A Special Comment
Hatchet columnist Andrew Clark recently wrote a piece entitled:”I voted ‘yes’ on Prop 8: Gay marriage legalization not equialent to civil rights movement,” and it’s the dumbest thing I have read in a long time.
His article is very, very dumb.
Am I resorting to insulting an article that has a different opinion than me? No. I am resorting to insulting an article that is wrong. There is a difference.
I also will not attack his grammar, because I am also terrible at forming sentances. However, there are a bunch of glaring errors to prove just how dumby dumb dumb dumb the piece is.
His words are quoted and indented. Enjoy:
I’m coming out of the closet: As a Californian, I voted yes on Proposition 8 to ban gay marriage.
Tasteful.
Not because of religious reasons and not because the Bible tells me to - rather, for entirely secular reasons.
…
The 1964 Civil Rights Act gave individual human beings of all colors the fundamental human rights to equality that our Creator endowed to all of us upon birth.
This isn’t a religious issue, but the 1964 Civil Rights Act was! God wanted equality then but not now, you see!
In contrast, the gay marriage movement is seeking rights for “couples,” a vague societal concept that is formed much later in life and easily made or broken.
Oh, okay. Since blacks just wanted to drink from water fountains and not marry people of other races, which was also banned in many places at the time. You’re right though Andrew, this vague idea of “couples” has no place in our law system! This vague societal concept shouldn’t be governed over at all! I vote “yes” on Prop 9 to BAN ALL MARRIAGE! FUCK COUPLES!
Pushing to legalize gay marriage and the rights of couples is quite new and quite another thing.
Oh yes, this new “rights of couples” thing that pre-dates recorded history.
Let’s analyze marriage laws in the United States. Each state has its own law codes on marriage, each with requirements and restrictions. In California, the law states that anyone can get married, so long as the partner is someone of the opposite sex and above the age of 16. A marriage fee of about $40 and a blood test for HIV are required. There is no mention that this law does not apply to homosexuals or that it only applies to heterosexuals.
Okay, I’ll just tell you. Gay people can’t get married in California.
So theoretically, a gay person and I have the exact same right under California law: We can marry someone of the opposite sex who is older than 16 if we pay 40 bucks and get tested for HIV. That gay person can’t marry a man, but I can’t do it either.
You can marry someone you love. A gay person must marry someone he/she cannot biologically have feelings for (unless he/she finds the Creator and is converted).
So am I being discriminated against? Is he?
No. Yes.
Yes, I realize that this is odd back-door logic, but you see my point.
Yes. No.
The gay marriage movement wants to frame this issue as an oppressive struggle for freedom and equality and an end to discrimination, particularly that there is a fundamental human right to marriage. That’s simply not true.
Again, then how would you feel about a universal ban on marriage. We can all just have civil unions. Smaller government!
Last week, one GW columnist said that 1,138 federal rights are given to legally married couples. Again, gay marriage activists cite this as proof of discrimination and hate. Because of its emotional trigger, the one you most often hear is probably the right of couples to hospital visitation. How can you be against that? Many of these rights, however, are simply inherent in a big-government tax system that treats couples as financial entities, hardly the work of hateful discrimination.
Institutional discrimination is still discrimination.
I’m sure a ballot initiative that granted gay partners the right to hospital visitation would pass in any state.
You voted against it.
They don’t want just the couples’ rights. They want the whole tamale, title of marriage and all.
Yes, the same way you do. You want the whole tamale too! It’s important to heterosexuals. Why shouldn’t it be important to homosexuals?
It’s an aggressive push on society to take the debate out of the legal realm and into the realm of history, tradition, sexual taboo, recognition and everything else that the title of a “marriage” would uncomfortably force on the rest of the population.
Just like equal rights for African Americans was UNCOMFORTABLY FORCED on the population. Just like equal rights for women was UNCOMFORTABLY FORCED on the population. Just like interracial marriage was UNCOMFORTABLY FORCED on the population. This has nothing to do with comfort. To be honest, fuck your comfort. This is about what is right. This is about love. This has nothing to do with your comfort. Get comfortable. This is real. Their love for one another is real. If you don’t feel comfortable, too bad. You aren’t going to have to kiss any men.
Gay people love just like you do.
Gay people care just like you do.
This has NOTHING to do with your comfort. America isn’t about comfort. It’s about life, liberty, and happiness in a place where all people are created equal.
Equal.
So when gay rights activists want to pursue actual rights, let me know. Until then, I’ll be voting yes to ban gay marriage.
And you will continue to be a backwards thinking individual tolerant of discrimination.
