Marriage Debate

[thaiboxerken]

Yeah, you did. I wasn't surprised. It simply doesn't fit with your views.

I mentioned Pat Buchanan's "Death of the West". He describes how the sexual revolution and culture wars are reducing the populations of the West just as immigration (much of it illegal) explodes from the South.

Does it start to make sense, or do you need me to draw a picture with crayon for you?

Pat Buchanan's opinion isn't evidence of anything. Is there there and evidence that the government is interested in procreation and that it enforces this interest with marriage laws?

 

[Scot C. Trypal]

Also, Hardenbergh, can you find the reference to the Journal article that claims “gay men have an average of eight partners a year outside of their supposedly “committed” relationships”? “A British medical journal” just doesn’t help, and I doubt the research is as presented. I mean, how many times have I seen “pro-family” researchers survey the sexual habits of homosexual AIDS patients and then claim they apply to the whole gay population?

Still, even if it were true, it’d be unjust bigotry to claim that about all gay men. I, for one, have lived a life more puritan than the pilgrims , and, unless you’ve had one “partner” or none your entire life, I’ve got you beat in the chastity realm.

 

[bluess]

Can you explain how the abortion epidemic fits into your outlook?

Epidemic? What, abortion is catching?

It doesn't fit into the women and couples who believe that a child of the body is more important than a child.

It does fit into a society which decries sexual education until after the girl is pregnant, limits access to birth control and the morning after pill, lowers the economic class of a single, undereducated mother and values the appearance of morality over all else.

And yes, both sets of characteristics are prevalent in American society.

 

[Huntster]

Originally Posted by Huntster :
Ever hear of contract law? Contracts are agreements made between two or more parties, and government is called upon to enforce them all the time.

Yes, but contract law happens to pertain to financial obligations and services.

And fiduciary matters are more important than marriage matters?

Why is it that a business contract must be enforced, and the marriage contract is "divorced" so readily and easily?

Why not? Are you suggesting that the government make divorce illegal also?

Nope.

Nor should they have made it "no fault", either.

Have they made contract violations "no fault"?

Because that's what you want?

Yes.

So you admit that your position regarding marriage and family matters is based purely on your own selfish opinions and ideology?

 

[thaiboxerken]

I KNOW that an assumption was made at that step.

Then your argument is just plain silly. I know, let's start arguing on the assumption that Superman is a real person and if same-sex marriage is allowed, Superman will go berserk and destroy cities.

 

[Hardenbergh]

I have to wonder which part causes you distress?

Is it that people donate genetic material to infertile couples?

Or that heterosexual people would do that for homosexual people, often friends or family? If so, is it less of a bother to you if a gay friend donates to a lesbian couple?

Or are you the sort that thinks parents are defined by a similarity in As Ts Cs and Gs, not the sacrifice, love, and acts of parenting, and so the word “donor” should be “father” or “mother” regardless of how the child sees them, or the person’s involvement in their life? If so, are adoptive parents, not parents to you? (talk about denigrating the role of parenting in society!)

Or maybe you’d just rather gays live the way they used to. “Traditional family values”, where a gay man would marry some poor unsuspecting woman who should count herself lucky if she only ends up living her life in a marriage with little intimacy, no passion or natural attraction, with a man who has the same sexual orientation that she has. The all too common fates of such women (and their children) are to endure cheating, abandonment, or worse, like a STD. If you really want gay folks to marry against their nature, you could start counseling women to marry gay men, for the cause; set up an organization. If you have daughters, they could be the first in the program.

Okay, I’m being testy and jumping to conclusions, but, honestly, what sort of control are you saying you’d want over the lives of all these families, so that the world could recover from what it has “come down to”?

Anyway, Bluess is right. The prime reasons for gays and lesbians to use surrogacy or other fertility treatments is because either 1. they live in a jurisdiction that won’t let them adopt, or 2. they feel threatened that the people you keep quoting from will come after their families soon, and try to split them up, all the while chanting “it’s for the children” and “we’re pro-family”. Fear of loosing what’s most precious to you is a powerful motivator to make sure you’ve got the best legal stand you can have, and these opponents seem to respect genetics over parenting, just as they respect anatomy over the actions and commitments of marriage.

