Marriage Debate

[ImaginalDisc]

For what kind of job might it actually matter?

Off hand, the military still prohibits females in combat.

 

[Random]

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





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

I read these quotes and thought to myself, “And this would be a bad thing, why?” Bigotry and intolerance are things that should be opposed, but “People will be prejudiced against us for our prejudices!” is not a slogan that would have me storming the barricades.

“…treating churches that oppose gay marriage the same as racists that opposed interracial marriage in the 1960’s…” Why not? They are both positions based on irrational prejudices, why should they not be treated the same.

To complaints about discrimination against the boy scouts I say, good. I would hate to think that an organization that condoned bigotry was getting a free ride.

I have this problem a lot when debating the legalization of same-sex marriage with its opponents. We both have the same list of probable consequences, only I start with “Wouldn’t it be great if…” and they start with “Wouldn’t it be terrible if…”

 

[Earthborn]

Off hand, the military still prohibits females in combat.

So if I understand you correctly, it only matters when an employer wants to blatantly discriminate? Well, I won't argue with that and just say that I think people should be treated equally regardless of sex or gender.

After all, if all militaries in the world would also prohibit males in combat, the world would be a more peaceful place.

 

[HeavyAaron]

Employment discrimination based on sex is allowed in some cases for even private employers. A common example is if you havea female part to play in a movie, it is legal to restrict the applicants to women. (This also works for race and age discrimination in employment.)

Aaron

 

[Hardenbergh]

(This is an aside but it would therefore seem that you do not wish to engage in a discussion.)

Will you actually answer my question?

I'll put it this way. What do the articles not have to do with the issue?

 

[ImaginalDisc]

So if I understand you correctly, it only matters when an employer wants to blatantly discriminate? Well, I won't argue with that and just say that I think people should be treated equally regardless of sex or gender.

After all, if all militaries in the world would also prohibit males in combat, the world would be a more peaceful place.

Wait a second, I am not supporting the discimination, I am merely pointing that it is the case. I'm advocating that people be allowed to determine their sex for themselves.

 

[wolfgirl]

I'll put it this way. What do the articles not have to do with the issue?

I think the point is that you are not really discussing anything but instead only posting articles and things for people to read that supposedly make your points for you. People are asking you to speak for yourself instead. We here are used to (and prefer) having actual discussions with people as opposed to just being handed a reading list. Make your points for yourself.

 

[Hardenbergh]

I read these quotes and thought to myself, “And this would be a bad thing, why?” Bigotry and intolerance are things that should be opposed, but “People will be prejudiced against us for our prejudices!” is not a slogan that would have me storming the barricades.

“…treating churches that oppose gay marriage the same as racists that opposed interracial marriage in the 1960’s…” Why not? They are both positions based on irrational prejudices, why should they not be treated the same.

Kinda looks like we've reached an impasse.

 

[Darat]

I'll put it this way. What do the articles not have to do with the issue?

They do not address the issue of why people of the same sex should not be able to marry.

 

[rocketdodger]

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

Yes.

2) This part is patentantly absurd. I know of no one who believes that there would only be a singular effect ..snip..

Yes I am talking about the net effect, and yes everyone comes to different conclusions.

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

That is basically the first part of my argument, yes.

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?

No I don't, but that doesn't prevent me from making such a claim. It is based on common sense. If you would like to disprove that claim you may try, and I will modify my views if you succeed. The fact is, every function of traditional marriage that I can think of (besides the classifier one) is not damaged by homosexual marriage. Perhaps a small percent of the population can think of additional functions of marriage, but that is irrelevant. I am talking about the masses of people here, not the exceptional ones.

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.

Do you participate in society at all? If yes, then when was the last time you filled out an important form and didn't have to mark MARRIED or SINGLE? We would like to think that the classifier of "marriage" is benign, and it should be, but unfortunately it is not -- married couples get MANY benefits from society that single individuals DO NOT.

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?

Ok perhaps I was a bit blunt. Let me put it this way -- the reasons why most opponents of gay marriage think that it will detract from traditional marriage are all logical contradictions. Upon clearing all such contradictions, the only reason that will remain is the classifier one.

So you are right, there are many many people that oppose gay marriage for other reasons. But, they are all wrong, and upon being corrected, they will either have to change their views or else adopt the bigot argument.

 

[Scot C. Trypal]

Ah, a gay marriage thread! I am required by law to comment .

42

Just to clarify my earlier assertation that I'm concerned by arguments that reduce marriage to its procreative activities: I don't have any issue with people who do get married solely for procreative reasons. I don't have any issue with people who do it only for financial reasons (though if they were friends of mine, I'd be disappointed and hoped they'd receive some sort of emotional benefit). I do have an issue with other people claiming that any of these reasons should be the benchmark for the legal validity of my marriage.