Comfort? Jesus christ, think rationally. Think emotionally. Or just think.
Comfort? COMFORT?
We do not differ in opinions. This isn’t about opinions. You are wrong. You voted wrong.
Good night and good luck.
EDIT: Friend and logic tutor Max Utzschneider wrote a comment that is precisely what I wished to have said. For actual substance and readable content, check out the third comment down.
KIRK EDIT: Just in case no one has seen this yet:
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Comments
since you already know how i feel about this, travis, let me simply say that that “no. yes. yes. no.” bit was perhaps the most wonderful thing you’ve ever written. good show, old man.
Travis asked me to comment on this, so here goes.
As Will points out above, one aspect of Andrew’s argument seems to be that everyone, gay and straight, is held to the same standard - they all must marry people of the opposite sex. Therefore banning gay marriages is not discrimination. The question I would like to ask, then, is what Andrew has in mind when he thinks of examples of discrimination. Let’s take a law that says women can’t vote. Most people think such a law would count as discrimination. But the law would apply equally to Andrew, me, and everyone else -including women. Even if Andrew got a sex change it would still apply to him equally. Therefore such a law would not be discrimination, according to Andrew’s logic. This seems to be a very strange understandig of discrimination. Discriminatory laws apply to everyone, but they set aside specific groups for unequal treatment because of some arbitrary characteristic of those groups. That’s what discrimination means. Everyone has the same law apply to them, and that law discriminates against a certain group.
I’m not sury how Andrew could make such an obvious mistake. I think he’s attempting to say that the California marriage law confers a benefit, and that benefit is conferred equally. But the benefit is not conferred equally, because the ability to marry someone of the opposite sex is useless for a homosexual - he does not receive the benefit. We could think of it this way: what if the California marriage law stated that only homosexual couples could marry? Based on the way he frames his argument, Andrew could not argue against this.
So perhaps Andrew thinks that we ought to respect the California marriage law simply because it’s the actual one we have. It should be adopted for conventional reasons. But this quite obviously isn’t enough, because slavery etc. was conventional until overturned. A law is not justified by appeal to the mere fact that it is a law.
The main point in all of this, however, seems to be Andrew’s argument that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the gay marriage movement are different in kind. He says that the former claims people of all color have fundamental rights of equality endowed at birth from our creator. Gay marriage, on the other hands, deals with “couples”, a vague societal concept “that is formed much later in life and easily made or broken”. He seems to be saying that marriage isn’t a right because it is based on a vague societal concept of a couple. Now a couple just means two. Two bananas. A couple of bananas. Two people. A couple of people. I don’t see how this is a vague societal concept. Perhaps Andrew thinks that because people can enter into and out of relationships the term is vague. But that doesn’t make the term vague. It just means that some couples last longer than others. Perhaps the problem is that “couple” is a societal concept. What is a societal concept? Is voting a societal concept? What about murder, a specific legal concept that is defined by the law of a society. This distinction seems hopelessly confused. More to the point, Andrew seems confused about what it means to be conferred a fundamental right to equality. This does not just mean that we are born equal. It means that we remain equal. Specifically, the Civil Rights act of 1964 creates protections against things like discrimination in the work place - you can’t pay someone less because of his race; you can’t fire someone because of her race. The payment and firing of employees are definitely societal practices that occur much later in life. This does not mean somehow that they aren’t protected. It is our protection against arbitrary and vague social practices that anti-dicrimination laws seek to protect. We are born equal - this is endowed by our creator. But once we enter the world our social practices can get in the way of this equality - that’s where laws come in, to ensure that this equal protection occurs.
I think the major problems with Andrew’s argument have been pretty well fleshed out. It is quite clear that he has no idea what discrimination is, what a right is, what a couple is, what a societal concept is, or what a law does. I think this is an example of poor thinking generated by an inadequate command of basic english vocabulary. Most defences of gay marriage bans argue that gay marriage is immoral. While these arguments are also weak, they at least latch on to the idea that someone does not have the right to do something that is immoral (I do not think that gay marriage is immoral, but I do think that marriage between a goat and a human is - that’s why the one doesn’t collapse into the other). But Andrew does not even argue that gay marriage is immoral. He’s supporting a position with arguments that no-one, not even on his side, posits.
My guess is that Andrew knows he is wrong on some fundamental level, or at least knows he has no good reasons to support his position. He has probably spent considerable time trying to convince himself that he has good reasons, and this arduous and forced process has spiralling into incoherence. Andrew has identified himself as a Republican who is against gay marriage - to accept a verdict from the tribunal of reason would entail a complete loss of identity for him, and he is unwilling to face that consequence because he has defined himself in anti-gay terms for so long he cannot imagine himself as supporting anything different. He probably developed this identity at an impressionable young age when he was not fully capable of evaluating good reasons.
