bob and Sue’s infertile marriage, say) has an obliterative or nullifying effect on (the meaning of) marriage writ large.
My nose detects the acrid odor of extreme nominalism in this crucial assumption of the supporters of same-sex marriage.
I agree with Douglas Johnson: This has been a good exchange of views on this vexed subject.
May 21st, 2012 | 8:23 pm
Here is a question for everyone: Should it be legal for a lab to attempt to create a child that is the biological offspring of two people of the same sex? Perhaps they’d attempt it using stem cell derived artificial gametes, or some other method, it doesn’t matter. I think it should be prohibited, because it would be expensive and unethical and there is no medical need or public benefit and no right to do it.
If it were illegal to conceive offspring with someone of the same sex, instead of legal but merely impractical as it is now, then our discussions of same-sex marriage would be very different. We’d realize that same-sex couples were more like siblings than infertile couples, in that it doesn’t matter if they are able to have kids or want to have kids, what matters is if we approve and allow them to conceive children together.
May 22nd, 2012 | 6:52 am
Ken Zaretzke,
That is an excellent point. I only have a few minutes to write (so forgive typos as no time to proof), but I thought I would share an analogy I sometimes make that gets to your much larger point. The reductionism you talk about takes place all the time on a variety of issues, and here is how I sometimes find myself discussing it:
May 22nd, 2012 | 7:19 am
Okay, I guess I’m not taking my run so I have a few more minutes. In case the usual suspects have stopped following this thread, let me answer in their stead. They’d probably say something like this:
Ken & Doug,
You are just making our point. The church doesn’t throw out parishioners who aren’t what you would call perfect Catholics, but they include them into the fold. There are thousands of SSM families out there that are less than perfect in your eyes. So fine, they are less than perfect. Why should they be thrown out?!”
See the circular reasoning at work here? The premise of the above assumes that SSM is marriage and it is we who want to redefine it by throwing people out. But more to your point, the mission of the church writ large is for everyone to follow Christ. That mission does not hinge on the success or failure of individual parishioners to do so–let alone priests, bishops, cardinals or popes. And no matter what a wayward parishioner does, the church always wants to bring him back even if it excommunicates him. The atheist who was baptized a Roman Catholic can leave the church but he has no power to bring it down with him on the way out.
Our usual suspects would respond:
Have you guys been reading out posts??! We are saying exactly what you are saying. Your church marriage wouldn’t change just because gay marriage isn’t banned. You can go on doing whatever you want inside your church.
I’ll let you fix my first attempt at this line of argumentation, but it seems to me the best response is to, once again, point out the circular reasoning being used above by the use of the term “gay marriage,” and then to point out that marriage is a natural right and not a creation of the state. What we are really fighting is the idea that the government should be freed from the chains that restrict its power (unalienable rights endowed to us by our creator) and then allow it to redefine the very natural rights it was created to protect. To stick with my example, it would be as if the “atheist Roman Catholic” successfully petitioned the government to redefine Roman Catholicism on its own terms in an attempt to bring down the church on his way out.
I’m sure I’ve mangled this to some degree. It’s impossible to stick your landing on the first go around, but let me know if you think we are making the same argument.
May 22nd, 2012 | 8:05 am
Gracious, I’m not done yet–I forgot about the Libertarians!
So imagine 10 or 20 years down the road a few states have redefined Roman Catholicism and mandated that all Roman Catholic churches in the state of Massachusetts, Iowa, etc. accept atheist priests.
Meanwhile in 31 other states (or is it 32 now?) laws have been passed affirming Rome’s definition of Roman Catholicism.
The debate rages between “traditional Roman Catholicism” and “civil Roman Catholicism” and then finally the libertarians jump in. “Enough!” they say. “If atheists want to be Roman Catholic priests then they can be Roman Catholic priests! If believers in the Trinity want to be Roman Catholic priests then they can be Roman Catholic priests! I don’t really care. Furthermore, I don’t think the government should be in the religion business at all! Why does the government get to decide who is a Roman Catholic and who isn’t? In fact, why does the government get to decide what’s a religion? The government should no longer recognize religion!”
And those supporting “civil Roman Catholicism” would applaud as our libertarians would walk away proud thinking they had leveled a sensible blow for limited government.
May 22nd, 2012 | 12:35 pm
Ken,
It’s good to have you back, and I do want to hear how your environmental work went. I’m especially happy to have you back because you are able to argue logically and without insult or accusations of dishonesty or bad faith. (Though the comment about the “acrid odor of extreme nominalism” is not to your credit.)
You remain wrong, of course. ;-)
It’s all very well to argue that supporters of gay marriage are reductionist, but, if you remember, I argued that your position was reductionist. At most, only one of us can be right, and the difference comes down to definitions.
