I have to say, I envy what Sherif Girgis, Robert George, and Ryan Anderson (GGA) have accomplished in their recent article (available here) and several follow-on posts (the latest is here). They have at last brought 100 percent epistemic closure to their opposition to same-sex marriage.
Their article is long and full of stuff, and it has generated an interesting discussion (many posts thru Jan. 3 are here, and GGA’s latest includes links to some more recent ones), but the verbiage is really all a gloss on this proposition: “Same-sex couples can’t marry because heterosexual intercourse is the sine qua non of marriage.” Or, to put it even more concisely: “Same-sex couples can’t marry because they’re not opposite-sex couples.”
Remember all that talk about marriage being “ordered (or oriented) to procreation”? As the new article and especially this follow-up make refreshingly explicit, “ordered to procreation” actually means “synonymous with heterosexuality.” Whether or not couples can actually procreate has nothing to do with it. If they can have penile-vaginal sex, they can accomplish the good of marriage. If not, not.
Never mind that the authors think they have discovered the truth of their proposition in the mists of time, in the self-evident contours of human sexuality, etc., etc.: what they have here is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, impervious, like some species of Marxism or Freudianism, to external refutation. Tell them that marriage does many important things besides provide a context for procreation, and that (straight) couples who cannot possibly procreate are allowed (indeed encouraged) to marry, and they merely say that those other purposes and other constituencies of marriage are not marriage’s essential nature.
Theirs is, in my own view, an impoverished, incomplete, and significantly wrongheaded view of marriage—and, what’s more important, it’s the whole wrong way to talk about marriage, which is a social institution, not a Platonic abstraction. But I see why it appeals to GGA: it allows them to absent themselves from all of the difficult questions in the gay-marriage debate…e.g.:
* The policy debate. GGA’s article includes some pragmatic arguments, but they’re baggage. If the documentary evidence were a mile high that legalizing same-sex marriage benefits gays and society, that wouldn’t change the fact that same-sex couples can’t be married.
* The equality debate. What equality debate? There is no equality case for same-sex marriage, because same-sex couples can’t be married.
* The humanitarian debate. Look, it’s not GGA’s fault that gay couples can’t be married, but they can’t, and that’s that. The good news, though, is that gays can still have intimate friendships. (Thanks.)
Disconcertingly, GGA congratulate themselves for resolving the gay-marriage issue, when they’ve merely ducked most of it. They seem to have no moral qualms about saying, in 2011, that their moral universe need take no account of gay lives and loves. Let them eat friendship! GGA have, indeed, defined not only gay marriage but gays out of the picture. I wish I could help them to see why, to a gay American in 2011, their approach seems not only unpersuasive but chillingly callous.
I wasn’t being entirely sardonic when I said I envy what GGA have accomplished. I sometimes wish I, too, could write myself a permission slip to take a pass on the hard moral and social questions. I’m grateful that the American public hasn’t and won’t.
75 Comments for “Let Them Eat Friendship! (George et al.)”
posted by Rauch: ‘Let Them Eat Friendship’ « Family Scholars on
[…] at Independent Gay Forum, author Jonathan Rauch responds to the recent Sherif Gergis, Robert George, and Ryan Anderson piece on “What is […]
posted by BobN on
Are you trying to elevate the profile of these unknowns?
posted by Jimmy on
“They seem to have no moral qualms about saying, in 2011, that their moral universe need take no account of gay lives and loves.”
These and theirs never want to allow love to enter the debate because not even an iota of their phony sophism can withstand it. The moment we are more than just puzzle pieces, their tower of babble crumbles. People marry today, in this country, because they love each other and want to form a family. And no matter what happens after that, the family unit begins as a party of two (unless there is, say, a bun in the oven or kids already in tow.)
posted by Jay Jonson on
It is unbelievable how intellectually impoverished public discourse has become. When people like Margaret Somerville or Robert S. George can gain tenured positions at respected universities simply by recycling absurd “natural law” arguments, you know both that our intellectual class has become hopelessly corrupt and that there are no good arguments against same-sex marriage. No wonder David Blankenhorn was tongue-tied when he tried to explain how same-sex marriage harms heterosexual marriage.
posted by esurience on
This is that damn “heterosexuals are MAGIC!” argument. Oh isn’t it just so obvious that men and women were made to be with one another and just so damn complementary?
