In his response to Ryan Anderson’s comments on marriage, David Blankenhorn explained:
I changed my view on gay marriage for two reasons. The first is fairness. And the second is to get out of the very box that Ryan Anderson wants to put me and everyone else in — the little box inside of which the culture war on gay marriage must precede and overwhelm and define everything else.
No thank you. And, no thank you. And I can report from personal experience that the air is much easier to breath, once you are outside that stifling little box.
That third sentence isn’t a fair summary of what Ryan is arguing in the symposium or elsewhere, and Ryan has responded. I’m more interested in David’s idea of a stifling box. He is right about it and he uses a metaphor that’s occurred to me from time to time.
To take the position Ryan and we do is restrictive and being a cultural minority (a minority among the elites, that is) holding to a position harder to articulate in ways effective in our society can feel stifling. It can feel, to offer another metaphor, as if you’re trying to walk while your knees tied loosely together. It would be nice to run.
One knows exactly how David feels, but it’s a terrible reason for doing anything. It only means that you’ve joined a broad cultural consensus that may or may not be right — to extend the metaphor, you may get outside in the fresh air only to find that you’re standing at the south pole in a t-shirt — and that may shift so that you once again feel yourself stuck in the stifling box. David wants to defend marriage, and defend (the question of the sex of the spouses aside) a fairly strict understanding of marriage, but already for many people that’s a quaint and slightly reactionary and oppressive idea. It may not be too long till someone’s patronizing David with a remark about the stifling box he’s trying to keep everyone in and urging him to come out into the fresh air.
December 21st, 2012 | 6:59 pm
David:
OK, good point. After all, freedom is arguably the basic American idea, and so freedom (“yearning to breathe free”, “free at last”) is a frequent American appeal and ideal, when we are confronted with the authority of a venerable and crucially important institution, such as marriage. I do take your point.
I still, however, believe that my argument about the “stifling box” is valid, in this instance, when the issue at hand is whether (as Anderson argues) efforts to strengthen marriage must by definition be premised in opposition to gay marriage.
And by the way, I have re-read Anderson’s piece, and I honestly believe that what I describe here and in my comments on our blog as the main practical implication of his argument — that marriage in America cannot be strengthened unless, first and foremost, gay marriage is opposed — is accurate and is not at all unfair or patronizing. And yet you he say otherwise, which has gotten my attention.
If what I have said above is NOT the main, or least one major, implication of his argument, can you (or he) please tell me what the main implication actually is, or what the major implications actually are? I’d be interested.
December 21st, 2012 | 7:50 pm
David:
What you’ve done in your reply is replace Anderson’s actual argument with what amounts to a bumper sticker slogan: “that marriage in America cannot be strengthened unless, first and foremost, gay marriage is opposed.” That is no more an accurate description of Anderson’s argument as it would be an accurate description of the prochoice position on abortion if a prolifer were to suggest that her adversary is advancing the notion “that liberty in America cannot be strengthened unless, first and foremost, we permit mothers to hire medical assassins to murder their prenatal children.” Because prochoicers do not believe fetuses are persons during most of their gestation, that description, though rhetorically effective in raising the temperature in the room, begs the question, but worst of all, it does not advance the conversation in any meaningful way. You are doing precisely the same thing in your response to Anderson. He and his co-authors make the argument that gay “marriage” is not really marriage, precisely for the same reason that numerous other types of friendships, associations, and alliances, though they may very well result in some good, are not marriages. This is the argument with which you have to deal.
It may be the case that you have a knock-down drag-out argument that would defeat the argument that Anderson et. al. make in their book, What is Marriage?. Many of us who respect your intellect and your accomplishments are anxious to hear it, and to read the dialogue between you and your critics that would follow.
December 21st, 2012 | 8:43 pm
It’s quite simple. When assessing his own position Blackhorn should ask himself who has more influence on his fellow citizens Dan Savage or him? Blackhorn’s argument while seemingly inclusive is actually predicated on a belief that it can exclude Savage et. al. from the subsequent discussion of what marriage means having just admitted them into the ranks of the married.
December 22nd, 2012 | 6:20 am
David:
I hear you, and I respect you, but I don’t think you are being fair in this case. I said — and I say here again — that the main implication of Anderson’s argument is that meaningful support for marriage in America must by definition be premised in oppostion to gay marriage. In my view, this statement is not ungenerous; it is not a characature of his argument; it is not misleading. On the contrary, it seemed and still seems clear to me that this is +the main practical implication of his argument.
I further said to you (and him), if what I said is NOT accurate, tell me what is.
You say — presumably this is your answer to my question — that Anderson’s main thesis is that gay marriage is not marriage. (You even use scare-quotes, as in gay “marriage.”) And then you say that I am supposed to rebut or repsond to that main thesis.
Well, that’s exactly what I did, in my comment. Anderson has a worked-out set of arguments and principles which lead him to this main conclusion, and the entire gist of his argument is that this fact — marriage has a definition, and gay ain’t part of it — has to be at the front and center of of any meaningful attempt to strengthen marriage in America as a social institution. So we are back we started. Have I missed something? If so, please tell me what it is.
You also call on me, as if it’s some kind of requirement, to give a point by point counter-argument regarding the thesis that gay marriage is not marriage. I can’t possibly do that in this forum, any more than I could on our blog post comment stream the other day, but I can say a brief word or two about it here, as a possible marker for further discussion between/amoung us.
I like definitions as much as the next fella, and several years ago I wrote an entire book basically trying to answer the question, What is marriage? So anyone who’s interested in how I approach that question can read that book.
Right now, I’ll just say that my approach was historical and anthropological, and I was mainly interested in the question of origins — how did marriage come to be in human groups? — and in the role of institutions in social life.
Anderson’s approach, in my view, is quite different from my own — to me it’s much more philosophical and much more formal. In Anderson’s epistemology, as I understand it, based on reading the blog post and the book, there are certain questions about the goods and goals of human sexuality. Each of these questions has one correct or true answer. And all of these true answers, in turn, like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, fit together into one picture, one harmonious whole — one large structure of objective truth.
