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Given how much justified umbrage marriage traditionalists have taken over the “no rationale argument” argument, one would think they’d be careful before using it themselves.
So would I be correct to assume that you’d support SSM if gay fidelity rates matched those of heterosexuals?
I see no logical incoherence or inconsistency in my argument :)
I do see the incoherence and inconsistency in saying that there should be no discrimination on the relationship between any 2 people (or more, apparently)…because all human relationships are implicitly and explicitly discriminatory, normativelly and legally, on the bases of circumstance. And have been so long before there was such a thing as a state or a law. The law simply adapted to human nature.
No, because I made no such argument. I simply brought up that point in response to the argument that “gay marriage” is just as “loving” as traditional marriage. But love, or monogamy, has nothing to do with the legal definition.
Hilarious. Now, would you care to address my point that — in the line I quoted — you essentially said that all pro-SSM arguments are “not coherent or consistent”?
Pardon my CoC-compliant French, but this is darn rude.
A pot lover I once knew died without ever seeing marijuana legalized. He was from the 60s. Now opponents have been won over and 48% of Americans are now smart and decent people and marijuana will be accepted forever. Am I right?
I did, in the post above. That comment was clearly intended to be sarcastic, hence the smiley face.
PS: Actually, I take it back. Monogamy does have something to do with the definition of marriage, since it clearly can be dissolved on the bases of disloyalty, and the party harmed can get financial compensation for the harm. Hence, that is an expectation of the legal regime.
I agree with the bolded portion, but not the rest. The question — if we ignore the facile arguments on both sides — is whether drawing a distinction between heterosexual couples and homosexual couples is the right place to do it.
Let’s not exaggerate the differences.
I once knew a guy who believed in unicorns but his puppy was killed. He was really heartbroken and cried a lot. A really sweet guy from the 60s. Then he got cancer and suffered a lot. He died without ever seeing a unicorn. So sad. But now the government is forcing all people to pretend that unicorns exist and unicorn believers now share the freedom we all have. Freedom is so great. Am I right?
Strongly seconded. The cultural damage the gay left has caused by pushing things through in the way they did is enormous.
I’ve often tried pointing out to liberals — with absolutely no success — that the proper model should have been women’s suffrage, not the civil rights movement: i.e., victory should have been sought in this circumstance through (super-)democratic means that legitimize the results, even in the eyes of the losing party.
I have a very hard time believing that in the long term, as in centuries or millenia, people are going to think of gay marriage and traditional marriage as just two flavors of the same thing. The conception and raising of children is a vital part of human civilization, and those things will happen very differently in a gay marriage as opposed to a traditional marriage. In principle, I don’t know that the two family structures can’t coexist in one society. However, it’s not clear that civilization can persist when it has family breakdown that is as high as it is now, and increasing. And it’s not clear that you can have familiy stability when people think men and women are interchangeable as spouses.
I wish that I could use a time machine to see what will become of this in a thousand years.
State recognition and definition of who is properly married is a bullwark against the state?
I think she meant families. Or possibly Halliburton.
I’ve never been particularly opposed to SSM. After coming of age in the 80s/90s and bearing witness to the destructive results of promiscuous sexual behavior I wonder if marriage might not serve as a positive influence. I do know that polygamous marriages create enormous financial burdens upon society — see welfare and food stamp stats in the state of Utah. My most immediate concern if marriage laws continue to be revised, is that this particular ‘living arrangement’ could eventually be established as both a legal and social norm.
If I mentioned at work that I thought marriage could only be between a man and a woman I could lose my job for it. I would be completely legally protected for vocally favoring gay marriage. If you think that opinion swing is from free people seeing the light of reason, Fred, you are kidding yourself. The tyranny leaves you oddly unconcerned, for a libertarian.
To answer this question you cannot ignore the arguments.
The arguments from the pro-gay marriage side are incoherent and inconsistent precisely because the same argument can be applied to all human relationships. So can ours, except that our argument is explicitly that all human relationships are different and are discriminated differently by the law. This “discriminates” against gay relationships the same way that a relationships between 2 friends is discriminated against compared to one between a married couple.
This is not to say that there aren’t legal protections and responsibilities that cannot, and should not, be given to gay couples. Simply that the nature of the relationship is different, and hence has a different legal regime.
Saying that all that is needed is 2 people loving each other, captures 95% of the inter-personal relationships. We love our friends, we love our cousins, we love our siblings, we love our parents, we even love our pets. Yet none of those thing can be called “marriage”? Why not?
State recognition of private property is a bulwark against the state? State recognition of another state is a bulwark against the state? State recognition of the right to keep and bear arms is a bulwark against the state?
It is the responsibility of the state to enforce legal regimes.
The argument Mollie is making is a rather obvious one, but one which in today’s world seems so alien: social institutions are the primary mechanisms for keeping the government at bay.
When people relied on their families, on their neighbors, on their friends, on their communities…and dare I say…their churches, there was little room or need for the government to intervene (other than to enforce contracts and laws). As social institutions decayed, the government had more room, and need, to advance. The basic building block of all social institutions is the family.
