In my last post I asked you what you would do if you were faced with a question like Ellen posed to John McCain. It is only fair that I present my answer here, though obviously with the benefit of a lot more time, and the magic of a word processor, to present a much more coherent answer than John McCain did. Continue reading to find out how I would have replied if I had been a guest on Ellen’s show. (And yes, lots of people tell me I have an uncanny resemblance to Anthony Federov! Okay, not really, but since this is an imaginary interview anyway…)
[We pick up where Ellen says she wants to get married because she wants to "celebrate our love."]
Me: I’m not sure what you mean by that. Are you saying that you would love Portia more if you could call your love “marriage”? I am surprised to hear that. I can think of many ways you can celebrate your love, and I imagine you have already been able to do that. That is good. I am happy for you, I congratulate you on finding love, and I wish both of you the best.
But you are misunderstanding the state’s role in marriage if you think its interest in marriage is to encourage celebrations of love. The state is not interested in whether two people marrying each other love each other, though some religious marriage ceremonies mention that. Now, there’s nothing wrong with love, I think it is a wonderful thing. But as you realize, you do not have to be married in order to love.
Marriage should be limited to a man and a woman because the purpose of marriage, and the reason why the state has a compelling interest in limiting it to a man and a woman, is because we believe that it is best that a child be raised by its biological father and mother.
Ellen: But many gay couples want to have children.
Me: That is a good point, and I’ll get to that. But I think you and your audience would agree, in an ideal world, every child that comes into the world would be born with a mother and father who are committed to each other and to her. You can also see, I hope, that a society cannot survive if it cannot perpetuate itself.
Ellen: But isn’t the world already overpopulated?
Me: I’m afraid I have to disagree with you there, Ellen. Certainly, too many children born in places where they live in squalor and poor health. But if a society is to preserve and extend the values important to it, the best way for it to do so is to make sure that the highest proportion possible of its children are born in an environment where they can learn the values and culture that have made this such a wonderful country to live in. And we have determined that the ideal environment for that is where children are born and raised in a stable home with their biological mother and father. And in a society, like ours, that teaches its children to respect our laws about violence, respecting the environment, and democracy.
Ellen: But adopted children can be taught many of the same values.
Me: That is true, but I’d like you to look at it from the non-gay point of view. Marriage isn’t about gay people. It was designed to solve a problem that you and Portia don’t have. I have to make what should be a basic point, but it is often lost. I hope I do not offend you when I say, the most important reason any of us exists is because each of us had a mother and father who had sex. While the sex you have with Portia, or the sex a gay male couple may have, may be a wonderful expression and celebration of your love for each other, we can be certain that a child will never result from the kind of sex gay people have.
That is not meant as a criticism–of gay people anyway. It is meant to highlight a particular hazard of heterosexual sex. If a heterosexual woman goes to a bar, gets drunk, and has sex with some guy, there is a very real risk of her becoming pregnant. Indeed, we all know this sort of thing happens all the time. We all could list the many sad consequences of irresponsible heterosexual sex.
But if a gay person does the same thing, she may wake up with many regrets, but she will not wake up pregnant. Pregnancy is not one of the hazards of gay sex.
Marriage was designed to solve a problem you don’t have. As a society, we want to create, promote, and preserve an institution that encourages the most heterosexual sex as possible to occur within a stable marriage, so that the children that result from heterosexual sex can be raised in what we consider to be the ideal environment to promote and preserve the values important to our society.
So in an ideal world, there would be no children born outside of stable committed marriages. Of course, we do not live in such a world, and so I think it is great if couples, heterosexual and homosexual, who have the resources and commitment, will adopt such children and raise them as their own. This is a way we can all help to make sure children, and society, do not pay too heavy a price for irresponsible heterosexual behavior.
There are many ways, Ellen, that you and Portia can celebrate your love and commitment to each other, but so far, as a society we have only come up with one way to ensure that the most children possible who come into this world are wanted and cared for by his or her biological parents. And that is by limiting marriage to heterosexual couples who can have children.
Ellen: But infertile couples are allowed to marry.
Me: In some places, people are not allowed to marry because of various kinds of genetic incompatibility, and those have withstood scrutiny by the courts. For instance, cousins are not allowed to marry in many states because of the fear of genetic defects and inbreeding. Some states require you to take a blood test before marrying. And historically, marriage has sometimes been limited to fertile couples. I don’t think that is necessary, but as you say, it is logical and some places that is what happens.
In a larger sense, I think you’re making a category error. While it is true that certain individual heterosexual couples here and there cannot have children, as a class, homosexual couples cannot have children without external parties getting involved. In other words, if there are children born to homosexual couples, that never occurs by accident. Gay people are not going to have children accidentally.
Ellen: But how does allowing gay people to get married affect heterosexual couples?
Me: If marriage were just about love, it would not. But I believe society’s interest in marriage is to encourage the creation and stable raising of children. In California, there many avenues available if gay people want to celebrate their love or commitment to each other. There are legal mechanisms here where things like hospital visitation and end-of-life directives, inheritance law, joint property, and so on, can be spelled out between two people of whatever gender.
Ellen: But it still sounds like you’re saying, just because I’m gay, I have to sit at the back of the bus, or ride a different bus altogether, like interracial marriage or “separate but equal” school segregation.
Me: You are not denied marriage because you are gay, Ellen. Perhaps it seems academic or insulting to point out, but the state doesn’t ask if you’re gay when you get married. It doesn’t care if you’re gay, it cares if you are marrying a man. When you try to get on the marriage “bus,” no one makes you pass through the gaydar detector on the way to the altar.
Ellen: But so much harm and pain has come from marriages where homosexuals force themselves into an identity that denies their basic personality.
Me: I agree, and I would never encourage such a thing. I hope anyone getting married does so with the ability and desire to commit to it. I am just saying, as you know all too well from your prior relationship to Anne Heche, for some people their sexual identity can change. And when it changes, they are allowed to marry heterosexually. They are not discriminated against because they may have, or may even still, consider themselves gay. And I do not think they should be.
But on a more basic level I think there are some very important differences between interracial marriage and gay marriage. First of all, interracial couples can have children, and if they do have children, I think they should be married and committed to each other when they do. And that was certainly the case with Richard and Mildred Loving, the interracial couple.
Things are also very different now. Unlike the environment they lived in, if you and Portia are seen walking down the street holding hands, the police are not going to show up at your doorstep and arrest you later. You are allowed to express and show your love openly. Richard and Mildred went to jail when they did that. I think that was wrong then, and I think it would be wrong now for you as well.
Here’s what I think is so interesting, Ellen. For over a hundred years, homosexuals have been persecuted for how they wanted to live their private lives. They have fought for decades to get the government out of their bedrooms. When the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Lawrence v. Texas, you gained that right. In this country, it is no longer legal for the government to beat down your door and arrest you because of what you want to do with someone in the privacy of your own home.
So why, just a five years after gaining that hard-fought privilege, are some gay people all of a sudden demanding that government come back in their bedrooms? They of all people should be skeptical of government involvement into what is, and what I believe should remain, a private matter between consenting adults.
The end of my fantasy interview gives me the last word, makes me better-looking, and gives me a lot longer to explain my position, than would happen in a real interview with me. However persuasive you may find the arguments I raise here, I want you to notice two things about this pretend interview: It is possible to articulate a position against gay marriage without (a) invoking religious justifications, or (b) disparaging homosexual behavior. What I have laid out here is what you could call the secular argument against gay marriage. It is an argument that has almost always prevailed in those courts where it has been presented because it presents a “compelling government interest” in limiting marriage privileges. Discrimination is allowed if the government can show that it has a “compelling interest” in doing so. Since this argument tries to show that the very preservation and perpetuation of society depends on heterosexual marriage, it is able to pass this very high threshold. Interestingly, this is not the argument Jerry Brown’s California Attorney General Office made when it was defending Proposition 22 before the California Supreme Court.
You’ve made a great argument for why heterosexual marriage is good, but you’ve made no argument whatsoever for how on earth homosexual marriage threatens that. When imaginary Ellen asks the question, you fail to answer it. You say that “society?s interest in marriage is to encourage the creation and stable raising of children.” Actually, society doesn’t have to do anything to encourage the creation of children. Heterosexual sex drives, among other things, do that. Indeed society does have an interest in encouraging stable environments where children can be raised, and legal marriage does accomplish that–for heterosexual couples and homosexual couples alike. You’ve acknowledged that same-sex parents are just as capable as opposite-sex parents of raising children; would you have them do so without the protections marriage provides? That is certainly a less stable environment than one where the parents are married and both have full legal rights to their children.
I cannot speak for Ellen and her audience as you have, but I do not share your opinion of an ‘ideal world’ in regards to parents.
Let’s take Christ as an example here: He wasn’t raised by his biological father, and He turned out just fine…
Quite frankly, I do not believe it matters who made the child, but it matters infinitely who raises the child.
I don’t try to argue here that it harms heterosexual marriage, so that’s why I don’t answer it that way. My point is more fundamental than that. It’s a semantic argument, at root. (So is this whole question, however, since in California, the Supreme Court agreed that gays already have marriage in all but name anyway.) Instead, I say gay “marriage” isn’t marriage at all. Marriage is, or should be, reserved for people who can bear children. By the laws of nature (which no court or King can overrule), gay people cannot do that. It deserves this unique high status because of the importance of channeling heterosexual behavior into marriage. Its supreme importance means we limit it to that. It’s not about harm, it’s about maintaining and affirming the unique status of marriage in strengthening and furthering society. Since gays cannot bear children that have mothers and fathers, they should not be able to get married.
John Hurd, an Australian Catholic who has same sex attraction, makes the argument here. It’s hard to read, so I’ll excerpt part of it:
In other words, gays are free to create arrangements that encourage fidelity, monogamy, commitment, whatever. But marriage is for raising children. If gays want to celebrate and privilege their own arrangements, then gays should invent their own ways, and special terms, for that, rather than piggybacking on an institution that was designed for bearing and raising children. (That, by the way, is essentially the argument made here, by a man who is himself gay. He adds that even by being able to argue about how marriage is defined, we have already lost that argument. Stanley Kurtz believes that is what has happened in the uptick in out-of-wedlock births in Denmark. That can’t be proven at this point (by the time it can be, it would be too late anyway) so I don’t make that argument here.)
Or put yet another way, why do gays want to get married? If it is to celebrate love, you can do that by having a ceremony or any number of ways. Is it to commit to each other? You can do that through domestic partnerships. If it’s to raise other people’s children you can do that in a domestic partnership, or even all by yourself as a single person, as people in fact do all the time. If it’s to bear children, we don’t want to call that marriage because a child should have both a father and a mother. Actually, it’s a biological fact that any child born has a biological mother and father, and in a lesbian or gay male relationship, one of those people is by definition excluded from the relationship.
Andrew #2:
You’ll have to at least concede that Jesus had an unusually intimate relationship with His biological Father. (“…and the glory of the Father was with him, for he dwelt in him…”) One that none of us has, even if we are raised by our biological fathers. If we could have that closeness, then I do not think any of us would need much parenting, or laws or governments, at all. I do not think your example is relevant to the rest of humanity.
To the larger point, no, there is actually not a ton of evidence that children need fathers or mothers. It is exceedingly difficult to prove anything in social science, and so you’ll notice in my “interview” with Ellen I am careful to phrase this as a belief, not a fact. Though it is a belief I think is widely shared, even by many gay people.
Instead, I would turn the burden of proof around. We know that children raised by their biological mothers and fathers has at least worked well enough to get our society this far. The burden of proof should be on those who want to change that. They should be the ones to prove that children raised by just one biological parent, or none at all, do just as well. Sixty years after divorce really started becoming common, just now is a fragile consensus barely emerging that divorce is almost always bad for children. Do you think gays will be patient enough to wait that long?
There have been many studies on the children of same-sex parents. Scot of UtahCog has summarized the findings of several of those studies here.
Your definition of marriage as being solely for the purposes of bearing children is hardly widely accepted. It’s a shaky foundation to build an argument on.
The second sentence here does not logically follow the first. Marriage doesn’t need to be limited to a single class of individuals in order to preserve its “unique high status” or “supreme importance.” Allowing same-sex couples to marry does absolutely nothing to affect the ability of marriage as an institution to channel heterosexual behavior into marriage. Is the fear that heterosexual couples will say, “Gosh, if gay people are doing it, it must not be very special”? Considering how gay people lead the trends in fashion and entertainment, it’s just as logical to assume that gay couples getting married would encourage more straight folks to do the same.
This is a perfectly valid line of reasoning and an option that many gay couples choose. I know many gay men and lesbians who have no interest in marrying. (For that matter, I know many straight people who’ve no interest in marrying.) But for the government to make that decision for gay couples is wrong. To say to an entire class of people, “Hey, look, you’ve got the same rights as everyone else, we just call it something different,” no matter how you put it, is a separate-but-equal argument.
By the way, it might be true that in California same-sex couples “have marriage in all but name” (I don’t know), but you do know that’s not true in most of the United States, don’t you? It’s very far from true in Utah, thanks largely to the political efforts of your church. If your argument against gay marriage rests heavily on the assumption that same-sex couples can gain the same rights and privileges through other means, then I hope you’re campaigning as strongly for them to actually have those rights and privileges as your church is to make sure they don’t.
Ben, your source of science on the children of gay couples says (among other things), “we will not claim there is absolutely no difference found in the children of same-sex parents.” There certainly are differences, and in my mind they are probably not meaningless. When the data fails to show a difference (as opposed to showing that no difference exists), it tells us very little as there are millions of ways differences may exist that may have significant (and potentially unmeasurable) consequences. They may be for better or for worse, and the data is interesting, but ultimately not sufficient for much of anything.
The argument regarding separate but equal (and pretty much all related equal rights arguments) requires the assumption that marriage is something that can be between same sex partners but just isn’t always allowed. An alternate view is that marriage is itself fundamentally the germ of a family and is inseparably connected to the creation and rearing of children. That is, marriage in every way but name only is not just a concession, it’s the only possible concession.
Your tone is far from amiable when you encourage Borealis to campaign for gays to have rights and privileges through other means, but I can tell you that I have done exactly that. There are social injustices done to the families of gays that need to be addressed and fixed. Acknowledging that does not require the support of gay marriage.
I applaud you for doing so. It’s certainly a more ethical stance than denying same-sex couples all rights outright, and the only ethical stance for someone following Borealis’s logic to take. I won’t argue that my tone was not “far from amiable,” but to be clear I wasn’t accusing Borealis of that passive “I support equal rights for same-sex couples but not enough to actually do anything about it” position. I don’t know Borealis well enough to make such an accusation. I merely meant to point out that if you are going to make Borealis’s argument, I hope you’re actually backing it up, even if doing so might put you at odds with your church’s 100% no-rights-for-gay-couples position. Again, I respect you for backing your words with actions, L.
