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.
You must be kidding me. If, as you say, African-American men are resistant to marriage, why would allowing gays and lesbians make them even less willing to walk down the altar. Conversely, why aren’t they doing so at present? What’s stopping them from marrying? Your argument is specious at best, ignorant at worst. And just plain hogwash.
Asher, we don’t have access to data which could prove your social theory. You go on and on about humdrum bs that, in the end, says nothing but “we might look at things this way.”
It makes more sense to form social policy around things we do know about, and have access to, which is consistency in values which we can make explicit and talk about. If our value system is such that marriage is about child-rearing, then we must exclude, for example, elderly couples from getting married. There are no consistent (explicit, self-conscious) value systems which would oppose same-sex marriage.
No one would ever argue that, in general, our personal values which create marriage are characterized in the overly-intellectualized way which you suggest. While your characterization might be consistent with data, it is too complicated an issue to pretend to step from correlation to causation. This is precisely why most of the political philosophy you speak of, while an admirable exercise, is complete hogwash, by all practical standards.
I, for one, want policy to be crafted based upon data which we have direct access to, which is to say our collective value of consistency, combined with ideals of freedom, justice, nondiscrimination, and other such explicit values. If you want to encourage behavior which benefits society, there are many objective benefits to same-sex marriage. A few are: 1) a two-parent home for biological and adopted children of the couple, 2) reducing the spread of HIV in the gay male population, and 3) the general happiness, and therefore well-being, of homosexuals and the friends/family/children who have a vested interest in this happiness (though emotion seems to have been intellectualized out of your model).
If you want an argument for why homosexuality is beneficial to the survival of the race, look no further than (1) up above. There is a role to be played for nonreproductive care-takers in a society. As adoptive parents, or babysitters, for example. Clearly, there is some benefit, otherwise they wouldn’t make up such a (small but) significant demographic.
Just because you have a model which is consistent with (vary incomplete) sociological data which we have, does not mean it is the correct model. In many ways, it flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which is non-negligible, since it is something we have more direct access to.
Marriage is not something which evolved subconsciously from humans, so to treat it as something which is meant to serve some sort of subconscious, ulterior motive is quite a foolish position. It is a deliberately manufactured institution which is made to reflect explicit values which we hold. Perhaps those values have changed over time, but if the institution were dependent on those old values, it would have disappeared along with them. Decisions about modern marriage should be made in accordance with the conscious values we hold which make it a relevant, modern institution.
@kurt9 You said: Instead of presenting credible arguments (like this one of Heather’s) how gay marriage may undermine respect for marriage by lower class heterosexuals, the religious conservatives seem to be using the gay marriage debate as an excuse to legitimize their bigotry towards gays, in general.
IMO, this is the same reason the Catholic Church outlawed female priests all those years ago despite any other rationalization because to allow female priests would be to undermine respect for marriage by lower class heterosexuals/males. It wasn’t a valid argument and ended up hurting women and their rights for thousands of years.
It’s the same here. I didn’t used to so associate homosexual and women’s rights – I considered that an act of Andrea Dworkin extremism, but seeing some of these arguments – or reading John Derbyshire’s recent secular defense of his anti-gay marriage stance, it’s becoming more clear that this is indeed the case in the darkest possible way – (i.e. gay men deserve no respect because they are “taking the part of a woman.” ) in which case, I have no choice but to be strongly pro-gay marriage.
Excuse me. Meant “undermine respect for the church” in that analogy.
No discussion of marriage problems among blacks in the US is complete without the data on how incarceration of black males reduces black marriage rates, thus perpetuating the cycle of fatherlessness, poverty, and crime:
http://www.slate.com/id/2182089/entry/2182090/%20
“What’s more, the likelihood of young black women not marrying is greatly exacerbated by another trend: it appears that young black men who are not in prison typically take advantage of their strong bargaining position by not bothering to marry at all.
