quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I'm just sorry to learn that at least two of the people on this board don't actually have families, despite having parents who love them.
Eh, those people can't have turned out as stable, normal human beings, so who cares?
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(Edit: to Porter) In fairness to Paul, you did cut off the rest of his sentence. And when you include the rest of his sentence, I have to admit that I haven't seen an argument against gay marriage that didn't fall into one of those categories.
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One (irrational) fear I have also noticed is the tendency to assume that homosexuals do not understand age appropriate. For example, most people who talk about teaching kindergartners about gay marriage seem to assume that it would be more then some people have two mommies. The seem to think that there is no way to explain that without going into sexually explicit details. I think this is crazy and stupid since explaining some people have a mommy and daddy doesn't require explaining sex, but I definitely get that impression from some people. I don't know how to get people to understand that gay people can be age appropriate (and I have tried), but I think that is one issue that needs tackling.
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I've been expanding upon what I mean. Have you been reading the thread, or are you just trying to muddy the waters?
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Actually, it was more a response to the first instance in the previous page where you capitalized the word and used it exactly wrong. When I saw you use it again, in what appeared at first glance to be the exact same error, I posted without paying enough attention to the rest of your post where you did expand.
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quote:But enhancing it to include SSM makes an even less perfect vehicle.
Why? It creates more stable families able to raise healthy children. Many of those stable families are able to bear children directly, and children will enter many of the others through adoption, previous relationships, and the like. Why is it harming the ability of the state to support children to create more situations better equipped to raise healthy children?
My statement related to restricting marriage as a way to regulate creation of new citizens. Homosexual unions can't produce new citizens without a third party involved, a relationship which, if the government is interested in regulating the creation of new citizens, can be regulated. So if the purpose of state-recognized marriage is to regulate citizen creation, extending to include gay unions simply confuses the purpose of the vehicle, making it less effective.
If, instead, the interest is in creating stable environments for raising children, I think the focus should be on some relationship other than "marriage." As a theoretical, I know two women who, to some degree, share duties as caretakers of two special needs children (one of the women adopted them; the other is a close friend who is a primary support). If caretaker laws here in MA provided equal footing for all forms of socially-stable pairings for the purpose of raising children, I imagine they would consider taking advantage of such benefits. But because of the sexual/romantic implications of "marriage" they would not enter into such a contract, because they don't want the baggage. Or you could simply call it the Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert quandry; there are lots of people raising children who may desire the benefits in order to create a more stable environment for them and the children they are raising, but for social or legal reasons may not be "married."
If the state interest is in begetting children, extending the definition is unnecessary, confuses the issue, and diverts resources that should more appropriately be applied to regulating IVF (and turkey basters).
If the state interest is in the raising of children, or the creation of socially stable units in general, by focusing on "marriage" the goal is not only side-tracked unnecessarily, it loses valuable support, and it reinforces the (incorrect) idea that only certain types of couples (specifically those with a romantic or sexual implication) can form socially-stable unions worthy of being recognized for the purpose of providing benefits.
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If the state interest is in regulating the begetting children, then we need to get rid of about 99% of marriage law. Since we HAVE that 99% of marriage law that mostly deals with pair bonding, distribution of resources, and child rearing, its pretty clear that, if there is a state interest in child-begetting involved in marriage, its very clearly an extremely minor state interest.
And porter: A failure to communicate with you is my fault, insofar as I don't explain where the confusion lies. Its your fault insofar as you don't attempt to understand the terms as I'm using them. I'ma go out on a limb and say that you haven't been attempting to understand how I'm using terms.
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quote:If the state interest is in regulating the begetting children, then we need to get rid of about 99% of marriage law. Since we HAVE that 99% of marriage law that mostly deals with pair bonding, distribution of resources, and child rearing, its pretty clear that, if there is a state interest in child-begetting involved in marriage, its very clearly an extremely minor state interest.
I think we focus too much, sometimes, on the intentions of societal practices, rather than on their value.
It's like natural selection. When a scientist observes that all mammals have wombs, does he seek to explain it by asking about the intent behind the womb? No — from a scientific perspective, there was no "intent". Instead, he asks what survival value the womb has that causes it to persist and improve across generations and species.