Finally, I find it deeply troubling that Andrew’s article was published by the Hatchet. This is probably an example of “journalist ethics”, which attempts to be fair and balanced by presenting two sides to everything. This is neither fair not balanced. Objectivity and non-bias are scientific concepts employed by scientists in an attempt to understand reality better. The point of fairness and balance is to provide the best platform for discovering the truth. This is where newspapers go wrong - they often think that balance means presening two sides just because there are two sides - but contrary views can be found about anything. We want contrary views ONLY about things that are still contentious in light of the best reasons or best evidence developed thus far. We don’ want contrary views about whether or not the earth is flat. We don’t want contrary views about whether or not global warming exists. We don’t want contrary views about the merits of raping women. We don’t want contrary views about the fundamental tenents of evolution. These questions have been decided. The proliferation of contrary views regarding these things is the result of unfair and biased reporting of newspapers that think the truth is still in dispute. I think that the truth of whether gays should be allowed to marry has been decided. I think it has been decided that they should. But even if you don’t accept this, I think it has been decided that, if there are good arguments against gay marriage, they are not Andrew’s arguments. The above commentary should proved that. The Hatchet is seriously off base. In an obvious and pathetic attempt to stir up controversy, they have once again sacrificed their integrity by pawning off junk commentary as valuable student opinion. I think this is immoral because it proliferates the idea that this issue has not been decided, or that Andrew’s arguments have even the slightest potential to be anything but offensive (if they weren’t so laughably bad).
Travis and Max,
I am so glad that both of you responded to this editorial. I read Andrew’s piece and I was completely dumbfounded–even slightly embarrassed that a fellow classmate could be proud of such ‘logic’ and that my school paper would have such a shallow grasp on journalistic principles to go as far as to publish it.
However, your reasons and arguments could not have been better explained, and I am so glad that you chose not to just write Andrew off as crazy. Instead you got a discussion going, so thanks!
I think the reason the Hatchet had to publish it was because this kid is a member of the CRs, so if they didn’t, the CRs would have pitched a fit about. Equal time for a completely idiotic piece. If this is the future of the Republican party, both intellectually and ideologically, Democrats can at least feel good about that.
And if there are any conservatives out there, are you willing to stand up and say, “Yes, Andrew Clark has used sound logic to reject gay marriage without an appeal to religion. I am proud to agree with him?”
If you are, please let us know. I’d like to verify these kind of thoughts and critical thinking skills are possibly widespread in the youth of the conservative movement.
In fact, can any conservative give an argument against two people who love each other being married that doesn’t involves some form of “God doesn’t like it” or “It’s the way it’s always been”?
Travis, you’re funny. Max, that was really well said.
pat, i think i might be the most conservative person you’ll drink a beer with (I support a flat tax. and i think Obama blacks experience.) Obviously, i think Andrew is fucktarded. BUT I can tell you that this argument is actually fairly common in MN/ND (at least it was 5 years ago when I still lived there.) Remember Lawrence v. Texas, the sodomy laws? The same argument was thrown about then: nobody can commit sodomy, even straight couples — therefore it’s not discrimination.
If there are any arguments against gay marriage, it’s this: Churches could lose tax protections and marriage licensing rights if gays are allowed to marry and churches refuse. Just like how churches can’t politic (technically.) They legitimately could suffer legal consequences. Of course, the problem is that the government gives special tax status to churches, and allows churches to perform a government function in the first place. (you can’t renew your driver’s license at McDonald’s — why get a marriage license at a church?)
I think people kind of assume that the Right are confusing legal marriage and religious marriage. But really most of us don’t recognize that there isn’t actually a separation. Was the mormon church motivated by discrimination? absolutely. but they also had “legitimate” legal concerns.
I don’t understand why anti-gay entities don’t latch onto the fact that churches really could suffer legal consequences. Perhaps because that would force the debate into the Separation arena — and they fear they might lose that fight. Then again, maybe people like Andrew think it unnecessary to come up with “legitimate” arguments since they can just latch on to peoples’ homophobia (secular or religious). But that begs the question: Doesn’t Andrew know he’s at GW?
Jarebear,
If I remember correctly, when Texas passed laws banning sodomy they also repealed a law against bestiality.
