Marriage Debate

[Scot C. Trypal]

Wow, I missed you all.

Dave:

Certainly not all, possibly not even most, supporters of same sex marriage feel that way. Scot was particularly adamant that he did not agree with that view.

I did not agree that:

Rights and also obligations. In asking for the one, the GLBT are willing to accept the other, as long as the laws are applied equally.

?
I’m fine with the law being applied equally, rights and obligations, regardless of a person’s sex.

Again, I’d personally even be happy with the same rights and more responsibilities (actually, it’s greater enforcement of the promises already typically made). I think it would serve two great goals if gays started pushing for both, 1. equality and 2. more responsibility than typical marriage would give to the families they create and the promises they voluntarily make.

-------

Anyway, I just got back from a cruise full of families headed by same sex couples. About 2,800 people, IIRC, a full ship. I’d say it was about 50% kids, 25% gay parents and 10% grandparents. Oddly enough, the culture and civilization on the ship seemed to function just fine; maybe unusually dull, with so many gays in bed by 9. Parents parented; they consoled when their kids were hurt, they corrected when their kids did wrong; they encouraged when their kids were hesitant; and they seemed to all be eternally grateful for it all. (But what’s with lesbians? Not one of the pictures a lesbian took of us is framed decently! I’d hate to see their scrapbooks.)

I thought you, Dave, might find it funny: the very 1st couple we swapped stories with was one of your “gays don’t become parents by surprise” counter examples. They literally never saw it coming, and weren’t even looking to become parents. They got a call in the middle of the night from one of their dads saying they had to come and pick up the baby (a blood relative and now a young man) or he would go into state care. They were parenting the next day and were legal parents in a matter of weeks. At least most other couples get near 9 months to decide if they want the child in state care.

Quit using that one.

(Huntster, I was just kidding about not attacking anything I typed while I was gone. I came home anticipating it . Anyway, your State is breathtaking and I’m left a bit jealous, at least for the month of July)

 

[Meadmaker]

I see nothing there that explains why it is any of the government's business.

That doesn't surprise me.

 

[Meadmaker]

(actually, it’s greater enforcement of the promises already typically made).

Good to have you back, Scot. Talk some sense into these people.

Quit using that one.

You know me better than that. Besides, I always say "by accident", not "by surprise".

 

[Huntster]

...(Huntster, I was just kidding about not attacking anything I typed while I was gone. I came home anticipating it . Anyway, your State is breathtaking and I’m left a bit jealous, at least for the month of July)

Sounds like you didn't get rained on (at least much). That's a good thing for Southeast!

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

That's why we vote as a society.

It ain't about you, and it ain't about me.

It's about us.

I don't think many people want morality dictated to them by law or otherwise. We have some laws that one might agree are also moral issues, theft, murder, vandalism and so on. But there are lots of moral issues we don't subject to legal requirements.

No fault marriage laws replaced the ones which implicated one party's behavior as causing the breakup. If you cheat on your spouse and it leads to divorce, you still get half the house. So in essence there is no law against the immoral behavior of adultery.

I would make similar comments in reply to much of what Meadmaker posted. It isn't the courts and police which I find at the center of my life. In fact, I rarely need to resort to legal remedies or have any reason the courts are involved in my life. The last time I went to court it was years ago for a contested traffic ticket. There are very few things which I stop and say, "I can't do that, it's illegal."

Most people don't stay married or loyal because of any laws. Most people wouldn't murder or steal, law or not. And clearly the ones that would are not stopped by the law against it except that it allows police to arrest them and lock them up.

 

[Upchurch]

That doesn't surprise me.

Because it isn't there?

eta: would you care to answer the question?

 

[Gwyn ap Nudd]

Certainly not all, possibly not even most, supporters of same sex marriage feel that way. Scot was particularly adamant that he did not agree with that view. However, in the case of Upchurch, I asked a pretty specific question, and got a pretty specific answer. There's no straw man.

I think the same could be said for ThaiBoxerKen and ImaginalDisc as well. They can correct me if I'm wrong.

The fact that there is room for discussion on the nature of the responsibilities inherent in raising a family does not change the fact that the specific sentiment expressed by your statement <<Lots of rights. No obligations. It's a frequent criticism made by the right wing toward the left wing, and the left wing responds that the right wing just doesn't get it.>> is a strawman. Conservatives have no more claim to responsibility than liberals.

While it is true that there have been cases of a partner moving to a state in which a same-sex family has no rights in order to avoid her responsibilities to the other partner and the children, it is because individually they are avoiding their responsibilities, not because they are liberal. In fact it is the legislative principles of conservative lawmakers that allows them to evade their responsibility.

