What Marriage is -- response to Critics

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I've had a rather vocal critic over the past few days visiting the blog and throwing down challenges in the comment box. Never one to pass up a good challenge (assuming I have the time to answer), I thought that I would respond.

First, his initial statement about what marriage isn't:

What is "marriage" anyway? "Marriage" isn't about love. You can be in love and not be married. You can be married and not be in love. "Marriage" isn't about sex. You can have sex and not be married. You can be married and not have sex. "Marriage" isn't about children. You can have children and not be married. You can be married and not have children. "Marriage" isn't about religion. You can be an atheist and be married. You can be married without a preacher. "Marriage" isn't about vows. You can make vows without being married. You can be married without vows, only an affirmation; "I do". "Marriage" isn't about rings. You can wear rings without being married. You can be married without exchanging rings. Marriage is legally only about property, citizenship, kinship and inheritance. The marriage license is an application for State and Federal benefits granted a specific class of people. All arguments about love, romance, reproduction, religious dogma, tradition and family values are PERSONAL BAGGAGE and cultural ignorance of the legal fiction called marriage. Arguments that aren't about property, citizenship, kinship and inheritance are moot, leaving out most arguments against same sex marriage. Supporters and h8ters both need to learn what marriage ISN'T before trying to argue what it IS. Denying US Citizens benefits granted others on the basis of their sexual orientation is unconstitutional. Denying gays benefits because they offend the sensibilities of bigots is no more valid than denying the bigots the same benefits because "I" am offended by them. - Anonymous

 First off, let me say that I agree with about the first 1/2 of the statement. There are a lot of things in life that marriage is not about that seem to get inserted into the debate.What marriage is about, in a  short sentence (unless Walker gets his way) is regulating procreation. As the author points out, it is not about procreation itself (as many people have children outside of marriage) but about the regulation of procreation.

As a parallel example, consider my article about gay marriage leading to drivers licenses for the blind. Having a drivers license is NOT about driving (by the same arguments as above) because you can drive without a license. However, it IS about regulation of driving, just like marriage is about the regulation of procreation by the state. In the case of driving, most people avoid driving without a license because the penalties are so severe. In the case of procreating without a marriage, the penalties are not severe enough (perhaps unfortunately) to prevent most people from doing so.





Strangely enough, I also agree with the author's assertions that:

"Marriage is legally only about property, citizenship, kinship and inheritance. The marriage license is an application for State and Federal benefits granted a specific class of people"

 To this, I would add the part of the definition that he left out and say that it is done to regulate procreation for the benefit of children. But, yes, marriage is about that, and only that. It is NOT an inalienable right granted to us under the constitution (other than if someone has a right to marry a person of the opposite sex so do you under the equal protection clause) -- only an issue of state recognition of  an institution and licensing system created for a specific purpose.

All arguments about love, romance, reproduction, religious dogma, tradition and family values are PERSONAL BAGGAGE and cultural ignorance of the legal fiction called marriage.

One persons religious dogma is another persons moral values I would say. All laws are ultimately based on morality, so I see no reason to demonize moral values. Also, love romance, family and tradition all seem to be good things to me. What, did the author not get enough hugs when he or she was young? Is that the reason for the acrimony against family, etc?

Arguments that aren't about property, citizenship, kinship and inheritance are moot, leaving out most arguments against same sex marriage

 I would acquiesce to the fact that most arguments against same sex marriage touch on these ideas at some point, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that all arguments against same sex marriage that touch on ideas outside of these points are invalid. I'm personally pretty careful about using words like "all" anyway since it is easier to prove such statements wrong. 

Denying US Citizens benefits granted others on the basis of their sexual orientation is unconstitutional. Denying gays benefits because they offend the sensibilities of bigots is no more valid than denying the bigots the same benefits because "I" am offended by them.

This is the point where the argument gets confusing. Didn't the author just say, only a few sentences ago, that marriage is a licensing issue? So, which is it? Is it a "fundament right" or the state "granting a license"?  In the first case, fundamental rights are protected under the constitution. In the latter, it's something akin to the state allowing people to go hunting, a license which they can deny to any subgroup of people for an arbitrary reason.