Similarly, when looking at something like marriage, it is far less valuable to explore what humans intend by it (eg, "It was originally just a way to control women!" or "The government only cares about certain aspects of it!") than it is to explore what survival value it has, which causes it to persist across generations and permeate so many societies.
If marriage has survival value tied to the prosperity of children, then precisely how the government describes and regulates it is irrelevant, so long as their efforts do not hinder marriage's value to children, and do not cause fewer beneficial marriages to occur. In fact, I'd imagine that a government which provides incentives to couples that marry will consequently have more marriages, and therefore (if my initial assertion is correct) have more prosperous children.
(Unfortunately, our society has been trending towards separating marriage from children more and more as time goes on, and I suspect that at some point, much of the survival value of marriage will have been lost.)
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A good friend of my girlfriend is pretty adamant about marriages only being valid if the couple raises at least one child. He doesn't care whether the couple is hetero or homosexual, and doesn't care whether the child is biologically related to the couple or adopted, but in his eyes childless marriages aren't "valid". I think (though I could be wrong) that he'd like to see the tax benefits of marriage only kick in once the couple has a child.
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Paul, there is something that really bugs me about your "straights are better than gays!" reduction of people's arguments, and I'm having trouble putting my finger on it. Let me try.
Maybe it's because the actual phrase "straights are better than gays!" carries with it connotations, on its own, that are not always connotated by the arguments from which you're producing this phrase.
For instance, if I were to say, in an argument about the stocking of dairy farms, "Cows produce milk which is valuable for human consumption. Tractors do not. Therefore, we should not replace cows with tractors," you could reduce it to "Cows are better than tractors!" and sort of be right, within the narrow context of an argument about what you need to have on a dairy farm.
However, the phrase "Cows are better than tractors!" when divorced from my argument, seems to assert that cows are superior in EVERY WAY, and that every cow is better than every tractor, which is absurd. How can you even say that one thing is universally better than another, when there are so many different contexts in which things can be compared?
Similarly, a person could say, "Straight couplings can often produce children. Gay couplings cannot." This statement is simple and factually true, and should carry no connotations of bigotry or prejudice. It's just the reality we're all living in.
However, if you reduce it to, "Straights are better than gays!" within some context where the "value" of something is determined by its ability to produce children, and THEN remove the statement from its context, it's suddenly filled with connotations of bigotry, even though the original statement had no such connotations.
I feel like that's what you're doing in this thread, and it bothers me, because this tactic removes the discussion from the merits of each argument, and instead encourages the participants to reject arguments out of hand because of the connotations of your reduction of them. It's a really bad way to have a discussion if you value anything besides simply "winning" the argument. You might persuade people to stop arguing with you because they're afraid of having their words turned around on them, but you won't change any minds.
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I agree with you, Geoff. But the problem is that there isn't actually any data which suggests that children really are better off with both a mother and a father as opposed to two or more parents of any sex. What this means is that arguments against same-sex parenting ultimately have to retreat from data, and instead assert simply that traditional parenting "just is" better for some reason. And it's really hard to make that latter argument without treading in the "gay people and their relationships aren't as good as straight people and their relationships."
I mean, at the end of the day, the arguments which explain why homosexuals should not be entitled to the marriage contract are all about why homosexual relationships are not as valuable to society as heterosexual relationships. I don't think it's unfair to cast the implicit value judgement there into an explicit one, instead.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:And, in order to head off more of the "hate the sin love the sinner" reasoning, take two identical people with identical sins. Now make one of them gay. You now have two non-identical people, one of which has a heavier burden of sin. You know have a "straights are better the gays," line of reasoning contained within "hate the sin, not the sinner" reasoning.
And just because you don't think of it that way (to head off any responses along that line) doesn't remove it from "straights are better then gays," reasoning. I'm using that as a fairly broad phrase here.
This is simply false. "Hate the sin, love the sinner" is more or less a cornerstone of Christianity, and it means in part that having fewer sins does NOT make you better than those who've committed more sins. The means if you have two identical people, but one has a ton of sins and the other has few sins, each is just as much a child of God as the other - meaning both are equally good.
