Please reblog from Ask the Bigot (aka Katy Faust) if you believe same-sex marriage is not the rosy picture as whitewashed by media, think industrial surrogacy takes us into a “Brave New World” of chattel slavery, find political correctness in the service of censorship abhorrent and just know in your bones that the truth sets us free, helps us flourish and sustains Western civilization as we know and love it.
On Monday my friend Paddy Manning, a gay man in Ireland, published “The Airbrushed Portrait of the Perfect Marriage” at Mercatornet. The article critiqued the narrative that Elton John and David Furnish have “one of the most blissfully happy marriages” in show-business. Paddy points out that such a picture of the couple is only possible because, in the name of protecting their children, there is a legal injunction saddling the British press/internet which forbids publishing details of their extra-marital escapades.
So, in other words, the nature of these two men’s behavior and it’s inevitable impact on the children is not a problem. But reporting it is. The solution is not to stop the escapades, but to censor the reporting of them.
Because Mercatornet isn’t based in the UK, they published Paddy’s article. However, Mercatornet then informed Paddy that Elton John’s lawyers “issued an injunction of some sort to the hosting company…
I accidentally published an incomplete draft of this post earlier this month — WordPress is screwy sometimes. While published, that article had already attracted some attention, so I apologize for the mix-up and confusion.
Over at Amusing Nonsense, Sirius Bizinus is periodically providing his analysis of Hodges v. Obergefell, which is in front the Supreme Court. He has allowed me to comment on his posts here. So, when time permits, I’ll try to critique his arguments. My first rejoinder concerns procreation and marriage. In this case, it pertains to slippery slope arguments and redefining marriage.
To be honest, if I had one word to describe my reaction to Sirius’ response here to Justice Alito’s questions about why not recognize other types of relationships such as polyamorous or incestuous ones if same-sex marriage is ratified, it would be naive. Two words: hopelessly naive. And if I was allowed three or more, hopelessly naive and ignorant. This isn’t to claim that Sirius is unintelligent because clearly the opposite is true, as he has earned a graduate degree in law from some university in the Deep South — I can never remember which. But when matters extend beyond his legal pedigree or require more than a lawyer’s take on it, he stumbles. The more I read his blog, the more I become convinced he is oblivious to political and social theory, especially the ones that underlie today’s conservatism and “liberalism,” and how it has influenced past events and movements. I know I’m being a tad harsh, but Ican’t help but find his post hastily uncritical and indicative of a self-imposed blind spot. Hence, it beckons for stark exposure, ripped limb from limb, so to speak, as it’s put me in a dismembering sort of mood, but all in good time, dear reader. All in good time.
First, let’s talk about slippery slopes, which are injected regularly into many discussions of same-sex marriage and gay rights. According to definition, a slippery slope argument is reasoning that “asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question. A slippery slope argument states that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant effect”. For instance, I’m sure you’ve seen these infuriatingly fallacious commercials:
Critically, these style of arguments are always invalid, but this does not mean what you probably think it does. Validity refers to argument structure in logic and philosophy; more specifically, for an argument to be valid, if the premisses are true, so must be the conclusion. Validity does not guarantee soundness, however, as the premisses could be false. To better illustrate my point, behold these rudimentary syllogisms:
Socrates is a man
All men are mortal
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal
or
Socrates is a woman
All women are mortal
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal
The first argument is sound: It’s valid because the conclusion must follow if the premisses are true, which they are. Moreover, the conclusion is also true. On the contrary, the second argument is unsound: It’s also valid because the conclusion must follow if the premisses are true, but premiss 1 is false; Socrates is not a woman. It’s pivotal to note that the argument still fails even thought the conclusion is true. Furthermore, it’s significant to identify these examples as deductive arguments, which strive to be valid with their conclusions being inexorable as mandated by logical certitude. They’re what’s known as proofs.
Yet, we actually prove very little — colloquially asking for it way too liberally for my tastes. Most of the reasoning people do is inductive in nature, with the submitted conclusions intended as probably true. Of course, these arguments are invalid, but that does not make them poor. Rather, they live or die on how well the conclusion is warranted as likely. As a fallacy, slippery slopes are either presented as valid or the premisses don’t adequately support the conclusion as plausible.
Now, returning to the question of redefining marriage to include same-sex couples, claiming that if we recognize genderless marriage, then we’ll also legally acknowledge bestiality, polygamy, pederasty, necrophilia, etc. is indeed guilty of “slippery” thinking and overall an incredibly feeble argument. But at the very least, proponents of same-sex marriage are not being charitable if not outright dismissing based on mere caricature the challenge to “marriage equality,” as betrayed by this same slogan. For Justice Alito was not claiming that this “parade of horrors” would occur but on what objective basis would prevent it: Not would but why, as in theoretically or “by what principle,” as Robert P. George seems to like to phrase it.
As such, this is no longer an invalid slippery slope argument. There is no direct attempt at establishing a metaphysical causal chain between states of affairs, as in A will unavoidably lead to G. Rather, in this case, this claim belies deductive, valid reasoning. It’s reductio ad absurdum, which is pretentious Latin for basically taking your interlocutor’s logic to its idiotic conclusion and then thrusting it back against your opponent.
See, although “marriage equality” advocates find it irrelevant that there is a categorical difference between opposite-sex and same-sex couples — the former are innately procreative, while the latter are innately infertile — it means a commonality between the two must be given for them both to be marriage material. Remember, “equality” is what they’re all about. On this account, intense romantic feelings are proffered, but this is as vague as believing in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Love, after all, is as amorphous in meaning as in the multitude of shapes it comes in. Limiting the institution to two people surely seems as arbitrary as maintaining it as husband and wife.
Therefore, all those sophistic platitudes for same-sex marriage now can be sallied against the post-gay marriage, two-person status quo of the institution as unfairly discriminatory: Who’s to say single-partnered love is superior to multiple-partner love? Isn’t it “as good as you”? What about the romantic sentiment shared between siblings? Isn’t denying them “marriage equality” not just institutionalized incestophobia? What about the amorous desire a secluded rancher has for his stallion? If inmates can marry, surely a hardworking society-contributing person like he should have the right to marry the object of his affections. Can you say that these the listed hypothetical individuals in these cases are not “born this way”? If we now have multitudes of genders, and Facebook has 56 options, why don’t we have more than two or three sexual orientations? Isn’t it entirely possible that “familials,” “beasties” or some other Orwellian obscurities can be coined and applied to each group as they are shepherded under the LGBT alphabet soup umbrella for political capital, while a concentrated public image campaign via TV, cinema and news is conducted to normalize what was considered abnormal and abhorrent as “just another thing”? I mean, It worked for homosexuality and now transgenderism. Or what about the phenomenon known as singlism? They’re tax-paying individuals whom the state discriminates against by recognizing marriage at all. Truly, the equitable thing would be to abolish the institution. Summarily, there’s just a lot of holes in theory within “marriage equality” that makes it a highly spurious for public policy making.
In short, if marriage has no basis in rigid objective reality, say human sexual complementarity, as it had been grounded in for millennia, then it and its natural fulfillment, family, is purely an expression of subjective whim and preference that’s subject to anyone’s inner proclivities. If you loosen the bonds that define marriage in the spirit of “tolerance,” you must recognize everything and distinguish nothing. If there is one thing both sides agree on, it’s that marriage is distinguished. Why else are we fighting about it? Digression aside, this is just simple deduction and logical entailment. It’s also the sturdiest of justifications for a premiss in an argument becoming less slippery but more sure-handed in its descent to the “parade of horrors” and marriage’s eventual resting place six feet underground. Hence, Sirius cannot be more mistaken, utterly inconsistent and self-contradictory to his greater cause when he asserts, “The bottom line here is that recognizing same-sex unions does not by itself require recognizing other unions, just as recognizing heterosexual unions did not require recognizing all other unions.”
To his merit, though, he does seem to anticipate the strength of the above reasoning after breaking the dam, so to speak, and tries to pragmatically posit an objective bulwark to suppress it until the rush of social consensus, of course, becomes irresistible. He writes:
One could point to trends of excessive force, unequal social status, and other points of reference to show why polygamy should not be recognized (at least as of right now). Furthermore, one can point to all sorts of psychological damage should siblings and other family get married.
One also could point to trends of excessive force (here, here, here), unequal social status — as in an estimated 700,000 same-sex households out of 115,227,000 American households ( ~ 0.6%) that apparently justifies gutting humanity’s first institution as essentially nonprocreative and blood ties between child and parent as optional in the view of the state — and other points of reference (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here) to show why same-sex relationships should not be recognized (at least as of never). Furthermore, one can point to all sorts of psychological damage children suffer with surrogacy and divorce among other related and correlated factors involved in nontraditional households (here, here, here, here, here).
Ah, but this all is rank bigotry on the level of notorious Bull Connor because, well, HRC, GLAAD and all those well-dressed, good-looking, likeable, eloquent demagogues on the news and in TV and movies and such shout it really, really loudly — so, it must be true! I feel like those who are taken with this rhetoric have an arbitrary double standard here. After all, Sirius’ listed reasons not to acknowledge polygamy and incest would and are outright condemned as prejudicial by his side — including himself, I bet — if nearly exactly applied to same-sex relationships as done above.
I also “feel like I’m taking crazy pills here!” because Sirius and other well-intentioned LGBT allies are also seemingly unaware what other advocates for “marriage equality” pretty candidly admit about this embroiled front in the culture wars, among other related trends. For instance, Jillian Keenan writing for Slate shamelessly transposes the above “bigoted” reasoning as the next step in “marriage equality”:
The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less “correct” than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults. Though polygamists are a minority—a tiny minority, in fact—freedom has no value unless it extends to even the smallest and most marginalized groups among us. So let’s fight for marriage equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States—and then let’s keep fighting. We’re not done yet.
Or as George, Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis cite and observe in their defense of marriage, the Orwellian re-education has already begun with terms like “throuple,” “wedleases” and “monogamish” starting to make their rounds, thereby impugning the conventions of monogamy, exclusivity and permanence within marriage. Dan Savage is a big proponent of “monogamish”ness and resorting to profanity such as “suck my cock!” to those who disagree with him. Yet, for some reason, CNN features him to debate for the LGBT side of things as if he is a knowledgeable, qualified source and is conducive to civil discourse, though his regular polemics show him instead as a detriment to it. New York Magazine has run this Q & A with a man in a monogamous relationship with a mare. Wikipedia actually has an article documenting the cases of “human-animal marriage.”
Note also the sources for these stories come from well-known organizations and not just some lilliputian rag. New York Magazine and the New York Post also frame their subjects sympathetically or at least with a hint of curious optimism. The fact others consider it at all newsworthy, publishable and worthwhile to inject into the marketplace of ideas for the readership to consider, especially coming from allegedly reputable news sources like The Washington Post and CNN, suggest what we conservative conspiracy theorists have always been harping on about: The press at large are heavily predisposed for the Left, and as such, are corrupt and irresponsible when feigning objectivity and moderacy — whether they realize it or not. Likewise, this litany of examples also points that the alleged regression into depravity won’t occur ex post facto of same-sex marriage recognition but that we are well on our waysliding.
Some would contend that this moral decline has been going on for decades, centuries even. Perhaps Nietzsche or more accurately Dostoevsky was right: “If there is no God, everything is permitted.” Assuredly though, if the mainstream press are flirting with these notions that not only sex and gender are irrelevant for marriage or for general courtship but also norms pertaining to exclusivity, permanence, monogamy and keeping it in the species can be discarded, then these ideas must certainly not be too far removed from the public consciousness either. So, it would appear the “bigots” are not merely fear-mongering but are actually being reasonably observant.
The even more observant also notice the disparity between what image media perpetuates about gay rights and what lesser publicized voices and queer theory have to say. They take it straight from the gay activist’s mouth. For starters, the 1989 manifesto After the Ball lays out an extensive game plan to persuade America “to conquer its fear and hatred of gays” via “propaganda” — authors Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen’s word, not mine. Apart from opining that marriage is a patriarchal, sexist institution that ought not exist but suits their designs, here are some highlights:
You can forget about trying right up front to persuade folks that homosexuality is a good thing. But if you can get them to think it is just another thing–meriting no more than a shrug of the shoulders–then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won (p. 161).
[…]
Constant talk builds the impression that public opinion is at least divided on the subject and that a sizable bloc — the most modern up-to-date citizens — accept or even practice homosexuality. …. The main thing is to talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome (pp. 177-178).
[…]
[G]ays can undermine the moral authority of homohating churches over less fervent adherents by portraying such institutions as antiquated backwaters badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology… [This] has already worked well in America against churches on such topics as divorce and abortion. With enough open talk about the prevalence and acceptability of homosexuality, that alliance can work for gays. Where we talk is critical . . . In the average American household the TV screen radiates it’s embracing bluish glow for more than 50 hours every week…. These hours are a gateway into the private world of straights, through which a Trojan horse might be passed (p. 179).