It can be. It has been for several years now in Massachusetts, Canada, and a handful of European countries. To my knowledge, the universe hasn’t imploded yet. What you mean, I believe, is not whether marriage can by between same-sex partners, but whether it should. Any argument claiming same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue requires the assumption that marriage shouldn’t be between same-sex partners, an assumption that I have yet to see proven by any means but a claim of religious authority. It may well be your religious belief that marriage is “fundamentally the germ of a family and is inseparably connected to the creation and rearing of children,” but that is not the legal definition of marriage in the United States, else there would be no need for anti-gay-marriage activists to amend state and national constitutions. An amendment is by definition a redefinition.
So long as the data fails to show negative differences, any attempts to deny same-sex parents the right to raise children can be based only in conjecture and hypothesis. I maintain that laws denying people and families fundamental rights should not be based in conjecture and hypothesis. If the data is insufficient to draw conclusions, we should err on the side of protecting rights, not on the side of taking them away.
Borealis said: You?ll have to at least concede that Jesus had an unusually intimate relationship with His biological Father.
Firstly (forgive the formal tone; I don’t imply any rudeness, just organization), your argument is: “Ideally, a child should be parented by (and only by) his/her biological mother and father.” The above, quoted statement wanders out of this realm.
Secondly, I personally believe the relationship Christ had with Heavenly Father had absolutely nothing to do with the Father being Christ’s biological father as such would mudden the example Christ set for us as to how we should interact with the Father. That is to say, everything Christ had with the Father, we can have as well; therefore, the relationship, in my mind, couldn’t be influenced in the least bit by biology.
Borealis said: I am careful to phrase this as a belief, not a fact.
And this is where the problem lies: it is just a belief. And the government has absolutely no right to make one belief more valid than another. To me, all this isn’t about legality, it’s about trying to snuff out or inferior-ize somebody else’s sincere beliefs [that do not infringe upon anyone else's rights].
L said: There certainly are differences, and in my mind they are probably not meaningless.
From what research I’ve read, the biggest differences are that the children tend to be more compassionate, caring, empathetic, etc. … things President Hinckley often stressed, if I’m not mistaken.
Borealis said: Marriage is, or should be, reserved for people who can bear children.
I believe marriage is, or should be, reserved for people who can raise children.
Instead, I would turn the burden of proof around.
All that needs to be done is disprove the ideal that children should be raised by their biological parents. Frankly, there is a plethora of evidence against this as a great deal of children are abused, neglected, exploited, etc. every day by their own biological parents (even parents who love and are completely devoted to each other).
There is definitely not such damning evidence against gay couples as parents…
Children have a right to goodly parents.
There’s a danger of talking around each other here, so I just wanted to clarify. I’m talking about the position that marriage can’t be between same gendered folks because that just doesn’t satisfy the requirement of what marriage actually is. That is, not what it should be, but what it is in the minds of those who hold the position. And, yes, such a position requires assumptions about what marriage is that extend beyond the legal definition. Amendments can be redefining a redefinition, and therefore an attempt not to redefine. But, again, you’ve got my gist, it’s just the overall idea that there’s a cogent position that sees marriage in terms that make “separate but equal” not only inaccurate but a somewhat nonsensical description (and charges of discrimination moot… or at least so far as discrimination is a social construct rather than a law of nature). Whether someone sees marriage as a package of social benefits or the foundation of future generations makes a big difference. Naturally, the law is concerned mainly with limited legal aspects but it doesn’t preclude the expanded significance of committed love and the families that naturally follow from heterosexual love as a necessary part.
In the absence of data, there is nothing BUT conjecture and hypothesis to base things on, and those who sincerely are concerned about protecting the rights of children have as much virtue as those who protect the rights of gay folks who want what many people believe doesn’t apply. I’ve seen folks disrespected who believe so, but it’s a rational and reasonable view that can be honestly held despite the way I’ve seen categorical dismissal of such a view as disingenuous.
Thank you for your kind words regarding my activism. :-)
Actually, marriage does solve a problem that homosexuals have, and it is the same problem heterosexuals have: promiscuity. Though you point out that unlike heterosexual sex, gay sex does not produce children, but gay promiscuity is still harmful to individuals and society, just as straight promiscuity is. Gay promiscuity spreads disease and emotional instability that hurts society. This is why they have the same need for and right to marriage. It will protect them and it will improve our nation.
Peter, the gay men I know don’t really believe in monogamy anyway. The majority want all the benefits of an “open relationship” (promiscuity) but they want a legal “marriage” so they will have the benefits that brings. I’m sure there are exceptions, but they are few and far between in my experience. So, giving gays the right to marry doesn’t solve “promiscuity” any more than it does for heterosexuals. It should, but it does not.
Gads, It would be easier to say, “Marry whom you will if it makes you happy but please respect my desire to not officiate at the ceremony.”
Since this argument tries to show that the very preservation and perpetuation of society depends on heterosexual marriage, it is able to pass this very high threshold.
I don’t think it does, at all. I don’t see any credibly argument that in any way suggests that is the case. Not only that, but allowing homosexual marriage will not affect or diminish heterosexual marriage. Furthermore gay couples can indeed have children, through surrogacy, sperm donation, or adoption, and these are ALL ways that straight couples also have children.
I don’t accept the assertion that you are giving any good non-religious reason to keep gays from getting married. I think that any secular reason I’ve ever heard is just an excuse to continue religious bigotry. Furthermore, there is no secular reason not to classify sexual orientation or gender identity as the same kind of thing as race, religion, ethnicity, etc., and for discrimination based on that to be illegal.
Reading this it seems clear you want to justify your anti-gay marriage stance with anything but the truth, your reasons are all flawed and some are just plain untrue. Speak the truth and it will hold more water. You don’t believe in gay marriage because you are a Mormon and it directly contraditcts your religious ideals set forth by your religious leaders. I’m not decided on the gay-marrige issue but I’m tired of nonsensical reasons it might not be good, when those presenting the ideas are not telling the truth.
Peter: fidelity is possible without marriage. And even if it weren’t, abstinence is. Please remember that this blog is focused on believing members of the church.
Playasinmar: There are many compromises that would make things “easier” but many people find issues of morality to be an important area in which to stand for what they believe is right.
Craig: You say you don’t see a compelling argument and then make a series of unsupported statements. It would be more informative to discuss the arguments that have been made and why they are uncompelling and then to support your own statements with some sort of logic as well. If you believe there’s nothing of merit at all on any side of the issue but the one you’ve accepted and that every contrary position is based on bigotry and discrimination then I think you ought to talk less and listen more.
Preston, if you would like to discuss why something presented here is untrue, feel welcome. If you would like to discuss how some specific reasoning is flawed, feel free. But please don’t expect to come here and attack folks who see things differently than yourself. Have a look at the comment policy, and feel free to comment and discuss freely as you follow that guide.
Looking back at comment 14, I didn’t mean to imply that nobody can hold your position, Peter, if they are a believing member of the church, but rather that within the paradigm of the church gay monogamy isn’t really an acceptable substitute for chastity. The reminder of the focus on the blog is something that was on my mind and came out misplaced as an add-on thought.
Wow, way to invalidate Borealis’s entire argument, L. :)
Yes, but the purpose of this post, as I understand it, is to discuss how an anti-gay-marriage position can be defended logically and rationally, without bringing in religion. The more I see such arguments fail, the more and more convinced I am that it’s not possible. The way I see it, the problem is that such arguments are constructed backwards. Believing LDSaints who recognize that legislation in a secular government needs a secular rationale take the conclusion that’s been given them by their leaders–that gay marriage should not be allowed–and work backwards from there to find logical reasons to justify the conclusion. Unlike Preston seems to suggest, I don’t see all such efforts as inherently dishonest, but I do see them as flawed attempts to rationalize something that is inherently irrational. I don’t mean this as an insult to Mormons or their leaders in any way–I recognize that from a believing perspective leadership by revelation is entirely valid–but religious faith by its very nature requires one to set aside reason to some extent. What I see apologetics such as Borealis and yourself doing, L, is attempting to insert reason into a process that by its own self-definition is beyond human reasoning. Thomas Monson et al. did not send out a letter to California Mormons because they went through the logical processes that you guys have described and concluded that gay marriage is harmful to society–they certainly didn’t do so because they believe same-sex couples should be able to get legal rights and privileges equivalent to marriage without calling it marriage–rather, they did so because they prayed about it (presumably) and felt that was what they should do.
I see that I have left -L- to do the Yeoman’s duty of replying to these comments. I am sorry that I have been engaged elsewhere. I will try to reply in more detail to some of these later. For now, an observation. I am feeling a little lonely here with the unsupportive tone of just about all of these comments. If these comments are any guide, then Proposition 8 is doomed. -L-, perhaps there will be some room in the desert for us lonely John the Baptists, crying vainly in the wilderness? It sure feels like that sometimes. I suppose this is what it feels to be a gay marriage supporter at an LDS Church service in California right now?
Well, it’s not fun, and I think a lot of the emotion here is because people on both sides are feeling besieged, misunderstood, and like their fundamental characteristics (sexual orientation, or faith) as a person are being denigrated. Let’s try to be reasonable, and remember that the ballot box is a horrible place to work out any personal issues any of us may have. If any of us are looking to the ballot box to validate the lifestyle we have chosen (whether that be faithful LDS, gay, or somehow both), then we are sure to be disappointed at some point. It is better to find purpose and meaning in the way we live our day-to-day lives and work out our issues there, or on the therapists’ couch. I am sure all the rest of you already knew that, but a friendly reminder of that doesn’t hurt from time to time, if only for me and the mouse in my pocket.
I, personally, couldn’t care less whether or not my future family is legally validated. It’s merely a small hurdle, a minor inconvenience that I can overcome with some patience… true, I’ll need patience, but I’m working on that…
What concerns me is the attitude behind the desires to make it illegal… these “We are like unto ‘John the Baptists, crying vainly in the wilderness’” thoughts which come across very self-righteously and create an atmosphere where families reared by gay couples are segregated, belittled, and spat at (because families reared by gay couples should be separate, are inferior, and should be spat upon to dissuade others from creating such).
I especially don’t understand the attitude, “I don’t see anything wrong with homosexuals becoming parents and raising children, they can do just as fine of a job as a heterosexual… it’s just that it’s inferior.”
If these comments are any guide, then Proposition 8 is doomed.
Well I certainly hope to God that is so.
I think a lot of the emotion here is because people on both sides are feeling besieged, misunderstood, and like their fundamental characteristics (sexual orientation, or faith) as a person are being denigrated.
I’m sorry but I don’t think anyone is denigrating your faith, rather we are offended that you and the church want to force your faith on us. I fully respect your faith and right to it. You even admit that sexual orientation is a fundamental characteristic, (as I argued) like faith or race – although faith is chosen, and neither sexual orientation nor race are, but that’s not really the point. The point is that your argument, like Ben and Preston say, is actually a religious one, because you are trying to justify your religious belief has some sort of logical reality (which I don’t think it does, at all) outside of the church. As such, it ought have absolutely no force or bearing on any sort of legislation, in any form, whatsoever. What you propose is not at all unlike Jews and Moslems trying to outlaw pork in the entire country, or alcohol, or making everyone go to church on saturday (the real sabbath) instead of sunday, or any number of ridiculous things. The fact that many people think that it is ok to force their beliefs on someone else doesn’t mean that it is any less wrong, or as a matter of fact, illegal (according to the Constitution at least, which doesn’t seem to mean a whole lot, lately).
And L, there actually is much data that points towards totally invalidating this very stance. As Ben has pointed out, there are myriad very reputable studies to be found at the blog he linked to.
If I sound emotional, it is because I am. I am sick to death of being treated as a second class citizen, and of having my entire life-experience, my beliefs and RIGHTS so casually invalidated by those who want a different life for themselves. The fact is, there is no evidence at all that says that children are any worse off when raised by gay parents, that gay marriage will in any way negatively affect our society. Also, you seem to suggest that it would preferrable for gay people to get heterosexually married and have families and children that way. In fact, that is harmful to all parties involved, and is so incredibly presumptuous and bigoted that I can’t believe people actually think this way! You may think I am being overly harsh, but saying that heterosexual marriage is inherently better is like saying a white couple is better than a black one, or a Mormon couple is better than a Jewish one. It’s ridiculous, and offensive to the extreme.
I have avoided making any personal attacks on anyone else, and I think I will focus on the argument here rather than trying to respond to these accusations that I am motivated by religious bigotry or hatred of gay people. If you believe there can be no legitimate reason for opposing gay marriage, then go somewhere else, because it is impossible to have a rational and respectful discussion under such conditions. (I was afraid someone would take my ‘John the Baptist’ quip in a way I did not intend, which was ironically. Sigh.)
Ok, let’s recap. I have said that marriage has been, and should remain, about privileging those relationships which can lead to the bearing and raising of children. This has been challenged on several counts.
First, my opponents assert that marriage is not primarily about bearing and raising children. I agree that this idea is not universally held anymore. In fact, it is interesting to note that gay marriage has made the most inroads in places where this belief is in the most decline, and where families are being formed the least often. But I believe there is ample support for this idea in history, case law, and legislation. Anyone who wants to look into this further can consult the amicus briefs in the New Jersey gay marriage case where this is laid out in some detail.
Second, I have been challenged when I assert that opposite sex parents are ideal to the task of raising children and this arrangement, where opposite sex parents who are both biologically related to their offspring are married to each other, is what should be privileged (if only rhetorically) by the moniker ‘marriage’.
There are several ways this is challenged. First, some people claim that gender should be unimportant in choosing a mate. If you think about this for a minute, you’ll realize that gay people don’t believe this any more than I do. If they did, then traditional marriage would be no bar to them. If gender is unimportant, then a gay man could just as easily be attracted to a woman as a man. In fact, gender is just as important to gay people as it is to heterosexuals. When a gay man is attracted to another man, he is obviously not indifferent to the fact he is a man; that is a vital part of what he is initially attracted to. Same thing for a gay woman when another woman catches her eye. Instead, what I think my opponents are really rejecting is the importance of gender complimentarity in raising children.
It is self-evident that it is. It a biological fact that it takes a man and a woman to produce a child. I believe that men and women each have adaptations evolved (or, if you prefer, ordained by God) over millions of years that each provide important aspects of care to the child. This is not to say that it is impossible to raise children under different circumstances; the species is resilient. We are talking about what is ideal, and I have not claimed, and I have not seen anyone else claim, that the “universe would implode” if it is sometimes otherwise. (When summarizing the other side’s arguments, it is disrespectful to present their arguments as a caricature rather than fairly.)
If gender complimentarity were not important to the propagation and maintenance of the species, then humans would not have distinct genders. If it is homophobic to make this observation, then Mother Nature herself is a bigot.