Charles and Luoh are able to examine this statistically because they have data across all 50 states and for the 1980, 1990 and 2000 census. So they are able to compare the situation of women in different times and places, taking into account background trends as they vary across the country and from decade to decade. They estimate, for instance, that a one percentage point rise in the proportion of young black men in prison reduces the proportion of young black women who have ever been married by three percentage points. In states where 20 or 25 percent of the available men are in prison, young black women become very unlikely to marry. The effect is even more dramatic for uneducated women, since women tend to pair up with men of a similar education level, and uneducated men are particularly likely to end up in jail.”
The marriage rate for blacks has been going down for a LONG time, especially over the past 40 years. How the hell are you saying that gay marriage might POSSIBLY contribute to lower black marriage rates!? You might as well blame the current economic crisis on gay marriage, cuz you know, it was doing so well before that pesky Massachusetts legalized gay marriage. Please do some research on what you’re talking about before you spew out this nonsense.
@Shep
The first Gay Marriage case was in fact in 1970 and I believe it was Minnesota. It went to the Supreme Court wich rejected the case as without merit. I mentioned it a few days ago on another thread on this site. I can find it or you can google Minnesota 1970 Gay Marriage and find the case info easily enough.
Yea, much like the pro life movement only cares about the needs of the child before they are born not after they are alive on the planet, your statement shows that gays only are benefited until they discover they are gay and then loose all benefits. Seems to be a major flaw within the conservative movement to be summed up as we only care when the whim suits our needs. When it suits your needs, it doesn’t matter anymore.
@Danilo
I believe that the degree of “masculinity” is the same in the case of gay men as it is in straight men. There are men of every degree of masculinity and femininity in the heterosexual community as there is in the homosexual community. The inherent trait is the sexual attraction to men, period. I would think that amongst men in general there are varying degrees of sexual interest. Not all men have the same libido. But I also don’t think that has much to do with the level of masculinity present. I know plenty of less than mach straight guys who are very interested in sex, and their lack of machoness has no affect on how much they want to do it.
@Asher
“Well, since heterosexual marriage serves a general social interest, it also serves the interests of gays, too.”
Oh really? The general social interest that you described is that it reduces the “amount of sexual competition required to attract females that takes place in a polygynous environment,” and that it “reduces the amount of time young men need to expend oompeting [sic] for mates.” Great for straight men I suppose, but how does this benefit gays, exactly?
A nation and a world that until very recently has had nothing but heterosexual marriage has produced a black population to whom 71% of all children are born out of wedlock, and according to your numbers, more like 90% in some inner city regions. If an institution that has been purely heterosexual for so long hasn’t convinced more black men to marry the mothers of their children, why should anybody believe that legalizing same sex marriage will change that in either direction?
@Carlo
“Oh really? The general social interest that you described is that it reduces the “amount of sexual competition required to attract females that takes place in a polygynous environment,” and that it “reduces the amount of time young men need to expend oompeting [sic] for mates.” Great for straight men I suppose, but how does this benefit gays, exactly?”
The fact that you cannot figure this out for yourself is astonishing. Men, whether gay or straight, especially men under 35, become invested in their society in large part to their ability to successfully pursue sex. It’s not a stretch to say that, for most men, inability to access sex makes their existence rather meaningless. Let’s take out the 3 to 4 percent of gay men, and take out 20 percent of straight alpha males. That leaves 76 percent of males which are about 38 percent of the population. This means that, barring the sexual socialism of monogamy, you have 38 percent of the population born that have no reason to exist. That’s what evolutionary biologists would call a genetic load.
Human gestation, birth and rearing is a biologically expensive process, and wasting 38 percent of each reared offspring because of lack of sexual access is biologically expensive. Heterosexual marriage solves this problem, and that is a benefit to beta straights, gays AND alpha straights. Societies, such as in AFrica, where monogamy is not the norm tend to be nasty places to live, compared to what we are acclimated.
Again, the fact that you ccan’t figure this out on your own is astonishing.
