Minnesota Family Council launches efforts to pass marriage ban

Really sad – when mis-guided people have to put energy into doing something so destructive that simply harms others.

And remember the bible says – “Whatsoever you do to the least of your brothers, that you do unto me!”

“if we receive your help and that of thousands of other Minnesotans who believe in God’s design for marriage. ”

Funny how such an all-powerful being needs so much help to have things his way.

If God was so against all this wouldn’t he just stop it?

In other words, they just want money from those that believe in the Great Christian Delusion of how the world works or should work. That is fine with me if they can also bring back stoning people, selling daughters into slavery, incest, persecution of divorced heterosexuals and all the other ridiculous primitive Bible laws… that no Christian can legally do in this modern day. Total hypocrites.

Lets face it. All this is going to do is make a lot of people come out of the “Suspension of Disbelief” that religious nut-jobs need in order to keep it’s brainwashed power over people. I know because I was one of them and got deprogrammed. The Christian faith is a TOTAL SCAM … it’s grossly outdated and just doesn’t relate to the reality of today.

Eating the body of it’s Christ leader (cannibalism) and drinking his blood (vampirism) is SICK along with their symbol of the dude hanging dead from a cross.

Why don’t we see Buddhists trying to push and impose their religious views onto non believers? Why aren’t the Hindus trying to pull this total RAPE of spirituality by slipping religious laws into government laws?

Andy Birkey, thanks for reporting this. I hope the MN Independent will also fully expose this so called ” extensive training program ” that NOM will distribute. We need to shed the light of truth on this organization of hate and discrimination cleverly disguised with religious righteousness.

@Mike – My faith isn’t a scam to me, but then again, I understand where you’re coming from. I too was raised by a bunch of hypocritical, bible-thumping, homophobic bigots who got their weekly hit of self-righteousness every Sunday morning and then spent the rest of the week thinking about how they were so much better than everyone else. It takes some deprogramming to get rid of that crap, but the assumption that those people are the sum total of Christianity is about as bad as the assumptions those people make about non-Christians.

Some of us maintain our Christianity by living with and in the modern world and attempting to do so in a manner reflective of Christ’s unlimited and uncompromising love, rather than standing apart from it and casting judgement on it. I would argue that the religion that you and I grew up in has very little to do with Christ and love and very much to do with self-centeredness and fear. Just something for you to ponder, I guess.

Also, by “bad” assumptions I mean “inaccurate.” I don’t mean to impute any sort of malign intent to your assumptions regarding the whole of Christianity, Mike. Sorry if my first comment didn’t make that very clear.

The usual religious right pottage of pious hypocrisy, naked prejudice, dishonesty, and self-serving lies and half-truths.

Let’s be very clear as to how this supernaturalist, traditionalist/conservative, literalist belief system actually works:

1) Take one’s own historically and culturally bound views, values and political commitments, and project them onto the Bible and the alleged will of your god. You probably have no idea you’re doing this–you don’t have the capacity for critical self-reflection to realize it.
2) Assert that you merely humbly acquire your views through reading the text of the Bible. You don’t bring any assumptions or implicit schemas to the interpretation of that text, you merely “find” your meanings, values and beliefs there. You’re a simple person of faith only following orders, and your will is subservient to that of your god. On the contrary–you’re actually engaging in a giant religious Rorschach test, but you have no idea that this is the case.

In short: you project yourself onto the Bible and as well as the imagined will of your god, then triumphantly declare to have found Truth.*

You find no irony or reason for suspicion in the coincidence of having views that line up perfectly with the will of your god, even though other Christians and other religious believers arrive at all sorts of different interpretations of this alleged will of god or the gods, and believe their views with equal fervor.

You often find yourself dogmatically committed to your views, adopting a pose to others and often yourself of absolute certainty. You mistake this for knowledge, when it’s merely a reflection of your catastrophic inability to think critically about your own beliefs.

Stupidity as public policy. Religious mania posing as morality. The attitudes and actions of bigotry dressed up in the language of conservative Christian virtue. Pious ignorance proclaimed loudly and proudly.

The same sex marriage amendment in Nov. of 2012 is really the question of whether we want this degraded mentality to form the basis for law in Minnesota.

*[Actually this process is considerably more complex and very likely reflects a dynamic synthesis of multiple factors--textual information mediated by prior belief in a context of environmental influences, but with the element of psychological projection an obvious major component.]

JDB … Thanks for your comments and point of view. In reality, I do know those who are still involved in the Christian church and are appalled at the idea of every having their religious views or practices forced onto other people. They give other respect and keep it to themselves or in their church with their members… AS THEY SHOULD.

I personally would never want to rob anyone of their delusions of life after death or of all the grossly made up stories of the Bible with no basis in modern day reality, created from a primitive man that lived in a time of widespread heathenism, rape and murder. People back then… hundreds of years ago needed some sort of guide to live by. They didn’t have the psychology, medical technology or other advancements of science to understand why things happened. They needed a cop-out and a mental rationale to explain all the unexplainable. Well, we simply don’t live in that time anymore and it’s become BIG BUSINESS for those to manipulate and use others for their own selfish gain… case in point, The Bachmann Clinic that uses JUNK RELIGIOUS THERAPY with no backing by the American Psychological Association or any of the other credited associations.

I dare anyone to go to any Atheist site, one I like is TheThinkingAtheist.com… fully read how it exposes and refutes the Bible stories and total rubbish, then come back and say you seriously believe in the illusions. Heck if you HAVE to choose a religion, go with Buddhism or Hindu. I personally follow the teachings of the Chakra System. That way I’m not praying to anything in any sick rituals or chanting any allegiance or devotion with brainwashing tactics. This way I still have a basis of learning the nitty gritty of my soul and it’s various challenges for the goal of a more enlightened state of human life.

Again, I wouldn’t try and rob anyone of their delusions and illusions, but when those people create the “Us Against Them” cult mentality then it’s gloves off and time to PUSH BACK the CRAZY.

Eric … excellent post. Bravo. Fully agreed. Thank you for your logic and reason with higher cognitive observations.

Mike,

I’m grateful you read my post, and also for your contributions to the discussion.

The MN Family Council is a political organization, an arm of the MN Republican Party. It’s run by people with extremely close ties to the republican party. Its only reason for being is to motivate low-information voters to vote for Republican candidates. They don’t even care about people being gay. If denigrating people with red hair would get more people to the polls to vote for republicans, they would do that instead of going after gays. It’s all about more power for republicans. These people are evil incarnate and parasites on the body politic.

“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views…which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.”

Dr. Who

…any group that has the words “Family, or Values, or Freedom” in its title Usually stands for Neither…or well . ONLY thier Version of it. This ammendment WON’T STOP people from Marrying….but IF it passes – it WILL BE a STAIN of Embarrassment on MN for generations ie: History books

Eric, thank you for your professedly enlightening but assuredly ignorant and hate-mongering reply – folks please scroll up to see Eric’s comment if you missed it.

Eric charges those religious fundamentalists as being “pious hypocrites” and does not hesitate to impute unwarranted slanderous calumnies upon them (“hypocrisy, naked prejudice, dishonesty, and self-serving lies and half-truths”) . ‘Hypocrites’ he says? Can he prove that the members of the family council are engaging in depraved acts of homosexuality with each other, or with anyone for that matter? Thought not. Just nasty swear words from a potty-mouthed “diverse” and “inclusive” pro-homosexual and anti-religious bigot.

And them projecting their preconceived ideals upon the bible – them reading what they want to see in there? The bible says homosexuals are to be stoned to death. That their acts are an “abomination”. Well really, it says that their acts are an ABOMINATION. Explicitly. Personally I have nothing against homosexual acts, but the bible is pretty clear – homosexual sex is a veritable ABOMINATION. Stone them! How Eric and his homosexual cronies can possibly construe the bible as saying otherwise defies all sound logic and imagination. Really, who is the one projecting themselves onto the bible?

Time to get real Eric. Time to get honest. And time to soap your mouth of your filthy bathroom invective.

Sorry guys, the last post was accidentally made with Eric’s name. Apologies.

yeah thanks guys for deleting my comment. i wonder who’s really inclusive and allows diversity of opinions? you just want to silence anyone who disagrees with you. you let eric’s comment but delete mine. who’s the hypocrite now?

“Sam”: Welcome to the site. All first-time comments are held in a queue for moderation. Yours, signed up with a fake email address and using the name Eric, shouldn’t appear at all, as you’re directly in violation of our comment policies. Stick with one username and drop the ad hominem and your comments should appear right away. To be clear: This is your only warning.

The Minnesota Family Council can lie to itself, but it doesn’t have my permission to lie to me.

You know, sometime somewhere the silent middle is going to grow weary of the extremists owning this debate.

Marriage support does not require you to hate gays, and oddly enough hating gays doesn’t require you to support marriage.

On the other hand, not all gay marriage supporters really want to change the definition of marriage.

No one wants gay marriage to be illegal unless you want to see the government jackboot interrupting weddings between two people of the same sex, and keeping them from living together in domestic mutuality.

No one wants to change the definition of marriage unless they really want us to no longer recognize the essence of how we take responsibility (or don’t take responsibility, conversely) of what a man and woman do together — create children.

OL,
Nice try. When it comes to denying a group of people rights by enshrining discrimination into the state Constitution.

Marriage has legal rights that it confers upon those who sign the contract. There are somewhere over 500 legal rights that married couples have the gay ones do not in Minnesota law. The Religious Right wants to continue to discriminate against gays. This is what the issue is. So unless ALL of those laws are changed so that the law is neutral to gay as well as straight couples, this debate/fight will continue.

And sorry marriage isn’t necessary to 1) create children and 2) raise them, so try again. And does that mean that marriages without children aren’t “real marriages”?

“The bible says homosexuals are to be stoned to death. That their acts are an “abomination”. Well really, it says that their acts are an ABOMINATION. ”

It says the same thing about eating shellfish.

Sam,

You’re laboring under some misconceptions. To clear things up…

You wrote,

—-”‘Hypocrites’ he says? Can he prove that the members of the family council are engaging in depraved acts of homosexuality with each other, or with anyone for that matter?”

1) Your comments are potentially more revealing than you know. You claim you have “nothing against homosexual acts”, but then refer to them as “depraved” a few sentences earlier. It’s possible however that you intended the “depraved” comment to amplify the hypocrisy of a hypothetical scenario of anti-gay bigots themselves engaging in homosexual sex acts.

2) Leaving that aside, I never made the claim that I believed religious right anti-gay activists were engaging in homosexual sex acts. My charge of hypocrisy is stems from the apparent contradiction between religious right hyperventilation about morality on the one hand, while at the same time engaging in morally reprehensible discourse and actions against a sexual minority.

3) You wrote,

—-”And them projecting their preconceived ideals upon the bible – them reading what they want to see in there? The bible says homosexuals are to be stoned to death. That their acts are an “abomination”. Well really, it says that their acts are an ABOMINATION. Explicitly.”

So what? The Bible also advocates racist genocide, sanctions rape, the killing of disobedient children, and much else that’s vile. Jesus seems indifferent to the moral crime of slavery. Why then are Christian conservatives not calling for these odious views to be adopted as moral precepts? (Christian conservatives WERE justifying slavery by reference to the Bible many decades ago. Perhaps you don’t recall.) Somehow they are picking and choosing what counts as ‘Biblical morality.’ What’s behind this? What explains this cafeteria style approach to morality?

Well, clearly, if you were absolutely loyal to the text of the Bible you’d be seen by most people as mentally ill and/or morally depraved. It’s obvious that Christians are changing along with a changing culture (as are we all), adopting their views to accommodate changing values and assumptions. The striking dishonesty and hypocrisy many others and I have noted is the contradiction between claiming to advocate for ‘moral absolutes’ and ‘timeless moral truths’ on the one hand, while continually modifying one’s views to suit contemporary standards.

A second level of dishonesty and hypocrisy exists with the frequently heard religious right claim of simply ‘following god’s word’, when in actuality what’s happening is a process of projection of one’s unconsciously adopted values, assumptions, beliefs and political commitments onto the text of the Bible.

4) So, the more educated and self-critical Christians recognize that Biblical interpretation is not and can never be a simple reading of instructions. It necessarily involves being fully aware that one brings historically and culturally bound assumptions and methods to bear on how one reads the Biblical texts. In other words, one is making choices about what to accept from the Bible, whether you know it or not.

Scott,

Of all the stand-offish suspicion. But I like tracking down these kind of issues, so what, pray tell was I trying to do that offended you so?

Marriage is not illegal for gays, it is simply between a man and a woman. I understand that isn’t gay marriage, but that is marriage.

But gay marriage is not illegal for gays either. There is no jackboot breaking up wedding ceremonies between two people of the same gender.

You call marriage a contract, and where in Minnesota law are contracts between people illegal if they are same-sex?

I realize your point is about the benefits, and I would like to talk about that. Just lets I make sure we agree that the discussion is about benefits and not about a “ban” or making same-sex marriage “illegal” — because in reality it is neither a ban nor illegal for them to have a wedding and live together and even consider themselves married. Nor does it keep hospitals, employers, etc… from recognizing their relationship either.

I just want to wade in on this homosexuality debate.

Does anyone else notice that saying “marriage is between a man and a woman” does in no wise criminalize homosexuality?

Whatever people think about homosexuality, its simply a different issue than marriage.

I honestly get frustrated when I see either side using marriage as a proxy war for their views on homosexuality.

O.L. wrote,

“Marriage is not illegal for gays, it is simply between a man and a woman. I understand that isn’t gay marriage, but that is marriage.”

You’ve made a factual and logical error.

Your factual error is in believing that marriage is a heterosexual institution. You may believe this as a private moral view, but same sex marriage is a matter of fact in a number of countries as well as states in the US. Same sex marriage exists right now for many same sex couples whether you like it or not.

Your logical error is so close to a frequently heard fallacious argument that I’m treating it as the same thing. It’s formulation goes, “Gays and lesbians can get married anytime they want to, as long as it’s to someone of the opposite sex.” Well, typically, the person making that argument doesn’t realize that they’ve done a bait and switch. The motivating question is whether gays and lesbians can marry a person of the same sexual orientation, it’s not whether they can marry someone of the opposite sex–everyone knows they can and this isn’t at issue. It’s an obvious truism, and no sophistries can skate around it, that same sex couples can’t legally marry in many areas. Claiming that they can, but only if it’s to someone of the opposite sex, is not entirely honest and a little bit slippery.

OL,
Thanks for being civil and asking questions.

There are two issues here. There is a number of people who want to criminalize homosexuality, like say Bradlee Dean and Bryan Fisher at the AFA. And there is the issue about the legal recognition of gay couples so that they are not discriminated against.

The amendment would prevent gays from getting married and would do NOTHING to help their legal standing in the mulititude of legal issues where gay couples are still discriminated against. Marriage right now is a legal status for opposite sex couples. It gives them rights like filing taxes jointly, inheritance rights, no questions asked hospital visitation rights, no problems dealing with adoption and a number of other things. These are areas where being married automatically gets opposite sex couples rights that same sex couples do not.

So then how do we get equal civil rights to gays, when there are those who want to arrest them?

Eric,

I’m sorry, but your comment is rife with the kind of fanaticism that I think is very harmful to this debate.

You are setting strong will against a rather existential question … what is marriage? I bet that is a question I can answer and you can’t.