[…]
In any campaign to win over the public gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to adopt the role of protector…First the public should be persuaded the gays are victims of circumstance, that they no more chose their sexual orientation than they did say their height, skin color, talents or limitations. (We argue that, for all practical purposes, gays should be considered to have been born gay– even though sexual orientation, for most humans, seems to be the product of a complex interaction between innate predispositions and environmental factors during childhood and early adolescence.) . . . And since no choice is involved, gayness can be no more blameworthy than straightness.
In order to make a Gay Victim sympathetic to straights, you have to portray him as Everyman. But an additional theme of the campaign will be more aggressive and upbeat. To confound bigoted stereotypes and hasten the conversion of straights, strongly favorable images of gays must be set before the public. The campaign should paint gay men and lesbians as superior — veritable pillars of society (p. 183).
Our primary objective regarding diehard homohaters is to cow and silence them as far as possible (p. 179).
Moreover, listen to Marsha Gassen in 2012:
Anderson further provides several examples here, but I’ll give you some of my favorites:
Anti-equality right-wingers have long insisted that allowing gays to marry will destroy the sanctity of “traditional marriage,” and, of course, the logical, liberal party-line response has long been “No, it won’t.” But what if—for once—the sanctimonious crazies are right? Could the gay male tradition of open relationships actually alter marriage as we know it? And would that be such a bad thing?
We often protest when homophobes insist that same sex marriage will change marriage for straight people too. But in some ways, they’re right (The Advocate).
Michael Signorile strongly advises gay couples to “demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution.” They should “fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, because the most subversive action lesbians and gay men can undertake…is to transform the notion of ‘family’ entirely.” According to Professor Ellen Willis, “conferring the legitimacy of marriage on homosexual relations will introduce an implicit revolt against the institution into its very heart.” Surely, all this casts doubt on and contradicts the highly publicized and seemingly innocuous meme of “how will allowing gay couples to marry affect you or your marriage?”. They also strongly indicate that HRC, GLAAD and others, whose campaign and tactics uncannily resemble those prescribed in After the Ball, have been far less than truthful to the American people surrounding this issue.
And then again for the Left, truth and civility — those pesky things that help keep a free society free — are not virtues, and altering and doing away with marriage and the family has traditionally been one of its long-held ambitions. Let’s just say, same-sex marriage aligns with or is and has been very much in bed with Marx. According to Paul Kengor, the cranky German mused frequently about “abolishing the family” and how his workers’ revolution would be “the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.” Likewise, Marx’s successors were the academic pioneers to scrutinize and radically challenge Judeo-Christian ideals on sexuality, gender and identity at large. They never conceived of same-sex marriage, but its legal and social affirmation would see them overjoyed. And this all makes sense. After all, under communism, your first loyalty is to the state, the community. The church and the traditional family are competition in this regard and overall impediments to utopia. Why else would the Soviet Union praised Pavlik Morozov as a state hero for betraying his family to the secret police and thus rendered as exemplary for all adolescents? Out with everything that upheld the old order, for the new world, a future free of inequality, awaits.
Additionally, if you look at other well-known authoritarian regimes, you’ll see they have a tendency to blur this distinction between the domestic and the state. We’ve already met Pavlik. Hitler had his infamous youth program. To this day, China’s government limits the number of children couples are permitted to have. In all these cases, the state does not recognize the family as a separate entity, and as such, has and uses the authority to extend its control where we don’t want it: our private home life. Same-sex marriage necessitates that the boundary between family and state is a function of malleable subjective preference and personal whim instead of something fashioned from the timbre of objective reality like biology. In other words, why should government heed me at all when I object to sexual education that explains BDSM to my ninth grader if my relationship to my child is ultimately just another social construct devoid of actual meaning and clear demarcation when there’s “the common good,” as defined by faceless bureaucrats? Why would I endorse public policy that undermines my claim to my kids and their inherent rights to me?
I’ll let you chew on that one for awhile, so let’s once again return to Marx. He also put a lot of stock and faith in change qua change as both a unequivocal and unilateral force for good: “The philosophers have variously interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it.” And so did Lenin: “What is to be done?”; and so did Trotsky; and so did every good Bolshevik, Stalinist, Maoist, etc., possess unflinching confidence in the future they were deceiving and or murdering to build. The ends justify the means.
So, it’s much to my chagrin when Sirius expresses the following:
What we are looking at is the residual process of trying to normalize marriage across the nation. As people clamor for marriage equality, the uniformity is upset. We must either be okay with having different marriages in different states, or we must come to a new consensus.
That new consensus does not necessarily include people who want to limit marriage to man and wife. Young people overwhelmingly support marriage equality. Even when balancing things out with other voters, in the U.S. support for marriage equality has reached an all time high. As older people give way to newer sensibilities, the consensus will go against people who oppose marriage equality.
At the least, then, both sides need to be careful for what they ask for.
With any social change, there are always going to be arguments that claim the change will go too far. That in and of itself is no surprise, especially in this case. But really nobody is advocating for drastic changes to marriage law. Instead, they’re asking for states to recognize marriages granted in other states. While it raises concerns, the U.S. hasn’t imploded any other time it enacted social change.
Now, of course, he isn’t a communist as in like “Comrade Sirius,” but he does naively echo the Marxist fatalistic and blind adherence for change with little concern for the costs. He’s so self-assured in the righteousness and inevitability of “marriage equality” as a cause that he tends to overlook the harm to American civil health its supporters are doing in service to it. The defamation and slander the gay rights movement have repeatedly used to get to this point is seemingly fine. Sirius also alludes to federalism and an inexorable “new consensus” but is not only ok with unelected judicial fiat overturning the current official and recent consensuses, as established in state constitutional amendments, he seems to welcome it coming sooner rather than arriving later by its alleged natural course. As this sets precedent in judicial activism, it weakens those “laboratories of democracy” of the states in favor of further centralization of power.
In addition, Sirius expresses no qualms over but approval for the zealotry to put First Amendment-inspired negative freedoms of religion, association, speech and conscience in a collision with public accommodation law. I’m referring to Christian wedding bakers, florists and the like. Never mind civil rights and civil liberties are in tension with one another, and each needs to limit the other to some degree to ensure balance. According to Sirius, “Freedom of religion does not trump basic human rights,” which broadly is right. But by “basic human rights,” he means nondiscrimination rights to equal treatment based in statutory law, and that these measures take precedent, in principle, over freedoms of religion, conscience, association and such, as enshrined in the Constitution. This view seems radically backwards, as constitutional rights are more fundamental than ones found in the nondiscrimination statutes for employment and service as enacted by legislatures. What he’s espousing sees the scale tipped heavily against the Bill of Rights. It’s no longer the supreme law of the land but a vassal to progressives’ “tolerant” convictions and “more enlightened” modern anti-discrimination laws. This is hegemony, not equality. Moreover, he’s running contrary here to the driving spirit of many of the first Europeans who immigrated to these shores. Groups like the pilgrims fled the Old World so they could have the liberty to live by their principles in the new one without reproach from the state. Summarily, what good is having my mind if I can’t speak it or act upon its precepts?
Additionally, I feel obligated to point out his faith in the steady march of progress and social change is gravely misplaced. I bet Lenin and the Bolsheviks were equally assured of their impending “new consensus” and the paradise they were forging, except it resulted in miseries for 70 years like gulags, abject poverty and Lubyanka killings. Western Europe faced centuries of disunity and stagnation after Rome was sacked by Alaric and the Goths, and it did not perhaps completely recover until the Carolingians. The French Revolution was done for “liberty, equality, fraternity” but led to Robespierre, the guillotine and eventually Napoleon. The Nazis gave rise to Hitler, the Holocaust and World War II. China’s Cultural Revolution slaughtered an estimated 30 million over a course of a decade. Sure, “the U.S. hasn’t imploded any other time it enacted social change.” It was just torn asunder by the bloodiest conflict in our history due to the growing influence of the abolitionist movement against slavery and the election of Abraham Lincoln. It also wasn’t too long ago that the intelligentsia were fawning about abortion as a foregone conclusion. Roe v. Wade was supposed to be the formal resolution to the issue, period. Yet, now some would contend it’s Sirius and his pro-choice leanings that are on “the wrong side of history.” History, she’s hard to pin down.
Anyway, the frightening thing is that sharp individuals like Sirius fight for “social justice,” a euphemism to mask Leftist objectives, and believe such ends to be somehow latent within or mandated by the Constitution. In fact, what they are advancing is born of an ideology that rejects the classical liberalism of the Founding Fathers. They’re all about equality — cultural, material, social or otherwise — but have little to no appreciation of liberty in any form. You know contemporary American “liberalism” is way askew when they start to have more in common with Marx than Thomas Jefferson, the progenitor of the Democrat party. His belief in freedom of conscience, like not coercing someone to participate in something they deem as sinful, would be and is considered cover for homophobia nowadays. We conservatives, on the other hand, are comfortable with good ole TJ.
We also like our Alexis de Tocqueville and his exultation of American mediating institutions, those lesser forms of human association that act as a barrier “between the individual in his private life and the large institutions of public life.” These include the family, as emboldened by marriage, churches and Christian schools and charities, among many other nonreligious “associations.” “Marriage equality” crusaders and their reliance on the courts to seek government to redefine and exert greater control over the sort of things that are supposed to keep it at bay. They instinctually presuppose the state ought to and is in the business to define and regulate mediating institutions. This is evidenced disconcertingly by fact social justice warriors clamor for its interference or edicts and shout “hallelujah!” at Ireland’s same-sex marriage referendum because it more than anything bestowed social affirmation and dignity. Apparently, validation is not to be had in who we voluntarily associate with, and integrity isn’t implicit within our natures; both are found in Big Brotherly benevolence and or if something gets carved into legal stone. That’s what is really of import. The licit gains, although nice, were ostensibly a smokescreen. Contrarily, the first Americans escaped Europe to be rid of the overbearing hand of big government; a multitude of contemporary ones now search for its embrace and then its fist to punish those who don’t want to be held so tightly. Truly, Thomas Sowell is right, as we don’t see eye to eye. There is a “conflict of visions.”
Enough analysis, though. Let’s finally get a grip on this slippery slope situation. Given that in theory, redefining marriage means making it a union grounded in the vagueness of intense emotional attachment, this entails that other forms of “love” ought to be recognized, lest we keep affairs unequal. Many people on the Left, including plenty of gay activists, not only realize where the logic leads and recognize gay marriage as a revolutionary overhauling of family, they openly crave it. Therefore, I don’t know how it isn’t unadulterated inanity for Sirius to assert, “But really nobody is advocating for drastic changes to marriage law.” Same-sex marriage is a challenging to our very understanding of family and parenthood as they are conceptualized and forged into current law. The legal framework involving divorce, adoption and alternative reproductive technologies will all demand to be amended to accommodate such upheaval.
Moreover, acknowledging same-sex couples as marriage plays a perfect complement to other Leftist goals. There are feminists scholars who argue marriage is an oppressive patriarchal institution that needs to be diminished if not utterly vitiated for women to truly achieve cultural, legal and material parity with men. Or then there is this professor’s ideas about how parents reading bedtime stories and put them into private school is unfair and contributes to inequality. Speaking of family, all these modern ideologies draw much from their Marxist and neo-Marxist parent philosophies, whose innovators again wanted to subvert the natal bonds between mother-father and child, among other traditional values, according to their writings. They’re all monsters descended from the same Marxist Echidna, and all of them are intent on devouring the individual by isolating him or her from the familial associations he or she is naturally born with. After same-sex marriage, destigmatizing polygamy and company can be conceivably applied to further this end. As severe strains of egalitarianism, these worldviews are innately totalitarian, not liberal. It’s not in their progressive nature to desist and be content.
So, yes, there is plenty of theoretical concern for “the parade of horrors,” but beyond pontificating in the abstract, the actual behavior of nonacademic agents suggest that these fears have basis in the real world too. Journalists and other people in mainstream media are beginning again to popularize and normalize what was considered unthinkable for polite society in the same manner they elevated the once taboo notions of homosexuality and transgenderism. Moreover, the mainstream gay rights movement, at large, has shown itself to spew lies that both deny and disguise its readily apparent insatiability, especially of late — “If you like your morality and civil liberties, you can keep your morality and civil liberties.” Right Christian bakers, florists and photographers? And then there’s the body politic of the movement, the social justice warriors, who are more Marxist and therefore totalitarian in their tendencies and views on equality, liberty and the state than liberal in any robust sense. Domesticity and human worth is grounded in the state are a couple telling examples of their mindset. Moreover, they are the lifeblood of this cause, and they really believe it to be their own and the next front in the inexhaustible war for civil rights. They won’t stop and will swarm the enemy (the social conservative) like killer bees, the good drones that they are, cued by collaborative media for whatever becomes the next stop for the social justice parade.
Consequentially, there is ample evidence and warning that this saga is far from over. It is not at all unreasonable to predict a coming lapse into that ugly (polygamy, incest, etc.) and horrible (further marginalization from those with traditional values from polite public society) parade, though it’s nigh impossible to know how long it will take. The hive is just too frenzied and preoccupied to notice, believe or care about what’s been briskly detailed above. When it comes to “marriage equality,” most of its members only smell blood and pheromones.