Also, in general, the difference between liberals and conservatives is not that liberals do not believe in responsibility. It is that they believe that, in many cases, the government does not have a mandate to criminalize a lack of responsibility. That does not mean there should not be a means to address the damages that an irresponsible person causes. But such cases are torts, not crimes, and are to be handled in civil court (and divorce court is a branch of civil court), not in criminal court.

Again, I’d personally even be happy with the same rights and more responsibilities (actually, it’s greater enforcement of the promises already typically made). I think it would serve two great goals if gays started pushing for both, 1. equality and 2. more responsibility than typical marriage would give to the families they create and the promises they voluntarily make.

Welcome back, Scot. Sad but true. As with any minority which still needs to prove itself, you have to be twice as good to get half the respect.

 

[Scot C. Trypal]

Dave:

Good to have you back, Scot. Talk some sense into these people.

Oh no you don’t! Clever like a fox, you are.

I’m starting to think this particular fight is mainly one of definitions anyway. When you or I say marriage is not only about “love”, I think we’re using the common pop song notion of “love”, just a feeling. I know I’ve been. But I think we both see the love in a healthy marriage as inseparable from obligations and required actions, even without a feeling of infatuation. In short, I think there’s more common ground here than appears. We’ll see.

Anyway, you know, I agree with much of what you post, but I still see it as applicable to all those couples and kids I just got done breaking bread with for the last week. Still, from your other posts, it seems you can see it as greatly applicable too.

So, without much of an ax to grind, you and I get to argue about the relatively trivial minutia:

You know me better than that. Besides, I always say "by accident", not "by surprise".

Hey, it can happen by accident. I didn’t press this particular couple too much on the circumstances; best to just leave it at what they offer on such a sensitive topic. But an accident can lead to gay couples being responsible for parenting, and, like this couple, they may not even be aware it’s a possibility. Just by coupling up and living together, they put themselves at even greater risk of this happening.

It can vary from year to year, but I know right now we personally could suddenly become the parents of about 4 additional children (3 for sure) if a tragic accident happened.

I’ll certainly grant you that it is far more common for heterosexual couples to become parents by surprise or accident, but it still happens to same sex couples too.

Huntster:

Sounds like you didn't get rained on (at least much). That's a good thing for Southeast!

Not once! 85 and sunny in Junno (they told us only 40 days/year like that) and the other stops were the same. The only rain happened at night. Beautiful!

Now, let’s fight! Say something provocative, anything.

Eh, I’ll just wait for it.

Welcome back, Scot. Sad but true. As with any minority which still needs to prove itself, you have to be twice as good to get half the respect.

Thanks Gwyn. Good to be back.

You're right, but I say, sc$%w them; let’s behave four times as good then, and show’em how it’s done.

 

[Meadmaker]

Quoting me
Lots of rights. No obligations. It's a frequent criticism made by the right wing toward the left wing, and the left wing responds that the right wing just doesn't get it

I suppose it would be incorrect to overgeneralize by saying that Upchurch was a typical liberal, but his response did indeed demand all the rights of marriage, and it is no exageration to say that he wanted no legal obligations for marriage. This is the way the right wing characterizes the left wing, regardless of whether or not it's accurate. (In my opinion, it is at least partly accurate, and some on the left, in this case Upchurch, are described accurately that way.) So, the "straw man" to the extent that there is one, is describing Upchurch as "the left wing". To that extent, there's a straw man.

And I have never suggested that anything related to marriage or divorce should be anything other than a civil case. I did use the word "punish", which might imply a criminal case, but I corrected that as well.

To say that I want to criminalize anything is, dare I say it, a straw man. However, I won't accuse you of creating a straw man. I think Upchurch erected that particular edifice. Just to clarify, I don't think anything related to consensual sex, or anything related to marriage, should be a crime. (OK. I could probably come up with some sort of fraud cases, but you ought to get what I'm saying.) I'm not suggesting that anyone clap anyone in irons. (That's not for marriage, just for nessooieh, and that's Scot's area) I'm just saying that money should be forked over as compensation.

 

[Meadmaker]

If you cheat on your spouse and it leads to divorce, you still get half the house. So in essence there is no law against the immoral behavior of adultery.

Precisely the problem. Let's do a case study. Real people. Friend of mine.


Female. 40 years old. Married at 25. She wanted children. He didn't.They didn't have any. She had an engineering degree, but chose, with his blessing, to make a living as an artist. A lot less money, but she liked it much more, and int provided a modest income to their double income no kids household. At age 40, he comes home, announces he isn't in love and they are getting divorced. (No one knows if the much thinner 30 year old he is seen with shortly after divorce came before or after the divorce.)