I bet between the two of us, I’m the only one who can show what marriage is in a way that justifies every regulation and expectation in marriage that we uphold today.

I doubt you can do the find any definition of marriage which is consistent with your expectations of what marriage is.

And, since you seem to be sure of what is factually correct about what marriage is, and what it isn’t, I’ll let you start first.

Answer me this, what is marriage? What is marriage that the state should have any interest in it whatsoever?

I’ll give you the first go on it, but I’m sure I can answer those questions and you can only answer them by piggy-backing on my answer.

Thanks Scott.

I appreciate your points, too.

We will disagree whether or not the amendment will keep gays from marrying or not. Likely that is because I see marriage as a behavior that the government recognizes, and you might see marriage as a government institution itself.

As a behavior, nothing in the amendment keeps gays from engaging in it. It doesn’t even keep the government from recognizing their marriages as civil unions or domestic partnerships (or my favorite, Reciprocal Beneficiaries).

But you are right, otherwise, but I would put it even broader. The amendment would do nothing either for or against the behavior of homosexuality. It won’t criminalize or privelege it (and it won’t even preclude those relationships from benefits and rights). Its completely orthogonal to homosexuality, just as marriage is orthogonal to homosexuality.

That’s just how I see it. And neither side really gets what they want, but I think the people who care more about the day-to-day humanitarian concerns of everyone in society get a lot of mileage out of the amendment.

Frankly, O.L., you are not making any sense at all in your pathetic attempts to trivialize loving, committed relationships and marriages between same-sex couples that are EVERY BIT AS REAL as that between opposite-sex couples.

O.L. if I’m understanding your argument, you say that the amendment doesn’t change anything and that “it won’t even preclude those relationships from benefits and rights.” Speaking as some who got married in Iowa in 2009, I can say definitively that my marriage brings with it no rights. Minnesota doesn’t recognize my relationship with my partner. I guess we’re just “really good friends” when we’re on this side of the border. My employer doesn’t recognize our relationship for purposes of insurance benefits and the federal government doesn’t recognize my relationship for tax or any other purposes.

I have many heterosexual friends who are married who have no intention of having children – so saying the “essence” of marriage is children doesn’t make sense unless society starts denying childless couples rights the same way it denies my partner and me rights.

I just really think that hatred/fear/religious arguments against gays are being used to distract the electorate from bigger problems. My marriage has no impact on my next door neighbors. Theirs has none on me. I don’t get a special low tax rate based on the fact that I don’t have certain rights (COBRA, Social Security partner benefits, FMLA, and so on there are hundreds).

I’d just really like the same civil rights that my neigbors have. After all, we’re all paying taxes and we’re all working hard to be productive citizens in whatever way we can.

Lane,

I’m sorry you think I’m attempting to “trivialize loving committed relationships”. I don’t see that in what I write at all, and honestly I don’t see where you would be getting that impression either.

Since you brought up the point about trivializing, I can’t help but ask… when we are talking about same-sex marriage, are we talking about:

1) Government Recognition of a homosexual relationship, wedding and living together

2) Making it so that anything unique about the man/woman relationship with each other and the child they potentially have together is not recognized by the government in marriage by neutering “man and woman” from the definition of marriage.

The reason I’d like people to make a better distinction is that I support #1 as a part of recognizing a much larger group of responsible adult mutual support relationships. But there are reasons I don’t support #2.

I don’t support #2 because that is trivializing their relationships. I don’t see how recognizing what #2 entails trivializes any other relationships.

O.L.,

If I’m reading you correctly you seem to hold that same sex marriage (your first point) somehow “trivializes” heterosexual marriage. Is that your view? If so how is that NOT a non sequitur?

O.L.,

I note your studious avoidance of my two points. On the assumption that you might respond to them directly at some point I’ll proceed with our discussion.

You make a most curious series of statements. Perhaps the most curious appears to be your implication that there is an objective definition of marriage, one possibly even ‘out there’ waiting to be found by us, as opposed to marriage being a human construct. I certainly don’t deny that there are truths to be found in human nature, and that these may be discovered in their fullness over time through psychology, sociology, lived experience, etc., and may inform our views on marriage. But this is only part of the picture. We as humans ultimately create the laws that define the institution of marriage. I hope this is not belaboring an obvious point, but it is far from obvious to many of the opponents of same sex marriage on this site.

And, to clear up a potential misconception on your part when you write,

“I doubt you can do the find any definition of marriage which is consistent with your expectations of what marriage is.”

My expectations of what marriage “is” have pretty much lived up to my expectations when I got married to my then girlfriend over 15 years ago. Are you assuming that everyone here speaking up in defense of same sex marriage is necessarily gay or lesbian? If you read enough conservative opinion you often get the sense that this is widely believed. The truth of the matter is that many heterosexuals, such as myself, believe that same sex marriage is just as normal, natural, moral and valid as heterosexual marriage. Same sex marriage doesn’t threaten my marriage in any conceivable way, or yours, or your community, anyone’s kids or our society. It is not the causative start of any slippery slope toward negative social outcomes. It doesn’t symbolize or exist as an instance of an alleged downward slide of morality. It’s merely more people getting married. But actually it’s more than that. Same sex marriage represents a strengthening of our collective commitment to a justice, fairness, and the expanding circle of moral concern.

Finally, one last bit of housecleaning. You write,

“I bet between the two of us, I’m the only one who can show what marriage is in a way that justifies every regulation and expectation in marriage that we uphold today.”

I’ll wait for further elaborations of your views to confirm my suspicion or otherwise, but I suspect the “we” to which you refer is a commitment to an arbitrary circularity that we’ll have to unpack.

Do you have any substantial disagreements with the above, except for my sentence above since we’ll get to that eventually (or not)?

So, to the main question: do there exist any rational, non-arbitrary, non- religious chauvinist and prejudicial reasons for restricting marriage to heterosexual couples only?

I hold that there are none.

So, what is my definition of marriage? A minimal definition would be: A legally recognized union of two or more people that may or may not include the raising of children (and that may or may not include intra-family relations pending more social scientific research.)

OL,
“1) Government Recognition of a homosexual relationship, wedding and living together

2) Making it so that anything unique about the man/woman relationship with each other and the child they potentially have together is not recognized by the government in marriage by neutering “man and woman” from the definition of marriage”

On #1 the government current recognizes marriage based on the license NOT on weddings and living together, so not sure what you mean by that we are pressing for government recognition of “weddings and living together”. What we are fighting for is the SAME civil rights as heterosexual couples, like in TZ’s comment above.

On #2, there is nothing “unique” about the nuclear family as the you describe it above. Humans have been using a variety of living arrangements for familes over time, there is nothing unique to the small nuclear family, other than it being more common in the US since the last century.

Again what gays are asking for is the same civil rights for their relationships that heteros have.

Eric,

To your first question, neutering the definition of marriage from the gendered reference to “man and woman” so that it can no longer recognize anything unique or important in that relationship trivializes that relationship.

Does that answer your question?

Having two gay people who get government goodies and live together in a mutually trusting domestic relationship doesn’t, because as I argued before, it is orthogonal to marriage.

I’m against neutering marriage, but not against gay couples practicing their form of marriage, and even recognizing them with CUs, DPs, etc…

Eric,

Like many of our understandings of objective truth, it is wrapped in our own constructs. For instance, engineers construct models that represent objective truth that help them produce reliable results.

Marriage is also a human construct also rooted in objective truth which helps is produce more reliable socialization and civilization of children. Hence the number of studies that bear out marriage when practiced with the same fidelity as the engineering models have a positive benefit for those in it, and the children produced from it.

We as humans create the laws around it, but just as an emperor’s throne doesn’t stop the tide, and just as the law of gravity cannot be repealed by congress, it is by fidelity with the objective truths that we hope to produce the most reliable results.

Scott,

I’ll put you down as a fan of #2, who presents your own personal view as universal truth.

Thanks for letting us know.

T.Z.

I’m sorry to hear about your plight.

I wonder, do you think your relationship is more deserving of the benefits of marriage then a mother/daughter pair (non-sexual) who are simply banding together to raise the daughter’s children after the husband abandoned them?

Their relationship is committed, loving, and mutually dependent just as yours. It is also with children who depend on their stability.

If you think your relationship is more deserving of the benefits that would aid your mutual trust and dependency, please tell us how.

So O.L.’s “engineered” definition of marriage consists of that “unique, important” one-to-one pairing of a penis and a vagina that contributes to “more reliable socialization and civilization of children” conveniently ignoring the “objective truth” that such “unique, important” pairings have a 50% or so failure rate …

Parenting skills are “orthogonal” to the definition of marriage.

All I see here is the “objective truth” of anti-gay animus. Meh. *yawn*

OL
Too bad you seem to incapable of answering arguments with a counter argument rather that a stupid comment. I thought there was hope for you to be more the typical anti-gay troll we get here.

Civil rights are NOT “government goodies”, they are what people need to conduct their life. Telling one group of people their primary relationship must be a PinV relationship to be recognized for rights is stupid. Please inform us how we currently stop fathers and daughters from marrying or mothers and sons?

Marriage, as a number of had mentioned, has legal contractual rights that go with it. Remember people are signing a legal document when they sign the marriage license. A mother and daughters relationship is already a legal one, so the equivalent of marriage is NOT needed for their mutual support and ability to get legal rights. Daughters can be on their parents health coverage until age 26. Parents have legal hospital visiting rights.

And the history of human relationships is not “opinion”, humans have long associated in many ways to support each other.

So again come up with something that is NOT religious prejudice wrapped up in a smart ass tone.

O.L.

You wrote,

“To your first question, neutering the definition of marriage from the gendered reference to “man and woman” so that it can no longer recognize anything unique or important in that relationship trivializes that relationship.

Does that answer your question?”

No, unfortunately, it does not. It’s a circular definition–a tautology. Neutralizing the language of marriage does not automatically trivialize heterosexual marriage. You have to bring forward another premise for that to be possibly true.

Consider the class of properties A that are believed to be inherent to heterosexual marriage. Now, as it turns out, all the properties B associated with same sex marriage have, as far as we know, identical overlap with A, except for the accident of sexual orientation. Thus, if you’re claiming that heterosexual marriage will be trivialized if same sex couples are allowed to marry, it can only be because you believe heterosexual couples to be somehow superior to same sex couples simply on account of their heterosexuality–an instance of prejudice. Or, is there another explanation? I’d be curious to hear your answer.

It also seems like you’re committing a category mistake: you’re conflating the change in language with a change in the valuation of the relationship.

Lastly, your view seems to fall into self-contradiction: unless you want to admit to bias against same sex couples, then it would follow that not allowing same sex couples to marry would trivialize their relationships, and in a way that does not parallel the case of heterosexual relationships allegedly being trivialized by neutralizing the language of marriage. In other words, the same standard you uphold for the importance of heterosexual marriage must also be upheld for same sex couples, unless your view is motivated by an intent to denigrate and trivialize!

A summary observation: If the case AGAINST same sex marriage had validity, I think we’d all know it by now and the push for same sex marriage would have been halted in its tracks. The contrary obtains: we’ve seen no accumulated body of argument and evidence that allowing same sex marriage will in any way produce negative social outcomes. Prejudice against LGBT people very much appears to be the only leg the opposition is left standing on, even though they try to dress up this ugly fact with sophistries quite easy to debunk.

Lane: > “So O.L.’s “engineered” definition of marriage”

You put the word “engineered” in quotes, but that word is entirely your own.

I used the word “engineer” to describe people who build constructs that help them understand objective truths.

I used engineering to describe a practice where such constructs are used often, and the fidelity of those constructs determines the success of the use of the construct.

But the word you used in quotes, “engineered” is not something I used. I’ve called you in this thread and another for accusing me of things I’m not doing.

As it is, I’m happy to let you play in the la-la land of your own strawmen, and I’ll just point it out.

All I’m saying is that marriage is based in objective truth, and the more it matches the objective truths the more successful the institution is. Not only do studies bear this out, but the scientific process itself is based on this very notion also. In fact, while engineers use models, physicists use the word “theory” and “law” to describe these constructs. Mathematics itself, what these laws, theories, is also such a construct.

I bring it up in this conversation because I wanted to head Scott off before he created a false dilemma between human constructs and objective truth.

It seems to have worked, in spite of Scott’s further goading and taunting :)

Eric, sorry I just confused you for Scott in my last post. Please accept my apology.

O.L.,

Of course.

I like where you’re going with this statement since it accords with my own tendency for ideal-seeking:

“All I’m saying is that marriage is based in objective truth, and the more it matches the objective truths the more successful the institution is.”

How, marriage as it’s constructed now, is only minimally ideal-seeking. We don’t prevent marriage and the having of kids based on, for instance, whether one or more parents are alcohol abusers, have violent tendencies, or criminal records, etc. Marriage right now is essentially wide open for business.

Scott,

I’ll agree that rights are more important than goodies.

I’ll admit that in my discussion I equate what comes along with marriage as benefits and priveleges (i.e. government goodies).

That is because I’ve never seen anyone accurately describe what right is denied. Everything I’ve seen put up as a right is either really just a government goody, or it is a right that isn’t actually denied.

I scanned your comment for what you might present as such a right.

You listed,

1) Daughters can be on their parents health coverage until age 26.

2) Parents have legal hospital visiting rights.

Your first example is not a right is it, it is a benefit. It is listed in the “benefits” in the insurance brochures and employer’s human resource documents.

Your listing is also misguided as benefits are decided by the insurer, not the federal government. There is no government regulation or recognition of a right on that matter that I’m aware of.

Your second one is similarly off-set as a right. Visitation rights are a matter for the hospital alone. The guardianship of parents is respected as a right to visit only as long as the child is a dependent (like the 26 year old limit in your example previous).

Hospitals are increasingly wary of visitation based on relationships, and are instead relying on advanced directives — in my own experience.

When my wife and I had children together, my wife was encouraged to write up an advanced directive, even though I was there and was her husband.

She used the advanced directive to keep one of her parents from visiting her.

There have been times in other medical issues she’s had that required her to sign an advanced directive to allow me to visit her in the hospital — even though I was her husband and helped admit her to the hospital.

So could you bring up something that could honestly and accurately be categorized as a right, rather than a privilege or a benefit?

Until that happens (and it hasn’t yet in many years of discussing this issue) I’ll continue to call them “government goodies”.

In all that bloviating, I’ve yet to see O.L. advance one single legitimate reason as to why civil marriage should not be extended to same-sex couples. I feel sorry for people who keep talking to themselves …

Eric,

Thanks. I also appreciate that we seem to want to find the answers on the same ground, so to speak.

I’ll also agree that gender neutralizing (or neutering) the definition of marriage doesn’t, in and of itself, trivialize the man-woman relationship.

If you read more closely you’ll see that there were two dominoes that fall to cause that outcome.

The first domino is to create a gender neutral definition of marriage, the second — a direct outcome of the first — is “that it can no longer recognize anything unique or important in that relationship”.

I’ll also add that even as you understood it, it wouldn’t be a tautology.

Just seeing the premise show up in the conclusion is not tautological. Every proof will start with something it is trying to prove, and if you see it in the conclusion then you’ve done the proof right.

A tautology practically means that you’ve done too many steps. You can have tautologies within a proof, and still have a valid proof. You just took too many steps.