What’s more is that many same-sex couples do want marriage rights and, even more so, obligations for this reason of procreation and child rearing. They also want it because they are financially entangled and interdependent. It’s not nearly just an emotional connection for them, even if that was the matter. I’ve seen nothing turn a “marriage is an oppressive institution” feminist lesbian into a homemaker desperate for marriage rights faster than the prospect of becoming a parent.

I know for a fact, becoming parents was the reason if I did all I could to legally protect my stay-at-home parent from me, if I (as unimaginable as it is) betray my vows, or from the loss of me. Now our kids and our financial interdependence are the reasons to ask for legal marriage. We, and many gays, already have the emotional connection stuff and it was achieved with no law involved.

So why would Maggie instead focus on what gays already have, and then claim they don’t really want what they want (or that they really wouldn’t want it if they knew what it was )?

Seems to me this Maggie has some strongly help assumptions about gays and lesbians of which I’d doubt she’d be willing to let go. Funny that she also seems to like to think of herself as defending marriage, family, mothers and fathers, when her aim is to attack marriages, keep people from legal marriage, debase their families and the roles of so many mothers and fathers, just as long as they’re gay.

Odd how PCness can make anti-family into "pro-family".

Hardenbergh, Can I ask you to satisfy my typical curiosities about those holding your position?

1--Do you not care about or see no value in the sanctity of the marriages of same-sex couples? If not, why does the value of all that involved (the fidelity, commitment, sacrifice, family ties and so on) diminish so much based on the geometry of organs?

2--Do you not want gays to be legally responsible to keep their promises to their spouses and all the extended family involved?

3--Do you think, if a family’s breadwinner is a woman, that their homemaker should only have a claim to the income, SS, and health insurance if the homemaker is a man?

4--Do you want gays to be able to abandon the children they’ve raised and agreed to raise with no legal consequence?

5--If you think marriage is beneficial for heterosexual couples, do you think it’s beneficial for homosexual couples?

6--Do you think gays don’t have marriages based on their procreation and raising of children and financial interdependence?

7--What should gays do with their lives, with that nature to couple up and make a family that most humans have as one of their strongest drives? Do you think gays should be encouraged to marry the opposite sex? If so, would you let your daughter do so?

I simply have to wonder, and I’d, in advance, apologize for any incorrect assumptions I’ve made with my questions.

 

[HeavyAaron]

Yes.

Okay, so assertion 1) has been clarified to:

"Gay marriage would not in any way affect traditional marriages except in the way people view the institution of marriage."

That's granting too much. That's asserting the conclusion. So I cannot grant you this as opponents of SSM do not grant this.

Yes I am talking about the net effect, and yes everyone comes to different conclusions.

Great. So that's a tautology. Any effect would be on net a positive, a negative, or neither. That contains no information, so I'll discard it.

[/QUOTE]That is basically the first part of my argument, yes.

Okay good. Here we agree. Opponents of SSM, or anything else, oppose it generally because they believe the costs outweigh the benifits. I should state, upon further reflection, that this isn't always true. Selfish people will be more concerned with personal costs/benifits instead of total cost/benifits. I'm not sure if this quibble applies here or not.

No I don't, but that doesn't prevent me from making such a claim. It is based on common sense. If you would like to disprove that claim you may try, and I will modify my views if you succeed. The fact is, every function of traditional marriage that I can think of (besides the classifier one) is not damaged by homosexual marriage. Perhaps a small percent of the population can think of additional functions of marriage, but that is irrelevant. I am talking about the masses of people here, not the exceptional ones.

Okay, sure you can CLAIM anything you like. But if you want me to be persuaded by it you'd better list them. I'm not about to grant you assertions that go unnamed.

Do you participate in society at all? If yes, then when was the last time you filled out an important form and didn't have to mark MARRIED or SINGLE? We would like to think that the classifier of "marriage" is benign, and it should be, but unfortunately it is not -- married couples get MANY benefits from society that single individuals DO NOT.

And I agree this is unjust. I would fix it by removing any government recognition of marriage. Your solution doesn't fix it. There would still be singles discriminated against.

Ok perhaps I was a bit blunt. Let me put it this way -- the reasons why most opponents of gay marriage think that it will detract from traditional marriage are all logical contradictions. Upon clearing all such contradictions, the only reason that will remain is the classifier one.

This is the assertion you sought to prove. I am not yet persuaded. Granted I don't expect you to be able to show that all opponants' arguments are contradictions. After all, that's a potentially infinate set. But you are the one who put this forward. And for your conclusion to follow your assertions I believe you would need to show this.

