Chik-fil-A

[Diogenes]

Then it is ignorance.
I read this from George Will:

"So the "sanctity" of American marriage is problematic. The crucial question is: Because the public meaning of marriage — the reason there are laws about it — is procreation and child rearing, what would be the consequences of altering the public meaning of marriage by including same-sex unions?"

Will we get kicked out of marriage-dom? You say no. Thanks. But let me ask you this - what if a heterosexual couple intentionally do not intend to have children, do not intend to adopt, they let everyone know this and then both take medical measures to ensure they cannot have kids. Would you, if you had the power, work to keep them and people like them from getting married? Why or why not?

The law takes no notice of extemporaneous commentary of people expressing their intentions to do this or that. Unless it is intentionally brought to the attention of a court by legal notice then it is irrelevant to the State what a person's expressed intentions are. As far as the law is concerned, they could just be blabbering, or their current intentions (through the act of getting married) could belie their future intentions. One's present self never completely controls ones future self.

Again, this aspect of law is a leftover from the previous social custom of marriage for the purpose of Child rearing and inheritance. The left-over momentum from the original impulse leads society to ignore or overlook marriages which do not overtly serve this purpose, and never let it be forgotten that it *IS* in the best interest of all societies to produce sufficient offspring to hold their nation's land against incursion by others who would take it.

The Europeans have obviously forgotten this, and they will eventually pay a horrible price I think.

Also, I don't think the statment was ass-holish. Sorry if you think so. Maybe a bit tongue in cheek.

You are making light of what some consider a serious point. I have long argued with libertarians about animal consent. They say an animal cannot consent, and I argue they certainly can. There are videos on the internet right now showing all sorts of animals consenting to sex with humans.

They argue that animals cannot "legally" consent, to which I respond, prior to the 1970s, neither could homosexuals. (They were legally Non compos mentis. )

The point is, as George Will pointed out, If you allow marriage of two consenting adults, by what argument can you oppose the marriage of three consenting adults?

As far as "consent" goes, that is just a legal construct. That wall will succumb to the same sort of constant pressure that is able to take down the wall of law and custom protecting procreative marriage.

My first statement relates to, I think it's called a logical fallacy (maybe?), called Reductio ad absurdum. I don't know if it follows that allowing same gender folks to marry leads to what the cartoon shows.

Is there any path of which you can conceive that it will lead to the opposite? Will it eternally run parallel, or will it eventually intersect one position of the other? Here is a photograph from the recent "Kiss in" protest of Chic-fil-a.



Would you have guessed this idea would be popular in the homosexual movement?

It is almost like saying that electing Rick Santorum (maybe next time!) will result in women loosing the right to vote. Both probably not true - but depending on what you believe to begin with, it may seem that way.

I am not sure I am trying to employ a narrative. Without some sort of input, or a background in history, I saw a way for someone to slip in and perhaps deny marriage to folks who cannot/ will not have kids. Ah! Perhaps that is MY Reductio ad absurdum! But it is good to be sure.

Again, the age old custom has emerged to the present day from roots steeped in biblical teachings and customs. As people have always assumed that men and women were likely to have children, the law and custom has always given them the benefit of the doubt in this regard. I can fathom no reason why anyone would feel the need to change it.

Do you ever visit or post at:
http://ricochet.com/
For the price of a cup of coffee once a month you can interact with a eclectic group of conservatives who may agree with you, but are very well prepared to seriously argue with you if they see a hole in your argument. Might be fun.

I have heard of it, but I don't recall having visited before. I argue at Free Republic often enough, but a lot of the time I am dissatisfied with the caliber of reasoning I find there. There are a few people there whose knowledge and experience I respect, but they are distinctly in the minority.

People here at talk polywell often seem to have the intellect but not always do they have the background of knowledge which I would prefer. Not all of course, some people here impress me quite a lot, depending on the topic.

Even some of the people with which I often disagree. (Here's looking at you Simon. )

I'll check it out.

[rj40]

Then it is ignorance. ... ...

The law takes no notice of extemporaneous commentary of people expressing their intentions to do this or that. Unless it is intentionally brought to the attention of a court by legal notice then it is irrelevant to the State what a person's expressed intentions are. As far as the law is concerned, they could just be blabbering, or their current intentions (through the act of getting married) could belie their future intentions. One's present self never completely controls ones future self.

Again, this aspect of law is a leftover from the previous social custom of marriage for the purpose of Child rearing and inheritance. The left-over momentum from the original impulse leads society to ignore or overlook marriages which do not overtly serve this purpose, and never let it be forgotten that it *IS* in the best interest of all societies to produce sufficient offspring to hold their nation's land against incursion by others who would take it.