When a tautology seems to encompass all of the proof, then you realize you’ve not done anything at all. But that doesn’t mean that anytime you see the conclusion and the premise as the same thing you’ve got a tautology.

In my reasoning, I accept that trivializing something is to negate its unique value. Neutering the definition of marriage from its reference to “man and woman” causes marriage to no longer recognize anything unique about that relationship (it no longer sees any difference, as the definition of “gender neutral”). Hence it trivializes the relationship.

Each step in that is valid and cannot be removed in order to arrive at the conclusion (hence it is not a tautology).

But I will agree (looking at your reasoning) that it depends on there being some unique value in the man-woman relationship that is not intrinsic to a same-sex relationship. If A=B, then there is nothing unique about A. I’ll admit that so far I’ve only presented the premise that A!=B, and that is where the microscope needs to be turned.

But it is logical to present that “if A!=B” then forcing “A=B” does trivialize what is unique about A. (Note that the use of the term trivialize assumes that in this algebra there is a function which can make A=B, all I proved that if they are unique then making them not unique makes a change (which I call trivializing) to A.

And while I’ve raised the formality of the presentation, that is still informal, so take it accordingly.

And I’m prepared to show A!=B.

As I said above, I’m not against same-sex marriage (neither the behavior, nor the government recognition of such). What I am against is neutering the definition of marriage so as to negate the governments ability to see and protect objective truths that improve success, recognition of rights, and general happiness for society.

Lane,

I’m not so sure that if all I could contribute to the conversation was an admission of ignorance and blindness, (i.e. “I’ve yet to see O.L. advance one single legitimate reason”), I wouldn’t be so quick to admit it.

Probably because I have a strong sense of trying to understand and know what I talk about before I talk about it. But if you don’t see or know, I’m glad to see you admit it.

OL,
Actually the age dependents can be covered on a health plan IS determined by the government, the age 26 is part of the ACA. Some employers do set limits, a vast majority use the legal guidelines.

One right that married couples have, is the right sue in wrongful death situation, gays couples do not have that right.

What is your definition of a right?

Scott,

Thanks for pointing that out. I agree same-sex couples should have the ability to sue for wrongful death.

As I can see, that is a matter of probate law. States such as California have altered their probate law to give domestic partnerships that right.

So in short. I’m comfortable calling it a right, but it is a matter of inheritance which marriage is a part of. I’m happy to include more types of relationships into the probate law. And I’d hate to see all of those relationships have to call themselves a marriage to gain access to probate.

For instance, in Texas I knew two men who lived together. One man’s wife ran off, the other man’s wife died. They banded together and shared money and responsibility for the children.

If one of them died wrongfully, I would want, for the sake of what they banded together to accomplish as a domestic matter for the children, that the other could sue.

There are a number of relationships which are mutually trusting, domestically dependent, and often have children they are raising, that would benefit just as much as same-sex couples with many of the benefits they seek.

Wouldn’t you agree?

O.L.,

Thanks for taking the time to respond to some of my points.

So, I’m curious to find out why you hold that trivialization, if granted for the sake of moving along the course of the argument, is itself non-trivial, i.e., why should neutralizing language matter at all?

Presumably there is a reason or reasons why denying uniqueness should matter, and on grounds other than the bare fact of heterosexual gender difference itself.

Scott,

Just to clean up a few items…

I’ll give a practical definition of a right. Rights involves a behavior or ownership that is naturally according to their humanity.

Rights need to be recognized as opportunities for all of humanity, and based on no identity other than being human.

They should be identified by tying them to some aspect of humanity, (e.g.) ownership, either mutual association, kinship, pursuit of happiness, etc… so that the laws we form can have the highest fidelity with those aspects.

That may involve more of my personal theory then is needed, but I think you’ll find it (though abstract at this point) agreeable?

Scott,

Good point, we can assume that there is a context that makes the differences between A and B meaningful.

I should seek to spell out that context as well as the differences.

Again, thanks for pointing that out.

Wow, I did it again.

I have a good friend named Scott and a good friend Erik. But the voices I read Eric’s comments in come across more like Scott. So I apologize again, please bear with me and I’ll be more careful.

O.L., don’t be so glad now when I tell you that all you have said I’ve already heard or read in not so many different variations all my life – including your obsession over the so-called unique nature of man-woman marriage. You come across as insincere when in trying to “understand” the same-sex marriage issue, you put forth the same arguments that have already been discredited again and again from so many different places. Rather than be “Minnesota Nice” and counter with sound information only to be ignored altogether or demeaned, I am choosing to call out bigotry and ignorance whenever I see it. There is no excuse anymore because we’ve had at least two decades of this discussion. I don’t like you, and don’t care if you don’t like me, either. If necessary, I will push you and others like you to the side as we work to achieve full equality under the law for people like me who are LGBT. Again, you and others like you have yet to show a single, legitimate reason to deny civil marriage to same-sex couples who are every bit as human as you and your wife are, and whose marriages will NOT affect your marriage in the slightest bit. Grrrrr.

Lane,

Thank you for your admission that you are forgoing ration and reason, and instead wish to use emotional epithets.

Choose the playing field you think you can do best it, and I’ll do the same.

@ O.L., GLBTI’s make children too and…

your assessment on “what marriage is” is NOT historically accurate. In fact, marriage used to include everyone until it was redefined by the homophobes.

Contrary to myth, Christianity’s concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has constantly evolved as a concept and ritual.

Prof. John Boswell3, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the “Office of Same-Sex Union” (10th and 11th century), and the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century).

These church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiatied in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John.

Such same gender Christian sanctified unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (‘Geraldus Cambrensis’) recorded.

Same-sex unions in pre-modern Europe list in great detail some same gender ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek 13th century rite, “Order for Solemn Same-Sex Union”, invoked St. Serge and St. Bacchus, and called on God to “vouchsafe unto these, Thy servants [N and N], the grace to love one another and to abide without hate and not be the cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God, and all Thy saints”. The ceremony concludes: “And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other, and it shall be concluded”.

Another 14th century Serbian Slavonic “Office of the Same Sex Union”, uniting two men or two women, had the couple lay their right hands on the Gospel while having a crucifix placed in their left hands. After kissing the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion.

Records of Christian same sex unions have been discovered in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, in Istanbul and in the Sinai, covering a thousand-years from the 8th to the 18th century.

The Dominican missionary and Prior, Jacques Goar (1601-1653), includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek Orthodox prayer books, “Euchologion Sive Rituale Graecorum Complectens Ritus Et Ordines Divinae Liturgiae” (Paris, 1667).

While homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, homophobic writings didn’t appear in Western Europe until the late 14th century. Even then, church-consecrated same sex unions continued to take place.

At St. John Lateran in Rome (traditionally the Pope’s parish church) in 1578, as many as thirteen same-gender couples were joined during a high Mass and with the cooperation of the Vatican clergy, “taking communion together, using the same nuptial Scripture, after which they slept and ate together” according to a contemporary report. Another woman to woman union is recorded in Dalmatia in the 18th century.

Prof. Boswell’s academic study is so well researched and documented that it poses fundamental questions for both modern church leaders and heterosexual Christians about their own modern attitudes towards homosexuality.

For the Church to ignore the evidence in its own archives would be cowardly and deceptive. The evidence convincingly shows that what the modern church claims has always been its unchanging attitude towards homosexuality is, in fact, nothing of the sort.

It proves that for the last two millennia, in parish churches and cathedrals throughout Christendom, from Ireland to Istanbul and even in the heart of Rome itself, homosexual relationships were accepted as valid expressions of a [Christian] god-given love and commitment to another person, a love that could be celebrated, honored and blessed, through the Eucharist in the name of, and in the presence of, Jesus Christ.

“… in the evening the youth came to him [Jesus], wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan.” —The Secret Gospel of Mark, The Other Bible, Willis Barnstone, Editor, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1984, pp. 339-342.

And by not supporting marriage equality for all Minnesotas families, you further an apartheid state which DOES discriminate against homosexuals by depriving them of 1183 federal and 515 states full citizenship birthrights not to mention of their religious liberties.

“First they came…” is a famous statement attributed to pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group. The text of the quotation is usually presented roughly as follows:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Wendy,

I’m rather familiar with Boswell’s claims.

If you are ready to call “civil unions” same-sex marriages, just as Boswell identified same-sex unions and blood-brother ceremonies as same-sex marriage, then we really have nothing to argue about.

Many of Boswell’s examples (even some you cited) were not at all interpreted as sexual unions civilly though there is no telling what happened privately.

I have no problem extending civil unions to non-sexual relationships also.

Wendy,

On what grounds of what I’ve written can you claim that I don’t support equality?

I stand for marriage equality even. As I see it and practice it, marriage equality is the equal recognition of the rights of the man, woman, and child they potentially have together.

While not the marriage equality you stand for, can you honestly tell me that the marriage equality I stand up for is not…

1) Based in humanity

2) Based in full recognition of our rights.

3) Based in full equality in how it values those rights amongst men, women, and children?

Can you honestly tell me how the government can equally recognize the rights of the man, woman, and child they potentially have together, if it can’t recognize the man and woman together?

They came to take away the rights of children in how they were created, and the claim they have on responsibility first from the two that combined to create them … and I stood up to defend them.

Will you?

spoken with true heterosexual privilege. Nor is there an agreement on how your book has been deceptively translated to exclude an entire class of good upstanding individuals. All marriages are civil unions.

Spare me the NOHM talking points. I’ll stand for ALL MINNESOTAS FAMILIES.

Heterosexual privilege to what, exactly?

The only privilege I seek to maintain is the rights of children to know their heritage (a UN recognized right).

No two people are better positioned to give a child a sense of self worth, to bestow on the child cultural identity, then the two people who shared their identity to create a child.

Marriage to me isn’t about loving whomever you want … that is what adultery is are about. To me marriage is about promoting love to the people that most deserve it.

And a child most deserves the direct love, tolerance, and support from the two people who they directly share identity with.

I also know that women and men who have children together deserve the love, tolerance, and support of the person they combined with to create the child.

If you can show me any other way where children rights and parental rights can be honored more fully then by keeping their relationship in-tact and fully tolerant and supportive of one another, then I’m all ears. I’d love to hear it.

I’m not saying people who are gays want to take away people’s rights.

What I’m saying is that government’s ability to protect the rights associated with how children are created is greatly impaired when it cannot recognize their relationship at all as anything unique.

My question above, about equality, is not that different then put to the judges in the trial of Brown v Board of Education.

Can separate but equal be equal? Can you segregate out the men and the women from each other (even if just certain instances) and still consider that equal?

I think we all remember their answer … no, separate but equal is not equal.

You can’t separate the man from the woman and still promote the kind of marriage equality that supports all the rights that children are due by us in how they are created.

At a NOM-sponsored anti-gaty hate rally in the Bronx in May, a preacher yelled through a megaphone that homosexuals are “worthy of death.” NOM’s leader Maggie Gallagher has said of her war to get marriage equality repealed in New York “it’s going to be a bloody mess in New York.” After Gallagher was interviewed on Wallbuilders this week, Wallbuilders’ David Barton apologized to Native Americans before saying that the bloody scalps of the six Republican New York State Senators who voted for marriage equality should be hung over the rails to serve as a warning to others. How Christian.

I’m unaffiliated with NOM.

Actually the points on rights to heritage were made by Margaret Sommerville many years ago, long before NOM came on the scene.

The points that you mislabeled as heterosexual privilege are more accurately known as responsible procreation (as it denotes a responsibility to see other’s rights recognized), and they have existed even longer then the recognition of rights to heritage.

I’m happy to have the discussion about rights with you.

I just don’t see removing recognition of responsible procreation — the responsibility to see to the rights of the child and the person you have the child with — as progressive. In fact, any time human rights are devalued or even ignored it is regressive to me. The same kind of situation that pastor Niemollor lamented above.

Any gay basher who wants to allege that gay people are bad parents and that therefore, they shouldn’t be allowed to marry, should take their gay-bashing Bible, stick it down their throat and choke on it. The government does not require heterosexual married persons to have children. Ergo, parenting skills are irrelevant to the question of whether gay people should be allowed to marry. Look around the world at which countries have LGBT equality and which don’t. Holland does; Saudi Arabia does not. Canada does; Iran does not. Do you think the U.S. should move more towards becoming like Holland and Canada or like Iran and Saudi Arabia?

Wendy,

When you stand for all families, does that mean you stand for the following examples — real live examples of people I’ve helped in the past… ?

1) Two men who are non-sexual in their relationship, who’ve banded together to raise their children after the wives abandoned them or died?

2) A young father who moves back in with his parents to help raise his children together.

3) Two sisters who share an apartment and care for each other in their elderly years.

None of those relationships are marriage, none of them have “equality” with marriage.

What is your plan, being for all families, to help them?

Otherwise you are simply grandstanding, promoting only homosexual couples at the expense of everyone else.

Voting down state-sanctioned ideology via this amendment changes NOT ONE THING to heterosexual marriage participants or its successes or failures the day when MInnesota says it values all of Minnesota’s children, people and families over a disparate ideology.

Scott Rose,

I never said gays are bad parents.

But if the two people who created the child are bad parents, then there is damage already done.

I promote marriage as a way to encourage those two people who are best positioned to keep the child from that kind of hurt, to take that responsibility seriously.

Do you see the following tenets as promoting that responsibility, or trivializing it?

1) Any two people can raise a child if they love the child.

2) Your first obligation is to true to your sexuality.

3) Fathers (or conversely mothers) have no unique value in the home.

4) There is nothing unique about sharing identity with a child as the blood father or mother.

Now, it is true any two people who love a child can raise the child. But my point is simply that the two people who most deserve for the child’s sake to be those two people, are the ones that combined to create the child in the first place.

Consider an arguing mother and father (it happens). Nothing is more detrimental to a child’s sense of self worth then to see the two people they identify with trash each other’s identities, to fall out of love and even hate each other. What does a child think when they call the person they call their dad the one who has the same eyes or same smile, “oh that worthless person”. What does a girl think if a father calls her mother, “that worthless slut”.

That is the personal worth and right that I’m shooting for when I preserve the simple language of “man and woman” in marriage. I’m preserving the recognition of their unique capacity together, and the responsibilities that come with it, for the sake of the children who deserve the best most responsible parents in the world.

Because no matter how loving the family is they go to from a broken home (and I know I certainly hope they do, whether that is a same-sex household or not) the tragedy already happened.

Just for the record, anyone can review the comments above and see where I’ve endorsed the liberty to same-sex marriage, as well as recognizing it with Civil Unions.

It would be entirely untrue to call that “Gay bashing”.

But I will say this. When I say same-sex couples, I include non-gay couples. I take it everyone here does too, because there are a lot of loving same-sex couples, committed in relationships of mutual dependency, who are not gay or sexual at all.

Does anyone disagree that a couple who is loving, commited, and mutually trusting and dependent should have to be sexual to gain what they advocate for gay couples?

If so, then when I look at Scott and Wendy’s rebukes of denying rights to needy people, I wonder if you realize those rebukes are just as valid for those that require gayness for same-sex couples for the same rights and privileges.

How often I’ve seen same-sex marriage promoters call such a situation “second class citizens” only to relegate anyone who isn’t sexual to that very status.

I take it then that you, O.L., and your wife will vote against the proposed marriage amendment as well as to persuade others to do likewise?

On what grounds Lane?

Just what I thought.