Ben demands that I support this argument with empirical evidence, and prove, to his satisfaction, that children are harmed when they are raised by same sex parents. First, note that the opposite of ideal is not “harmful”. So I would not necessarily say that children are harmed when raised by same sex couples. I say instead that this arrangement is sub-optimal, or not ideal.
Though there is some empirical evidence that this is so, I do not think that it is necessary or even good to make an empirical claim like that. (Perhaps in a separate thread, if people are sincerely interested in that, we can discuss the empirical evidence for and against gay marriage. I think this is less relevant, because it need not be a basis for rejecting gay marriage, as I will try to show here, and also because the evidence is far from definitive at this point.) A couple of examples will illustrate what I mean here.
a) I have been accused here of making arguments out of expediency. Surely, the empirical argument made by Ben and others is made out of expediency rather than out of a dispassionate reading of the evidence? To explain what I mean, I ask simply: If there should emerge solid evidence (and it could only emerge after decades of observation) that same sex marriage is harmful to children, would you then support the abolition of same sex marriage? No, you would either (i) resist this evidence the same way people resist all kinds of evidence; it is very difficult to resolve definitively any argument in social science. Or, (ii) you would very reasonably point out that it is unfair to take away what people have been living under, and planning their lives around, for decades. It is much easier to not give someone something in the first place than to try to take it away later. In other words, the second point here is that there is now something more important than empirical evidence, i.e. fairness. Put yet another way, empirical evidence isn’t really the most important aspect of your beliefs either.
b) Can we even agree, empirically, what kinds of child outcomes are ‘good’ and which are ‘bad’? Certainly certain outcomes, like school performance, would be important, but I would not expect those outcomes to be poorer anyway, since they are highly dependent on income and gay couples have higher incomes than heterosexual couples, on average. Though I would point out that the studies Ben pointed us to suffer from recruitment bias and that could obscure any negative outcomes in education anyway
But what about other items listed? For instance, some researchers observe that children of same sex couples are more open to sexual experimentation and embracing a gay identity. Is this good or bad? That cannot be determined empirically.
If I were designing a study, I would look at these childrens’ own attitudes towards marriage, sexual fidelity, and divorce, both in what they believed and how they lived. That is where I would expect to see most of the effects. If these children grew up thinking marriage was less important for themselves, or that sexual abstinence before marriage and sexual fidelity after marriage were unimportant, and acted accordingly, I would consider that outcome bad. Not everyone would agree with that. In either case, however, we cannot really know what those attitudes will be for several more decades.
c) There are several ideals we hold as a society that we do not demand be supported empirically. When we say that society should be just and fair, protect the powerless, provide for the needy, and care for the elderly and infirm, we are not making empirical arguments. We are saying what kind of society we want to live in. I think societies have a right to organize themselves according to those values, and privilege, rhetorically and otherwise, those values that the majority feels are important. Opposing values may either be tolerated or punished, as society determines. If we convince people they are good, empirical proof becomes irrelevant to how we prioritize these values. Some of them, by certain empirical measures, may even be shown to be expensive or detrimental to certain people (think of the expense of caring for the poor, or the price victims pay when we release criminals because of insufficient evidence. We all agree it is worth it to care for the poor to some degree and that sometimes the guilty may need to go free to protect the innocent. We may argue about how best to acheive these values, and there empirical studies can help. But they cannot rank our values for us.)
I do not think most of us really disagree with that when I put it this way, what we are really arguing about here is which values should be important and maintained, at the expense of other values that should be discarded or devalued.
I have explained here that there is no difference, save in name only, between domestic partnerships and marriage in California. I conclude by asking, what is it that gay couples want from marriage in California that they cannot already have through domestic partnerships? I believe it is two things. One is they want to appropriate, through official government recognition, for their own relationships the prestige and goodwill that the word ‘marriage’ has earned for itself through the years. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly (since very few gay people actually choose marriage for themselves even when it is available to them) I think they are trying to demonstrate that their relationships, whether those relationships occur within marriage or not, are in every way on par with heterosexual relationships (as Craig at #20 passionately articulates). The argument here makes no comment on that, except to observe one key yet obvious difference, rooted in biology and human nature, which is that heterosexual sexual relations can result in children, whereas homosexual sexual relations never do.
In the end, the voters will make this determination at the ballot box. They get to decide how their society should be ordered and what relationships, if any, should be privileged. I think that is as it should be. I say, if you believe that marriage should be primarily for bearing and raising children, or that complimentarity in gender is important in raising children, then you should vote yes on Proposition 8.
Thank you Borealis, comment 18 hit the nail on the head. Far too many emotions and sensitivities are invested into the issue for this debate. Even the Church recognized that this was an emotional and divisive issue. I wish that recognition would have prevented them from entering the battle in California in such an aggressive attack mode. There are going to be casualties, and I don’t think there had to be.
Like the rest of you, I am emotional and sensitive in this debate. I took offense to L’s initial reaction to my comment(14)–I felt like I wasn’t welcome here and he was essentially booting me out of the blog because I am no longer “believing.” Quite frankly, it’s the same emotion I feel in Church every Sunday. (I do still attend weekly, L). Thanks L for clarifying and recanting some.
L’s remark, “Please remember that this blog is focused on believing members of the church”, is fair (though it is also very condescending). This blog is designed as a support group for gay Latter-day Saints who want to reconcile their sexuality with their faith and stay active. They’re looking for faith and optimism, not criticism and political debate. But instead of placing the burden of that goal on the commentators, as L has, we should place the burden on the bloggers.
May I suggest to those who write these posts that if they want to be uplifted and encouraged, they write about things pertaining to their faith instead of politics? I realize that for many, opposing gay marriage is a question simply of faith. (Other posts on the topic have talked about obedience to the prophet, for example) But in this post it isn’t. This post presents a secular attack on gay marriage. As such it invites those who defend gay marriage to defend it and do so with secular arguments, as I did. Yes, we have deviated from the purpose of the blog, but be careful who you blame for it.
I apologize again for making you feel unwelcome or unappreciated, Peter. As I said before, the comment reminding everyone of this blog’s focus was misplaced (but certainly relevant). The purpose and scope of the blog are outlined pretty specifically in the pages linked from the top. Subjects include secular topics, political topics, any topic of interest, as long as they are within that scope and consistent with that purpose. All participants, authors or commenters, are responsible for making their participation consistent with the tone and purpose of the blog.
I have a lot to learn and frankly look forward to Borealis’ posts on gay marriage because it’s an interesting point of view. Because I read it and engage in discussion here doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with it all. But having a respectful dialog is increasingly important when the topic is something significant, as gay marriage and the current political debate is. Basically, I’m glad for this forum and I think we could all learn a lot from each other if we could tread a little softer and go easy on generalized statements, incendiary assertions without relating it specifically to the conversation currently underway, assigning motivations to others, etc.
I think my favorite part is where the comment was made that gays marrying would logically lead a trend for heterosexuals to follow since the gay people lead the trends of fashion and entertainment. I hope the point being made was how illogical he felt the argument he was countering was.
Guys, I am no social scientist, I have no degrees in child psychology, and I myself have been in counseling for a long, long time. So who am I to say anything on the topic of mental health? Other than I hope to one day have some. In MY experience, kids need a dad, and kids need a mom. My dad was a drunk. He never hit us, he never molested us, but he was absent. Sometimes, I would think, during my early teenage years in particular, it would be better if he WERE dead because then somehow the hurt would be less, and support would come from outside. For years, I felt his absence in my day to day life, in scouting, in school, at church. I hated Fathers and Sons because MY dad was either going drinking or recovering from his last round, and if I went it was with the Bishop or some other dad who in my mind was the picture of fatherhood, which would inevitably lead to frustration that my dad was not. He was not there to teach me how to be a man, how to be a husband, and how to be a father. My mother tried to step in, and she did an amazing job doing what she did do, but she could not fill those shoes because she is not a man. My grandfather, scout leaders, quorum advisors, and bishops also gave a great effort, which I appreciate eternally, but at the end of the day, they still could not fill that need that I had. Please do not try and tell me how I feel, or how I should have felt, or why I felt the way I did.
GREAT! So, two dads would be every fatherless child?s dream. Of course not. If you have two dads, you have no mom. Her role is just as essential in bringing up us younglings, both the boys and the girls.
Now there are certainly circumstances that are beyond our control. Moms leave the family, Dads go to war, Moms get in accidents, Dads sign over any parental right before the baby even arrives. There are plenty of opportunities already for children to come into homes without a mom and a dad. Do they grow up to be thieving lecherous people? I don?t think so, not the majority. Is it possible to be a productive member of society without a foundation from mom AND dad? Of course. It MAY require a little more effort, but it can be done. I believe what Borealis?s point is, and I would agree, is that the ideal environment for raising children is with their biological parents, who love each other, and are faithful to each other. They respect each other, and they teach their children how to love and respect as well. Can a gay couple do that? I?m sure they can, but there will still be those Fathers and Sons outings, or Daddy Daughter dates, and a myriad of other situations and learning opportunities where a specific gender of parent is called for, and no matter how much others step in, it is just not the same. It can?t be, at least that was MY experience.
Now some say the argument is the government has no right to say this and no right to do that. Well, if that is your stance, how is it the California government has determined the voice of the people, the will of the Californians, is wrong? It was not the government who passed Prop 22, it was the people. The Cal. Supreme Court handily beat that proposition by saying looking at the intent of the Framers in that all men are free in the pursuit of happiness, which the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted as including marriage. So, in essence, they are saying that the intent of the Framers would endorse gay marriage. I don?t know about y?all, but I have a hard time imaging the founding fathers talking about and endorsing homosexuality as a legitimate institution that the state should fully endorse and support.
Finally, the Cal. Supreme Court pulled some trickery in my opinion. Up until its decision, strict scrutiny was only applied to matters the Equal Protection and Due Process Clause with regards to race. Under strict scrutiny, the most exacting standard the court can use, the state must show a compelling government interest and that the law is narrowly tailored to that interest in order for the law or policy to be held constitutional. The reason strict scrutiny is held in such deference is because we believe, and all of science readily agrees, race is immutable, that is, it cannot be changed. The court refused to say that sexual orientation is immutable, but then continued on in their argument pretending that it was, making all the parallel arguments between same sex marriage and interracial marriages. In short, the majority opinion changed the precedent and the rules of the game to get to the result they wanted, which I would have been fine with from a legal stand point had they just said they deemed sexuality to be immutable. But they didn?t, they said it was not immutable, and then treated it as though it were. That is how the government is telling people what is and what is not okay. It was the majority of the state that passed Prop 22, not the simple majority of seven justices. If California passes Prop 8, and it is the will of the people, what then?
To wrap up, my Dad is sober today. He has been for soon to be 14 years. I am immensely proud of him, and today consider him a great Dad! Even back then, when he was a drunk, he still taught me how to work, and how to be responsible enough to pay bills, but there is SO much more a son needs from his father apart from those two lessons, important as they are.
I stand with Borealis on this one guys. I don?t consider myself a hater or a bigot, if anything I like gay men too much! Lol.
First an amen to Peter’s #22. I keep this site in my Google Reader because I have several friends (among them my wife) who post here (sometimes) and I sometimes find the content interesting in the context of my LDS background, but for the most part I refrain from commenting because it’s pointless for someone to be talking about something based on their faith and for me to say, “Well, pooh on you, your faith is wrong.” When Borealis writes a post about political issues and deliberately takes them out of his religious context, that tells me it’s fair game for me to critique his logic and it would be nice to do so without reminders of site policy and accusations of hurting someone’s feelings. If you’re going to talk religion then fine and if you’re going to talk feelings then fine, but if you’re going to talk politics, let’s talk politics.
While we’re on the subject of “feeling besieged, misunderstood, and like their fundamental characteristics (sexual orientation, or faith) as a person are being denigrated,” though, I hope you do realize, Borealis, just how offensive the “ideal family” argument is to those of us who don’t come from your definition of an ideal family. It’s one thing to say that single-parent families are less than ideal–there’s a plethora of data on the detrimental effects of divorce and I imagine few widowed parents would call their own situation ideal–but to say that families with adopted children and same-sex-headed families are somehow less than their straight, blood-related counterparts, especially without any data to back up such a statement, is grossly inconsiderate and downright hurtful. I wasted much of my teenage years melodramatically mourning the fact that my family was not the ideal that was put on a pedestal at church, but then I grew up and realized that ideals are nothing more than imaginary constructs. No one has an ideal family, and it’s downright silly to presume that having two biological parents makes one family somehow closer to that imaginary ideal than a family with two loving mothers or a family with responsible adoptive parents or even a family with just one supportive parent. I would not want to live in a society that values an imaginary ideal to the point that it rewards one family for having a superficial likeness to that ideal while denying those rewards to another family who lacks that superficial appearance.
Second, let’s get this bigotry thing out of the way. Merriam-Webster defines a bigot as “a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.” I’d say that first part could be applied to everyone here, myself included. I can be obstinate in my opinions and prejudices, and I am not particularly tolerant of views that I see as harmful to other people. You might say that L has been the target of my bigotry in the recent past because I felt the views he was expressing were harmful to people I care about. That said, I don’t believe you are a bigot, Borealis, though I do find some of your reasoning to be based in bigotry, at least to the extent that you have expressed prejudices here, embodied in your assumption that same-sex-headed families (and adoptive families) are “sub-optimal.” You’ve made a judgment here about a class of people not based on your actual experience with individuals or on any empirical evidence (by your own admission), but on opinion. If that doesn’t qualify as prejudice, I’m not sure what does. You’ve said you don’t hate gay people and I have absolutely no reason not to believe you–hence I’ve no reason to call you a bigot–but you don’t have to hate a class of people to treat them as less than you, which is precisely what you are calling for when you say same-sex couples do not deserve the privileged term “marriage.”
I, for one, maintain that gender is less important than most people–straight and gay–make it. I chose last year to continue a marriage I had previously chosen to abandon precisely because I could not bring myself to believe that the genitalia of my spouse was more important than who she is as a human being. And I’m thankful that no constitution or court impeded that decision. To say that gender should be irrelevant to a secular, pluralistic legal system and to say it plays no role in human attraction are two entirely unrelated things.
No one contests your biological facts. Producing and raising children are two different things. Your argument assumes that biological parents are the ideal people to raise a child, but you’ve very little to support such an assumption. In many species and indeed many human cultures now and throughout history it is not the two biological parents who raise the child but one of them or another relative or, probably most commonly, a larger group of adults. Where does your ideal come from? You’re welcome to believe that “men and women each have adaptations evolved (or, if you prefer, ordained by God) over millions of years that each provide important aspects of care to the child” but that belief is no more valid and indeed less supported than my own that anybody who is a parent and is determined to be a good one will evolve the necessary adaptations (or, if you prefer, be granted them by God) to provide important aspects of care to a child.