Over at Amusing Nonsense, Sirius Bizinus is periodically providing his analysis of Hodges v. Obergefell, which is in front the Supreme Court. He has graciously allowed me to comment on his posts here. So, when time permits, I’ll try to critique his arguments. In this case, it pertains to procreation and marriage.
First of all, Sirius does an ok job summarizing the “bigots” position in regard to procreation and nuptials:
The idea is that marriage has been defined as between men and women for centuries is because this basic pairing is how children are created. Because it was the only way of creating a family in antiquity, governments decided to enshrine the relationship with marriage. Government has an interest in promoting procreation and stable environments for children because that’s the only way our society can be perpetuated.
I would clarify that society, not government, has enshrined the relationship due to its unique potential of producing children. Not every civilization has had a sophisticated legal bureaucracy to formally acknowledge marriage, yet the institution, as fundamentally a heterosexual union, has been practically a universal idea up until about 15 years ago. It’s this life-giving, species-perpetuating power, the sustaining of the state via its future citizens, that justifies government’s involvement here, as it is clear that we do not want government to regulate every form of human association.
Where I believe Sirius’ bias starts to show is in phrases such as “only way of creating a family in antiquity” and “that’s the only way our society can be perpetuated.” Here, it’s implied that this line of thinking made sense in the remote past when there wasn’t large-scale adoption and artificial reproductive processes like surrogacy or in vitro fertilization. This rendering is incorrect. It’s not that we hold there is one way to promulgate society; rather, what’s known as the “traditional family” is the best way. If government is to have any sort role in the creation and socialization of its future citizens, it ought to promote the ideal. We are aware there are other familial arrangements and there are conceivably other ways for society to sustain itself: The world state in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World comes to mind. Yet, Huxley’s brilliance was to realize the abandonment of procreative sex and blood ties was pivotal in a society that didn’t have individual autonomy and prosperity. In brief, conservatives believe the biological family, as a mediating institution against the reach of the state, furthers the causes of freedom, wealth and well-being. While diminishing it — e.g. abortion, feminism’s belittling of motherhood and advocacy to normalize feminine promiscuity, the trivialization of sex and the formal relegation of mothers and fathers as optional via a SCOTUS decision in Obergefell v. Hodges — works to undermine “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Forgive my pedantry here, but for Sirius to reasonably declare that the procreation argument against same-sex marriage is “untenable,” he must at first understand it and the supporting position. Although he is far from the only person to mischaracterize in this regard, as comments from federal judges illustrate, the remainder of his post is predicated on strawmen.
For instance, he writes,
This idea takes the emotional relationship aspects of marriage and throws them out the window, along with justifications for some of the other ancillary benefits of marriage (like tax breaks). We’re looking at marriage solely for the purpose of creating and maintaining a family here.
But understanding marriage to be essentially defined as a procreative union does not exclude love and emotion from the equation. This simply does not follow. It is entirely possible and happens often for marriage to be both about love and procreation without leaving out the “ancillary benefits of marriage.” How so?
Enter the wonderful world of metaphysics and being philosophers in it by making distinctions. Sirius confuses essential properties with accidental properties as well as natural function/purpose with artificial or user-imposed function/purpose. Essential property: A property an object, person or thing must have to be what it is. Accidental property: A property an object, person or thing can have without ceasing to be what it is.
For example, a bachelor must have the property of unmarriedness, for lack of a readily apparent term, to be a bachelor. However, a bachelor can also have the property of being Swedish, French or Cambodian and still be a bachelor. Natural function/purpose: The goal or directed end an object or thing has by virtue of being what it is. E.g., a squirrel is naturally predisposed to gathering nuts and acorns and burying them to survive the winter because of the fact it is a squirrel. It’s important to note, natural here does not refer to the zoological animal kingdom, as in appearing or existing in habitats found within the likes of African savannah, Australia’s Outback or Himalayan steppe. Rather, it pertains to a thing’s nature and how function or purpose is imbued within that nature. User-imposed/function or purpose: The goal or directed end an object or thing has by the imposition of some sort of artificer. E.g., the function or end of the twig that’s positioned into the anthill is that of the chimpanzee wielding it for the purpose of procuring ants to eat, but such a purpose is not immanent in the twig itself.
Now, let’s return to the issue at hand, marriage. Sirius seems to think our claims about marriage and procreation entail a user-imposed function. That, as a social construct, the institution is man-made and therefore has a man-made, instrumental end of procreation. But not every marriage produces children, whether by infertility, age, choice or plain dumb luck, yet these couples are still allowed to and are considered married. Likewise, people marry each other because they are in love and not solely to have kids. Therefore, this is a silly excuse to prevent gay couples from saying “I do”.
That’s pretty sound reasoning except that those who raise the procreation objection to same-sex marriage don’t subscribe to the above description. Marriage is not a mere instrumental means to the end of procreation as extrinsically imposed by society. Rather, marriage is essentially related to procreation as intrinsically mandated by its natural foundation in human sexual complementarity, which is what society recognizes in matrimony. Marriage is procreative by its own nature not social fiat. According to us, being procreative, which means being predisposed toward the biological end of procreation and reproduction, is an essential property of marriage in order for it to be marriage. It’s fundamental to what it is, imbued in its essence and thereby essential. It’s not an accidental property like being in love or having the legal benefits that are recent Western additions to the institution. There are, unfortunately, many loveless marriages out there today, as well as the proverbial arranged marriage that were common in the past and still exist today in many parts of the world. Yet, these cases don’t cease being marriages because the individuals involved are not in the emotional throes of love. In other words, the legal standing and amorous feelings are both historically and metaphysically accidental properties of marriage.
What about those old couples that are infertile by nature? They’re still married. As Sirius puts it: “Currently there are no requirements that parties to a marriage must be able to procreate in order to get married” and “What this means, though, is that infertile couples couldn’t get married. Additionally, if there is some tragedy where one person has to become sterile, that could be grounds for dissolving the union.” Summarily, this is no reason to exclude gay couples who are also infertile by nature.
However, once again, Sirius is mistaken and conflates legal requirements with metaphysical ones. The infertility of an old heterosexual couple is not the same sort of infertility of a homosexual couple. Marriage, as a union of persons, is not essentially grounded in singular characteristics of one of the persons involved in it. Otherwise, it’s a fallacy known as pars pro toto, a composition error in reasoning that erroneously infers the parts for the whole. The union is what’s important and not whether one of the people taking part in it is a good person or infertile. This is relevant in that the the old nonprocreative heterosexual couples, whose unions are recognized, are infertile in the likely sense that the singular females members have undergone menopause, while homosexual couples often involve two potent males and two fertile females. So, the opposite-sex couple that can’t procreate is most likely because one of parties involved is infertile, but the same-sex couple that can’t procreate is always because the nature of the relationship makes procreation a default nonstarter.
Why does this distinction matter? It’s not only that marriage refers to a union of person and is not defined by one of the singular members within it. Rather, bear in mind that we are comparing two categories of comprehensive unions. The issue surrounding same-sex marriage ultimately comes down to whether same-sex couples are meaningfully no different than opposite-sex couples. Those for “marriage equality” assert yea — they are the same — while the “traditional marriage” side says nay — they are different. Here though, we have a disparity that philosophically one can drive a mack truck through. In other words, same-sex relationships are essentially and categorically infertile; opposite-sex relationships are essentially fertile even if procreation, gestation, pregnancy and birth doesn’t occur and children don’t always obtain. The relationship is still apt for procreation and is naturally fulfilled when it happens. The elderly pair is just the exception to a very fecund rule; Adam and Steve and Lilith and Eve, though not exceptions, are nevertheless irrevocably bound to it.
Hardly arbitrary, it’s not the law that excludes same-sex couples from marriage, but instead its the constituent individuals’ freely-enacted choice in partner and the essence of such companionship that precludes them from the institution. That’s no more unfair than a nonprofit charity receiving tax breaks instead of a for-profit corporation. Though similar, as they are organizations of people, they are inherently separate types of entities. Likewise, although a same-sex relationship approximates an opposite-sex relationship in some respects, they too are inherently distinct in the same manner a triangle, which although comes close to having four sides, just simply in no possible world can be a square.
Moreover, we proponents of this conjugal view of marriage view the institution comprehensively, and as such, realize the coital act, although critical to marriage, is not everything that marriage is. So, yes, love is still very much in play and helps make sense of and enhances our understanding of marriage instead of diminishing it. To show this is not just subject to me and a bunch of uneducated bigots, I’ll let esteemed Princeton legal scholar Robert P. George describe our position. Writing for The Public Discourse, he summarizes:
Historically, and, in my view, rightly, marriage has been understood as the distinctive and distinctively valuable form of human association that is oriented to procreation and would naturally be fulfilled by the spouses’ having and rearing children together. It is a comprehensive (and thus conjugal) bond inasmuch as it unites persons not merely at the level of hearts and minds, but in the bodily dimension of their being as well. In this way, it differs from ordinary friendships and other non-marital forms of companionship. And it requires commitments of exclusivity (“forsaking all others”) and permanence (“till death do us part”).
Bodily (“one-flesh”) union is possible in virtue of the sexual-reproductive complementarity of male and female. It does not consist, and has never been regarded as consisting, merely in the juxtaposition of flesh. It consists, rather, in the capacity to combine to form a reproductive unit. Thus, marriages are consummated (i.e., completed) by coitus; and marriage is inherently, and not merely incidentally, a sexual bond (and not just an emotional one). Sexual-reproductive union, as an integral aspect of the conjugal relationship, is—like the relationship itself in its totality—intrinsically and not merely instrumentally valuable. Although the marital bond is inherently oriented to procreation, it is not the case that procreation is an extrinsic end to which marriage or the marital embrace is valuable merely as a means. Rather, marriage is indeed a “one-flesh union.” And this explains why, in virtually all cultures throughout history, (a) marriage has been understood as a child-centered institution, yet (b) infertility has not been regarded as an impediment to marrying or a nullifier of existing marriages.
To be honest, George articulates a much stronger version of how comprehensive marriage is than I do above. I make a point to identify and separate procreation and love — one as essential and other as accidental in how they relate to marriage — while George better synthesizes them together. George completely follows through on the natural law basis of marriage, inserting value while I just describe what is the case. These differences, however, are more rhetorical than ideological. Furthermore, George being George and I being a nobody influenced by him means his iteration is superior. In addition to his eloquent prose, it is more palatable to the average American, who strongly equates love with marriage, and also more extensive because he and his colleagues go on to show that this conjugal account also demonstrates why we have marital norms like monogamy and permanence that the “revisionist” view — marriage is merely a social contract centered around intense emotional attachment — simply cannot provide.
Finally, I suppose one could read all these abstract distinctions, chalk it up as mere semantic word games and object as to what does philosophy and metaphysics have to do with the legal case for and against same-sex marriage. Well, in a word, everything. Metaphysics, broadly speaking, is the study of what is the case. The social justice crusaders who wield the slogan of “marriage equality” are making a claim that presupposes certain metaphysical assumptions for legal application. Namely, same-sex and opposite sex couples are virtually the same and should be treated accordingly via 14th Amendment-inspired “equality under the law” considerations. Therefore, it’s only rational to examine these underlying assumptions and our understanding of what is a marriage. After all, law operates with certain presumptions about what is the case, and notions of fairness and justice can only be meted out from a basis found in real states of affairs.
In my view and experience, advocates for same-sex marriage utterly avoid the nitty-gritty here. Whether this is just a mere act of hasty misunderstanding and overlooking one’s biases, agenda-driven subterfuge or a combination of both, as I suspect, pausing to expose its position’s supposedly sound metaphysical assumptions to greater public scrutiny is something Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD and the horde of courted social justice fodder seemingly don’t have enough interest in to halt their inexorable romp through our judicial system. Instead, they advance convoluted legal arguments that sneak in controversial theses like a same-sex relationship is applicable to marriage, and it’s people like George who question these implicit assertions.
The argument from procreation is fundamentally a metaphysical argument not a legal one. Therefore, when those like Sirius, who has a background in law, responds to it from a purely legal framework that just reasserts the same contentious claims that are being contested, as he does throughout his commentary, it amounts to just talking past, or more accurately, over what is being argued, as questions of law and issues of legality are ultimately rooted in the primacy of philosophy and its metaphysical considerations. For instance and more specifically, “Remember, the whole point of this idea is to show that the state has an interest in how new citizens come about to the exclusion of other marriages” is a prime example. If you start from the premiss that a same-sex relationship is already a marriage and marriage is just an emotional union, as Sirius implies here, his reasoning is insurmountable, but this is heavily begging the question in his favor. It is whether or not that it is a marriage that the procreation argument, in large part, challenges.