Actually …

You jumping to a conclusion completely contrary to what was written is exactly what I thought you were doing.

It appears it is just as I thought…

The inability to answer my simple yes or no question is but another indication of O.L.’s insincerity, his inability to just say right out that he is truly anti-gay despite his weasly words at the end. Meh.

Which reminds me of this old joke about Danes always answering a question with another question …

*yawn*

O.L. needs to be reminded that what a loving, committed couple does with their relationship, whether married or not married, whether straight or gay, whether they choose to have children or not, is no one’s business but their own. Additionally, he went to great lengths to speak on behalf of children; he needs to realize that there are uncounted same-sex households raising children, that by extending civil marriage with all its rights and responsibilities to those families actually strengthens those families which in turn benefits those children and their self-esteem; society benefits from greater stability. As for his examples of the different “non-sexual” families that he’s helped in the past, consider this:

1) Two men – one gay, one bi (or one gay, one straight; choose any combination) who are non-sexual in their relationship, who’ve banded together to raise their children after the wives (one lesbian, one bi or one lesbian, one straight; choose any combination) abandoned them or died?

If same-sex marriage, they have that option.

2) A young father (straight or gay or bi or initially-straight-but-accepted-his-being-gay-later) who moves back in with his parents to help raise his children together.

Is O.L. trying to say that the young father should marry his parents? Sheesh.

3) Two sisters (two lesbians, one straight one gay; choose any combination) who share an apartment and care for each other in their elderly years.

If same-sex marriage, they have that option.

As for raising children, a lot of married, opposite-sex couples do such a poor job, but we don’t force them to divorce because of that. Same-sex couples raising children will still be subject to the same standards that society imposes on opposite-sex couples (and other forms of family) raising children.

In short, I don’t see one single legitimate argument from O.L. for denying access to civil marriage for same-sex couples. Just more of the same, tired, ol’ anti-gay animus.

UFF DA. Two sisters marrying each other. Nah. But why would O.L. bring up this example in the context of marriage rights and benefits? Is he trying to say that they should have the right to marry each other? Silly.

On the other hand, given those two sisters are elderly and past child-bearing age, one could argue that they be allowed to marry each other … I’ll leave it to O.L. to perhaps advocate for this?

A lot of married couples are non-sexual, too. Again, it is none of our business, including O.L., as to what they do or don’t.

Again, there is still not one single good argument against same-sex marriage!

Hello again Lane,

Your question wasn’t a simple yes or no.

You said you, “I take it then [...]”

I simply asked on what you take it on.

Trying to understand where you are coming from is not an expression of insincerity.

And you are right, what a loving couple does in their relationship is up to them.

That is why I support extending civil unions to non-sexual relationships (meaning it is neutral on whether or not the participants are sexual or not).

It would recognize same-sex marriages, and other same-sex relationships that are loving and committed as well.

And the question is, that you didn’t answer, do you require people to be married or in a sexual relationship at all to get the same benefits?

I never said I consider it a marriage.

You see I’m not denying same-sex marriage to gay couples, and I’m for recognizing them with Civil Unions or Domestic Partnerships. And I’m for recognizing many other types of loving and committed relationships beyond marriage.

Do you have a plan that is as inclusive of humanity? Or are you really just trying to promote homosexual couples at everyone else’s expense?

Just as evidence of what Lane has missed over and over again, on August 11th at 10:28pm I said…

“I can’t help but ask… when we are talking about same-sex marriage, are we talking about:

“1) Government Recognition of a homosexual relationship, wedding and living together

“2) Making it so that anything unique about the man/woman relationship with each other and the child they potentially have together is not recognized by the government in marriage by neutering “man and woman” from the definition of marriage.

“The reason I’d like people to make a better distinction is that I support #1 as a part of recognizing a much larger group of responsible adult mutual support relationships. But there are reasons I don’t support #2.

“I don’t support #2 because that is trivializing their relationships. I don’t see how recognizing what #2 entails trivializes any other relationships.”

Nice try, O.L., given that marriage-lite such as civil unions, domestic partnerships, reciprocal benefits, etc. etc. are not universally recognized; given that a lot of anti-gay folks when given a chance will go all the way to ban even these; given that marriage-lite needlessly complicates law and creates a so-called separate-but-equal that is anything but equal; and on and on. Just more weasly words on your part. Additionally, quite a few of us can see through your lame attempts to discredit me by dissecting my words on a literal basis as though I don’t know what I am talking about. You, sir, don’t have a way with language that you think you do. I still don’t like you, and don’t care in the least bit what you think given you still spew nonsense. Meh.

Lane,

If you don’t mind me saying, you’ve been one of the most daft people I’ve discussed this with in a long time. I’ve reserved judgement on that up till now but I think it is deserved.

Your commentary is full of contradiction.

You complain that Civil Unions are not an answer because they are not universally recognized. Neither are same-sex couples with neutered marriage licenses, which you do endorse.

You claim that anti-gay people will ban Civil Unions if given a chance, but you only seem to support homosexual couples getting Civil Unions. You don’t have to be anti-gay to worry about privileging one sector of society at the expense of everyone else — even non-homosexual same-sex couples should be able to be recognized for their Civil Union.

You say Civil Unions (and the like) are marriage-lite, but above Wendy promoted Boswell’s findings of same-sex unions as marriage — not marriage lite. Why don’t you two discuss it between yourselves and when you come to a mutual conclusion then let us know.

You say marriage-lite complicates law. But neutering marriage licenses complicates our ability to recognize and promote the equal recognition of children’s rights that I mentioned above. It looks like you only care about complication (if it really exists compared to neutering marriage licenses at all) when it comes to homosexual couples, should we take a page from Wendy’s book and say you are speaking in true “homosexual privilege”?

You say it creates a “seperate-but-equal” choice to have civil unions, but overlook the fact that same-sex unions are “seperate-but-equal” by nature, they are segregated men vs women, and that can never truly be equal when it comes to their rights and children’s rights in taking responsibility for how children are created in a way to fully recognize their rights.

Your stamping down everyone’s rights, needlessly.

You see, as I’ve already pointed out I see our options along two lines. And all you are doing is weaseling around the fact that what you want to do is #2 from above — remove any recognition that is meaningful and unique to a type of relationship that involves not just the two people, but the potential of a child which shares their identity and relationship whether or not they are married. Marriage recognizes what is already there, but you don’t want it to anymore?

I’m not sure why you fear our ability to promote marriage equality as the equal recognition of the rights and responsibilities of the man, woman, and child they potentially have together.

It doesn’t mean we have to take anything away from the gay relationship, it simply means we recognize it on its own merits, along with every other mutually trusting adult relationship of civil union, or domestic partnership, or reciprocal beneficiaries (whatever you want to call it).

As I said, I’m for #1, but there is no reason being for #1 should threaten government recognition of the the important rights and responsibilities that are intrinsic to how children are created.

It seems I’m not discrediting you out of clean linguistic cloth. Your contradictions are your own, and they are on a matter of being logical, rational and reasonable, more than literal.

You can try to console yourself by saying these are just a “try” or a “lame attempt”. But that is just soothing yourself it seems. When you come so ill prepared, so functionally self-contradicting, it is just yourself to blame.

O.L. wrote,

—-”No two people are better positioned to give a child a sense of self worth, to bestow on the child cultural identity, then the two people who shared their identity to create a child.”

Do you actually have evidence to back up these claims? Doesn’t a supportive environment, whether straight or gay, have just as great a chance of creating conditions for generating self-worth in a child? If you know much about psychology the claim that homosexual couples are not the equal of straight couples in this regard strikes me as nothing less than bizarre.

You also write of “cultural identity.” –By this I take you to mean heterosexual couples as a superior normative standard? If so, this is heterosexual chauvinism, and it doesn’t stand on firm ground.

In another statement you wrote,

—-”What I’m saying is that government’s ability to protect the rights associated with how children are created is greatly impaired when it cannot recognize their relationship at all as anything unique.”

This is a curious statement. Reworded, it seems to be: the uniqueness of heterosexuality (whatever that means) is impaired when the uniqueness of heterosexuality is denied. But what does this tautology mean? It doesn’t appear to have any real world consequences. One would have to provide evidence that heterosexual couples make superior parents than homosexual couples in some way. I’m at a loss as to what that would be. Thus, I’m lead to conclude your statement is nothing less than the expression of an essentialist procreative mysticism. In other words, your view (unless you have yet to spell it out fully and present new reasons and evidence) is that heterosexual parents are superior to homosexual parents, not on account of any empirical consequences, but because of some something akin to mathematical axioms and proofs. Heterosexual parents are inherently superior to homosexual parents. Why? They just are. I suspect you have something up your sleeve to defend your view, if I’ve characterized it accurately at least in part

—-”But my point is simply that the two people who most deserve for the child’s sake to be those two people, are the ones that combined to create the child in the first place.”

Why should this be the case? Is your view backed by any evidence?

Eric,

You are right, gay or straight is orthogonal (i.e. not-correlated) to being a loving and supporting couple for raising children. Many studies show they either can do as well as the other.

Which is why I really have no preference for either.

But what does seem to matter is that the two people who combined their identity to create the child, hence share their identity with the child, are the most important ones to be the loving and supporting parents.

The studies don’t hang on the grounds of straight or gay, but they do hang on keeping the bonds inherent in creating a child in-tact.

Here’s how the studies play out, as I’ve seen.

In-tact families have more success in socializing children then when the child is taken away from the direct care of both by divorce, death, abandonment, etc… Every study that looks into that shows that relationship when low-conflict and loving is uniquely positioned to protect the child from identity issues.

On the other hand, a number of studies compare homosexual couples with heterosexual. To help make that as much of an apples to apples comparison that they can (and yes I’m somewhat over-simplifying to say this) they compare same-sex couples with divorced, co-habiting, etc… opposite sex couples. That is keeping it apples to apples by adjusting for the fact that we already know that same-sex couples don’t have in-tact relationships with the children, and so a fair comparison is to compare them with heterosexual couples that are also not in-tact.

Now, if you can show me a study that doesn’t follow those general observations, feel free to show them to me.

But as it is, it is clear that intact family relationships are unique, and important, and only contextually relevant in the context of man and woman (though not all man and woman relationships are keeping those family bonds intact).

I’m not saying that heterosexual parents are superior. I’m saying that the intact family relationships are uniquely positioned to be successful. And that only happens in the context of a man and a woman.

There is need for adoption, and foster care, due to tragedies that tear those relationships apart. And I won’t call them inferior, because they are in many ways more critical (as the child is already in a state of additional need) then the intact ones.

But economically speaking, the cost of preserving the intact bonds is less then the cost of trying to repair the damage that happens when they are broken.

Its like saying keeping people’s home-ownership intact is cheaper then the costs involved in defaulting on a house loan. As there is a need for both, and probably a greater need of dependancy on others for people who are defaulting, I won’t say which is superior in a sense of need and capability. But we all can understand that keeping the house ownership intact has many advantages to helping people who’ve defaulted.

For what it is worth, I see gay or straight as orthogonal (meaning no correlation) to home ownership also.

Eric,

Also no need to fear about what I’m normalizing.

Cultural identity is your heritage, which is a gift from your parents. That doesn’t mean steroetypes, but it does mean that understanding the culture you come from can help you understand many aspects of your identity.

And with more understanding comes a greater ability to choose what you do with your heritage and culture.

http://www.alabamapolicy.org/pdf/currentfamilystructure.pdf

I’m not sure if they let links show up here or not. Hopefully that works.

That is a good review of the current research on the matter of intact vs non-intact families.

Just showing I can make an opening salvo into scientific review if asked. I’ll also point out that much of what I say is so accepted that it can be found in textbooks, and is accepted as basis that research needs to adjust for.

In the physical sciences, when something is so expected that it is determined as part of the basis for experiments to be built on, it can be referred to a “law”.

We don’t see studies still exploring whether or not the law of gravity exists or not. Neither do we seem to see any studies that contradict or still try to find if intact families are naturally advantaged in socializing children.

Well, its not completely that way for intact family research, but it is as much as you might expect to see in the social sciences.

O.L. says: I’m not saying that heterosexual parents are superior. I’m saying that the intact family relationships are uniquely positioned to be successful. And that only happens in the context of a man and a woman.

Really?

What does all this hand-wringing over intact and broken families have to do with equal access to civil marriage for those who are LGBT? Passing this marriage amendment will do absolutely nothing to address this crisis. Meh.

As for marriage-lite complicating law needlessly, this premise stems from the fact that marriage rights and privileges flow through from so many different places as a result of the marriage license issed from the state. Certificates attesting to the various forms of marriage-lite are not universally recognized, and so most of these rights and privileges do not flow through to the couple and their children, if any. To remedy this will require extensive revisions to the law to provide for this uninterrupted flow regardless of status of state-recognized couples with the headache of standardizing among the fifty states and also the ongoing efforts to ensure both sets of basically identical code are kept in sync ‘lest the equality under the law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution be violated. It is far simpler to make a few changes in existing law to make marriage gender-neutral.

As for my being daft, I don’t know about that given that I consider myself well-grounded in reality, always connected with the people all around me every day. And I am secure enough in my gay sexuality not to worry about feeling neutered should I gasp! find that wonderful man to marry and settle down and create our own intact family. Meh.

O.L., it is my honor for being one of the most honest people to call you directly on your daftnesss.

Neutered marriage licenses? What a laugh!

As for “neutered” marriage licenses, it is true that they are not recognized throughout the entire United States, just the states where same-sex marriage is legal. But we are working on that, and shall ultimately prevail. History and the U.S. Constitution is on our side.

My focus is on gaining equal marriage for same-sex couples since that is where gender-based discrimination exists. As far as marriage rights and responsibilities, it is the opposite-sex couples that are currently privileged; we seek only the same rights for same-sex couples, too.

> but you only seem to support homosexual couples getting Civil Unions.

Wrong. I stated explicitly that I do not support marriage-lite whatsoever.

> You don’t have to be anti-gay to worry about privileging one sector of society at the expense of everyone else — even non-homosexual same-sex couples should be able to be recognized for their Civil Union.

As far as marriage rights and responsibilities, it is the opposite-sex couples that are currently privileged; we seek only the same rights for same-sex couples, too. Even in the states where same-sex marriage is legal, those rights and responsibilities that are based on federal law do not flow through to same-sex married couples.

When access to civil marriage is no longer based on gender, any two couples regardless of gender or sexual orientation or sexual proclivities or … will have the option to marry if they love and want to commit to each other, to mutually support each other. Of course, some restrictions will apply such as underage, ban on first cousins, etc.

O.L. probably overlooked the involvement of the Church and the community in the solemnizing of same-sex unions as per Wendy. Based on what she has shared with us several times, I am under the impression that these were practically the equivalent of our modern marriages.

I shan’t respond to the rest of O.L.’s angry rantings other than to say that society benefits when more people regardless of sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity enter into stable households that may or may not have children with their relationships and families legally protected by marriage licenses. Additionally, making marriage gender-neutral does NOT in any way compromise our ongoing efforts to protect and help all children grow into responsible adults; even O.L. knows this to be true.