Fair enough. I apologize for the show of disrespect. My intention was to point out that, contrary to what L had said, the word “marriage” is not fundamentally anything. It’s just a word. Words don’t have any power or meaning beyond that which we assign them. Some religions define marriage one way and some laws define marriage another way, and no actual harm is done to anyone’s own personal definition. The problem here is not that the word has special properties that same-sex couples need, but rather that as a civilization we’ve assigned a certain meaning and status to the word and then allowed one class of people that status but not another. It’s not the place of secular law to reward one group of people with the status “marriage” while denying it to another, based only on the religious beliefs of some. If same-sex couples are to be denied the status than everyone should be.
That’s an excellent question. I don’t see it happening–evidence is to the contrary–but that’s beside the point. I would have to see some pretty strong evidence that some real, meaningful harm were being done. I would also be wary of making judgments, on a societal level, of who is capable of raising children and who is not. That, in my mind, borders on eugenics, which is a large part of my problem with your “ideal family” argument. So yes, I’ll concede that fairness is more important to me than empirical evidence, but that’s certainly no reason to dispense with empirical evidence altogether. Empirical evidence helps us decide what is fair.
Can we set aside ideals for a moment and talk about reality? The reality is that same-sex couples do and will continue to raise children. Is it not logical to hypothesize that these children will value marriage more highly if raised by married parents than if raised by unmarried parents? Can you see how denying same-sex-headed families legal marriage actually subverts your ideal of marriage?
I would argue that the values you name here are not just a matter of what kind of society we’d like to live in, but rather what history has shown works. If you are going to have a society composed of different people with different beliefs, you need justice and fairness to protect those varying beliefs. If not, eventually the oppressed will rise up and overthrow your civilization. The problem with your argument against gay marriage is that it is not in line with justice and fairness. You’re arguing for a specific definition of marriage based on specific religious beliefs to override the core concepts of justice and fairness necessary to make a pluralistic society function. Even if the majority believes you and votes accordingly, that doesn’t make it right, by which I mean it doesn’t make it a sustainable view that will ensure the continued survival of our civilization. The majority of citizens of many states were opposed to racial integration, but thanks to “activist judges” on the Supreme Court, the bigoted majority wasn’t allowed to pick and choose which elements of justice and fairness they wanted in their societies.
Again, what this comes down to is belief. This being the case, I don’t see how this argument “articulate(s) a position against gay marriage without … invoking religious justifications.” Your entire argument is premised upon a belief that you cannot support empirically. That’s religion. Or can you sincerely tell me that God has nothing to do with your definition of marriage? Or that the Proclamation on the Family had no influence on your concept of complimentarity?
You are welcome to your beliefs, but once your beliefs start telling you to do harm to other people and their families by denying them legal rights and equality, then I have a hard time seeing your beliefs as any different from those that tell some parents to let their children die rather than taking them to a hospital or those that tell a man to marry and sexually abuse kidnapped twelve-year-old girls. If Nephi were tried in a court of law he could explain all he wanted that it was God who told him to kill Laban, but any pluralistic society that allows such justifications as legally valid will not last for long.
:) Well, it’s certainly just as logical an argument.
Lest I be accused of not paying attention, I do recognize and appreciate the difference between downright opposing any and all rights for same-sex couples and opposing same-sex marriage but supporting other marriage-like rights. I would concede that the latter is the lesser of two evils, but I maintain that insisting on different treatment of same-sex couples hurts them and their families, even if you do give them the consolation prize of domestic partnership.
In general, I don’t believe you, in particular, have said anything that requires a reminder of site policy. Unfortunately, there has been more than one that have. Borealis can write on any topic he likes, but he can’t disband the site policies (and indeed hasn’t). I don’t know whose feelings have been hurt (other than perhaps, Peter’s, for which I’m happy to provide a third apology), but it should be possible to have a discussion about virtually any topic on this blog without saying something in a manner that hurts feelings.
As for the actual content of the discussion, I think Borealis has done a pretty great job of presenting one secular view of marriage being fundamentally related to procreation and therefore being inapplicable to same sex couples (big oversimplification, and that’s why I like HIS presentation of it). The range of “harms” (that justify all sorts of escalating wars of words and accusations) related to excluding gays from marriage are somewhat irrelevant in the context of this argument because it’s the kind of harm that comes from inherent classification, not arbitrary discrimination. If I am not allowed to use the women’s restroom, I can complain about the harm and the discrimination, but it’s not because the person who made the rules had it in for me. Regardless, granting that real harm does come from not allowing gay marriage, you have to start looking carefully at what those harms are and putting them into different categories. There also needs to be an indignation in proportion to the injustice. Some of the harms I’ve heard are somewhat mundane and in no way justify the strong inflammatory rhetoric that sometimes resonates around the “harm” argument. For example, one simple harm I’ve heard quoted is not getting the family discount rate at the community pool. There are families that have 12 kids that don’t get it either (past their first 2 kids, for example). Some of the more serious potential harms (such as health benefits, parental custody, etc.) are completely addressable through legal means other than marriage, as Borealis noted. Many then go with the “but they shouldn’t HAVE to” argument, and that’s similar to my “I shouldn’t have to buy flood insurance” argument, but it’s not because everyone is trying to ruin my life that I have to buy flood insurance, it’s because I live in a flood plain. That’s just how it is. And for the concept of marriage Borealis posits, secular as it is, marriage just isn’t applicable to gay couples. If one wants to understand the argument, one must see it with its own assumptions and values, not within one’s own fixed views. There’s far more here that I’d love to discuss related to “harms” but it’s a bit far afield from Borealis’ post and I’ll save something more complete for another day
I’ve not said that the harms are not irrelevant in the context of Borealis’s argument (i.e. if I were to accept that his claims are true). The problem is that his argument and his claims cause those harms, which exist in the real world, outside his proposed world where they are irrelevant.
I’m getting a little tired, L, of being accused of not understanding something because I disagree with it. I understand his argument–he’s stated it very well. I can see the argument within the context of its own assumptions and values and still refuse to accept those assumptions as truth.
Borealis
I’m told that my grandmother on my dad’s side had very little good to say about her father. I’ve also been told that the reason for this was that she felt that she and her siblings and her mother were very neglected by her father who was a polygamist. He had three other wives and seldom visited her family. She seldom saw him. I’ve seen where they lived. It was not pretty and apparently the other wives had nicer homes. My great-grandmother, in fact, died when she drove to town alone in a horse and buggy and on her return it tipped over and she drowned. I won’t take the time to explain the horrible things that happened to my grandmother on my mother’s side because of the polygamy of my great-gradfather.
I believe you have proposed the need for ideal conditions in rearing children (with one father and one mother) and that this gives a tight secular argument for supporting the CA amendment. Is it plausible and consistent to believe that the conditions of polygamy which divided the attentions of a father in 2 or 4 or many more directions, would provide the “ideal” conditions you say are needed?
Our Church promoted that form of child rearing for something like 40-50 years and as I understand it, we still believe that is one feature of eternal increase in the eternities.
Can you explain how that fits in with your secular explanation????
Probably not relevant to this very fascinating debate, but as the father of adopted children (one of which was a “live abortion”), don’t tell me that biological parents are the ideal parents. Biology has nothing to do with parenting a child. Love does! Just because a man and a woman can biologically create another human being does not create a family unit of love, whether sanctioned by the government or not. The government has made it almost virtually impossible to adopt a child any longer, forcing childless couples to “prove their worthiness” as parents in humiliating and demoralizing ways, while awarding the prize to unwanted biological producers. What worthiness test was required of any biological “parent”? To say that this is the foundation of the argument for marriage rings false. Government should encourage environments of love for children to be raised. To say that that is best suited by biological producers (many a mother or father being no more than an egg or sperm donor with no desire to be involved whatsoever) does not encourage such environments. If love and protection and support and care are critical for raising children, to imply that infertile couples or gay couples cannot provide that “ideal” doesn’t seem logical. The biological parentage “ideal” as justification for limiting the definition of marriage to a man and a woman seems to fail the test at its most fundamental level – biology has nothing to do with “being parents”.
Also, countless governments have been anxiously engaged in enforcing “religious belief” in inacting marital laws to a huge detriment to the family unit. When governments refuse to recognize the legality of divorce, (in the spirit of protecting the “sanctity of marriage”), making it virtually impossible for anyone but the rich to obtain said divorce, the majority are left to live in unsanctioned “common law marriages” and by default are forced to raise their children with no benefits, rights, or privileges that come with “marriage” – just ask anyone who has served in a Latin American or Southern European mission: the biggest hurdle to baptism is getting said “common marriages” legalized. I have seen numerous friends hurt and suffer because of governmental enforcement of meddling in the affairs of the family “because they know what is best for society”, when in reality it has everything to do with religion and money. This current debate in CA seems to be in the same category of meddling where government shouldn’t go and is destined to bring just more hurt and suffering.
Beck, I think you have entirely misunderstood my argument. Look it over again. I am not saying, because they can breed, heterosexuals are better and thus deserve the prize of marriage. My points follow many of the ones you raise, which is that marriage is a vital part (though it cannot prevent all harm to children) of encouraging stable and committed families to form. It is precisely because heterosexuals breeding outside of committed relationships causes so much harm that we want to encourage and privilege marriage. Homosexuals will not be having children by accident, they will not be getting abortions, and they are unlikely to neglect their children. Heterosexuals need marriage because their irresponsible sexual activities have more serious consequences than homosexuals. They need it not because they are better than homosexuals, but because they are worse. (At least the consequences of their actions are.) We want to send the message that marriage is all about bearing and raising children.
But I do have to disagree with you about the importance of love. Love is good, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to raise children. I used to work with hundreds of children who were coming through DCFS, and I often spoke with their parents. Most of the parents truly loved their children; when their kids were taken away, their tears were real. But the fact is, they were horrible people and even more horrible parents. I remember one woman whose daughter was being taken away from her for the fifth time, because she had descended into alcoholism and prostitution once again (and she serviced her Johns while her daughter was in the room). (Worst of all, after a bit of pleading and promises to do better, she got her kid back.) Her problem was not that she didn’t love her daughter enough. Her problem was she lacked the desire and/or ability to provide a stable and consistent home environment. Whereas, when they were in our facility, they thrived, because they had structure, stability, and consistency; and they did pretty well even if we didn’t particularly like the kids. (Though I did fall in love with many of them.) It’s through seeing that where I realized the limits of parental love. And it’s why I resist so strongly the idea that marriage should be about “celebrating love” or other such claptrap. For example, see my tirade in the update here. From my point of view, we are closer to agreement if you could show me that all or most of the homosexuals who want to marry want marriage because they intend to bear and/or raise children.
Believe me, I have seen firsthand the damage heterosexuals can do to children, and it is heartbreaking. And you don’t have to complain to me about our crazy adoption system.
Ron, you raise some excellent points that I will try to address soon but it deserves a more extensive answer than I can provide just now.
Ben, I’m not sure we have anything more to say to each other on this topic. From your last comment, I think you are saying that there is no possible reason for opposing gay marriage that is not based on bigoted assumptions about an entire class of people and an unconstitutional imposition of religious views. It is not just that my arguments are not effective or persuasive, it is that no fair or reasonable argument exists at all. Can you see how that cuts off the possibility for any meaningful discussion? I cannot have a discussion with someone who automatically assumes I am a religious and sexual bigot. It is not enjoyable, but more importantly, it is pointless. Your mind is automatically made up that I am both evil and wrong, before one word comes out of my mouth.
I think many people have missed the point of this post. It is certainly not to hurt anyone’s feelings. It is not even to convince people who are for gay marriage that they should be against it. It was offered to believing Latter-day Saints, who want to “do all they can” to help Proposition 8, articulate a rationale to their neighbors (of varying backgrounds and religions) in California for why they should vote in favor of that Proposition. Obviously, it is not going to work very well if they just say, “My Prophet wants you to vote for this Proposition.” What I offered here I hope is at least better than that! I also hope it is far superior to John McCain’s mindlessly repeating, “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.”
It was my best attempt, however inadequate, at helping with that. It is respectful and it doesn’t say, “because God says so.” If there are deficiencies in the argument, I don’t mind people pointing them out. If there are better arguments in favor of the Proposition, I wish people would post them. There are other ways to approach the question that I may offer, that may be more persuasive (including the empirical evidence Ben thinks I don’t have just because I say it’s not relevant to this line of argument), if people are sincerely interested. But I am under no delusions that my words here are going to convince die-hard same sex marriage supporters. You are welcome here, but you are not who I wrote this for, and I am not trying to convince you of anything.
Ben, if you think my argument is unconvincing, fine. But it is not fair to conclude that all opposition to this is therefore actually about religion. There are people who are atheists, such as this guy, but who are still against gay marriage. (He is a lot smarter and more articulate than me. If you hate my arguments here, just go read him instead for a better one.) Is he a crypto-theist? There are even gay people in gay relationships who do not think same sex marriage should be legal. Are they self-hating gay homophobes?
If we are going to compare only being able to live in a domestic partnership instead of a marriage to sexual abuse, slavery, and Jim Crow, if people are automatically going to take everything to volume 11 with every point I make, then I think that augurs very poorly for our democracy–worse than what gay marriage (or lack thereof) could ever do to us. Is there a way for me to mention that I am against gay marriage at all without it being considered an “attack” on gay people, or your very existence as a person? Can you see how overly personalizing political disagreements is a recipe for perpetual personal unhappiness? Is there any observation I can make about gay marriage aside from “I am 100% for it” that will not bring down a flood of righteous indignation? If you cannot concede at least that possibility, if we cannot have policy and political disagreements without people calling me names, if we cannot have a sense of proportion about this, and people rush to tell me that I am not just wrong, but evil, for holding those opinions, then I really do fear for our country’s future. Maybe the universe, or at least our cherished United States of America, actually will implode! Not because of gay marriage, but because I am afraid that we no longer believe that sincere people of good will can have an honest disagreement.
Is there a way for me to mention that I am against gay marriage at all without it being considered an ?attack? on gay people, or your very existence as a person?
No. Because it is and always will be, no matter how nicely you put it.
There’s a very big difference between an honest disagreement, and thinking that an entire group of people just isn’t quite as good as you are. It doesn’t matter how politely you say it, it’s still discrimination, and it’s still wrong and immoral.
I think you are saying that there is no possible reason for opposing gay marriage that is not based on bigoted assumptions about an entire class of people and an unconstitutional imposition of religious views. It is not just that my arguments are not effective or persuasive, it is that no fair or reasonable argument exists at all.
Exactly.
