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  • From: Lee Haslup <biglee AT haslups.com>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] Interesting SWF on the gay marriage thing.
  • Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 14:29:13 -0500

Michael Williams wrote:


I find it laughable to describe benefits as important as healthcare, inheritance and partner benefits as "trivial."

As it pertains to the gay marriage issue isn't healthcare subsumed under "partner benefits," or am I missing something?

Also, the argument that marriage is primarily an institution geared towards rearing children is, even if true from 10,000 feet, simply hilarious.

You are right that I tend to view things from 10,000 feet. More people should, I think, when contemplating societal issues.
Tell that to my countless relatives who were childless their entire lives, or married or remarried well past child-bearing age. However, if you really cling to that as a reason for marriage, I might point out to you that Paula could well choose to raise a child with her partner. Wouldn't you rather that child have a "stable environment?"

The topic of childless hetero couples we will deal with below, but as to your point about gay couples raising children it is a good one. In any issue of sufficient complexity to be worth discussing at length there will be tensions between various desirable goals. It is quite likely that expansion of the notion of "marriage" to include Paula and her partner would be good for a child that they might raise. On the other hand, the dilution of the idea of marriage and the blurring of its edges will be unfortunate for rather more children whose family environment is that much less stable. I concede your point but, on balance, find other considerations more pressing.
Really, though, the whole idea that marriage is suddenly this pristine institution that must be preserved on its high pedastal is just ridiculous. Your points are well-made, but you're dreaming.

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world can live as one.

Sorry. I hate that song, actually.

I have more than one ex-brother-in-law who defiled the institution of marriage /way/ before I even had a chance to enjoy its benefits. If marriage is suddenly so well-defended and so highly regarded by all those who live within its graces that its borders must be defended at all costs against the onslaught of outsiders, then it must have gotten a patch job pretty recently.

So, you are arguing that the institution of marriage is a patched and shabby thing, fallen into disrepair and disrespect -- that one more thing may well push it over the edge into irrelevance? You seem to be arguing my side, should I be arguing yours? Please advise.

Note that I'm the offspring of one man and one woman who have been happily and passionately wed for nearly fifty years. I know that a stable environment for child-bearing is best. I agree wholeheartedly. But I've seen enough marriages that never involved even one little fleshloaf and enough marriages that exploded like an outhouse full of dynamite to know that it is ridiculous to pretend that "our families" are under some sort of assault, or that marriage = child-rearing. The majority of straight people my age (late 20's) who have gotten married lately or are getting married soon are doing so with zero desire for children.

I read your follow-on correction to this sentence changing "people" to "people I know personally" but it doesn't change my response, which is: Thus the brilliance of the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Paula and her partner are unlikely to slip up on their medication, or have one too many Margaritas, and "accidentally" go out and adopt a child but with heterosexual couples accidents happen all the time. Marriage, according to the conventional understanding casts the net just wide enough.

They just want to be married. The world would benefit from /more/ relationships like that of my parents, not fewer.

Indeed it would.


Yes of course, you are correct that they are seeking equal "rights" in the sense that they seek to compel other people and the community at large to treat them as if they were "married." The special benefits

I seek to compel the country to treat me like a real, adult human being, capable of deciding on my own how to enter into a consensual relationship with another adult. Is it bad and wrong of me to compel others to treat me equally? If so, then I guess I'm bad and wrong. The history of social change in our country is, in every instance, the story of one group or another having to compel the rest of the society to view them as human beings.
It's interesting to observe here that this is a point on which you are altogether wrong with regard to American history. It's something of which we can all be proud. Take woman's suffrage, for instance. The suffrage movement never had anything like the power it would need to compel the male-dominated power base to implement the changes they wanted. The vote was given to women by men who had been convinced of the rightness of their cause, not taken.

You say it as though we have a gun to someone's head and are saying, "If you don't let us in, the kids are gonna get it!" (Please feel free to reference "Blazing Saddles" for an example.)

National Lampoon Magazine once ran a cover showing a dog with a pistol to its head and a caption reading "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog!" [Jan 1973]

In fact, it's just that hint, that whiff that passes in the air, of hysteria that tends to taint any defense of marriage as a heterosexual act. It's as though something you possess now is threatened, that we will take something from you by being granted the right to wed, like we're stealing your yard gnome and taking it on a world tour.