Even though the comment had a good start, it seemed to fall apart and contradict itself by the end. I guess that the authors stopping point was a good one so that he or she avoided seeming even more silly.


Cute Heterosexual Girls:

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Proposition 8 Decision -- Giving Blind People the Legal Right to Drive Since 2010

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I've been thinking about the Proposition 8 decision a lot lately, and I've decided that it can be extended beyond licensing homosexuals to marry to other types of licenses. All you need is a sort of shared complicity between the plaintiffs, judge, defense attorney, and media to make it work. At last, you can help blind people obtain the fundamental right that they've been so long denied: the right to have a drivers license!

Here's how:

Plaintiffs:

1.Make sure to file the case in a district where you're sure that the judge will be sympathetic towards the cause of the blind. In fact, it would be even better if the judge were secretly blind himself, although there has to be enough ambiguity there that nobody knows the status of the judge's sight abilities for certain. Also, make sure that your blind-loving judge is the chief judge in his district so that he can be sure to assign himself to the case.

Judge:

2.Have the judge attempt from the start to make the case as much of a show trial as possible. Try at first to get cameras into the court room so that you can have something akin to the "Scopes Monkey" trial. When a higher court overturns that, insist on a bench trial, as opposed to a narrow legal ruling, so that you can create as much of a circus environment as possible.

3. Turn the issue of licensing (a state right) into an issue involving the U.S. constitution by creating a fundamental right where none existed before. To bolster this, use the country's unfortunate racist history to bring in decisions about sighted black people having the right to drive a car and make the large legal jump to all blind people having the right to a drivers license.

4. When people object and say that, even in principle, a blind person can't drive a car, make sure to claim that the original laws prohibiting people from driving a car were based only on "moral" grounds. Don't mention the fact, in your ruling, that blind people can't drive a car safely, even in principle. In fact, make sure to avoid any discussion of that rather obvious point in your decision at all costs.

5. To further bolster your decision, and to make it harder to overturn on appeal, use the bench trial to find several "facts" about the case -- 80 or so should do the trick. Make the findings as broad as possible, including a combination of facts that are laughable misrepresented (i.e. "your chances historically of being hit by a blind driver are much lower than your chances of being hit by a sighted driver"), thinly veiled ad hominem attacks on the law's original authors (i.e. "the laws were misrepresented to the voters and passed to oppress blind people"), and facts disputed by the the general scientific consensus (i.e. "blind people are better at detecting peripheral objects than sighted people") . When people object, particularly to the unscientific facts, have your supporters in the media meekly explain that, these facts are supported by the evidence presented at trial. However, make no mention of this in your decision, instead pretending like these facts are universally known and accepted in the scientific community.


Defense Attorneys:

6. Make sure that the defense of the current drivers license laws is lead by the most bumbling and inept attorney that you can possibly find, one that almost certainly found his juris doctorate in the bottom of a Cracker Jack box. Have him give evasive and stupid answers when asked relatively simple questions, answers like, "I don't know" and "I don't need to present evidence of that." Also, have the defense counsel call idiots as witnesses that repeatedly contradict points of their own testimony and actually act to support the plaintiff's position. Also, only call two witnesses (compared with the plaintiff's 20 or so witnesses, even though there are scores of expert witnesses to choose from who would be happy to testify and could greatly strengthen your case.

Media:

 7. Have your supporters in the media celebrate the ruling that you make as widely and loudly as possible. Make sure to leave out any legal or logical flaws in the ruling -- those things shouldn't detract from the "historic ruling" that extends "equal rights to all".

8. Also make sure that your friends in the media marginalize anyone who opposes your ruling as "old fashioned", "ignorant", or "bigoted". This works even better if you can find a single group among the many who opposed your ruling and fought for passage of the original laws -- say . . . I don't know . . . the Mormons -- and point out all of the silliness in their history as justification for the silliness your judge friend just passed in court.

9. Downplay any "slippery slope" arguments that crop up as a result of the ruling as "ridiculous". Say things like, "A blind person driving a car makes perfect sense, but this is a totally different case from a quadriplegic driving a car. And, two or more blind people driving the same car at the same time? I can't even begin to tell you what's wrong with that idea!"


