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‘Same-Sex Couple’ Does Not Equal ‘Two-Sex Couple’
Same-sex “marriage” is in discussion again, as the US Senate seems intent on forcing the issue further down the throats of resistant Americans. There are multiple arguments for why same-sex couples do not qualify for “marriage.” My primary argument is that same-sex couples cannot produce children.
Marriage is socially and legally recognized for couples of two sexes because such a couple may, even is likely to, create new life, i.e., produce children. Those children blend the two families from which the couple came into a new branch on the tree of humanity and perpetuate that blend far into the future. Throughout history and across cultures, it has been and is the expectation of children that drives marriage. “Romance” or “erotic love” are very late additions to the long and broad history of marriage, and not particularly central to why marriage exists.
“Marriage” establishes a social and legal framework so that the new branch on the tree of humanity formed by creating children not only does not wither and die, but grows and thrives. Society (and the law that society creates to govern human behavior) has both short-term and long-term interests in the children that a coupling by people of different sexes may produce. Short-term, we want a structure in which those children are more likely to be protected, housed, fed, clothed, etc. Long-term, we want a structure in which those children and their children on through the generations bolster the society into which they are born.
It is a biological certainty that a couple consisting of people of the same sex will not produce children. Their coupling will end no later than when one of them dies. Societies (especially ours in the US) have legal systems for contracts for people to form partnerships that involve themselves only, and exist during their lifetimes.
In times or cultures in which women might be limited in their ability to own or control property or to conduct business, marriage also helped to protect women from destitution. That’s not really a concern in 21st-century America. So we’re left with children (or at least the possibility of children) as the public justification for marriage.
“Marriage” exists because of the potential for children emanating from the couple. A same-sex couple cannot produce children. “Marriage” designed for two-sex couples should not be extended to same-sex couples.
Published in Marriage
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Lmao. Most dense response I’ve ever seen.
You FEEL you have the right facts on marriage and everyone else is wrong, but your “right” facts are wholly modern, a part of a single generation, untested and untried beyond even a decade.
You are not in a position to claim you are right with any kind of certainty. You BELIEVE you are right with an unreasoned faith that you impute to your interlocutors with derision.
Have some humility.
Agreed, as do pretty much all SSM opponents.
This exchange does illustrate the more fundamental issue as it relates to marriage: we all use the same word but with widely differing meanings and then widely differing choices stacked on top.
Nope. They are too antagonistic towards heterosexuals for this to make the worst of them satisfied.
This is the short and sweet version of @scottwilmot’s comment that love proceeds from the word.
The truth is marriage is between a man and a woman.
It is necessary that love proceeds from that union.
Ancient times had this far more right.
We have taken what was established as a better way of producing love in marriage (marrying who you love) to expecting it without effort. So now we divorce when the feelings of love dissipates, thinking that those feelings are the essence of love and it’s loss means you should not be married anymore. Never mind the incarnate marriages you have running around the world.
Its all backwards.
Civil marriage demands nothing of the participants. So what do the rest of us get out of it? For what purpose should society keep up the institution and keep providing legal benefits if there is no ROI for society? If people can love, have sex, have children, contract, inherit, etc whether or not marriage exists, if the participants carry no legal obligations then why does civil marriage exist?
It’s inconsequential. Without kids, the marriage is pointless from the state’s perspective.
The value of marriage for a non reproducing couple only creates spiritual benefit. But I don’t think you care about that.
My experience is that it’s intensely personal. To perceive that one falls short of the standard seems to lead most to just want to do away with the standard completely.
They have no concept of grace and are actually far more judgemental towards themselves than anyone outside them holding up the standard are towards them.
It is a human reaction, but one that should be resisted. If your reasoning to disregard the standard is your personal inability to live up to it, but the standard is judged good, then the standard should not be removed.
Marriage as between a man and a woman is simply an axiom. Now that this has been abandoned, there is no defensible ground at which to stop its slide. The same arguments supporting SSM, “throuples” and all the rest may also extend to incest, pedophilia, and bestiality. Once you give up the defensible position, it’s all just a matter of opinion.