Well… no. Isn’t it obvious that’s not true? All you have to do is acknowledge that gay people actually exist… and then it becomes apparent that no, not all men and women were made for each other. Some men were made for other men, and some women were made for other women.
An opposite-sex relationship is ideal and complementary and yada yada yada for a heterosexual…. BUT NOT FOR A GAY PERSON. So it’s not a universal rule. It’s a rule that applies to heterosexuals only.
I don’t know why that’s so hard for them to understand. The appeal they see in opposite-sex relations is because they happen to be heterosexuals.
If I wanted to, I could make an argument about how same-sex relationships are really the superior ones. After all, if you’re gonna spend the rest of your life with someone, doesn’t it make sense that you’d be more compatible with someone of the SAME GENDER than someone of the opposite gender? I could make a superficially plausible argument along those lines… but it all melts away once you realize that gay and straight people both exist, and obviously the compatible partner for a gay person is of the same-sex, and a compatible partner for a straight person is of the opposite-sex. Duh.
posted by Jimmy on
Fans of GGA’s work consider the exceptions people like Jonathan Rauch take with their skewed work to be minor and easily dismissed.
http://guarino.typepad.com/guarino/2011/01/marriage-family-hijinx.html
posted by Jorge on
Not that I know who these people are, but it makes sense that somewhere out there there are professor-level people opposed to same sex marriage who can frame it in this kind of method.
So far I’m not impressed. The authors have exercised considerable power in framing two opposing definitions of marriage in a way that benefits their argument. This very framing must be challenged as suspect. I respect the time and research they spent on their own definition, but where did they come up with their “revisionist” definition? Between those two ends, a variety of other definitions of marriage exist. My definition is essentially what the Pope says, except that I reject the assumption that male souls are distinct from female souls and thus believe nothing impedes same-sex marriages from being consummated. Many people who reject same-sex marriage are ambivalent about marriage being a lifelong commitment.
So, there’s ducking from the beginning.
posted by Will on
These remarks are as bad as all the legalese surrounding DADT. A good way for people to spin their tires.
posted by matt on
Same sex marriage is legal in New Hampshire but with the new Republican legislature it is definitely on the chopping block. Equality and civil rights have powerful enemies now in Concord, NH. Any efforts or progress they make in denying people access to the institutions of the society will be in vain. Every court from Hawaii to Massachusetts including the US Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional position that marriage is a fundamental human right and to withhold it from anyone is in direct violation of a citizens due process protected in the 14th amendment section 1 of the constitution. The legislative work of these representatives is embarrassingly amateur and pathetic. Moral disapproval of a group of people be it rooted in fear or hatred or reaction formation is not a rational basis for legislation. Neither is tradition alone i.e., the definition of marriage, without any other asserted state interest a rational basis for legislation. This is exactly what these hacks are trying to do. Mandate a moral code of exclusion upon a social institution courts have said time and time again, everyone has a right to. I can use any information you got and all the relevant ammo you can find for my war on the morons. Keep fighting for equality and don’t give up. If they offer you civil unions, don’t take it. It’s unconstitutional to offer up something less while withholding the other. Marriage or nothing. People of NH come together for equality and preserve the right to marry for everyone.
posted by BobN on
Every court from Hawaii to Massachusetts including the US Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional position that marriage is a fundamental human right and to withhold it from anyone is in direct violation of a citizens due process protected in the 14th amendment section 1 of the constitution.
No, we’ve lost that argument in several states, including NY.
posted by David Quinn on
If heterosexuality isn’t essential to the definition of marriage, then what is? I’d like to know.
posted by Anthony on
The only essential is this: marriage requires two people who choose each other as spouses and who seek legal recognition of their status as a family.
posted by David Quinn on
Anthony, why only two people? Also, must the relationship be sexual, and if so why?
posted by Anthony on
Why only two people? My view is that when two people come before the state (or whichever institution has power to confer legal recognition of marriage) and ask for its recognition of them as spouses and family, they are vouching for their exclusive and profound intimacy with one and other. As such, they are stating their intent to live united by their intimacy under the law as spouses.
In my mind, claims to exclusive intimacy are impossible between more than two people.
