Marriage Debate

[Earthborn]

Can people who undergo sex changes get married? If a man surgically becomes a woman, can he then marry a man?

Depends on whether she can change her gender registration from "M" to "F". Some countries and some jurisdiction allow this, others do not. And there is also a variety of criteria for allowing it.

Seems to me we'd have to have a very firm and restrictive definition of "man" and "woman" before we could even consider which of them should be allowed to get married.

'Luckily' we do have such a definition: anyone registered by the government as "M" is a man, anyone registered as "F" is a woman, regardless of biology or identity.

 

[BPSCG]

Can people who undergo sex changes get married?

There's no such thing. If you have the same combination of chromosomes you had when you were born, you're the same sex. Everything else is just extensive plastic surgery and hormone injections.

I'm in favor of gay marriage. I figure they can't hurt the "institution" any more than heteros have, and they're certainly not going to hurt me in any way.

Slingblade gets a ten/ten on the common sense test.

 

[Tricky]

Or finding a better balance between anti-discrimination laws and religious freedoms, including the freedom to believe that homosexuality is sinful. I can see why faithbased adoption agencies object to being forced to treat homosexual couples the same as heterosexual ones, and I think they should have the freedom to set their own criteria for what they consider good parents. But the issue is a seperate one from same sex civil marriage.

I agree, which is why the argument is worthless. There is zero chance that faith-based organizations are going to be forced to help gays adopt, unless of course, they were receiving government funding. Then they can either give up their claim to moral superiority, or they can give up the funding.

My point was that the churches look to be more in need of moral fiber than the potential gay parents.

In the Netherlands we have civil marriage regardless of sex or gender, but we also have legal protections for religious people who object to same sex marriage. Faith-based adoption agencies are under no obligation to give children to parents who are not good parents according to the agency's own criteria. Since people don't have a right to a child, adoption agencies almost always have a religious or ideological basis, and judging whether people will be good parents is a value judgement that can't be made on objective criteria, I think this is how it should be.

I agree that adoption agencies should not give children to people who whould not be "good" parents, but there must be some objective standards by which that decision has made and they must be available to the married couple in order that they can understand, and perhaps change the things that got them excluded. For example, if the couple raised pit bulls in the living room, they could agree to stop doing this. If gays were being systematically discriminated against, it would be hard to cover up.

There is also no obligation for churches to carry out same sex marriages (it has never been possible to obtain a civil marriage through a church ceramony. Church marriage and civil marriage have always been strictly seperated) and there is also no obligation for civil servants to carry out same sex civil marriages if they morally object to such marriage (in that case city hall must appoint a different civil servant to do the job).

Maybe that's true there. It hasn't always been the case here. Only in the last hundred years or so have there been good records kept of marriage by the government. My mom used to work for Social Security and she was occasionally bringing home a case where the only record of marriage was an entry in a bible, but those people were granted coverage. Then there's the case of "common law marriages" which are legal in many states.

 

[pgwenthold]

I'm in favor of gay marriage. I figure they can't hurt the "institution" any more than heteros have, and they're certainly not going to hurt me in any way.

My feelings as well.

I usually figure that gay people can't do any more damage to the institution of marriage any more than the lying, cheaters whores who married my brother have done.

Here are people who have done demonstratable harm to the institution, and they are allowed to remarry.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

There's no such thing. If you have the same combination of chromosomes you had when you were born, you're the same sex. Everything else is just extensive plastic surgery and hormone injections.
Slingblade gets a ten/ten on the common sense test.

Please tell me what a sex a person born with only a single X chromosome is. Please tell me what sex a person born with X chromosomes and one Y is. There are genetic conditions which can cause a person born with an X and a Y to never develop any male primary or secondary sexual characteristics. What sex is that person?

 

[BPSCG]

Please tell me what a sex a person born with only a single X chromosome is. Please tell me what sex a person born with X chromosomes and one Y is. There are genetic conditions which can cause a person born with an X and a Y to never develop any male primary or secondary sexual characteristics. What sex is that person?