George and company (Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis) actually do more than merely argue from a procreative definition, as people do have varying conceptions of marriage. As noted earlier, they compare and contrast their conjugal view with the “revisionist” one that belies the push for same-sex marriage. They basically conclude that the former can account for other marital norms like monogamy and permanence. The latter, on the contrary, is not only insufficient in this regard but undermines these norms and ultimately entails and engenders the abandonment of the institution. The social repercussions of such a collapse are very much among the state’s concerns if SCOTUS carves in stone a right to same-sex marriage: rising out-of-wedlock births rates, an increase in poverty and greater numbers of children growing up without one or more of their biological parents. All these consequences are foreseeable and plausible if the court formally recognizes marriage as merely an emotional, adult-centric union. Moreover, making it far less probable that these three are outliers who boast an “untenable” argument motivated by animus against same-sex couples, more than 100 academics from a variety of disciplines agree with them.
Sometimes, other people are simply better at explaining the alleged “bigoted” philosophical opposition against same-sex marriage better than me. Published about a year ago, here are some highlights from Michael Hanby’s article at The Federalist, which should be read in its entirety, about the cultural assumptions that underlie the push for same-sex marriage.
The force with which an idea (same-sex marriage) has taken hold that is unprecedented in human history and unthinkable until yesterday, the speed at which it is sweeping aside customary norms, legal precedent, and the remnants of traditional morality is nothing short of breathtaking. That it should have achieved this feat thanks largely to sentiment, fashion, and the brute power of a ubiquitous global media, with so little real thought about its profound effect upon human self-understanding or its far-reaching practical implications, is more astonishing still. Though its power seems inexorable, we would do well nevertheless to exercise perhaps the last reserve of real freedom still available to us—the freedom to think about the true meaning of things—lest we be deceived about what this moment portends or caught unawares as it washes over us. For beneath the surface of this rising tide of ‘freedom and equality’ lies something very close to the brave new world of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian imagination.
Hanby is so very on the ball here. The meteoric rise of this “civil rights” issue is nothing short of remarkable, and the lack of vetting is indicative of the decline of Western civilization. For a society who once touted the use of reason in making law and public policy, to so readily abandon its application in the face a group of clever people asserting their agenda is merely the next step in “freedom,” “equality,” “civil rights” is disturbing of a nation that crafted something as ingenious, revolutionary and influential as the Bill of Rights.
To accept same-sex unions as ‘marriage’ is thus to commit officially to the proposition that there is no meaningful difference between a married man and woman conceiving a child naturally, two women conceiving a child with the aid of donor semen and IVF, or two men employing a surrogate to have a child together, though in the latter cases only one of the legally recognized parents can (presently) contribute to the child’s hereditary endowment and hope for a family resemblance. By recognizing same-sex ‘marriages’ the state also determines once and for all that ARTs (assisted reproductive technologies) are not merely a remedy for infertility but a normative form of reproduction equivalent to natural procreation, and indeed it has been suggested in some cases that ARTs are an improvement upon nature. Yet if this is true, it follows that no great weight attaches to natural motherhood and fatherhood and that being born to a father and mother is inessential to what it means to be human, or even to the meaning of childhood and family. These are not fundamentally ‘natural’ phenomena integral to human identity and social welfare but mere accidents of biology overlaid with social conventions that can be replaced by ‘functionally equivalent’ roles without loss.
Bingo! This paragraph encapsulates what we “bigots” vehemently oppose about same-sex marriage. It has nothing to do with what Adam and Steve or Mary and Eve do behind closed doors. It has everything to do with what it entails about the family in the eyes of culture and law. We just think it is highly foolish, as a society, to view and treat mothers and fathers as optional. That, social disaster probably will unfold from such a publicly accepted sentiment, i.e., more children growing up without either a mommy and daddy. There is a pretty substantial consensus of data that out of wedlock births correlate with poverty (here and here). And that’s not an insult to single parents — who most undoubtedly are doing the best they can for whatever reason they are raising a child alone — but an acknowledgement of what for millennia was obvious: A child’s life generally is invaluably enriched when he or she knows and lives with his or her biological parents and forever complicated, if not diminished, when one or both of those parents are taken away whether by divorce, death or even in more contemporary phenomena such as adoption and assistedreproductive technologies (surrogacy and in vitro fertilization). That’s what we are being unfairly dubbed as on the “wrong side of history” for. Plus, there’s always the fact we are even entertaining the idiocy of granting the state leeway to effectively determine and regulate what is family and how it’s created — although this, as Hanby also notes, is contradictory as the family existed and preceded the first state — sounds like the happy suicide of individual liberty.
Moving on, Handby continues to strike gold:
…worrisome is the fundamental anthropology—the philosophy of human nature—implicit in it (same-sex marriage and the practical policies to implement “equality)…And to declare that there is no difference between conceiving a child through procreation in a marriage and through the technology necessitated by same-sex unions is to say something definitive about what a child and the human being are, even if this goes unrecognized. Indeed it is all the more definitive the more it goes unrecognized.
[…]
To declare same-sex unions marriage and their technological ‘reproduction’ normative is essentially to reconceive the child not as a person but as an artifact. It is to deny that he is essentially the natural fruit of a love inscribed into his parents’ flesh; since love is now a mere emotion with no bearing on the meaning of the body, which has been relegated to the sub-personal realm of ‘mere biology.’ It is to deny that his being from his parents and having a lineage is deeply constitutive of his humanity or his personal identity; since the very notion of ‘lineage’ is confused by these new artificial combinations and since ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are merely names affixed to a social function which can be performed in creative new ways. And it is to deny that he is his own being with inviolable dignity who cannot be manipulated or controlled; since it was a process of manipulation and control that brought him into being in the first place. The technological dominance of procreation asserts, contrary to the child’s true nature and to his parents’ unquestionable love for him, that a child is essentially a product of human making, an assemblage of parts outside of parts that are the parts of no real whole, whose meaning and purpose, as with all artifacts, reside not in itself but in the designs of its maker.
It’s this type of reasoning that leads people like Robert Oscar Lopez to conclude that surrogacy and other artificial reproductive industries is the new slave trade. That, the child, dehumanized, is commoditized to be bought and sold. The very fact that these practices have grown into multimillion dollar industries firmly suggests that this use of technology to trump biology is no longer the exception to the rule but is the rule. That Katy Perry, a pop culture icon and a role model to many, says she’ll make a child essentially because she wants one and can just demonstrates how children are thought of not as “created equal,” but as tacitly inhuman enough to be coaxed into the world due to the sufficient combination of whim and money. The recognition of same-sex marriage officially legitimizes it as normal and acceptable, and all of this, the playing God and playing parent, is simply abhorrent.
Of course, I expect the typical proponent of same-sex marriage to bristle and dismiss this insinuation as absurd and offensive, like they do with every principled “hey, wait a second” raised to halt their parade. Note, however, this taking offense doesn’t address the argument and deflects from what’s at issue: Should we redefine marriage, as a society, in such a way that makes familial biology irrelevant and enables the widespread creation and purchase of human beings as not only morally ok but good? If the same-sex marriage cause is so righteous, then its apologists should be able to utter a satisfying answer to this question that irks our liberalized American sensibilities without just resorting to red herring epithets of “bigot” about those who pose it.
Experience also tells me that there are proponents of same-sex marriage also will bring up the heterosexual couples, who for the reason of one of them being infertile, utilize surrogacy or IVF to have a kid. Why can’t two men and two women? In other words, I’m being marked as arbitrary.
Again, this criticism misunderstands several important details. The marriage debate, fundamentally, is the question about whether or not same-sex relationships are meaningfully different than opposite-sex relationships. Two classes, types, categories — or what have you — of relationships are subject to scrutiny here. I repeat: classes, types or categories. Therefore, misguided are the appeals to individual members or the parts of members within these classes, typesor categories as having sway over the whole class, type or category. Whether or not some heterosexual couples choose to adopt or use artificial means to achieve pregnancy or if a person is impotent is irrelevant. Such reasoning is a fallacy of composition and subsequently a category error. For all intents and purposes, it’s like saying, because some apples in the barrel are orangish in color, then the whole barrel itself contains orange-colored apples, and due to these discolored apples, the company should ship all apples with oranges with the understanding they’re the same type of fruit. Likewise, the context of what’s being argued and proposed in Hanby’s article, my post here and mostly the issue at large is on the level of society and public policy making, not the realm of individual or relatively small groups of couples as exceptional cases. Referring to them misses the point whether or not we, as a society, ought to regularly utilize artificial reproductive technologies and make motherhood and fatherhood superfluous. Carve them into stone and institutionalize them.
Consequentially, as Hanby astutely points out in this “Brave New World” where people confuse apples with oranges:
Thus deprived of the desire or even the capacity to think about the true meaning of things, and unable to perceive the loss, people will not merely be susceptible to manipulation by sentimental platitudes and sophistic arguments—‘People shouldn’t be discriminated against based on who they are or who they love’—they will be eager for it.
The push for the same-sex marriage is not the cause of what Hanby describes but more likely a symptom. One of the crucial ways it became a political hot topic is because the sexual revolution has trivialized sex to the degree where the ability to procreate, the essence of marriage, has been so castrated from the form of human association to which it is unique, anything that can be construed under the nebulous notion of love rings of wedding bells. Same-sex unions naturally fit the bill. Logically speaking, so do polygamy, incest, pedophilia and bestiality, all of which further render successively marriage an even more meaningless and non-distinctive relationship. If the LGBT lobby is truly invested in civil rights and desires to be ineffectual on the traditional family and marriage, civil unions are the apt compromise.
That’s the “brave new world” we ought to live in,
Modus Pownens
P.S. As I have co-opted Handby’s incisive words, I urge you to read it in his intended context.
Sorry, that it’s taken forever, but I need another say in this dialogue. So, I was “disappointing.” Hmmm…I can see why you think I grouped you into pro-marriage equality clan, so yes, I suppose I owe you an explanation and an apology, Oscar, for the manner in which I responded. Honestly, I did not mean to misrepresent your position or put words in your mouth on the issue, so to speak. I’m sorry if it appeared that way, as it wasn’t my intention.
In my mind, I was being charitable. To me, your act of responding implied you did have somewhat of a firm stance on the issue, despite your assurances you didn’t. It came off as logically inconsistent like writing, “I don’t know a word of English.” I refrained from mentioning this evidently false inference, as psychological speculation about your motives and framing you as self-contradictory would be getting close to a tu quoqueand was irrelevant to what was in contention, namely the ontology of marriage.
Secondly, my response was written for more than one audience; it was as much a reply to you as a strategic commentary for those who on either side of this matter. This was never explicitly stated when it probably should have been to prevent the very misinterpretation we’ve had here. Like any good debater, I had to reveal the implications of your deft use of the “social construct” foil. Your “critique” was an attempt to demolish any rational or moral debate on the subject, an overturning of the entire game board and a fact you don’t seemingly dispute. Within its efforts and actions, the same-sex marriage movement assumes there is a game board with moral and rational pieces to move. I was endeavoring to show your denial of objectivity on the matter was a road to a nihilistic destination, a place where they should not be comfortable.
Do I think I was convincing or even comprehensible to anyone who is on the other side of the issue? Nah, it’s not what they want to read, and there’s a massive shortage of intellectual honesty in this country. But hey, I had to try.
Niceties aside, I must warn you, Oscar, that I’m going to probably disappoint you more if not totally irritate you. Please remember, I’m not being pedantic in an attempt to spitefully humiliate you. Rather, I’m endeavoring to refute a line of argument of same-sex marriage apologists, so anyone who feels like or he or she has skin in the marriage debate, as I do, and is convicted enough to read our correspondence can see how claiming marriage has no essential properties is untenable. There is no ill intent against you in this post, just resolve to do by best in a fight against a great injustice I perceive. No disrespect but an opportunity that can’t be squandered because of my moral principles that have next to nothing to do with Exodus, Leviticus or anything in the Bible. If you do not respond to this post for any reason, I will not view that silence as defeat nor construe it as such. Granted, my wanton tardiness does not warrant a reply. I’m just compelled to show the facts about our point of conflict here, and let whomever reads our dialogue to privately decide for themselves who is right, and who is wrong. So take a deep breath. It’s now down to business.
Firstly, I feel your claim to knowledge about that the public currently believes marriage to be merely “a declaration of love,” although tentative, is completely unsubstantiated. As much as you opine about how people view marriage now, I feel compelled to point out vestiges of this notion that children and procreation are still associated with marriage, at least in the conservative circles I keep. There is an expectation they come after the marriage ceremony. It’s not uncommon to hear, “I want to get married and then start a family.” Even with the emergence of cohabiting couples, who are in love and resemble a married couple without children in many cases, their unions aren’t culturally considered marriages by default, though in nearly every respect they look married, according to how you think society has already defined the institution. And I fail to understand why your experience of how the country views marriage is more authoritative than mine, if we are to assume — quite falsely, I might add — that our individual perceptions here can be epistemically justified.
Secondly, “the slew of legalizations” you mention is hardly representative of what people have democratically declared in regard to marriage. They are judicial rulings overturning constitutional amendments ratified relatively recently by public referendum. Moreover, mainstream news outlets did not cover of it, but traditional marriage advocates marched in Paris earlier this year with some estimates putting their ranks in the hundreds of thousands. Sure, there are the polls in the last few years that show the growing support for same-sex marriage. However, polls and the press who push them are both notorious for being misleading, and the polls that really matter are done at the ballot box. So, no, I don’t think it’s accurate to conclude that society solely views marriage as just a committed, amorous relationship between individuals.