Now that that has been destroyed to such a degree as today, why are we surprised that the Welfare state has grown so big, or that absurdities like “our children belong to all of us” are heard on TV?
That would be a good retort if I had made that argument. As I have not made that argument — and will not because I agree with you that it’s a looser — please refrain from implicitly putting words in my mouth.
This is amongst the oddest of the marriage myths. We’ve had state recognized marriage for as long as we’ve had states (or, at least, demonstrably, for as long as we’ve had writing, marriage law being amongst the first things to be written). In pre-state societies, you generally find either community or chief recognition of marriage.
Similarly, there’s a lot of reasons that we believe in private property, and property rights of some kind have always existed, but the reasons for those property rights are not generally listed in the statutes.
Often, justifications for capitalism may not apply to specific frivolous spending, but all laws are, necessarily, somewhat overbroad.
Nowhere did I say that this what “you” said.
Tom Meyer:
AIG:
Just in support of Tom’s claim not to have made the dumbest of SSM arguments; Tom’s generally pretty even handed in his approach. He’ll make arguments that I believe to be wrong, but he’s rarely prone to making particularly thoughtless partisan claims (less prone, for instance, than I am).
When you write that “the pro-gay marriage arguments* are not coherent or consistent,” don’t be too surprised when people who advocate for that position take umbrage at the implied insult, especially when the only arguments you put in our mouths are the most easily refuted.
As I said earlier, this is no different than when Judge Walker scurrilously claimed that there are no rational arguments on the traditionalist side. If you’re curious to see a better argument than those you’ve cited, I think I did a decent job here.
* Had you described those arguments as those of “many” or even “most” of the pro-SSM crowd, I’d have taken less issue.
We had a movement before we had a discussion, and all the while we’re still waiting for social science to come in. The campaign question may be settled for many election cycles to come, but the policy and certainly metaphysical questions can’t be answered by identity politics or progressive prime time programming or hashtag activism or too easy accusations of bigotry.
From the Daily Beast:
“Notice, by the way, that the ultra-conservatives and the radical liberationists share the same vision of LGBT liberation. Whether as dream or nightmare, both see it as destroying conventional notions of church and state….
“The mainstream LGBT movement, meanwhile, still insists that neither of these futures will come to pass. “Don’t worry, they say, we’re not out to smash anything.Who’s right? Only time will tell.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/did-christians-get-gay-marriage-right.html
Alright then. So you say the purpose of marriage is to:
1) Foster emotional and financial stability.
It along with 95% of other human inter-personal relationships. So I don’t see how point #1 is exclusive to marriage.
2) Foster an emotional and physically beneficent environment for sex.
So can any non-marital sexual relationship. I don’t see how #2 is exclusive to marriage. What does a legal regime have to do with fostering sex, anyway?
3) Fosters a nurturing and stable environment for children.
Well, gay relationships can’t produce any children, so that can’t possibly apply to them.
Marriage, in legal terms, is not related to any of the above 3 points. It cannot be related to any of the 3 points. In legal terms, it must be related to the obligations, responsibilities, liabilities, and constraints surrounding the expected or potential output of the relationship.
The definition you gave here isn’t that far off from the “all you need is love” argument. Sorry, that’s how I see it.
No reason to take it as an insult if someone tells you they think you’re wrong. You’re free to argue why I’m wrong too. No offense taken whatsoever.
PS: The definition of marriage you gave in the linked post would be the equivalent of me saying that the definition of a corporation is: an institution which fosters
1) making lots of money,
2) doing what you love to do, and
3) hiring lots of people.
Those can be arguments for the benefits of setting up a “corporation”, just as your 3 points can be arguments for the benefits of a marriage. But those cannot be the defining characteristics or the legal definition of the thing.
The threefold purpose of marriage being mutual aid, comfort, and support, the avoidance of fornication, and the raising of children has been Christian doctrine for thousands of years. Christian doctrine obviously doesn’t include SSM (marriage, as described by Christ, involves a man and a woman leaving their parents and cleaving unto one another in the procreative act; procreation is not a purpose of marriage, but the procreative act is a necessary element of marriage), but the law that American law is based on is built on a foundation that explicitly recognizes Tom’s factors; American law mostly dropped the description of the reasons, but kept the substance.
There’s a pretty substantial difference between thousands of years of Christian doctrine and the hippy view. Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the SSM debate has been watching Christians abandon Christian doctrine where it might be seen to provide aid and comfort to the heathen.
lol :)
I don’t think AIG was referring to infidelity, but to the common phenomenon of open non-monogamy, even between “committed couples.” No doubt this occurs with straight couples –though I’d wager the numbers are tiny — but is this marriage? Single-sex and also not monogamous? Where’s the marriage part? We’ve been taught to see gay marriage advocates as mainstream types trying to create traditional families, and who may even have a little something to teach the rest of us about healthy relationships. These are not lessons I would want my husband to learn.
More reading: here, here, here, here, and elsewhere. You can google it.