So you are right, there are many many people that oppose gay marriage for other reasons. But, they are all wrong, and upon being corrected, they will either have to change their views or else adopt the bigot argument.

How about this argument I've put forth before:

This is, admittedly a cheat because it's not talking about aggrigate costs and aggrigate benifits, but personal ones. (Which requires the earlier selfishness.) Because of the government benifits of marriage (which you've referred to and I concur exist) each additional couple who marries increases the cost of government and decreases its tax revenues on the whole. Any shortfall has to be made up from additional taxes or decreased outlays, some of which will fall upon me. Allowing additional couples to marry thus will increase my taxes and/or decrease my government benifits. Therefore it is not in my personal best interest to allow these marriages. According to you this is either 1) WRONG or 2) BIGOTED. I claim it is neither. Now, that's not to say it's a good argument for keeping SSM outlawed. But it is a counter example for you.

Aaron

 

[Scot C. Trypal]

How about this argument I've put forth before:

This is, admittedly a cheat because it's not talking about aggrigate costs and aggrigate benifits, but personal ones. (Which requires the earlier selfishness.) Because of the government benifits of marriage (which you've referred to and I concur exist) each additional couple who marries increases the cost of government and decreases its tax revenues on the whole. Any shortfall has to be made up from additional taxes or decreased outlays, some of which will fall upon me. Allowing additional couples to marry thus will increase my taxes and/or decrease my government benifits. Therefore it is not in my personal best interest to allow these marriages. According to you this is either 1) WRONG or 2) BIGOTED. I claim it is neither. Now, that's not to say it's a good argument for keeping SSM outlawed. But it is a counter example for you.

Aaron

I'd say it’s 1. wrong, because it ignores other economic considerations that will affect you, and only looks at taxes. Not only that, some people pay more in taxes yearly because they get married, and this would be an argument for gay marriage for those couples.

Off the top of my head, some other possible considerations you must add to your personal costs:

--Abandonment of unmarried homemakers adds more to welfare costs.
--Abandonment of children with unmarried caregivers adds more to welfare costs.
--The same above goes for death in place of abandonment. Say, for the cliché case of the grown siblings getting the estate of a gay partner, leaving them penniless, because siblings are considered closer kin when no will or marriage is in place.
--Right now you pay gays to be on welfare because the law treats them as near asset-less single parents with no income. They could not get this welfare, food stamps, tax credits or Medicare if they were married to their breadwinner, who does make a lot of money and does have assets.
--Keep them from taking advantage of government grants. I’ve had to sign a bunch of grantees in my dealings with government that another company or individual had no connection to me as a family member or “spouse”. I could create a company for my partner and none of my grantees would apply; I’m sure some have.
--Insured people aren’t getting medical care on a costly emergency basis only, for which they cannot pay. If they are married they can get on their breadwinner’s insurance.
--I know it’s intangible but I think it’s clear there is a social gain you get by encouraging monogamy for all couples, if not in saved health insurance for lower std rates, then in the benefits of more stable families.
--Marriage makes people liable for their spouse’s debts; they then aren’t as likely to fall to you if the spouse defaults.

In fact, I see someone has tried to calculate it all out. I’ve not read them in detail but I see these two studies actually show a net savings for allowance of marriage rights for same-sex couples:

"Equal Rights, Fiscal Responsibility: The Impact of A.B. 205 on California’s Budget," by M. V. Lee Badgett, Ph.D., IGLSS, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, and R. Bradley Sears, J.D., Williams Project, UCLA School of Law, University of California, Los Angeles, May 2003

"Supporting Families, Saving Funds: A Fiscal Analysis of New Jersey’s Domestic Partnership Act," by Badgett and Sears with Suzanne Goldberg, J.D., Rutgers School of Law-Newark, December 2003

 

[rocketdodger]

How about this argument I've put forth before: ..snip..

Okay you got me, I apologize for not completely clarifying my argument.

I am referring to people who support heterosexual marriage and oppose homosexual marriage.

I thought this would be assumed. Sorry for any confusion.

 

[HeavyAaron]

Okay you got me, I apologize for not completely clarifying my argument.

I am referring to people who support heterosexual marriage and oppose homosexual marriage.

I thought this would be assumed. Sorry for any confusion.

I was not confused. I understood your assumption. I'm just not among that group. And I presume I'm the target audience for these debates. Most people are either ardently in support of legalizing these marriages or passing laws to further entrench non-legal status. I'm open to argument and debate, as I know my option will never be on the table.