Now, as a part of putting together and appreciating the beauty of this jig-saw puzzle, Anderson (and many others working out of this particular tradition) has discovered, by way of fact, that gay marriage is not marriage. There is one and only one true answer to the pure philosophical question, What is marriage, and the entire issue of same-sex relations violates and degrages the integrity of that true answer.
Now, the main reason that I don’t believe in this thesis is that I don’t believe in this epistemology. I don’t believe that there is one true answer to every question; I don’t believe that all of these true answers fit together, like a jig-saw puzzle, into one harmonious whole; and I further believe that people who do think this way tend to be, as I believe Anderson is in this case, far, far too aggressive in their demand that all of the rest of us line up behind their true definitions of things.
I could, and maybe will, as an alternative way of exploring the topic, take up the matter in the way you ask me to — on a specific, point by point basis. But for now, in this forum, all that I feel able to do is to adumbrate for you the basic epistemological divergence that I think helps to frame the disagreement at hand.
Meanwhile, I’m still like the guy in Reagan’s old joke, waiting for my two dollars — I’m still waiting for someone to tell me why my explanation of the main implication of Ryan’s argument is not an accurate one.
December 22nd, 2012 | 12:37 pm
Sam makes an excellent point. Blankenhorn has always sought to occupy a very sparsely populated middle ground between the liberationists (and their de facto ‘love is all you need’ allies) on one side and Christians on the other. That ground has shifted somewhat in the last year, but I don’t see that its population has. Even “conservative” SSM advocate Andrew Sullivan cannot seem to support marital fidelity for gay male couples. Is Blankenhorn even today more than an army of one?
December 22nd, 2012 | 12:38 pm
Fairness does not require enabling postgendered reproduction, so people can reproduce as or with either sex. It is not unfair that people can only reproduce as the sex they were born as, with someone of the other sex. It is also not unfair that society expects people to commit to one person with whom they want to have all their children, and accept the outcome if children arrive or do not arrive. Yes, lots of people feel it is unfair if they cannot have children with the person they want to have children with, but that’s because they have an attitude of entitlement and feel everything is unfair when they aren’t allowed to get what they want.
What is unfair is that marriage loses its approval of having sex and children together, and that thousands of same-sex couples don’t have any recognition because some transhumanists are insisting that their being allowed to reproduce with someone of the same sex using artificial sperm and eggs is more important than their security and benefits.
December 22nd, 2012 | 12:49 pm
David:
Pardon my wordiness, but I’ve been thinking more, and I’d like briefly to say why I responded to your challenge at the level of an epistemological discussion, rather than (as you requested) at the level of a specific, empirical counter-argument to the thesis that “gay marriage is not marriage.”
I take Anderson and his two co-authors to be the proponents of a totalistic explanation of human sexuality, or of what Rawls called a comprehensive system – a fully worked out framework for determining what is objectively and permanently true in the area of human sexuality, all built (largely inductively) upon a few core concepts (“truths”) about the definition and destiny of the human person, and characterized by a thick, rich web of interlocking definitions, premises, and conclusions, all of which fit together into a harmonious whole.
I have noticed, in my own experience, two things about attempts critically to probe or challenge this way of thinking. The first is that such systems can rarely be upset or called into question on a piecemeal basis, through the presentation of empirical evidence. There are two reasons for this. Not only is more and new empirical evidence always available, but more importantly, any particular challenge of this nature is simply swallowed up, digested, and rendered harmless by the larger system. You got a problem with my knee bone? Well, what you might not know is, that the knee bone is connected to the shin bone, and the shin bone is connected to the foot bone. All of the bones work together perfectly and each perfectly reinforces all the others. So, you wanna ask me, why do I think homosexual conduct is intrinsically disordered? Well, glad you asked, because you see, it all has to do with the goods and goals of marriage. The shin bone is connected to the foot bone. And so it goes.
The second thing I’ve noticed is that a system of thought founded on principles of deductive reasoning – if this true, then this also is true – cannot often be challenged or probed on the basis of inductive reasoning. The two ways of figuring out what is true ultimately simply do not go together, and the latter process (induction) can only very rarely successfully overturn the former (deduction) in the eyes of those who adhere to the deductively arrived at system. It’s like throwing a few grains of sand at a cannon. The sand may be real enough, and meaningful enough, but it hardly bothers the cannon. The canno hardly even notices.
That is why, in my view, this Anderson and colleagues way of knowing about sexuality has to be challenged ultimately at the system, or epistemological, level. And that’s why I am trying (in a very rough and tentative way) to do in my replies to you.
A caveat: I am certainly not trying to put words in anyone’s mouth. Maybe I am wrong about how Anderson and his colleagues think about these things. Their ideas belong to them, not to me; they know what and how they think much, much better than I do; and I am sorry, and ask sincerely to be corrected, if I am getting all or any of this wrong. I freely acknowlege that I might be getting some of it wrong.
December 22nd, 2012 | 12:53 pm
In graf 2 above, instead of “largely inductively,” should be, “largely deductively.”
December 22nd, 2012 | 1:31 pm
When an anthropologist (or a social scientist, for that matter) starts to tell you how things *ought* to be (e.g. what’s fair), he’s no longer speaking as an anthropologist (or a social scientist). Whether he knows it or not, he’s speaking as an ethicist / philosopher. If he’s right, it’s only because he’s doing good philosophy.
Given the very nature of truth and goodness, it’s obvious there’s no getting out of the philosophy “box” on any question regarding truth or goodness. There is doing good and bad and mediocre philosophy, but the option of “doing no philosophy” is self-evidently impossible.
Why are these things so opaque to revisionists? It’s probably because they want to hide behind consequentialist and ad misericordium obfuscations and don’t like being called out. Then again, perhaps I should be more charitable and assume better. Perhaps it’s just vincible ignorance.
December 22nd, 2012 | 1:54 pm
DB is right that Anderson’s whole argument is that gay marriage is not marriage, and that is a useless and meaningless and embarrassing argument. I also would not want to be in a box with anyone making that argument, it is indeed stifling.