You are welcome to conclude that we have nothing to say to each other, Borealis, but I’ve said nothing to lead you to believe I’m automatically assuming anything. I’ve addressed specific points of your argument, noting the better points along with the ones that fail. I’ve said specifically that you are not a bigot, but shown one specific way that your argument relies on bigoted reasoning. I’ve not once said that you are evil, but only that the heterosexist assumptions of your argument cause harm to gay people. Furthermore, I’ve not said that there can not possibly be a non-religious argument against same-sex marriage–I’ve not yet seen one, but I’ll be happy to go read that link. I don’t need to assume something about all anti-gay-marriage arguments in order to show where yours relies on religious assumptions, as I’ve done here. I find it hugely hypocritical of you to accuse me of being disrespectful of you and your argument, particularly when I’ve bent over backwards to show respect to a person presenting an argument so inherently offensive, and then for you to almost completely ignore everything I’ve said in order to paint me as the obstinate dogmatist you apparently think I am.
Yes, I do believe the heterosexism necessary to your logic is potentially as harmful to people as sexual abuse, slavery, and Jim Crow–because those things all require the same kind of logic making one class of people less than another–but more importantly my question is this: Once you decide that your beliefs justify some level of harm, that faith trumps empirical evidence, where do you draw the line? How do you know whether you’re Nephi killing Laban or Brian David Mitchell kidnapping Elizabeth Smart? And how am I as an agnostic observer supposed to tell the difference? They’re all irrational beliefs to me. Generally my rule of thumb is that religious beliefs (and other beliefs not supported with empirical evidence) are not my business, so long as no one gets hurt. You and L seem to be saying, though, that I should allow for some level of harm, so long as no one is physically maimed or killed. What level of harm is too much? If the Catholic church were campaigning to make mixed-orientation marriages less valid than other marriages and a bunch of Catholics were talking on a blog about how that position is “rationally” defensible so that they could go out and convince their neighbors to vote against your family’s rights, at what point would you step in and say something?
You know, I’ve been reading comments posted from both sides of the issue and I think both sides have valid points. I think what needs to happen here is to admit to each other that you will both agree to disagree and that we can all be civil in doing so. Having different points of view is what makes this country so great. We can express our points of view as part of a national dialogue. What bothers me is when the tone changes and the word bigot gets thrown around as a way to silence dissent by either side. It really bothers me when one side or another plays the victim or martyr role and defines themselves as being overtly oppressed. They then start throwing the word bigot around as a way to demonize their “opponents.” Let’s stand a little taller and not take on any arrogant position that those who disagree are your enemies. I find that very offensive. We are all adults here and we can all play nice. It is possible to have legitimate positions that have a religious and/or spiritual component to them and not be a right-wing bigot or zealot. I don’t think anyone here has made the claim that they are more “superior” than anyone else. If you feel that others are making that claim, then I think to reexamine your perceptions here.
Apologies on the incorrect grammar of some of my sentences in the last post. I evidently think faster than I type and then I leave out words.
P.S. If you’d like to make this theoretical exercise more concrete, L, I can dig up examples of you around the bloggernacle circa August 2006 “escalating wars of words and accusations” when there was no actual threat of harm to your family, but there were some people saying less than flattering things.
Ben:
If I have misunderstood both your tone and the content of your points, then I am sorry. It looks like Craig and I both made that mistake. I think one area of miscommunication is now clear. I think you are conflating arguments from tradition with arguments from religion. I will plead guilty to the accusation that I am articulating a defense of tradition. But we disagree if you say that this automatically means it is also religious. In the larger sense that is true, but no more so than your position, since we are both steeped in enlightenment ideals that descend from the Protestant Reformation, which in turn descends from the scolasticism of Aquinas and Augustine, which depends on equal parts Greek Philosophy and Christianity. Certainly my defense of tradition is shared by other religions, but it does not uphold a specific religious tradition or even require the invocation of God.
It’s funny that you raise the question of rational defenses of traditional religious practices such as keeping kosher. Lee Harris leads out his essay with that very example, and he follows it to some interesting places! We are getting to some aspects of tradition and semantics that are hard to articulate in a television interview, are more hard to understand or follow, but form an important part of my own personal qualms about gay marriage and more particularly the way gay marriage is being enacted in most places. Though this is also a secular argument, it would probably be more appropriate for a separate post, since it is really independent from my arguments laid out here.
Ron:
I do not think we can say what the threshold is where the attentions of a father are divided so narrowly that they are no longer helpful. Is that at 20 children? 40 children? 60 children?
I tend to think that both things Jacob said about polygamy in the Book of Mormon are true. It is very effective at “raising up a righteous generation” and it also can lead to abuses that cause children and wives to mourn an hurt. I think we had both of those in this dispensation as well. Maybe that’s why we only had it for a short time? (I for one am skeptical that we will have much polygamy, if any, in the next life.)
From a secular standpoint, polygamy poses the opposite threat to civic government that gay marriage does. Rather than weakening the semantic and rhetorical foundations of marriage, polygamy (especially if it is backed up by an authoritarian religion) is a model that in practice is too strong! Powerful, self-reliant, and independent clans can develop that can become as powerful, or more powerful, than the civic institutions around it, (though they may exploit it, through becoming welfare cheats and so forth, they don’t need government for much) such that they may eventually be powerful enough to overthrow it.
Have you read Klaus Hansen’s Quest for Empire? I don’t agree with everything in it, but his argument was that the Mormons were persecuted for practicing polygamy not because it was an aberrant moral system (which were always, with the exception of Mormons, tolerated. Think of the Shakers, or other religious orders that preached free love, open marriage, etc., in the 19th century) but instead because it posed an unacceptable challenge to the civic and secular government, which was already quite afraid for its preservation in the run-up to the civil war.
What a surprise to find a link in the isocrat stats from here, but then I saw it was Ben…
L, you try to use my words against me and then blow off the entire body of research, not cool man :-]. Yes there are differences, there are significant differences from average in children of left-handed people, children of mixed-race couples, children of Jewish and Amish couples. Though I don’t have the research, I’m sure even the children of the LDS are different. So?
I don’t want to get bogged down in this, here, but I must add, gay couples do become parents by surprise. It may not be through sex, but it’s through merely being a couple. We’ve known a some couples who’ve become parents at the sudden loss of a related child’s parent(s). In Utah, law only allows one unmarried (gay) person in the couple, though, to be be a parent. In one of the couples I have in mind, the other parent, the only other parent the child had known from infancy was here on some sort of work visa which expired. The guy, being legally unmarried to a citizen, was eventually deported causing a great deal of trauma to the family, which led to a much more trouble I’ll have to leave out.
Marriage of parents works just as well for our children as it works for other children; it protects them too. Just as marriage is good for society and works even for couples who’ll never have children.
Another thing that should be pointed out is that where 1st cousins are allowed to marry they must first prove they are infertile (you can see the text of the laws, here). The state will only allow marriage if the union will not produce children.
Now I’ll try to go back to my corner, a test of will ;-).
Thank you for the apology, Borealis. In no way do I believe that you are an “evil” person. In my experience with you, you have always been civil, articulate, and kind. I remember one particular occasion where a post of yours upset me and I went into attack mode, but you responded calmly and politely, diffusing the conflict before it escalated any more. I was impressed and have held a level of respect for you since, despite not knowing you at all.
My purpose here, in fact, is quite the opposite from showing that you are a bad person. If we look back at the atrocities of history and conclude that they are the sole responsibility of “evil” people, we are missing an important lesson of history. The crimes of racism, ranging from slavery to Jim Crow laws to present-day racial discrimination, have been allowed to exist because of mostly good people who perpetuate attitudes of racial inferiority, based either on religious arguments (i.e. the mark of Cain) or on tradition (i.e. the pre-Civil War economy of the South being dependent on slavery). In many ways the most dangerous forms of racism come not from people who outright hate minority races and call for their extinction, but from people who genuinely care about minority races but hold onto sometimes subtle beliefs of superiority (i.e. “I just love Black people! They’re all so musically talented and great at sports!”). My comparing you to these people is not intended as an insult but rather pointing out a problem with your perspective that I believe you are not seeing. (And to be clear, I’m not claiming innocence here–I have unintentionally been guilty of heterosexism myself on more than one occasion, not to mention the all-too-frequent lapses into sexist or racist thought patterns.) As I’ve said I have no doubt that you don’t hate gay people, but you have said explicitly that same-sex-headed families are “sub-optimal, or not ideal.” An argument based on such heterosexism is dangerous because it propagates myths that will continue to harm gay people and their families as long as they exist. No, you are no Hitler–far, far from it–but the seemingly harmless seed that eventually grew into a Holocaust was a belief that non-Aryan races are “sub-optimal, or not ideal.”
I do see the difference between an argument based in religion and an argument based in tradition, but the distinction becomes blurred somewhat when a believing Mormon makes a traditional marriage argument on a blog for believing Mormons and where his stated intent is to encourage other believing Mormons to use this argument to support a religion-based proclamation made by Mormon leaders. That said, I will concede that you do not invoke God explicitly and therefore technically your argument is based in tradition, not religion. (Okay, I admit that concession has too many qualifiers attached to count as a real concession, but at the moment it’s the best I can do.)
Off topic and less than serious I invoke Godwin’s law! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law carry on.
No, Borealis, I have not read Hansen’s book except for some quotes from it, but overthrow of the government by polygamists goes far afield from my interest here. However, I believe I understand you to say that you think polygamy can be an acceptable way to raise children and meet the ideal you’ve been talking about.
For 30 years I was intensely involved in being a father and husband and I do have some impressions from having helped launch several children into the adult world. I think I have some idea about how much of a father’s attention is needed and is ideal.
I believe that providing an ideal parenting situation to help children get a good start in life is something most of us can agree is important, although in the real world I don’t know how you insure that.
However, I doubt you could persuade Ellen (or other non-Mormons in CA) of your genuine commitment to the welfare of children having the VERY MOST ideal family situation as long as you simultaneously support a polygamy arrangement for the rearing of children and continue to support the choices of our ancestors who did that for 40-50 years.
I’m kind of late coming into this discussion, but I’ve only now had time to read through this thread. Granted, I did skim some of the comments, but I think there are a couple points that have been left out of this.
First, I think there is natural tension between individual rights and larger social goods. Individuals have the “right” to smoke, drink, or engage in casual sex. But there are serious social consequences for each of those things, and so the state has to regulate it on some level—promoting “goods” without taking away “rights.” And, some things are so harmful to other individuals or larger society that they are made illegal.
One argument that I think needs to be more sufficiently and articulately presented is the role of culture in this debate. Media has the “right” to present sex, violence, and vulgarity to an extent, and the rules and regulations governing those “rights” have been loosened over time. We live in one of the most violence- and sex-obsessed cultures in the world—largely because of media influence. The more violent, sensational, and sensual marketers can make something, the better it sells. But it tears at the very fabric of healthy society. And “society” has to make the decision—at least in a constitutional republic such as ours—how much they are willing to tolerate, and laws are made accordingly. Again, there is natural—and appropriate—tension between individual rights and socio-cultural goods. Pornography is not a social good, and I would like to see much stricter laws and consequences in governing its distribution. It’s destroys any sense of decency of culture. And, yet, individuals have the “right” to view and produce it within certain strictures.
When “the Mormon Question” regarding plural marriage was the huge political issue, my understanding is that Latter-day Saints were not looking for socio-political endorsement for the practice. They just wanted to be left alone, free to practice their religion as they believed. Basically, they wanted only what gay and lesbian couples already have. But, polygamy was made a criminal offense. While gays and lesbians are fighting for legal recognition and socio-political endorsement, polygamists are generally only asking to for decriminalization of their practice so they can live their religion without legal repercussion. Why do gay and lesbian couples need more than that?
My political philosophy is such that there should be a socio-politically endorsed standard of marriage, generally, with certain rights granted to non-traditional couples—gay couples, polygamous couples, etc. I do not support gay marriage for many reasons that borealis has outlines, as well as others. But I do support some important rights for gay and lesbian couples, and for the decriminalization of polygamous unions.
We, as a culture, have the social responsibility to promote “social goods” even while granting certain “individual rights.” I don’t believe marriage and socio-political endorsement of every form of relationship is a “right.” But, the freedom to engage in certain relationships, given that partners are consenting adults and other social crimes are not being committed (underage marriage, abuse, etc.), without criminal offense, should be a “right.”
But back to the idea of “culture.” Laws need to be viewed beyond the immediate legalities to the culture they nurture. Someone brought up divorce law. Prior to “no fault divorce”, perhaps it was too difficult to get a divorce and strictures needed to be addressed, but “no fault divorce” has created a cultural attitude toward marriage and divorce that has largely been a socio-political and cultural disaster that has affected nearly every family.
Whether or not heterosexual couples can produce children, there is something to be said for a previously stated argument that they still maintain a pattern of marriage between man and woman that is generally in harmony with the promotion of marriage between a man and a woman and a social ideal. And I do believe marriage between a man and a woman is a social ideal and not just a religious ideal. Healthy families that consist of responsible, caring adults, a man and a woman raising biological children for whom they provide emotionally, spiritual, intellectually, and temporally, is the ideal.
Ben (#25), I don’t think it’s bigotry to state that there are certain circumstances that are “sub-optimal.” My belief, again, is that there is an ideal: a family headed by a mother and a father of biological children where the mother and father care for the emotional, spiritual, and temporal needs of their children. Clearly this is an exception rather than the rule. But, do we totally forego the ideal? When a client comes for therapy where there are clearly problems in the family that are common to a majority of families, do we not work to change that situation simply because they are far from alone in their situation? I was raised in a single parent home, by my mother, and I like to think that I turned out reasonably okay, but there were problems in my home with infidelity (which ultimately led to the divorce), and I hold firmly that I would have been much better off raised by both my parents who loved and were committed to each other and honored their marital vows and covenants. So, now, I make due with what I had and work to change the negative consequences my family of origin had on me emotionally and otherwise. I don’t think that saying my family situation was less than ideal or “sub-optimal” is an attack on my parents or my value as a person, given the affects that situation had on me. And the families in which we are raised do profoundly affect us.
I don’t think I’m being bigoted, either, by stating that single-parent, gay/lesbian, etc, households are “sub-optimal”. And while we do need to grant certain “rights” to those who are going to choose or are victim to such circumstances, we also have the responsibility to enact laws that promote the greatest of social goods and nurture a culture that values and supports those goods.
Beck, I hear what you say about adoption, and good adoptive families are SO needed—but I would suggest they are needed, generally speaking, because of the falling short of the ideal for one reason or another. Teen pregnancy, out-of-wedlock birth, parental neglect, loss of biological parents due to tragedy, etc—these are all non-ideal circumstances, and we’re glad to have stable and available families to come in and provide the love and support these kids need. But, would you argue that it is better for children to be raised in an adoptive home than a home where there is a biological mother and father who love and nurture the child in all the ways needed? Even with a healthy adoption, there are lots of difficulties families have to deal with—difficulties that become MORE difficult the older the potential adoptee gets: attachment, identity, etc. These are invaluable in the healthy emotional and relational development of children. But, adoption into a loving family is better than no family or an abusive family. It’s a valuable repair attempt when biological parents are unavailable or unable to care for the children, but it’s not ideal.