You argue define marriage as fundamentally procreational. I define marriage as fundamentally about creating a new, independent family. It is in marriage that adults shift their primary loyalty from the families they were born into to the family they make with their spouse. The family is the basic social unit, and marriage breaks individuals free from two families in order to create a third: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
Notice that Genesis doesn’t say anything about consummation or procreation. What makes marriage is that you have found the one who ends your loneliness and becomes your helper: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
Further notice that my definition doesn’t require a distinction between marriage writ large or small. What is necessary is that mysterious certainty that you have found the “flesh of your flesh.” The elderly and the infertile are not special instances. They are as capable of finding their other half as the young and fertile. Society recognizes that spouses have authority over each other in ways once held by the spouses’ respective birth families. By “cleaving” to one another, they earn privileges that are independent of their ability to procreate; rather their union represents the creation of a new family independent of its predecessors.
From this perspective, your definition of marriage as fundamentally procreative is reductive.
And of course, the other benefit of my definition is that it is not only biblical but focuses on the core of Jesus’s single teaching on marriage.
May 22nd, 2012 | 1:04 pm
Douglas,
“In case the usual suspects have stopped following this thread, let me answer in their stead.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought you said earlier that you weren’t going to answer liberals anymore because they’re all dishonest anyway.
At any rate, I would have to say that your impersonation of a liberal doesn’t fly so well. I don’t think anyone on these threads is asking the Roman Church to marry gay couples or to change its teaching on homosexuality. People have asked why the Roman definition trumps others in the public square, and David has asked some very sharp questions, I think, about the different standards that the Roman Church applies to gays. There are strong, logical arguments to make against David’s position, but that’s not what he receives. He just receives various accusations.
You might come up with more successful arguments if you argue with real people rather than making up retorts no one has made.
“marriage is a natural right and not a creation of the state”
I agree. This is why gays already possess a right to marry that states are only now beginning to recognize.
May 22nd, 2012 | 3:01 pm
Michael,
Your comment was even tempered in tone, but means to demean with an academic-sounding veneer acting as a sort of protective gloss and so your comment is not to your credit. (Okay, I admit that was fun to write.)
That said, you write:
At any rate, I would have to say that your impersonation of a liberal doesn’t fly so well. I don’t think anyone on these threads is asking the Roman Church to marry gay couples or to change its teaching on homosexuality.
This was in response to my liberal imitation here:
Your church marriage wouldn’t change just because gay marriage isn’t banned. You can go on doing whatever you want inside your church.
In my imitation I had your camp saying “church marriage wouldn’t change” and then you responded saying my imitation doesn’t fly because you are saying church marriage wouldn’t change. Umm…
And then you continue on saying:
You might come up with more successful arguments if you argue with real people rather than making up retorts no one has made.
I’m now thinking if my imitation consisted of just pasting an entire comment from you, you’d take offense.
May 22nd, 2012 | 3:20 pm
Michael,
Thanks. I am something of a “warmist,” as I mentioned last year in a comment, but it would be off-topic to discuss that here, so I will leave that aside. Suffice it to say that I’m still giving vent to my environmental concerns in the maximum feasible way.
I do remember your charge that I was “reducing” marriage to procreation. I remember how misguided I thought the charge was. I think it is not an especially good use of the antireductionism argument. You only mean I’m *equating* marriage with procreation, and in a sense I am. Using the language of “reducing to” is rather pointless, and not a good fit with the paradigm of reductionism (biology reduced to chemistry, or marriage writ large reduced to its instances).
The capacity to procreate is assumed by the Genesis account. Suppose Adam and Eve couldn’t procreate in the usual way, and generation was asexual–would this not, to put it mildly, remove some of the gravitas from leaving one’s parents in order to form a new family with one’s wife? What would be so great about “cleaving to your wife” in the circumstances of purely asexual reproduction?
When I cast about for the conditions that plausibly explain marriage’s existence, I arrive at the brute fact of procreation, which I find makes explicable the desire to create a new family with a spouse. It’s a matter of definition, as you say, but definitions have presuppositions, and knowing the presuppositions is sometimes necessary in order to properly define things. To say that marriage presupposes procreation is to say something profoundly important to the proper understanding of marriage–in my humble opinion.
May 22nd, 2012 | 5:43 pm
Ken,
“Suffice it to say that I’m still giving vent to my environmental concerns in the maximum feasible way”
That doesn’t sound like it’s going well. Sorry if that’s the case.
“You only mean I’m *equating* marriage with procreation, and in a sense I am.”