Later on you distinguish between "inherently good" and "functionally good". "Functional goodness" is simply shorthand for "commits more good acts and fewer bad acts", so obviously whoever commits more sins would be considered less functionally good. But most people, particularly Christians, do not measure people by their functionality - we do not approach people as we do cars or toasters. Accordingly, "functional goodness" is not the right way to measure the worth of a person. That is an idea inherent in the "hate the sin, love the sinner" reasoning; the sinner is loved not because of the function he serves or the actions he commits, but simply because he is a person. That's the whole point of it.
You may disagree with this. But the question is not what you think. The question is what the people who are presenting the arguments agaisnt SSM think. You can't claim that they are hating gays, when the hatred stems from assumptions you are making which they do not hold. If they are truly bigots, they must actually believe gays to be inferior people, based on their own assumptions and beliefs.
It's sort of like if you asked someone who the best college basketball player in the country was and they said Tyler Hansbrough. If you hold the assumption that having the best player makes a team the best team, then you could then infer that UNC is the best team. But if the person you are asking does not share the assumption that having the best player makes a team the best team, then you'd be wrong to claim that person is saying that UNC is the best team. It's entirely possible that under their own assumptions, they believe UNC has the best player, but has a terrible team.
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quote:But most people, particularly Christians, do not measure people by their functionality...
How are you defining "Christians" here? Because I haven't observed anything resembling a meaningful difference between people calling themselves Christians and, well, everyone else in this regard.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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What Tom said. All of the arguments (except for begetting children, which really has nothing to do with american marriage) presented here place significantly more value on straights or straight relationships then gays or gay relationships. As I said in a previous post, this isn't necessarily inherent value, but it is value nonetheless. And we're not talking about simple differences in functionality such as with your tractor vs cow argument, but valuations of differences in functionality.
I mean, look at Annie's arguments. Gays shouldn't be allowed to marry because kids would be raised by gay parents. Excuse me? This isn't saying "straights are better than gays?" In what fantasyland? That people are afraid that schools will teach homosexual lifestyles are acceptable? Again, what fantasyland do you have to live in to say this is not "straights are better than gays?" Or that gays aren't happy and so the state shouldn't condone the lifestyle? Again. This is simply saying "The straight lifestyle is better than the gay lifestyle."
The arguments that are made in opposition to equitable marriage are nasty. But they are dressed up in polite language in the hopes of hiding the nastiness either from the audience, or from the speaker.
I feel like having this discussion without talking about what the arguments actually mean would be like debating the jim crow laws without actually asking why blacks shouldn't have the same right to vote as whites.
Confronting the arguments in terms of the valuation going on forces people on the edges of the debate to ask whether they really think gay people are lesser people than straights. And very few people are willing to admit that anywhere other then in the deep dark places of their conscience.
I tend to rethink my behavior or positions (when they are important to me) only when the behavior or position has been morally challenged, or when my emotions are hot. If an argument is cool calm and collected, I'm unlikely to entertain the idea that I was wrong about something important to me. There's no reason to, after the debate. There's no personal investment to do so.
From what I understand, this is true for a lot of people.
So, realistically, I see my approach as being the best way of changing the minds both of people who are not overly invested in the issue, or who haven't made up their minds, or who are just listening, as well as being the best way of changing the minds of people like Annie... who is now, it appears, upset about how her arguments are being understood, which is fertile grounds for starting to change her arguments or her position.
After all, what we really are debating is whether we treat gays as equal citizens, or not. And that demands we ask if there are reasonable grounds for not treating them as equal citizens. Which demands we ask if believe that gays are not equal citizens.
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: ... If they are truly bigots, they must actually believe gays to be inferior people, based on their own assumptions and beliefs.
I find this dubious, at least in other bigot-related fields. For example, I rarely find that modern racists claim to be racists based on their own assumptions and beliefs. Thats pretty much why we have the classical "I'm not a racist, but ..." opening.
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You can definitely be a bigot without admitting it. You can be a bigot without knowing it.
But you're not a bigot just because someone else (Al Sharpton perhaps?) interprets something you say in a way different than you actually meant when they are approaching your statement under different assumptions than you are.
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quote:But the problem is that there isn't actually any data which suggests that children really are better off with both a mother and a father as opposed to two or more parents of any sex.
But there is. I quoted the bibliography from an article I cited in the Octomom thread, which listed many studies that showed just that.
