Marriage Debate

Upchurch said:
Why does the state have a lagitimate interest in creating more citizens when we are unable to take care of the ones we already have?
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This is the essence of my argument.

It is true that in theory SSM doesn't make sense if marriage is about raising children overall. But the fact of the matter is that this doesn't seem to be what marriage is about, at least not in the lawbooks.

Let me suggest the following compromise.

Allow SSM, but also add a "child-rearing marriage benefit package" to the laws. That way, everyone who wants to get married can, and those that need the benefits for "procreation" can get them.

My gut feeling? Those that oppose SSM would still oppose SSM -- they will find some other argument against it.
 
Ziggurat:
That's simply NOT equivalent, though. A same sex couple CANNOT produce a child of any kind. One person in a same sex couple can become pregnant, but ONLY through a relationship of some kind outside that couple (be it with another person or a fertility clinic). That's the facts. Therefore, the situation is simply NOT equivalent. It's not about natural conception being better, it's about a relationship which can produce conception at all being different from one that cannot. And same-sex relationships CANNOT produce children.
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Having just had a dinner last night where a bunch of these kids were scurrying all over the place, this strikes me as really odd.

Of course these kids were produced by these couples. Just like infertile heterosexual couples, they went to the fertility clinics as a couple (some clinics and donors wouldn’t help them unless they did), often times the non-genetic parent solely chose the donor, and often it’s was a relative of theirs. Sometimes the non-genetic parent did the insemination. Most of the couples are both legal parents of the child before the child’s egg is even fertilized. Those not adopted (about half) would undoubtedly not exist if these couplings did not occur.

So, doesn’t the state not have an interest in their existence? It certainly has a negative interest in marrying lesbians to their heterosexual donors (who may be strangers), or in marrying lesbians to gays (who are often their donors). But, to me, it clearly has an interest in keeping the parents responsible to each other and the children they create and mutually agree to raise.

True these kids are either genetically related to one or neither of people raising and responsible for them. But they do exist and though you are trying to focus on existence, you’re argument really relies on how they came into existence not if they exist. It seems you want to discriminate between children (and their families) based on their genetic makeup.
 
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Are you serious? Because forty years from now, we're going to need new citizens to take care of the citizens we already have who will be too old to do so, and we cannot get those new citizens by immigration alone. Because we don't want to suffer demographic collapse, because that spells doom for a country. Because we don't want to follow on the heels of Russia. Because while everyone knows where babies come from, it seems like people are forgetting where adults come from.
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Then isn’t it a positive that a group that once produced no future generation is beginning to do so?

Edited to say not really "no future generation", but gays are simply producing drastically more children recently.
 
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Ziggurat said:
I never said the state didn't have such other interests. In fact, I left the door open for you to introduce other state interests in marriage (and in a post above, actually suggested that advocates of SSM do exactly that), but you contented yourself with banging your head against the interest in procreation, rather than pursuing this alternate strategy which I really thought should have been obvious. But don't blame me because I didn't make your counterargument for you.
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You have got to be joking. I have been saying for pages and pages that the ability to breed is not the central issue and you're chidding me because I didn't start listing the alternatives for you? That is just down right dishonest and a dodge.

Answer the questions: why does the state does not have a legitimate interest in having more stable family units? Why does the state does not have a legitimate interest in having more child rearing environments made available for orphans and children in the foster care system? Why does the state not have a legitimate interest in creating more citizens when we are unable to take care of the ones we already have?

Ziggurat said:
Are you serious? Because forty years from now, we're going to need new citizens to take care of the citizens we already have who will be too old to do so, and we cannot get those new citizens by immigration alone. Because we don't want to suffer demographic collapse, because that spells doom for a country. Because we don't want to follow on the heels of Russia. Because while everyone knows where babies come from, it seems like people are forgetting where adults come from.
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Brilliant strategy, you have there. The ship is sinking, so lets put more passengers on it. :rolleyes:

What we need are productive members of society who are capable of taking care of the elderly as well as the young. Flooding an overwhelmed school system with undermotivated children only adds to the problem.

What we need to be doing is pushing the people we have to a position where they are capable of taking care of the elderly and the young. That means education which, as many anti-SSM advocates have been pointing out, works much better with stable households.
 
Scot C. Trypal said:
Of course these kids were produced by these couples. Just like infertile heterosexual couples, they went to the fertility clinics as a couple (some clinics and donors wouldn’t help them unless they did), often times the non-genetic parent solely chose the donor, and often it’s was a relative of theirs.
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I'm not trying to deny the significance of such acts, but there's still a difference. Just like there's a difference between a heterosexual couple conceiving their own child and one that goes to a surrogate mother, or between a couple that has their own child versus a couple that adopts. The difference doesn't necessarily make the bonds between parent and child any less meaningful, or less important, and the relationship with the child may indeed turn out to be the same, but the actual process is still different.

