The biggest social problem in the U.S. today is the crime and academic achievement gap between blacks and whites. The academic achievement gap (several grade levels and 200 SAT points (old system)) distorts our pedagogy, academic hiring and admissions, and employment standards in the public and private sectors (see the recent New Haven firefighters reverse discrimination case); it triggers huge and to date wholly ineffective government programs to try to close the gap (e.g., Head Start, No Child Left Behind). Black males commit homicide at ten times the rate of white males; in New York City, a representative locality, any violent crime is 13 times more likely to be committed by a black perp than by a white one. This crime gap results in depressed urban economies, huge incarceration costs, and the unjust demonization of the police as racist for merely going after criminals and of inner-city employers who worry about black thieves coming into their stores.
One overpowering cause of black social failure is the breakdown of marriage in the black community. Nationally, the black illegitimacy rate is 71%; in some inner city areas, it is closer to 90%. When boys grow up without any expectation that they will have to marry the mother of their children, they fail to learn the most basic lesson of personal responsibility. A community without the marriage norm is teetering on the edge of civilizational collapse, if it has not already fallen into the abyss. Fatherless black boys, who themselves experience no pressure to become marriageable mates as they grow up, end up joining gangs, dropping out of school, and embracing a “street” lifestyle in the absence of any male authority in the home.
If the black illegitimacy rate were not nearly three times the rate of whites’, I would have few qualms about gay marriage. Or if someone can guarantee that widespread gay marriage would not further erode the expectation among blacks that marriage is the proper context for raising children, I would also not worry. But no one can make that guarantee.
Why might it further depress the black marriage rate? There is a logical reason and a visceral reason. First, it sends the signal that marriage is simply about numbers: it is an institution that binds two (for the moment) people who are in love. It erases completely the significance that marriage is THE context in which the children of biological parents should be raised. And there are undoubtedly many other subtle meanings and effects of gay marriage that we cannot even imagine at the moment—which institutional shift is something that conservatives should be most attuned to.
As for the visceral reason: It is no secret that resistance to homosexuality is highest among the black population (though probably other ethnic minorities are close contenders). I fear that it will be harder than usual to persuade black men of the obligation to marry the mother of their children if the inevitable media saturation coverage associates marriage with homosexuals. Is the availability of homosexual marriage a valid reason to shun the institution? No, but that doesn’t make the reaction any less likely.
What are the chances that gay marriage would further doom marriage among blacks? I don’t know. Again, if someone can persuade me that the chances are zero, then I would be much more sanguine. But anything more than zero, I am reluctant to risk.
Is it fair to those gays who want to marry that their desires should be thwarted for the sake of black boys? Maybe not. And as has been pointed out many times before, it is exclusively heterosexuals who have eroded the institution of marriage through easy divorce, increasing rates of single-parenting, “blended” families, and co-habitation. But just because marriage is already in bad shape, for reasons wholly unrelated to gay marriage, doesn’t mean that gay marriage won’t weaken it further.
Black failure is at present a greater social problem in my view than whether gays who already have the right of civil unions have the right to marry as well. For similar reasons, I have always been appalled at the campaign by gay rights groups to shut down inner city Boy Scout organizations if they don’t toe the line on gay rights. A Scout troop may be the only hope that a black 11-year-old in Brooklyn has to learn self-discipline and deferred gratification. That black kid’s life chances are a lot bleaker than any gay white Eagle scout leader.
I agree with Andrew and David Hume that gay marriage is inevitable, given the clout of the gay lobby and the power of the modern non-discrimination principle. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t have consequences beyond what we can possibly foretell and which conservatives should be attuned to.
@Danilo
Well, Derbyshire/Bradlaugh has spoken favorably of eugenics in the past, and has a lot of opinions on race that have more in common with Victorian England than today. But what first seemed like occasional oddities (like the post that we’re arguing about a hundred comments later), is getting unsettling. Like being at a party and someone starts ranting about the racial inferiority of the Irish due to a lower percentage of pure Anglo-Saxon blood, and enough other people laugh and nod their heads that you think, “Maybe it’s time to leave, and not tell anyone I was here.”
@shep
“if marriage does nothing to rein in men from their natural promiscuity, then how does it work to avoid the same quarter-of-the-guys-getting-all-the-chicks problem: why wouldn’t the hot guys just cheat from inside their marraiges?”
It reins men in because it is accompanied by strong social pressure that is thousands of years old, and because it tethers men into women who are far less promiscuous than they. No such historical social pressure could possibly be associated with gay marriage, as it is a completely ex nihilo institution. But it is a legitimate problem because you’re likely to see marriage rates steadily declining, which will greatly increase the competition for sex.
“If we were to accept, arguendo, that a certain legal change were to have no effect whatever (no externalities, good or bad) *except* to make some specific group feel subjectively better about themselves, then wouldn’t that be (again, all things being equal), reason enough to make the legal change?”