I just meant that the term "heterosexual donor" sounds so cold and impersonal. It suggests that women don't need men anymore. All they have to do is go to a sperm bank--not much different than going to a supermarket.

 

[thaiboxerken]

And fiduciary matters are more important than marriage matters?

For some people, yes. As far as the government is concerned, it has no business monitoring and dictating how my love life and relationships should happen.

Nope.

Nor should they have made it "no fault", either.

Have they made contract violations "no fault"?

Sometimes, it depends on the violation.

So you admit that your position regarding marriage and family matters is based purely on your own selfish opinions and ideology?

Not my selfish opinions, but my ideology yes. I have this weird idea that people should be allowed to do whatever they want, unless they start trampling on other people's rights.

Marriage is a personal relationship between two (or more, in some countries) people. The government should not be involved at all. However, since the government is involved, it should not discriminate or regulate these marriages based on religion, race or gender.

 

[Scot C. Trypal]

I just meant that the term "heterosexual donor" sounds so cold and impersonal. It suggests that women don't need men anymore. All they have to do is go to a sperm bank--not much different than going to a supermarket.

Okay, forgive the rant.

That may be how you are looking at it. To them it's one of the most amazing gifts they will every get in their entire life; they are often dumbstruck with gratitude for days. If you’re like that when you go to the supermarket, well, you’re a far more grateful man than I.

I can't help the fact that the person donating is just called a donor or that most of them are heterosexuals, though I do wish a word for such a person could be made that had more gravitas...

 

[Ziggurat]

Then your argument is just plain silly.

And yet, you're too much of a drooling half-wit to actually be able to refute it, despite the fact that I explicitly told you how to. Are you actually proud of your imbecility?

 

[Upchurch]

It doesn't matter why things were done in the past, the relevant question is why should we do them in the future? And from that perspective, I should think it would be kind of obvious that procreation is a pretty damned important state interest, and that it is very much supported by marriage.

It matters quite a bit why marriage laws were put into effect if your argument is going to be that the state uses marriage as a method to promote procreation.

As an aside, terms like "obvious" or "common sense" are red-flags to me in debates. They usually indicate that the speaker cannot or has not thought out how something is "obvious" or why it is "common sense". I'm not saying that is the case here, but if it is "obvious", it should be easy to explain and back up with evidence.

Perhaps this wasn't clear, but yes, child rearing is part of what I mean by procreation. I'm talking about the whole process of creating new and productive members of society.

{snippy}

There's no absolute REQUIRED connection, yes. But in general, there IS a link between who conceives and gives birth to a child and who raises it: namely, they tend to be the same people.

If you consider child rearing to be a part of procreation and you do not consider the ability to conceive a child a requirement to raise a child, then wouldn't it be reasonable to say that same-sex couples can engage in at least part of procreation? Wouldn't it even be reasonable to say that same-sex couples can engage in the majority of procreation act? That is to say, 18+ years out of the required 18 years, 9 months?

We've been over this before: equal protection isn't the issue, because your sexuality is irrelevant to marriage law. This is a technical argument, yes, but technical arguments matter when it comes to the law.

This is where we disagree and, really, the heart of the debate. If sexuality were truly irrelevant to marriage law, there would be no sexual requirements to the law. There are sexual requirements, so sexuality is relevant.

Why else are we having this discussion?

Well, because that's what this thread is about. No other reason.

For this thread, yes, but this thread is not the reason that a Constitutional amendment has been proposed to keep this one subset of the citizenry from participating in these benefits.

This is, of course, not your argument, but does this raise any warning flags in your head that this one group is being singled out?

Not "again". Point 5 is the ONLY step at which the assumption is made that procreation is the sole interest in marriage.

Well, yes "again" in that procreation is even a purpose for marriage law. It is this that no evidence has been provided.