So, doesn’t the state not have an interest in their existence?
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Yes, it does. Just as it also has an interest in the existence of children born to single mothers, or even to heterosexual couples who aren't married. And as I've already said: there is a case to be made that same-sex marriage can promote the interests of the state in these matters. But the argument isn't automatic, and it doesn't follow axiomatically just because children can be involved in both same-sex and opposite-sex marriages.

Look, I know I'm sounding a bit like a heartless bastard on this. But the legal arguments involved are not supposed to hinge on fuzzy, emotional questions. They're supposed to be as clinical as we can make them.
 
Upchurch said:
You have got to be joking. I have been saying for pages and pages that the ability to breed is not the central issue and you're chidding me because I didn't start listing the alternatives for you? That is just down right dishonest and a dodge.
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No, Upchurch. You're still missing the argument, and like I told you, you're not going to be able to put up an effective counterargument until you actually understand the argument. What you were talking about is "issues" with marriage, and why people get married. But that's irrelevant. The issue is the state's interest in marriage: what motivates the state to extend a privilege to one subset of citizens? What benefit is derived? And you have NOT addressed that topic. "Love", for example, is not a state interest.

Answer the questions: why does the state does not have a legitimate interest in having more stable family units?
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Never said they didn't. But please, continue: what IS the state's interest in stable family units? How does providing SSM's promote this interest?

Why does the state does not have a legitimate interest in having more child rearing environments made available for orphans and children in the foster care system?
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Never said they didn't. Again: keep going with this argument. Is there a shortage of households available to take in orphans and foster children? If so, how big? How much of that shortage could be made up by same-sex couples? How do orphans and foster children who don't find good homes fare? How do they fare when placed in homes headed by same-sex couples? Those are the questions, and good answers to them can form the basis of an argument in favor of same-sex marriage.

Brilliant strategy, you have there. The ship is sinking, so lets put more passengers on it. :rolleyes:
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The problem has never been numbers, and on that point you're simply and completely WRONG. Your complaint is that we can't take care of the citizens we have. Well, that only makes any sense to begin with if you're talking about that proportion of the population which no longer works, and that, of course, is dominated by old people. But the problem of caring for the elderly only gets WORSE, not better, if you suffer demographic decline. You could have a population with only a single retiree and still have it unsupportable, if the workforce was also only one person. It's not about simple absolute numbers, the structure of the workforce matters too. And that structure gets top-heavy and unstable if the birth rate drops too low, as it is doing in a number of European countries. You want to see problems supporting retirees? Keep your eye on Europe in a few decades, you'll see some real fireworks.

What we need are productive members of society who are capable of taking care of the elderly as well as the young. Flooding an overwhelmed school system with undermotivated children only adds to the problem.
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Where did you ever get that idea? When, it our entire history, has the US ever suffered negative consequences from having too many children? You're simply inventing a problem out of thin air.

What we need to be doing is pushing the people we have to a position where they are capable of taking care of the elderly and the young.
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And that will work indefinitely into the future? Don't be stupid. In thirty to forty years, who's going to be doing that job? Largely people who aren't even born yet.
 
Hardenbergh said:
Heterosexual donors? Is that really what the world has come down to?
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Sure. When a culture expends effort to make a child-of-the-body more important than a child, then you have women who would rather get pregnant by proxy then consider raising a child that is not biologically theirs. Ain't it sad?
 
Ziggurat said:
No, Upchurch. You're still missing the argument, and like I told you, you're not going to be able to put up an effective counterargument until you actually understand the argument.
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You know, there was recently a thread about this where this was also a problem.

In fact, I admitted more or less on page 1 that no, I _didn't_ understand it, and perhaps someone should explain it to me.

16 pages later in thread, I still didn't understand it. 14 pages or whatever more in this thread, and we STILL aren't getting it.

Now, perhaps we are all really stupid. But after 30-odd pages of discussion, the fact that we still apparently don't understand the argument suggests to me that those making the argument haven't been very clear in what they are claiming.
 
pgwenthold said:
Now, perhaps we are all really stupid. But after 30-odd pages of discussion, the fact that we still apparently don't understand the argument suggests to me that those making the argument haven't been very clear in what they are claiming.
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I make no claims about my eloquence, but there have been a few people I would say who understood the argument I was making (such as Scot C. Trypal). So I don't think I'm completely inscrutable, though I'm sure I'm not an impressive example of lucidity either.

And I don't attribute this to stupidity either. But there's often a rigidity to people's thinking on particular topics: once you've decided on an issue, your thinking on the topic often just calcifies, and it becomes harder and harder to think about it in different terms. So one you decide you support same-sex marriage based on your answers to a particular set of questions, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that opposition must come from having different answers to those same questions, rather than to having a completely different set of questions to begin with. It's not an easy task to completely reframe a question you've already decided.
 