Segueing into the theoretical underpinnings of traditional marriage, your response here misrepresents my position, though the fault probably lies with me because I have not been precise and rigorous in its articulation. You write, “The OI argument stands only if we believe that marriage is defined, in principle, for the purpose of procreation, but who really defines marriage like this anymore?” I’m under the impression you think under my view, procreation is necessary for marriage and the reason why people marry. That marriage is a means to an end, namely procreation.
Let me be lucid: Whether or not procreation occurs or that children “obtain” is not what makes a marriage. In my account, marriage is defined in the terms of the type of relationship, which must be procreative in nature, not in result. This distinction still entails the sexual complementarity of man and woman. Only sperm from a male can fertilize an ovum from a female for a pregnancy to occur, or in an Aristotelian framework, only a man and a woman can physically coordinate together in the coital act for the biological whole and purpose of reproduction. This union is implicitly oriented toward procreation, while you and many others mistake marriage as defined as instrumentally or incidentally related to procreation, an accidental means to an end. As Patrick Lee, Robert P. George and Gerard V. Bradley writing for The Public Discourse note:
“…the institution of marriage is not primarily about procreation as an end or goal distinct from marriage. The institution is directly about the marital communion itself, which in its fullest fruition is family; and so it is about children, but principally as members of families. True marriage can exist even where children do not come of the union, but it always remains the type of union that would naturally be fulfilled by children, were they to come.
Sure, it’s a “baby-making institution,” but the “purpose” and the emphasis here is intrinsic, not extrinsic in kind.
Similarly, there is no dilemma between whether marriage is either “a declaration of love” or “a baby-making institution.” For me, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Love between members in a couple seems to facilitate the “baby-making” and vice versa. As Sherif Girgis argues also at The Public Discourse, “marital love also makes new life, so marriage itself is uniquely enriched and extended by the bearing and rearing of children, and the wide sharing of family life.” Marriage is both a physical and emotional, and thereby comprehensive, union between a man and a woman in which their subsequent children are a cultivation of. For advocates of the conjugal view of marriage like myself, marriage is a human good in it of itself.
These are not poison pills for me to swallow, Oscar, nor is this some ad hoc, “disingenuous” sallying of an absurd definition to defend traditional marriage. Just because many of the people who are opposed to same-sex marriage do not or cannot argue or perhaps don’t even know the underlying philosophy of their position is not a black mark against it either. They still express the tautological conclusion of marriage as being between man and woman, which is not only consistent with everything I’ve argued but is entailed by it. There are scores of atheists who justify their unbelief in God due to the existence of evil. Yet, I bet most of them don’t understand the Epicurean roots of their reasoning or that it is an attempt to show that the notion of God is inherently contradictory and therefore logically impossible. Does this mean that these claims are bankrupt because most lay people don’t know and can’t articulate the presuppositions that led to them? Of course not. To also borrow a phrase, I also suspect the only people who would espouse your critique of the OI argument are those who already are for same-sex marriage — even though such a position is foolishly self-contradictory. But so what? I find these veiled appeals to consensus and speculation about whom subscribes to what position as vacuous and irrelevant to determining the worth of our respective arguments.
Returning to the task at hand, one does not have to be a Aristotelian to subscribe to the OI argument; one just has to be realist about essential properties. The fact of the matter is that I hold a realist position in this debate, which reminds me that you do not: “Yes, I still maintain that there is no ought, Pownens. Which means that anyone arguing that marriage ought to be this way is unjustified.”
Dismissing what appears to be equivocation with the use of “ought” (correct me if I’m wrong, but above you seemingly conflate two different meanings and uses of the word), I feel like I need to ask how Nietszchean are you, Oscar? Do you maintain his perspectivism and therefore his rejection and value of truth? I’m really inclined to think that you do from reading your recent posts and your non-realism about social constructs’ possessing essential properties. It’s hard to be certain what exactly is your view, so I will rephrase and elucidate the issue slightly and then proceed accordingly.
I subscribe to an essentialism, which in brief is the view that things have essences — properties that a thing must have to be what it is, i.e., essence or thisness — when it comes to marriage. I don’t deny marriage has social customs that have varied and changed depending on the time and culture. These traditions or conventions, however, are incidental to marriage, as they were erected around the relationship. As the following analogy illustrates, the clothes and styles have changed, but there still remains the same body to wear them that was there from the start and serves as the explanation as to why and how there are clothes to don at all. Likewise, the relationship, which you admit predates the institution, serves as the basis for said institution. This relationship is a social construct insofar that persons individually construct a social arrangement between each other, and we call that type of association, marriage. However, even after these concessions and clarifications, I still maintain that marriage has essential features, and its subsequent cultural and legal institution has rational roots.
On the contrary, Oscar, you appear to maintain an non-essentialism (no “oughts”) for social constructs, which are defined as “created by people for people.” As such, your use of social construct in regard to marriage seemingly refers to a wholesale, institutional product totally derived from cultural whim and devoid of essential characteristics. It’s important to note your notion of the marital social construct is different than the one described in the above paragraph. The former deals with the interaction between individuals and has essential, objective characteristics, which cultures have enshrined into and recognized as an institution; the latter applies to a complete cultural fabrication of the masses that has no objective essence and in which every individual instantiation is arbitrary. It was the latter usage of the term and the positing of no essential features I challenged both as a “bare assertion” and historically and ontologically inaccurate, not the strawman that there aren’t any social aspects to marriage whatsoever, as you seem to imply in your second response.
Now that that’s cleared up, again, I see no given reason to accept that marriage is the social construct you describe it as — a relationship bereft of essential properties. There seems to be many social constructs, “created by people for people,” that have essential features to be what they are. For instance, law must be coercive and authoritative in nature, otherwise, it ceases being law and becomes “more like guidelines than actual rules.” Moreover, here’s another shot from The Public Discourse about a little social creation known as friendship:
For all its cultural variety, it has an objective core, fixed by our social nature: mutually acknowledged good will and cooperation. Without that, two people’s connection simply lacks the value (and special duties) of friendship. To overlook this is to err about a human good, not just the label for a construct.
So too, we argue, for marriage. For all the variety of its cultural supports, shaped by shifting historical demands, marriage as a human good has an objective core, fixed by the demands of our nature as sexual-reproductive beings; to deviate from it is to miss a crucial part of a basic human good.
Social constructs like law or friendship appear to have objective, essential features that make them what they are even if the content of particular laws and friendship vary, and for Girgis and company, marriage is akin to law, friendship and even human rights in this regard.
Then, there’s that little dilemma about another social construct intimately related to marriage that is the subject of a frequent example in rudimentary philosophy courses: bachelorhood. Let’s introduce it in the form of an indirect proof:
Social constructs, as “created by people for people,” categorically have no essential properties.
Therefore, constituent social constructs of institutional social constructs have no essential properties (From 1).
A bachelor is a constituent social construct of the institutional social construct of marriage.
Therefore, a bachelor has no essential properties (From 1, 2, 3).
A bachelor has the essential property of being unmarried.
A bachelor both has no essential properties and the essential property of being unmarried (From 4, 5).
Therefore, 1 is false; there is a social construct with an essential property (from 6, which is a contradiction).
I’m putting — I’m assuming — your Nietzschean inclinations to the test, as you non-essentialism commits you into denying 5, which means the claim, a bachelor is married, is not contradictory. Maintaining that there is no essence to bachelorhood and a bachelor can be married does seem to be rather inconsistent with the commonsense notion that by definition, bachelors are unmarried. You might be fine with such an implication of your non-essentialism, but I’d know there are philosophers who too would find this claim controversial, those of which would include but are not limited to: Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and more recently, Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam and Alvin Plantinga. You clearly aren’t a fan of their essentialist theories, but given those who have and do disagree with you and the above indirect proof, it at least casts serious doubt that your preliminary assertion is as self-evident as you state if not discredits the whole inference from marriage as a social construct to marital non-essentialism as invalid. Option one is hence clinging to you convictions and going down with the ship to attempt to survive the crushing metaphysical depths below. Then again, you can face the other end of the dilemma’s vise, concede a bachelor must be unmarried, and by extension, there is at least one social construct — though, it seems plausible there’s many more — that has essential and objective features, blunting the entire thrust of your original objection against the OI argument.
I hope you feel a tad awkward here, Oscar, because it would show you haven’t completely embraced the Dark Side of the Philosophy. My feelings, however, tell me that all that I’ve just argued is wasted on you, the good Nietzschean that you intimate that you are. At this point, I suspect we are talking past each other. You sympathize with Continental philosophy, where I align with the Analytic tradition of Western thought. I do have some choice words for Nietzsche and Continental philosophy as a whole, but that is possibly an even uglier and more irreconcilable disagreement than the one we’re having here. I have no qualms about hitting pause for now, as I think I’ve made a fairly compelling case that your philosophical presuppositions have little application to the marriage debate, as public policy-making doesn’t deny the efficacy of truth. Even the non-philosophically inclined should feel uneasy at the counterintuitive notion that a bachelor can exist as married, as your view entails. Plus, judging from the brevity of your posts directed toward me, you seem content with not doing any heavy metaphysical lifting, although I’m not opposed to a second rejoinder that would exercise such pursuits.
In summary, your confession of Nietzsche’s influence on your thinking, as pervasive as it might be, seems entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. When it comes to marriage, as it stands, “Nietzsche is dead.” It’s your choice whether or not to try to persuade me otherwise.
My online pen pal Oscar at Pretentious Musings has decided to take me to task about this argument against same-sex marriage I’ve been boasting about for quite some time. Good, I need a challenge from a worthy interlocutor because it’s been getting pretty lonely and pathetic just rambling into the great cyber wilderness of the Internet all by myself.
So. Here. We. Go.
Given that Pownens originally presented this argument as “non-Biblical”, I am going to approach this from a completely secular standpoint. Insofar as we accept this, the argument is problematic in that it attributes a normative standard to a social construct. Basically, Pownens is claiming that marriage ‘ought’ to be this way, when there is no ought to begin with.
Frankly, Oscar’s paragraph confuses me. I’ve never made a prescriptive claim to what marriage “ought” to be in any way. From whence I have scoured in my posts, I haven’t found any argument like “most of the world believes that marriage is between one man and woman” or “marriage has always been practiced as between one man and woman”; therefore marriage ought to be only between one man and woman. Neither has Alan Keyes. Nor am I applying my ethical preferences as a standard by which to yea or nay same-sex marriage. Instead, we have attempted to give an account, which is descriptive and not prescriptive, of what marriage is in reference to a moral debate, not what the institution ought to be. To do so is not an error in logical inference but the basis of rational moral discourse. After all, to claim “murder is wrong” requires an understanding of what murder is. Similarly, to imply there is marriage inequality, as same-sex marriage advocates do, requires an understanding of what marriage is. If anything, I’m making claims about what law ought to be based on what I purport marriage is. It’s no different than a feminist advocating for how law ought to recognize sexual consent predicated on what she thinks rape is. Ought is already assumed and used in such contexts. So, the indictment that I’m trying to fallaciously stem the is-ought gap in the manner Oscar surmises is off-kilter.
In fact, I reject the Humean skepticism that seems to influence Oscar’s objection, as I don’t hold that “matters of fact” are only derived of “impressions” from the senses. In other words, I don’t think the only facts are empirical ones as Hume did. Anyway, the rabbit hole here becomes too deep too quickly for this post, but as I hope the above paragraph successfully suggests, this alleged sacred distinction is not so nearly stark and rigid as both Hume and Oscar maintain.
Given Oscar’s background in philosophy, I’m a little befuddled about how he inferred claims about how marriage ought to be from phrases like “ontological impossibility” and comparisons to non-existent objects such as married bachelors, all of which are at least it part of the vernacular of metaphysics, which, to put it broadly, studies what is said to exist or what is and what is not.
I also find it interesting that Oscar evens opens this dialogue with this move. If he is correct that marriage is a merely social and cultural fabrication, then if any group is “attribut(ing) a normative standard to a social construct,” it’s the people who are pushing rather aggressively to redefine it on the basis it’s unfair to gay couples. Are they not arguing that marriage “‘ought’ to be this way” — namely that same-sex couples ought to be allowed to marry because of equal protection under the law — “when there is no ought to begin with”? So, if my argument dies by Oscar’s hand, then their case too must suffer the same fate. From his “completely secular standpoint,” this reasoning taken to its logical peak pushes all political debate on the issue off the ledge to the rocks below, as no reasoning on either side is justifiable. Pragmatically speaking, this will not do.
Therefore, I must challenge Oscar on his bare assertion that marriage is a social construct, as this claim is really where our conflict lies. His contention hardly seems evidently true, and he offers no reason as to why anyone should accept it. Plus, here’s a reason to doubt it: If marriage is a product of culture, a social construct, it’s likely we should have observed a greater variety of “marriages,” as Oscar understands them, across time and civilization than what we have. Obvious artifacts of culture like language, cuisine, art, religion have differed and changed from time and place. Even morality, although which is an objective feature of the world, has at least had a somewhat misleading facade of fluidity, as people’s ethical convictions have evolved throughout history, giving a false appearance of relativity. Yet, marriage has seemingly stayed remarkably static and universal in cultures for millennia. Sure, there have been various forms of polygamy, polyandry and arranged unions, but they all are rooted in human sexual complementarity. If marriage is purely created by culture, why haven’t we seen a host of diverse arrangements, wholly truncated from procreation, considered as marriage before now? Perhaps, it’s because marriage is actually founded in something more objective and is not actualized ex nihilo by society, as Oscar so opines.