No. Just look at all the arguments here where people talk about human rights, as if affirmative state endorsement of your personal arrangements where just as important as the ability to an impartial judicial system. Things are never ceteris paribus.
I do appreciate your well-reasoned objections, though.
@Danilo: Why does this site attract so many social Darwinist, authoritarian eugenics types
I actually don’t think there is much of a mystery here. For those who are temperamentally misogynist/racist/homophobic but for whatever reason have missed out on the pre-canned justifications provided by religion, what is the next intellectual stop? Dr Troost is not just talking to himself; there seems to be a small army of like-minded souls out there driven by similar batty home-grown theories. Dropping a few key words usually flushes them out — I’ve found (as you may have noticed) that “miscegenation” usually works pretty well on this site.
@Gotchaye
“Asher, granting that you’re right about the purpose of marriage, why doesn’t fairness require us to extend the same rights to same-sex couples? Heterosexuality isn’t a disability, and heterosexuals don’t deserve to be compensated for these natural human heterosexual tendencies you’re talking about.”
Because social policy isn’t primarily about interest. Seriously, it really is taht simple. A society obsessed with affirmative, substantive (as opposed to procedural) fairness is doomed to collapse. The point is that everyone, both gays and straights, is compensated, by the promotion of general social interests, by the institution of heterosexual marriage.
“What you’re arguing for is very much like race-based affirmative action. Perhaps society has an interest in giving certain minorities advantages when it comes to college admissions.”
I would have no objection at all, in fact, would enthusiastically endorse, race-based affirmative action if it promoted a general social interest. The evidence clearly indicates that such polices advance no such thing.
You weaseled out of the question Asher. What are you going to do about the benefits? What are you going to do about gay couples’ taxation, inheritance, immigration rights, next-of-kin status, hospital visitation, divorce, etc.? They should just all just go to hell right? Let’s hear you defend that.
@Brian
“Many (i really think _most_) gays are closeted and married.”
Not today, no way. Are there maybe 5 percent of gays who are closeted and married? Possibly, but i doubt it’s even that high.
“Also, if being gay is hereditary (good possibility) wouldn’t there be less chance that it gets passed on if those closeted gays don’t marry? T”
You’re confused. I have no problem with gays, and I even suspect that gayness plays some, yet to be discovered, niche role in society.
Asher —
I think your first argument actually cuts in favor of recognizing full gay marriage, rather than civil unions or any lesser status. Marriage is not an ex nihilo institution — all of the supports and constraints that come with marriage, well, come with marriage. At least some of that chastening power is, I submit, sure to flow into marriages between same-sex couples, thus resulting in a promiscuity-depressing effect, and an explicit social good, even on your terms.
As for the second argument, you refused to accept my ceteris paribus arguendo, and thus didn’t really answer my question. I actually agree that things can never be expected, in real life, to be ceteris paribus, but that doesn’t answer the question. As I babbled about at great length above, the possibility — even the certainty — of unknown (possibly positive, possibly negative) unintended consequences can only justify slow and careful experimental movement toward an end; it cannot justify closing the door on the given end entirely.
Finally, there’s the on-going game of “marriage is really about X.” Some claim that it’s “really about” raising families, even though it’s already open to all sorts of couplings that cannot be procreative (e.g., old couples, infertile couples, &c.), and has benefits and obligations that have nothing to do with child-rearing (e.g., social-security survivor benefits for surviving spouses where no children remain in the household; end-of-life decision-making authority, &c., &c.). You claim that marriage is “really about” keeping the top 20-25 percent of guys monogamous, so that the rest of the guys can get mates, though vast swathes of marriage rights/obligations have nothing to do with that end. What marriage is “really about” is all of the things that marriage is designed to do and actually does. This includes supporting child-rearing entities, supporting monogamy, increasing financial security, creating emotional and financial support structures, signaling functions for society generally, and many, many more. ALL of these are “what marriage is about.” If it’s of social interest for gay couples to have *any* of these benefits (and it seems plain to me that it is), then even from a strict social-benefit point of view, it is not true that gay marriage is merely a bauble.
A solid effort, but in the end I think we’ll have to disagree with one another.
@Carlo
“No, what we are saying is that we have the right to liberty and the pursuit if happiness,”
It is, in fact, this precise argument that gives me misgivings regarding the endorsement of same sex marriage. It confuses state actions that advance a general social interest, and those that make specific groups or individuals feel good. (Remember: heterosexual marriage as a general social interest also advances the interests of gays).
“If we were to accept this premise, why then does civil marriage serve the interests of only one particular group (heterosexuals), instead of all of society (heterosexuals and homosexuals)?”
Well, since heterosexual marriage serves a general social interest, it also serves the interests of gays, too.