The fact that Asher acts like a 12-year-old know-it-all is astonishing. Clearly, he is some undergrad who hasn’t figured out much about life yet, but thinks all the knowledge he needs can be found in pop-science and outdated or pop- philosophy books.
Sorry, Asher, but you’re exposing yourself more and more as someone who doesn’t know what he is talking about. Good luck finding anyone of merit who will take your ideas seriously.
@Pender
“Should we take marriage rights away from black people, since lots of white people are racist?”
No. A) Marriage is an affirmative state endorsement, so it isnt a right. B) Society benefits from conferring that endorsement on both blacks and whites.
“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?”
The fact that you cannot distinguish between affirmative harm and affirmative endorsement is astonishing. Re-read my numerous comments delineating between the two.
“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.”
You are misusing both terms “prejudice” and “bigotry”. The first is about judging without assessing the evidence. Since my entire discussion is centered around evidence this is a completely irrelevant assertion. Ugh, what a comment so unworthy of response.
@Ashra
Values are overrated. If values do not promote life then those who hold such values will perish. This is the problem with both the human rights left and religious right, the two big dogmas in today’s world, both think that values have no consequences that are determined by their interaction with human nature. The “human rights left” thinks that they can posit any values to suite their fancy, and the religious right thinks that values are judged by God.
“human rights” is the most dogmatic thing going today.
Oh, and same for ideals, they are just another term for values.
“Marriage is not something which evolved subconsciously from humans, so to treat it as something which is meant to serve some sort of subconscious, ulterior motive is quite a foolish position. It is a deliberately manufactured institution which is made to reflect explicit values which we hold.”
ugh, you could not be more wrong. Marriage is not the result of value-construction, it is the result of social evolution and adapting to physical and social environments. You are evincing what FA Hayek called social constructivism, that all humaan institutions are the product of self-aware willing. In fact, even where human institutions appear to be such, they are really based on earlier life experiments under other names.
No, marriage is not the result of human willing, it is the result of millenia of fumbling, trial and error experimentation and experience.
@Ashra
“The fact that Asher acts like a 12-year-old know-it-all is astonishing. Clearly, he is some undergrad who hasn’t figured out much about life yet, but thinks all the knowledge he needs can be found in pop-science and outdated or pop- philosophy books.”
Unlike almost everyone here I actually argue for my positions, as opposed to clinging to the dogma of “human rights”.
@Kurt9: If black men would be opposed to marriage because it would be considered “faggy,” then what is making them opposed to marry now? I think you and Ms. Mac Donald would do greater good by focusing not on those who choose to marry but on those who are rejecting marriage. By Ms. Mac Donald’s own figures, the illegitimacy rate within the community is 70%-90%. Those numbers are staggering. So it seems like there is more work to be done there than in opposing gays and lesbians.
@Asher Well, be sure to share your penetrating insights with the Supreme Court, which held in 1973 that “marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man”.
@JohnC
”
@Asher Well, be sure to share your penetrating insights with the Supreme Court, which held in 1973 that “marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man”.”
The entire edifice of “rights” as something timeless, universal and disembodied is dogmatic claptrap. We have no rights, except what we’re able to retain by force, so rights are always local, contingent and relative to a particular social situation. Rights are whatever you can get away with.
The Supreme Court could rule that there’s no difference between five and six feet and that would not make it so.
Wow, Asher, what an upstanding citizen you are.
I obey the laws of the land, pay my taxes, and strive to not become a burden to society in general. That is the epitome of an upstanding citizen.
What a pitiful vision of citizenship you have then
@Asher
“… rights are always local, contingent and relative to a particular social situation.”
Yep, “local” would be the United States, “contingent” would be a commitment to the rule of law by the state and its citizens, and “a particular social situation” would be the early 21st century, understood as a product of the living history of the nation.
Now you conclude as a result that “rights are whatever you can get away with”, but that’s because you hold a political philosophy that has more in common with Mein Kampf than the Enlightenment ideas that inspired, and hopefully continue to inspire, the most successful democracy in the history of civilization (for all its faults).