As for civilly-unioned same-sex couples raising children, what does that say to those children in the face of heterosexual privilege that implies that children born in “intact one man one woman marriages” are superior to them? This is of course intolerable. Allowing same-sex couples to civilly marry does NOT affect “intact one man one woman marriages” in the slightest bit; matter of fact, chances are good that some of the children in those “intact one man one woman households” may be gay in which case their self-esteem will be similarly affected just like those children in civilly-unioned households. Heck, these poor kids might have a harder time given the possibility that the loving support may be lacking compared to those in civilly-unioned same-sex households!

O.L. cannot dismiss what I just said on account of his own words:
It doesn’t mean we have to take anything away from the gay relationship, it simply means we recognize it on its own merits, along with every other mutually trusting adult relationship of civil union, or domestic partnership, or reciprocal beneficiaries (whatever you want to call it).

O.L. is seriously way beyond UFF DA. Sheesh!

It also bears reminding that we all were or are children once.

For my part based on my life experiences, I want to help leave a much better world for those who are LGBTI than the homophobic, ignorant world further fanned by anti-gay religious influences and opportunistic politicians that I grew up in. The pain and anger I felt – and still feel to some degree – leaves me with very little patience for hateful morons such as O.L. and others like him.

O.L.,

I’m sitting here scratching my head at the elementary methodological flaw in your argument.

The only valid basis for making a comparison as to the possible variance between heterosexual and homosexual couples and their respective outcomes for children is to compare intact opposite and same sex families. If the question is whether same sex or opposite sex parents in intact families produce better outcomes for children, then there’s no other way to study this than to use comparison groups that minimize confounding variables: intact same sex, and intact opposite sex families. I’m assuming you know this. And, to be clear, long-term same sex couples with children DO exist and can be studied.

So, I’m then led to assume that the core of your error lies in the use of ‘intact.’ You appear to be assuming that same sex couples with children cannot–by definition even!–form ‘intact’ families. Before I go further I want to make sure I have your definition of ‘intact’ families. I’m guessing it is: opposite parent households who have biological children of their own, with the parents remaining in a same-home relationship for the duration of their child’s development until adulthood. Is this it? If so, let’s move on.

There are three problems I see with this definition as a criterion of meaningful distinction:

1) It provides a distinction without likely consequence in the real world. If the social science research, however, actually HAS found an outcome difference between the children of ‘intact’ families and those of birth adoption and artificial insemination, then I stand corrected. But it would surprise me greatly if such a distinction had anything remotely approaching a strong level of significance. And even if it did, this can’t form the basis for an argument for restricting marriage to heterosexuals.

2) Same sex couples, just as opposite sex couples, can have children through birth adoption and artificial insemination. If same sex couples are going to be restricted from marriage on account of the ‘intact’ families definition, then this criterion would also have to apply to opposite sex couples.

3) We don’t in fact and realistically cannot restrict marriage to people we EXPECT will have an intact marriage who plan on having children. I trust this doesn’t require elaboration.

Lane: > “What does all this hand-wringing over intact and broken families have to do with equal access to civil marriage for those who are LGBT?”

Nothing, if you ask me. And that is exactly what the amendment affirms.

Lane: > “Passing this marriage amendment will do absolutely nothing to address this crisis.”

I think it will affirm that we need to hold value in the unique position that men and women have in their capacity to have children together. In that way we have a better conduit to promote and protect the family through promoting responsibility and equal recognition of the rights of the man, woman, and child they potentially have together.

Lane: > “marriage rights and privileges flow through from so many different places as a result of the marriage license issed from the state.”

I’ve always understood this argument as the same as Jello Biafra’s lament about the difference in America today vs when it was founded. When the USA was founded, they said “give me liberty or give me death”. Today they just say “give me convenience or give me death”.

Your statement doesn’t say what is more complex, as a civil union law can be written with the same elegance and simplicity borrowing much of the language of marriage. What you are complaining about is convenience.

Lane: > “I don’t know about that given that I consider myself well-grounded in reality”

Of course you do.

Lane: > “O.L., it is my honor for being one of the most honest people to call you directly on your daftnesss. [] Neutered marriage licenses? What a laugh!”

You misunderstand “calling” for simple mockery. One requires logic and reason, the other requires the ignorance to believe laughter makes anything accurate.

Lane: > “History and the U.S. Constitution is on our side.”

In 100 years from now, neutering marriage licenses will be seen next to slavery and abortion as some of the cruelest things as modern humanity has done against other humans.

It harms children’s rights the most, and as they are the ones that eventually will judge us, I doubt they will give your side such a glowing endorsement.

Lane: > “we seek only the same rights for same-sex couples, too”

Contradiction in three … two .. one …

Lane: > “I stated explicitly that I do not support marriage-lite whatsoever.”

And I note that you avoid the question of whether you extend the same rights to same-sex couples that are not homosexual either, like two sisters or a mother daughter pair who are equally loving and committed and in need of each other’s support.

It is one of the great bait and switches you are doing, isnt’ it. You say same-sex couples but you really only mean homosexual couples.

Lane: > “Based on what she has shared with us several times, I am under the impression that these were practically the equivalent of our modern marriages.”

Yet you would be opposed to them as “marriage-lite”. They were even publically understood as non-sexual in nature.

Again, your contradictions are your own.

Lane: > “society benefits when more people regardless of sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity enter into stable households that may or may not have children with their relationships and families legally protected by marriage licenses”

Which contradicts what he said above, “UFF DA. Two sisters marrying each other. Nah.”

Lane, for all your posturing, you really do a good job of tripping over your own mocking.

Yes, this makes a solid case that you are being daft.

Lane: > “Additionally, making marriage gender-neutral does NOT in any way compromise our ongoing efforts to protect and help all children grow into responsible adults; even O.L. knows this to be true.”

Actually, I know it not to be true, and even showed a review of studies that show this.

And further more you know it is not true either. You note how important stability is in adult relationships yet seem to think that a same-sex couple raising children (which shows an unstable severing of the relationship that created the child) as just as good.

Well, I admit, I assume Lane would be able to understand his own arguments coherently enough to realize when they conflict with each other.

But perhaps that is giving Lane too much credit?

Lane: > “O.L. cannot dismiss what I just said on account of his own words:

‘It doesn’t mean we have to take anything away from the gay relationship, it simply means we recognize it on its own merits, along with every other mutually trusting adult relationship of civil union, or domestic partnership, or reciprocal beneficiaries (whatever you want to call it).’”

Your confusion on the antecedent of “It” in my quote is the basis of your error.

It, of course, means affirming the expectation of equal gender representation in marriage.

But then again Lane started our conversation with a whole littany of false accusations (and even worse, they were embarrassingly easy to show they were false accusations too).

Lane: > “I want to help leave a much better world for those who are LGBTI”

Of that I have no doubt. The worry is that you want to do it at the expense of our ability to recognize the rights of everyone else.

Slavery is one such practice that tried to promote a group of people at the expense of other’s rights.

You’ve given nothing but your assurance that no ones rights are denied, even though I’ve enumerated those rights and shown where they are contradictory.

And I can take it two ways, either you are so daft that you simply miss the point of the conversation, or you are so prejudiced and biased that you simply don’t care about anything else.

You can’t point to anything I’ve said that would reasonably be interpreted as hateful, or even angry.

Mostly, especially with you Lane, I feel remorse and disappointment. So personally blinded by bias and prejudice that your mind is as closed and darkened as steel lockbox.

I pity you, really.

O.L.,

I doubt Lane wants to oppress others. The plight of groupings of individuals who could have benefited from legal protections existed long before the emergence of the gay rights movement. Yet, resistance from most quarters to any quasi-marriage arrangement was the norm, especially among today’s most ardent opponents of same sex equality.

You wrote,

“In 100 years from now, neutering marriage licenses will be seen next to slavery and abortion as some of the cruelest things as modern humanity has done against other humans.”

This is fanatic-level hyperbole. Perhaps you wish to retract? Slavery. Are you serious? The often violent subjugation and systematic dehumanization of others based on skin color, the forcible breaking up families, bans on educating slaves, mob lynchings without recourse to due process–all of this and more is equivalent to granting same sex marriage equal status and label with opposite sex marriage?

And abortion. It’s interesting how, unlike opposition to slavery over time, or like growing support for gay marriage, there is no converging moral consensus on abortion. Some view it as a crime, of course, but many others consider it a footnote of history, barely scratching the threshold of moral attention (except for abortion being a right of women), and have an excellent moral and philosophical basis for their views.

Despite your (much appreciated) attempt to spell out your views, you still have not provided any rationally convincing argument for why same sex marriage should not be considered the equal of opposite sex marriage.

Eric,

I appreciate your careful enumeration of your points, and explanation of them.

Eric: > “I’m sitting here scratching my head at the elementary methodological flaw in your argument.”

Okay, lets look at the methodological flaw…

Eric: > “I’m then led to assume that the core of your error lies in the use of ‘intact.’”

The error is all yours, I’m afraid.

Intact relationships are stable, but not all stable relationships are “intact”.

Stable just means it has not broken over a reasonably long period of time.

Intact means it was never broken, and remains pristine.

When talking about the parent-child bond, the pristine bond exists at the time of birth connecting the three people who now share an identity. Two people create a child between them, sharing their identity to create a third. That is the pristine relationship.

From there to remain intact, as encyclopedia.com relays the definition…

“in·tact fam·i·ly • n. a nuclear family in which membership has remained constant, in the absence of divorce or other divisive factors.”

An intact family, as used in the review I noted as well as studies and advocacy, denotes where the biological parents are both play active parental roles and spouse roles with each other.

No family formed from divorce or severing the child from the biological parents, however stable, is considered intact.

Most importantly for the discussion, that is how I use the term intact. I also have found that is the common usage of the term in studies, etc… from which to make the basis of observation made above.

I’m not sure how you can call that usage in error.

Eric: > “There are three problems I see with this definition as a criterion of meaningful distinction:

1) It provides a distinction without likely consequence in the real world. If the social science research, however, actually HAS found an outcome difference between the children of ‘intact’ families and those of birth adoption and artificial insemination, then I stand corrected.”

Yes, I believe you understand this correctly. You should read that study, and if needed I can provide studies on adoption, divorce, etc… that show the difference you are looking for.

But I’m surprised you aren’t aware of this before. I’m not kidding or over-stating when I say these issues are “textbook”.

Eric: > “this criterion would also have to apply to opposite sex couples”

I don’t disagree to a large degree.

But note that adoption is a way to help restore what was taken away from children by tragedy. I am against anything that turns adoption into a commodity, because to me anytime it is needed it is because of tragedy. And the most human of tragedies is because someone was paid to abandon a child as much as have the child.

Lane: “We don’t in fact and realistically cannot restrict marriage to people we EXPECT will have an intact marriage who plan on having children.”

Actually I disagree in that.

I think the expectation of a man and woman does that reasonably.

One common misconception people have is that an infertile couple is a non-reproductive type of relationship because they can’t reproduce.

Biology doesn’t adhere to the strict expectation of enforcement of rules as mathematics does.

In biology we note a man-woman relationship as a reproductive type of relationship because we observe children coming from them, effectively 100% of children come from them.

One doesn’t need to see 100% of man-woman relationships to be reproductive to denote it as such.

Biology then, when expecting reproduction to be possible from the man-woman relationship, explains the inability as infertility.

Its perhaps very technical in its usage, but meaningful on many levels, to say that an infertile relationship is a reproductive type of relationship. In fact, it has to be a reproductive type of relationship to meaningfully convey that inability to have children is an impairment of expected capacity, rather than expected to not be possible.

Doctors cannot diagnose someone with infertility unless they can reasonably expect that a child should have occurred in the first place. It has to be a reproductive type of relationship to begin with.

So even though not every man-woman relationship is reproductive, it is expected as a reproductive type of relationship.

Legal code is more organic like biological laws then mathematical laws. (Legal code that is mathematically exact and total in its execution requires “totalitarian” levels of government enforcement).

In our society, we see impairment as something to help people overcome, something to try to restore as much as possible. We try to enable people to work where they are otherwise impaired. We require access to facilities available to the handicapped to help restore to them the access they otherwise would have if they were not handicapped.

In that way, adoption is such an endeavor, and so is marriage for infertile couples.

Eric: > “I doubt Lane wants to oppress others.”

While not having a real fix on his personal motivations, all I can say is that his advocacy would oppress other individuals.

And his advocacy is openly biased and prejudiced towards only “LGBTI”.

And that is something I find most dissapointing.

I hesitate to identify a motive behind it other than the blindness of prejudice.

Eric: > “This is fanatic-level hyperbole. Perhaps you wish to retract? Slavery. Are you serious?”

I am deadly serious, in fact. And very sure that is the judgment that will be handed down generations from now.

All to often in this debate I am told that adult needs trump a child’s need for their parents, to know their heritage, to their claim on being raised in love and responsibility by the two people who combined to create the child.

When Rosie O’Donnell’s son asks why he doesn’t have a daddy, she doesn’t reply with any kind of neglect, death, abandonment, etc… just her own preference.

When a child wonders “who’s daughter am I?” and the response is a government cover up to keep her parentage a secret from her, all for no other reason then the adult couple’s fragile expectations of pretending they had the child between them.

When a father leaves the family because he found something more to his sexual orientation (be it just a younger more attractive woman or to another man), hence trashing the value that the other person he created the child with has to that child.

Saying, as I’ve heard you and Lane suggest, that biology means nothing — against the well documented science on the subject — to putting the adult whims above the needs of the child is oppressive to children.

To turn their birth certificates into receipts of ownership for who payed for the child rather then who the child can truly claim identity with (even if that person is no longer their father) turns them into the same chattel that slaves were.

I maintain the analogy is absolutely not misplaced.

What is misplaces is how anytime people bring up the concerns of children, in the rights to how they are created, we have people who want to shoe them off the stage with phrases like “but what about gays needs?” or “what about my needs?”

We should all share the stage of concern, and recognition of rights to our identity and humanity.

And I’ve seen nothing in your commentary that even acknowledges those needs.

The fact that their needs need to be ignored to even suggest that marriage licenses are neutered is very much my point, and however much you assume a level eminence in your commentary, it has only served to prove my point to exactness.

Whatever. Still proves nothing.

OL,

if your angle on being anti gay marriage is for the sake of family and children rights your methodology is cracked from the first letter on.

By being anti SSM you are taking away from children. All children being raised in SSM homes.

SS Couples are not illegal. SS couples reproducing, adopting and raising children in bonded life long romantic soul connected relationships are here, have always been here and always will be.

You might not support the idea that they are here, and always will be, but you must accept it.

According to provisional data from the Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control’s National Vital Statistics System, 5 of the 10 states, plus the District of Columbia, with the lowest divorce rates per thousand people (of the 44 states, plus D.C., that had available data) are also among the nine jurisdictions (a group that includes eight states and the District of Columbia) that currently perform or recognize gay marriages. Of course, states with more marriages naturally have more chances for divorce. But the trend also holds up when one looks at divorces as a share of marriages. In states that recognize or perform gay marriages, the number of divorces in 2009 was 41.2 percent of the number of marriages. In the 36 other states for which 2009 data are available, it was 50.3 percent. Remove the outlier Nevada, the state with by far the lowest divorce rate by this metric (16.3 percent), likely due in part to Las Vegas’s status as a wedding hotspot for out-of-state couples who may get married there but divorced elsewhere, and the figure jumps to 53.2 percent.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/07/06/divorce-rates-lower-in-states-with-same-sex-marriage

Yet another example of ‘we all do better when we ALL do better.’