Since it was a biliography of all of the sources cited in the article, though, the first of which were showing the opposition's case, some of the participants in the thread read the abstract of the first article on the list and laughed me to scorn for "proving their point."
Below is that list again, and let me link you again to the original article it comes from. You'll note that the first few citations are the articles about which the authors say: "Those current studies that appear to indicate neutral to favorable results from homosexual parenting have critical flaws such as non-longitudinal design, inadequate sample size, biased sample selection, lack of proper controls, and failure to account for confounding variables.2,3,4 "
quote:ENDNOTES
1 American Academy of Pediatrics, “Co parent or Second-Parent Adoption by Same-Sex Parents,” Pediatrics. 109(2002): 339-340.
2 Robert Lerner, Ph.D., Althea Nagai, Ph.D. No Basis: What the Studies Don't Tell Us About Same Sex Parenting, Washington DC; Marriage Law Project/Ethics and Public Policy Center, 2001.
3 P. Morgan, Children as Trophies? Examining the Evidence on Same-sex Parenting, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; Christian Institute, 2002.
4 J. Paul Guiliani and Dwight G. Duncan, "Brief of Amici Curiae Massachusetts Family Institute and National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality," Appeal to the Supreme Court of Vermont, Docket No. S1009-97CnC.
5 Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandfeur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 45
6 Sotirios Sarantakos, "Children in Three Contexts: Family, Education, and Social Development," Children Australia, vol. 21 (1996): 23-31.
7 Jeanne M. Hilton and Esther L. Devall, "Comparison of Parenting and Children’s Behavior in Single-Mother, Single-Father, and Intact Families," Journal of Divorce and Remarriage 29 (1998): 23-54.
8 Elizabeth Thomson et al., "Family Structure and Child Well-Being: Economic Resources vs. Parental Behaviors," Social Forces 73 (1994): 221-42.
9 David Popenoe, Life Without Father (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 144, 146.
10 Gwat Yong Lie and Sabrina Gentlewarrier, "Intimate Violence in Lesbian Relationships: Discussion of Survey Findings and Practice Implications," Journal of Social Service Research 15 (1991): 41-59.
11 D. Island and P. Letellier, Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them: Battered Gay Men and Domestic Violence (New York: Haworth Press, 1991), p. 14.
12 Lettie L. Lockhart et al., "Letting out the Secret: Violence in Lesbian Relationships," Journal of Interpersonal Violence 9 (1994): 469-492.
13 "Violence Between Intimates," Bureau of Justice Statistics Selected Findings, November 1994, p. 2.
14 Health Implications Associated With Homosexuality (Austin: The Medical Institute for Sexual Health, 1999), p. 79.
15 David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison, The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984), pp. 252, 253.
16 M. Saghir and E. Robins, Male and Female Homosexuality (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1973), p. 225; L. A. Peplau and H. Amaro, "Understanding Lesbian Relationships," in Homosexuality: Social, Psychological, and Biological Issues, ed. J. Weinrich and W. Paul (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982).
17 M. Pollak, "Male Homosexuality," in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, ed. P. Aries and A. Bejin, translated by Anthony Forster (New York, NY: B. Blackwell, 1985), pp. 40-61, cited by Joseph Nicolosi in Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality (Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc., 1991), pp. 124, 125.
18 A. P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), pp. 308, 309; See also A. P. Bell, M. S. Weinberg, and S. K. Hammersmith, Sexual Preference (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981).
19 Paul Van de Ven et al., "A Comparative Demographic and Sexual Profile of Older Homosexually Active Men," Journal of Sex Research 34 (1997): 354.
20 A. A. Deenen, "Intimacy and Sexuality in Gay Male Couples," Archives of Sexual Behavior, 23 (1994): 421-431.
21 "Sex Survey Results," Genre (October 1996), quoted in "Survey Finds 40 percent of Gay Men Have Had More Than 40 Sex Partners," Lambda Report, January 1998, p. 20.
22 Maria Xiridoui, et al., “The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV Infection among Homosexual Men in Amsterdam,” AIDS 17 (2003): 1029-1038. [Note: one of the findings of this recent study is that those classified as being in “steady relationships” reported an average of 8 casual partners a year in addition to their partner (p. 1032)]
23 J. Bradford et al., "National Lesbian Health Care Survey: Implications for Mental Health Care," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 62 (1994): 239, cited in Health Implications Associated with Homosexuality, p. 81.