But there is a real legal definition of marriage that DB and Coontz and Justice Kennedy all agree on: it’s civil approval to conceive offspring together. That’s what it is legally, in every society around the world. We can approve and allow same-sex couples to conceive offspring together, but we don’t have to, it is not a right, and it would not be good public policy. That might seem unfair, but we can mitigate that unfairness with Civil Unions for same-sex couples that give all the other aspects of marriage without approving of the conception of offspring together. That is much more fair than any other resolution.
December 22nd, 2012 | 4:02 pm
There is doing good and bad and mediocre philosophy, but the option of “doing no philosophy” is self-evidently impossible.
andrew,
Perhaps your wrote this before David Blankenhorn’s posts appeared, but clearly he is “doing philosophy.” What he is not doing—and what Anderson seems to want—is to accept all of the premises of What Is Marriage? and engage in an argument based on those premises.
December 22nd, 2012 | 7:51 pm
It seems that those who oppose same sex marriages, do so because they believe that marriage has essential properties, and “marriages” between two individuals of the same sex, or gender, is not one of these essential properties. This is a perfectly repectable position, in fact, I agree with it, in principle. It’s entirely rational to believe that, what makes anything, (not just marriages) what it is, is because of the properties that anything has. So, obviously, a table will have certain properties, that are essential to it, for example. Those who endorse marriage being only between a man and a woman, argue that SSM’s don’t have all the essential properties that make a marriage a marriage, therefore they aren’t marriages.
These essential properties include, love for each other, a life long commitment, the capacity to procreate, among other properties. But let’s focus on these three, for now. SSM’s can, in principle have two of these three. It seems that the capacity to procreate is the only one missing in SSM’s. But, clearly, many heterosexual marriages lack the procreative element (as has been pointed out by many who advocate SSM’s, such as Andrew Sullivan, for example), such as elderly couples, but no one dreams of arguing that these marriages between elderly couples who cannot, it’s just impossible, for eighty year olds to have kids. This constitutes a double standard, obviously. If opponents of SSM’s are serious about the arguments, they must either deny marriages to the elderly, or allow SSM’s into the fold.
Also, many marriages, between two heterosexuals don’t have love involved. Are these real marriages? Perhaps they love each other, but only want to be married for, say, five years, then end it, thereby meaning that they don’t possess the life long commitment property of marriage. Should we ban these types of marriages?
Perhaps another essential element to real marriages, is a religious aspect. That is, if marriage can only be a real marriage if one commits vows to God, which means one must believe in God, are atheistic or agnostic marriages “real” marriages?
i have to say that I respect those who oppose SSM’s, and believe that they advance their views in good faith, I believe that the whole essence arguments that they rely on, seem to work against their position more than for it. And I deeply admire Mr. Blankenhorn’s courage, in following the arguments to their proper conclusions.
December 23rd, 2012 | 2:24 pm
For those who are still following this string, David Blankenhorn’s second message responds to Frank Beckwith, not to me.
December 24th, 2012 | 7:00 am
David Blankenhorn, do you agree that marriage law is for marriage and not other stuff?
I’d expect you would say, yes of course.
Do you agree that sometimes the law gets stuff right and sometimes it gets stuff wrong?
I’d expect you would say, again, yes.
If I am mistaken, please clarify your answer to each of these basic questions.
It seems reasonable that marriage must have a reality independent of the law. The law is limited by what marriage actually is. Marital status is for clarifying who is actually married. Eligibility to marry is codified in boundaries that are justified by societal regard for what marriage is. The law is duty bound to distinguish the marital type of relationship from nonmarital types.
So the essentials of marriage cannot be placed on the backburner. This basic task cannot be removed from the frontburner.
Id you areconvinced that there is a sort of relationship that is one-sexed and which is marital — before the law enters the picture — then it ought to be a cinch for you to state how that type of one-sexed relationship is 1) like the union of husband and wife and 2) not like the various types of relationships that are not like the union of husband and wife. As is the law, you as a revisionist are duty bound to get at the pith of marriage so as to help society figure out if the marriage law is right or wrong.
It is not a duty the we can shirk.
December 24th, 2012 | 8:46 am
Two questions lie behind the definition of marriage. The first concerns who takes care of the children. This question dominates marriage law and has dominated conservative opposition to gay marriage. Marriage entails procreation, and the wife and children need to be cared for.
The second question has been neglected by conservatives but is central to the case for gay marriage. This question concerns who takes care of me. As a single adult man, I still belong to my parents. They will care for me and speak for me when I can’t.
Once I marry, however, I belong primarily to the new family I have formed with my wife. She cares for me and speaks for me when I can’t. If there is some conflict between her and my parents, her opinion counts more heavily. My parents and siblings are still important, but the act of marriage makes my wife the most important relationship.
It is this second aspect of marriage that lies behind Genesis 2:24 and Jesus’ opposition to divorce. This second aspect has been far more important in Christian thinking than the first.
December 24th, 2012 | 11:53 am
Michael, if that’s what’s important, then you should be pushing for more states to have legal recognition for same-sex couples so they can put off their parents and focus on each other’s more important needs, without demanding that they have equal conception rights as married couples do. They can have the legal obligations and recognition with Civil Unions defined as “marriage minus conception rights” which would be easier to pass in most every state and give federal recognition to, than to insist on giving them equal conception rights. Do they need approval to conceive offspring together to form a fully loving devoted real relationship? I don’t think so.
December 25th, 2012 | 12:59 pm
John Howard, your thinking is faulty in two areas.
Firstly, no democratic government dabbles in what you imagine as “conception rights.” But even if a government were to poke its nose into such matters, all couples (same-gender and opposite-gender) need conception rights, because both same-gender and opposite-gender couples are bringing children to term via surrogacy and/or via fertilization.
Secondly, any couple that forms a loving, committed relationship is entitled to the rights and responsibilities of conceiving and raising any children that may come into their lives, at any future point, regardless of the conception method, and regardless of the genders of the partners.
Finally, marriage licenses are never issued based on the couple’s intent to have (or not have) children, or on the method of conception/pregnancy, or on the government’s requirement that the couple breed (or not breed). Your notion of making animal husbandry a required factor in obtaining a marriage license is barbaric.