As for the rest of you, well, I cannot believe we are even having this discussion. As Max points out, there are no two sides to this argument. There should not even be an argument. You cannot have a debate about discrimination like you would about foreign policy or the economy. When it comes to a natural-born human right that we are all entitled to, there is a right answer and there is a wrong answer. You cannot just strip away the right to marry the person you love. It’s wrong.
What made proposition 8 particularly vile was that gay couples already had the right to marry and the voters took it away.
Perhaps even more disturbing was the proposition that passed in Arkansas that banned gay couples from adopting children. Effective January 5th, children already in the couples’ care were removed and placed into group homes and foster care. For some of those children, the adoptive couples were the only parents they had ever known. It’s barbaric.
Sorry I just have to respond to this:
“The 1964 Civil Rights Act gave individual human beings of all colors the fundamental human rights to equality that our Creator endowed to all of us upon birth.”
Anyone who has taken a class on race in America knows that the above statement is a perfect example of the terrible myth that the struggle for civil rights ended with the Civil Rights Acts. Good examples would be later acts that were passed for Americans with disabilities, Clinton’s initiative to allow gays to serve in the military and hopefully the upcoming act that will end the institutional discrimination against gay marriage.
ok I’m done.
I suppose the tax thing holds water, but I think as a matter of practice, people tend get married where they’re most welcomed or feel most comfortable. For example, a Jewish wouldn’t go to the local Catholic church for their marriage license.
I imagine the right doesn’t use this argument because in practice, straight couples have been going where they’re most welcome for their marriage licenses. Admittedly, it could get dicey if a Catholic homosexual wanted to get married in a church, for example. However, I haven’t heard of this being an issue in Massachusetts and we’ve had gay marriage for almost 4.5 years now.
I suspect that a sort of gentleman’s agreement would be established between churches and the states with regards to their ability to refuse marriages to homosexuals. Much in the same way the separation church and state, while not officially codified anywhere explicitly, is maintained. While this is not an ideal situation, very little having to do with religion and politics in America is.
Was “back-door logic” a joke about all the married butt sex gays want to have? Never will we surrender our Tamales to the Gay mafia!
To Pat, RE: homosexuals suing churches for discrimination when not being allowed to marry…
I don’t understand this argument. I know of a woman who was denied the right to marry in her home Catholic Church because she had already been married and divorced. Does this church’s “discrimination” against her mean the church loses it’s tax exempt status? Perhaps she could have sued the church if she really wanted, but no real member of a church would bring a court case against their own religion. That seems like saying “I can’t believe what I believe! How dare people support what I support! I’m gonna sue my community for all we’ve got!” I’m not sure of the legal standing there, but I feel like a court can’t mandate churches to perform every marriage with threat of removing tax exempt status.
Chris, the government can mandate that churches not directly preach politics. If your pastor says “vote for Ron Paul,” your church can get in deep shit. So yes, the government can take away tax privilages.
And remember, it’s more than just tax benefits — churches perform a government function. (As far as I know, no other private entity performs government functions.) And government functions certainly DO have to be performed within the realm of the law.
I also think you should pay attention to the difference between someone who gets divorced and someone who is gay — it should be obvious. (not that i’m saying divorced people should be denied anything, just that there is a fundamental difference that can easily translate into a legal difference as well. I doubt “divorced people” would ever be considered a “suspect class”)
Pat, I think you’re right that a situation like that would develop immediately and at least last for a while, I also agree it would be the best option for the time being. but really, all it takes is one person to decide they wanted to make a point, or simply for someone who is both highly religious and gay (they exist, really!) to sincerely want to get married in their church and for some entity like the ACLU to catch wind of it and start a shitbattle in the courts. I think that churches think that’s inevitable.
I honestly believe that if we just weren’t giving tax breaks to churches and allowing them to perform government functions that they wouldn’t have claimed as big an interest in other people’s business in the first place.
Hmmm… so when my church in high school said “All true Catholics vote pro-life” that was illegal? I guess what I’m saying is churches are already crossing that boundary and…
Forget it, this whole discussion is gay.
Admittedly, I did not read everything above my comment, nor did I finish Travis’ actual post itself. I was liking it, as well as the general motion and tone of the discussion. It’s just that I read a few paragraphs of each comment and then had to stop. For me, this whole argument is blatant evidence that marriage is a dying institution that, for most people, is becoming infeasible. Rather than lobbying the government for equal marriage rights (Or, as seems to really be the case, equal LOVING rights, which everyone has regardless of anything the government could conceivably do…i.e., the government will never pass a law against loving someone…let’s get it on, America!), I think people for whom this issue is a concern would be spending their time more wisely in pursuing equal benefits for all unmarried couples, gay or straight. In other words, if you are gay and want to celebrate your love, throw a big, wedding-like party! Invite your friends, and have someone preside over the ceremonies and marry you. Who cares if they don’t represent the church OR the government?? Talk about undermining a hostile authority system!! Plus it’ll be the wedding you’ve always wanted, and no one can do a fucking thing about it.