24 Theo G. M. Sandfort, et al., "Same-sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders," Archives of General Psychiatry 58 (January 2001): 85-91.
25 Bailey, J.M. Commentary: Homosexuality and mental illness. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry. 56 (1999): 876-880. Author states, "These studies contain arguably the best published data on the association between homosexuality and psychopathology, and both converge on the same unhappy conclusion: homosexual people are at substantially higher risk for some forms of emotional problems, including suicidality, major depression, and anxiety disorder, conduct disorder, and nicotine dependence...."
26 Joanne Hall, "Lesbians Recovering from Alcoholic Problems: An Ethnographic Study of Health Care Expectations," Nursing Research 43 (1994): 238-244
27 R. Herrell et al., "Sexual Orientation and Suicidality, Co-twin Study in Adult Men," Archives of General Psychiatry 56 (1999): 867-874.
28 Vickie M. Mays, et al., "Risk of Psychiatric Disorders among Individuals Reporting Same-sex Sexual Partners in the National Comorbidity Survey," American Journal of Public Health, vol. 91 (June 2001): 933-939.
29 Robert S. Hogg et al., "Modeling the Impact of HIV Disease on Mortality in Gay and Bisexual Men," International Journal of Epidemiology 26 (1997): 657.
30 Sandfort, T.G.M.; de Graaf, R.; Bijl, R.V.; Schnabel. Same-sex sexual behavior and psychiatric disorders. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry. 58 (2001): 85-91.
31 F. Tasker and S. Golombok, "Adults Raised as Children in Lesbian Families," American Journal of Orthopsychiatric Association, 65 (1995): 213.
32 J. Michael Bailey et al., "Sexual Orientation of Adult Sons of Gay Fathers," Developmental Psychology 31 (1995): 124-129
33 Ibid., pp. 127, 128.
34 F. Tasker and S. Golombok, "Do Parents Influence the Sexual Orientation of Their Children?" Developmental Psychology 32 (1996): 7.
35 Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz, "(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter," American Sociological Review 66 (2001): 174, 179.
36 D. Fergusson et al., "Is Sexual Orientation Related to Mental Health Problems and Suicidality in Young People?" Archives of General Psychiatry 56 (October 1999).
If you go on to look at the articles they cite in favor of their hypothesis (numbers 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and as corollaries 10 through 36) you'll see that even though you may disagree with the authors, they're not flaming idiots who cite articles to mean the exact opposite of what they have to say.
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quote:Again. This is simply saying "The straight lifestyle is better than the gay lifestyle."
Exactly. And what we're saying is that does not equal "Straights are better than gays."
Would you claim that a non-religious lifestyle is better than a religious lifestyle? Would you claim that supporting gay marriage is better than opposing gay marriage? Then aren't you making the same kind of value judgments that we are?
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Paul, I agree that some arguments against same-sex marriage DO have unprovable assumptions about the superiority of the "straight" arrangement at their core. But not all arguments — and not even all individuals making the arguments you're citing. The problem with using a "These arguments all really mean this!" approach is that you paint with a broad brush and make a lot of people feel slighted and defensive, without persuading them.
(Some pro-gay-marriage advocates have less-than-admirable motivations as well, mixed in among the altruistic ones. But I think it's counterproductive to point them out in an attempt to color perceptions of the movement as a whole.)
Hurting people's feelings isn't always avoidable, of course, but as this thread already has a general atmosphere of "people with X opinion are rotten to their core, and are worthy of all manner of scorn, to be heaped upon them in shovelfuls", it would be nice if someone were a bit more conciliatory about this stuff
For some people in the camp favoring traditional marriage, it's simply a matter of trying to protect a system that, whatever its perceived flaws, has a value that extends beyond its immediate and obvious benefits to individuals in the moment. To these people, it's not about disdain for gays, or some need to see gays punished for their desires — to them, the system is more important than any one person or group. These are people who have, in many cases, personally sacrificed their own desires to uphold a system they believe in, and want their sacrifice to mean something. They see traditional marriage, and marriage as a child-focused institution, as a foundational part of a prosperous society, and see losing it (by whatever means) as a potential step towards ruin.