By admitting a third or other number of people into marriage we magnify the possibility of fraudulent contract (which is more difficult to control when more than two are involved), we negate claims of exclusive intimacy and we dissolve the possibilty of a contract based thereon.
And what about sex? In my opinion, it is again intimacy that must be presupposed but not sex, lest we exlcude those who are unable to have sex but who are intimate and romantically committed to their partner/spouse. One’s inability to have sex shouldn’t preclude one from forming a family.
posted by David Quinn on
Polygamy has been widespread throughout history and still is in much of the world. Why not allow more than two people to marry? What is the vital State interest that prevents us allowing this?
Also, if intimacy is presupposed, not sex, then why not extend the benefits of marriage to spinster sisters, for example?
posted by Paul Brady on
‘[1] By admitting a third or other number of people into marriage we magnify the possibility of fraudulent contract (which is more difficult to control when more than two are involved), [2] we negate claims of exclusive intimacy and [3] we dissolve the possibilty of a contract based thereon.’
This is all nonsense. You have to admit that you are simply plucking this definition out of the air, rather than admit that you don’t think there is anything that marriage cannot be if ‘society’ wants it, i.e. that marriage as it has traditionally existed has any determining rationale which rationally explains its opposite-sex, two-person, exclusive, life-long nature.
Your definition claims to give three reasons but in reality [3] presupposes [2] and [2] simply asserts what you are supposed to be justifying (i.e. that you can’t have exclusive intimacy between 3 or more people).
As for [1], what do you mean by a ‘fraudulent contract’ exactly? And what empirical evidence do you have to suggest that a contract between 3 rather than 2 magnifies the risk of such ‘fraudulent contracts’? (Has anyone told the business world where multi-party contracts are still possible and legal as far as I know). Or evidence that it magnifies it to such an extent that we should take the momentous decision (on your own reasoning) of denying polygamous groups the right to marry?
posted by BobN on
So you don’t think it has to be sexual, but it does have to be heterosexual.
Well, that’s interesting.
posted by Jay on
He’s obviously a Mormon. No need to take him seriously.
posted by esurience on
The legal definition of marriage is what we decide the legal definition of marriage is, based on the needs and interests of society.
Heterosexuality isn’t essential to the legal definition of marriage because gay people exist, and it’s in gay people’s interest, and society’s interest, to recognize and support those relationships — for the same reason that it recognizes and supports the relationships of married heterosexuals.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Granting for the sake of argument that it’s in society’s interest to recognize and support gay relationships, why couldn’t the establishment of something new called “quarriage” be sufficient to do the job, while still treating “marriage” as “essentially heterosexual”?
(I keep coming back to this “quarriage” issue because I think that the Marriage Equality side has been spectacularly lazy about demonstrating that civil-unions are an inherently inadequate solution — they just rely on the scariness of phrases like “Separate is Not Equal!” and “Remember Jim Crow!” to do the heavy lifting for them.)
posted by Tom on
Why couldn’t the establishment of something new called “quarriage” be sufficient to do the job, while still treating “marriage” as “essentially heterosexual”?
Can you articulate a religiously-neutral rationale that provides sufficient reason why civil law should create two distinct, if legally equivalent, forms of civil marriage/quarriage, and articulate the necessity, in terms of the common good, served by such a law, that would not be served by a single form of civil law relationship, be it marriage or quarriage?
That’s the test, Throbert.
posted by Chris on
Why can’t EVERY COUPLE get a “Civil Union”? — that must be performed by a civil official, as they do in France and Mexico. Couples are then free to “marry” in their relgiious tradition, or not.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Tell ya what, Tom — if you can first pin down a definition of “sufficient” for everyone to agree on, maybe I’ll give it a whirl.
Otherwise, it’d be kind of a useless exercise, because no matter what I proposed, anyone (including you) could object that it’s not a “sufficient” reason.
posted by BobN on
It’s abundantly clear that different cultural groups have very different outcomes when it comes to marriage.
Why just quarriage. Why not waspirriage? African-Amarriage? Bikerriage?
