Homosexual marriage II

[The Gaffer]

Absolutely. You have to have some sort of community witness and authority to recognise it for it to exist in the first place.

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

But it's hard to think of another "right" where both parties are eligible, but not with each other.

Interesting - I'd never thought about it like that. Quite correct though. Good luck with the Supreme Court on that one.

[BeardofPants]

I agree with you gaffer that you need some sort of 'community' to recognise marriage, but I'd still argue that marriage or an equivalent union predates government.

From wiki :

"The exact moment and place that the phenomenon of human government developed is lost in time; however, history does record the formations of very early governments. About 5,000 years ago, the first small city-states appeared.[17] By the third to second millenniums BC, some of these had developed into larger governed areas: the Indus Valley Civilization, Sumer, Ancient Egypt and the Yellow River Civilization.[18]"

Government is still pretty recent, whereas humans have been mating & undergoing partnerships for far longer.

[The Gaffer]

Fair point, though I was thinking of marriage as something that, by definition, has ceremony as part of it. It's not just mating, even if it's for life. That implies some sort of formal convention, officially sanctioned in some sort of way. Even if it's just an assembly of a community or a bunch of elders sitting about, it's a kind of government.

I think we tend to romanticise and maybe even fetishise marriage and the family a bit when we're looking back at these things in the past. As noted, a marriage might be a wholly non-romantic, political thing. I remember when Prince Charles married Princess Di, one of these crusty old Royal commentators on the telly going on about how she was "outstanding breeding stock", probably one of the oldest motives for marriage in the world.

[BeardofPants]

Yeah, whereas I was thinking that marriage could be defined by any community sanctioned partnership. I'm sure that there were 'marriages' of a sort during the hunter-gatherer period also - if only to effect some sort of genetic diaspora.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

No, I wouldn't. And I'm mortally sure I've spent more time married than you have.

You're a romantic, and that's charming. But I don't believe, for an instant, that what you're referring to as "marriage in the fullest sense of the word" has anything to do with "marriage the legal condition." It may not even overlap.

I agree. It doesn't necessarily overlap. I think most legal marriages are marriages in this 'metaphysical' sense, but I also think that this 'true' marriage can easily exist where the other doesn't.

I don't even believe that it necessarily exists even in its most aspirational form, represented by Holy Orders.

Eh? Holy Orders? Do you mean holy matrimony? Holy Orders is ordination as a deacon, priest, or bishop...

Whether it's a gift of the Holy Spirit or has some other source, it isn't conferred during a ceremony anywhere

Well, I wouldn't agree that it isn't conferred during a ceremony anywhere. I think it normally is conferred in a ceremony, but the ceremony isn't essential.

So, if your issue is God, no action we can take would influence the bestowal of this gift on people, whatever their love object.

Indeed.

Therefore, we can go forward, secure in the knowledge that we could be in a blessed condition of holy marriage to our teddy bear, if God so willed it. What the state says is irrelevant. This, btw, is the POV of those child-molesters in Texas.

Probably true. Nice reductio ad Hitlerum there.

[inked]

The Islamic take:
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/S...=1119503543082

[The last sane person]

You are in very good company then.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

Eh? Holy Orders? Do you mean holy matrimony? Holy Orders is ordination as a deacon, priest, or bishop...

No, I mean Holy orders. Marrying the church, yes? Bride of Christ?

That would be an idealized version of marriage, I would think. If "marriage in its fullest sense" isn't reliably experienced in any form, it's absence isn't a defining issue.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by inked

The Islamic take:
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/S...=1119503543082

Thanks for posting that, inked. Very interesting read. I agree with almost all of it.

Islam originated in a time of very conservative morals, and the laws of Muslim countries protected their beliefs from intrusion very effectively until the present, when imperialism first and internationalism second crashed into their world and forced it to open itself to outside, more liberal views. They've retained a lot, though. Depending on what country we're talking about. Some of what they've retained is bad and some good, because the religion is imperfect. It certainly is interesting to see how their cultures and laws have preserved these kinds of old views right up to the present so effectively.

[inked]

Another interesting take....

FAKING OUT, VIRGINIA, IS KNOWN TO BE ATTEMPTED

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/...062308.article

[Rían]

Originally Posted by GrayMouser

Marriage is a socially-sanctioned arrangement, and if society doesn't agree, it isn't marriage.

Adam, Eve and God made a nice society ...

I think the Elves had it right - the bare minimum was man, woman and a vow before Eru. Society be hanged.

[Rían]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

What the state says is irrelevant. This, btw, is the POV of those child-molesters in Texas.

And also the POV of those people that wanted to abolish slavery.

[Rían]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

But it's hard to think of another "right" where both parties are eligible, but not with each other. You don't have a valid contract with a minor, because the minor can't sign one. You can't buy someone as a slave, even if they're willing, because the activity itself is forbidden. You can't marry someone who is already married to someone else.

But, in the case of gay marriage, it would be perfectly lawful for either person to marry, and yet they can't with each other. Effectively, it's a miscegenation law. Absent a pressing reason to prohibit (and the 2nd Amendment precludes reasons based on the sacred texts of any particular sect) the Supreme Court has already ruled (in 1967) those are unconstitutional.