The Europeans have obviously forgotten this, and they will eventually pay a horrible price I think.

----------
Rj40 says: I didn't think the there were that many gay folks in the world. You know, to threaten reproductive capacity.
----------

Also, I don't think the statment was ass-holish. Sorry if you think so. Maybe a bit tongue in cheek.

You are making light of what some consider a serious point. I have long argued with libertarians about animal consent. They say an animal cannot consent, and I argue they certainly can. There are videos on the internet right now showing all sorts of animals consenting to sex with humans.

They argue that animals cannot "legally" consent, to which I respond, prior to the 1970s, neither could homosexuals. (They were legally Non compos mentis. )

The point is, as George Will pointed out, If you allow marriage of two consenting adults, by what argument can you oppose the marriage of three consenting adults?

As far as "consent" goes, that is just a legal construct. That wall will succumb to the same sort of constant pressure that is able to take down the wall of law and custom protecting procreative marriage.

-------
Rj40 says: I have not really thought about the whole animal thing. I don't really care. Pretty gross though.
-------

My first statement relates to, I think it's called a logical fallacy (maybe?), called Reductio ad absurdum. I don't know if it follows that allowing same gender folks to marry leads to what the cartoon shows.

Is there any path of which you can conceive that it will lead to the opposite? Will it eternally run parallel, or will it eventually intersect one position of the other? Here is a photograph from the recent "Kiss in" protest of Chic-fil-a.



Would you have guessed this idea would be popular in the homosexual movement?

-----
Rj40 says: Meh. I don't think it will happen. I don't know what you mean about a path that will lead to the opposite.
-----

It is almost like saying that electing Rick Santorum (maybe next time!) will result in women loosing the right to vote. Both probably not true - but depending on what you believe to begin with, it may seem that way.

I am not sure I am trying to employ a narrative. Without some sort of input, or a background in history, I saw a way for someone to slip in and perhaps deny marriage to folks who cannot/ will not have kids. Ah! Perhaps that is MY Reductio ad absurdum! But it is good to be sure.

Again, the age old custom has emerged to the present day from roots steeped in biblical teachings and customs. As people have always assumed that men and women were likely to have children, the law and custom has always given them the benefit of the doubt in this regard. I can fathom no reason why anyone would feel the need to change it.

-----
Rj40 says: I'm sure there were many age old customs that died out in the past. And what about non biblical teachings and customs? It's a big world - maybe other folks have other things to say about how to lead a life and run a society. And many of those things may overlap with what you are saying. Anyway, the times are always a changin' - you'll be fine.
------

Do you ever visit or post at:
http://ricochet.com/
For the price of a cup of coffee once a month you can interact with a eclectic group of conservatives who may agree with you, but are very well prepared to seriously argue with you if they see a hole in your argument. Might be fun.

I have heard of it, but I don't recall having visited before. I argue at Free Republic often enough, but a lot of the time I am dissatisfied with the caliber of reasoning I find there. There are a few people there whose knowledge and experience I respect, but they are distinctly in the minority.

People here at talk polywell often seem to have the intellect but not always do they have the background of knowledge which I would prefer. Not all of course, some people here impress me quite a lot, depending on the topic.

Even some of the people with which I often disagree. (Here's looking at you Simon. )

I'll check it out.

------
Rj40 says: Good luck. I hope you find some sort of peace. I don't agree with much of what you say, but I wish you well.

[Diogenes]

------
Rj40 says: Good luck. I hope you find some sort of peace. I don't agree with much of what you say, but I wish you well.

What a very pleasant way of saying " I have better things to do than argue with you about it." !

Your comment reminds me of this joke.

"When I die, I hope to go peacefully in my sleep, the way my Grandfather did... Not Screaming, like the passengers in his Van.

Something wicked this way comes. I would certainly be more at peace were I oblivious to it. I suppose I feel the urgency of trying to wake the other passengers. It will pass.

[paperburn1]

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. If we allow marriage, anything could happen. You start with one man and one woman and pretty soon some guy is gonna wanna marry a horse! And here we are.

Slippery slope. Slippery slope.

As far as the link to the Jewish world review -
The spouse and I cannot have kids, too old, I hope we are allowed to stay married. We are paying property tax, so that should at least help kids. Perhaps we are still a bit legit.

May 1998 – The Jerry Springer Show had an episode titled "I Married a Horse!". The show was ultimately not aired by many stations on the planned date, apparently due to concerns about the acceptability of broadcasting an episode in which a man admitted to a long term emotional and sexual relationship of this kind. The man and his horse later participated in a British documentary on the subject.
This is for all you NAY Sayers out there

[ladajo]

Every story has three sides.