This could solve a lot of problems…
posted by Tom on
Frotarriage for Throbet?
posted by Peter Hoh on
I’m willing to give infertile couples a pass. I want to hear GGA explain how it is that our law allows someone to divorce his or her spouse in order to marry his or her affair partner.
posted by Carl on
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, a Republican makes a slew of homophobic remarks and wants to cut AIDS money for certain people (you can guess who).
http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/jan/11/1/brown-criticized-for-remarks-about-hiv-ar-686379/
posted by Throbert McGee on
Weasel word alert! In one of their follow-ups, GGA explain:
In other words, don’t even bother trying to argue that homosex does, in fact, amount to a form of “bodily union” that can consummate a same-sex friendship — because it’s obvious to everyone, but particularly obvious to GGA, that homosex cannot be a true bodily union in the realest and fullest sense of the phrase, or whatever. So there!
(And if anyone accuses GGA of fallacious special pleading here, I suppose they’d reply that it’s not special pleading in the “properly understood sense.” So there!)
posted by Chris on
If these three men had discovered their prostate glands, they never would have written this piece and there views (and lives) could be vastly different.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Speaking of faith doctrines…
posted by Throbert McGee on
I don’t agree that “natural law” arguments are intrinsically absurd — but I do think that at best, they’re only defensible as “necessary axioms” for people arguing within certain religious systems.
In other words, natural-law statements about the purpose of sex are not necessarily more absurd than “it is impossible for God to do evil” or “all men have certain inalienable rights.”
The absurdity comes in when supposedly educated philosophers fail to recognize that their statements ARE axiomatic — that is, not provably true, but merely accepted as givens within the context of a particular shared worldview.
posted by Jay on
Well, stated another way: no respected secular philosopher or legal scholar takes “natural law” theory seriously. Not since the 18th century. So I am amused that McGill University and Princeton University give tenured positions to intellectual hacks like Margaret Somerville and Robert S. George.
posted by David Quinn on
Throbert, surely the statement ‘all people should be treated equally’ is also axiomatic?
posted by Throbert McGee on
(1) We can agree to accept it as axiomatic (e.g., for the purposes of organizing a “Western-style society”), but we’re not obliged to treat it axiomatically necessary for any conceivable society.
(2) Even if we all accept this premise about equal treatment, it’s not self-evident that having “marriage” for heterosexuals and “quarriage” for homosexuals would necessarily fall short of the “equal treatment” standard. (Does “equality” require identical language, or merely that the government-provided benefits be identical?)
posted by John Howard on
There is not equal rights: same-sex couples do not have a right to conceive offspring together. It should be prohibited to do things that might result in a human person being created except by joining the sperm of a man and the egg of a woman.
Everyone has a right to procreate, but only with someone of the other sex, not too closely related, not a minor, and not married to someone else.
posted by Chris on
There is no law against procreating with a married person. Tell me again marriage has been the same for centuries……….
posted by John Howard on
That’s adultery. It’s illegal in my state, and not committing adultery is one of the Ten Commandments, and it’s been illegal in virtually all other legal systems. Even today, a couple was arrested in New York recently, and the law was affirmed by the NH Supreme Court a few years ago. There is no right to procreate with someone married to someone else, and no right for a married person to procreate with anyone other than their spouse.
posted by Chris on
In fact John, procreation has little to nothing to do with marriage now. 40% of Americans are born out of wedlock. Few people are overly concerned about that — and there is no stigma attached to it anymore.
posted by John Howard on
Now you’re talking about fornication, not adultery. They are both crimes, and neither is a right, but they have different implications and different punishments.
posted by David Quinn on
Throbert, re point one, you seem to be saying we could accept ‘all people should be treated equally’ as axiomatic in a relative sense, rather than an objective or absolute sense. In other words, it suits Western societies as the present time to accept it as axiomatic. Tomorrow it may not. This means it isn’t really axiomatic surely?
posted by Paul Brady on
‘The absurdity comes in when supposedly educated philosophers fail to recognize that their statements ARE axiomatic — that is, not provably true, but merely accepted as givens within the context of a particular shared worldview.’