I’m completely serious about this. Rather than battling for or against “morality”, we should be asking companies who give their employers health benefits why they don’t at least partially extend those benefits to their employee’s partners, perhaps at the behest of the employee. This is just an example. As Dan mentioned, we should be more concerned about the welfare of adopted children who are being taken from their homes by an arbitrary and bigoted state government. THAT is what we cannot allow. THAT is the change we have to seek in government. Don’t give Right-wing/conservative blah blah blah any more ammunition.
Patty J Ford’s GW Patriot response (http://thegwpatriot.blogspot.com/2008/11/everyone-is-wrong-about-gay-marriage.html):
Everyone is Wrong About Gay Marriage
Andrew Clark, if you ever have trouble publishing for the Hatchet, I am extending, unilaterally, an invitation to write for the Patriot. Why? Mr. Clark has inspired a level of vitriol normally reserved for Patriot staff after writing this piece in the Hatchet. Our own Bill Flanigen has called it “Dumb, dumb, dumb.” Travis at the Colonialist–you remember those guys, the ones that drooled over “the most awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, intellectually honest, honest, beautiful speech I’ve ever heard in my life. His face, his eyes, his voice: a serrated poem of a man,” followed by enormous joy over the ground breaking notion that Obama is getting a puppy for the White House (OMGGZ KIRK!)–refers to Clark as “a backwards thinking individual tolerant of discrimination.” How open-minded! That being said, Clark is off-track in his argument, but I’ll get there in a moment.
Travis’s claim that “this isn’t about opinions” is right for all the wrong reasons. Culturally, the definition of marriage was decided long ago, and no California proposition can change that. Whether the State redefines marriage to include homosexual, poly-amorous, bisexual, etc. marriages is irrelevant to the institution itself. It will always be between a man and a woman because it is religious in nature, and the state does not apply to the same authority the Church does. As St. Thomas More once declared, “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”
It may seem contrary to my point to declare the religious argument irrelevant. I do so because, whether I believe it should be this way or not, the state has become extremely involved in marriage for some time. Indeed, it is my own personal belief that monogamous, faithful couples of all stripes should be given tax breaks, and if that means universal civil unions than so be it. If marriage was just about consenting civil contracts, than it would be solely the business of the state, as Bill presupposes. But it’s not.
Travis, rather comically (they are a humor blog, right?) confounds the right to marry to the right to clean water for blacks in the 60’s. But the states have prohibited citizens from marriage for a long time with little objection. Roughly half of all states prohibit first cousins from marrying, and all prohibit marriage of closer blood relatives, even if the individuals being married are sterile and in love. In all states, it is illegal to attempt to marry more than one person, or even to pass off more than one person as one’s spouse. Some states restrict the marriage of people suffering from syphilis or other diseases. Are these the next boundaries to go?
I do not mean to say that all of these situations are equal (I can see the comments now: YOU BELIEVE HOMOSEXUALITY IS A VENEREAL DISEASE??), but rather that marriage is an institution with strict rules. Marriage, founded as an institution between man and God, is subject to moral and religious scrutiny. This MUST be addressed. Travis and others urge folks like Andrew Clark to “just think” but they fail to articulate an argument deeper that “this is love” and “their love for one another is real.”
If marriage was about love and only love, than this would be an easy issue. Unfortunately, this logic is absurd. Marriage is a cultural, moral institution meant to be a steadying force for societal progress. For centuries, the basis for marriage has not been love (imagine how romantic a proposal from your’s truly would be) but the transmission of one generation to the next through the creation and nurturing of new life. Dr. Somerville of McGill University’s Centre of Medicine, Ethics, and Law has said: “By institutionalizing the relationship that has the inherent capacity to transmit life — that between a man and a woman — marriage symbolizes and engenders respect for the transmission of human life.”
Dr. Somerville continues:
To change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples would destroy its capacity to function in the ways outlined above, because it could no longer represent the inherently procreative relationship of opposite-sex pair-bonding. It would be to change the essence and nature of marriage as the principal societal institution establishing the norms that govern procreation. Marriage involves public recognition of the spouses’ relationship and commitment to each other. But that recognition is for the purpose of institutionalizing the procreative relationship in order to govern the transmission of human life and to protect and promote the well-being of the family that results. It is not a recognition of the relationship just for its own sake or for the sake of the partners to the marriage, as it would necessarily become were marriage to be extended to include same-sex couples.