December 25th, 2012 | 1:31 pm
Francis J. Beckwith, you and Ryan Anderson argue — incorrectly — that same-gender marriages can’t be true marriages for the same reason that friendships can’t be true marriages, yet you fail to state what that “same reason” is.
In fact, same-gender marriages can be true marriages for all the reasons that opposite-gender marriages can be true marriages, as already proven in CT, DC, IA, MA, MD, ME, NH, NY, VT, and WA. In those states, all that civil law does — and all that it needs to do everywhere else, as well — is to recognize the willing union of two individuals who (a) are committed to partner with each other and with no one else, and who (b) accept the legal responsibility for any non-adult children that they may ever have, regardless of method.
In those ten states, as everywhere else, the current genders of the partners — as well as all future methods of potential conception, bringing to term, and/or adoption — are all irrelevant to the issuance of the marriage license.
December 25th, 2012 | 1:51 pm
In reply to the anonymous named “Chairm”. . .
Your two questions are obvious set-ups intended to help you advance some future argument which you have yet to disclose. For example:
A. There is no such thing as “for marriage and not other stuff” because marriage is defined differently in every state and differently in each of the 1,138 federal marriage-related programs; what may be “marriage” in one federal or state program may be “other stuff” in another, and vice versa.
B. The fact that laws — like every other imperfect thing in human existence — are sometimes well-written and sometimes poorly written is irrelevant.
You ask how much unique commonality exists in the marriages of same-gender couples vs. opposite-gender couples, all of which may or may have biological children from prior marriage, non-biological children via adoption, children via surrogacy, adult children, or no children.
Regardless of gender and regardless of the presence, absence, or ages of children, there are about 74,304 minutes in the year of an average couple. Over 99% of those minutes are spent in thousands of activities which are identical between same-gender and opposite-gender couples. True, not every single couple pursues every activity every year, of course: some (but not all) couples visit relatives, some (but not all) attend professional conferences, some (but not all) go hiking, etcetera. But 99% of the activities found in the same-gender couple group are also found in the opposite-gender couple group, and vice versa.
The ways in which loving, committed couples share their lives together do vary from one individual couple to the next, but those ways that are found among same-gender couples are also found among opposite-gender couples, and vice versa. Likewise, the ways in which marital couples differ from non-marital relationships also vary from one couple to the next, but they don’t vary between same-gender couples (as a group) versus opposite-gender couples (as a group).
Civil marriage law does not enumerate the thousands of activities in which couples may be involved, it does not require any of those activities, and it does not prohibit any of them. As already proven in CT, DC, IA, MA, MD, ME, NH, NY, VT, and WA, all civil law does — and all that it needs to do everywhere else — is recognize the willing union of two individuals who (a) are committed to partner with each other and with no one else, and who (b) accept the legal responsibility for any non-adult children that they may ever have, regardless of method. The current genders of the partners — and the future methods of potential conception, bringing to term, and adoption — are all irrelevant to the issuance of the marriage license.
December 25th, 2012 | 2:43 pm
John Howard argues — incorrectly — that it is not a right, it is not necessary, and it is not good public policy to issue civil marriage licenses for two loving, committed adults to marry and potentially (but not necessarily) raise children arising from prior marriage, surrogacy, and/or adoption.
He is wrong.
IT’S A RIGHT. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on at least 14 separate occasions that marriage is a fundamental human right. In America, fundamental rights are not guaranteed to some people while denied to others, unless there is a compelling government purpose.
RIGHTS ARE NECESSITIES. We recognize the necessity of providing human rights equally to everyone.
GOOD PUBLIC POLICY. As already proven in federal trial courts and in federal appeals courts, there is no legitimate government rationale for denying marriage to an entire class of people based on their arbitrary membership within that class, and thus there is no public policy rationale that could excuse such denial.
Precisely because marriage equality for everyone is a right, and is necessary, and is good public policy, ten of the United States (CT, DC, IA, MA, MD, ME, NH, NY, VT, WA) already permit couples to marry and potentially raise children.
CIVIL UNIONS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Legislatures and courts in multiple states have already proved that civil unions never provide equality, and always cause separate-but-equal, Jim-Crow-style, back-of-the-bus results. That antiquated, harmful legal approach began in the 19th century to justify racial segregation, but proved an abject failure, and was overturned as unconstitutional, multiple times, by the U.S. Supreme Court, starting in 1954.
December 25th, 2012 | 11:38 pm
Ned Flaherty, all people have a right to marry and conceive offspring with their spouse using their own genes, but no one has a right to marry or conceive with a sibling, or a parent or a child, or someone already married, etc. Those relationship types are off limits for everyone, and there is no right that is denied because there is a supportable basis to prohibit people from those unethical pairings. There is also a supportable basis to prohibit people from conceiving offspring with someone of the same sex, and no right to do so.
You are wrong that any couple is entitled to parent any children that come into their lives, no one is entitled to parent a child married or not. States take children away from unfit parents all the time, there is no right to parent. But every marriage has a right to conceive more. Marriage licenses are never issued to couples that are prohibited from conceiving offspring together, as same-sex couples ought to be.
December 25th, 2012 | 11:41 pm
Civil Unions are only unconstitutional if they give the same bundle of rights under a different name. But if they are defined as “marriage minus concpetion rights” then they can, indeed must, have a different name.
December 26th, 2012 | 1:03 am
“Francis J. Beckwith, you and Ryan Anderson argue — incorrectly — that same-gender marriages can’t be true marriages for the same reason that friendships can’t be true marriages, yet you fail to state what that “same reason” is.”
That same reason is that same-sex marriage never, with any couple, fulfills the natural, reproductive use within the marriage.
Biology created reproduction and binding that bind men to women and women to men.
The reason same-sex marriage gets in the middle of this is because it is one of many attempts to distinguish the sex act from its original purposes of marriage– to reproduce and to bind the two genders. It is unfortunate that gays got in the middle of this, because this is just one of many things that distort the two purposes.
Now, if you take away the purposes, why should people get married? We know it is a social good, but what should we tell the youth about the nature of marriage?