@Asher “Are there maybe 5 percent of gays who are closeted and married? Possibly, but i doubt it’s even that high.”
See, that’s the problem. Lot’s of confident opinion, but backed up by … what? More confident opinion, it would appear.
Let me suggest that you would have no fücking idea.
To be clear, then, you’re saying that society has no interest in correcting injustices unless those injustices harm ‘the public’, and even that governments have no interest in having just systems of law?
My first concern is about what constitutes the common good. Are we talking about whatever’s good for a majority? Because it seems to me that there are some few men, and perhaps women, who would welcome the state of affairs that obtains under natural heterosexuality. When does something stop serving the interests of a few and begin to be legitimate policy?
My second is that your ideas seem to leave gay marriage supporters with an obvious way of enabling the government to properly establish legal marriage. All we have to do is start planting bombs in courthouses, and promise to continue to do so until our political demands are met. It’s obviously better for everyone for the government to just legalize gay marriage instead of arresting and imprisoning productive members of society. It’s not merely that your system lets easily fixable injustices persist, it also seems to encourage political minorities to turn to violence so that the state gains an interest in addressing certain injustices.
@ JohnC
Holy sh**. But you and Shep and Sviluppo and Carlo seem pretty cool. I hope you are the majority because I’ve had enough of people who think that 1922-1945 was the height of civilization. Here in Rome we have now elected a real honest-to-God fascist mayor who wears a celtic cross and has been greeted with Roman salutes. The latest teenage fad is spray-painting swastikas all over Rome. Charming. Would you like a swastika with your cappuccino and cornetto?
@Danilo
Italian politics is fascinating and terrifying, isn’t it? Some of the ethnicity talk reminds me a bit of Lega Nord, though this particular discussion appears to have completely avoided the topic of immigration.
@ Sviluppo
Yeah and how about Berlusconi basically suggesting that the Italian resistance in WWII and the Italian Social Republic were morally equivalent? My boyfriend and I are actually a little freaked out right now. The external culture of the neighborhood went from mostly left-wing to rather extreme right in a few years. Are you in Italy too? I noticed your name means “development” in Italian
@Danilo
Nah, not Italian here, it’s an old nickname with a long and pointless story behind it. I’ve been over there, speak some of the language, etc. And for the record, the first time I walked through a Communist neighborhood (in Rome? Florence?) I was terrified. Hammer and sickle flags everywhere, I wanted to get out as quickly as possible. Hard to shake the fear of an upbringing in the 70s and 80s. 😉
Reading some of the Lega Nord statements and proclamations was mindblowing, particularly regarding African immigrants, with Southern Italians viewed as barely more tolerable. I’m not connecting the authors of this site to that party or any other far-right nativist party in Europe, but you just don’t hear these kinds of arguments and justifications in public very often these days.
Danilo- your sophistry is breathtaking. All your premises are self-evidently obvious, and to even question them is offensive. The premises of those who disagree with you are fundamentally illegitimate and to even assert them is offensive. The way Western society works you will probably win, for the forseeable future, because the homosexual lobby has assured that people will now be terrified of humbly asserting that their religious beliefs prevent them from endorsing the marriage of two people of the same gender.
It won’t do you any good though. You need to oppress other people to feel good, and eventually the US will be like Canada and it will actually be illegal to express moral disapproval of homosexual behavior. You will see nothing but public servility. Your problem is not that other people disapprove of you, but that deep down you know something is wrong with you and you can’t deal with it.
Gotchaye:
Per the public good stuff. I’m married, I also have 5 kids. You therefore have an interest in my domestic arrangements without any considerations of what my preference might be.
As far as the domestic arrangements of gays, I have no preference whatsoever. My indifference is perfect. If the common good is being advanced by changing the law so it might influence the domestic arrangements of homosexuals, you should be able to convince me that my indifference as stated above is mistaken, and that I should care, in a purely self interested way too. If you can’t there is no advancement in the common good.
Thrasymachus :
“because the homosexual lobby has assured that people will now be terrified of humbly asserting that their religious beliefs prevent them from endorsing the marriage of two people of the same gender.”
I always love it when people lose arguments they trot out things like “homosexual lobby”. Yes. Gays are SO POWERFUL that they can get 50% of the straight people to do their bidding.. whether they like it or not. That 4-5% of the population (mostly closeted by the way) have SO much power is quite impressive…
@ Sviluppo – Oh yeah isn’t it freaky how totalitarian the left-wing is too? During the Iraq invasion I had to be careful saying I was American in some places. It’s like they love authoritarianism, on the left or the right, and can *switch* from one to the other in record speed. Now all the old communists have embraced religion lol
@ Thrasymachus
You are putting up the red herring of social acceptance and speech censorship because you have no argument regarding the real issue, the benefits issue. If I have no marriage/civil union and my partner dies, the state steals 60% of the value of my home upon his death. I guess you would happily hand over all your life savings to Obama because some people found you aesthetically displeasing? If my boyfriend gets in a car accident, I don’t want to hear about it through hearsay because I am not legally the next of kin. But you don’t give a damn, because you think you have the right to control my life. They are life-changing events and they are what drives the SSM movement. Having SSM is like having insurance for life’s calamities. But you don’t believe that, you think I am interested in what some fat white redneck Jesus freaks think of me.