Moreover, there’s also an ontological bugaboo Oscar has overlooked. And, it’s fairly straightforward to show what it is by going backwards. Let me explain: According to him, marriage, as a social construct, is determined by cultural whim; culture is a product of societies; societies can’t exist without people; people come from families; families spring forth from fertile loins, i.e. the union of a man and a woman, which, ipso facto, is what we social conservatives call a marriage. Summarily, men and women have long entered into what are clearly marital relationships way before there was culture to acknowledge such unions as marriage. And I’m not talking about fornicatin’. I mean forming households. The fact is domesticity predates civilization, society and civil law and is a necessary precursor to it all. Society doesn’t decide what is marriage; it just recognizes what has been here the whole time: the comprehensive union of a man and woman and its implicit reproductive potential.
Of course, Oscar and those in favor and actively invested in marital redefinition will not be convinced that the aforementioned first relationships are marriages (ah, the bigotry). They will extol Oscar’s reasoning and will cheer him as their champion. They are probably smitten over his swift dismissal of my argument. Some have probably even come to same conclusion that Oscar has and have drank the Kool-Aid without realizing the poison contained within it.
I had a philosophy professor who once said something along the lines, “Every solution to a problem in philosophy has a cost.” Oscar was able to diffuse my argument seemingly with ease because he didn’t directly address it. By denying that marriage has an essence derived from objective features of the world, Oscar did not question the validity or attack a premise. Instead, intentional or not, he assaulted the presupposition that there is any rational discourse to be had on this issue, a radical tactic which undermines any topic for debate. It’s probably the best compliment he could give me with his sudden overturning of the game board and all its pieces. I actually take it as evidence for the veracity of my position. Platitudes aside, however, if he’s correct that marriage is a social construct forged from subjectivity, same-sex marriage proponents have as much logical ground to stand on as me, which is none. Oscar has scorched it all. Their morally-charged appeals to the 14th Amendment are as “problematic” as my analytic analysis of marriage. It’s not a victory; it’s mutually assured destruction.
At the very best, the implications are more favorable to my side of the battlefield. If marriage “is merely a reflection of what society wants,” there should be a reliable means to divine what people desire in this regard. Surely, the oligarchical fiats of federal judges overriding democratically ratified state amendments voted in by public referendum isn’t such a measure. Truly, the most accurate method to ascertain what society wants marriage to be is to have its people, “bigots” and all, to decide for themselves and put those recent pro-same-sex marriage polls to the test. Wouldn’t you agree, Oscar?
In that immemorial contest of wills and strength known as tug of war, from the get-go, you never concede more than half the rope to the opposition. It bestows an overwhelming advantage to your opponent that results in this undignified position:
Most people call it defeat. The Left dubs it as “the wrong side of history.” In response, the Right needs to emphatically disparage the phrase and others like it. Yet, in their folly, conservatives don’t discredit it for being question-begging and fallacious — consensus or success in the Culture War does not make the position the truth. It also assumes fatalism, an impossible claim to knowledge of how events will unfold. Instead, conservatives ingest this poison pill we’re not forced to swallow. We hand them more than enough rope to tug nooses tight around our necks.
Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella offers this as wise counsel to any self-appointed champion of the Right: “As I have said more than once, if you are a conservative don’t talk like a [insert favorite expletive] liberal. Don’t validate, by adopting, their question-begging epithets and phrases.” That means don’t use terms like “white privilege,” “war on women,” “rape culture,” “assault rifle,” “Islamophobia,” “disproportionality of force,” “income inequality,” “class warfare,” “xenophobia,” “social justice” and yes, “same-sex marriage.”
If my posts here and here haven’t been abundantly lucid, there is no such thing as a same-sex marriage. It’s a contradiction in terms, an ontological impossibility. In the same way the concept of bachelorhood intrinsically requires a man to be unmarried, the concept of marriage, in principle, requires the type of relationship to be procreative. All same-sex couples cannot procreate, no matter how many times they lovingly bump uglies. A pregnancy will not occur because it cannot occur, as dictated by the laws of nature. On the contrary, most opposite-sex couples can procreate. In fact, a pregnancy is prone to occur when a male and female have coitus. When two women or two men engage in sex, there is no chance. Zilch. That’s a huge difference between heterosexual couples and homosexual couples. Plus, emotional love is not what makes a marriage, otherwise there would be no such thing as an arranged marriage. So, like the fact married bachelors do not exist, marriages between individuals of the same sex whose unions are innately infertile, by definition, do not exist either. Therefore, the Right should object to the use of “same-sex marriage” at every turn, as any rational person would to “square triangle” or “massless body.”
The burden of proof falls upon same-sex marriage advocates. They push “marriage equality” — another one of their dastardly sayings — for same-sex couples, but the slogan implies as it stands, there is marriage inequality. It assumes heterosexual and homosexual relationships are one and the same, yet there is an imbalance in the sight of the law. As rationality in the practice of debate and making of public policy mandates, the same-sex marriage movement must show that marriage law is unjustly discriminatory. Mind you, it’s a very heavy burden to bear, as it requires an understanding of what marriage is, which if properly recognized, lays irrevocably entrenched in the same-sex marriage movement’s path. The Right’s duty is to make same-sex marriage advocates attempt to hoist that burden repeatedly and publicly, a responsibility we have shirked to our detriment by permitting the term.
Likewise, we have also foolishly conceded the phrase “same-sex marriage ban.” How can what amounts to a logical impossibility be banned in the first place is a feat well beyond my cognitive prowess. It also is ridiculously puerile and imprudent to prohibit what not only what doesn’t but cannot exist.
Moreover, lets scrutinize what actually is a ban, shall we? By definition, according to Google, “it’s an official or legal prohibition.” As such, every ban has an object to which it is directed. For example, “The university banned smoking from campus.” Smoking is the object of the predicate banned. In other words, whatever is outlawed must be defined for there to be a ban. Now, states that have not legalized same-sex marriage have been categorically alleged to have constitutional bans barring same-sex marriage. Well, take a look. Many — not all as media assert — of the so-called “bans” are not directed toward same-sex couples. These amendments affirm one type of relationship as marriage; they don’t “ban same-sex marriage.” Missouri, for instance, makes no mention of other types of relationships. So, the elevation in status of one sort of relationship over others is as much a ban as Missouri recognizing the channel catfish as its state fish. It’s no prohibition against any other species just like many of the state amendments’ contents is no prohibition against same-sex marriage. They actively elevate something in particular in status, while bans directly relegate something in particular in status.
As a an act of degradation, bans also intimate a period of decriminalized experience with their objects of interdiction. There is a familiarity with something that is banned. Books must be read before they are barred from schools. Drugs must be used before they become illegal substances. Then, same-sex marriages must have been instituted if they are banned. Of course, that’s false, as redefining marriage, up until roughly 15 years ago, has never been considered before in history. However, what it does subtlely convey, by those who proliferate the term, is that same-sex marriage, i.e., the love between same-sex couples, was the norm, which can be obfuscated and expanded to mean regular, typical and morally permissible, especially given the ethical relativism infesting society. There connotes a bias fitting a narrative of victimhood that these big, nasty constitutional amendments are bans passed in animus against gays and that their pre-established rights were cruelly stripped away from them.
As a rhetorical weapon, such a myth is lethal to our cause. Therefore, when applicable, it is vital to deny there is a ban against same-sex marriage, just like there is no such a thing as same-sex marriage. They will inevitably channel Saul Alinsky and denounce you as bigoted for trying to be rational, but this claim too is baseless. Hold them to task to justify their slanderous indictment, as the unsustainable burden proof again falls upon them. We can’t afford to continue to forfeit more and more ground. The debate can’t be in terms that already make us the oppressor. If the fight is fair, same-sex marriage has no chance.
Our divorce was not settled in mediation or with lawyers. No, it went all the way to trial. My husband wanted primary custody of our children. His entire case can be summed up in one sentence: ‘I am gay, and I deserve my rights.’ It worked: the judge gave him practically everything he wanted. At one point, he even told my husband, ‘If you had asked for more, I would have given it to you.’
I truly believe that judge was legislating from the bench, disregarding the facts of our particular case and simply using us — using our children — to help influence future cases. In our society, LGBT citizens are seen as marginalized victims who must be protected at all costs, even if it means stripping rights from others. By ignoring the injustice committed against me and my children, the judge seemed to think that he was correcting a larger injustice.
My husband had left us for his gay lover. They make more money than I do. There are two of them and only one of me. Even so, the judge believed that they were the victims. No matter what I said or did, I didn’t have a chance of saving our children from being bounced around like so many pieces of luggage.
The fact Darnelle, the children’s biological mother, lost custody of her own children when she did nothing to warrant losing them is chilling. This anecdote shows the oft-peddled claim, “How does allowing gay couples to marry affect your (heterosexual) marriage?” as vacuous. By redefining marriage, it alters who the law recognizes as legal parents. If a type of union between individuals is infertile, by its nature, is elevated in status to be on par in legal jurisprudence to the type of union that is, the vast majority of time, fertile, then blood ties, the biological connection between parent and child that is recognized by law as the adhesive that formulates families, becomes irrelevant. The implication of legalizing same-sex marriage is that the state does not have to recognize that genetic bond. In the sight of the law, mothers and fathers become optional. Familial bonds become strictly social constructions with no basis in objectivity, which makes it much easier for the state to meddle in domestic affairs. In other words, by advocating for same-sex marriage, you are advocating for the dissolution of a buffer zone that keeps the government out of your home, the means of taking away your children from you. Yep, saying “yes” to the illusory right to marriage is saying “no” to children having the real right to be raised by their biological parents. Darnelle is an example that this alleged slippery slope is quickly becoming legal precedent in reality.
A second and equally pivotal excerpt:
USA Today did a photo journal shoot on my ex and his partner, my children, and even the grandparents. I was not notified that this was taking place, nor was I given a voice to object to our children being used as props to promote same-sex marriage in the media…
…After our children’s pictures were publicized, a flood of comments and posts appeared. Commenters exclaimed at how beautiful this gay family was and congratulated my ex-husband and his new partner on the family that they “created.” But there is a significant person missing from those pictures: the mother and abandoned wife. That “gay family” could not exist without me.
There is not one gay family that exists in this world that was created naturally.
Every same-sex family can only exist by manipulating nature. Behind the happy façade of many families headed by same-sex couples, we see relationships that are built from brokenness. They represent covenants broken, love abandoned, and responsibilities crushed. They are built on betrayal, lies, and deep wounds.
This is also true of same-sex couples who use assisted reproductive technologies such as surrogacy or sperm donation to have children. Such processes exploit men and women for their reproductive potential, treat children as products to be bought and sold, and purposely deny children a relationship with one or both of their biological parents. Wholeness and balance cannot be found in such families, because something is always missing. I am missing. But I am real, and I represent hundreds upon thousands of spouses who have been betrayed and rejected.
Yes, people, this issue is a matter of social justice, but not in the way it’s portrayed by journalists. Same-sex marriage advocates are waging war against women and children. Unless there’s a divorce and adoption — both of which are messy affairs — third-party reproduction is always involved in the establishment of a same-sex household, but to coax this family into existence, wombs must be rented out, sperm must be collected like milk and children are commoditized. I hope such methods are seen for what they actually are, obviously and unequivocally depraved.
Please, take Darnelle’s words, experience and tragedy into your consideration on this matter.
Remember when this blog was about philosophy and Christian apologetics before all the politics? Believe it or not, I still do, and I want to get back to doing some of the good ‘ole Lord’s work. Dan Savage, the prominent same-sex marriage and gay rights activist, affords me the opportunity to do both. So, what’s that saying about birds and stones?
Basically, Savage attacks the Pentateuchal laws in regard to homosexuality as null and void because the rest of the stuff in there is no longer followed or believed to be binding. He calls condemning homosexuality and ignoring all the other rules about menstruation, diet, ceremony, etc. is hypocritical. Furthermore, the Bible’s alleged treatment of slavery and lack of abolitionist sentiment severs any credibility and authority about any other moral claims it establishes. Savage paraphrases from Sam Harris that “The Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong: slavery. What are the odds that Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? One hundred percent.” And as such, the book is ethically bankrupt.