Personally, I find your desperate urge to parade your own cleverness puerile and your core ideas repellent, and by your own admission they have precious little to do with the topic under discussion.
To sum up my own puzzlement with Asher’s position, I’m perfectly willing to agree that I can’t demonstrate that my notion of what the state ought to be doing is more correct than his. However, I don’t see how he’s offered a positive vision of the state.
Asher, you’re perfectly happy arguing that other people are wrong, but I haven’t seen much argument from you that your position is right. Earlier, in response to my asking about what, exactly, constituted the public good, you said that it was whatever benefited the class of people who contribute to society. Let’s leave aside that this may be a bit circular – it seems to me that you acknowledge that what you think the state should do is merely that which you’d like the state the do. By your standards, it seems that you’re just choosing classes and attitudes to prefer and are saying that the state should support those at the expense of others. You try to get around this at one point by saying something about ‘objective class interests’ or similar, but that’s useless without an explanation of what an objective interest is, which I don’t think you can provide.
It seems that anyone else can have a theory of political legitimacy exactly as justified as your own simply by choosing different classes and attitudes to support. You want to say that it’s somehow illegitimate for people to want government to support the class of (broadly) liberal people who believe in individual rights, etc, at the expense of those who are made better off by discrimination. But all of your reasons why this is illegitimate apply just as well to your own understanding of government.
I don’t follow Heather’s logic. If gays get married, black men won’t want to? Has gay men having sex with multiple partners convinced any more black men to be monogamous? Should we get the gays to join gangs and smoke crack to keep black men from engaging in these activities? Should we get gays to eat salty fried junk food to combat the hypertension, obesity, and diabetes epidemics in the black community?
I cannot remember reading anything quite as crazy as Heather’s post.
Wow, the anti-gay-marriage group is really really scraping around the bottom of the barrel for arguments. This one’s a real reach.
I have an idea. Let’s allow white gays and lesbians to marry, but prohibit black gays and lesbians from marrying. That should fix this difficulty, yes?
This would be discriminatory? Well, yes, but what’s a little discrimination to worry about? Isn’t the current prohibition of gay marriage discriminatory?
Thanks Ralph, Us Black Gays (not mentioning you) are just written off as we are most times are by these wonderful Gay Rights group! Isn’t community just wonderful????? And what have done for us minority gays lately?
@Ralph
@Danilo
“What a pitiful vision of citizenship you have then”
Sorry, but that is the classical understanding of citizenship back into antiquity. The basic social contract: you obey the laws and pay your taxes and receive protection of life and property, in return. This ain’t rocket science kiddies.
@ JohnC
The problem is taht you behave as if the right to marry was a fundamental, ahistorical, universal, disembodied right that has always existed but that we are finally getting to recognize as we leave our prejudice and bigotry. Are you saying, then, that because the state did not recognize same sex unions 100 years ago that gays had no such “rights”? No, of course, you’re not. You’re saying that such “rights” exist from time immemorial, and that any state at any time and place not endorsing same sex couples is infringing on those timeless rights. Consider that most states in the US do not endorse same sex unions, i.e. that is the law of those states. You clearly think that those states are infringing on absolute human rights by not endorsing same sex unions.
Clearly, your notion of rights is that they are timeless, universal and absolute. So, the question is, then, as for all observed phenomena, where did rights come from? What is their geneology? How can rights even exist? Did they exist a million years ago? One hundred thousand years ago? Ten thousand years ago?
No, rights are always won and asserted. They are always and everywhere manifestations of a conquering power.
“u hold a political philosophy that has more in common with Mein Kampf than the Enlightenment ideas”
The Enlightenment is a mixed bag. The upside of the enlightenment was that it attempted to challenge notions that directly conflicted with observed reality. The downside was that it attempted to take reality as a blank slate and then mould all of reality to suite its tastes. In this latter, it was just an extension of the magical thinking that pervades religion. The idealist starts from an idea and proceeds to say “the world ought to be so and so, and thus and thus”, this is according to his personal tastes but it is presented as something universal, absolute and timeless. In this, the enlightenment idealist is every bit the dogmatist of a Jerry Falwell.