She got possession of the house, but on the artist's income, couldn't afford the payments.

I say she had a reasonable expectation that she would have companionship and a place to live for the rest of her life. Furthermore, she made choices based on that reasonable expectation that would impact her future earnings potential greatly. Furthermore, she sacrificed something that cannot be replaced in exchange for the companionship she expected.

Has she been harmed? Should she be entitled to compensation? I say yes and yes. What says anyone else?

 

[Upchurch]

I suppose it would be incorrect to overgeneralize by saying that Upchurch was a typical liberal, but his response did indeed demand all the rights of marriage, and it is no exageration to say that he wanted no legal obligations for marriage.

Incorrect.

There are legal opligations for marriage, they just aren't the obligations that you are trying to have legally enforced. For example, one is legally obligated to only be in one legal marriage at a time. One is not legally obligated to love only their legal spouse.

To say that I want to criminalize anything is, dare I say it, a straw man. However, I won't accuse you of creating a straw man. I think Upchurch erected that particular edifice. Just to clarify, I don't think anything related to consensual sex, or anything related to marriage, should be a crime. (OK. I could probably come up with some sort of fraud cases, but you ought to get what I'm saying.) I'm not suggesting that anyone clap anyone in irons. (That's not for marriage, just for nessooieh, and that's Scot's area) I'm just saying that money should be forked over as compensation.

I'll direct your attention to this post wherein I pointed out to you the distinction between "legal trouble" and "civilly actionable". Maybe you missed that post or didn't understand it when you continued to use the term "legal", but something that gets you into legal trouble is known as "illegal" and doing an act that is illegal is a crime.

If I've set up a straw man, I apologize. I only did it because the words you are using don't mean what you seem to think they mean.

 

[Upchurch]

Incorrect.

There are legal opligations for marriage, they just aren't the obligations that you are trying to have legally enforced. For example, one is legally obligated to only be in one legal marriage at a time. One is not legally obligated to love only their legal spouse.

Oh, look. I've said this before.

And here again, you claim that you want wedding vows to have legal force.

 

[Huntster]

Originally Posted by Huntster :
That's why we vote as a society.

It ain't about you, and it ain't about me.

It's about us.

I don't think many people want morality dictated to them by law or otherwise.

I agree. That's why we constantly and continually have somebody "cutting up" about one thing or another.

They just can't figure it out, and they want it "their way".

We have some laws that one might agree are also moral issues, theft, murder, vandalism and so on. But there are lots of moral issues we don't subject to legal requirements.

As people "petition to government for redress", fewer and fewer issues will be not subject to legal requirements.

Why do you think the vast majority of the world's lawyers are in the United States?

No fault marriage laws replaced the ones which implicated one party's behavior as causing the breakup. If you cheat on your spouse and it leads to divorce, you still get half the house. So in essence there is no law against the immoral behavior of adultery.

Yup.

Damned shame, too.

I would make similar comments in reply to much of what Meadmaker posted. It isn't the courts and police which I find at the center of my life. In fact, I rarely need to resort to legal remedies or have any reason the courts are involved in my life. The last time I went to court it was years ago for a contested traffic ticket. There are very few things which I stop and say, "I can't do that, it's illegal."

Then, you'd better exercise care, because virtually everything is regulated by law.

Did you know that there the regulatory requirements tightening the amount of water your toilet can use to flush are on their way?:

When announcing WaterSense at a major water industry conference yesterday in San Antonio, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said the agency was “spreading the ethic of water efficiency through education, not regulation.”

At the national level, water experts are focusing on high-efficiency toilets, which must use no more than 1.28 gallons per flush to get the WaterSense seal of approval. Current ultra low-flow toilets use 1.6 gallons per flush, and some customers say such toilets don't have enough water to clear the bowl.

EPA officials stressed that WaterSense products must reach performance standards along with conservation goals to ensure that they meet customers' needs.

 

[Huntster]

The fact that there is room for discussion on the nature of the responsibilities inherent in raising a family does not change the fact that the specific sentiment expressed by your statement <<Lots of rights. No obligations. It's a frequent criticism made by the right wing toward the left wing, and the left wing responds that the right wing just doesn't get it.>> is a strawman. Conservatives have no more claim to responsibility than liberals.

Why was it, then, that when discussion about and actual reform of the welfare state was going on, it was the liberals fighting it and the conservatives advocating it?

Why is it, then, when there is talk of reforming family law, it's the liberals fighting it and the conservatives advocating it?

In fact it is the legislative principles of conservative lawmakers that allows them to evade their responsibility.