I think you are doing an injustice to the argument being made by George et al by substituting your own idiosyncratic definition of axiomatic for what they mean. The ethical theory proposed by the classical tradition of Western ethics (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas) is open in recognising that, like any ethical theory, it relies on certain axiomatic principles which it terms ‘self-evident’. Much needless confusion has been caused by treating references to self-evidence as being references to some mysterious intuition or ‘feeling’ of certainty. It is neither. Rather, it refers to a particular logical quality or status of a proposition, i.e. that the proposition, in so far as it truly operates as a first principle, cannot be demonstrated by any deductive argument (though it may be rationally argued for and reasonably affirmed through dialectical defence by refutation of objections or alternatives) but must be pre-supposed for the sake of further deductive argument. Other writers in tradition, such as John Finnis, have provided such dialectical defences of such axiomatic moral principles as impartiality between human goods and persons (i.e. equality of all persons). Such defences offer rational grounds for accepting such principles as axiomatic in our moral reasoning even though they are not capable of demonstration, in the strict sense. As Wittgenstein said, all justification comes to an end somewhere. But Throbert is wrong to suggest that the only choice once it does is between (a) axioms that can be demonstrated and (b) axioms that we adopt for no other reason than they seem to be ‘popular around here’. George’s position on gay civil marriage is expressly built upon self-evident first principles (understood in this sense) and so whether you find it reasonable or not, it is mistaken to claim that it is predicated upon the prior acceptance of any religious belief or doctrine or claim of divine-revelation.
posted by Throbert McGee on
We may have to agree to disagree here, but in my view:
(1) GGA take it as axiomatic that “sexual complementarity” between male and female is necessary for true “bodily union”;
(2) GGA are predisposed to see this statement about sexual complementarity and “true” union as a self-evident first principle because — being so Catholic that you could spot them as Catholic all the way from the Moon — they have long been steeped in St. Paul’s analogies that as the bridegroom is to the bride, so the pastor is to the congregation, and so Christ is to the Church Universal. Moreover, as Catholics, not only do they know St. Paul’s analogy, but they have spent a lifetime hearing theologians ooh-ing and aaah-ing over the analogy’s sheer perfection — clearly, it can only have been ordained and arranged by an all-wise God that His Son should be to the Church as a groom is to a bride! No human could have conceived such splendid metaphorical tidiness, surely.
(3) A non-Christian philosopher who didn’t share GGA’s “prior acceptance of any religious belief or doctrine” would most probably not have thought to treat as self-evident such sweeping statements about “sexual complementarity,” as GGA did.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Just to be clear, I know that non-Catholic Christians would also rely on St. Paul’s analogy about bridegrooms and brides. And for that matter, I don’t actually know with total certainty that GGA are Catholic, but am admittedly stereotyping them based on their appeals to natural law.
posted by Throbert McGee on
To correct my own thought: Actually, the issue here is not that the statement was too “sweeping”, but that the phrase true bodily union has no objective, culturally-independent meaning and is instead laden with mystical import that presupposes a specific mystical/religious doctrine.
(The phrase cannot be merely synonymous with the objective scientific property of “having procreative potential,” since their whole point is to argue that heterosexual genital intercourse can achieve this “true bodily union” even when both the male and the female are physically sterile.)
posted by Tom on
The article follows, very closely, the reasoning of a conservative branch of Roman Catholic natural law theology of marriage. As far as it goes, that’s fine with me. I do not argue with any religion’s theology of marriage, however much I think it wrongheaded.
Where the article falls down is that it does not deal with the question of civil marriage, and the rationale for recognition of civil marriage, at all. At least it does not do so systematically, or outside the framework of natural law theology. At best, it glosses over them.
And that is the problem. Civil marriage and religious marriage have been kept separate in our law, for a reason.
Religious denominations conflict in what marriages they recognize, and don’t, and what the implications of various categories of marriages might be. If theology is to be the basis of the law of civil marriage, then which theology is to be used? Is Roman Catholic theology to be the basis of civil law? What claim does it have, other than raw numbers of citizens who are adherents, that the theology of my co-religionists, who comprise perhaps 3-4% of the population, does not have?
It is because of that conflict that the law of civil marriage, in theory at least, has been based on the common good, which is a reasonably objective criteria.
The difference between the religious theology of marriage and the rationale for the civil law of marriage is important.
For example, as Peter Hoh suggests, remarriage after divorce is not recognized as a valid religious marriage by many Christian denominations, and yet it is freely permitted in civil law. The reason is a consensus that the common good is served by the state promoting stable, legally protected civil law relationships between divorced and remarried people, whether or not the marriage is valid religious marriages.