O.L.,

My sense is that you’ve worked yourself into what I would call the magnifying glass fallacy, a form of confirmation bias perhaps. You have a pet theory. Perhaps the best entry point into discussing this is to use examples from your most recent post:

—-”When a child wonders “who’s daughter am I?” and the response is a government cover up to keep her parentage a secret from her, all for no other reason then the adult couple’s fragile expectations of pretending they had the child between them.”

—-”All to often in this debate I am told that adult needs trump a child’s need for their parents, to know their heritage, to their claim on being raised in love and responsibility by the two people who combined to create the child.”

These are the best examples of what I’m talking about. They may exist as touchstones of importance for you, but for everyone else they are likely of dubious import. Perhaps I understand why you emphasize these things. If you concede the same sex couples can form good relationships, and that their parenting ability lacks nothing simply on account of being gay or lesbian, then where you hang your hat if you wish to still maintain a separate but equal marital status for same sex couples? You inject some high octane fuel into the micro engines of kids’ ‘knowing their heritage’, ‘knowing their biological parents.’ You must invent significance where there is only the observable minutiae of life. The truth is otherwise…

Children have no need to know their biological parents, or what their “heritage” might have been. There is no harm in this, not even in theory. It’s the proverbial molehill into mountain. I know from personal experience that these exaggerations of yours are just that. I was adopted at birth, and so were my brother and sister. And I can tell with utmost sincerity that we don’t give a damn about who our biological parents are. We were raised by decent people who cared for us and that’s all that matters. We’ve had passing curiosity about who are biological parents might be–who wouldn’t? But not knowing our biological parents is categorically completely distinct from anything I or my siblings would consider harm.

—-”To turn their birth certificates into receipts of ownership for who payed for the child rather then who the child can truly claim identity with (even if that person is no longer their father) turns them into the same chattel that slaves were.”

I don’t use words like the following unless I actually believe something to be the case, but here it’s appropriate: This is absurd. It baffles me anyone could even arrive at that comparison for a second without immediately dismissing it as the silly hyperbole it is. Of the large body of phenomena of which having and raising a child consists (changing diapers, preparing food, socking away money for college, doctor’s visits, choosing what books to read to them, etc., etc., etc.), you seem to believe that all of that pales into significance in light of whether a child stays with its biological parents or not? (Please not that I’m restricting my analysis to the assumption of adoption at birth.)

“Truly claim identity” with–what does that phrase even mean? If we’re talking about adoption from birth, bonds of parent-child love are strongest not on the basis of the accident of biologic parenthood, but on sharing a life together. Am I suppose to believe that being adopted at birth somehow makes me a chattel slave?

You wrote,

—-”I maintain the analogy is absolutely not misplaced.”

I’m absolutely certain that you’re either a) being overly defensive about a point made in haste that you should have disowned, or b) at least in this instance, you’re not thinking clearly about your views.

Can we just agree that maltreatment, and also disruption of a child’s life by coming-and-going adults, is far from ideal and needs to be resisted, without resorting to hyperbolic comparisons with slavery?

—-”The fact that their needs need to be ignored to even suggest that marriage licenses are neutered is very much my point, and however much you assume a level eminence in your commentary, it has only served to prove my point to exactness.”

Well, we’ve come to an impasse then. You appear to believe artificial insemination, surrogate mothers, and adoption at birth are all morally problematic if not evil. You provide no evidence or remotely convincing argument that this is the case. You then conclude that a separate but equal status for same sex marriage is called for, while not applying a similar standard to opposite sex couples (who might want to adopt, let’s say). That’s where were at from what I can tell. If you want to continue our discussion I’d be glad to give more consideration to your thoughts.

And seriously OL, lets stop with the ball-chopping analogies, unless you want to put criminalization of het men who have undocumented and unbiblical ‘emissions’ on the table. I mean after all, its oppressive to children to not. 8 /

Wendy,
You slay me. I mean it wasn’t on the table?

OL

If Marriage was defined as a sanctioned family legal status, perhaps you could start debating on it from your views. But it is not.

SSM is not the topic of your attack, it is SS couples raising children, having children, and adopting children.

Unless you are ready to put to jail all SS couples that are raising children they reproduced on their own, or are raising you have zero legs to stand on.

In decades to come, it will be the ones that debated against SS couples and marriages that will be on the side of the moral declined, not the opposite. For equality and Justice is not determined by religion, but by actions of the people.

fam·i·ly/ˈfam(ə)lē/
Noun: A group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.
Adjective: Designed to be suitable for children as well as adults

fam·i·ly (f m -l , f m l ). n. pl. fam·i·lies. 1. a. A fundamental social group in society typically consisting of one or two parents and their children.

a group of people held together by bonds of love and affection.

OL

you are the sinner in narrowing or redefining the meaning of marriage.

Marriage is a relationship that might procreate offspring together. A legal marriage should always mean that the couple is publicly approved and allowed to have sex and possibly procreate offspring together. It should never be given to couples like siblings or children who are not approved and allowed to have sex and/or procreate offspring. And same-sex couples should not be approved and allowed to procreate offspring, there should be a law that limits procreation to joining a man and a woman’s untampered-with gametes.

Siblings and other couples that are not allowed to procreate should be able to get all the other rights and benefits of marriage in the form of Civil Unions that are defined as “marriage minus procreation rights” so that marriage continues to mean the couple is officially acknowledged and allowed to reproduce offspring.

@ John H,
I hope you are kidding. If you are not what color is the sky in your world?

@John Howard, “publicly approved and allowed to have sex???” That sounds more like a pagan sex ritual.

But seriously if you’re going to redefine marriage for the formation of a ‘breeder class’ of heterosexuals, I think we might be better served numbering and tagging you like breeding cattle or show dogs and form a heterosexual breed association with some quotas and breed standards at least. Clearly some of you are breeding that shouldnt be.

@Paul, no thats never been on the table.

@Wendy, no it’s not a pagan sex ritual, it’s just normal marriage. “You may kiss the bride” is a euphemism, for the literal “you may now have legal sex and make babies together.” Everyone has an equal right to marry, it is not limited to a special breeder class, which bothers eugenicists ever since Dr. Saleeby and Margeret Sanger proposed separate parenting licenses back in the early 1900′s. All marriages should have a right to reproduce offspring. You hopefully agree with that, right? It is never given to siblings and other couples that are not allowed to have sex or procreate, because it is inherently permission to have sex and procreate.

We should not allow anyone attempt to procreate with someone of the same sex, they are similarly situated to siblings and other relationships where procreation would be unethical.

Civil Unions should be defined as “marriage minus conception rights” and available to couples that are not allowed to procreate offspring with each other, like siblings and same-sex couples.

And yes, google “egg and sperm civil union compromise” and you’ll see that it is very much on the table. Please call your Congressmen and ask them to resolve the marriage debate immediately, and get protections and recognition to same-sex couples, preserve marriage, and stop genetic engineering of human beings.

Thats exactly what you’re suggesting by restricting gay people from procreating, which at least shows the disingenuousness of the radical right-wing ideology that sexuality is a choice.

We must not cater to one extreme ideology today and then another tomorrow and on and on and on… All of which are unconstitutional. Thing is you want LGBTI’s to is to accept civil unions and essentially cave on what makes this apartheid state of affairs illeagal. No way. I’ll stick with the credible professionals, over 477,000 credible medical and psychological associations. Not the phony spin factories.

Resolution on Marriage Equality for Same-Sex Couples
Adopted by the APA Council of Representatives on August 3-5, 2011

——————————————————————————–

WHEREAS People benefit by sharing their lives with and receiving support from their family, friends, and other people who are important to them (Cohen & Wills, 1985);

WHEREAS A person’s sexual orientation defines the universe of persons with whom he or she is likely to find the satisfying and fulfilling romantic and intimate relationships that, for many individuals, comprise an essential component of personal identity (D’Augelli, 2000; Gonsiorek & Weinrich, 1991; Herek, 2001, 2006; Peplau & Garnets, 2000);

WHEREAS Homosexuality is a normal expression of human sexual orientation that poses no inherent obstacle to leading a happy, healthy, and productive life, including the capacity to form healthy and mutually satisfying intimate relationships with another person of the same sex and to raise healthy and well-adjusted children, as documented by several professional organizations (American Psychiatric Association, 1974; American Psychological Association, 2004a, 2004b; Conger, 1975, National Association of Social Workers, 2003);

WHEREAS Many gay men and lesbians, like their heterosexual counterparts, desire to form stable, long-lasting, and committed intimate relationships and are successful in doing so (Gates, 2006; Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2001; Herek, Norton, Allen, & Sims 2010; Peplau & Fingerhut, 2007; Simmons & O’Connell, 2003);

WHEREAS The consideration of policies to provide or deny same-sex couples full access to civil marriage and other legal forms of family formation in all branches of both the federal and state governments in the United States has frequently subjected the human rights of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people to public debate and resulted in wide variation among jurisdictions in access to these rights (Gates, Badgett, & Ho, 2008; Hatzenbuehler, McLaughlin, Keyes, & Hasin, 2010; Herek, 2006; National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2010; Rostosky, Riggle, & Horne 2009; Russell, 2000);

WHEREAS Emerging evidence suggests that statewide campaigns to deny same-sex couples legal access to civil marriage are a significant source of stress to the lesbian, gay, and bisexual residents of those states and may have negative effects on their psychological well-being (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2010; Rostosky et al., 2009);

WHEREAS The denial of civil marriage, including the creation of legal statuses such as civil unions and domestic partnerships, stigmatizes same-sex relationships, perpetuates the stigma historically attached to homosexuality, and reinforces prejudice against lesbian, gay, and bisexual people (Badgett, 2009; Herek, 2006; Hull, 2006);

WHEREAS Many gay, lesbian, and bisexual adults who are in a committed same-sex relationship have taken advantage of the right to marriage, either in their home jurisdictions or in other jurisdictions, even though many jurisdictions that do not permit marriage of same-sex couples do not recognize these valid marriages (Badgett, 2009; Gates et al., 2008; Herel, Marech, & Lelchuk, 2004; Marech, 2004);

WHEREAS Many other adults who are in a committed same-sex relationship wish to marry, but are prevented by state law from being married in their home jurisdiction or from receiving recognition of their marriages performed elsewhere (Herek et al., 2010);

WHEREAS Empirical research demonstrates that the psychological and social aspects of committed relationships between same-sex partners closely resemble those of heterosexual partnerships, and an emerging research literature suggests that legally recognized same-sex relationships may also be similar to heterosexual marriages in these psychological and social aspects (Balsam, Beauchaine, Rothblum, & Solomon, 2008; Kurdek, 2004, 2005; Peplau & Fingerhut, 2007);

WHEREAS Married individuals generally receive social, economic, health, and psychological benefits from their marital status, including numerous rights and benefits provided by private employers and by state and federal governments (Badgett, 2001; Brown, 2000; Chauncey 2005; Gove, Hughes, & Style, 1983; Gove, Style, & Hughes, 1990; Kiecolt-Glaser, 2001; Murray, 2000; Ross, Mirowsky, Goldsteen, 1990; Stack & Eshleman, 1998; Williams, 2003;

WHEREAS All people can be adversely affected by high levels of stress and the link between experiencing stress and manifesting symptoms of psychological or physical illness is well established in human beings and other species (Cohen, Doyle, & Skoner, 1999; Dohrenwend, 2000); Kiecolt-Glaser, McGuire, Robles, & Glaser, 2002);

WHEREAS Individuals with a homosexual or bisexual orientation are often subjected to minority stress, that is, additional stress beyond what is normally experienced by the heterosexual population, as a consequence of stigma, discrimination, and violence (Badgett, 2001; Berrill, 1992; Herek, 2009; Herek, Gillis, Cogan, 1999; Mays & Cochran, 2001; Meyer, 1995; 2003; Meyer, Schwartz, & Frost, 2008);

WHEREAS The experience of minority stress may create somewhat higher levels of illness or psychological distress in the sexual minority population, compared to the heterosexual population (Herek & Garnets, 2007; Mays & Cochran, 2001; Meyer, 1995; 2003);

WHEREAS Minority stress is common to all minority groups that experience stressors due to prejudice and discrimination based on their minority status (Meyer, 2003);

WHEREAS Lesbian, gay, and bisexuals with multiple minority statuses (e.g., people of color, persons with disabilities) often experience a dual minority stress that may negatively impact their mental health (Crawford, Allison, Zamboni, & Soto, 2002; Green, 1994; Harley, Nowak, Gassaway, & Savag, 2002).

WHEREAS Policies supportive of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people’s human rights may have positive effects on their psychological well-being (Blake, Ledsky, Lehman, Goodenow, Sawyer, Hack, 2001; Goodenow, Szalacha, & Westheimer, 2006; Hatzenbuehler, Keyes, Hasin, 2009);

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, That the American Psychological Association supports full marriage equality for same-sex couples;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Psychological Association reiterates its opposition to ballot measures, statutes, constitutional amendments, and other forms of discriminatory policy aimed at limiting lesbian, gay, and bisexual people’s access to legal protections for their human rights, including such measures as those that deny same-sex couples the right to marry (Conger, 1975, APA 2007);

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Psychological Association calls on state governments to repeal all measures that deny same-sex couples the right to civil marriage and to enact laws to provide full marriage equality to same-sex couples;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Psychological Association calls on the federal government to extend full recognition to legally married same-sex couples, and to accord them all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities that it provides to legally married different-sex couples;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Psychological Association encourages psychologists and other behavioral scientists to conduct quality research that extends our understanding of the lesbian, gay, and bisexual population, including the role of close relationships and family formation on the health and well-being of lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults and youths;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Psychological Association encourages psychologists and other professionals with appropriate knowledge to take the lead in developing interventions and in educating the public to reduce prejudice and discrimination and to help ameliorate the negative effects of stigma;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Psychological Association will work with government and private funding agencies to promote such research and interventions to improve the health and well-being of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.

Btw… marriage has never had a procreative mandate, and never should. Millions of married people either have chosen not to or unable to have children and their marriages have never been questioned.

And….. “You may kiss the bride” is a euphemism, for the literal “you may now have legal sex and make babies together”

No, no its not. It means that two people have joined together in a legal contract which extends land and property rights.

@Wendy, of course there is no requirement that a marriage reproduces! There is a RIGHT for a marriage to reproduce, and same-sex couples should not have that right.

Civil Unions would help thousands of same-sex couples and their children, and it is outrageous to refuse CU’s that would help them because you insist that they should be allowed to try to reproduce offspring together. Are you trying to help gay people or transhumanists and eugenicsts? Allowing labs to create people from two people of the same sex would be a huge mistake, waste our resources and destroy the basis of equality and dignity.

But Wendy, they could legally kiss before they got married. What marriage says is that they can now have sex, it is no longer fornication, they are approved and acknowledged sexual partners that might procreate and are welcome to procreate. That’s been the universal meaning since before there was any land or property rights. Even people without land and property got married, and were prohibited from fornicating.

I wholeheartedly disagree with your tiered society ambitions. Straight people have been making babies in labs for decades. You want to CONTROL whos having children, something like I suggested above. You simply automatically assign yourself the authority to decide whos advantaged and who again is handicapped in our society. Thats whats unethical.

Wendy,
Not on the table was a joke about where it landed!