December 26th, 2012 | 1:49 am
David Nickol,
Your interpretation of my comment is strangely obtuse. It seems you’ve concluded precisely the opposite of what I meant to convey, which is that David Blankenhorn’s historical and anthropological approach is ultimately philosophical, i.e. laden with philosophical assumptions. Either my written English is really unclear, or you’ve got some “animus” going on. :)
As for what Ryan Anderson wants, it seems he at least wants David Blankenhorn’s definition of marriage, whatever that might be. What does David Blankenhorn mean when he uses the word marriage? Seems to me a fair question, and the first step toward meaningful discussion.
Blessings to you this Christmas season.
December 26th, 2012 | 8:23 am
Ned,
“But even if a government were to poke its nose into such matters, all couples (same-gender and opposite-gender) need conception rights, because both same-gender and opposite-gender couples are bringing children to term via surrogacy and/or via fertilization”
No one “needs” conception rights, and there is no “right” to conception. Artificial forms of conception can be regulated by the government, and my experience raising my adopted children convinces me that the government should prohibit all surrogate arrangements. Children should know their biological parents.
I believe that gay marriage is long overdue, but gays should form their families through adoption, not surrogacy.
December 26th, 2012 | 12:26 pm
John Howard wants to outlaw same-gender couples from in vitro fertilization and/or surrogacy. But ever since they were invented, those practices have been legal — for everyone, and there are no plans to outlaw them — for anyone.
John Howard is not aware that U.S. courts have consistently established each couple’s right to parent all their children by prior marriage, surrogacy, and/or adoption (absent proof of some extreme unfitness that vitally endangers a child).
December 26th, 2012 | 12:37 pm
John Howard, civil union laws are always unconstitutional. When civil union conveys marriage rights under a separate name, it is unconstitutional because separate-but-equal is unconstitutional; when civil union conveys some marriage rights but denies others, it is unconstitutional because it denies equal protection under the law.
December 26th, 2012 | 12:59 pm
Jason Jackson:
Procreation is not necessary for a civil marriage to be real, true, valid, legitimate, and legal.
Procreation is irrelevant in civil marriage law; it is neither required nor prohibited.
The purposes of civil marriage get itemized in the statutes; they never list “procreation” or “gender binding.”
No democratic lawmaker anywhere on earth is willing to dissolve the marriages of couples just because they have not procreated.
Q. Why should people get married?
A. People should marry when they want to form a loving, committed relationship, and have it legally recognized, and protect each other, and protect any potential children.
December 26th, 2012 | 1:09 pm
Michael, the right to conceive has been a recognized principle in U.S. jurisprudence since family law began. And except for the normal standards of safe medical practice, government does not regulate in vitro fertilization or surrogacy. Finally, no U.S. lawmaker is willing to outlaw surrogacy, and there are no plans to do so.
December 26th, 2012 | 1:52 pm
Ned,
“Finally, no U.S. lawmaker is willing to outlaw surrogacy, and there are no plans to do so”
They should. Children have the right to know and be raised by their biological parents. If the biological parents cannot or will not raise the child, then he should be placed in an open adoption. If the biological parents will not accept an open adoption, only then should the adoption be anonymous.
For too long, adoption and surrogacy law has been made by the parents who benefit from those laws. The criteria for good law should be the health of the children.
Listen to the children on this issue, and they will tell you that they want to know who their biological parents are.
December 26th, 2012 | 5:02 pm
Michael wrote “No one “needs” conception rights, and there is no “right” to conception. Artificial forms of conception can be regulated by the government”
The state can ban IVF without it impacting anyone’s conception rights, it’s when people are forcibly sterilized or coerced into not reproducing and are not allowed or approved to reproduce that conception rights start being threatened. When people aren’t allowed to conceive with someone, or are thwarted by the state, their conception rights are being violated. But sometimes people without a right to conceive do reproduce, like a father and daughter in Maine recently, and they are jailed for incest. There is no right to conceive with a daughter. But there are supportable basis to prohibit incest, and also same-sex reproduction, and there is no right to conceive with someone of the same sex.
December 26th, 2012 | 5:08 pm
Ned said: “John Howard wants to outlaw same-gender couples from in vitro fertilization and/or surrogacy.”
No, I want to outlaw in vitro for all couples, including same-sex couples, and I want to outlaw same-sex conception, which means literally making biological offspring together using stem cell derived gametes or any other method. The very concept of children that are the offspring of two people of the same sex should be banned, just as the very concept of children from siblings is banned.
December 26th, 2012 | 5:29 pm
“When civil union conveys marriage rights under a separate name, it is unconstitutional because separate-but-equal is unconstitutional;”
But these wouldn’t convey the essential sine qua non right of marriage, they wouldn’t be equal, that’s the whole point. The point is that now that we realize that we can’t give equal conception rights to same-sex couples without harming natural conception rights and causing an unsustainable disaster of genetically modified billion dollar super babies for everyone, now that we realize that we should preserve sexual reproduction freedom and not take away anyone’s right to have natural offspring with their spouse, we realize we have to prohibit people from marrying someone of the same sex. We can’t give equal rights to same-sex couples. But we can give all the other rights of marriage, an unequal bundle of rights, if we give the bundle a different name. It’s constitutionally required that it have a different name. And the fact that it is substantially different and missing the essential right of marriage makes it possible to enact these CU’s in many states that have amendments against CU’s that are substantially similar. Perfect fit.
“when civil union conveys some marriage rights but denies others, it is unconstitutional because it denies equal protection under the law.”
Nah, there’s no right to marry someone of the same sex, and everyone is free to marry someone eligible if they are able to find someone that consents and is eligible.
December 26th, 2012 | 5:51 pm
“John Howard is not aware that U.S. courts have consistently established each couple’s right to parent all their children by prior marriage, surrogacy, and/or adoption (absent proof of some extreme unfitness that vitally endangers a child).”
Well, people can try to establish custody of children and make their case on many basis, including that they commissioned for the child to be conceived, or have already established a bond with the child, or they are a biological parent, or they are married and have a stable home, or whatever, and the judge sorts through all the options and all the claims and tries to do what is in the best interest of the child, with the understanding that a child’s best interest includes living in a moral society and not just “who’s gonna give him the most stuff” or “who’s going to raise him with the right values” or whatever.