Similarly a case can be made — and has been made, by Jon and others — that the common good is best served by the state promoting stable, legally protected civil law relationships between same-sex couples, whatever the theology of such relationships might be within various religious denominations.
That is the point the article does not address, and that is the only relevant point for discussion of civil marriage.
posted by Jorge on
The article follows, very closely, the reasoning of a conservative branch of Roman Catholic natural law theology of marriage.
There’s a liberal branch?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology
🙂
posted by Chris on
In general the liberals are called “nuns”.
posted by Throbert McGee on
In the “since you asked” department: There is one school of theological thought which would assert that an implicit belief in the Triune God is axiomatically primary to all logic — thus, even if you’re an atheist, merely by opening your mouth and agreeing to engage in debate, you’ve already conceded the Truth of the Nicene Creed. And if all valid logic tacitly acknowledges the glory of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, then any rational form of civil law must also do so, QED.
(I’m not sure if this line of reasoning has an official name, though of course outside the circles of religious apologetics, it’s popularly known as the “You Gots to Be Fuckin’ Kidding Me” argument. It’s definitely not exclusive to conservative Catholics, though.)
posted by Throbert McGee on
Indeed, if GGA had announced up front that they intended to address themselves exclusively to liberal Catholics who support same-sex civil marriage, they’d have a pretty solid argument, and even if one sympathizes with the liberals, one might have to concede that they’re not being logically consistent with Catholic theology.
posted by BobN on
They could have saved themselves a lot of time and just said:
Tab A >>> Slot B
God said so!!!
posted by John Howard on
Jonathan Rauch has never written a response to my suggestion for a permanent Civil Union compromise based on conception rights. I don’t know why GGA don’t raise the issue of same-sex procreation and insist that marriage approves of procreation, surely they have heard of same-sex procreation experiments, and surely they realize that a brother and sister have the ability to procreate but still aren’t allowed to marry. Marriage is for couples that are allowed to procreate offspring, form their own genes. All marriages have always been allowed to procreate offspring together, they’ve always expressed official public approval of the concept of children coming from the couple, and no marriage has ever been prohibited from procreating. Same-sex couples should be like siblings: prohibited from procreating, whether they can or not.
Google the Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise, and tell me why you think the status quo is preferable to getting federal recognition and recognition in more states. Is it really more important to deny that marriages should be allowed to use their own genes to procreate offspring, or to insist that same-sex couples should have an equal right to procreate offspring? Really?
posted by David in Houston on
I love how these people try to come up new and improved reasons to discriminate against gay people. They know that they can’t really explain why senior citizens and infertile heterosexual couples can marry if marriage’s focus is on procreation. So now if marriage is really about the ‘bonding’ of genders, then discrimination against gay people is justified. Of course, you don’t have to get married to have sex; and straight couples don’t get married because they discovered that a penis and a vagina fit together. Their entire premise is laughable. The fact that they refer to gay relationships as close-friendships (with a lot of rubbing, I suppose), shows how truly offensive their rhetoric is.
posted by Jorge on
I love how these people try to come up new and improved reasons to discriminate against gay people.
Ouch.
posted by Jay on
The whole mystification of heterosexual intercourse is an interesting twist. The tactic used to be to express horror at homosexual intercourse. Now it is to call something as common as pig tracks a miracle.
The poet Richard Howard anticipated (and rebutted) George’s natural law-lite argument when he described homosexuality as “the triumph of engineering over architecture.”
posted by Tom on
The mystification of heterosexual intercourse is just one of the many oddities of thought that the argument over same-sex civil marriage has wrought.
Equally odd are the theological and political flip-flops on civil marriage.
Conservative Protestants, who used to deny the sacramental nature of religious marriage, now refer to civil marriage as “sacred” as often as not, and Roman Catholics, who used to insist on the sacramental nature of religious marriage and carefully distinguish civil marriage as non-sacramental (presumably to allow the Church to make a distinction between marriages recognized by the Church and marriages not recognized) seems to have erased the distinction.