John
Really? Talk about lack of freedom and choice. What you are saying is one of the most obsurd things I have read in this group. It is so far from human nature and the pursuit of happiness I have to wonder how anyone would come to this particular conclusion about love.

Kissing the bride is permission to have sex? No, It is to show all who attend the love you have for each other.

You want gay people to “give up” the right to have children in order to get a version of marriage that you find suitable, and you’re confounded as to why people wont give up rights that everyone else has in order to get a shit-ass version of another that youve been withholding. No thanks. That is making the situation worse actually.

Everyone has the right to reproduce. Men even have the PRIVILEGE to anonymously reproduce via donation. They also have the privilege to anonimously sacrifice said “sacred seed” to napkins and bedsheets. As a single woman, I have the right to reproduce if I choose by a couple different methods. None of which is transfered by marriage.

Wendy, you’re confusing things. My proposal would not affect sperm donation or unmarried sex or any of the things that people currently do to have children. (I oppose those things, but my proposal doesn’t address them). My proposal only prevents things that heven;t been attempted yet in humans, and haven’t eve been successfully done in animals (they’ve made mice with same-sex parents, but the procedures they’ve used would not be acceptable for a same-sex couple looking for a child.)

Yes, I want people to give up the right to try to make offspring with someone of the same sex, and accept that people only have a right to procreate as the sex they are most likely able to procreate as, with someone of the other sex.

It’s ridiculous to insist that people should have a right to procreate with someone of the same sex. There are actual families out there that have no recognition or protections, but you think it’s more important that they have the right to do something that may never be possible and will probably be illegal if it ever becomes near to being possible. Your priorities are all messed up. You’ll cost us billions of dollars and waste precious years and hurt millions of children.

@Paul, you must not have read it correctly, there is nothing absurd about limiting procreation to male-female couples and prohibiting labs from making children. It is absurd to insist on same-sex procreation when people need the security that could come from CU’s defined as “marriage minus procreation rights”

It wouldn’t change anything about premarital sex or sperm donation or anything people do currently. It would increase protections for same-sex couples, and preserve natural procreation and the right of every married couple to use their own genes.

Im not confused about a thing. Im totally on to you. Maybe youre not used to that.

Fornication? Did I just see that word? Please show me your time machine from 1890. Next we’ll be hearing about the sin of masturbation, and how regular Bible reading and vigorous outdoor exercise can cure even stubborn cases.

This is one of the reasons why the same sex marriage debate is so difficult: We have people like John who uncritically subscribe to these hoary old concepts like ‘fornication’, apparently believing they were handed down from on high, and are the last thing standing between what they view as ‘morality’ and total social breakdown: people taking off their clothes on film in public cinemas, or having opposite sex students living in the same dorm rooms, or hearing the dangerous word ‘vulva’ on cable television. Oops. Too late.

John wrote,

“It’s ridiculous to insist that people should have a right to procreate with someone of the same sex.”

The technology may not be there, and perhaps it never will, but that’s no reason to stop research. John, what is your actual argument against this kind of research or the possibility, at some point, of same sex couple reproduction? What’s the problem with transhumanism more broadly?

@Wendy, you are trying to confuse other people, by suggesting my proposal would prohibit donor gametes or unmarried sex or something else. My proposal doesn’t ban anything people do now (except same-sex marriage of course). It would ban use of stem cell derived “female sperm” or “male eggs” and other ways to create children that do not join a man and a woman’s natural gametes. All people should be created equal, from a mother and a father.

@Eric, the research is a waste of resources that should be used to help actual sick people get healthy. There is nothing unhealthy about being a man or a woman and having to reproduce with someone of the other sex, in fact, sexual reproduction is very healthy, it is what jump-started evolution after millions of years of asexual reproduction of simple organisms.

And do you not care about the thousands of same-sex couples raising kids who already exist and do not have federal recognition or any recognition at all in most states? We can talk about re-legalizing same-sex procreation in a few years after we have gotten those couples the security and recognition they need. The proposal would not prohibit any research, it would only prohibit actually attempting to create a person by any means other than joining a man and a woman’s unmodified gametes.

@ John

So you propose how people have sex, and babies should be directed by law of our governemnt.

In your theory, anyone that is “knocked” by rape or incest would be criminal (the mother that is). with your theories, anyone that has a child outside of your definition of wedlock should be criminal.

I suppose you oppose abortion and birth control too.

The only conclusion is that you base this on moral standings that you find within your religious belief system.

which brings us back to being un American and un constitutional.

It is not illegal to be gay, or to produce a child if you are gay or to raise a child if you are gay.

your theories are dangerous to the well being of all children in the world and to life in general.

you can not dictate what is a family and what is not.

@Marie, where do you get all that stuff from? I’m saying we can resolve the marriage debate and help thousands of same sex couples attain federal recognition and recognition in most states, by giving up the idea of equal procreation via Civil Unions defined as “marriage minus procreation rights” simply by prohibiting same-sex procreation and affirming that marriage protects the right to conceive offspring together.

My proposal doesn’t affect anything to do with unmarried sex, all it does is affirm that married sex is legal, married conception is legal. That’s to protect marriage from being stripped of the right to procreate offspring. You don’t want to do that to everyone’s marriage, do you?

Oops, my last comment didn’t come out right, I messed up my editing. I meant to say we can resolve the debate and help thousands of couples by giving up the idea of equal procreation rights for same-sex couples and instead accepting civil unions defined as “marriage minus conception rights.”

The only thing my proposal prohibits is attempting to create a human being by any means other than joining a man and a woman’s unmodified gametes, which can’t even be done and might never be possible.

The point is that we can help thousands of families right now. Insisting on a right to create people from lab-created gametes doesn’t help anyone, it can’t even be done!!!!

so only forming a baby in a marriage between two married people?

no that isn’t helping. Gay parents can NOT get pregnant within their marriage without the help of out side the marriage donations of some sort.

so no you are not helping anyone.

marie, what’s more important to same-sex couples today, and for the next five or ten years: that they have a right to attempt to procreate biological offspring together, or that they have all the other rights and benefits of marriage including full federal recognition and recognition in most states?

Leave marriage out of it, for now, and just try to answer that: which is more important?

marie: “so only forming a baby in a marriage between two married people?”

No, that’s not what this proposal does, it says “only forming a baby from a man and a woman’s unmodified genes” and doesn’t prohibit sperm donation or unmarried sex.

Please give it more thought, it is a good proposal that would improve everyone’s life. All the three laws in it are good useful and needed laws that improve things. it’s foolish to reject it and choose a right to do something that can’t even be done, or to harm marriage and equal rights by putting procreation rights in jeopardy.

in your theory then there IS room for ssm period.

why limit ssm at all?

Don’t give your proposal any more thought, Mr. Howard, because all of what you say is such nonsense. You are even more daft than O.L..

No marie there is no room for same-sex marriage if we prohibit same-sex procreation, because that would change marriage. For the first time it would be given to couples that were prohibited from conceiving offspring and forced to use donor gametes.

You aren’t getting that I’m saying people should have procreation rights only with someone of the other sex, there should be unequal rights and so there should be different names for the bundle of rights. And the unequal right in question is the essential right of marriage.

No Lane there is no nonsense here. Its a simple logical proposal that stops genetic engineering of human beings and keep procreation natural.

Postgenderism is nonsense, demanding same-sex procreation rights is nonsense – it can’t even be done!!! Why are you demanding equal procreation rights?

unequal rights is bigotry period. There is only one reason to propose thoughts like yours and that is to base them on a morality based situation, which I am betting is 100 percent based on your religious background.

SSM is a Civil right, one that us Non SS couples need to stand up for which I do! proudly.

marie, you’re wrong. Everyone has the same rights, and they don’t include a right to procreate with someone of the same sex. Thus, same-sex couples have unequal rights (though same-sex procreation is not yet banned), just like sibling couples have unequal rights. But no one has to marry their sibling, everyone has a right to marry someone eligible to marry.

Why are you fixated on legislating something that isnt being done?

You are the one confused. I am telling you to go deal with all the sacrificial spillage of gametes before you come here and hijack a conversation over futuristic oogey-boogy.

Go clean up all the examples of het male privilege before you add another level of oppression and handicapping of LGBTI’s before you tell us who can and who cannot reproduce.

Also everyone please note that John Howard IS NOT advocating against infertile het-men being able to add a gamete or two in order to have his own children, just certain people..

John your wrong. Everyone does not have the same rights. Your version of it is immoral and should be the stuff that is banned, but as a true equalist. I Do accept your choice of lifestyle, no matter how harmful it is to yourself and your children that you are indoctrinating. I will never support it.

Romantic biologically attracted bonded love is what we are talking about with ssm.

I hope that you find help for your mental illness. For where all the credited medical boards do not support the ideas of ss as a problem they do find your extreme thoughts an illness.

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/11/dan-savage-explains-real-history-of.html

traditional marriage.

Your idea of “compromise” isnt compromise at all, but perhaps you dont see that from the position youve assigned yourself of grand negotiator of rights, but separate and unequal civil unions are no compromise. The Constitution and Bill of Rights doesnt say we’ll have one subset of people with all the rights and privileges and another subset will be eternally handicapped by law in life, love, procreation and religious liberty. It says everyone. And bigotry is what is costing billions.

@Wendy, the egg and sperm law would prohibit all tampering with gametes and genes, by het-men also. People have a right to be created equal, as the natural offspring of two people. Biology requires that natural offspring come from a man and a woman, that’s just a side effect of stopping Transhumanism and genetic engineering.

There are a few different proposals for what I refer to as an “Egg and Sperm Law” restricting human reproduction to an egg and sperm, such as the one already enacted in Missouri as part of their law legalizing stem-cell research, to Margaret Somerville’s, which specifies that the egg and sperm be from living and identified donors, in addition to being untampered-with. I support Somerville’s language, but I still use my old language for simplicity and consistency.

@Wendy, the reason I am fixated on stopping Transhumanism and Postgendeism is because it is cruel to kids to make them think they’ll be able to change sex or procreate with someone of the same sex someday, and as long as it is not prohibited, then kids will think that it might be possible for them someday. Also, leaving genetic engineering a looming legal possibility causes angst and ennui among the population by making people think their own genes are not good enough, and they are not needed or wanted anymore to participate in the continuation of humanity. It also diverts lots of researchers and resources and energy and money away from helping actual living people. And, leaving it legal means the marriage debate will go on, and same-sex couples and their families will be tossed around like footballs with no security and spotty protections.

Making it illegal as part of the Compromise would help thousands of same-sex families and resolve the marriage debate. It would affirm that everyone is equal and has an equal right to procreate and participate in the continuation of humanity and their family. It would help kids know their future reproductive potential is as their own sex, with someone of the other sex, and that they have every right to do that, the same right as everybody else. It would save money and energy.

Those are immediate benefits, not far off benefits. They kick in the day we enact the Compromise, they aren’t futuristic. You are the one demanding a futuristic right that won’t be of any use to anyone for years and years, and might never be possible or practical. You are advocating for that right even though actual families have no use for it, and need all other protections right now.

And I am not saying only some people get to procreate. All people have a fundamental right to marry and procreate, they just need to find someone to consent to do it with them. There should be no tests or changes in the eligibility requirements of marriage, we’ve already got them figured out and they are fine (except for the states that allow people to marry someone of the same sex, of course).

Marriage and procreating are not one in the same. In your world not only is it criminal to produce or have a family if you are gay within a marriage, but all out wedlock births would be illegal.

Your world is dangers John very dangerous.

It is two separate issues of genetic differences within the procreation world and marriage.

SSM is not a lead to it. never has been never will be.

its actually wealthy christian married couples that use the science world to try and “engineer” their babies.

Donors are used in SSM yes, surrogates are used. But that is egg sperm.

I disagree with the whole conspiracy act of stem cell // Frankenstein babies and movement. It is only a disguise for the anti choice people, who are again driven by religion.

Its all about control and special interest that is deep rooted in personal religion. Which is the real danger in our country.

My proposal doesn’t make out-of-wedlock births illegal. All it does relative to marriage is affirm that married couples have a right to use their own genes to try to procreate. It has no impact on out-of-wedlock births at all, or sperm donation for that matter. Please stick with the reality and don’t lie about what my proposal does.

Marie, same-sex couples (married or not) would still be able to use donors, that wouldn’t be prohibited by my solution. The only thing they’d lose is the word marriage and the right to try to make offspring together, but they’d gain federal recognition and recognition in most of the 50 states very quickly, with all the other rights of marriage in the form of CU’s.

No one is engineering babies yet, everything is still “egg sperm” as you say. I do oppose eugenics and sperm and egg donation and indeed think we should prohibit it, for wealthy christian couples and gay couples and single people too. But that would be a different fight, and is unrelated to marriage or gay people. My proposal is consistent with those goals, of course, but my proposal sure doesn’t lead to banning donation or out of wedlock sex, so don’t tar my proposal with that. Any change in donation rules or fornication laws or anything like that would still have to be done democratically, so unless you think that’s what the majority will do, there is nothing to fear about that.

No, your wrong. The word marriage is a civil right, ssm is a marriage. The world connotation and legalities across the world need to recognize that ssm is the same as opposite couple marriage.

Where I believe your odd conspiracy practices with altered procreation is just that a conspircy, and I stand by my theory and opinion that it is deeply rooted in religion as well, but that is all a different story, since it is separate, completely separate from SSM and is NOT part of the debate of SSM.

no deal

@Wendy, I do hope you don’t lump all us “breeders” into the same pile ;)

Marriage is a civil right, but marrying someone of the same sex is not. Nor is sibling marriage or cousin marriage. Many states allow cousin marriage, but it is not a civil right. The state can restrict some types of relationships from marriage if there is a supportable basis, and there certainly is a supportable basis to prohibit people from attempting to procreate with someone of the same sex.

@Wendy
“no deal”

So you think it’s more important that same-sex procreation is legal than that same-sex couples have security and protections of Civil Unions with all the rights and benefits of marriage except procreation rights. I’m sure all those couples and their children thank you for putting the interests of Transhumanist geeks and eugenicists before their needs. Just toss them under the bus, walk all over them, so that you can have procreation rights with another woman??

Come on, Wendy, it’s not too late to put their interests before your fantasy.

you insist on comparing ssm with sibling marriage, that point alone shows your dire sickness and how dangerous you are with your thoughts.

SSM is a civil right issue, and as a straight married woman I will fight for the equality to the end.

I will also fight for the protection from religious zealots trying to indoctrinate our laws with their religious beliefs.

I’m not comparing gay couples to incestuous siblings, I am comparing same-sex procreation to sibling procreation. Both are unethical and should not be allowed. Note that I am talking about procreation. Now, procreation happens to be an essential right of marriage, and it would change marriage to allow siblings or same-sex couples to marry but not procreate, it would strip procreation rights from every marriage and make them all vulnerable to being denied the right to conceive offspring.

There should be CU’s for them, that would provide all the benefits of marriage except the right to procreate. Do you think religious zealots are happy with those CU’s I am proposing? I am not a religious zealot, I am proposing a compromise that reasonable people can get together and support, leaving some extremists on each side unhappy but benefiting everyone, including them actually, tremendously.

marie, you are not helping gay people or their families by rejecting this proposal. You are only helping Transhumanists and eugenicists and, ironically, religious zealots, who will have more to be zealous about and will be more powerful and dangerous the more radical transhumanism is allowed to proceed.

procreation is not the essential right of marriage. One does not have to be married to produce, one can choose to have a child any which way they want.