I have no idea. Please tell me how giving that person hormone injections and cutting off various parts of his/her body changes his/her sex.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

I have no idea.

You just siad that a person's chromosomes determine their sex. In order to be consistent, you must explain what the sex of a person who does not fall into the standard classifications is, and on what basis that descision is made.

Please tell me how giving that person hormone injections and cutting off various parts of his/her body changes his/her sex.

A person's sex is a social classification. If a person goes to great lgenths to have society recognize a change in their sex, then that's their right. A person born with only an X chromosome is no more genetically female than either of us, and that person will require hormone injections and cutting off various parts of his/her body to appear female.

 

[Forty-Two]

I'm getting really sick of the whole "children need a father and a mother" arguement being used to advocated heterosexual-only unions. Marriage is about much more than just procreation. Sure, I'm looking forward to having kids with my husband, and while it factored heavily into my decision to marry him, it wasn't the only or even the most significant reason I had for marrying him.

I find it disturbing that this view on marriage reduces a powerful interpersonal relationship to the act of breeding.

I don't want to create a strawman, since no one has explicitly made a connection between these two positions, but it strikes the same chord with me as those who believe women should treat themselves as pre-pregnant. Yes, the biological imperative is to reproduce, but we're more than just breeding stock.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

I find it disturbing that this view on marriage reduces a powerful interpersonal relationship to the act of breeding.

I don't want to create a strawman, since no one has explicitly made a connection between these two positions,

...snip..

It is not at all a straw-man since when Hardenbergh was asked what are the good arguments s/he pointed he/she said:

I thought the article, "Do Moms and Dads Matter?" was a very good article.

http://www.marriagedebate.com/pdf/Do_Moms_Dads_Matter.pdf

...snip...

 

[Earthborn]

Please tell me how giving that person hormone injections and cutting off various parts of his/her body changes his/her sex.

An individual's sex is defined by his/her primary and secondary sexual characteristics. Please explain how one can change an individual's primary and secondary sexual characteristics without changing his/her sex.

A person's sex is a social classification.

No, the social classification is called "gender", not "sex".

 

[Hardenbergh]

It is not at all a straw-man since when Hardenbergh was asked what are the good arguments s/he pointed he/she said:

You're right, I should have said that all the articles were very good. In other words, I don't have time here at work to wade through all the articles. You're all welcome to do the reading on your own. I just linked to a couple of articles. There are many.

 

[HeavyAaron]

This is the motivation behind all homophobia. It is a rather complex subject and I am writing a book on it (not just applied to homophobia, though).

You will arrive at the same conclusion if you think about the issue long enough. The evidence is quite simple:

1) Gay marriage would not in any way affect traditional marriage except in the way people view the institution of marriage.
2) Such an effect would logically either be positive or negative.
3) If the effect was to be positive, nobody would oppose it.
4) Therefore the effect is presumed to be negative by opponents of gay marriage.
5) All but one function of traditional marriage that could possibly be undermined by gay marriage can already be undermined by traditional marriage (such as couples professing how much they love each other, raising children, etc). In other words, gay marriage could NOT logically harm these functions of traditional marriage.
6) The remaining function of traditional marriage is to separate those that are married from those that are not -- giving benefits to those that are married. This fact is indisputable.
7) This last function CAN be harmed by allowing gay marriage, because it lets more people ("fags" and "homos" and "dykes", to boot!) into the elite group of "married couples."
8) Therefore, anyone opposing gay marriage must be opposing it for the reason I put forth. Or at least, anyone who isn't a moron and opposes it, because only morons would argue that the functions in point 5) actually would be undermined by gay marriage.

1) Do you mean effect traditional marriageS? Otherwise I don't know what you mean.