It just so happens that on these forums when someone launches a status-quo position on SSM their position is quickly attacked. When I see an inconsistant pro SSM position it's left untouched, so I usually find myself pointing out the inconsistancies on that side of the debate.

Aaron

 

[HeavyAaron]

I'd say it’s 1. wrong, because it ignores other economic considerations that will affect you, and only looks at taxes. Not only that, some people pay more in taxes yearly because they get married, and this would be an argument for gay marriage for those couples.

The "marriage penalty" to which you refer hits a much smaller group than the marriage benifits in taxes, and the government is trying to eliminate any marriage penalties in the tax code while leaving the marriage benifits.

Off the top of my head, some other possible considerations you must add to your personal costs:

--Abandonment of unmarried homemakers adds more to welfare costs.

Unless you are proposing SSM cannot end in SSD this is a nonsequiter.

[/QUOTE]--Abandonment of children with unmarried caregivers adds more to welfare costs.[/QUOTE]

Child support does not depend upon marriage as it stands.

--The same above goes for death in place of abandonment. Say, for the cliché case of the grown siblings getting the estate of a gay partner, leaving them penniless, because siblings are considered closer kin when no will or marriage is in place.

If SSM goes through then this would be an additional government cost due to survivor's benifits in SSI.

--Right now you pay gays to be on welfare because the law treats them as near asset-less single parents with no income. They could not get this welfare, food stamps, tax credits or Medicare if they were married to their breadwinner, who does make a lot of money and does have assets.

If they are unethical enough to take advantage of this now, I doubt they'd marry to get rid of it. I'm sure there are unmarried heterosexuals who stay unmarried for just this reason.

--Keep them from taking advantage of government grants. I’ve had to sign a bunch of grantees in my dealings with government that another company or individual had no connection to me as a family member or “spouse”. I could create a company for my partner and none of my grantees would apply; I’m sure some have.

Honestly, I have no clue as to what you're referring.

--Insured people aren’t getting medical care on a costly emergency basis only, for which they cannot pay. If they are married they can get on their breadwinner’s insurance.

Umm... that money for the insurance comes from somewhere! TANSTAAFL. If the breadwinner works for the government then it comes from taxes, if it comes from a private employer than it comes from increased costs of that firm's product. Either way, I pay.

--I know it’s intangible but I think it’s clear there is a social gain you get by encouraging monogamy for all couples, if not in saved health insurance for lower std rates, then in the benefits of more stable families.

Again, the health insurance comes from somewhere. Monogamy certainly has its benifits. But does legal marriage offer better legal protection of monogamy than marriages that are not legally recognized? AFAIK, cheating is no longer recognized in the courts in dividing assets during divorse and such.

--Marriage makes people liable for their spouse’s debts; they then aren’t as likely to fall to you if the spouse defaults.

Only in some states. And regardless, this can be done through cosigning.

In fact, I see someone has tried to calculate it all out. I’ve not read them in detail but I see these two studies actually show a net savings for allowance of marriage rights for same-sex couples:

Do you have links for these articles? As it stands your arguing against my Devil's Advocate position, so I'm unlikely to spend much effort to find these, although I'd find them interesting.

For that matter the Devil's Advocate position really just has to show that it's possible for a rational person to believe that SSM is not in their own financial interest. And humbly, I submit that I've shown that much.

Aaron

 

[Upchurch]

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

{snip}

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

As a Boy Scout*, I'd just like to point out that the policy by the current leaders of BSA is absolutely antithetical to the mission and goal of the BSA. Issuing moral stands against homosexuality is out of scope for the BSA and fundamentally contradicts the 3rd through 6th and 12th Scout Laws.

There are not only "gay activists" and the ACLU, but also Boy Scouts themselves who are rightly fighting this policy. Don't confuse this policy with being in sync with the spirit of BSA. This policy comes from those within the BSA that have abused their position to force their biases against others.

eta: "Maggie" could only be "right on the ball" with this comparison if religious organizations were turning their backs on their core principles. Which, given what I know about Christianity, appears to indeed be the case.



* Or rather a former Boy Scout and current Eagle Scout. Eagle Scout is for life.

 

[thaiboxerken]

I thought the article

Did you want to give us specific examples of arguments that are "good" or are you just here to spam websites?

 

[thaiboxerken]

I find terms like "fags", "queers", "dykes" very offensive. In fact, it makes me cringe.

You might find those terms offensive, yet you still hate homosexuals. Your refusal to use derogatory terms doesn't change that.

 

[thaiboxerken]

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

She's wrong. The Boy Scouts don't get to use federal funds and property for the same reason that the KKK doesn't, they are a discriminatory group. They are free to discriminate, just not with public funding or support.