I know the SSM-ers are howling that they don;t mean that, and it’s terrible of me to equate these things. I’m not equating, and I’m not putting words in your mouth. Just pointing out that the only “limiting principle” which withstood millennia of attacks has been laid aside. If we accept neither genetic nor cultural defenses of marriage, then how are we to base a defense of children? You don’t need to wait for someday — it’s happening now.
I have no malice for gays and so forth (a person is not a policy), but this abandonment of marriage (by diluting to meaninglessness) is a program from Hell.
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There is also a very politically incorrect thing to say about social statistics in this area and I’m not going to be the one to do it. lol
Civil marriage exists because a large majority of voters want civil marriage to exist.
Why do a large majority of voters want civil marriage to exist? Because they think it makes their lives better, even if they aren’t currently marrried.
Single people often aspire to getting married someday in the future. So, even most single people want the government to continue allowing for civil marriage.
In a religious context, I think you are correct.
However, in a civil context, marriage can include more than only between a man and a woman.
Now, perhaps this would be less confusing if the government didn’t call it marriage, but called it civil union instead.
So, let’s say that all 50 states abolish marriage tomorrow and create the institution of civil union and stipulates that everyone who was “married” under the old law will be in a civil union under the new law.
This would eliminate the religious scent from this civil institution. So, we could continue to have our theological debates over whether, say, a divorced woman can be re-married in the eyes of God. And our society, which consists of people of a variety of religious faiths and many of no particular religious faith, could get about the business of allowing people to enjoy civil union.
That’s all modern civil marriage is. It’s a legal issue, not a religious issue.
From a theological-religious perspective, this seems correct. Or at least according some of the world’s religions, marriage is a union between one man and one woman.
But that’s a religious issue.
We aren’t talking about whether same sex marriage is in line with a specific religious sect but about what kinds of civil marriage laws are most comfortable for the largest number of people in our society.
You aren’t entitled to your own facts.
I’m agnostic, by which I mean non-militant atheist.
If individuals can love, have sex, own property jointly, have children, etc without being married, then what do they get from civil marriage that they can’t get without it?
Neither are you. Civil marriage is quite different from religious marriage. Religious marriage is tied to theological precepts. But civil marriage evolves and changes over time.
Children deserve to grow up in a society which rewards and reflects nature, decency, and the things which brought that society into being. To me this is the essence of societal conservatism. No parents should have to explain to their children the insanity or perversion of adults whom the children must attend. Back in the closet if you’re teaching school. Not all [blanks] and so forth, but the grooming pipeline is in full flow right now.
This is not to say that there are no threats from the straight population, but that’s no justification for throwing all boundaries out the window. That’s just silly.
People think that they get something out of being married, whether they actually do or not.
Perhaps if we did abolish civil marriage, nobody would be any worse off. People could still have children, allow people to inherit their property upon their death, resolve child custody disputes and so on and so forth.
But in a representative government like our, government responds to what people want. People want civil marriage.
Libertarian advocacy of abolishing civil marriage is going to lose at the ballot box. Even abolishing easy divorce is likely to do badly at the ballot box.
I love how you blew by my comment pointing out you have nothing but your feelings of rightness to justify your position.
The only one relying on feelings is you.
Wait. Are you saying that we shouldn’t allow same sex couples to get married because same sex marriage is repulsive to you?
Heh, and I’m Catholic yet I avoid talking about the religious aspect of marriage because that’s not the question. Not yet anyway.
So you support SSM now because most people want it? Does that also mean you used to be opposed to it because most people used to oppose it too?
As someone said earlier, discussing popularity isnt entirely irrelevant in terms of political persuasion, but that shouldn’t affect your own opinions, right?
I’m not a libertarian and I don’t advocate abolishing civil marriage. What I advocate lost and is unlikely to return any time soon. So it’s irrelevant now except when it will be used to encroach on religious marriage and except when it will be used to impose incorrect wokeism and except when it will be used for redistributuon.
DING DING DING
Tax breaks. Welfare. Inheritance. Divorce rights.
I am reminded of the line about pandas in Fight Club.
They get all that without civil marriage too except for divorce rights since that is the only thing dependent on the existence of civil marriage. Even then people get the equivakentvor better than divorce rights without civil marriage.
And tax breaks make no sense at all if the only benefits are personal. Especially if the personal benefit is fulfilling a feeling or desire. I’d like a tax break for that pizza I’m about to order, please…