Oh yes the gay lobby is oppressing 97% of the population. Nice try. I guess the Jews control the government too eh? And pretty soon we’ll abolish the first amendment and then take away your Bible. You know because the first amendment is just optional in the US, and America censors religious beliefs. It must already be completely illegal to follow Christianity and Judaism because eating pork is legal.
@JohnC
“For those who are temperamentally misogynist/racist/homophobic”
ain’t no such things. The first is a cultural development, probably most likely a reaction against some environmental shock. The second is that people are naturally hard-wired to prefer interacting with people genetically more like themselves. The third is probably a combination of several natural instincts related to passing on the geneline. Racism, sexism and homophobia are completely made-up phantasms that never existed as objective categories of experience.
“@Asher “Are there maybe 5 percent of gays who are closeted and married? Possibly, but i doubt it’s even that high.”
See, that’s the problem. Lot’s of confident opinion, but backed up by … what? More confident opinion, it would appear.”
If you are claiming taht, despite all the celebration of gays in popular culture, that any meaningful percentage of gays actively repress their homosexuality then you’re just a silly little boy and not worth my time. Silly little boy.
“If you are claiming taht, despite all the celebration of gays in popular culture, that any meaningful percentage of gays actively repress their homosexuality then you’re just a silly little boy and not worth my time. Silly little boy.”
Wow. The hubris and naivete. You just have no clue about gays.
@Gotchaye
“To be clear, then, you’re saying that society has no interest in correcting injustices unless those injustices harm ‘the public’, and even that governments have no interest in having just systems of law?”
Justice is always local and contingent, so the real question is who is really a member of one’s society. What I will say is taht well-run societies that want to thrive do not systematize injustices against contributing members of their own societies. (contributing being the key here, since I deny that society has much of an obligation to anyone who is not contributory or directly covered by one, such as a parent).
“My first concern is about what constitutes the common good. Are we talking about whatever’s good for a majority? Because it seems to me that there are some few men, and perhaps women, who would welcome the state of affairs that obtains under natural heterosexuality.”
They wouldn’t like it for long because sexual competition would end up being the sole focus of all male activity, and you’d see an explosion of violence like you could not imagine. I’d like to point out that my argument is quite parallel with Hobbe’s description of leviathan. Such a state of sexual naturalism would turn into a war of all against all. Feminist critics of political liberalism have often criticized it as being an agreement between men. And they’re right!! A very large component of political liberalism is that top, alpha males exchange access to multiple females for access to specific higher class females and other forms of social status. But gays also benefit from heterosexual marriage, simply due to the fact that both gay and straight males investment in a society is hugely related to their ability to access sex. Gay males will always have access to sex, gay marriage or not, but the same cannot be said for straight males. So, if society does not attempt to enforce heterosexual monogamy then you’re going to have to tell me what you’re going to do with all the straight males with no sexual access. I assure you it wouldn’t be pretty and the outcome would be bad for everyone gay or straight.
As an aside I suspect that female beauty standards evolved in hand with monogamy to reinforce it; alpha males traded quantity for quality. More polygynous societies don’t have different beauty standards, they have lower beauty standards, and, yes, there is empirical evidence for that assertion.
“It’s not merely that your system lets easily fixable injustices persist, it also seems to encourage political minorities to turn to violence so that the state gains an interest in addressing certain injustices.”
The problem is that this simply isn’t a reality. Why not? Because when given the option gays actually do not get married. Gays want to change social policy, not actually get married. Tax rates are far more objectively impactful than is endorsement of same sex unions, and if people are not out there bombing courthouses to reduce tax rates then I doubt it’s going to happen over gay marriage.
You didn’t quite answer my first concern. You think that heterosexual marriage is such that it makes absolutely everyone better off, and that therefore it contributes to the common good. Leaving aside that I find it implausible that there isn’t one person who could rationally prefer that we have no institution of marriage, do you think that only policy which makes everyone better off is legitimate?