But you are right, the state cannot just ruthlessly redistribute babies to the best families, that would violate the right of parents to raise their own children. In that sense there is a right to parent your own children. In the same way the state cannot prohibit people from marrying and having children to raise as their own, and that is what I mean by conception rights. They are the same as marriage rights, that’s what marriage rights are, and that’s why we never talked of “conception rights” before. We just used the word marriage because they were inseparable rights, the same right.
December 26th, 2012 | 9:41 pm
John Howard: In vitro fertilization and same-gender conception are already both a couple’s right and a couple’s choice, no one else’s — not yours, and no plan to do that. These practices do not carry any health risks, such as those that can occur with in-breeding ot the government’s, and no legislator is willing to outlaw these practices.
December 26th, 2012 | 10:45 pm
Ned Flaharty,
I did not ask “how much unique commonality exists in the marriages of same-gender couples vs opposite-gender couples”.
Besides, something is unique or it is not.
December 26th, 2012 | 11:04 pm
Ned Flaharty,
Put aside the label, marriage, for a moment. And forget comparison with the union of husband and wife, for a moment.
What, if anything, makes the type of relationship you have in mind unique among the rest of the types of one-sexed relationships or living arrangements?
If, as your comments strongly suggest, this depends on the law’s requirements, then, please show where such requirements perfectly empower Government to enforce those essential feature(s).
For example, will there be a check box for any of the following? Gay identity, same-sex sexual attraction, same-sex sexual behavior, love, romance, sexual monogamy.
No SSM law has such requirements. No SSM advocate has proposed such requirements. Applying your thinking on legal requirements, none of that would distinguish SSM from other one-sexed scenarios. There is no call made to empower Government to compel participants in SSM to fulfill any of that. Yet these noncompulsory things form the claimed basis for SSM law according to lawyerly advocates and proSSM court opinions.
How does that jive with your remarks about procreation?
….
By the way, my name is Chairm. Please focus on the content of comments rather than making snide asides regarding my name or any other fellow commenter’s moniker. Thank you.
December 27th, 2012 | 12:43 am
Chairm asks:
A. “how a marital, one-sexed relationship is 1) like the union of husband and wife and 2) not like various other types of relationships”
. . . which is the same as asking to . . .
B. “compare the marriages of same-gender couples vs. opposite-gender couples.”
It’s well known that both types of couples may or may not have biological children from prior marriage, non-biological children via adoption, children via surrogacy, adult children, or no children, so any comparison needs to accommodate that matrix.
If Chairm still insists that task “A” is not the same as task “B” then he’ll need to itemize how and why they are different, and what it is he’s really trying to do.
Q. Chairm also asks what, if anything, makes same-gender marriage unique compared to other same-gender relationships or living arrangements.
A. Same-gender marriage is unique among all other same-gender relationships because it is: (a) the permanent union of a (b) couple who desire (c) legal recognition and (d) may (e) now or in the future (f) have children via (g) prior marriage, (h) surrogacy, and/or (i) adoption.
Clauses (a), (b), and (c) are from the existing marriage laws that accommodate same-gender marriages (CT, DC, IA, MA, MD, ME, NH, NY, VT, WA) as well as the proposed same-gender marriage laws in just as many additional states. Notably, clauses (a), (b), and (c) also appear in the marriage laws of all states that do not yet issue same-gender marriage licenses. Clauses (d), (e), (f), (g), (h), and (i) are from other state laws in states that allow opposite-gender marriage only, as well as states that allow both opposite-gender marriage and same-gender marriage.
Since the formation of the United States, all states have been empowered to enforce essential features (a), (b), and (c). Various states also adopted specific provisions implementing some or all of clauses (d), (e), (f), (g), (h), and (i) in other statutes.
Regarding check-boxes for: (1) identity, (2) attraction, (3) behavior, (4) love, (5) romance, (6) monogamy, (7) ability to procreate, (8) desire to procreate, (9) procreation method(s), (10) commitment to procreate, or (11) commitment to not procreate, no such check-boxes appear in any current state marriage low or in any proposed state marriage law, regardless of whether the couple is same-gender or opposite-gender. No such check-boxes are needed, desired, expected, or wanted in any state law.
December 27th, 2012 | 11:07 am
Ned Flaherty: You don’t seem to understand that “same-sex conception” refers to manufacturing genetic offspring of a same-sex couple, probably using stem cells to make opposite sex gametes, which has never been done before, not even in animals (they’ve made a fatherless mouse, but it was not a process that would be used for humans, it was more like parthenogenesis and involved an intervening generation of mice). I’m not talking about IVF or surrogacy or sperm donation, those things are not rights of marriage (homologous IVF might have a claim of marital privacy but I think it can be banned) and are independent of marriage. Being approved and allowed to conceive genetic offspring is a right of marriage. There is no guarantee of success, but no marriage has ever not been approved and allowed to try. Same-sex couples should be prohibited from trying, it is not something we have to let labs try to do, it would be unsustainable and require big government and put the child at risk of unknown problems, and there is no need to that justifies the risk and cost.
It can certainly be prohibited with a federal egg and sperm law, and no politician is going to oppose it once the public realizes what it costs and what it would do to natural reproduction rights.
December 27th, 2012 | 12:14 pm
John Howard: The term “same-gender conception” includes any and all conception methods that same-gender couples might use to conceive a child, now or in the future. Individuals and couples already have all the rights that they need to conceive. People are continuing to use whatever methods are available, and there are no plans to stop them from doing so.
Remember that you want to oppress only same-gender couples.
In pursuit of that, you claim — incorrectly — that some of their conception efforts might be “costly” and “risky” and “unsustainable” and “risk unknown problems” and “require big government” and “harm natural reproduction rights” but you make those claims with not one shred of credible scientific proof to support the fears that you imagine.
Before government could consider banning the fundamental human right to conceive, there would need to be enormous scientific proof supporting a vital public purpose. All you have so far is the bigoted desire to oppress a group. That’s enough for you, perhaps, but not for society.