Well, no, and here’s why. The schtick about cherry-picking what to follow from the Old Testament is an all too common criticism, but it relies on sloppy exegesis. First of all, Christian theologians for ages — I’m talking as far back as Augustine and Tertullian — recognized three categories of laws within the Leviticus and company. Ceremonial laws dealt with issues such as circumcision, diet, cleanliness, sacrifices and priestly garments. Civil/judicial rulings for things like crimes and business exchanges. The moral category involved basic normative principles often involved in the Ten Commandments like murder, theft, deceit, adultery and idolatry. Also of import, Israel, as God’s chosen and holy people, was supposed to be a theocracy. Hence, the ceremonial and civil/judicial laws are considered to be only applicable to the Jews at this time. Therefore, this section of the legal code is not viewed as appurtenant to Christians, as we don’t live under the same circumstances. The moral laws, on the contrary, transcend time and space and are authoritative. So, the ones about human sexuality, like those in Leviticus 18 and 20 about homosexuality, are still very much in play. Indeed, Savage is mistaken: The Christian, who denounces homosexuality on the basis of the Old Testament, is being fully consistent in his or her beliefs.
Of course, there’s also the New Testament edicts that prohibit homosexuality in Romans 1: 26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9, which bears the notion the entire Bible needs to be interpreted comprehensively, not this sniping of verses and passages out of context. The Old Testament often does not make sense without the New Testament and vice versa.
This exegetical principle now brings me to Savage’s, and those of like mind, fixation on slavery in the Bible. Admittedly, the issue is not so easily dismissed like his first criticism, especially given our cultural and righteous aversion to the institution in modern Western society. However, it’s crucial to remember that the Bible is to be understood holistically. Scrutinized verses need to be weighed against similarly themed passages and with the whole of Scripture. So obsessing about relatively miniscule chunks, loading them into your anti-Christian cannon and blasting away as if your ammo is deadly to the whole Christian worldview is honestly nothing more than blustery. Let me also write, given my two years in graduate school, such attitudes presented to other positions in academia would be deigned as inappropriate and ineffective. There is something called the principle of charity, which deems a critique as efficacious if it attacks the strongest form of the argument, not the low-hanging fruit.
Hence, Savage and other “New Atheist” types who attack the Bible are too content with their marauding diatribes about the hateful, capricious God of the Old Testament, the atrocities against the Canaanites and, in this case, slavery. They claim victory prematurely, as Christians have been grappling with these passages since the 2nd century A.D. Yep, sorry to burst your bubble, but these criticisms aren’t some new insight never considered. Enter Origen who proposed the Bible must be read through the lens of Jesus. In other words, if you read Leviticus and think God endorses slavery, this conclusion makes no sense in the light of Christ’s love in his death and resurrection, and you therefore, have misinterpreted the text. Following from this idea, C.S. Lewis advocated what’s known as “mere Christianity” or the foundational propositions of the Christian worldview. As William Lane Craig notes, “If God exists and has revealed Himself decisively in Jesus of Nazareth, then Christianity is true, and the rest is working out the details.” According to Craig, the slavery accusation, as it is often asserted, is very much in the details and has no bearing on whether or not theism is true or the historicity of Jesus. Admittedly, Savage here never claimed these alleged contradictions mean Christianity is false, — only its moral claims — but such a view is implied and plausibly inferred. In either case, the apt reply to Savage’s obsession with the little things is “so what?”.
Moreover, another thing to remember, the Bible is less interested in individual social standing than it is invested in spiritual salvation. Whether or not a person was a master or a slave doesn’t really matter when the soul could be forfeit.
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal (Matthew 6:19-20).
The Bible repeatedly urges devotion to the eternal than what is material and temporary. It’s message breaks the chains of sin. That’s the paramount biblical message, i.e., the Gospel.
However, some might find find the above described exegetical strategies and explanations as wishy-washy, so here are some more little “details.” For example, the slavery laws clearly belong civil/judicial category, which had no intention of application to any gentile society, let alone modern America. Similarly, Biblical slavery most likely resembled indentured servitude and not the plantation-style Antebellum South practice with which we strongly associate. It was voluntary and like a form of welfare for the destitute, with many of the laws protecting the slaves from harm. Service was also supposed to be temporary, as mandated in Deuteronomy 15:12. It was actually quite humane and progressive for its time.
It might be objected that regardless of the favorable conditions, it still is deplorable to own a person as property, and surely a just God would reflect that moral truth in its decrees. Ah, but the Bible does twice in Exodus 21:16 and Deuteronomy 24:7. Still, I don’t see why the Bible must overtly express abolitionist sentiment to be considered morally authoritative. Moreover, this objection seems in line with the same thinking behind the arguments from evil, only it’s posed specifically around whether or not the Bible has moral worth, not around God’s existence:
If the Bible is moral, then it has laws that prohibit the possession of people as property.
The Bible has laws that permit and regulate the possession of people as property.
Therefore, the Bible is not moral.
As a modus tollens, it’s valid, but it’s not sound as the first premise is not solid like in similarly formulated arguments from evil. For there could be a morally sufficient reason for God tolerating the temporary and voluntary possession of people, such as to prevent widespread poverty that afflicted ancient peasants as is suggested in the Bible. There could be others, but the fact is humans are epistemically limited and have about an amoeba-sized view inside the Earthly petri dish. God’s perspective is rather all-encompassing, so it’s conceivable that we don’t have all the information to judge why God would tolerate the owning of people. Premise 1 also is colored by a Western-centric interpretation of slavery: If the Bible does not meet that worldview’s expectations in regard to morality, then it’s devoid of normative weight. But that conditional is clearly false.
Furthermore, I think Savage’s contention that the Bible “is a radical pro-slavery document” is a gross mischaracterization. His ignorance becomes incredibly evident when he makes that jab at the book of Philemon. In the letter, Paul beseeches Philemon to welcome back Onesimus, a runaway slave of Philemon’s who had become a Christian. He implores Philemon to receive Onesimus “no longer as a slave” but “as a dearly loved brother” (Philemon 1:16). Although Paul didn’t speak against the institution of slavery, the implications of the Gospel were not conducive with the practice of institution. As all people are sinful, they’re all equal, and moreover, equal as brothers and sisters in Christ. This claim clearly is not compatible with the Roman or American South’s slavery institutions. This might be speculative, but I would conjecture this idea also undergirded Christian abolitionists’ rationale for ending slavery and influenced the Founding Fathers’ revolution and subsequent nation-building.
So, the Bible did not get “the easiest moral question” in the Bible wrong if, indeed, it’s in regard to slavery. It took a nuanced position on a complicated issue that only faintly resembled what Americans consider as slavery. If anything, the Christian tenants, properly understood, implied the buying, selling and trading of human beings as chattel as morally reprehensible and laid the groundwork to formally ending the injustice. Then for curiosity’s sake, what is “the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced?” Infanticide seems pretty straightforward, as it seems pretty hard to justify the killing of babies unless of course, they happen to be inside the womb. Then it’s not even ok; it’s a woman’s righ—oh, wait…
This also reminds me: Isn’t it interesting the famed champion of the bullied refers to the Christian students who walk out on his tirade delivered from what is a bully-pulpit as “pansy-assed?” Savage justifies his behavior as executed in self defense, despite the video shows Savage verbally segueing to talk about the Bible in his presentation and seemingly no students are heckling him for his sexual orientation or offering any sort of provocation. Though it does bear asking, why the hell is Savage speaking, first of all, at a high school journalism conference, and secondly, why is the Bible a topic at such an event? All but the iron—no sorry, I mean hypocrisy is lost on me here. Here is a man who is vehemently condemning ethical double standards and slavery, who openly endorses the breeding and purchasing of children to gay couples as equality under the law.
“Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel (personal property) of an owner and are bought and sold as if they were commodities.”
I’ve already defended the American Organization for Marriage’s argument in “Marriage = Biology (Not Bigotry)” video from the polemical likes of Mr.Repzion. His channel is just an expression of his personal whims and beliefs. From what I can glean, there is no greater agenda motivating his editorial videos, and he doesn’t project an aura of legitimacy that should be heeded in the comprehensive context of American politics. This isn’t a knock against him but an acknowledgement of the nature of his online fiefdom. He is small fry: A guppy who darts hither and thither through the Internet’s currents, snacking on whatever his floppy fish-mouth can envelop.
Now, to bigger, more dangerous gilled creatures. (Spoiler: Gratuitous allusions and metaphors of fish to follow)
The larger piscean species to be tackled this time is the American Foundation for Equal Rights, and it’s devoted to “finding Nemo,” i.e. marriage equality. The organization also published a video in response to NOM, and before I sink my hooks into this one, I want you all to watch NOM’s video first and then view the “intrepid” Matt Baume and his stellar “refutation.”
You draw your own conclusions, but here is my commentary of NFER’s rebuttal.
00:00 – 00:25: Firstly, NOM’s video never compares same-sex couples to drug dealers and pedophiles. Actually, NOM makes a comparison between gay marriage, “drug dealing” (00:47) and “incest and pedophilia” (01:02). These are behaviors, not citizens, according to NOM. The organization simply is arguing for the prohibition of behaviors it finds destructive and not the oppression of a group of individuals. It’s attacking the actions of people, not the people themselves. There is an important difference.
Moreover, NOM is lucid in this distinction. Throughout the video, the producers change the typography of the words “people” and “behavior” to draw attention to this point. Hint: They’re bolded and colored orange. In the 00:00 – 01:12 span, the upper right hand corner reads “behavior of its citizens.” And if this wasn’t crystalline, in 03:50 – 04:20, the video directly addresses this objection.
00:26 – 00:49: Again, Baume bastardizes what NOM means by natural marriage like Mr.Repzion before him. As NOM implies at 00:15 – 00:17, “natural” refers to — and I’m sorry for the graphic imagery — when a penis releases semen into a vagina due to sexual intercourse, fertilization, followed by gestation and birth can occur. This is a fact confirmed by biology and thousands of years of history and prehistory. Couples didn’t magically manifest because sets of a man and a woman just happened to live together and their tribes, for no reason, just started to call and treat their relationships as what would eventually be dubbed as marriage. No, marriage has always been about sex and the resulting children. The society, people and legality of the institution, the state to that Nancy Cott’s quote refers and the civil rights that Baume’s NFER champions, all came afterward. I’m not just talking about in time either. Their ontological cradle is “natural marriage.”
The whole “This term is nonsense…[marriage] is something that comes from people, a set of laws” schtick is actually the nonsensical claim. Baume’s denial here is like saying a documentary about salmon spawning in rivers is not natural because the cameras, video and sound editing and David Attenborough’s dignified inflections is “something that comes from people, a production created by human technologies.” It neglects the fact the subject of the documentary, the root of the whole enterprise, is a natural phenomenon. Likewise, Baume ignores that the whole reason for marriage, as an institution, is the biological reality of procreative sex.
Moreover, Baume just begs the question in favor of same-sex marriage advocates. He does not demonstrate why NOM’s foundational premiss is faulty, and his asserted alternative is just left without any justification. Granted, it’s a tall order discrediting millennia of successful human reproduction and a biological tenant so apparent, people understood and repeatedly applied the principle way before microscopes made it possible to see sperm, with their flagella, rushing to fertilize egg cells. Instead, it’s easier to not engage your opponent’s argument and falsely conflate people with behaviors again by claiming, “with this term, NOM is calling gay people unnatural.” This statement patently isn’t true as a thorough scouring of NOM’s video will vindicate. However, there will be more on what appears to be the blatant refusal to do honest discourse later in the post.
00:50 – 02:05: Here’s where it becomes apparent that Baume just wants to discredit NOM without that little something called intellectual honesty. Baume’s sophistry really starts to shine, and any charitable interpretation of his mistakes thus far, i.e. honest errors in reasoning, becomes less and less likely.
He says, “It’s not so surprising that NOM gets their terminology so wrong because their definition of marriage defies reality. Here’s what NOM thinks marriage is…”. Then, he attack NOM’s list of effects of marriage as if these are necessary characteristics of the institution, or its definition.
See, the verb “is” usually accompanies a sentence or phrase that would be considered a definition. For instance, with Baume in mind, sophistry is “asubtle, tricky,superficiallyplausible,butgenerallyfallaciousmethodofreasoning.” However, the list Baume targets is not expressed with the verb: “Natural marriage creates children, best raises children, protectswomen, civilizes men, [sic] lowers crime, poverty, and welfare.” All these verbs are extrinsic contrasted with the intrinsic is. They are a posteriori results of marriage and not a priori prerequisites of it. Hence, any of Baume’s thrusts are striking a straw man. For example, NOM’s video never argues that marriage categorically creates children like Baume insinuates. NOM is highly aware that sex is what puts the buns in the oven because the organization bases their entire video upon that fact, which Baume conveniently ignores and only now acknowledges here because he can levy it against NOM’s credibility. Though, he assuredly doesn’t draw any real blood here or throughout his rebuttal. He hits ketchup packets, whose crimson substitute, unfortunately, looks legitimate enough to many who will view his video and take his words as gospel.
Furthermore, anyone who knows anything about this debate should realize NOM’s definition of marriage, like each pro-family group, is delineated as a union between one man and one woman. It’s common knowledge. Baume certainly knows it. He also shows the ability to differentiate between a definition and an effect and what NOM means in this section because he says later, “That’s actually true. Marriage has a stabilizing social influence…”. Therefore, pinning that list of effects as a definition is like saying a pro-choice group’s definition of abortion is that it liberates women, gives them control of their body, etc., It’s a definition no one defends because it isn’t one. It takes a slimy panache to pull such a stunt, a feat Baume continually attempts to outdo.