What the world seems intent on doing at the moment is completely changing what marriage is supposed to mean. The benefits to society of monogamy and stability in relationships is unquestioned, and should be rewarded by civil unions and any other governmental benefits possible. But as society’s degredation can be measured by the destruction of the nuclear family by the out-of-wedlock pregnancies and innercity deadbeat fathers of heterosexual couples, further degrading the institution’s child-rearing nature will only do more damage.
What about couples that do not intend to have children, you ask? Irrelevant, says I. Marriage between opposite-sex partners symbolizes the reproductive potential that exists, at a general level, between a man and a woman. Society is built on a societal-cultural paradigm where symbolism is just as important and is often indiscernible from actual rules and boundaries. The reproductive potential of opposite-sex couples is safely assumed at a higher level and the societal-cultural paradigm won’t allow for a case by case analysis. Such a case by case philosophy would submit any law to constant illogical scrutiny.
In short, the issue is all about what marriage actually is. If marriage is about loving relationships and if the reason for denying homosexuals marriage privileges is our inherent disrespect for their loving and possibly stable relationship, than we are wrong to exclude such people from marrying. But if the reason to exclude homosexuals and others from marriage is to protect the very essence, nature, and substance of the institution intact, than such exclusion is ethically acceptable for society.
If anyone just skipped here to the end, simply read Sam Schulman’s nearly-flawless defense of marriage, or even just this snippet:
I believe, in fact, that we are at an “Antigone moment.” Some of our fellow citizens wish to impose a radically new understanding upon laws and institutions that are both very old and fundamental to our organization as individuals and as a society. As Antigone said to Creon, we are being asked to tamper with “unwritten and unfailing laws, not of now, nor of yesterday; they always live, and no one knows their origin in time.”
Admittedly, it is very difficult to defend that which is both ancient and “unwritten”–the arguments do not resolve themselves into a neat parade of documentary evidence, research results, or citations from the legal literature. Admittedly, too, proponents of this radical new understanding have been uncommonly effective in presenting their program as something that is not radical at all but as requiring merely a slight and painless adjustment in our customary arrangements. This is simply wrong… The gods move very fast when they bring ruin on misguided men.
In the end, Travis is right. It’s not about opinions. It’s about history, culture, and society. The rules were written a long time ago with a very specific plan in mind. It’s time we started playing by them.
I also just realized that the comment above me says, “this discussion is gay.” Somewhere, I am laughing right now. I just don’t know where.
Your opinion certainly holds a lot more weight after telling people to “think emotionally”. Holy shit that’s stupid - have you read The Hatchet comments section concerning the article?
Loren’s idea is great. As a certified Reverend in the Universal Life Church, I would like to let everyone know that I will happily preside over unsanctioned gay weddings. Open bar preferred but not required.
Tom-
I thought my end argument was clearly an attempt to be Keith Olbermann and wasn’t necessarily to be taken as precise logical thought.
Max Utz however said what I felt. No one has attempted to fight back against anything he said.
Well, i kind of agree with GWPatriot that “marriage is a cultural, moral institution meant to be a steadying force for societal progress,” which is partly why I think it is important that gays have the right to be a part in it and why i think it’s important (apart from the 1000+ legal rights associated.) Loren has a good idea about getting rid of marriages altogether, and if we’re talking about legally, i could support that. (civil unions for everyone, i say! leave marriage to the churches.)
as for excluding gays because they don’t procreate, and saying that sterile couples are even more … procreationally legitimate (?) because their marriage “symbolizes the reproductive potential that exists,” i’ve got a newsflash: I can get as many bitches pregnant as i want and take the kids with my into my big gay marriage with my gay ass husband. Are families only about procreating? And since when are marriages?
And as for:
“It’s about history, culture, and society. The rules were written a long time ago with a very specific plan in mind.”
Actually, the notion of one man + one woman = marriage is relatively new. Of course you know that recently it was limited to people of the same race (and before that, many black people couldn’t even marry each other. one of the handful of downsides to being a slave.) But polygamy was pretty common in the bible. In fact, marriage laws in general were pretty retarded in the bible. For example:
http://www.thebricktestament.com/epistles_of_paul/instructions_on_marriage/1co07_01-02.html
^explains that marriage is all about being able to have sex.
and
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/rape/dt22_23a.html
^explains that if you rape a virgin, she has to marry you.
yes, legos are the best way of sharing the info.