Similarly, politically, social conservatives, former champions of states’ rights when it came to issues like civil rights, now seek a federal definition of civil marriage, abrogating entirely the historic role of the states in determining the bounds of civil marriage, while liberals, former champions of federal power in civil rights issues, now argue for the primacy of the states in determining the bounds of civil marriage.
It is as if same-sex marriage has turned everything on its head, like a midsummer’s night dream.
posted by Jorge on
I must try to remember all this.
posted by Jay on
Excellent points,Tom. As far as “state rights” versus “federal encroachment,” it will be interesting to see how Justice Roberts, Alito, and Scalia will torture reason when they are confronted with arguments re section 3 of DOMA. The district judge’s decision in the DOMA cases from Massachusetts said that DOMA violated the tenth amendment to the constitution, the amendment that “states righters” (including Roberts and Alito) love to promote.
posted by John Howard on
“The poet Richard Howard anticipated (and rebutted) George’s natural law-lite argument when he described homosexuality as “the triumph of engineering over architecture.””
I think that is a good description of the essence of homosexuality, and that’s proof that being opposed to that essence, aka being anti-gay, is the same thing as being opposed to engineering. And being opposed to engineering’s triumph over “architecture” (aka, nature, I think), is to necessarily be anti-gay. I used to try to say I was only opposed to engineering, not anti-gay, but I’ve come to realize that is impossible due to the essence of homosexuality and the essence of gay as being opposed to nature and nothing but a mad desire to engineer people rather than have them created by “breeders”, “as common as pig tracks” and deserving the same amount of respect. The implication is that homosexuality, not just gay marriage, must be opposed and reversed and ended if we are to stop genetic engineering. I think it is still good to be compassionate and help homosexuals, since it is not their fault, but now it is clear that it must be opposed, not just tolerated.
posted by Jimmy on
“but now it is clear that it must be opposed, not just tolerated.”
So, you are exactly where we all knew you where to begin with. Big whoop.
posted by John Howard on
I didn’t know that I’d have to oppose homosexuality because it was actually a rejection of nature and a call for genetic engineering. I learned that from you guys, and other Transhumanists passing themselves off as people who merely want to be left alone to love someone of their same sex. I was hoodwinked. I truly believed that I could oppose and stop genetic engineering without being anti-gay. Wrong!
posted by Throbert McGee on
Jimmy: +1
posted by Jay on
As always, John Howard reverts to his idee fixe, same-sex procreation, but at least he now acknowledges his homophobia. It is a leap to go from “engineering” to “genetic engineering” and from “architecture” to “nature.”
posted by BobN on
Why can’t EVERY COUPLE get a “Civil Union”? — that must be performed by a civil official, as they do in France and Mexico.
That’s not true. France and Mexico, like the U.S. have civil marriage. The difference is that the state does not allow religious functionaries to perform civil ceremonies, as we do in America.
Also, France has PACS, civil unions — a sort of marriage lite — in addition to civil marriage. They were created because of same-sex couples, but opposite-sex couples are taking advantage of them in far larger numbers. The conservatives in France, in trying to “protect marriage” have dealt it a serious blow.
posted by Throbert McGee on
This is the best religiously-neutral argument I can come up with for excluding same-sex couples from civil Marriage, while keeping civil Marriage open to infertile and elderly opposite-sex couples:
Note that this argument is different from GGA’s in that they (perhaps over-ambitiously) made philosophical assertions about the “real essential nature” of different relationships, whereas my argument totally avoids any claims about what “real marriage IS,” and only makes predictions about how the relationships will tend to be perceived by others.
(Is this a sufficient argument for favoring “opposite-sex Marriage but same-sex Quarraige”? I dunno — as I said to Tom upthread, he needs to define “sufficient” first. But it is, nonetheless, a religiously neutral argument! One admitted weakness in the “procreative role model” argument is that it provides no obvious reason to exclude heterosexual polygyny from Civil Marriage, since one man with several wives can obviously be very, very procreative. And the biggest weakness is that it’s sheer conjecture that the average young opposite-sex couple will actually be influenced to have more babies simply because the State gives a special honorific label — “Married” — to other opposite-sex couples, but not to any same-sex labels.)
posted by Throbert McGee on
Incidentally, while admitting the weaknesses of the argument I outlined, I would insist that a very strong argument isn’t necessarily required here, since I’m not doing anything as drastic as proposing that same-sex couples should not be legally recognized at all.
posted by Jorge on
That weakness can be shored up by replacing premise 1 with a different valid purpose for slightly theoretically favoring procreative coupling. You focused on the procreative aspect and ignored the more commonly cited coupling aspect.