One side, the other side, and something in between, which is probably more so where the truth lays.

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/08/6065

[mvanwink5]

Being educated is being liberal

I simply took that to mean public education has become left wing indoctrination by leftist. The state has always used public education as a means to indoctrinate, I mean to provide a "proper" education.

[randomencounter]

Being educated is being liberal

I simply took that to mean public education has become left wing indoctrination by leftist. The state has always used public education as a means to indoctrinate, I mean to provide a "proper" education.

Yet people need to learn how the world really works somewhere.

Real education being only available to those with the means to pay for it is one of many paths to totalitarianism favored by the religious right.

[mvanwink5]

Always the false choice.

[Diogenes]

Unconfirmed reports: Family Research Council shooter carried Chick-fil-A bag, posed as intern; Update: NBC confirming




http://twitchy.com/2012/08/15/unconfirm ... as-intern/

[Teahive]

First of all, a marriage between a man and a woman has the potential to produce additional people, who are neither consenting nor adults. The wellbeing of these children is important both for their sake and for the sake of the society as a whole, whose future these children represent. This consideration obviously does not apply to homosexual unions.

Second, men and women are inherently in very different positions within a marriage. The inescapable fact that only women become pregnant means that male and female situations are never going to be the same, no matter how much "gender neutral" language we use or how much fashionable talk there is about how "we" are going to have a baby. Laws must make them jointly responsible for the baby that she alone will have. This consideration likewise does not apply to homosexual unions.

Both arguments are very similar, and equally problematic. There is a difference between giving birth and bringing up children. The latter applies to homosexual unions, too. They might adopt, or bring their own children into a new relationship. And while the former may require a woman as well as a man as initiator (at least for now), it does not require marriage. Neither does joint responsibility.

If wellbeing of children and joint responsibility are important, which no doubt they are, then the logical precondition for specific support by society is quite simply, bringing up children..

I think where much difference of opinion creeps into any discussion is in the definitions of words and phrases. "Bringing up children" can mean more than one thing, and those differences are not equal.

The Welfare state produces a constant stream of children "brought up" to adulthood, but most often containing none of the proper software programing that would make them a harmless or even contributing member of society. By the same token, having homosexuals raise a child to adult hood might produce an adult human, but would it produce one at harmony with a functional society?A study says this is less likely.

That article is fairly clear about the dangers of confusing correlation with causation. Anyway, the issue is not whether homosexual couples would make perfect parents (they don't), but whether marriage creates a more stable environment for children to grow up in, even if the couple is homosexual. Thomas Sowell apparently thinks this point deserves no consideration. But the reality is that children aren't always brought up by both their biological parents.

Hmmm... I often find it difficult to convey a complex idea, but the word "optimization" might get across the gist of it. People who are familiar with optimization realize that it is not the same thing as perfection. It is the weighing and adjusting of sometimes multiple factors to achieve the best balance that can be had given the competing influences.

With that in mind, I would argue that in a large statistical analysis of a given population, what has become the most common condition is very likely to be the optimized resultant of the competing vector forces.

Evolution works like that. Characteristics which aid in survival tend to be re-enforced. This concept works in social dynamics as well as with everything else. As water seeks the lowest level, so to do other dynamic social forces seek their own ground state. That ground state tends to be the optimized condition for the circumstances in which that society finds itself.

Evolution requires, and maintains, variation. There is no single optimum as there is no single set of circumstances that would apply to every individual. And as average circumstances change different traits become more or less dominant across the species.

Law need not mention gender at all. Judge people by their actions, not by their genetic makeup.

There are many laws which divide by gender. A woman can decide whether or not a man pays child support for a child he does not want regardless of his feelings on the subject. She can decide whether he has a child, or nothing. How do you not divide such a law by gender?

If absolutely necessary, divide by function or action. That way you automatically cover intersex cases as well as possible technical advancements such as artificial wombs.

[tomclarke]

Why Absolutely! Obama says he's for gay marriage, and his supporters fall all over themselves denouncing and threatening everyone who is not.


I should say, Denouncing everyone except for the Black Pastors and the Muslims, of course.

So let me get this straight:
Contributing millions of dollars to groups trying to make marriage illegal

Stop lying here. Same sex marriage has ALWAYS been illegal till the emergence of this recent kookery in some of the Wealthier and Kookier states. Even in Massachusetts, they couldn't get it through vote, they got Kook Judges to impose it on the state. The NORM is that it is illegal. This has ALWAYS been the norm.

