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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
I dont recall the line. Is it quotable here?
Oh… and higher welfare goes to unmarried. That’s one of the things contributing to the dysfunction in poor demographics. Even if they want to get married, they can’t afford it. The woman gets no single mom bennies if she’s married and WIC is seriously diminished if the kids live with both parents.
The most lucrative arrangement is a single woman living with her kids and a boyfriend unrelated to the kids while baby daddy is living with another woman and her unrelated kids.
The Atlantic did an entire investigatory piece on this years ago.
That’s what you take away? You don’t have kids, do you?
Here’s the core: “I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every Panda that wouldn’t screw to save its species.“
This is great in theory, until the civil side starts getting coercive toward the religious side.
Same!
I’m convinced that pandas are one of those creatures that are not extinct BECAUSE OF human intervention. They are playing with a deck heavily stacked against them.
No. I changed my mind about the modern notion or purpose of civil marriage compared to an older notion or purpose of civil marriage.
It used to be that people who were not romantically attracted to each other got married, perhaps for financial or dynastic reasons or to protect the family honor.
Today people tend to get married for romantic reasons. So, I no longer see any reason to oppose same sex marriage. I suppose I could elaborate more about this. But that’s a very simple way of putting it.
People in this discussion have mentioned that it is an axiom that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Even if this is true, people (including me) want our government to do more than pronounce axioms. People (including me) want our government to enact laws that increase the amount of well-being that human beings enjoy. I think including same sex couples into the civil marriage institution accomplishes that.
Right. I am perfectly happy holding an opinion that is held by less that a majority of voters. For example, I don’t support raising the national minimum wage and don’t support raising the state minimum wage for any state.
this isn’t the purpose of government.
They are an evolutionary dead end.
That’s right. That’s why I think churches and mosques and religious organizations should be allowed to continue with religious marriage even as civil marriage changes and evolves to include same sex marriage.
You don’t get to decide what the purpose of government is. The voters get to decide.
No, the Constitution spells it out pretty clearly.
Also, are you in a privileged voting spot compared to Stina? How can you say, yet she cannot?
“Should” is doing a lot of work here if you have been paying attention to current events in Colorado. This whole thing where artists have to endorse gay marriage is nauseating. Unbelievable.
Also, supposedly the way they’ve legally arranged homosexual marriage you’re going to get your marriage “evolved”, as you say, by the FLDS church. It hasn’t happened yet, but supposedly all of the ducks are lined up to make it happen. lol 150,000 in North America.
I’m trying to think of a really smart remark about the part “should be allowed”. lol
What does it mean to you to “get married”? All the things you list as reasons that individuals get married are easily attainable without marriage. How does civil marriage actually increase wellbeing as you claim it does? Don’t the underlying individual values and actions provide the individual wellbeing and not the government blessing?
Aside from the reasons individuals have for wanting civil marriage, what of the purpose society has for providing a legal status and providing benefits to people? If the only beneficiary is the participant and if the participant can benefit on his own without civil marriage then how can continuing civil marriage be conservative or libertarian? Shouldn’t it be on the same list as the dept of education or inheritance tax for termination?
Of course I dont agree with the “ifs” posited above, but it seems to me that most SSM proponents do even if implicitly.
This idea that individuals can define themselves in any way thay want and then force the rest of us to accept their definition is a major common thread rumning throughout progressivism. Pick an issue and it appears to be prominently woven in. That along with the destruction of civil mediating institutions at first in the guise of liberalizing them.
It’s insane.
People can be tolerant without going so far hard left that you are doing everything in the communist playbook.
Dennis Prager, the guests on Charlie Kirk, particularly Pedro Gonzalez and Dr. James Lindsay, and Steve Deace are really good about explaining these topics.
I had eight straight years of being imbued with a diversity environment before this all got crazy, thank God. Part of it in urban Seattle. I’m not going to be politically correct about any of it.
Indeed. Education. Civil Rights. Marriage. Popular election of Senators. Universal suffrage. Gender. Race. Citizenship. Morality. Culture. History.
Over and over. Yet our side hasn’t found any kind of effective response or preventive offense. Probably because, I suspect, politics itself is an example of destructive progressive deconstruction.
Excellent point. It’s why SSM seems so anti-libertarian — anti-liberal. It’s government use of force to validate people in their relationship.
I mean, it’s not my best Christian practice, but I don’t really care what SS couples do — until it involves kids
The corporatist- Communists are harassing the crap out of the ‘Gays Against Groomers” group. Those guys have every right to operate. It just shows where this country is.
Important point. Why are “Gays against Groomers” getting the business from the woke mob? Answer — frikkin obvious.
I deliberately avoided using religious language because the current efforts by government, businesses, media, and others to force religious people into isolated ghettos is bad for society in general, and I wanted to focus on the broad social reasons why “marriage” is limited to a pairing of people of two different sexes, regardless of religious beliefs. The current state of the law, and especially with the proposed Congressional statutory enactment of the deceptively named “Marriage Equality Act” will force people – religious and non-religious – into celebrating and supporting as “marriage” that which they do not believe to be marriage.
Many of the comments here also are demonstrating that calling a pairing of two people of the same sex a “marriage” is a large, if not final step, toward completely stripping “marriage” of any meaning whatsoever. Anybody can marry anybody. The state (or even really the church) cannot effectively (and in my opinion should not) examine why two or more people want to “marry.” Who cares whether the people are romantically or sexually attracted to one another, or whether the marriage was arranged by the families? Why not a son “marry” his mother? Or a brother and sister, or two (or more) brothers? Why limit “marriage” to two people? If “marriage” depends only on the participants’ feelings and there’s no benefits or social obligations to or from wider society, there is no point to having a condition called “married,” and “marriage” should be abolished from the law.
As @rufusrjones said, should is doing a lot of work here. In your formulation, the religious folks are only granted the freedom to continue their practices by a benevolent government rather than already having the freedom that exists outside of/independent of any government. You don’t seem concerned about civil marriage mission creep, when it’s already started to happen.
(Full disclosure: I really don’t care who gets “married” but I sure as hell care about the First Amendment.)
Saw this old post just lying around:
https://ricochet.com/262296/marrying-my-dog-inc/
i.e. the FLDS church is very fired up about this. Etc.
Just think, if you had written this more recently, you would have had to include a trans angle.