To them, it isn't about this specific change, or any opinion they might have of the people it would benefit. In past generations, they also opposed the proliferation of divorce, birth control, promiscuity, and other practices that had nothing to do with any "prejudice", but that had implications for the meaning and future of marriage and family.
To them, this is not about prejudice at all. It's about protecting something they care about — a system that they have sacrificed to uphold, and that they see as the source of much of the good in their and others' lives. They feel that humanity lacks the knowledge or the authority to decide how the system ought to work — that we are merely its beneficiaries, and that if we make changes without a certain knowledge of their long-term implications, the results could be terrible, and our generation will be responsible for much sorrow in the future.
I, myself, am speaking in the third person about this because I haven't fully decided where I sit in this argument. But whatever my hesitations, I have a great deal of compassion for the people I'm describing here. They are good people, on the whole — at least as good as any arbitrarily-chosen group from the other side. And their intentions are pure. They come at their conclusions from a completely different place than you do, so they end up with a different opinion. But it tortures them that their opinions are viewed as the product of bigotry, and that they might be viewed that way throughout history, and that they cannot persuade anyone to understand what truly motivates them.
This is my attempt. I still think that there must be a way to compromise on this issue, and that is the solution I favor — whatever that compromise ends up being. But we will never get there if we insist on demonizing each other, and if we refuse to see the good in any but our own camps.
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Annie, any study which says that homosexuals make worse parents because they are more prone to mental illness, and then winkingly says that they aren't sure whether this is due to societal disapproval or not, is precisely an example of the "homosexuals are bad people" phenomenon Paul and I are talking about.
If you control for the obvious factors, which the studies listed above that I've bothered to look at do not, homosexual parents do no worse than heterosexuals. Saying "we shouldn't let this population raise children because social stigma has driven a slightly larger percentage of them to drugs, all else but social stigma being held equal" is the statistical equivalent of begging the question.
Which is why the link you've provided twice now is to a group that was forced to strike out on its own once their original parent organization called 'em on their intellectual dishonesty.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Again. This is simply saying "The straight lifestyle is better than the gay lifestyle."
Exactly. And what we're saying is that does not equal "Straights are better than gays."
Would you claim that a non-religious lifestyle is better than a religious lifestyle? Would you claim that supporting gay marriage is better than opposing gay marriage? Then aren't you making the same kind of value judgments that we are?
Yes, I would claim that a non-religious lifestyle is better than a religious lifestyle. I would claim that supporting equitable marriage is better than opposing gay marriage. And I would also claim that, holding all else equal, a non-religious person is better then a religious person, and that a person supporting equitable marriage is better than a person opposing equitable marriage. (Of course, in such a discussion, I'd also offer my explanations why I think this, and caveats where the belief would no longer apply).
Here's the difference, though: I'm not hiding from my position. You and puppy and tresopax are trying to say that "A person who doesn't want his children taught that homosexual lifestyles are acceptable," isn't saying "a person living a homosexual lifestyle is not as a good a person as a person living a heterosexual life style, all else held equal."
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: You can definitely be a bigot without admitting it. You can be a bigot without knowing it.
But you're not a bigot just because someone else (Al Sharpton perhaps?) interprets something you say in a way different than you actually meant when they are approaching your statement under different assumptions than you are.
Exactly.
So the question as to who falls on which side of the line is a matter of debate. One where "their own assumptions and beliefs" are only one piece of the debate and not a necessary condition.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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"Paul, I agree that some arguments against same-sex marriage DO have unprovable assumptions about the superiority of the "straight" arrangement at their core. "
I didn't say anything about unprovable or not. If you can prove it (and not, as tom points out, by circular reasoning), then we've got something real to talk about. But even then, what has to be acknowledged is that we're talking about treating a class of people differently based on the class, not the individuals.
"But not all arguments — and not even all individuals making the arguments you're citing. "
See, this is where I disagree. I think every argument that has been offered on this thread (again, with the exception of "begetting children,") has within it "straights are better than gays," as a central premise. I GET that you and Annie don't think so. I think its pretty funny that you can say that after reading Annie's list of arguments, all of which are pretty unambiguous in saying "Straights are better than gays," (again, with the notes above in effect on that statement).