Okay, about the Nazis. The gravest mistake made when analyzing the Nazis is to assume that, because of the hideous vileness of the Holocaust, the Nazis got everything wrong. They did not. Why was Hitler so successful? Because he capitalized on some very real and deep insights into the nature of human reality. This, of course, is why people have had such a difficult time grasping the Nazi phenomena, they insist that the violations of their cherished moral ideals by the Nazis implies that Nazi conceptions were completely unrelated to reality. In other words, they move from an idea and attempt to impose it on all of reality.
So, while I may loathe the Holocaust as a particular historical phenomenon, I can also say that much of what Hitler said was much more grounded in the this-reality of this-world than what came from Enlightenment thinkers. Also, much of what the Nazis asserted was fantastical crap, although notions such as “human rights” and “pure blood” give each other a run for the money as fantastical crap.
Politics is war by other means, that is what it is. Hitler understood that reality, unlike many Enlightenment thinkers.
“I find your desperate urge to parade your own cleverness puerile and your core ideas repellent”
Your sanctimonious moral preening is amusing.
@Gotchaye
I can’t find any vision of the state anywhere in any of your comments, despite going back and reviewing them. You take some idea that suits your fancy and then assert that the world ought to conform to your ideal. I am presenting a descriptive analysis of the phenomenon of the state, and of politics in general, and you are going on and on about the ideals of “rights”. You start from an idea and seek to impose it on reality, nothing more or less that what the most fervently dogmatic religious believer does.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m pointing out that you have no coherent theory that explains how such timeless, universal, absolute rights could possibly exist in the first place. What you’re saying can’t even rise to the level of being wrong, because it hasn’t even managed to rise from the realm of nonsense. In order to explain how something could even be a part of human reality, you’ll have to explain how it could possibly exist in the first place. My description of the state and politics is derived, largely, from Hobbes, Machiavelli and Nietzsche, it is a description of why the state exists in the first place, why it exists rather than some other arrangement. Rights? Morality? Fine, tell me how they could possibly exist as you assert them. Give me a Genealogy of Rights.
“It seems that anyone else can have a theory of political legitimacy exactly as justified as your own simply by choosing different classes and attitudes to support.”
No, almost no one has a theory of political legitimacy, instead, they assert it ipse dixit. The number of people I encounter that actually attempt to establish a theory explaining political legitimacy is staggeringly few and far between. Most just start from a particular whim and then proclaim “the world ought to be so and so and thus and thus”.
Also, the phrase “objective material class interests” is an ironical, but serious, reference directly to Marx. Different types of human life have different interests derived not from some ethereal subjective values but from the reality of their objective existence. Marx simply erred in his derivation of class, he thought it originated with relations to means of production, while the reality is that it originates from the relationship to the means of reproduction.
Let me give you an example: compare a two-parent family to a young single mother who choose a sperm donor with poor genes. The latter, just to survive in a complex modern society, requires huge infusions of social capital just to barely make it. All of the social infrastructure required of modern life is completely provided by external sources, she contributes nothing. Given that there is an average inborn difference between those two classes of people, they are likely to have far different impacts on overall society. Women who give birth out of wedlock tend to choose to have sex with men who are low Contentiousness, low Agreeableness and high Extroversion. They tend to have lower IQs, lower time horizons, and much more likely to engage in anit-social activity.
Yes, there is no a priori line where non-contirbutive ends and contributive begins, but that is a guiding concept for a body politic that wants to survive and thrive. Maximize the contributive classes and minimize the non-contributive classes.
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@Asher:
“ugh, you could not be more wrong. Marriage is not the result of value-construction, it is the result of social evolution and adapting to physical and social environments. You are evincing what FA Hayek called social constructivism, that all humaan institutions are the product of self-aware willing. In fact, even where human institutions appear to be such, they are really based on earlier life experiments under other names.