To the second, I don’t see how what you’ve said is relevant. It doesn’t matter whether SSM supporters want gay people to actually get married or whether they just want them to have the legal right. And people aren’t bombing courthouses because they believe, unlike you, that the government can craft just laws without the threat of social upheaval hanging over it and that, in fact, there’s a pretty good chance that that’s going to happen in the near future. My point was that your theory of political legitimacy, if widely embraced, would seem to encourage people to threaten violence in order to get their way, since it’s the only way that some group smaller than the whole community can seek justice through the law.
j mct: I’m not sure how to interpret that, exactly. Are you saying that you have to rationally prefer one state of affairs to another in order for it to be better for society? Do you mean that everyone in a society must be able to be convinced in that way, or do you just mean that you in particular need to be convinced? It seems absurd to suggest that a change in policy has to be better for everyone – slave-owners had an interest in continuing slavery (again, before the threat of violence changed their incentives) – but it’s rather egotistical to insist that the common good is whatever serves you personally.
@Shep
“Marriage is not an ex nihilo institution — all of the supports and constraints that come with marriage, well, come with marriage.”
Incorrect, gay marriage, objectively, would be fundamentally different from straight marriage, because of the sex differences. If the parts are different the wholes are different (okay, that’s a horribly dirty joke, sorry). The policy of gay and straight marriage might be legally the same, but the objective facts of the two would be quite different. So, yes, gay marriage would, indeed, be ex nihilo and would not benefit from the thousands of years of ingrained social pressure that straight marriage benefits from.
“At least some of that chastening power is, I submit, sure to flow into marriages between same-sex couples, thus resulting in a promiscuity-depressing effect, and an explicit social good, even on your terms.”
Agreed, if the evidence were to suggest that marriage would have salutary effects on gays, related to a general social interest, then i would heartily endorse same sex unions using social policy.
“Finally, there’s the on-going game of “marriage is really about X.””
Given the regularity and ubiquitousness of marriage in human history, it is absolutely not a game. It exists. It has a particular function, and it behooves us to understand that function. The argument that it is primarily exists to provide two parents for a child always fell flat with me, precisely for the reasons on which you expounded. I will say, though, that it is probably a secondary function related not to the quality of environment for the child but by forcing men to provide for their own biological offspring. But that is about the parents, and sexual access, and not about the children.
“What marriage is “really about” is all of the things that marriage is designed to do and actually does. This includes supporting child-rearing entities, supporting monogamy, increasing financial security, creating emotional and financial support structures, signaling functions for society generally, and many, many more.”
Agreed, but you are reversing cause and effect. Marriage does all these things as the methods for redistributing sexual access to lower status males. I mean if marriage had an openly stated, willed, purpose of sexual socialism, enforced by nothing more than finger wagging then it would collapse in short order. No, marriage achieves sexual socialism by using all the methods you listed. The ultimate aim, though, of each of those, e.g. financial security, is managing sexual access.
“What marriage is” is the entire point of this discussion, and like everything else in this world, we are not free to just will ‘whatever is” willy-nilly. Marriage, as evolved, has a particular function that is mind, and will, independent.
@Brian
“Wow. The hubris and naivete. You just have no clue about gays.”
I know. Breathtaking in ignorance, isn’t it? One can only stare and wonder at what sort of isolated upbringing he must have had.
@Gotchaye
“You think that heterosexual marriage is such that it makes absolutely everyone better off, and that therefore it contributes to the common good. Leaving aside that I find it implausible that there isn’t one person who could rationally prefer that we have no institution of marriage, do you think that only policy which makes everyone better off is legitimate?”
Very complex issue here. No, I absolutely do not say that everyone is better off. Violent, predatory criminals, as a class of people, for example, clearly do not benefit from such an institution, because violent comes tends to coincide with personality structures not well-suited to committment and monogamy. Notice that in one of my comments I distinguished between individuals residing in a society and contributing members of society. The objective material class interests of those two groups are diametrically opposed. Yes, the differences are heavily influeced by genetic differences. I want institutions that allow the latter to flourish and the former to whither and die out. Heterosexual marriage helps accomplish that aim.
So, no, I want policies that advance the objective class interests of the types of life I’d like to see flourish but diminish the types I’d like to see whither away. All history *is* a history of class-warfare, just not in the way that Marx conceived, since an organisms’ class interests are not dictated by the means of production but by the means of reproduction.
“My point was that your theory of political legitimacy, if widely embraced, would seem to encourage people to threaten violence in order to get their way, since it’s the only way that some group smaller than the whole community can seek justice through the law.”
Um, political legitimacy *is* predicated on the threat of violence. Why do you think I pay my taxes? Because if I don’t men with guns come and haul me off and wreck my life. Politics is war by other means, and the reason why such minority groups won’t engage in such violence is that there is a much bigger and nastier force to stop them, namely, the state.
Politics is the gun, and nothing but, so people already do threaten violence to achieve political ends: it’s called the IRS (and, no, I’m not at all into anti-tax separatist nuttiness). If you support taxation then you support violence.
” Carlo
@Brian
“Wow. The hubris and naivete. You just have no clue about gays.”
I know. Breathtaking in ignorance, isn’t it? One can only stare and wonder at what sort of isolated upbringing he must have had.”