In many if not most states, you can't marry first cousin or closer.

[The Gaffer]

* Points at Prince Charles *

This is what you get if you let cousins marry.

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by inked

Another interesting take....

FAKING OUT, VIRGINIA, IS KNOWN TO BE ATTEMPTED

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/...062308.article

Would that be VIRGINIA as in VIRGINIA vs. LOVING? I imagine quite a few fakes were attempted back in the Good Old Days.

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by inked

The Islamic take:
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/S...=1119503543082

You should say "an" Islamic take, not "the." There isn't a Muslim hive-mind distributing thoughts to all Muslims you know.

The Gaffer: Prince Phillip and Queen Elizabeth are, IIRC, third cousins. That's not bad in the genetics department you know.

[Rían]

well, pretty inbred third-cousins, I imagine ...

[The Gaffer]

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins I believe. Lots of the European royals have been doing it for centuries.

Hence bug-a-lugs.

[GrayMouser]

In the category of "What more can you say?"

Some Republicans, feeling the wind blowing against them this election cycle, have re-introduced the Federal Marriage Amendment. Nothing surprising there, except the original ten co-sponsors include Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) and Sen. Larry Craig (R.-Idaho).

Because after all, marriage should be defined as a union between a diaper-wielding dominatrix and a men's room toilet.

[inked]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...,6057126.story

Opinion

Protecting marriage to protect children

Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving. But in all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood.

By David Blankenhorn
September 19, 2008


I'm a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same-sex marriage. Do those positions sound contradictory? To me, they fit together.

Many seem to believe that marriage is simply a private love relationship between two people. They accept this view, in part, because Americans have increasingly emphasized and come to value the intimate, emotional side of marriage, and in part because almost all opinion leaders today, from journalists to judges, strongly embrace this position. That's certainly the idea that underpinned the California Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage.

But I spent a year studying the history and anthropology of marriage, and I've come to a different conclusion.

Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.

In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood -- biological, social and legal -- into one pro-child form: the married couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other.

These days, because of the gay marriage debate, one can be sent to bed without supper for saying such things. But until very recently, almost no one denied this core fact about marriage. Summing up the cross-cultural evidence, the anthropologist Helen Fisher in 1992 put it simply: "People wed primarily to reproduce." The philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell, certainly no friend of conventional sexual morality, was only repeating the obvious a few decades earlier when he concluded that "it is through children alone that sexual relations become important to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution."

Marriage is society's most pro-child institution. In 2002 -- just moments before it became highly unfashionable to say so -- a team of researchers from Child Trends, a nonpartisan research center, reported that "family structure clearly matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage."

All our scholarly instruments seem to agree: For healthy development, what a child needs more than anything else is the mother and father who together made the child, who love the child and love each other.

For these reasons, children have the right, insofar as society can make it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. The foundational human rights document in the world today regarding children, the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically guarantees children this right. The last time I checked, liberals like me were supposed to be in favor of internationally recognized human rights, particularly concerning children, who are typically society's most voiceless and vulnerable group. Or have I now said something I shouldn't?

Every child being raised by gay or lesbian couples will be denied his birthright to both parents who made him. Every single one. Moreover, losing that right will not be a consequence of something that at least most of us view as tragic, such as a marriage that didn't last, or an unexpected pregnancy where the father-to-be has no intention of sticking around. On the contrary, in the case of same-sex marriage and the children of those unions, it will be explained to everyone, including the children, that something wonderful has happened!

For me, what we are encouraged or permitted to say, or not say, to one another about what our society owes its children is crucially important in the debate over initiatives like California's Proposition 8, which would reinstate marriage's customary man-woman form. Do you think that every child deserves his mother and father, with adoption available for those children whose natural parents cannot care for them? Do you suspect that fathers and mothers are different from one another? Do you imagine that biological ties matter to children? How many parents per child is best? Do you think that "two" is a better answer than one, three, four or whatever? If you do, be careful. In making the case for same-sex marriage, more than a few grown-ups will be quite willing to question your integrity and goodwill. Children, of course, are rarely consulted.

The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously argued that, in many cases, the real conflict we face is not good versus bad but good versus good. Reducing homophobia is good. Protecting the birthright of the child is good. How should we reason together as a society when these two good things conflict?

Here is my reasoning. I reject homophobia and believe in the equal dignity of gay and lesbian love. Because I also believe with all my heart in the right of the child to the mother and father who made her, I believe that we as a society should seek to maintain and to strengthen the only human institution -- marriage -- that is specifically intended to safeguard that right and make it real for our children.

Legalized same-sex marriage almost certainly benefits those same-sex couples who choose to marry, as well as the children being raised in those homes. But changing the meaning of marriage to accommodate homosexual orientation further and perhaps definitively undermines for all of us the very thing -- the gift, the birthright -- that is marriage's most distinctive contribution to human society. That's a change that, in the final analysis, I cannot support.

David Blankenhorn is president of the New York-based Institute for American Values and the author of "The Future of Marriage."