And yes, I KNOW that an assumption was made at that step. I pretty much spelled that out explicitly in my outline for how to counter this. All you need to do is come up with another interest the state might have in promoting marriage besides procreation. Why isn't anyone doing that? I would have thought that would be easy. Hell, I may even just do it myself if none of you can come up with such an interest.

As I said, there is no reason to. It is your claim and it is up to you to support it. Until then, I stand by my counter argument. You know, pretty much the only thing in that post you didn't address:

The only counter-argument that need be made is:

Unless the government has a compelling reason to discriminate between two subsets of citizens, it should refrain from doing so.

 

[Huntster]

Originally Posted by Huntster :
Yeah, you did. I wasn't surprised. It simply doesn't fit with your views.

I mentioned Pat Buchanan's "Death of the West". He describes how the sexual revolution and culture wars are reducing the populations of the West just as immigration (much of it illegal) explodes from the South.

Got anything from a creditible source?

Will the CDC do?:

..........The abortion rate reported here for the United States was higher than recent rates reported for Canada and Western European countries and lower than rates reported for China, Cuba, most Eastern European countries, and several of the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union (19,20)..............

.......The abortion ratio for Hispanic women (225 per 1,000 live births) was lower than the ratio for non-Hispanic women (233 per 1,000 live births). This differs from the findings for abortions performed in 1999 and reflects a return to the previously observed pattern among Hispanic women of slightly lower or similar ratios to those for non-Hispanic women. As in the past, the abortion rate per 1,000 Hispanic women (16) was higher than the rate per 1,000 non-Hispanic women (13). This finding is consistent with another study (18) but differs substantially from abortion rates by ethnicity that were published previously by NCHS (25). The differences are likely due to the method used to account for underreporting of abortions by adjusting CDC tabulations to national totals. This finding also suggests that the reporting areas for the 2000 report are not fully representative of the U.S. Hispanic female population of reproductive age. Race-specific and ethnicity-specific differences in legal induced abortion ratios and rates might reflect differences among groups in factors such as socioeconomic status, access to family planning and contraceptive services, contraceptive use, and incidence of unintended pregnancies.
NCHS vital statistics reports indicate that fertility and live birth rates were substantially higher for Hispanic women as a whole than for non-Hispanic women for all age groups in 2000 (7). However, because fertility and live birth rates differ substantially among the Hispanic subgroups (Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, other Hispanic), and these differ substantially from rates among the non-Hispanic subgroups (white, black, other), comparisons between Hispanic and non-Hispanic groups are of limited value (7). Currently available abortion surveillance data do not permit cross-classification of race by Hispanic ethnicity. Efforts are under way to provide a cross-classification of race and ethnicity in future reports to comply with OMB Directive 15, which specifies federal standards for the collection of data on race and ethnicity (54).

Population shifts:

Developed countries face declining populations

While around one-third of countries now have birthrates below replacement level, the lowest fertility rates are in the world's 44 most developed countries, which account for 19 per cent of the world population. All except Albania have fertility below replacement level and 15, mostly located in Southern and Eastern Europe, have reached levels of fertility unprecedented in human history (below 1.3 children per woman). Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, and most of the successor States of the former USSR are expected to have significantly lower populations by 2050.

Migration

According to the report, migration will continue to have a significant impact on population trends.
• During 2005-2050, the net number of international migrants to more developed regions is projected to be 98 million. Because deaths are projected to exceed births in the more developed regions by 73 million during 2005-2050, population growth in those regions will largely be due to international migration.
• In 2000-2005, net migration in 28 countries either prevented population decline or doubled at least the contribution of natural increase (births minus deaths) to population growth. These countries include Austria, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Qatar, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom
• In terms of annual averages, the major net receivers of international migrants are projected to be United States (1.1 million annually), Germany (204,000), Canada (201,000), United Kingdom (133,000), Italy (120,000) and Australia (100,000). The major countries of net emigration are projected to be China (-333,000 annually), Mexico (-304,000), India (-245,000), Philippines (-180,000), Pakistan (-173,000) and Indonesia (-168,000).