I believe there are even religious beliefs (I’m NOT talking specially about religious organizations) who espouse beliefs that I believe are “sub-optimal.” The Jehovah’s Witness discouragement of higher education I believe is “sub-optimal.” And I don’t consider myself bigoted toward people of that tradition.
A.J., you crack me up. So true.
Scot, I’m sorry for being “not cool”. In pretty much any context at all I’m in favor of using the best available data, not appealing to the scant chance that the totality of evidence is all inadequate to tell us anything. But, then, this topic is unique and I’m still trying to sort it out. My skepticism would remain even if it weren’t politically charged and emotionally volatile, but I think my conclusion that the data (i.e. not showing a difference in certain aspects of gay parent raised children) doesn’t matter much is acceptable under the circumstances.
I think it would perhaps be best to phrase the presented ideal as “It is ideal that the creators are responsible for their own creations” instead of “The creators are the ideal caregivers for their creations.”
“It is ideal that the creators are responsible for their own creations” puts the burden of upholding the ideal on the creators whereas “The creators are the ideal caregivers for their creations” puts the burden of upholding the ideal on the quality of caregiving.
If we were truly seeking the latter, marrying only those who are the ideal caregivers (or those who would raise the children the best), we wouldn’t be worried about biology in the least bit; we would be seeking out those who are most apt in teaching and child rearing.
I feel (and correct me if I’m wrong) this concept of ‘traditional marriage’ at core is focusing on the former: We should be taking responsibility for our own actions, and if we are going to create children we should be the ones rearing and taking care of them — marriage is, therefore, seen as the contract we sign before we take on that responsibility. If, therefore, we are not (or cannot) take upon ourselves that responsibility, then marriage is vain (it would be like getting a gym membership and never going).
Quite frankly, I agree 100% with this concept of responsibility as the ideal. However, that’s NOT what’s happening; there are many ‘creators’ who are breaking this ideal — and to blame and fine those who are picking up the slack as offenders of the ideal instead of blaming and fining those who are deviating from the ideal is cruel, to say the least.
It makes no sense to me to say people who enter into a contract saying, “I will take responsibility of what should be someone else’s responsibility” do not deserve to enter into the contract of marriage… it just doesn’t make any sense to me to fine such a contract, and it especially doesn’t make any sense to say that such a contract is deviant to Christian ideals — ideally, should we not be willing to fulfill duties of others when these others cannot fulfill such duties… isn’t that what Christ is all about?
Basically, I’m tired of hearing that gay marriage breaks/offends/blasphemes an ideal when the ideal is dependent on children being created, and therefore only breakable by heterosexual relationships. I’m tired of gay couples being seen as inferior parents when they are repairing damages made to this believed ideal. Seriously, it’s bull crap, and to dishonor, in any way, the contributions being made to society by these couples is, to put it bluntly, highly ungrateful.
(On a different note, and to perhaps sidetrack a little:
Pertaining to what is necessary in creating a child: it is needed only 46 chromosomes and an environment for the fetus to develop… theoretically speaking, two men or two women can provide such; so, I wonder: if there comes a time in science where a healthy human embryo can be formed from two sperm or two ova (which has already been done with mice) would you (those who hold the “marriage is only for raising one’s own biological children” stance) accept homosexual marriage or would you adjust your stance?)
Ron: No, I do not think polygamy meets the ideal, at least for the long term. Perhaps for a couple generations at most. Personal opinion, obviously. So I would not try to defend polygamy in front of Ellen. I would make the point that Ty makes, which is an excellent one, which is that our ancestors were not claiming that polygamy was the same as regular marriage. They said it was different, and even came up with their own word for it (“plural marriage”). This concept did not depend on recognition from the state, only their non-interference with it. Gays already have this freedom everywhere in the country to design and advocate for their own desired arrangements ever since Lawrence v. Texas was handed down. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, wrote:
This finding is broad, sweeping, and the law of the land. And none of the constitutional amendments proposed limiting marriage to one man and one woman would change that either. If there are specific changes to laws they need to help them be better accommodated (such as immigration or adoption laws), then they could lobby for those specific laws to be changed without needing to appropriate the term ‘marriage’ for those arrangements.
-L-: I actually think Scot was addressing me, rather than you, but confusing the two of us. If so, then I will address Scot
Scot: When I dismiss these studies I do not mean to say they are useless, that the researchers wasted their time, or that your work in summarizing them was useless. But they are not relevant to our discussion here for three reasons. 1. This is not an empirical claim, because I do not claim that gay parents are bad parents. I am saying what I think should be. 2. If we were to try to show that children were “harmed” by being raised by same sex parents, the outcomes I would be most interested in (those childrens’ attitudes and practices about their own marriages, sexual conduct, and divorce) would not have emerged yet to draw any conclusions. 3. These studies are trying to tell us about the effects of same sex parents; you are arguing that these same sex parents and their children, will benefit from marriage. But since these studies lump all same sex couples into one bucket, whether they are married, in partnerships, or neither, we cannot distinguish the effects, if any, on those couples’ children of marriage versus domestic partnership versus nothing. We do not know, and these studies cannot tell us, if having unmarried same sex parents harms children and having married same sex parents helps them.
Note how this points out a glaring inconsistency in the arguments of some here (not you, Scot). They say that it is offensive to suggest that it is sub-optimal to have children raised in conditions other than with a mother and a father, that it shouldn’t matter so long as they are loved. But then they turn around and insist that homosexual couples need marriage in order to properly raise their children. Are they saying marriage is an ideal condition for children parented by same sex couples but not for children who are not?
Ty #43: Great points all, except I really worry about polygamy. More than I do about gay marriage. I’ll try to explain later, but a really good reason for opposing gay marriage is because it will inevitably lead to polygamy (and the Prop 8 would prevent that as well, though it would not, obviously, prevent the granting of the “certain rights” that you are contemplating for them.)
Andrew #45: I never said, and do not believe, that gay parents are inferior for repairing damage (through adoption I think you are saying) caused by heterosexuals. I would hate for you to be offended for something I did not say, and do not believe.
While your hypothetical example of same sex parents both being genetically related to each other (this is through a process known as nuclear transfer) will produce children genetically related to both parents, it does not solve the problem of the need for gender complimentarity in parenting. And it also will not happen by accident, after a bender at the bar.
Borealis
I think u miss the point of what I am saying.
I am responding to your concerns about parenting and children getting the best possible start in life. I think your response to Ellen was in the spirit of saying to her that children deserve the best parenting possible. And so you’re saying she and her partner couldn’t provide it. You are suggesting that you and your wife can do that better. And you are saying other LDS in CA can make the same argument.
So, the issue of polygamy with reference to the bit of Kennedy’s writing for the majority which you quoted. It is irrelevant in my mind to the point under discussion–which is the rearing of children.
I am raising the issue of polygamy because of how it may and has affected the rearing of children. I gave you examples from my own grandmothers as to how it affected their rearing.
Here I think is Ellen’s response to you.
Ellen: You have got to be kidding, Borealis.
You are talking to me about concerns with respect to the rearing of children??? Do you realize that your Church promoted polygamy for 40-50 years???? Have you watched the news lately? Do you have any idea how polygamy has been affecting the rearing of children in Texas lately? So you think, polygamy for a generation or two is OK for children??? You amaze me!!!!
I haven’t weighed in on this thread yet, waiting to have something to say that hasn’t been said before. I think I have it now.
Forgive me that the following is not quoted exactly or cited well. I can’t find the copy I had of the book cited, so I can’t give an accurate reference or a verbatim quote.
From Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band:
One gay character says to his partner:
Now, if someone is inclined to do it, I’d love to have the exact quote and citation.
Rex, I accept that other people have different opinions. I don’t accept that all opinions are equally valid, particularly when certain opinions seek to harm whole classes of people.
“I actually think Scot was addressing me, rather than you, but confusing the two of us. If so, then I will address Scot”
No, L knows it was him; we go back ;-).
“(those childrens? attitudes and practices about their own marriages, sexual conduct, and divorce) ”
Five years ago it was all about the doomed mental well being of the children and gender behaviors; it starts to feel like the goal posts keep changing. Nevertheless, we have data about their sexual conduct, and sexual orientation. Do you have a mechanism in mind by which their practices of marriage or divorce would be altered? I was raised by a heterosexual couple and their example translated into my getting married. Why would it be different for children of same sex parents?
Nevertheless, these children come into same-sex headed families regardless of marriage. Parenting and marriage are separate issues; in fact, in Utah, we are 3rd in the nation in the percentage of lesbian couples on the 2000 US census also raising children.
“you are arguing that these same sex parents and their children, will benefit from marriage. ”
Do you disagree?
“But since these studies lump all same sex couples into one bucket,”
You can read the methods; some will tell you. Most of the time it will only be parents who are both legal co-parents, as there was no (or rare) marriage law at the time.
“Note how this points out a glaring inconsistency in the arguments of some here (not you, Scot). ”
No, I’m as glaringly inconsistent as my friends :-).
“They say that it is offensive to suggest that it is sub-optimal to have children raised in conditions other than with a mother and a father, that it shouldn?t matter so long as they are loved. But then they turn around and insist that homosexual couples need marriage in order to properly raise their children. Are they saying marriage is an ideal condition for children parented by same sex couples but not for children who are not?”
There are, of course, more options than that.
First, promoting an idea that there is something defective with our children is not merely “offensive,” it’s factually wrong and damaging to the relationship between our children and the LDS children they’ll interact with. Yes, most children do best with their biological mother and father, but a minority of children do not; they do best with their parents, be they adoptive or ivf, same-sex or not.
I’ve a hard time believing–and I hope for good reason–you really want to deny there are benefits in marriage for couples and their children because some parents are able to compensate.
Remember you are dealing here with a population of infertile couples who go through hoops to become parents; the least committed of them are weeded out. While the majority of all pregnancies in the US are planned (a great deal of married heterosexual couples do not experience your accidental children problem anyway), as you argued, that group that are unintended don’t make it to parenthood via adoption or ivf. Research has found non-biological parents, in general, because of these trials, end up being more involved and committed parents. But it’s a false choice to pose that either non-biological parents are bad parents or they don’t benefit by legal marriage, right? It’s as if you’d hope to test parenting ability and disallow marriage for the best equipped–a sort of socialistic aim to punish the successful in this non-zero-sum game–but that does no one any good, particularly in the case of basic human rights and discriminating on sexual anatomy. The rising tide here lifts all boats, and we all benefit when both dysfunctional families and great families are lifted, right?
I have to think, without the heat of these politics, it’d be clear to all that “doing as good as average” at one task, doesn’t mean “doesn’t deserve equal treatment” or “can’t do better” at others.
Also, it’s not only parents and children who stand to benefit (ways in which they would listed here), it’s society on whole (ways listed here). Marriage is simply not a hammer, good for one purpose and one nail; it’s more like a swiss army knife in its many benefits to society. It’ not that either children are doing worse than average, or society can’t benefit by giving their parents legal marriage.
A friendly reminder to A.J. and L: “When summarizing the other side?s arguments, it is disrespectful to present their arguments as a caricature rather than fairly.”
I am not offended; however, you may not have said it outright, and you may not believe it, but such is rather inferred in the belief — whether you can see it or not, it’s there.
Your argument for marriage, as presented here, is based solely on creation (unless I missed something), not gender complement. However, if you feel compelled, keep an eye on my blog; my next post will address the latter.
You kind of lost me here…
Ben, there are opinions and truth. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and life is better for everyone when there is freedom to share them. Only in dictatorships are there opinions that are less valid. A person’s opinion may not portray the truth, but no opinion in and of itself can harm one person, much less a whole class.
Andrew (#44), I think you’re right in stating that there are many “creators” who are careless—and even occasionally criminal—in the way they break/neglect their responsibilities as creators. And it’s left to others to join in a help out. That is why adoption and healthy, stable extended family are so invaluable. And we need laws that govern the process of who/how others step in that process. But, to try to change the ideal or claim that the most positive alternatives should be substituted as the ideal is irresponsible. For someone to say that those who pick up the slack are offenders is, as you say, and I would agree, hurtful and likewise irresponsible. I would also suggest that not all alternatives to situations where the ideal fails are of equal value, in my judgment. A healthy, stable two parent home is better for a child than a healthy stable single-parent home or a home headed by a gay/lesbian couple.
Concerning another point you made, I would agree that to suggest that gay people are by nature inferior parents because they are gay is a damaging, hurtful idea. I don’t believe it. Individually, and perhaps even as a couple, I think they could often provide a very healthy nurturing environment. But, that’s not the same as saying that the MOST positive/healthy/ideal environment would be in a home headed by both a mother and a father. If I were a judge and was given the option of placing a child with a straight couple whom I had reason to believe would be abusive or neglectful, or a gay couple who had demonstrated stability and the likelihood of providing a stable, nurturing environment, and those were my only options, I would place the child with the gay couple. But I would never suggest that that situation was now the ideal. And I would always try to enact laws/policies that upheld and promoted the ideal within our culture. Always.
On a different note, it’s seems to me that gays aren’t as much interested in “rights” as they are social affirmation–a cultural attitude that would fully affirm that there is absolutely no difference between homosexual relationships and heterosexual relationships, generally speaking, and that parenting by homosexual couples is as equally ideal for a child as parenting by heterosexual couples. And that’s nonsense, to be frank. There are differences—differences determined by biology. Whether or not we state that those differences have lesser or greater or equal value is an entirely different question, but there ARE differences. Two men is not the same as two women and neither are the same as a man and a women. Sex and gender and the biological, temperamental, psychological, and emotional differences that come with those differences will have an impact on children. Again, I’m stating that there are differences; I’m not stating, at least given this particular question that any one of those differences has greater or lesser value.
But, when we get to the greater or lesser value, I believe that the most ideal setting, again, is to be raised in a home with a mother and a father. I will ardently defend the truth that there are certain gay couples who would likely provide a more stable and nurturing environment than heterosexual couples, but I would suggest that if there is the option between placing a child in a healthy stable home headed by a mother and a father, verses a home headed by a lesbian or gay couple, that the child always go to the home with a mother and a father. Again, I’m talking generalities and all other things being equal.
Ron (#47), I don’t think its fair to make broad judgments about the value of plural marriage based in the Texas LDS sect any more than it would be fair to make broad generalizations about gay marriage/parenting based on California pride parades with gay couples carrying children who are holding signs saying “Got lube?” (true story). My judgment, based on what I’ve seen in the practice of some more contemporary, independent polygamous families, is that many of them are quite stable and healthy and provide a positive nurturing environment. I doubt I could ever find it on my heart do defend the Brigham Young example (twenty-something wives and fifty-something children), but there are other models and practices that I would suspect to be quite healthy, stable, and nurturing environments. And if it were not for the illegalities and social taboo around plural marriage, I would suggest placement of children in one of these families before I would suggest placement with a family headed by a gay couple. But I accept that’s purely my personal judgment.