2) This part is patentantly absurd. I know of no one who believes that there would only be a singular effect and it would be objectively positive or negative. Surely there would be countless effects, some of them known and others unknown. Some would have positive effects, some negative effects, and some neutral effects and most effects would not be able to be objectively catagorized. Perhaps you meant on balance it'd be positive or negative (and you've forgotten nuetral.) But I think it's reasonable to believe different people would come to different conclustions about the balance.

3) If everyone agreed that benifits would outweigh costs, then yes, only irrational people would oppose it. Therefore we can conclude that if there exists a single rational person who opposes SSM then not everyone agrees that benifits outweigh costs. But then, we already knew that.

4) I'll accept this with the modification that opponents of SSM believe that a high probability exists that costs would exceed benifits.

5) In order to make a claim such as "all but one of the functions of marriage" first one must exhaustively list the functions of marriage. I don't claim to know them all. Do you?

6) I will retain the right to dispute your "indisputable fact" until number 5 is addressed. In fact I have a hard time accepting that dividing the general populace into two classes, the married and the unmarried, IS a function of marriage; nevermind the only one that is harmed. Ask any couple to list the top 5 reasons why they married. I highly doubt you'd get snobbery in any of the lists. Where did you get that from?

7) Umm... still need to believe that it's a function of marriage first.

8) I cannot accept your conclusion before accepting all the premises and that the conclusion logically follows from them. You're a long way from that yet.

It seems terribly arrogant to me, that you believe you can divine the thoughts of so many different and diverse people and find that they actually think something so simplistic and elitist. Perhaps you should ask them?

Aaron

 

[ImaginalDisc]

An individual's sex is defined by his/her primary and secondary sexual characteristics.

Really? Then what sex is a person born with an X and Y chromosome, but who never develops male genitals?

Please explain how one can change an individual's primary and secondary sexual characteristics without changing his/her sex.

According to BPSCG a person bown with an X and a Y who used to have male primary sexual chareristics, who have had them swapped out isn't female. In my opinion, they call themselves anything they like. The only time the details are any of my buisiness if if we're going to go to bed together.

No, the social classification is called "gender", not "sex".

Not according to my driver's lisence or my employer.

 

[slingblade]

There's no such thing. If you have the same combination of chromosomes you had when you were born, you're the same sex. Everything else is just extensive plastic surgery and hormone injections.

I did misuse my terms, you're right. I apologize. Would "gender reassignment" be a more precise term than "sex change?"

Slingblade gets a ten/ten on the common sense test.

Thank you! I'm quite humbled by that, and not a little pleased you think so.


The reason for my post was merely to point out that few things in this debate are as black and white as they may seem to some.

 

[BPSCG]

I did misuse my terms, you're right. I apologize. Would "gender reassignment" be a more precise term than "sex change?"

Thinking about that... I'd be inclined to say "yes," inasmuch as gender is a societal construct, while sex is a biological one. It raises the question (not "begs the question") of who does the "reassigning."

 

[Hardenbergh]

I just received a link to this article in an e-mail. I'll caution everyone that the word "queer" was used so I'll have to try to condition myself to the word.
Apparently, even homosexuals don't find the word offensive anymore.

Consider Anthony Giddens, the most influential sociologist in Britain, and arguably all of Europe. Giddens’s 1992 book, The Transformation of Intimacy, with its famous notion of “the pure relationship,” is the text most frequently invoked by European demographers to explain trends like parental cohabitation and same-sex unions.

Giddens’s point is that modern marriage is slowly being divested of connections with anything beyond the purely emotional bonding of adults. It used to be that the love of husband and wife was only part of the picture. Men and women were held together by love, but also by economic interdependence, and a shared commitment to parenthood. But gradually, says Giddens, the marriage alliance is becoming less and less about a shared project of prosperity and parenting. Increasingly, marriage is being reduced to a strictly emotional connection between two adults: “the pure relationship.”