 

[Huntster]

Originally Posted by thaiboxerken :
Then your argument is just plain silly.

And yet, you're too much of a drooling half-wit to actually be able to refute it, despite the fact that I explicitly told you how to. Are you actually proud of your imbecility?

Actually, he is.

See my sig lines below, linked for your reading amusement.

 

[Huntster]

Originally Posted by Huntster :
Can you explain how the abortion epidemic fits into your outlook?

Epidemic? What, abortion is catching?

Yes, socially, it is.

While abortion rates in the United States is slowly declining now, it skyrocketed between 1969 and 1990.

A sexual revolution was going on, didn't you know?

 

[Upchurch]

Will the CDC do?:



Population shifts:

Sorry, you're going to have to spell it out for me. How does that prove a state interest in procreation?

eta: and, more importantly, how it shows that US promotes procreation through marriage?

 

[Darat]

Will the CDC do?:

Yet some of those European countries allow same sex marriage (or civil partnerships) and also have less restrictive abortion laws....

 

[Huntster]

Sorry, you're going to have to spell it out for me. How does that prove a state interest in procreation?

If your domestic population is declining (due to procreation ideologies and sexual revolt), and your neighbor's population is exploding (because they don't suffer from the same, lame attitudes), and especially if you don't have the good sense to secure your borders from illegal entry,...........

you will be (like we used to say in Vietnam) overrun.

 

[Hardenbergh]

Also, Hardenbergh, can you find the reference to the Journal article that claims “gay men have an average of eight partners a year outside of their supposedly “committed” relationships”? “A British medical journal” just doesn’t help, and I doubt the research is as presented. I mean, how many times have I seen “pro-family” researchers survey the sexual habits of homosexual AIDS patients and then claim they apply to the whole gay population?

Still, even if it were true, it’d be unjust bigotry to claim that about all gay men. I, for one, have lived a life more puritan than the pilgrims , and, unless you’ve had one “partner” or none your entire life, I’ve got you beat in the chastity realm.

A link to the British medical journal wasn't provided. I tried to find it on the internet. I found a few other websites that quote the same passage from the journal but without an actual source.

I just found a reference to it in another place:

Far higher rates of promiscuity are observed even within 'committed' gay relationships than in heterosexual marriage: In Holland, 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. (Xiridou M, et al. The contribution of steady and casual partnerships to the incidence of HIV infection among homosexual men in Amsterdam. AIDS. 2003; 17: 1029-38.) Gay men have sex with someone other than their primary partner in 66% of relationships within the first year, rising to 90% of relationships after five years. (Harry J. Gay Couples. New York. 1984)

http://www.canadawebpages.com/pc-forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4498&whichpage=49

 

[Upchurch]

If your domestic population is declining (due to procreation ideologies and sexual revolt), and your neighbor's population is exploding (because they don't suffer from the same, lame attitudes), and especially if you don't have the good sense to secure your borders from illegal entry,...........

you will be (like we used to say in Vietnam) overrun.

And that has anything to do with marriage, how?

 

[Huntster]

Originally Posted by Huntster :
If your domestic population is declining (due to procreation ideologies and sexual revolt), and your neighbor's population is exploding (because they don't suffer from the same, lame attitudes), and especially if you don't have the good sense to secure your borders from illegal entry,...........

you will be (like we used to say in Vietnam) overrun.

And that has anything to do with marriage, how?

Abortion and same-sex marriage both are antithetical for stable domestic population. Advocating either or both contributes to the problem.

A declining domestic population coupled with an explosion in immigration (especially illegal immigration) results in a major culture shift.

Government has a stake in major culture shift.

 

[Upchurch]

Abortion and same-sex marriage both are antithetical for stable domestic population.

Got evidence for that?

Advocating either or both contributes to the problem.

Got any evidence for that?

A declining domestic population coupled with an explosion in immigration (especially illegal immigration) results in a major culture shift.

Government has a stake in major culture shift.

Because we've never had a culture shift before and survived it just fine? Time to crack the ol' history books again?