December 27th, 2012 | 1:51 pm
Ned Flaherty,
I did not ask what you claimed I asked.
Readers can check for themselves. I asked about the type of relationship before the law enters the picture. I was explicit on that point.
I did not ask for a pointless count of minutes. It was pointless by your own account, Ned, when you noted that, in your account of SSM law, none of these activities are required and are thus irrelevant to even your own recasting of my query.
And, as I observed, a type of relationship is unique or it is not unique. There is no degree of uniqueness. Your comment ilustrated that the type of relationship you have in mind is not unique among the range of one-sexed relationship types.
Loving, you said. But that is not a legal requirement in SSM law. Nor is it unique to SSM, if indeed it can be counted as a definitive feature of SSM. Loving sibling friendship can meet your list quite readily, for example. Indeed there is no justification in your account for limiting SSM to a count of two participants only. Mere assertion does not answer my query. This is so for your rhetoric and is so for SSM law as well.
Justify the law if you think the law is right.
As I said, sometimes the law gets stuff wrong.
As for children attained in a one-sex-short scenario, there would be at least two pre-requisites and both are extrinsic to SSM: parental relinquishment by the mother or the father who is not a participant in the SSM; and adoption y the non-parent who is a participant in the SSM. Neither is automatic via SSM law. Neither is intrinsic to the one-sexed scenario. When you point at children you point outside of this type of relationship.
Besides, siblings could meet this requirement, but you did not mention relatedness in all your sophistry. Perhaps that would not factor into your thinking. Please clarify.
You proposed that willingness and desire for legal recognition are trump cards for eligibility. Yet how can that justly be denied threesomes or moresomes or related people? SSM law needs justification that you have yet to supply as per my query.
Permancence is not a legal requirement of SSM law. You have asserted arbitrarily and even in responding to your own recasting of my query.
In the meantime you invoked certain rules of pro-SSM argumentation when you spoke about procreation. Your SSM idea is destroyed by application of those rules you think are decisive.
The marriage idea faires much much better. Here we are discussing the type of one-sexed relationship that you think merits special status (marital status is a special status) and around which reasonable boundaries for eligibility can be justly drawn. You have barely touched this basic task.
December 27th, 2012 | 2:46 pm
And, for the record, Ned Flaherty, I have been clear in what am “really trying to do” (as you put it). Read my comments directed to David Lankenhorn. am asking about the type of one-sexed relationship that he has in mind when he talks of SSM with the gay emphasis. This query arises directly from his own remarks since his switch to favoring the SSM idea.
I doubt he takes the legal centric approach that you do, Ned Lahert, because his book on marriage is framed as a study of the history and anthropology of the marriage idea. E has described the SSM idea as a conceptual mess. He has not recanted any of that, he says.
So what is this SSM idea that he now accepts?
Your response to my query the SSM idea as a conceptual mess. And your comments have not provided an apt response to Blankenhorn’s dislike of the ‘culture war’. But they do undermine the SSM campaign quite readily. That you are not aware of what you have done here is perhaps not surprising because the SSM campaign has taught its supporters to assert but not to reason soundly.
December 27th, 2012 | 3:36 pm
The term “same-gender conception” includes any and all conception methods that same-gender couples might use to conceive a child, now or in the future.
I use the term “same-sex conception” to refer to creating biological genetic offspring of two people of the same sex. So I don’t use the term to refer to third party reproduction, or surrogacy, or anything where the child is the genetic offspring of a man and a woman, the natural fertilization of a woman’s egg by a man’s sperm.
“Individuals and couples already have all the rights that they need to conceive.”
Nah, they are getting away with it, but there is no right of an individual or a couple to create an embryo except by marital intercourse. But that’s not important, I am not arguing to prohibit IVF or third party conception, just same-sex conception, as defined above (and all attempts to make an embryo except by joining an unmodified egg of a woman and an unmodified sperm of a man).
People are continuing to use whatever methods are available, and there are no plans to stop them from doing so.”
Well, I’m trying to put a limit, to preserve natural conception rights and stop the big government agency from manufacturing people and destroying the basis of equality and rights and dignity.
Remember that you want to oppress only same-gender couples.
Ah, come on it’s not oppression that they cannot reproduce offspring together using their unmodified gametes.
December 27th, 2012 | 8:00 pm
Chairm, my response to you is not intended to be a response to David Blankenhorn, or any other person, or to be about his dislike of culture war, or any other subject.
My response is just to you, just about what you wrote.
The only criticism of my comments comes from those whose argument they defeat. I’m perfectly comfortable with what I said, and am satisfied, given your inability to respond.
December 27th, 2012 | 8:00 pm
John Howard: Taken together, the rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, privacy, and equal protection under the law are what gave individuals and couples all the rights that they need to conceive, using whatever methods they choose. Your phrase “no right except by marital intercourse” is a dead give-away; nowhere in the law is there any such twisted restriction.
Lots of couples get lots of help with fertilization, surrogacy, pregnancy, and birth. They are entitled to use physicians for that technical assistance. But a statute that outlaws same-gender couples for pursuing what opposite-gender couples pursue is unconstitutional from the outset.
It’s clear that you want to outlaw the creation of biological genetic offspring from two people of the same gender. What’s not clear is that lawmakers will find any legal basis for doing so, especially with that running-off-the-road screed about “big government agencies manufacturing people and destroying the basis of equality and rights and dignity.” Whether parsed or taken as a whole, that’s the kind of phrase that arises when a fearful lunatic fringe wants to coagulate all its insecurities into one big, threatening, boogey-man enemy.
December 27th, 2012 | 8:03 pm
Chairm,
All current marriage laws (same-gender and opposite-gender) are for two persons only. That was by design, and no one is proposing any other number, so this is not the raging issue that you imagine it to be, or that you wish it to be.
Your obsession with “uniqueness” remains unexplained and unjustified. Nevertheless, same-gender couples are every bit as unique (or not unique) as opposite-gender couples, so your “uniqueness” topic is unnecessary, and irrelevant.