I believe it to be a valid argument.
It’s biggest weakness is not its logic but its intensity. You destroy it by asking a very simple question: So What? As a religiously neutral argument, its ability to define and ultimate truth is very poor. Even if straight marriage should be slightly favored over gay marriage, if gay marriage is still G-R-E-A-T for child-rearing, why bother?
Thus GGA’s argument. One of the logical weaknesses of Social Darwinism, which is exactly what GGA’s argument sounds like to me, has always been that it tries to advocate for results other than those actually reached by survival of the fittest, which the current results are by definition.
Whereas the weakness of religious arguments is that, in a country of multiple religions, no one religion or ideology can be assurred of being right. They answer the why but are unprovable.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Well, I didn’t totally ignore the “coupling” aspect — in point 3, I noted that there are various “coupling skills” for which same-sex couples can be good role-models for other people in society (fidelity, conflict resolution, etc.). However, if one accepts the assumption that role-modeling procreation is something socially important, that happens to be one area where our relationships can’t compete with heterosexual relationships.
posted by Jay on
I know that education in America has fallen way beyond that of other advanced nations, but I did not realize that our people are so stupid that they require role models in order to learn how to procreate. Perhaps this is the flip side of the need for classes in the proper use of condoms.
Actually, I don’t think there is a serious problem in learning how to procreate. The problem, if there is one, is that people are procreating outside of marriage and at a lower rate than some people think we should.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Heh.
Just to clear that up, it wasn’t role-modeling the mechanics of procreation that I had in mind, but role-modeling the desirability of procreation — so that “childless by choice” heterosexual couples might reconsider their stance and start making an effort to get preggers. (Again, assuming that the national birthrate is below optimal levels and needs to be nudged up a bit.)
posted by Jorge on
(If that’s what he actually meant, you have to wonder who’s accusing who’s education of being unsophisticated.)
posted by John Howard on
Makes some good points, but this would seem to allow siblings and father-daughter couples to marry, since they appear procreative.
It also fails to consider research into same-sex procreation, which is really happening and shouldn’t be ignored.
posted by Marco Luxe on
Doesn’t premise 1 argue more strongly not for procreative “coupling ” but for all procreative activity? If the creation of new taxpayers or cannon fodder is a legitimate purpose of government, then any pregnancy is positive. This was the premise of Nazi militarism and racism, where 80% of Hitler Youth girls came back from summer camp pregnant. The women leaders of the Germam Maiden League [BDM] would counsel the moral and patriotic duty of bearing children for the Reich, within wedlock if possible, but without it if necessary. [The rise and fall of the Third Reich: a history of Nazi Germany By William L. Shirer, p254]
posted by Infovoyeur on
See I went to an inferior college and can onley come up with this I recognize mekanikal over-simplistic even etiolated explanation for why GGA etc. think as they do.
Their piece is not legal-political philosophy etc. It is a religious tract of faith.
Religion broadly (=”a frame of orientation and an object of devotion”–Eric Hoffer).
These thinkers’ psychic economies require a syndrome of fear of change, need for continuity, of external fixed authority, Natural Law it has been called.
Period. Then they do not reason, but rationalize (defend) their prior pulsion by–well, rationalizations, however elegant. (Perkins of Harvard said the smart don’t necessarily think better, but instead more skillfully rationalize their ideas…)
See my college gave just too simplistic reasonings, the one answer at the bottom etc., I realize the insufficiency hence unfairness of this.
At least I shall not go macho alpha wolf and say “I won this because I know more about these thinkers’ true motivations than they know about themSELVES.” How un-manning…
Reference the important meta-analysis by social psychologists, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition.”
Natural Law as religion generically. Cherchez la–femme? L’argent? Or often (not always), the psychogenic pulsion…
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[…] Anderson (hereafter GGA), has received considerable attention—as it should. (Jonathan Rauch’s incisive retort links to much of the […]
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