I don't have a very sensitive nose so perhaps the whiff of hysteria eludes me, but granting that yours might be more acute it remains true that you cannot dismiss a position out of hand by demonstrating that there are idiots who agree with it. The world is full of people who are right for the wrong reasons or for no reason at all.
You sound very reasonable, and that's extremely nice. But you sound worried that I or anyone else would try to compel the rest of society to treat us equally and that this is something entirely new and terrifying, when it has never happened any other way for any other group.


couples and their anticipated offspring.) The gay marriage types are seeking their "fair" share of benefits intended for someone else.


I particularly like the quotes around "fair." You're an intelligent person who's willing to discuss this and disagrees with me, so I'm going to bite the bullet and ask: what's unfair about letting me get married?

It is perceptive of you to find the pair of quotes that distinguishes my world-view from most people's -- especially most people on this list. Earlier I mentioned tensions between desirable goals -- things where to get more of one good thing you have to give up some of the other. One set of such goals is codified in the slogan of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. I tend to prioritize them in that order -- where Liberty comes first. Too many people, I think, put Equality first. (The French did, for one example. They straight-away started chopping off heads and generally made a mess of everything until, Napoleon, a figure who would be hard to admire in other circumstances, restored something like sanity.) Because I have different priorities, I tend to see different "trump cards" in many arguments. When you look at a sentence like "Compel people to treat me equally." You probably see the "trump" card as the word "equally." (I am paying you the complement of assuming that it is not the word "me.") The reasoning would go -- people who seek to treat me inequitably are being wicked and thus their desires are wicked and they can rightly be compelled to act rightly. I, on the other hand, see the word "compel" and think that as long as their actions do not involve force or fraud people should be allowed to do what they want, even if I disagree with it.
As to what is not "fair" about letting you get married, there is nothing you can physically do to get married that I would keep you from doing -- you can go to a church (or not), make promises, have a party (invite me -- I'll come) live together, etc. etc. etc. But, for my part, I don't support changing the laws to recognize your union as a "marriage" under the strict legal meaning of the term. I don't believe that the intent of the people who approved the laws was that it include you and your partner and, less importantly, I don't even think it would be a good idea. The quotes around the word "fair" indicate, not that it is unfair for you to get married, but that I have considered the issue of fairness and find it less important than other issues involved.


For the social institution of marriage to be most useful it needs to have fairly simple rules. Most people know what a "man" and a "woman" are and infertile couples, childless couples, elderly couples, etc. can still support the institution by observing its customs.

Finally, someone tries to let in the childless and old! What about my getting married doesn't support the institution by observing its customs? Is it that I /can't/ have children? That's the problem I find in any argument that marriage must be preserved for the sake of the children it's intended to produce: it either cuts out heterosexual couplings that don't involve children or it contradicts its own reasoning by letting them in but failing to explain how letting them in is better than letting gay couples in, as well.

As more of a traditionalist that a rationalist I am comfortable with a larger degree of contradiction than other people you may meet but it comes down to a preference for having laws and social norms that have sharply defined edges. As an example, the age of consent is defined everywhere in terms of calendar years without regard to the actual physical and emotional maturity of the individual child.
If you want others to support the institution by observing its customs, which is a brilliantly written way of putting it and nicely includes people like my childless sister who was married twice but would sooner have gouged out her eyes than bear fruit, then let others observe its customs. It's a faulty argument as it stands, now, though, because it runs:

--marriage is for straight people to have children, thus gays can't get married

Sure they can. Many do. Many gay men have wives who they love (platonically) and children who they love devotedly. Their relationship to their partners does not line up with their physical attractions and, because they are gay this is called "living a lie." Many straight men call it "being married."
--but marriage is a social institution which should include those who can't have children but want to observe its customs

The chief custom of which, being that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. This is a simple test, easily decided and not given to lawyerly wrangling.

--but gay people want to observe its customs

Well, they do have that one problem with the whole man/woman thing.

--but marriage is for straight people to have children, thus gays can't get married

This seems to be where we got on.

It makes you not a member of the Religious Right. Most people aren't. The "Religious Right," to the extent that they exist at all, are the useful idiots used by the secular left to delegitimize protest against their attacks on common sense, common understanding, and at times, common decency.

That's funny, I thought they were the baby factory for the secular right, but heck, what do I know?


What indeed?

BigLee





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