Was there any evidence provided that the state's interest in marriage is procreation? Maybe I missed it.
 
My understanding of the argument by progeny is:

1. Heterosexual couplings, unimpeded by infertility or birth control, are likely to result in the birth of children.
2. State recognition of a heterosexual coupling is necesssary to ensure that the possible resultant children will be maintained appropriately. This includes the ability to assign financial responsibility in the event the coupling is not permanent. This is good.
3. Homosexual couplings can only engender children by directed means. 4. State recognition of homosexual coupling will result in children being purposely engendered within a homosexual coupling. This is bad.

Is this right?
 
pgwenthold said:
You know, there was recently a thread about this where this was also a problem.

In fact, I admitted more or less on page 1 that no, I _didn't_ understand it, and perhaps someone should explain it to me.

16 pages later in thread, I still didn't understand it. 14 pages or whatever more in this thread, and we STILL aren't getting it.

Now, perhaps we are all really stupid. But after 30-odd pages of discussion, the fact that we still apparently don't understand the argument suggests to me that those making the argument haven't been very clear in what they are claiming.
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You know, maybe you're right. Maybe I just don't understand the argument, because everytime I address a different point I find out that that wasn't the argument either.

So, Zig. What exactly is your argument?
 
Upchurch said:
You know, maybe you're right. Maybe I just don't understand the argument, because everytime I address a different point I find out that that wasn't the argument either.

So, Zig. What exactly is your argument?
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I'll try to make it as simple as I can. In fact, I'll even go a step further, and tell you how to frame a counter-argument.

1) The state has an interest in promoting and supporting procreation (note the indefinite article is used for "interest" - that's caused confusion before), and can advance this interest through marriage.
2) Marriage is not a right. It is a privilege, with benefits provided or enforced by the state. As such, it does not need to be extended to everyone, or to every possible couple.
3) There is a difference between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples on the issue of procreation. Because there is a difference on this matter of state interest, treating the two differently is not unconstitutional.
4) There are costs associated with every benefit provided or enforced by the state, and those costs are borne by people other than the beneficiaries. The state should not place this burden on others unless a state interests is adequately served by doing so.
5) Same-sex couples do not serve the same procreation interest that separate-sex couples do, and so does not have a reason to extend these benefits to same-sex couples.

So that's the argument, in brief. Now, since you've had a hard time doing this yourself, let me show you the basics of what an effective counterargument would be (which attacks the second half of the last point above, which is the weak link in the argument):

1) Although same-sex couples do not serve the same procreation interest as opposite-sex couples, they still serve a procreation interest, through adoption, foster care, and artificial reproduction.
2) Procreation is a state interest that is promoted by marriage, but (note the indefinite article used before) it is not the only state interest promoted by marriage. Some other interest is also served, and served equally by same-sex marriages.
3) While state interests (the combination of procreation and any other interests) in promoting same-sex marriage may not be identical to the state interests in opposite-sex marriage, they are still sufficiently beneficial to society to warrant the associated costs. Same-sex marriage is therefore beneficial to society as a whole, and the privilege should be extended to cover same-sex couples.

I've only provided the outline, but there's a damned good argument to be made there, you've just got to actually make it.
 
Ziggurat said:
Whether or not the difference is due to choice is irrelevant: what matters is if the distinction has substance. Your gender DOES have substance in the context of marriage. Your race does NOT. You can disagree all you want to about how that substantive difference SHOULD be handled, but that there is a difference is undeniable.
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But it is not undeniable....in fact, that's what this entire discussion should be about. It seems that pro-SSMers think that gender does *not* have substance in the context of marriage, and that anti-SSMers think it does.

Solve the question about whether it does or not, and you solve whether or not SSMs should be legal.
 
Q: But doesn’t expanding marriage to include homosexuals actually help strengthen marriage?

A: Just the opposite. There is recent evidence from the Netherlands, arguably the most “gay-friendly” culture on earth, that homosexual men have a very difficult time honoring the ideal of marriage. Even though same-sex “marriage” is legal there, a British medical journal reports male homosexual relationships last, on average, 1.5 years, and gay men have an average of eight partners a year outside of their supposedly “committed” relationships.

Contrast that with the fact that 67 percent of first marriages in the United States last 10 years, and more than threequarters of heterosexual married couples report being faithful to their vows.2

No. Watering down the definition of marriage does not help strengthen marriage.
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http://www.family.org/cforum/fosi/marriage/faqs/a0026916.cfm

http://www.fotf.ca/tfn/family/PDF/Marriage_in_Jeopardy.pdf
 
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