That is incorrect criticism. It matters not what is usual, or what has always been the case. If under any circumstances marriage is now legal and this group campaigns to make it illegal the OP is correct, if a bit vague.

I have to say I am neutral on this issue. I can see the arguments on both sides. I suppose my position (which is impractical) would be that marriage deserves to be reserved as an institution for cases where the intention is to bring up children. But interpreting this in the various cases would be a nighmare, and single-sex couples would be possible, as would infertile couples, with some provisos, since adoption is an option.

it would be unfair perhaps on those mixed-sex couples who have no intention of having children.

[tomclarke]

The point is, as George Will pointed out, If you allow marriage of two consenting adults, by what argument can you oppose the marriage of three consenting adults?

Very easily. Marriage is an institution sanctioned by the state and given certain financial and other privilidges and responsibilities in law (in UK anyway).

The purpose is to support something perceived to be valuable because it provides benefits. Which, demonstrably, it does.

There is no evidence that polygamy provides those same benefits: it is so rare in Western cultures that sufficient data does not exist. Certainly the psychological dynamics of pair-bonding is different from group-bonding. Both occur in other species, but not interchageably. There are of course evolutionary requirements for polyandy to be a stable strategy, relating to who contributes to child care, and who biologically reproduces. The two need to balance.

It does not matter, either, whether your reason for institutionalising marriage relates to children, or something else - maybe marriages keep people happier, make them more productive, etc. There is no reason to expect pair-bonding and polygamy to have similar effects, so no argument against differentiation.

If you consider polygyny, common in some cultures, there are reasons why this might be considered contrary to Western norms though as a special case of polygamy, given the correct legal framework, it might be OK. But then, given the correct legal framework, I expect it would very rarely happen!

[GIThruster]

There is no evidence that polygamy provides those same benefits: it is so rare in Western cultures that sufficient data does not exist.

There is actually a significant amount of data correlating polygamy with child abuse and rape here in the States, as result of our relatively large Mormon population. I should note that the main Mormon church no longer supports polygamy, but there are several "fundamentalist" shoot off's that are still teaching polygamy. There are lots of tiny little towns in Utah where you can go and find small groups of women grocery shopping together, and all dressed in dresses (as these groups frown on women wearing anything else). This is a pretty sure sign of a polygamous family.

If you search "polygamous" and "child abuse" together you'll be shocked at the number of hits you'll get. I was once exposed to a big data dump on all the sorts of child abuse going on and the person who shared that stuff had become an anti- polygamy zealot for good reasons.

[tomclarke]

There is no evidence that polygamy provides those same benefits: it is so rare in Western cultures that sufficient data does not exist.

There is actually a significant amount of data correlating polygamy with child abuse and rape here in the States, as result of our relatively large Mormon population. I should note that the main Mormon church no longer supports polygamy, but there are several "fundamentalist" shoot off's that are still teaching polygamy. There are lots of tiny little towns in Utah where you can go and find small groups of women grocery shopping together, and all dressed in dresses (as these groups frown on women wearing anything else). This is a pretty sure sign of a polygamous family.

If you search "polygamous" and "child abuse" together you'll be shocked at the number of hits you'll get. I was once exposed to a big data dump on all the sorts of child abuse going on and the person who shared that stuff had become an anti- polygamy zealot for good reasons.

The problem is that while polygamy (actually in this case polygyny) is illegal, you are selecting for the people who do it. And I can fully believe that the incidence of problems is much higher than normal.

The only common cases of polygamy are polygyny associated with very unequal power relationships between men and women.

[GIThruster]

The only common cases of polygamy are polygyny associated with very unequal power relationships between men and women.

That's right, and the very unequal power relationships are likely the cause of the polygyny, the rape and the child abuse.

I think what people don't understand is that 3,000 years ago when the family unit was the only building block of society, infant mortality was very high and domestic work entailed more time than hunting, polygynous marriages served a salient function. By the time nomadic peoples became sedentary and began to plow fields, the need for such large families waned as they became more sufficient with lower numbers. By the time we see cities begin to develop, the need for very large families was almost entirely gone. Since the industrial age, large families have been a practical disadvantage as extra hands (children) have become extra mouths to feed rather than extra hands to work. It now costs a huge amount for a parent to support a child to adulthood and with the labor laws we have (not complaining) there is no fiscal advantage to having children. This is all backward compared to what was 3,000 years ago.

The morality that supported polygamy 3,000-6,000 years ago was entirely based upon need and reason, and need and reason now dictate something very different. This should be no surprise.