No, marriage is not the result of human willing, it is the result of millenia of fumbling, trial and error experimentation and experience.”
Monogamy might be the result of social adaptation, but marriage is absolutely born of conscious subscription to values, as is its continued existence. It’s a freaking legal (and religious) institution. People created and defined it by use of words and text. Words and text don’t come about subconsciously. Sorry.
You didn’t really address the points that reducing AIDS and having married (gay) parents are both good for life and society.
You may not like values and rights, but our laws are based on them. Moreover, the US Constitution makes explicit reference to them. It is not possible, without completely revamping our system of government (rewriting its most essential document from square one), to consistently follow whatever system you might advocate.
The point is, it doesn’t matter if they are nonsensical or not, they just are. And they absolutely have a place in any discussion on the topic of gay marriage, because it can only be discussed in the context of concrete legal framework. Not your head-in-the-clouds fairytale framework.
This seems to me to be one of the weakest arguments about gay marriage going – though I share similar feelings as you about the Boy Scouts’ ban on gays. As a Mass resident, it seems to me that the most discussion happens about the fight, whether in the courts or the legislatures, for gay marriage. Once it actually becomes legal, no one really talks about it.
@Heather MacDonald and Kurt9:
This may be the most hilariously convoluted argument yet against gay marriage. Who in blazes cares whether black men will pretend to have one more reason for refusing to marry the mothers of the children they continue to father with such astonishing diligence? What does reason have to do with someone whose idea of sex revolves around proving that he’s not a “faggot”?
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There are so many problems with this argument… it’s kind of embarrassing (a quite a bit racist). You actually entertain the idea that black people are *so stupid* that they’d shun the institution of marriage because it has gay cooties all over it.
I wonder if the people who make WordPress are somewhat ashamed that this kind of thing gets published on their platform.
Bravo for what has got to be the nuttiest, most mind-bending argument against allowing for gay marriage I’ve read in the last month.
I’m coming back to read your blog later when I have the requisite class of scotch in hand so I can really enjoy myself.
Ashra: “[Marriage is] a freaking legal (and religious) institution. People created and defined it by use of words and text. Words and text don’t come about subconsciously. Sorry.”
Marriage is a human universal and doesn’t depend at all on words or text since it exists in the absence of written law, or even writing. Sorry.
So your beef is really with our Founding Documents, then, which state exactly the opposite.
The human universal of marriage has just been people living together with no ceremony (like any hunter-gatherer society) and raising kids. In these societies, two men can live together if they do their share of the hunting. Two women can live together if they can provide services (sewing, toolmaking) to the men. So there has potentially been gay marriage for 99% of human history (read “Back to the Paleolithic”)
Wow. This has got to be the most ridiculous and far-fetched reason to continue to deny marriage to gays. I suspect it would be easier to just continue on with the old, tired, ridiculous, hateful, fear-based, ignorant, and nonsensical reasons. You are to be commended for your imagination and originality.
@Ashra
When I was back in college I got into a debate with another student over definitions and language. This student claimed that meaning in language requires prior definitions of terms in order to be intelligible. Basically, I got her to the where she was claiming that all intelligible language first required a dictionary reference to define it.
Law is, generally, a formalization of pre-existing social customs, that is its genealogy. The formalization of marriage in legal codes is simply a recognition, codification and regularization of norms that existed even before written language arose.
You are simply incorrect, marriage, just like any institution, is not the product of intentional human willing, ex nihilo.
Let m expound on my previous comment:
Definitions are a codification of pre-existing common usage of language
Law is a codification of pre existing customs and norms.
And, for what it’s worth, if the state of Washington, where I live, had a ballot initiative extending marital endorsement to same sex unions I would vote in favor of it. My objection is to the ridiculous notions of timeless rights.
@Asher
“So, while I may loathe the Holocaust as a particular historical phenomenon, I can also say that much of what Hitler said was much more grounded in the this-reality of this-world than what came from Enlightenment thinkers.”