Personally, since it always comes down to a semantics issue, I propose this solution:
Remove the word “marriage” from the books. States can only recognize civil unions, which can be either opposite- or same-sex. Those civil unions should grant all the rights today’s married couples do.
Keep the word marriage in your church, between you and God. (And there are plenty of Universal Life Reverends, like Pat and myself, willing to give that service to whomever we like.)
Just an idea.
Just for the record: I decline to state my position on gay marriage, but the following is a direct quote from the California Family code:
“297.5. (a) Registered domestic partners shall have the same rights,
protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same
responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law, whether they
derive from statutes, administrative regulations, court rules,
government policies, common law, or any other provisions or sources
of law, as are granted to and imposed upon spouses.”
Anyone who talks about “rights” being denied does not know the law. What this debate is about is semantics.
I should clarify:
I don’t mean to denigrate the importance of the debate by saying it’s about semantics.
Words are extremely important, and this debate is extremely important. Society needs to decide where it stands, and the wording of issues like this can make all the difference.
Logan, the supreme court in CA knew about that law when they ruled that separate but equal still isn’t equal, even for gays. I don’t know you, but i somehow doubt you’re qualified to make the judgment that the justices of the supreme court of CA don’t know the law. Maybe this is a shot in the dark, but I’d guess that the justices do know the law, and probably know it better than you.
And btw the notion that civil unions are just as good has been tested in NJ, and it failed.
Semantics is the study of meaning - in language it refers to the signified content of the sign, which is the word itself. To say that this debate is “just” semantics makes no sense, if it is an attempt to say that semantic issues are excluded from rights talk. The debate has always been semantic, because the term “married” is seen as particularly meaningful to individuals. This is what makes it an issue about rights. As used in America, the concept of possessing rights has been generally interpreted to mean that each person ought to have the ability to express herself (or himself) meaningfully in areas deeply connected to an individually held vision of the good life. The caveat is that, because we share a society, our rights are limited where they might limit the rights of others. As Loren has commented, one way of getting around the gay marriage problem would be to diffuse the meaning of the term “marriage” so that it doesn’t carry important enough semiotic content to represent an avenue of expression (of love, fidelity, etc) that is deeply connected to a personal vision of a good life. This would in effect make the issue of marriage not an issue of rights. But the alternative seems equally plausible. If many people currently DO find that the term “marriage” describes a relationship central to their vision of a meaningful life, then why not simply allow them to express themselves in this manner and grant the right? Some conservatives will respond by saying that this move would infringe upon their rights, because allowing gays to marry removes important semiotic content contained in the term marriage, such that the removal of this content strips away an avenue of expression central to their life goals, and therefore violates a right. This response could seemingly apply to Loren’s proposal as well. And this is where we have to move beyond the quite simplistic “American” rights talk, because both sides seem to possess valid claims. The twin doctrines of non-interference and the ability to pursue one’s life goals have come into conflict, because the pursuance of one life goal interferes with the other, and vice versa. Given a conflict between life goals, we have to step in and say authoritatively that one life goal is better than the other. We have to say that one vision of the good life is radically wrong. This is where I find conservative arguments unconvincing (I say conservative, but this is just shorthand. People on all sides of the political spectrum can be opposed to gay marriage - Barack Obama, I believe, is an example). Both sides start from the position that all people are born equal, that all human life has equal value. Conservatives usually go on to make two sorts of arguments - a secular argument and a religious argument. The secular argument is based in convention. It says that marriage is a time-honored institution - to change its meaning removes its meaningful content and strips heterosexual marriages of a right. The religious argument just says that gays are immoral sodomists who will go to hell - this sort of rhetoric isn’t supposed to be in our political discourse, so I’m not even going to address it. We are left with the secular argument. What is distinct about this is the claim that allowing homosexual marriages will remove meaningful semiotic content. This in itself is not a justification. My life may be meaningless unless I am allowed to own a store that doesn’t allow minorities inside, but this doesn’t make it a right worth protecting. It means that the things that give my life meaning are immoral because they are dependant upon the exclusion of others - based on morally irrelevant criteria - for their importance. Applying this example to gay marriages, I contend that the argument against gay marriage fails because the meaning generated by the exclusion of homosexuals in the idea of “marriage” is a meaning based on excluson, and is therefore immoral. My presupposition is that being gay is morally irrelevant in the same way that being black, or a woman, or Jewish, or red-haired, or from a certain neighborhood, is morally irrelevant. It does not matter if homosexuality is an acquired trait or not - being from a certain neighborhood can be an acquired trait, and we do not make rules that say “people who live in Alabame cannot vote”. Being from Alamaba is morally irrelevant in the same way that being gay is morally irrelevant. Therefore, it is safe to say that given the conflict in rights, gays should be allowed to marry because the ability for gays to marry is not an exclusionary practice - its meaning is not generated through exclusion, because it is not motivated by a malicious intent to decrease the value of marriage for straight couples.
