I have followed a few links from here and I've seen that you've discussed this issue in a similar venue to this one before. To your credit, you address many of the things that are my main arguments when I discuss the issue with less eloquent conservatives than yourself: perhaps most importantly the issue of "Marriage was already expanded to include interracial couples; how is this philosophically different?" I am also glad to see that your arguments are not based on Christian principles, as the plurality of anti-gay-marriage arguments I've heard elsewhere are. (And since the USA isn't supposed to make any laws respecting an establishment of religion...)
However, I have a bit to say about some of your other points:
...in the few countries where gay marriage or even the equivalent of civil unions is allowed, marriage has further dissipated...
I don't believe that that indicates that legal gay marriage causes a dissipation in marriage on the whole--it is entirely possible that that cause/effect relationship is backwards. (If people don't care as much about marriage, then it's reasonable to expect they'd be more likely to allow same-sex couples to do it.) I'm not saying the relationship is necessarily backwards, I'm just saying it's not necessarily forwards, either. It may be one third thing is causing both of those effects, or it may be completely coincidental--a theory which would be supported by the fact that Massachusetts, where gay marriage was legalized, has the lowest divorce rate in the country.
If it is arbitrary and unduly restrictive to maintain that marriage is between two people, a man and a woman, then why is it not also arbitrary to maintain that marriage is between two people?
I would like to posit that I have absolutely no problem with supporting group marriages as a viable form of marriage. I do not often discuss it because it's politically bad mojo, but I believe that it behooves me to do so as long as I'm responding to your post. Decades ago, there was a fight for interracial marriage, and people supporting that idea may well have had the same view about gay marriage. It is my hope that gay marriage sees legality within the next two decades, and polygamy follows in several more.
...marriage properly understood is not about individuals in intimacy with each other but the family as a unit...
I'm not sure if that's true, but I'm willing to grant it for the sake of argument. Having done so, though, I still fail to see how that leads into an exclusion of gays. Gay couples can adopt, just like straight couples (and I don't think many would argue that a straight couple with an adopted child is less worthy of the mantle 'family' than one with a biological cild.) It may even someday come to pass that gay couples can conceive children fo their own--perhaps by way of inserting DNA from one woman's egg cell into another woman's egg cell.
they have found that a man and a woman, raising a child, is better than the other combinations....
If, then, households with both genders occupying parental roles function better than households with only one, should not only two gender households be allowed?
I do not see how this can be a viable argument against gay marriage unless you also purport to make single-parenting unlawful.
(edited to fix a couple typoes and clarify a couple phrases)
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-11-12 06:24 am (UTC)However, I have a bit to say about some of your other points:
...in the few countries where gay marriage or even the equivalent of civil unions is allowed, marriage has further dissipated...
I don't believe that that indicates that legal gay marriage causes a dissipation in marriage on the whole--it is entirely possible that that cause/effect relationship is backwards. (If people don't care as much about marriage, then it's reasonable to expect they'd be more likely to allow same-sex couples to do it.) I'm not saying the relationship is necessarily backwards, I'm just saying it's not necessarily forwards, either. It may be one third thing is causing both of those effects, or it may be completely coincidental--a theory which would be supported by the fact that Massachusetts, where gay marriage was legalized, has the lowest divorce rate in the country.
If it is arbitrary and unduly restrictive to maintain that marriage is between two people, a man and a woman, then why is it not also arbitrary to maintain that marriage is between two people?
I would like to posit that I have absolutely no problem with supporting group marriages as a viable form of marriage. I do not often discuss it because it's politically bad mojo, but I believe that it behooves me to do so as long as I'm responding to your post. Decades ago, there was a fight for interracial marriage, and people supporting that idea may well have had the same view about gay marriage. It is my hope that gay marriage sees legality within the next two decades, and polygamy follows in several more.
...marriage properly understood is not about individuals in intimacy with each other but the family as a unit...
I'm not sure if that's true, but I'm willing to grant it for the sake of argument. Having done so, though, I still fail to see how that leads into an exclusion of gays. Gay couples can adopt, just like straight couples (and I don't think many would argue that a straight couple with an adopted child is less worthy of the mantle 'family' than one with a biological cild.) It may even someday come to pass that gay couples can conceive children fo their own--perhaps by way of inserting DNA from one woman's egg cell into another woman's egg cell.
they have found that a man and a woman, raising a child, is better than the other combinations....
If, then, households with both genders occupying parental roles function better than households with only one, should not only two gender households be allowed?
I do not see how this can be a viable argument against gay marriage unless you also purport to make single-parenting unlawful.
(edited to fix a couple typoes and clarify a couple phrases)