For example, in regard to natural marriage “[sic] protecting women and civilizing men,” Baume spouts this glorious tidbit:
At least to NOM’s credit, this is sexist against both men and women. This is a hard claim to debunk because it doesn’t make sense, but what NOM seems to be saying is that if gay people can get married, then men will start impregnating women and then leaving them to go commit crimes. This is offensive to just about everyone but most of all, to reality.
What?!?! Baume’s statement is baffling. Nowhere in the span of NOM’s video is such a ludicrous notion even implied, let alone explicitly stated. For NOM, natural marriage has the aforementioned functions. That is all. The charges of sexism are off-kilter because in NOM’s video, the text underneath at 01:12 – 01:30 unpacks what is meant by “protects women” and “civilizes men.” That’s the context of their definition that both “defies” and “is offensive…to reality.”
Lastly, Baume’s contention that the children of same-sex couples are on equal footing with those of heterosexual ones is more contentious than what he portrays. Try here and here. I’ve also read that both sides have used studies with cherry-picked selections, so let’s say for the sake of intellectual honesty, the scientific jury is still out on the question whether same-sex households are equivalent in child rearing to heterosexual homes.
02:06 – 02:23: Once again, Baume demonstrates his uncanny, arbitrary and selective listening skills. The phrase that seems to go through one earhole and right out the other without leaving an impression in his grey matter is “as a whole.” Gay people comprise how much of the overall population? Four or five percent at most. Hence, it is political idiocy granting superfluous benefits under the law to a small minority whose plight amounts to a triangle demanding to be known as a square. It would be crafting an extra class of civil rights for a group of individuals whose choices —the free expressions of one’s sexual proclivities, homosexual or otherwise — afford them no “inalienable” or “self-evident” entitlement to such privileges. To succumb in this manner is not being fair or reasonable. The governance of our whole society is hardly supposed to be dictated by the whims of the irrational few.
Now, let me be transparent: Do gay members of the workforce deserve to be fired or denied employment based on their sexual orientation? Absolutely not. Do gay children deserve to be bullied at school? Good gracious no! Should gay people be derided as “fags” and suffer other malicious slurs? Of course not. They should be given the basic human dignity all imperfect people deserve. And I believe this truth entails gay couples having access to life insurance, hospital visitation, etc., all of which I feel civil unions ought to guarantee.
Ultimately, I’m as much an enemy as the gay civil rights movements chooses to make me. It all depends on you. You can march for what is fundamentally yours, and I will walk shoulder-to-shoulder in stride, or you can continue to tread on forbidden ground and trample the essential freedoms of others in your struggle for “equality.”
Every time you sue a Christian baker for refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding, coercing a person to violate his or her constitutionally protected religious and moral conscience, you fashion a foe. On each occasion you slander someone who publicly expresses discontent at anal sex, a behavior completely enacted by free will, you raise an adversary. In each moment you indoctrinate our children at school with the lies that a gay lifestyle, consciously pursued, is as healthy as a heterosexual one, and thereby a viable and normal alternative, you forge opposition. Your scorched earth-tactics in this war are growing tiresome. The “tolerance” you so crave is becoming exhausted. We are weary as you tear up our constitutional rights “as recompense for your imagined slights.” Our ranks are swelling; a storm is coming. When it breaks, know that it was your lack of restraint that stirred this furious tempest against you.
The lesson of this ominous forecast, Mr. Baume? Whatever is left, if and when the proverbial straw breaks the camel’s back, it probably won’t be “the land of the free,” and that outcome doesn’t bode well for American society, as a whole. Moreover, the conditions now that are stoking these fires are not paradise for all either.
To summarize, NOM and I contend redefining marriage is and will have implicit and contingent negative repercussions for everyone. It’s clear Baume paid little attention to NOM’s and its listed consequences, so I’ll add more: the weakening of the family, a mediating institution against the reach of the state, the forfeiture of any logical ground to withstand the lunacy that is polygamy, polyandry and bestiality and the path to new judicial precedent in family law — as the litigation of custody battles in experimental same-sex families, in principle, would then be applicable to heterosexual households, the impoverishment of civil discourse, societal abandonment of common sense and the commoditization of women and children as chattel. That’s scratching the surface of the opportunity cost of granting “ancillary benefits” without proper qualification. Alas, this is “justice”; this is now America.
02:24 – 02:42:
There’s only a predatory hatred of gay people to be located within those words if and only if Baume and his allies want such meaning to lurk there. “Merely validates sex partners” refers to the erroneous legitimization of behavior between individuals solely because it’s amorous. It wasn’t intended to denigrate gay people, as Baume falsely asserts. The only one entering the “realm of invasive, personal attack” is Baume, whose blatant misrepresentation of NOM’s video and repeated cries of prejudice are so baffling inappropriate, dishonesty instead of mere fallacious reasoning is fast becoming the only explanation for his utterly feeble rebuttal. He accuses more than he argues, inventing bigotry when no such menace exists. Any attempt at civil debate becomes impossible if all he does is take umbrage at genuine logic.
Moreover, “What’s love got to do with it?” Nothing. The fact the partners, gay or straight, love each other is irrelevant, as the notion of marrying for love is a relatively recent Western addition to the institution. Do political or arranged marriages cease being marriages because the man and woman don’t love each other? Do loveless marriages not exist? Being in love is not a necessary condition of marriage, although I submit it’s certainly conducive to a happy, “until death do us part” endeavor.
02:43 – 02:57:
Once again, both sides of the debate claim academic studies as support to their conclusions. Personally, I haven’t read the studies to fairly ascertain for whom social science is a handmaiden. What I have read is that both are proliferated with statistical and sampling fallacies. Baume, for the first and only time, correctly asks for these statistics. However, he promptly returns to form when declaring their non-existence.
I’ll let Professor Robert Oscar López of English Manif have the honors for this one:
First, it is highly suspicious that studies into same-sex parenting generate a similar “no difference” hypothesis even though we know that the death of a parent, divorce, adoption, and third-party reproduction do cause different outcomes in children, when those aspects are studied outside the label of same-sex parenting. The only way that a same-sex couple can raise a child, is if there was the death of an opposite-sex parent, a divorce or breakup of a heterosexual couple, an adoption, or some kind of third-party reproduction. And on all these latter family issues, the social-science record is clear. Children grieve for dead parents for their whole lives. Divorce has catastrophic effects on children. Adoptees are almost four times more likely to commit suicide and reveal a host of other difficult outcomes. Children of sperm donors were revealed to have many more adjustments problems in a huge 2010 study that was commented on, by Elizabeth Marquardt. And now research into children of surrogacy contracts shows that they have greater levels of depression, disruptive development, and even higher rates of some forms of cancer. Then there is research into the Cinderella Effect, which finds that the highest indicator of risk for abuse of children is the presence of a non-genetically related guardian in the home.
How is it possible that hundreds upon hundreds of studies into same-sex parenting find that when gay parents are involved, none of these family dynamics produce differential outcomes?
I hate to tell you, but it’s not possible.
Now, it bears elucidation: Death of a parent is not always associable with same-sex parenting. However, I believe López refers to a situation in which a single parent dies, and his or her child is then moved to the other biological parent who now is living with his or her same-sex partner. Moreover, surrogacy, in-vitro fertilization and adoption are natural developments of same-sex marriage. In other words, they are very applicable to same-sex families.
Hence, contrary to Baume, the studies and statistics do exist. When gay couples are removed from the equation, studies are lucid that biological, intact families are preferable for child-rearing. However, when gay couples are considered in this same type of research, the evidence for this conclusion vanishes even though “the only way that a same-sex couple can raise a child, is if there was the death of an opposite-sex parent, a divorce or breakup of a heterosexual couple, an adoption, or some kind of third-party reproduction.”
Curious, very curious.
02:58 – 03:19:
Baume once again asserts, “It’s true in some states that companies might have to do business with gay couples, but that has nothing to do with marriage.” Au contraire, Monseur Baume, there is such a thing as a marriage industry. Where do the decadent wedding cakes, lovely flower arrangements and funky bands come from for both the ceremonies and receptions? Companies have and will do business for gay couples planning their weddings. Plus, it’s been well popularized about florists or bakers suffering lawsuits for refusing service to a gay couples because it would be in violation of their constitutionally protected right to abide by their religious and moral conscience. I’ve even watched a video where Baume comments on situations such as these. Granted, “fund” is an unusual word, and perhaps NOM could be more clear, but government coerced endorsement of something citizens find morally repugnant is what’s at issue here.
I also maintain the subject can be reasonably inferred because of the box floating next to Baume’s head with NOM’s video reading, “Gov’t ‘can override your religion [sic].’ Court rules: Businesses not allowed to reflect faith of their owners.” I also wager the “taxes” refer to the funding of this abuse of federal power, although this connection is more tenuous.
I’m not sure how Baume does not make this realization, as involved and well-versed he is in the happenings involved in this civil rights issue. Certainly, this absence is embarrassing for a “journalistic” show called “Marriage News Watch” that describes itself as “a news and editorial program” at the end of the video.
What the forever slippery Baume is not silent about is that gays have to “file extra returns and pay extra taxes because the government does not recognize those relationships.” This is a red herring, as it is not pertinent to the topic at hand, and civil unions could remedy this issue rather than a radical overhaul of humanity’s first institution. It also fits in nicely with the victim-narrative Baume is broadcasting: NOM is oppressive to gays and wants government to enable that prejudice.
03:20 – 03:59:
Ok, the crucial assumption of this whole push for same-sex marriage is that heterosexual and homosexual relationships are essentially equivalent; therefore, they deserve equal treatment. Ah, but they’re not. Only sexual relations between a man and woman can create human life. Marriage arose because of this biologically affirmed phenomenon. On the other side, a man and a man or a woman and a woman, no matter how many times they try, will never conceive a child without help from outside of the bedroom. In-vitro fertilization, renting out a woman’s womb to compensate and the industry that provides these services are seriously questionable. Women and children are reduced to chattel to be bought and sold. Sounds familiar? The antebellum American South built their society on a similar practice.
Ruminations on the past aside, marriage, by definition, only pertains to couples that can engage in procreative sex. Therefore, NOM’s video is not advocating for “separate but equal” or anti-miscegenation-type laws, as Baume insinuates. A black man and a white woman, vice versa or any racial combination between a man and a woman can still result in offspring. So appeals to Loving v. Virginia are misplaced. Moreover, NOM’s video tacitly recognizes this distinction; Baume dismisses it because marriage, in his view, is mere consensual commitment between loving adults. Human history and biology vastly attests otherwise.
04:00 – 04:15:
No, no, no! NOM’s video never calls gay people “uncivilized” nor deems them as not a part of “civilized society.” If anyone is being demeaned and treated as unfit of dignity, it’s NOM by Baume’s slanderous commentary. NOM refers to the institution, properly understood, as the foundation of civilization. It isn’t even directly talking about heterosexual couples let alone homosexual ones. Again, this is obvious, as any honest viewing of NOM’s video will demonstrate. Plus, the vindicating words are elevated right next to Baume’s countenance.
How stupid does he and AFER believe us to be?
04:16 – 04:38:
Here’s Baume’s concluding and knockout punch:
So let’s see: NOM just compared an entire minority group to criminals, called them unnatural, said they are less fit to raise children, demeaned their relationships and called them uncivilized. And then they say, ‘That’s not bigotry.'”
Except it isn’t. None of these accusations are true.
I would like to add NOM claims “natural marriage creates the best possible family for children.” Their video never says gay people “are less fit to raise children,” as Baume would have us believe. Rather, it means the arrangement or union of same-sex marriage is not conducive to child-rearing. This is not an assessment of gay people’s parenting skills. It’s an evaluation of environment. It’s akin to saying a cage around a diver best protects while swimming with sharks, while a cageless diver is implied to be less safe. This isn’t a reflection of the diver’s swimming ability. The diver is not being questioned. Of course, if gay people choose “to swim sans a cage” and believes themselves as impervious as those who choose to “surround themselves with iron bars,” such folly can and should be challenged.
So, Baume’s wild haymaker does not land. However, it’s so off-target, his charges so false, the video ends with the disclaimer that “The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of AFER or its legal team.” Good think too as Baume’s counterstrike comes off as a low-blow. It’s not just sophistry; it’s slander in what appears to be uttered in actual malice.
So, in other words, the nature of these two men’s behavior and it’s inevitable impact on the children is not a problem. But reporting it is. The solution is not to stop the escapades, but to censor the reporting of them.
Most people call it defeat. The Left dubs it as “the wrong side of history.” In response, the Right needs to emphatically disparage the phrase and others like it. Yet, in their folly, conservatives don’t discredit it for being question-begging and fallacious — consensus or success in the Culture War does not make the position the truth. It also assumes fatalism, an impossible claim to knowledge of how events will unfold. Instead, conservatives ingest this poison pill we’re not forced to swallow. We hand them more than enough rope to tug nooses tight around our necks.
Modus Pownens 