This was a pretty long post, but I think it presents a powerful argument for gay marriage that cannot be overturned. It is why I consider the “debate” about gay marriage to be pretty much settled. Finally, it is interesting to note that the moral intuition motivating my argument, that a right based on exclusion (on morally irrelevant grounds) is not a right, was mirrored by Andrew in his initial anti-gay marriage article. His intuition was that the grounds for a violation of rights is unequal application of a law. He merely failed to understand what it means to apply a law unequaly. It means that the very existence of the law is predicated on an arbitrarily exclusionary practice that. Banning gay marriage is an example of such a law.
Jarebear: The supreme court ruling didn’t give anyone any more “rights”, per se. Whichever side of the argument you’re on, you have to admit that civil unions had all the same “rights” before and after. The only thing that changed was the word, which can be extremely important.
Max: I completely agree. I realize my first post could be misinterpreted. Thanks for the post.
Wonderful argument, Max, but I think it’s important to consider the arguments that the most intelligent anti-gay marriage thinkers are making. I think that the arguments they are making aren’t the arguments you present. They don’t simply claim that they oppose gay marriage in order to secure some sort of “right” on the part of non-gay couples to participate in an institution somehow cleansed of gays. No doubt, many people that oppose gay marriage do think that way (and for those people, your argument would be a decisive refutation). The best arguments against gay marriage, though, seem to stake out their territory elsewhere. They argue not just that that gay marriage harms straight married couples, but that gay marriage harms society at large. The argument is typically made with reference to metrics like the divorce rate, the marriage rate, and out-of-wedlock births. One of its premises is that gay marriage, by removing the connection between procreation and marriage, thrusts society into a world where procreation and the nurturing of children are not undertaken within the stable framework of the heterosexual, two-parent household. Please don’t think that I actually believe this argument. I’ve just encountered it often, and I don’t believe that any better case against gay marriage could possibly be articulated.
I believe that the best, most coherent defenses of gay marriage will have to reckon with it (and DO reckon with it)in one of two ways:
1) They show that gay marriage will lead to an increase in the health of society (with reference to the above-mentioned metrics), or that those metrics are insufficient to show the health of society.
2) They show that the sort of utilitarian appeals mentioned in (1) are irrelevant when talking about the right to marriage. Of course, this second option has two possibly unintended consequences that I can imagine:
(a) It moves the “right to marry” into the realm of other rights like the “right to freedom of speech” or the “right to freedom of conscience/religion.” This isn’t so much a problem, I think, as an opportunity. It allows us simply to assert that marriages are contracts, and we ought to have the freedom to contract with other consenting adults in whatever way we please. But then, that’s the libertarian in me screaming out for the legal recognition of some unrestrained right to freedom of contract.
(b) It allows us no principled argument against the re-legalization of polygamy. Here, gay marriage advocates would have simply to bite the bullet and accept polygamy as a natural outgrowth of the rights-based argument for gay marriage–I cannot imagine a rights-based argument for marriage that excludes plural marriages without partaking in the same sort of repugnant exclusion that anti-gay marriage arguments do. I bit that bullet long ago, and ceased to be bothered by polygamy (in theory, though the reality of the practice often involves other violations of rights that ought to be investigated and prosecuted by any diligent government). If a group of consenting adults want to share spousal rights, I see no reason to deny them the opportunity, even if I regard their choice as odd.
(With regard to Loren’s argument: that used to be my position as well. I embraced it because I believed that it was a pragmatic compromise that all sides would be able to accept. I was wrong: as a matter of fact, anti-gay marriage advocates have no reason to accept that compromise, precisely because it’s not hard to find religious groups [or Universal Life Church ministers] willing to “marry” gays. And, for whatever reason, anti-gay marriage groups ARE, as you say, advocating exclusion. Government control of marriage allows them to use the power of the law to keep gays from marrying.)
The Colonialist should be doing more. Have you seen Princeton’s Proposition 8?
http://www.americablog.com/2008/11/princeton-proposition-8-to-protect.html
He did not seriously say it’s OK because he can’t marry a dude either.