For Europe’s demographers, Giddens’s idea of the pure relationship makes sense of why so many parents now avoid marriage. When having a child turns into an experiment that might possibly lead to marriage, rather than a reason to get married in the first place, you know that marriage has been narrowed into an identification with the adult love relationship.Gay marriage fits in here, as well. When gay-marriage advocates define marriage, they carefully confine themselves to the adult love relationship, insisting that parenthood has no intrinsic connection to marriage. So, for Europe’s demographers, gay unions fit into a series of changes that signal the unraveling of marriage as an institution designed to keep mothers and fathers together for the sake of their children. The pattern makes sense in light of Giddens’s notion of “the pure relationship.”

Zombie Killers

 

[Earthborn]

Really? Then what sex is a person born with an X and Y chromosome, but who never develops male genitals?

If that person did develop female genitalia, that person is a woman. Chromosomes have nothing to do with it. Before people knew about chromosomes they already classified people as "man" or "woman" based on primary sex characteristics (genitalia) and secondary sex characteristics (beard, breasts, etc...)

The International Olympic Committee is the only group of people who ever defined "man" and "woman" based on chromosomes, until they stopped doing that in 2000 when they finally realised that chromosomes are a rather unreliable way to determine sex.

Not according to my driver's lisence or my employer.

If your driver's license says "sex" but mentions your gender, or if it says "gender" but mentions your sex, you have a good reason to complain. Of course for most people there is a strong correlation between their sex and their gender, which is why there is often so much confusion between the terms.

 

[ImaginalDisc]

If that person did develop female genitalia, that person is a woman. Chromosomes have nothing to do with it. Before people knew about chromosomes they already classified people as "man" or "woman" based on primary sex characteristics (genitalia) and secondary sex characteristics (beard, breasts, etc...)

And before people knew about the nature of the solar systen they called Venus and Mars "wandering stars". It turns out that when we learn knew things about how the world works, we need to revise our simplistic classifications of things.

The International Olympic Committee is the only group of people who ever defined "man" and "woman" based on chromosomes, until they stopped doing that in 2000 when they finally realised that chromosomes are a rather unreliable way to determine sex.

If your driver's license says "sex" but mentions your gender, or if it says "gender" but mentions your sex, you have a good reason to complain. Of course for most people there is a strong correlation between their sex and their gender, which is why there is often so much confusion between the terms.

Most people, fine. I'm not talking about them. We've been discussiong exceptional people for several posts now.

Please tell me what sex XXY, X, and XXX people are, and what sex XY people who never develop male primary sexual and secondary sexual traits are.

 

[slingblade]

Why shouldn’t children with intersex be raised in a “third gender”? We advocate assigning a boy or girl gender because intersex is not, and will never be, a discrete biological category any more than male or female is, and because assigning an “intersex” gender would unnecessarily traumatize the child.

http://www.isna.org/faq/gender_assignment

Lots of interesting articles and opinions at this site.

 

[Hardenbergh]

Here's another article that I received in the same e-mail. Maggie is right on the ball.

While it may be inconceivable for many to imagine America treating churches that oppose gay marriage the same as racists who opposed interracial marriage in the 1960s, just consider the fate of the Boy Scouts. The Scouts have paid dearly for asserting their 1st Amendment right not to be forced to accept gay scoutmasters. In retaliation, the Scouts have been denied access to public parks and boat slips, charitable donation campaigns and other government benefits. The endgame of gay activists is to strip the Boy Scouts (and by extension, any other organization that morally opposes gay marriage) of its tax-exempt status under both federal and state law.

That churches can be made the collateral casualties of the same-sex marriage campaign is important to grasp. At a minimum it gives partial answer to the view of indifference that asks how gay marriage hurts anyone. When judges treat your religious community, its schools and its charities on par with the purveyors of racial hatred, it will no longer be necessary to ask. But then, it will also be too late.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0605260218may26,1,1440466.story