Using this method, society can help to rectify the injustices long suffered by the blind and ensure that the fundamental right to a drivers license is enjoyed by all!

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Three Arguments Against Gay Marriage

I'm not going to post too many more times on this topic because I like to keep my posts and my interests fluid in life. Since the religious arguments against gay or same gender marriage are probably more widely known and easier to understand, I found a video on Youtube that explains some of the secular arguments against gay marriage, made by a legal scholar speaking at UC Berkeley. As usual, if my esteemed readers are too lazy to watch the video, I summarize the content briefly in my comments below.





The gentleman in this video presents three basic secular arguments in this video against gay marriage.

1. Gay marriage is radical: Heterosexual marriage has been the norm for our society since its inception. Moreover, nearly every society in the world, and in the world's history, has embraced some form of heterosexual marriage while very few have ever embraced homosexual marriage. The gentleman also points out that the right to marriage, especially gay marriage is not present under the "positivist" view of the law (in other words, the right is never specifically mentioned as existing in the constitution). Thus, in order to transform the institution of traditional marriage, gay marriage advocates have the "burden of proof" in explaining why society should accept gay marriage.

I agree with this point wholeheartedly.

2. Gay marriage is risky: Because gay marriage is such a radical departure from past ideals and institutions present in our society, the consequences of instituting this new right will likely be difficult to predict. I covered some of the ripple effects that could potentially occur from gay marriage in both a serious and humorous way in a couple of my previous posts. The speaker also states that a transition away from marriage may have been partially responsible for the fall of Roman society.

While I agree with the basic premise of his arguments (and have posted both serious and humorous supporting material), I would like to see more support for his idea about a change away from traditional marriage being a partial cause of the decline and fall of Roman civilization. While the idea is interesting, to my knowledge it isn't a commonly known idea or fact and needs to be substantiated heavily before I can accept it.

3. Gay marriage is a departure from the norm: The speaker argues in this video that gay relationship comprise only a small minority of all relationships that exist in society. The speaker then argues that the three options for this situation are: prohibition, tolerance, and acceptance. The speaker then argues against the latter because, although some gay people are good people, the characteristics of the group -- including high rates of infidelity and STD infection rates -- are undesirable.

I agree with this point as well. Unfortunately, if gay marriage is ultimately legalized, I can see a very plausible future where traditional marriage is no longer the norm in our society, as I have mentioned in an earlier post.

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Happy Family:

Proposition 8 -- The end of marriage (in 50 years)

I found an interesting video on Youtube that inspired me to write another post, this time about why gay marriage is ultimately bad for and will harm society by dissolving the institution of marriage. As always, if my readers are too lazy to watch the video, I have summarized the main points below.





To summarize, marriage -- in the opinion of Mr. Keyes (apparently a former opponent of Obama in some past political race) if you take away the idea of centering marriage around procreation, you take away the need for marriage altogether. The conveyance of these ideas by Keyes in the video is a bit strained (largely due to repeated interruptions by the host) but, to summarize, Keyes was restating the observation that the exceptions don't disprove the rule. I agree wholeheartedly. Let me explain.

How does "the exceptions don't disprove the rules" apply to gay marriage?

Let me start my argument by stating two facts that I hold to be "self evident": 1. Marriage exists and has existed in nearly every culture in the history of the world and 2. Marriage is mainly centered around the idea of regulating procreation. The first point is easy to prove, simply because even a small amount of research will verify that practically every culture on earth, even those sometimes considered "primitive" by western standards, has a form of marriage. If you don't believe me, try Googling it. The second point is a bit more difficult to argue but can probably be adequately proved through an observation that the reason why marriage is ubiquitous is because the requirement for procreation is ubiquitous.

Assuming these two propositions, then the establishment of marriage for the purpose of regulating procreation becomes "the rule" and marriages for other reasons -- including couples who are infertile, don't want kids, are too old to have children, are of the same sex, etc. -- become "exceptions". Also, as happens in every other institution in the world, the exceptions cannot disprove the rule. Another example of this is the concept that people shouldn't steal food from grocery stores but a man does steal food in one particular case because his family is starving. In that one case (or other cases like it) the theft was justified; in general, it isn't.