Do you have some vote tallys to demonstrate that?

Also, in general, the difference between liberals and conservatives is not that liberals do not believe in responsibility. It is that they believe that, in many cases, the government does not have a mandate to criminalize a lack of responsibility.

What about the government funding of irresponsibility (as long as it ain't "faith based"?)

 

[Meadmaker]

"Legal" includes both civil and criminal actions.

Speeding tickets are civil infractions. The CANSPAM act provides civil penalties. A law which provides that one person or organization can sue another is one that defines civilly actionable offenses.

Yes, there are actions you can do in marriage that ought to get you into legal trouble, but not criminal trouble.

 

[Meadmaker]

For example, one is legally obligated to only be in one legal marriage at a time.

In the post you linked, that wasn't "an example", that was specifically the only obligation.

 

[Upchurch]

In the post you linked, that wasn't "an example", that was specifically the only obligation.

With the condition that there may be others I wasn't thinking of at that time, correct?

Irregardless, is one obligation equivalent to no obligations?

 

[Upchurch]

"Legal" includes both civil and criminal actions.

Speeding tickets are civil infractions. The CANSPAM act provides civil penalties. A law which provides that one person or organization can sue another is one that defines civilly actionable offenses.

Yes, there are actions you can do in marriage that ought to get you into legal trouble, but not criminal trouble.

(source)

Why is a traffic ticket treated differently than a civil matter by the court?

Resolving a traffic ticket in court is handled differently than resolving a civil lawsuit because most traffic tickets are handled as criminal matters. The sentence in a criminal case can result in an order to pay a fine, a sentence of probation, or time in a jail. The sentence imposed in a criminal case is an obligation that a person has towards the "state" for violation of law; that is, it is a punishment for the act that was committed. The "state" could be a local township, municipality, city, county, state, or the federal government.

A civil matter typically results in an order awarding a money judgment to be paid by one party of a lawsuit to the other. The judgment is imposed to make the victim "whole" for the harm caused by the offender. A judgment in a civil matter does not include the imposition of a criminal sentence.

Thus the major difference is that in a criminal matter, a person who has violated a law can be ordered to forfeit his/her personal freedom since s/he has, in effect, caused a harm to the "state." The "payment" to the "state" is ordered as punishment for an act that the offender done.

eta: (stupid tab key)

(source #2)

The Penalties section of the CANSPAM act allows for the government to levy fines and the DOJ to seek criminal penalties. I see nothing about civil actions.

 

[Meadmaker]

The Penalties section of the CANSPAM act allows for the government to levy fines and the DOJ to seek criminal penalties. I see nothing about civil actions.

Look harder. The phrase "civil action" appears 8 times in the law. "Civil penalties" appears two additional times. If I recall (I didn't reread the whole bill, just searched for terms) the only reference to criminal penalties is to places where things that are already crimes, specifically fraud, are also made crimes when they occur as part of spam.

And that's the problem in general. You aren't looking very hard. You're picking apart and trying to find little bits here and there, and quibbling about this and that, and inventing stuff, when in reality, my position is quite clear. Furthermore, it's very close to Scot's. Our attitudes are very different, and our priorities are very different, but when we scratch through to what should really be done, we're pretty much in agreement.

And why is that a problem, someone might ask? Because in the course of this, you and your fellow supporters are really alienating would-be allies. There are an awful lot of people out there who aren't bigots, but when confronted by a bunch of people who insist that anyone who differs from the gay rights agenda in the slightest can only do so because of bigotry, they decide to chuck you all in the soup and pull the "no" lever.

Take Huntster. He's not a bigot. He's a Catholic. If you can't tell the difference between the two, it's because you're a bigot. Huntster will never support gay marriage, it's true, but I'll bet that if you would stop insulting him and listen to what he's saying, you might get him to civil unions that are nearly identical to marriage, and you would certainly get him to the point of allowing gay people to live their lives as they wish without government interference, which would be darned near as good.

And if you could get Huntster to that point, you could get 51% of most states at least as far as Vermont-style civil unions. And if that's not good enough for you as a first step, you deserve to lose.

You are the gay marriage movement's greatest enemy.


ETA: P.S. The speeding ticket was a bad example, because it involves specifically government action against an individual. But I'll bet if you tried hard, you would have been able to see through that to the point of the post.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Hunster and Meadmaker, thank goodness we don't have your world of dictated moral behavior. I prefer the government stay out of my personal life as much as possible. Why do the wrongs you cite need be addressed by courts and police? It's like going to your mom and whining, "Johny won't let me play." At some point mom needs to let Johny deal with it alone.

The world isn't fair. Get over it.