Marriage does NOT = procreation.

John, you haver nothing to bargain with. Folks arent trying to reproduce with their siblings, and your Jim Crow ain’t no trade off. I have no interest in muddling through your disingenuous oogy-boogy.

I do not support gay folks trading away their reproductive rights for a form of Jim Crow legislation, which is why you are getting no traction. It is unconstitutional on a number of counts to deprive gay couples their marital rights under the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. Gay couples have every reason to hope for their own bio children, in the same way that bio hearts, ears and skin and other organs are being created out of folks own stem cells and not donors. I will no longer feed the troll. Gay people not only are entitled to all marital and religious rights as they are to advances to bio children. .

Not to mention that a form of using ones own stem cells have just basically cured a number of cancers in the last week or so. I think you should focus on other types of unregulated random hand-jobs and otherwise unregulated emissions happening now by the millions from heterosexuals than what gay folks may or may not choose to do with their own personal DNA somewhere in the future.

Wendy,

We need to remember that the religious extremes are very tough to deal with when it comes to evolution, mostly cause they don’t accept or support the idea.

The medical advances and technology has always been a scary ride for them. How can we learn such things when “God” doesn’t want us to do it? How can we do such things period if there is a God in which they perceive them?

No sibling is trying to reproduce with another, no one is trying to make Frankenstein baby. There will always be the one or two psychopath in life that trys something this unethical but we as a society deal with those, as we need to deal with the zealots.

The funniest thing is that the egg and sperm conspiracy people are trying to put out there a male egg idea. I have this underlying theory that its really about the idea that the male society is scared that we wont need them anymore :) since the only way we have done any sort of “cloning” is done only with a female.

marie: “One does not have to be married to produce, one can choose to have a child any which way they want.”

What I mean when I say “procreation is the essential right of marriage” is that, the right to procreate is the essential right of marriage, that without the right to procreate, a couple is not married, cannot be said to be married according to the universally understood current and historic meaning of marriage. There are ZERO married couples that do not have the right to procreate. There are ZILLIONS of couples that do not have the right to procreate (siblings, children, people already married) and they are never allowed to marry, because marriage ALWAYS gives approval to procreate and that should remain true.

We need to protect natural procreation rights, and the way to do that is affirm that everyone has a right to marry and all marriages have a right to procreate, and then to keep the limitations on what relationships are allowed to marry as they are today, with only a few relations off-limits where there is a supportable basis, including of course same-sex relationships.

Well, Wendy, if you are insisting that gay couples be allowed to conceive offspring together, then you prove my point, that same-sex marriage means we have to allow same-sex conception and that is what is really at stake here.

If we allow a couple to try to procreate offspring, then of course we should allow them to marry first! It makes no sense to say they can go right ahead and make offspring together, but no, they shouldn’t be married! It directly undermines the notion that people should marry before they have sex and make babies, it would imply that marriage is not necessary and go right ahead and make offspring without marriage.

So I’ve agreed with you that, if we allow same-sex procreation, we should allow same-sex marriage. I think that’s what Zablocki v Redhail was about too, when a state said they couldn’t marry but still allowed them to procreate together anyway. Makes no sense.

Now, do you agree with me that if we DON’T allow same-sex procreation, if it was prohibited to use stem cell derived gametes or to create gametes that do not represent an actual existing person, or if all IVF and technology was prohibited, by laws, and therefore that people were prohibited by law from attempting to procreate offspring with someone of the same sex, that we should then not allow same-sex marriage? I suspect you will say that even if we prohibit them from procreating, we should still let them marry, but that utterly changes marriage, as I just said to marie above. That would be the other effect of same-sex marriage, that it would negate everyone’s procreation rights by equating them to a same-sex couple’s.

Sorry but I have a right to procreate as a man with a woman that is not satisfied by being forced to use modified stem cell derived gametes or donor gametes and so cannot be equated to my right to procreate with another man.

marie, actually they clone males all the time, most livestock is bred using semen from cloned bulls. They take cells from a prize bull and put them in eggs extracted from female cows, which become embryos, which are then implanted in additional female cows, resulting in another copy of that prized bull, which they then attain the semen of and use to make more cows, by sorting the semen into XX and XY and discarding the XY, and impregnating additional cows to get more cows.

So the only cloning is done of males, they don’t bother to clone females, though they do select from the best females to mate with the cloned bulls, with some females selected to provide the uterus and gestate, and others selected for their milk production and meat production.

And I’m not making a naturalistic argument, or an argument that we shouldn’t mess with God’s design, I’m making a practical public policy argument, that it would be expensive and erode our rights and is unsustainable and unwise and unnecessary. I’m saying we’d be much better off if we prohibit genetic engineering of human beings and preserve sexual reproduction and equal rights. It is the basis of equality and dignity that we are all created as the offspring of our mother and father, and that we have to join with someone of the other sex to make offspring with.

Mr. Howard, you are literally so full of bullshit. What the hell does genetic engineering and cows have to do with equal access to civil marriage for SS couples?

The correct answer is: NONE. Surprise!

Lane, same-sex couples must use genetic engineering in order to produce offspring, and producing offspring is a right of civil marriage.

John, a lot of opposite-sex couples must use genetic engineering in order to produce offspring, too, and producing offspring as a right of civil marriage is not codified in law as far as I am aware.

Has anyone out there had fried eggs and Rocky Mountain oysters for breakfast? How is it?

No Lane, no one has been created through genetic engineering yet, every person so far has been the result of fertilization of a woman’s unmodified egg by a man’s unmodified sperm. Labs have not altered the genomes or created gametes of non-existing people.

You are right that the right to procreate within marriage is not codified, but that just goes to show how well understood it is. But it is now under attack and needs to be codified in federal law, so that no state declares any couples married that are not allowed to procreate, and no state prohibits any married couple from procreating. That is one of the three laws of the Egg and Sperm Civil Union Compromise.

Technically speaking, you are correct, but who cares given the speaker … And absolutely no deal on this so-called compromise of yours! Now go lay an egg, Mr. Howard!

You lost all claim to your arguments John, you spewed the God word. In Gods Design.

I knew you would sooner or later.

Religious extremest are just that extremest and are the biggest danger to all society.

you also said no child has been born from non natural ways, Gay people still use donations, and adoptions to ether get prego’s or to form a family. So any SSM is the SAME as opposite.

no need to protect what is not happening or will not happen. you are just a non stem cell research anti choice anti gay fanatic.

marie, I was saying that my argument was NOT based on respecting nature or “God’s design”! I guess I needed to put it in quotes, but I thought the sentence was pretty self-explanatory.

No child has been born from modified gametes or cloned, every child has been the product of unmodified egg and sperm.

My proposal doesn’t affect adoption or donation, gay people will still be able to do those things, they just won’t be allowed to conceive offspring together, which is the right that must be preserved for all married couples.

I’m not an anti-gay fanatic, my plan would help gay people and their families with equal protections and security in all fifty states, it would improve their lives and reduce the divisiveness and anti-gay sentiments that gay people face. You don’t care about them at all, you are just using them to keep Transhumanism legal, which is reprehensible. Actual families are struggling today, and you are worried about making sure they have procreation rights, which can’t even be done and might never be possible. You are harming them directly by denying them recognition, and putting them in harms way by keeping the issue contentious and volatile.

sorry nope, marriage doesn’t = babies.

married folks don’t all have babies, they choose not to have them, to only adopt or have donations and or to use insemination. all things you say you are ok with.

that is HOW gay people have them too. by having sex with a person of the opposite sex, by having donations, or adoption.

so you are proclaiming something that is not being done.

Marriage, family of all kinds deserve equal legal rights period.

In response to John Howard,

—-”… I am comparing same-sex procreation to sibling procreation. Both are unethical and should not be allowed.”

Unless I’ve missed a post of yours, you haven’t once yet argued for why same sex marriage is unethical. You’ve only asserted the claim. On what basis is same sex marriage unethical?

—-”Now, procreation happens to be an essential right of marriage, and it would change marriage to allow siblings or same-sex couples to marry but not procreate, it would strip procreation rights from every marriage and make them all vulnerable to being denied the right to conceive offspring.”

Allowing same sex couple to either a) use future technology to procreate, or b) allow them to adopt children, will not in any conceivable way strip heterosexual marriage of any of its rights, nor threaten it with any harm. To assert otherwise is not to make a meaningful statement, it’s to project a psychological fear or fantasy while dressing it up with the language of ethical concern. I don’t think you’re necessarily pulling this deception consciously.

Arguing for separate but equal status has objective drawbacks.

Arguing for separate but equal status on the basis of your idiosyncratic opposition to future reproductive technologies is morally questionable since it places narrowly held principles over the actual well-being of other people.

Ironically, it is many of the possible future reproductive technologies, some of which are now being used today, for which future generations will be enormously appreciative. Who wouldn’t want to have a substantially lessened genetic risk for cancer? Who wouldn’t want non-poor eyesight? Who wouldn’t want pre-implant genetic interventions that will radically reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke and early morbidity? Your dismissal of these “transhumanist” possibilities is morally obnoxious. If transhumanism is “playing god” to you, then I suggest you consider that when your god plays god, he/she/it is doing an atrocious job of it, and that we can (and will) do better. In fact, we already are. Have you ever worn eyeglasses?

As has happened repeatedly over the past couple of hundred years, religious and cultural conservatives will stand damned by future history for its continuing embrace of that which harms, lessens, degrades, divides and limits us.

marie, marriage = possibly making babies together. Marriage is not required, obviously. People do not have a right to make babies together with someone of the same sex, it should be prohibited. It is better public policy to prohibit human manufacture and ensure that all people are created naturally, as the offspring of their mother and father.

Adopting and sperm donation are not rights of marriage, first of all, only having sex and procreating offspring together is (which may extend to a right to IVF depending on how we interpret marital and medical privacy).

Yes, the whole point is that it is not possible to do what the Compromise prohibits, that’s why it should be so painless to give up the non-existent option and cash it in for federal recognition and 50 state recognition.

You are turning down a deal that would help thousands of families and their children, so that something that can’t even be done is legal. That makes no sense.

Eric, thanks for demonstrating that SSM = Transhumanism and the real demand is to replace natural sexual reproduction with genetic engineering of people.

It’s unsustainable. For every child a lab creates that supposedly has no risk of cancer or bad vision, a million children will still be born naturally, but there won’t be any money for health care for them, we won’t be able to give them eyeglasses, because we spent all the money and energy on genetic engineering a few perfect kids, who are really just as likely to suffer from unknown and unpredicable effects from imprinting errors or IVF errors. And even if they were healthier, they would be products, slaves, created like cattle to be owned and to perform. Transhumanism is misanthropic, it hates the human condition and hurts people as it attempts to supplant them with some sci-fi cry-baby’s bitter hatred of people.

John,

“Eric, thanks for demonstrating that SSM = Transhumanism and the real demand is to replace natural sexual reproduction with genetic engineering of people.”

I think we’re finally grasping the partially informed and paranoid worldview you inhabit.

Of course SSM marriage doesn’t depend on same sex reproduction since a) marriage doesn’t require procreation nor prohibit adoption among opposite sex couples, and b) same sex couples can and do kids and do a fine job with it. Your paranoia over transhumanism–a viewpoint I’m willing to bet you barely understand–is simply your odd and cranky add-odd to a debate that has never had use of any of its assumptions.

Less so does SSM rest on, logically stem from, legally require, or in any way stand in a relationship of dependence on transhumanism. It’s frankly bizarre that you could even arrive at that conclusion. It doesn’t reflect any of the SSM debate’s current realities (don’t recall the marathon transhumanism debate in the NY State Legislature on gay marriage? Me neither. It never happened), only your weird worldview.

—-”It’s unsustainable. For every child a lab creates that supposedly has no risk of cancer or bad vision, a million children will still be born naturally, but there won’t be any money for health care for them, we won’t be able to give them eyeglasses, because we spent all the money and energy on genetic engineering a few perfect kids, who are really just as likely to suffer from unknown and unpredicable effects from imprinting errors or IVF errors. And even if they were healthier, they would be products, slaves, created like cattle to be owned and to perform. Transhumanism is misanthropic, it hates the human condition and hurts people as it attempts to supplant them with some sci-fi cry-baby’s bitter hatred of people.”

Your comment about conditions of inequality is well taken, but this is a much wider discussion than you perhaps realize. A few points are in order on this and your other points.

1) It should be noted that perhaps the leading transhumanist organization, the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, especially its Executive Director James Hughes, has long been outspoken about the need for universal access to corrections and enhancements. This would necessitate more aggressive state re-redistribution of wealth. Ironically, it’s social and religious conservatives who are opposed to transhumanism AND doing anything serious about social inequalities. So, what’s their recourse? Ban research they don’t like. We saw quite this anti-science under the Bush administration, and given the playing field of crazies on offer for 2012–Perry, Bachmann, etc.–we can probably expect more.

There’s an argument to be made for early adopters bringing down the cost for everyone else in a cascading effect. This has happened with many technologies in the past. In principle there’s no reason why it can’t be done with pre-implantation genetic screening and correction.

2) Do you actually know what sustainable means? Perhaps you mean to say ‘scalable.’

3) The lack of money argument. This is purely speculative at best, and whatever the actual state of affairs turns out to be, it will much more likely have to do with social spending decisions we make as opposed to the inherent cost of transhuman interventions. Plus the argument ludicrously assumes that the only tradeoffs in our medical system will be between genetics and everything else we spend money on. This is so silly it doesn’t warrant a response.

4) The products, slaves, etc., argument. Call this the ‘genetics is a magic line’ argument. It presupposes that once we’re able to correct defects (that no one outside of handful of religionists and social conservatives will object to (reducing cancer risk for instance)), that this will somehow lead to a dystopia. Why? Because we attempt to control outcomes? We do this pervasively anyway through education, extracurricular opportunities, increasing literacy, funding libraries, removing kids from harmful parents, etc. Why will genetic interventions change this? Because we alter the fundamental building blocks of humanity? We can and do do this already through how clean or dirty our environments are, epigenetic influences of all types, etc. Why will more control at a genetic level automatically bring about slavery or commodification of children? This is never made clear.

In fact, it’s never quite clear how this pessimistic scenario could possibly come into being without also assuming several other necessary concurrent developments, which, ironically, are much more likely to emerge on the assumption of SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE ECONOMIC POLICIES: pushing everything into the market place while leaving no room for the public or private; structuring more and more of life on the frameworks of measurement and analysis used by corporations; insisting on conformist and authoritarian conservative social orders, which are, without question, more likely to bring about these dystopic scenarios than liberal, freethinking, anti-authoritarian social orders.

5) Transhumanism is misanthropic: this view simply reflects your uneducated bias. Talk to any transhumanist and they will tell you that one of, if not the, primary reasons they are transhumanist is because they want more of the good things in life–more health, happiness, longer lives, greater capacity for fulfilling theirs and others potentials, etc., and they want less of the bad things–brains damaged by strokes that can’t be repaired, less or no cancer, memories that fail over time, cardiovascular systems that become diseased, etc. If this is misanthropic, then you’ve apparently misunderstood the term.

So, if you want to play the game of moral self-congratulation, please go somewhere else. If you want to make necessary moral distinctions, by all means let’s do so, but please do learn about them first.