But how will letting gays marry "dissolve" the institution of marriage? Why are the two even related?

Again, to prove this point, I refer back to the arguments made by Keyes in the video. Essentially, what he argued here was that, in principle, any heterosexual couple can conceive a biological child. An infertile or older couple can use fertility treatments or in vitro fertilization and a couple that doesn't want kids can change their mind and decide to have kids. Gay couples, without extensive intervention from science, cannot have kids, not even in principle.

Without getting into the discussion of whether gay couples can adopt kids (they can) or whether they make good parents (some do, some don't probably), let me refer the argument back to the original premise: marriage is about society's ability to regulate procreation. If you allow marriages that are literally impossible for parents to produce natural offspring in, even in principle, you essentially negate the need for marriage at all. Why else would marriage exist if not to facilitate procreation?

That's the entirety of Keyes' argument from the video. For my part, I would like to agree with his viewpoint and expand on this a bit in the next section.

If marriage no longer exists to govern procreation, why have marriage at all?

This is the 800 pound elephant in the room that nobody in the gay rights movement wants to address directly. Ask any gay marriage advocate what the purpose of securing the right of gays to marry is, and they're sure to say something about equal rights. I have yet to meet one who says openly, "We want to do away with the institution of marriage." Yet, if you're going to allow marriages that negate the reason for having marriage in the first place, society will have two logical choices left: a) dissolve the institution of marriage (either gradually or suddenly) or b) change the reason behind having the institution.

From what I've seen from the gay marriage advocacy movement, they've opted (at least publicly) for the latter approach. In place of marriage as a vehicle to regulate procreation, gay marriage advocates have decided to redesign it as a relationship based on "mutual attraction, love and affection". While this sound difficult to refute on the surface (who can argue against love?) it has some interesting outcomes if you take it to the logical conclusions. I think that gay marriage advocates refer to this as the "slippery slope" argument, something that has admittedly been discussed before but I would like to rehash again to make a few points.

The road to polygamy and more:

When marriage eventually becomes (as I believe it will) to be associated with love between people instead of regulating marriage, there is really nothing to stop it from including more than two people in that "love bond". Why not three people? or four? If marriage is really only about love, then why not allow "big love" (pun intended) to replace the smaller love of traditional marriage. For example, say that a woman has a husband and a lesbian lover. With the only requirement for marriage being love, why can't she love, and be married to, both partners simultaneously?

Okay, fine, we'll have polygamy then: so what?

Unfortunately, situations like these can be taken to ridiculous extremes. If three is okay, how about four, five, six? How about a cult leader who wants to marry all 150 of his followers? What about a man who wants to marry a new woman every week without bothering to divorce his current wives? Even though situations like these might elicit scorn from the current gay marriage movement, I would bet good money that the ACLU will be defending cases like these in 20 years.

And the absurdity doesn't need to stop there. For example, what about incestuous relationships? If marriage is only about love, why not let brother and sister or mother and son (or daughter) marry? Why not take it to even a further extreme and allow children to marry? After all, if a 15 year old boy can be tried for murder as an adult, surely he can be allowed to marry as an adult as well.

I could even see the marriages becoming more absurd from there. What about if a man wants to marry his horse, or a woman who is already deceased? What if he wants to marry a futuristic robot or even a ham sandwich?

But, gay marriage is legal in some parts of the world, and this hasn't happened.

Just because something hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that it's not going to happen someday. If you expect to see an institution as embedded as marriage disappear, you have to give it a while to happen.

Even in places like Canada, where gay marriage is legal, my guess would be that, if I were to poll 100 people on the street, the majority of them would have some notion that a "traditional marriage" is the model that most people in society either follow or strive to emulate. However, I really don't see, in an environment of "anything goes" with respect to marriage, I just don't see how that common perception of traditional marriage as being the standard can last. At most, I'd give it 50 years -- after gay marriage, polygamy, etc. have been legalized and embraced by society -- that the majority of the people on the street would not say that traditional marriage is the norm. And, when that happens, society is going to change dramatically.

And that will lead to the end of marriage, at least in the form in which society presently knows it. But, the implications of that are best left for another post.

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