I’m sorry but it is not ignorant or hubristic to point out what is so obvious as to be beyond discussion: only a very tiny percentage of the gay population in the US is both in the closet and married.
Gotchaye:
Sorry if I was obscure.
If something is in the public interest, the ‘public’ i.e. people not directly involved, must have an interest. In the case of slavery, free labor obviously had an interest.
Per using myself as the one you should have to convince, I was using myself as a stand in for John Q., and in using you as the guy I’d have to convince (and I am perfectly confident I could do so), I was using you as a stand in for John Q.
That is not either here or there though. Slavery involves forcing someone to do something they wouldn’t. Noone is telling gays two of them cannot live under the same roof. Where there is no gay marriage, the public, through the law, is expressing it’s indifference to gay domestic arrangements. Is it right to be indifferent? If gay marriage were to become law, and no gays actually got married, should that be considered a bad thing?
Again, the law as current in most places, expresses my indifference to gay domestic arrangements just fine. Why shouldn’t I be indifferent?
@Danilo
“You weaseled out of the question Asher. What are you going to do about the benefits? What are you going to do about gay couples’ taxation, inheritance, immigration rights, next-of-kin status, hospital visitation, divorce, etc.? They should just all just go to hell right? Let’s hear you defend that.”
No one’s weasling out of anything. For starters, most of these have very little impact today compared to other obstacles that normally confront people from all walks of life. Secondly, everything you listed is no different for single people. Marriage simply confers an affrimative state endorsement that functions to reinforce and advance a general social interest. Again, all this “go to hell” stuff is just weird. You are saying that if you can’t file a joint tax return that is tantamount to “going to hell”? Weirdo.
@j mct
“Gotchaye:
Sorry if I was obscure.
If something is in the public interest, the ‘public’ i.e. people not directly involved, must have an interest. In the case of slavery, free labor obviously had an interest.”
I would recommend using social interest instead of public interest. Public interest implies everyone alive within a particular jurisdiction, which is not plausible since different types of life have incompatible interests.
“I’m sorry but it is not ignorant or hubristic to point out what is so obvious as to be beyond discussion: only a very tiny percentage of the gay population in the US is both in the closet and married.”
Ah yes. And Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Jim McGreevey and Bob Allen are just the exceptions that prove the rule, I suppose? And all those Craigslist ads from married men soliciting gay sex are just hoaxes, I presume. And male prostitutes NEVER have married men as clients. And websites like gayhusband.com and straightwife.com, and organizations like the Straight Spouse Network, they don’t exist?
@ Asher
“Secondly, everything you listed is no different for single people.”
Are you mentally challenged? That is the point. I am beginning to doubt your qualifications as representative of the master race, Herr Ashner.
Asher:
“Secondly, everything you listed is no different for single people.”
yes. and to remedy that, single people get married..
duh
Ugh, Danilo et. al,
Just because someone arrived at the same position on this question as you that you have doesn’t imply he used to the same reasoning to get there. In the explication of his views, Asher made perfectly lucid points comparing heterosexual marriage and homosexual marriage, and within that argument he interspersed empirically valid claims on topics like criminality, race and IQ. If you investigate marriage through a reductionist lens of evolutionary psychology, the idea that homosexuality is an adaptation of frustrated males to the monopoly of females by “alpha” males isn’t that controversial. I am reading a textbook by David Buss right now that claims that very thing, in fact.
If it is somehow offensive to you that those facts inform his positions – that’s nonsense. Lots of have people have previously expounded on the naturalistic fallacy, and more importantly, the lack of convincing evidence that granting homosexuals marriage as it exists today would necessarily harm heterosexual marriage. It should satisfy you the conservative has capitulated.
But, if you’re coming to seriously debate on a website called Secular Right, you’d better expect people to interrogate political questions starting from different priors than you have. Asher favors a quite stringent test of social policy, claiming that it should demonstrate a common good before society fully endorses – in this case, that shared good I presume would be the fulfillment of our biological imperative to preserve and procreate the species. I don’t agree fully with stance; too much of that sort of thinking invites the dystopia of Huxley’s Brave New World. “Freedom of action” simply has a much more intrinsic and fundamental value to me. But it’s not like Asher’s position is so easily found prima facie incorrect. I suspect its rigorous dismissal requires more sophisticated arguments that incorporate the breadth of our scientific knowledge on human evolution and sociology, some of whose implications you seem to loath to entertain.