Likewise, your obsession with “before the law enters” also is suspicious in its illogic.
You write “mere assertion doesn’t answer” and indeed that is so. Apply that rule to the content of your own messages, and you’ll be all caught up.
The marriage laws did not change; the existing laws were merely extended to include citizens that were previously excluded. You obsess over what you call “SSM law” but there is no such thing as the “SSM law” that you imagine; they’re all just “marriage laws.”
It’s unclear why you keep commanding me to “justify the law.” Ten statutes were drafted, debated, passed, and enacted by duly elected representatives. They satisfy — and are satisfied by — all the respective state constitutions, and the federal constitution. None are under challenge in the courts. That’s all the justification that society requires.
Relinquishment and adoption are accommodated for same-gender couples just as they are for opposite-gender couples; whenever it’s necessary, it’s done, and it works.
Siblings! Again, you raise another false “issue” that is already perfectly satisfied by existing marriage laws. Marriage to siblings is not permitted, whether same-gender or opposite gender, so the existing law is just fine.
Your fixation on identifying “boundaries for eligibility” for same-gender marriage is easily relieved. Just use the same boundaries already itemized in the ten active statutes, and you’re all set. The boundaries for opposite-gender marriage work equally well, too, absent the gender-based restriction.
You want to make this far more complex than it needs to be — number of spouses, uniqueness, pre-law, relinquishment, adoption, siblings, eligibility, status, etcetera — because within that complexity you hope to find some opportunity to halt same-gender marriage.
If you weren’t so fixated on stopping it, you wouldn’t suffer so much when discussing it.
December 28th, 2012 | 11:24 am
Sorry Ned there is no right to attempt to reproduce offspring with someone of the same sex, and it is bad public policy that it is currently allowed. It is not yet prohibited because the public doesn’t even realize it is being developed, and the public is presently unaware that being allowed to reproduce together is the real demand of gay rights activists. Wow that’s crazy, it can’t be done and might never be possible, and will be super expensive and risky and use tons of resources up, and yet it is more important to you than all the other 1037 benefits that same-sex couples supposedly need. I guess they don’t need them that bad, if you are willing to refuse them unless they also have equal conception rights. That’s just so destructive to society and the planet and to the basis of human rights, and so harmful to thousands of same-sex couples that have zero interest in being allowed to reproduce offspring together.
Remember that our unalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are endowed on the basis of our creation being equal, that we were all created through the union of a man and a woman using their own genes and having natural offspring together. If we break away from that and start making some people from modified gametes, we will no longer all be created equal and so the basis of all of our rights will vanish. It might not be obvious to you, or maybe you don’t care, but that’s the fact and you should have to start explaining why you want to destroy the basis of equality and rights, just to create babies for same-sex couples. Why do they need to be allowed to do that? Supposedly it didn’t matter that they were unable to reproduce, now all of a sudden nothing matters but that? Sorry, game over Ned.
December 28th, 2012 | 4:07 pm
John Howard:
All the rights that you want to deny to other people are already guaranteed under the rights to (1) life, (2) liberty, (3) pursuit of happiness, (4) privacy, and (5) equal protection under the law. No law restricts other people’s rights the way that you want to restrict other people’s rights. Lawmakers won’t do it, and it would be unconstitutional if they did.
The reasons that you offer in support of denying rights — “costly” and “resource-intensive” and “risky” and “destructive to society” and “destructive to the planet” and “destructive to human rights” and “harmful to same-gender couples” and “crazy” and “impossible” — actually defeat you, because none of them are valid reasons for denying rights, and all of them are superstitions for which you haven’t a shred of scientific evidence.
Stop trying to speak about “the real demands of gay rights activists.” You are far too insulated and uninformed to be doing that, and you do it very poorly, as you are the antithesis of a gay rights activist.
Also, stop writing that certain rights are “more important” to me than other rights are. You have no knowledge of what my universe of rights is, or what importance I assign to each, or whether I would trade some for others, etcetera. You can’t make intelligent remarks about thoughts I haven’t even disclosed to you, so stop now.
The U.S. Constitution does not predicate anyone’s rights upon any specific type of conception, gestation, or birth; it bestows the same rights to all living human beings, period. Being conceived, gestated, or born differently does not make any person unequal (even if you wish that were the case).
Your argument that when same-gender couples have marital relations then opposite-gender couples see all their rights vanish is just as ludicrous as its predecessor argument: when same-gender couples have marriages, then opposite-gender marriages become unholy. Both arguments are equally false — and laughable. The latter has already been laughed out of courtrooms; the former, if anyone is so stupid as to attempt it, will, likewise, also be laughed out.
You ask why same-gender couples want to have and raise children. They do for the very same reasons that opposite-gender couples want to have and raise children. Same-gender couples can and do reproduce, and no intelligent, informed person in modern times has argued otherwise; therefore, it’s a falsehood for you to say “they’re unable to reproduce” and “it doesn’t matter anyway” and “nothing else matters.” Yes, they’re able to, and yes, it matters to them, and yes, everything else matters, too.
December 28th, 2012 | 9:20 pm
There is no right to reproduce with someone of the same sex, no matter how much happiness someone thinks it would give them. We could allow it, like we allow driving cars and flying airplanes, but it isn’t a right, we don’t have to allow it. The reasons we shouldn’t allow it are the cost, the energy, the bad effects it would have on society and government and on human rights and equality, which far outweigh any good that society would get out of allowing it. Transhumanists disagree of course, they think the world will be much better after we replace natural dirty sexual intercourse with genetic engineering and artificial wombs. And they want people to think we have no choice but to allow them to do it, because they have some right to do it. But they don’t, they’re lying.
December 30th, 2012 | 11:02 pm
Well, Ned,you have offered no justification for the law that would merged nonmarriage with marriage. That the SSM advocates demand that the marriage law be justified. So you stand obstinately against this basic standard. You insist that unless something is legally compulsory it cannot be a legitimate basis for lawmaking. That is superficial and circular logic on your part. But it does not justify what you arbitrarily demand. The lack of sound reasoning accompanies your obstinancy. This is your bigoted view of the law and of SSM. I take your word for it.
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