Phew, I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up. But while I commend your honesty here, I am disappointed that you still feel the need to mischaracterise the position of others to advance your neo-fascist philosophy.
“Clearly, your notion of rights is that they are timeless, universal and absolute.”
I nowhere have said nor implied such a thing. Rights and liberties only exist when a society (a) instantiates them in its constitutional framework, and (b) agrees as part of that framework that all its members are subject to the rule of law that rests on that framework.
This is the case in the United States, where the founding documents lay down a system where liberties are equally enjoyed by all citizens, and may only be circumscribed by legal measures that are enacted through the processes mandated in those documents.
So by default, if civil marriage exists at all, then not only is Bill (a white man) able to marry Mary (a white woman), but so is Brian (a black man), and so is Susan (an Asian woman). And since this is the default position, society is obliged to create laws if it wants to exclude certain classes of persons from enjoying that right. As long as such laws have been properly enacted they constitute a valid limitation on the implied universality of a particular right (to marriage).
So the issue is not whether the right exists, but whether its limitation is in accord with social consensus (the political process) and the other sections of the juridical framework that express that consensus (the legal process). But the presumption is that the liberty in question is universal, and the onus is on those who would wish to impose a limitation to provide a convincing reason for their position, which is why Heather’s attempt to reverse that onus is fundamentally wrong-headed.
@Ashara
“You may not like values and rights, but our laws are based on them. Moreover, the US Constitution makes explicit reference to them. It is not possible, without completely revamping our system of government (rewriting its most essential document from square one), to consistently follow whatever system you might advocate.”
No, no, no. You are wrong again, in the same way you were wrong about marriage. Rights are not prior to law, and if it were can you specify where rights originated? At least the signers of the Declaration asserted that rights came from a particular giver, God, who endowed everyone with them and who set up the idea of good government in order to secure those rights. Outside of that specific context of origination, the notion that law comes from rights is build on a foundation of sand. Re-read my numerous comments challenging anyone here to tell me where rights originate if they are prior to law. Why hasn’t anyone even attempted
Re interracial relationships, I am all for them. I am in one with an Asian (or Amer-Asian). Re the dynamic of black men/white women. I understand the dynamic of black women, who already have limited prospects being burned by their available crop of men dating white women. B/c there are so many more white guys than black women, their impact is lessened. Plus, white/asian relationships are disproportionately white man/asian women, which again puts a burden on Asian men.
So my question is. 1) Why aren’t there more black women/white male relationships? 2) Why aren’t there more asian men/white women relationships? And 3) Why aren’t there more black women/asian man relationships? If Asian men and black women are the ones who are looking for the available mates of which there is a shortage, why don’t they hook up?
@JohnC
“I am disappointed that you still feel the need to mischaracterise the position of others to advance your neo-fascist philosophy.”
You’ll need to be more specific here, about why you think I’ve mischaracterized. There are three possible conditions of existence for rights:
A) They come from some extra-human, mystical higher spritual plane, aka “god”
B) They are the product of established norms of civilization
C) They are timeless and have an existence independent of anything.
Let’s throw out A since no one here is appealing to a higher spiritual authority as the origination of right. Actually, correction, you invoke it when you mention the founding documents, but I doubt you’re really serious about the founding documents, since most of what passes for “constitutional” today bears almost no resemblence to the sorts of discussion at the time of the actual founding. That’s a tepid bait-and-switch on your part, but the next one is the real whopper. You say:
“So by default, if civil marriage exists”
No, no, NO! Silly boy. There is no default. Formal marriage is a AFFIRMATIVE state action, it is the state undergoing positive action to address a certain phenomenon. It’s like saying “the default speed limit is 55”. Um, no it isn’t, since speed limits are positive, intrusive state actions into human society. Let’s take some hypothetical state of nature where no formal institutions of marriage exist. So here you have people living togther in various arrangements that suits themselves or what their friends and family suggest to them. Now let’s say the state comes along and sets up some formal institution recognizing some of those arrangements with some sort of recognizing criteria. Now, the arrangements not covered by that criteria still go on just as they did before without any intrusion by the state, the only such intrusion is into arrangments covered by the criteria. Additionally, some of the people involved in the arrangements covered by that institution might opt not to take advantage of taht institution.