Well, if the preceding segment of the discussion tells us anything, it is that the religious right does not have a monopoly on dogmatism, and are perhaps not the most dangerous variant of this disease. Asher knows many things about the social order with a ferocious certainty that would make Jerry Falwell proud. He knows, for instance, that:
* “If you support taxation then you support violence” since “politics is the gun, and nothing but”
* Racism is a “completely made-up phantasms that never existed as objective categories of experience”
* Interracial marriage “tends to produce a lower-IQ and more criminal population”
* The percentage of closeted men in the US is tiny, certainly less than 5% of all gay men, and this is “so obvious as to be beyond discussion”
But most of all Asher knows the real purpose of marriage (the equitable distribution of sexual access to women for heterosexual men) and that all other aspects are either secondary or have been concocted to bribe the populace into compliance. What’s more, as social-engineer-in-chief, he believes marriage should be shaped by the stateto breed out undesirable traits such as criminality and low IQ, since these are clearly genetically based.
In any case, he assures us, gay marriage is a mere “bauble”, and the inequalities complained of are trivial compared with the real problems most people face.
Read enough of this obnoxious drivel and, as Sviluppo said, this feels “like being at a party and someone starts ranting about the racial inferiority of the Irish due to a lower percentage of pure Anglo-Saxon blood, and enough other people laugh and nod their heads that you think, ‘Maybe it’s time to leave, and not tell anyone I was here.’ “
@Soul Searcher
“If you investigate marriage through a reductionist lens of evolutionary psychology, the idea that homosexuality is an adaptation of frustrated males to the monopoly of females by ‘alpha’ males isn’t that controversial.”
Yes, it is controversial, as indeed are most of the “findings” of evolutionary psychology, and it is hardly a surprise that David Buss should be peddling such an interpretation.
On the other issues such as IQ, the fact that the mean score of Germans is substantially higher than Serbs on a standardised test (allegedly 107 vs 89) doesn’t actually tell us anything useful by itself, and yoking such a datum to twin heritability studies to “prove” that one group is genetically smarter than another is simply sloppy thinking that abstracts from not just social conditions but the nature of both the tests and the studies.
To then take such “conclusions” as a proven basis for a social theory which then dictates social policy is not just arrogant but dangerous — and we’ve been there before.
@Danilo, Brian
You are both insinuating that the state destroys the lives of gays, that it is an affirmatively harmful action that the state takes, like sending someone to prison. I pointed out that then such hard would accrue to single people who never married. Simply pointing out the silliness of the claim that not recognizing same sex unions destroys lives.
@JohnC
Marriage is an empirically objective phenomenon, with an particular investigable history, not simply whatever we say it is based on whimsy. By your usage of dogma, all scientific investigation is dogmatic. Hell, I’m pretty sure that if I jump off my third story deck I’ll fall. Is that dogmatic, too? Of course not. All I am doing is taking the phenomenon of marriage and attempting to construct a theory that best fits the facts, that’s all science really is, and you’re not even attempting that.
* “If you support taxation then you support violence” since “politics is the gun, and nothing but”
Well, that’s what it is, that’s its basic essence. This is pretty standard stuff, especially since Hobbes. Hell, most of western political philosophy since then has been a discussion of why people would want to submit to such an entity as Leviathan.
* Racism is a “completely made-up phantasms that never existed as objective categories of experience”
Unlike you, and most who use this term, I attempt to take empirically objective phenomena and devise a theory that best fits the facts, and that predicts phenomena. Take Jim Crow laws, for example. The leftist economist Gunnar Myrdal studied them extensively and found that the sole reason for their existence was to keep black men from having sex with white women. In other words, sexual competition. That is a perfectly rational phenomena, just like how the current one where African-Americans sell their vote to whichever party promises themselves the most free stuff. Perfectly rational.
* Interracial marriage “tends to produce a lower-IQ and more criminal population”
Well, if interracial marriage consists of lower IQ men outcompeting higher IQ men, then that’s the case.
“But most of all Asher knows the real purpose of marriage (the equitable distribution of sexual access to women for heterosexual men) and that all other aspects are either secondary or have been concocted to bribe the populace into compliance.”
Well, if you have a better theory that fits and explains observed facts then I’m all ears, but I have yet to see you even attempt to present one.
“he assures us, gay marriage is a mere “bauble”,”
Any policy that does not aim at adressing some general social interest is a bauble. My evidence for this, as I’ve already mentioned several times, is that when a regime beings offering endorsements of same sex unions same sex couples rarely take advantage of that endorsement. Please learn to use objectively verifiable evidence when making your arguments.
“To then take such “conclusions” as a proven basis for a social theory which then dictates social policy is not just arrogant but dangerous — and we’ve been there before.”
But you don’t have a social theory at all. All of your prescriptions for crafting social policy are based on your particular whimsy: the world out to be so and so, according to my fancy. Present arguments that fit and explain observed social phenomena, and we’ll take you seriously.
last para should read
“the world ought to be so and so”
@JOhnC
“Yes, it is controversial, as indeed are most of the “findings” of evolutionary psychology, and it is hardly a surprise that David Buss should be peddling such an interpretation.”