I mean a good bit more than that. Genesis describes accurately the complex of feelings that drive people toward marriage: the feeling that you’ve found part of yourself in another, the feeling that your loneliness has come to an end, the feeling that you have found a helper. These feelings are a good bit larger than procreation.
And they come first, which is why Jesus does not accept infertility or even non-consummation as reasons for divorce. Marriages are blessed by children, but children or even the expectation of them are not necessary for marriage. The certainty that you have found part of yourself is necessary for marriage.
While the childless marriage can be full, there is something broken and some betrayal has been made when any couple divorce whether they have had children or not.
“The capacity to procreate is assumed by the Genesis account.”
I wouldn’t put it that way. Genesis assumes that most unions will result in children. Childless couples have always been with us. And I hasten to add that I don’t think one can find anywhere in the Bible or in the Church Fathers any sort of approval for homosexual unions.
“When I cast about for the conditions that plausibly explain marriage’s existence, I arrive at the brute fact of procreation, which I find makes explicable the desire to create a new family with a spouse.”
Why “cast about” when the Bible has already done the work for you? Even if you want to continue to argue against gay marriage, I think my definition is better, more biblical, and less reductive. I think you would accept my definition if you were looking at it on its own.
“It’s a matter of definition, as you say, but definitions have presuppositions, and knowing the presuppositions is sometimes necessary in order to properly define things.”
I wonder what is presupposed by my definition then. I can’t think of anything except that my definition presupposes that Genesis correctly describes the meaning of marriage.
May 22nd, 2012 | 5:56 pm
Douglas,
“I’m now thinking if my imitation consisted of just pasting an entire comment from you, you’d take offense”
I didn’t take offense. I just don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Does your pretend liberal want to change the way the Roman Church conducts marriages, or does he want a civil marriage that allows gays to marry? I think most liberals want the latter, but your pretend liberal is talking about throwing people out of church. I’m confused by your way of describing this scenario. If I understood it, I might argue against it, but I don’t understand it. And so I suggest that you argue against a real person rather than some made-up person.
May 22nd, 2012 | 7:08 pm
Douglas Johnson,
“. . . but let me know if you think we are making the same point.”
I think you addressed that to me, but not sure. All the same . . . . The supporters of same-sex marriage argue in the way you describe not because they are dishonest or engaged bad faith (though some are) but because they view religious belief, including their own, through the prism of liberalism. This may be the source of the “circularity” you’re pointing to. Needless to say, they don’t think there’s any circularity. Liberalism for them has an epistemological function; it’s the fount of knowledge, and can’t be leading to vicious circularity, but only to the truth of the matter. You could say (but I don’t, preferring the more philosophical usage) that this is to “reduce” religious truth to liberal truth. I’d rather say it is to (wrongly) *equate* religious truth with liberal truth.
The tolerance that liberals speak of is unable to accomodate, in a morally neutral way, religious enforcement of truth that would constrain other peoples’ liberty. For the religious, truth is the most important thing. For liberals, individual liberty is the most important thing. Conflict is inevitable, at least when consensus evaporates.
May 22nd, 2012 | 11:48 pm
Ken,
“The supporters of same-sex marriage argue in the way you describe not because they are dishonest or engaged bad faith (though some are) but because they view religious belief, including their own, through the prism of liberalism”
You ascribe to liberalism what is true about all religions and philosophies—they all rely on their suppositions. Ultimately, every religion and philosophy is circular. How could it be otherwise?
“Liberalism for them has an epistemological function; it’s the fount of knowledge, and can’t be leading to vicious circularity, but only to the truth of the matter.”
The same is true about religious belief.
Furthermore, I wouldn’t pitch religious belief against liberalism. I assume that you have more respect for liberalism than you do for some forms of religious belief. I also assume that you recognize that liberalism developed as a way to curb an excessive devotion to “truth” by some Christians. Liberalism is a lot like democracy. It requires compromise, and no one wants to compromise, and sometimes compromise becomes an end in itself.
“The tolerance that liberals speak of is unable to accomodate, in a morally neutral way, religious enforcement of truth that would constrain other peoples’ liberty.”
Is it possible to enforce truth in “morally neutral way”? I don’t know what that would mean.
“Conflict is inevitable, at least when consensus evaporates”
But from another angle, the Christian conservative and the liberal agree to not tolerate the religious freedom of lots of other people: those who practice genital mutilation, Mormon polygamy, some versions of Christian Scientism, etc. There’s a good bit of dark talk on First Things about the end of democracy, that liberalism has turned rotten and intolerant, but I don’t see it that way. Consensus around the marginalization of gays has collapsed with Christian conservatives wanting to continue the practice, but that doesn’t mean that liberals are waging some kulturkampf against Christianity.