But there is no default, it is an AFFIRMATIVE state action.
“So the issue is not whether the right exists, but whether its limitation is in accord with social consensus (the political process) and the other sections of the juridical framework that express that consensus (the legal process). But the presumption is that the liberty in question is universal,”
And where does that “presumption” originate? Nowhere. It is merely asserted ipse dixit. If that presumption exists then where does it come from. See, this is where you attempt a bait-and-switch, moving from B to C. You initially claim that rights are conventional and thn you subtly attempt to underhandedly move to the notion that there is a presumption of universality and timelessness to them. You are doing a version of the famous “libertarian straddle” first elaborated by self-described post-libertarian Jeffrey Friedman in Critical Review about ten years ago. In it he describes how libertarians attempt to fill in the incongruities in “consequentialist” libertarian theories with “normative” libertarian theoris and vice versa. It’s why I am no longer a libertarian.
Your elucidation of rights contains that same fatal flaw: whenever a conventionalist (social consensus) notion of rights doesn’t cover what you want it to you switch to an ahistorical, abstract, idealist version of rights. The reason why you don’t simply stick with the latter, although many libertarian idealists fantically do stick with pure normative/ideal theories, is that anyone who doesn’t accept all your priors just finds you frustrating and amusing.
I’m quite sure you don’t have any idea of this straddle you use, I didn’t when I was a rock-solid libertarian, but it’s there, and when pushed you revert to a subterranean notion of timeless, universal, absolute human rights.
It’s just an intellectual sleigh of hand, and it falls apart when exposed. Either rights are conventional and an end result of the political process, or they stand outside of the political process independent of all other existence. As soon as you reject the former, conventionalism, you default to the latter, absoluteism/idealism.
Oh, and about that fascist jibe. If willingness to look this-reality as it is squarely in the without fearing the absence of an absolute notion of human rights makes me a fascist then I don’t really care. As Orwell pointed out 60 or so years ago: fascism has come to mean nothing more than that which I dislike.
@Asher For someone so fluent, you have a surprising difficulty in understanding the simple English of others. Perhaps you have been deafened by the excessive volume of your own voice?
@ Asher
As a sort of student of Italian history I DO hear the echoes of fascism from several writers of this forum, and I mean the real fascismo DOC (Protected designation of origin)
Marriage is NOT affirmative, restricting marriage is affirmative. For 99% of human history anyone could live together with anyone. Probably before the 20th century there were fewer conflicts over hospital visitation, inheritance, next-of-kin status, etc. because a gay or lesbian couple who had money could simply purchase the rights they wanted, and those who had no money had no medical care or inheritance anyway. There were no immigration issues because people travelled without passports. It is only in the bureaucratic 20th century that the State presence made the married/unmarried distinction legally fundamental and intervened the most in the lives of gay people. So you may have it backwards.
@Jon Rowe To the extent that mate selection by women is conditioned by perceptions of status, then patterns of inter-racial marriage may be an index to perceptions of racial equality. In Australia, for instance, Asian man/white woman is not an uncommon coupling (including the Prime Minister’s eldest daughter).
Danilo, Brian- I don’t care about you, or your boyfriend, or your benefits, or your legal circumstances, or your hospital visits. I don’t have any empathy for you. Respect and consideration are a two-way street.
Calling people Nazis who disagree with you is a juvenile and yet evergreen left wing tactic. Particularly strange in this context since many of the Nazis were gay. Maybe Ernst Roehm is your guide. He sure know how to get a political movement rolling! Cheap shot? Sure, but you throw in a cheap shot anytime you feel like it so why not?