No, you’re confusing controversial and debatable, most findings from ev-psy are the latter not the former. But, again, you’re not even attempting to explain how homosexuality could have possibly evolved. You want to claim that it is biologically-based, it clearly is, but then you draw back from any discussion about how it could possibly come about. Unlike you, I am actually attempting to explain the world as it is. If homosexuality is biological then it is almost certainly an adaptation to something; I eagerly await your explanation as to what that something is.
This just in: gay marriage legalized in Maine.
Now all three black couples living in Maine will be initiating divorce proceedings..
“Any policy that does not aim at adressing some general social interest is a bauble. My evidence for this, as I’ve already mentioned several times, is that when a regime beings offering endorsements of same sex unions same sex couples rarely take advantage of that endorsement. Please learn to use objectively verifiable evidence when making your arguments.”
What you might cite as objectively verifiable I might cite as at best incomplete.
As has been stated many times elsewhere, gay marriage hasnt been around long enough for many people to take advantage of it. There are 3 generations and one more coming up that are just getting used to the idea that gays are even accepted into society, both here and elsewhere in Europe. It will take time for most of those gays to realize that marriage IS am option. The jury is out on this one.
Congratulations to Maine.
By the way Danilo, Maine has what is called a ‘people’s veto’ which will allow gay marriage opponents to place the issue on the ballot in November. So its not over yet.
@Brian
Well, it’s always possible to say that evidence is incomplete, that’s the heart of Hume’s problem with inductive reasoning. But we are not looking for absolute truth, merely the best theory that fits and explains the evidence. And that theory is that same sex marriage is completely irrelevant to any general social interest.
Asher
Sometimes incomplete means wrong. Like this time.
@Asher
However interesting your arguments are, I don’t think the general public on either side of the issue would be persuaded on arguments that marriage is all about alpha males and sexual competitiveness. They’ll decide on other facts to see if same sex marriage has any social interest. For example, there are an increasing number of gay couples who raise children so it seems to me to be a valid social interest to recognize these couples. It is also true that gay couples are more likely than heterosexual couples to adopt children with disabilities or otherwise ‘undesirable’ children which also seems to be in the social interest. Don’t sociobiologists posit that gays play an integral role in the social fabric (often as neutral caretakers)?
Anyway, our society reflects our values, and if the one of the values that emerges is recognition of same sex couples (even if the social interest is simply one of the importance of recognizing equality), so society will come around to embrace it.
@Asher Since we don’t actually understand the biological underpinning of sexual orientation, we can hardly claim any firm knowledge about etiology. In any case, it is of no relevance to the case for marriage equality since the reason two persons want to marry is not relevant to their juridical right to do so, whatever their sex.
But for what it’s worth, sexual orientation seems prima facie unlikely to be an adaptation though there may be some genetic predonditions. Quite plausibly, gene expression in the uterine environment may play a strong role as well as developmental factors in the first years of life, and the final outcome — the lived experience of our sexual desires, however formed — is clearly strongly shaped by social factors. The contemporary perception that sexual orientation is some sort of binary switch which is definitional of our personalities is not the way sexual object choice has been perceived through most of history.
The point is that human behaviour — politically, socially and historically — is rarely amenable to simple, reductionist explanations, and grand social theories based on such styles of reasoning are inevitably a cover for pre-existing political programs about which both liberals and conservatives should harbor the deepest skepticism.
What’s the definition of stupid? This article.
Following up on JohnC’s point, we just don’t have the evidence yet to make a determination. I would imagine that something as complex as sexual orientation has a complex, multifaceted etiology. Is “homosexual orientation” the same thing for those macho gays as for the more feminine ones? What about the role of people who are not exclusively homosexual? To what extent is homosexuality linked to other traits (remember that study suggesting that gay men and heterosexual women’s brains view spatial orientation differently, as opposed to het. men?)? Is homosexuality the same for men and women? (Almost certainly not). Do women even have a sexual orientation in the same way that men do?
Whatever the answers to these questions are, it changes nothing in the political debate.
Probably there are biologically different human homosexualities. They probably have different etiologies than in other animal species. Homosexality in fruitflies is not the same thing as human homosexuality. The evolution and biology of sexual orientation are fascinating topics. Too bad they are usually a post-hoc cover for social and religious discrimination so we will probably have to wait 50 years now before we can study them in an apolitical way.
Should we take marriage rights away from black people, since lots of white people are racist?
As long as we’re working along these lines, why shouldn’t we also ban black people from taking the bus, since then more (racist) white people would be willing to use public transportation? Or maybe we could meet in the middle by letting blacks on the bus as long as they sit at the back.
These are the kinds of arguments you have to contend with when you abandon the notion of rights and get purely utilitarian in a world of prejudices and bigotry.
Or maybe that’s not what this “secular opposition to marriage equality” is about; maybe it’s really about blind fealty to the Religious Right’s platform even when that platform makes no logical sense.
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