Ben, I’m sorry if you were offended by my being amused by Godwin’s law. It’s the first I remember hearing of it, and it’s insightful in a funny way regardless of any present discussion. As far as your last several comments directed toward me, I have written answers to them, but I’ve decided not to post them for several reasons. If you really want me to respond, let me know privately.
Ty: “And I would always try to enact laws/policies that upheld and promoted the ideal within our culture. Always.”
Ty, I have to wonder: do you think it’s ideal for a child to be raised by a gay man and a straight woman couple, given the added difficulties? If you had to choose in a case of adoption, would you favor the straight man/woman couple instead? Would you hope to promote, if you could, that ideal?
While the research has been hard pressed to find any deficit in children of same sex parent, I can show you research that has found, on average, deficiencies in children of parents who’ve ever been treated for depression, are left handed, live below the poverty line, are deaf, and I could go on. Why is everyone blowing off the research and favoring a gut reaction as evidence for same-sex couples, and no one is wanting to stop those “non-ideal” unions with demonstrated problems?
What about convicted felons? I doubt anyone thinks they are ideal parents, and yet no one is out to stop them from marriage. Why is it that the ideal is not promoted? You write you would always do that, and you may, but I’ve not heard one serious or action-backed word about keeping convicted criminals from marriage, or any of the other group that raises, on average, children who have been shown to have significant problems.
I think, outside of gay issues, we all know no parents are ideal; we don’t typically want to pick or define another man’s family, and we know marriage can most often only help those families that may be called non-ideal. I certainly want them to get married, as nearly all couples, parents, and societies benefits when people couple up. We benefit even more when we hold them to their promises.
This claim of hoping to “promote the ideal” just comes off as a misdirection, particularly when it’s supposedly for the children, the same children many of whom anti-same sex marriage movements are trying vigorously to keep from stuff like their breadwinner’s health insurance and an equal right to inheritance, and make sure one of their parents can just up and leave their family with no legal consequence. Even for clearly sub-par parents, who is really against marriage?
“Again, I?m stating that there are differences; I?m not stating, at least given this particular question that any one of those differences has greater or lesser value.”
I know you are trying to be nice, as others are here, and that’s appreciated. Nevertheless, such claims of neutrality can seem to parents like myself as attempts to avoid personally feeling the consequences of the opinion. It can be even worse than just eating the cake. If you aren’t saying there are deficits in children of same-sex parents, what does it mean to say it’s not the ideal place to raise children? We all know the message sent to all our children, and an attempt to disown it would be best explained.
(so much for my test of will; I’m hooked ;-))
I concur completely; however, to generalize homosexual men and women with heterosexual men and women is perhaps the biggest flaw I’ve seen, especially pertaining to biology, temperament, psychology, emotions, etc. From what I’ve witnessed in my life so far, homosexuals generally have a much different nature to them, a different makeup of these characteristics, than the heterosexual counterpart. (And when I speak of ‘homosexuals’ I’m not talking about how attracted someone is to the same sex; I’m talking about something much more innate I’ve witnessed, something that affects the very core nature of an individual.)
I understand — and agree with — the sentiment that two straight men are less ideal of parents and two straight women are less ideal of parents; there simply isn’t that complement of nature. However, to project that onto homosexuals is rather irresponsible, in my opinion. I’m not saying that this would, necessarily, imply that homosexuals are equal parents as heterosexual parents (I do believe this, but such is not what I’m arguing right now); I’m just saying, if we are, indeed, looking at differences, we should be looking at differences, and a homosexual is biologically, emotionally, temperamentally, etc. different than a heterosexual.
And, again, I have stated this before, but from what research I’ve read so far pertaining to the impact homosexual couples have on their children: the children tend to me more caring, empathetic, compassionate, etc.
They also tend to be less interested in conforming to social gender roles (oh no, there are going to be more female mathematicians… ) Of course, this is highly significant in the LDS world as gender roles are seen as absolutely vital — a person with a penis has one specific gender role to which he must conform or he cannot be exalted; a person with a vagina has another.
On a different note, it?s seems to me that gays aren?t as much interested in ?rights? as they are social affirmation?a cultural attitude that would fully affirm that there is absolutely no difference between homosexual relationships and heterosexual relationships, generally speaking, and that parenting by homosexual couples is as equally ideal for a child as parenting by heterosexual couples.
I agree with you on this as well. This is exactly what I’m seeking, because it is exactly what I believe and have seen. It is what I have prayed and constantly pray about, and it has become a part of my testimony of God.
I parallel it with the LDS desire to be seen as Christians. I mean, what does it matter if other Christian denominations equate Mormonism with Christianity? Yet, it seems to matter to the LDS church, and the leaders will continue to defend their position that they are Christian — even though there are differences in belief (and such are perceived as rather major differences that impact how the children of God are spiritually raised).
And to brush it off with, “that?s nonsense” is rather irresponsible, in itself. That is, yes, it’s nonsense to say that there aren’t differences — just as it would be nonsense to say there’s no difference between a pound of sugar that came from sugar cane and a pound of sugar that came from sugar beets. It is not nonsense, however, that one prefers sugar from cane more than sugar from beet, vice versa, or believes that the 99.95% sucrose composition of both sugars is equal, that the 0.05% difference has no adverse effects, either way (that is to say, they believe that the differences do not negate equality of quality).
And I would always try to enact laws/policies that upheld and promoted the ideal within our culture. Always.
I’m far less concerned with cultural ideals and far more concerned with absolute ideals. Culturally, man and woman as parents are seen as the ideal. I do not agree with this, I do not believe this, and I do not believe such is truly God’s stance. These are my beliefs, and I would never try to force anyone else to accept my ideal — I will share my testimony of what I believe is ideal, I would hope people would go and sincerely pray about it without expectation of specific answers, but I would never try to shove it down someone’s throat… and I would definitely not treat someone who didn’t share my ideal as a lesser being whom I cannot support and sustain as my brother/sister in Christ because I believe their actions are sinful — and, yes, quite frankly, I think this attitude people have in regards to homosexuality is very sinful and destructive to a Zion-ed atmosphere.
And if a law/policy/belief/attitude has an inference of this, that people with different ideals deserve less, I will not support it.
Now, I do understand the importance of restricting someone’s ideal if it comes with the possibility of infringing upon another’s rights — and I believe this is where the LDS stance is coming from as they believe it is a child’s right to be raised by a male and a female. Again, though, the quality of parenting I have seen and witnessed in homosexual parents is equal to the quality of parenting I have seen and witnessed in heterosexual parents. Research, beliefs, what-have-you aside, I have witnessed what I have witnessed, and I have witnessed that “if there is the option between placing a child in a healthy stable home headed by a mother and a father, verses a home headed by a lesbian or gay couple … all other things being equal” then one has an equal choice; therefore, I have not witnessed any infringement of rights.
As far as the LDS church’s stance of upholding their ideal in a non-LDS realm, however, such is directly infringing upon or attempting to block (and I don’t mean just legally) my inalienable right to pursue happiness and to create the best possible life according to my ideals — which ideals, again, I have witnessed far from infringe upon anyone else’s rights, including children.
The LDS church refuses to even give me and those like me a chance to prove our natures as entities that can be married (not in a legal sense) as one to create a balanced whole, capable of creating an ideal environment in which to raise a child. Such is an infringement upon our right to a fair trial — I believe such a right extends into the spiritual, and it’s a right Mormons tend to call every time someone says something to the effect of, “Mormons are not Christians.” This infringement is evident in my parents where my future spouse is automatically not really welcome in their house — and this is directly due to the advice and stance of the LDS church. There is no fair trial to see if my choice is producing/will produce good fruit or bad fruit; it is automatically condemned as bad fruit and unwelcome.
Granted, I’m sure there’s going to be a natural trial when it comes to my family in that they will see — and have already begun to see, actually — the results of my decision. However, the LDS church, herself, seems to be refusing any sort of trial and, therefore, will not accept any evidence because it is believed that the Judge has preemptively spoken and ruled out the possibility of any trial. Any evidence trying to be presented gets the label, “We already have a ruling; the case is shut,” and no fair trial is given. This, perhaps above all other things, is what really frustrates me.
Ty (#54)
I am making no generalization based on TX. I am simply saying to Borealis, that I think that in his discussion with Ellen (which he suggests can be a model for other CA Mormons) it is going to difficult to hold a position that says the major motivation for supporting the amendment is to provide children the best possible home environment. Ellen and others (I think) will say, look at polygamy and what you did in Utah for well over 50 years?? Was that really in the best interest of children??? So now you want to admonish us about how to raise children in CA????
Perhaps you don’t agree with how I think Ellen will respond?
With respect to your personal judgment wherein you prefer to place children with polygamous couples, I would not try to make such a judgment. I am simply saying my personal family experience didn’t work out very well with polygamy. I wouldn’t choose to be raised in a polygamous family. I liked having my dad and mom always in my home. And I wouldn’t try to persuade Ellen that polygamy can be an ideal way to raise children, better than what she could provide, which is apparently your feeling based on your last sentence.
Ron, all I was trying to say was that whether generalization come from me, you, or Ellen, we need to be cautious of them. Just as homosexual arrangements vary, so do plural marriage arrangements. And I would hope, if I were ever put in a position to make a judgment, that I would look beyond stereotypes and generalities. Not all plural marriage arrangements are the same; often a husband and his wives will all live in the same household, so your statement about always having your mom and your dad in your home wouldn’t be applicable in such a case. Not only would mom and dad be home, but there my might be two or three moms and dad at home–all of whom could add unique gifts to the nurturing of the children in that home.
I’m not promoting plural marriage. I’m just pointing out some of the problems that I think can occur when we don’t consider the complexity and diversity of different arrangements. I’m thoroughly annoyed by gay people who get defensive when people suggest that opening up the doors to gay marriage would also open up the doors to plural marriage. I want to see those doors opened, though not as the socially affirmed standard. My personal socio-political preference is to uphold marriage between one man and one woman as a general social standard and ideal, while decriminalizing and granting certain legal rights to non-traditional couples or family arrangements that are not deemed to be specifically harmful to the emotional, psychological, or physical health of those involved. That’s a tricky dynamic to workout, but that would be my preference.
Scot,
First, I don’t accept the simplistic labels of gay and straight. I think they’re cheap, and the complexities of the human experience quickly get lost when reduced to them. If someone chooses to identify as gay, fine. But to use that has a term that somehow defines and clarifies the whole experience of someone who is same-sex attracted is entirely problematic. Every relationship has difficulties. And when relational dynamics where one person experiences SSA are taken into perspective of the vast array of difficulties that arise in marriage, I can only say that they are unique, not more or less difficult. If I were in a position to judge during an adoption case, I would look at the entire case. If I was aware that the man in one relationship experienced SSA, but had demonstrated that he was an emotionally stable/mature individual and was a positive, nurturing presence in the home, and the “straight” man in the other couple was less present/mature/nurturing, I would give custody to the former. Easily. If the options were between a gay couple who had demonstrated that they were both emotionally stable/mature individuals and that there was a positive, nurturing presence in the home, on one hand, and a man/woman household where there was reason for concern of abuse or neglect, on the other, I would likely give custody again to the former. Though it wouldn’t be my ideal. I would prefer to find a stable/mature/nurturing man/woman couple to take the child.
To hold that there is an ideal for the raising of children, and that we should be socio-culturally and politically supportive of that idea, is that “blowing off” your research? I’m happy to hear that child-rearing in same-sex homes isn’t “harmful.” If it were, I would hope we would criminalize it. But the point is, I don’t believe its the most ideal atmosphere. And I’m always prone to look at social science research with an incredibly skeptical eye, regardless of what “side” it comes from. A intelligent and articulate researcher can design a study to make the results say whatever he/she wants. I certainly think research is highly valuable, but it needs to be looked at critically. Too many people on both sides of any divide are a bit to eager to jump on board with any research study that affirms their side of the discussion—and I feel equally as critical of those who do the same from a more “conservative” standpoint.
You’re right that there are who “vigorously to keep from stuff like their breadwinner?s health insurance and an equal right to inheritance, and make sure one of their parents can just up and leave their family with no legal consequence,” but even though I do not support gay marriage as a “right”, I do support certain legal rights for non-traditional couples that would grant some of the legal benefits you specifically referred to. I support legislation against hate crimes, job and housing discrimination, etc. But I do not support making gender irrelevant in our society and culture, generally, or when it comes to marriage and family, specifically.
I would argue that ignoring the gender differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals is doing just this, making gender irrelevant, throwing it away for sex (meaning one’s anatomy, not the act). With this attitude, it doesn’t matter what the core gender makeup of a spousal relationship is, it only matters what anatomy is present.
From what I have observed, I believe there is as equal of a complement of genders in homosexual couples as there is in heterosexual couples.
Using the sugar cane vs. sugar beet example, the 0.05% difference is mostly anatomy… and, I must truly question if this is sufficient reason to tip the scales in favor for one or the other. I especially question such when I apply the concept of Christ’s message: Stop worrying about the outward stuff, and start worrying about the inward stuff. And, again, inwardly, I believe homosexual couples are equal in every way — including gender — to heterosexual couples.
Andrew (#57): The original post was more humanistic in it’s arguments, and I’ve tried to maintain that sentiment in my comments of my own political ideals. A lot of what you’ve shared breaches into the theological, so I won’t approach that here. I will say, though, that you seem to criticize my generalization and then you go on to make a similar generalization. You say:
Then you say:
I simply don’t accept this. Again, I defer to the complexity of the human experience. Granted, I’m heavily prone to deconstructionism, but, as I mentioned in my response to Cog, I philosophically reject the categorization of “gay” and “straight” that you seem to have adopted. That there is or should be a difference in the parenting of a mature “straight” man and a mature “gay” man—broadly speaking, because there are certainly going to be differences based on individual personality, temperament, etc, of ALL men—seems overly-simplistic and misguided.
I’ll simply reaffirm my belief that, even if a child is not harmed by having same-sex caregivers, it is missing something that a child raised with both a mature/healthy male/masculine and mature/healthy female/feminine will have. I’m a firm believer that children need mature nurturing and consistent presence from both a father and a mother for the most healthy emotional, mental, and relational development. I’ve already stated that I do not come from such a home—at least not from the time my parents divorced when I was in my early teens—but I still have firm conviction of this truth as an ideal that we should uphold and nurture. And I do have issues I have to work through related to circumstances in my upbringing, both related and unrelated to SSA. Some of these issues may have been there had my parents been more healthy and committed in their relationship and in the way they raised us, and some probably not.
Ty, re: vocabulary. fine. By gay i just mean attracted primarily to your same sex, nothing more, just as I mean “primarily favors their left hand” when I use the slang southpaw.
Of course; the point it that some families have an easier time keeping together and raising children than others. Why not favor the ideal?
It does, surprise me to know you think it’s not more difficult, on average, on all involved to conduct a relationship contrary to your orientation, considering the accounts on the blogs. I too advocate looking for a home for a child based only on the child’s best interest on a case-by-case basis. In other examples you’ve given, though, there was the idea of all other things being equal between the two options, no? That is what I was asking; not about a SSA man who was “emotionally stable/mature individual..” and a OSA man who was “was less present/mature/naturing”. What if all other things were equal by your analysis but the fact that one man was oriented towards men and the other towards his wife? Is there an ideal there?
At this question, I’m not sure I was clear then. Of course we should be supportive of families, but no family is the ideal family. No one is hoping to take or keep support away from families but those against equal marriage rights and responsibilities for same-sex couples.
And yes, we all know the problems with the research; I address them and recommend people look at the methods; I link to each paper and hope to eventually have up a dry description of each one’s methods. My point was there are many identifiable groups who do raise children with detectable deficiencies, some of them I listed above. By the definition of “ideal for raising children,” they cannot be the ideal either. If you hold to your hope to promote only the ideal in marriage, why do they get a pass?
Great :-).
Andrew, you continue to oversimplify the “heterosexual”/”homosexual” dichotomy. It’s not that simple. You almost seem to speak of homosexuality as a third gender—something I don’t accept scientifically, theologically, or philosophically. You can believe as you which, but please be careful to distinguish that which is scientific fact (difficult to do with such complex issues, I know, but I still suggest we at least try) and that which is part of your philosophy/theology, and through which you find meaning your circumstances. I simply don’t know how to engage some of the things you’ve said outside of a more nuanced discussion.
I would suggest that a great deal of the problems and difficulty in relationships where one individual experiences same-sex attraction stems from shame, secrecy, insecurity, dishonesty, infidelity, and possibly mental and emotional immaturity on the part of one or both partners. As we evolve culturally—both in society and in the Church—such that individuals have access to more support, resources, help, etc, before entering marriage so they can do so without the baggage of shame and secrecy, with proper expectations and sufficient maturity, and so that they do so more from internal desire/drive than from external familial/cultural pressure, the nature of difficulties will change. I know a good number of men and women in opposite sex marriages, and those where there is a high level of maturity, honesty, openness, and commitment are the ones where I sense there is the most fulfillment and happiness. (Notice I didn’t say raging heterosexual drive.) I expect that they have difficulties in their marriage, but not more than other couples, generally, and not necessarily due to same-sex attraction specifically—rather, more to periphery issues that would be problematic in any relationship but which tend to be especially problematic with those dealing with SSA because of the way we’ve traditionally approached the issue within out culture.
Even if both partners in both a homosexual relationship and a heterosexual relationship were equally of general relative maturity, I still believe, as I stated in my response to Andrew, that a child is best off when raised with both a mature/healthy male/masculine and mature/healthy female/feminine nurturing presence for the most healthy emotional, mental, and relational development. Everyone has problems and issues from their family of origin that they will need to sort through in adulthood—if they don’t think they do, they’re completely ignorant—but I still believe the situation as stated above is the most ideal for children to be raised in.
You’re point is well-taken. My thought is simply that we identify those problems and address them individually, still striving to maintain and nurture an ideal in our laws/policies while simultaneously recognizing that few, if any, situations are ideal and that we are going to have to likewise have policies that allow for those circumstances, as well as resources to help those individuals/families improve and work toward that. Some may simply not share that ideal, and some accommodation needs to be made for them too, but I believe they will generally be in the minority, and that the majority needs to uphold what it sees as that greatest social good as the ideal, and nurture it.
Ty (#59)
I agree we should be cautious of generalizations, which is one difficulty I see in this whole line of reasoning advanced by Borealis to deal with Ellen. I believe his assertion is that there is one best family arrangement, the one supported by the amendment.
I have tried to suggest here, that it is difficult for the LDS to have a long history of polygamy, which has a checkered past for those of us who have it in our families, and yet insist that others must hold to what we now assert is the “ideal.”
I don’t think you, Ty, or anyone on the blog so far, seems to see what I see as a problem to be a problem. Maybe the CA folks, including Ellen, will not even notice that the LDS have this history, but we now want to “generalize” that there is one best type of family to raise children (which is not a polygamous family).
Maybe Borealis has, in fact, a perfect response for Ellen.
I can very well distinguish between what is theory/theology/philosophy and what is proven truth. Nowhere in my comments have I equated what is my philosophy to what is proven or fact. However, if we were to stick solely to what is scientifically proven, then much of this post is void.
Nevertheless, I will stick to, from now on, empirical data:
I did come from such a home, and, from my observations, children raised by homosexual couples are not missing anything that I had and have.
Children raised by single parents? Absolutely. Children raised by two sets of parents due to divorce and remarriage? Absolutely. Children raised by homosexual couples? Absolutely not.
Perhaps.
That is not what I am implying or believe.
Again, I will leave the nuances out from now on.
For what it’s worth, declaring ideals is nuance by nature. I was merely declaring my ideal as opposed to the ideal presented and put in the mouths of Ellen and her viewers. My ultimate goal in commenting on this thread was not to convince anyone of my ideal but to show that not everyone shares the “It is ideal for a child to be raised by a man and a woman” belief.
Furthermore, I find it rather unfair to claim that I am speaking on a mostly theological stance when my stance is based primarily on what I have observed in my life as a child raised by heterosexual couple compared to the lives of the children I have witnessed who have been/are being raised by homosexual couples.
Meanwhile, the stance presented in this post is not based on any firsthand experience or observation but is rooted in the theological belief of what it means to be male/female.
Please, don’t try to project on me what you, yourselves, appear to be doing.
Ron, perhaps I don’t see a problem in what you seem to see as a problem. Generally, I’m annoyed that members of the Church have such a knee-jerk reaction to polygamy. I think it’s disrespectful and does a disservice to our pioneer fathers and mothers who exercised a great deal of faith to practice it, who believed in and trusted the teachings of the prophets, when it was against the cultural grain of their upbringing.
I don’t have any personal problem with the practice, and while I don’t have personal conviction about it’s practice in the eternities, I don’t have any problem with the idea that that may be the case for some—though it doesn’t make any sense to me that it would be so for all or even most. So many of our ideas about monogamy being the ideal form of marriage are modern, western cultural constructs. Within the context of larger world history, polygamy has been the norm, not monogamy. But, my socio-political philosophy is that I support monogamy as the general standard, and believe that certain legal rights should be granted to non-traditional couples.
Andrew, I was referring to the ideas you were bringing into it concerning what Zion community should be like and that your testimony of God is such that there is no difference between same-sex couples and opposite sex couples (if I understood what you were saying correctly). If you want to have a theological discussion, we can have that elsewhere, because I don’t see anything you’ve just written as supportable theologically or revelationally (I think I just made up that word) by scripture or prophets, past or present. If you have any believe still in Mormonism, which I thought you did, this goes against the grain of every foundational assumption within very basics of Mormon thought. But, that is a different discussion for a different thread.
Concerning the more temporal nature of parents and families, you state:
Andrew, this statement—with all due respect, because I think you’re a very bright, thinking person—simply is not logical. You seem to be confusing things that are not to be confused and trying to defend something that is indefensible. Not missing anything? Uhh… how about a stable male/fathering presence in the case of a lesbian couple, or a stable female/mothering presence in the case of a gay male couple. Yes, there is something missing. You may try to say that the difference makes no difference in the end—though I would disagree with that as well—but you simply cannot say that there is no difference, or that nothing is missing.
Indeed, it is; however, I will merely state that my beliefs, theories, and philosophies concerning Zion and there being no fundamental differences between homosexual couples and heterosexual couples have been derived from what I have read in the scriptures (including, and very specifically from D&C 132) and from the prophets.
I really don’t want to come across as a “know-it-all” here… please don’t be offended if I do: This is solely logic; however, I should perhaps qualify that they are not missing anything that I value in my life and relationship with my parents. My logic is completely sound in saying, “I grew up in X, I have been observing Y, and I don’t see anything I value in X that is missing from Y.” (Granted, I did leave out “that I valued in X” originally. Also, I do admit, that different people value different things… but, again, that gets into nuances)
Wow, that comes off as sounding rather Totalitarian…
This statement and the one before are very nuance-heavy that, if taken without theology, can be deemed rather Freudian; psychology is not a proven science; therefore, by your own previous desires should not be used here — nor is it a solid, impenetrable barrier of offense.
(Of course, I do have a response to the concept of father figures and mother figures, but such is philosophically and psychologically founded — more “confusing things that are not to be confused” — and, as you desire, I will omit.)
True; I should not have implied that they are carbon copies in every way.
On the flip side, logically, it is not sound to say, “X and Y are different. Y is missing something that X has; therefore, X is ideal.” One could just as easily say, “X and Y are different. X is missing something Y has; therefore, Y is more ideal.”
Just as it was wrong of me to infer that there is absolutely nothing missing from homosexual couples that heterosexual couples have, it is wrong to infer that heterosexual couples absolutely have everything a homosexual couple has.
So, basing things on “Y may not be harmful, per-se, but it isn’t a carbon copy of X; therefore, X is ideal” is very illogical — unless, of course, there is included the statement, “X is ideal” — however, the way “X” is being presented as ideal here is through saying it isn’t the exact same as “Y.” This is not logically sound.
Ty: Have you ever met one of those Baptists who’d pity the poor children of the LDS, missing a good chance at heaven for the sort of parents they have? I imagine, such an intractable difference is what it comes down to here; there just seems to be no good way to debate around the supernatural.
Fact is, something is still being lost in translation between us, and I’d bet that rehashing it once more won’t matter much. I probably should have left this thread alone as I’ve tried to do elsewhere (blame Ben for this one ;-)).
Warm regards, and if anyone for some reason wants to keep at it you know where to find me :-).
Borealis started this lively discussion by producing a little hypothetical dialogue with Ellen which might be a sample for LDS members in CA to follow. Indeed, here are reportedly some suggestions for CA Church members. which were read this morning: It appears some will be having exactly the kind of dialogue we’ve been talking about..
PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING POINTS IN RELIEF SOCIETY AND PRIESTHOOD OPENING EXERCISES THIS SUNDAY, AUGUST 10, ONLY.
1. The First Presidency’s letter dated June 20, 2008, to all Church members in California states, “we ask that you do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time?”
2. In connection with the Proposition 8 campaign’s grassroots efforts, the supporting coalition, of which the Church is a member, will hold three walk/phone days to help generate voter support on August 16, 23 and September 6. We invite everyone who can do so to please participate either by “walking” that is, visiting homes door to door in assigned neighborhoods, or by phoning neighbors in specific assigned neighborhoods, for three hours each of these three days.
3. Church members who have been asked to help with the campaign will be calling you at your homes to officially ask you to help and give you further information about where and what time to meet this Saturday
4. They will also ask you to bring a friend from another faith to assist.
We, as a Bishopric, ask you to please participate in this important endeavor.
***********
I assume this is authentic, but I don’t know for sure just because it is circulating on the internet??
Ty (#69)
You say you don’t see a problem where I do.
Here is the response I think Borealis or you might get from Ellen (or a neighbor when we LDS go door to door).
Ellen: You have got to be kidding, Borealis.
You are talking to me about concerns with respect to the rearing of children??? Do you realize that your Church promoted polygamy for 40-50 years???? Do you think that is an ideal way to raise children?
I suppose this might be your response based on what you have said to me.
(#54)
My judgment, based on what I?ve seen in the practice of some more contemporary, independent polygamous families, is that many of them are quite stable and healthy and provide a positive nurturing environment..(if illegality were not an issue).. I would suggest placement of children in one of these families before I would suggest placement with a family headed by a gay couple.
But, of course, you might not say that to your neighbor, Ellen. Do you care to say what you would say?? I don’t think it is too far fetched to suggest some going door to door are going to get this challenge if they ask for support of the amendment because they just want an “ideal” family environment for children.
BTW..right after you say you don’t agree with me about polygamy being a problem,(#69) you say you are …
annoyed that members of the Church have such a knee-jerk reaction to polygamy. (You) … think it?s disrespectful and does a disservice to our pioneer fathers and mothers
I hope you are not calling my reaction to my grandparents “kneejerk.” I don’t think looking carefully at my own family history should be called a “kneejerk reaction.” I shared on the blog the experience of my own two grandmothers who grew up with the diviided attention of their fathers who had other wives and children. I honor my great-grandfathers for the good things they did. I also know something of how their daughters felt about them and the challenge they all faced in dealing with multiple families.
I think I’m respectful (especially of my grandmothers who I knew personally) but I can still consider whether this is a good way to raise children based on what is admittedly a limited example, but reflects a legitimate concern..
.
Clarification, Ron: No, I wasn’t referring to you when I made the comment about “kneejerk” reactions. Sorry about the misunderstanding. It was a side comment that came to mind that I probably didn’t distinguish enough from the other points you made.
But I’m still annoyed by it. :) Members of the Church can acknowledge our past respectfully even though we don’t currently practice, but too many members can’t seem to distance themselves from it quickly enough. I expressed similar thoughts after Romney’s comments on 60 Minutes several months back.
As a 60 yo openly gay man of many years, I am most fascinated that a presumably gay identified individual would author the original post. It leads me to think that the author is not entirely comfortable with his own identity as a gay person.
I do not know the author personally and while the arguments are somewhat well-reasoned within the context of the Mormon belief system, I witness a certain thoughtful yet dispassionate approach.
One thing which makes Ellen so popular is her “realness”, her empathy and compassion for others and her shining disposition while walking publicly through the world with her held head high and her feet planted firmly on the ground. I cannot say that I get the same impression from the respondent. If the author is heterosexual, I can more easily accept the p.o.v., but find it difficult to imagine a heterosexual making cojent observations about the nature of gay relationship without benefit of experience. On the other hand, I can imagine a gay person with little experience in actual gay relationships writing this and coming to these conclusions. I would counsel that person to broaden his own experience of “gay identity” in lieu of creating arguments for the sanctity of heterosexual marriage in civil law. For me, the arguments of the respondent lack an authenticity born out of personal knowledge. They seem like intellectual constructs which one could “use” if they felt the need to make an argument against same sex marriage. Meaning that they lack the emotional integrity one usually associates with personal conviction. I could certainly be wrong about all of this, but my God given intuition tells me otherwise.
There are some substantial argumentative flaws in this post. What I love most is how Ellen conveniently doesn’t argue back. This totally sounds like it could have been uttered by a politician. My favourite parts were when you didn’t answer how gay marriage affects heterosexual marriage, and when you said that you’re not denied marriage for being gay. Right, just for wanting a gay marriage. The distinction between the two is functionally non-existent.