"(Some pro-gay-marriage advocates have less-than-admirable motivations as well, mixed in among the altruistic ones. But I think it's counterproductive to point them out in an attempt to color perceptions of the movement as a whole.)"
Yup. And the people who are out to destroy marriage, or screw religions, are jerks. At least most of those people are honest about what they are saying, though.
"Hurting people's feelings isn't always avoidable, of course, but as this thread already has a general atmosphere of "people with X opinion are rotten to their core, and are worthy of all manner of scorn, to be heaped upon them in shovelfuls", it would be nice if someone were a bit more conciliatory about this stuff [Smile]"
Well, frankly, I think that people against equitable marriage are being just as much jerks as the people out to destroy marriage or screw the religious, and for more or less the same reasons. My problem is that THIS group of people aren't mostly honest about what they're doing. And that they're being jerks.
"For some people in the camp favoring traditional marriage, it's simply a matter of trying to protect a system that, whatever its perceived flaws, has a value that extends beyond its immediate and obvious benefits to individuals in the moment. To these people, it's not about disdain for gays, or some need to see gays punished for their desires — to them, the system is more important than any one person or group. These are people who have, in many cases, personally sacrificed their own desires to uphold a system they believe in, and want their sacrifice to mean something. They see traditional marriage, and marriage as a child-focused institution, as a foundational part of a prosperous society, and see losing it (by whatever means) as a potential step towards ruin."
And, again, I'll note that this contains several premises, one of which is that marriage would not be a child focused institution if gays are allowed to get married, and another of which is that "straights are better than gays".
"To them, this is not about prejudice at all"
And some of them might honestly believe that. But the thing is, they still rely on arguments that say "straights are better than gays."
"It's about protecting something they care about — a system that they have sacrificed to uphold, and that they see as the source of much of the good in their and others' lives"
Right. And not letting other people partake! Not letting other people access that happiness, that goodness, that system for which they are willing to sacrifice.
"They feel that humanity lacks the knowledge or the authority to decide how the system ought to work — that we are merely its beneficiaries, and that if we make changes without a certain knowledge of their long-term implications, the results could be terrible, and our generation will be responsible for much sorrow in the future."
Right. Again, "straights are better than gays."
I'm sorry, but if you try to dig into that, its where you end up. I mean, letting gays marry could result in terrible long term problems? Seriously, thats not "straights are better than gays?" In what fantasyland?
"But whatever my hesitations, I have a great deal of compassion for the people I'm describing here. They are good people, on the whole — at least as good as any arbitrarily-chosen group from the other side."
I disagree. These are people who are unwilling to share something that brings into their lives a lot of happiness and goodness, that they are willing to sacrifice for, that they believe brings them closer to god and holiness. They don't want a group of people to be able to access that.
Its not worthy of respect from any moral system that I recognize as promoting goodness. None. Its, from my view, an astoundingly selfish and evil thing to do.
" But it tortures them that their opinions are viewed as the product of bigotry, and that they might be viewed that way throughout history,"
It should. It IS the product of bigotry. denying the bigotry against gays that has come down through the milennia in their religious tradition is denying the blindingly obvious. They might have prettied up the justifications so that the bigotry is hidden even from themselves... but the LDS view on marriage is informed by 2 millenia of christian attitudes towards gays, and trying to deny that this has happened, or that these attitudes are overwhelmingly violently negative, is simply hiding yourself from the truth.
"and that they cannot persuade anyone to understand what truly motivates them."
Well, its hard, when the arguments are all about how bad gays or their lifestyle is.
" I still think that there must be a way to compromise on this issue"
There are several compromises out there, but one that will never work over the long term is legal marriage for straights, but not for gays. You can make everything legally a civil union, that would work. You could have different categories of marriage, and depending on how you set it up, that would work. (e.g. marriage with children, marriage without. Or just different forms, some with "husband, wife," terminology, and some with "partner" terminology). I have no problem making explicit protections for churches who do not perform same sex marriages. Etc.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:22 Maria Xiridoui, et al., “The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV Infection among Homosexual Men in Amsterdam,” AIDS 17 (2003): 1029-1038. [Note: one of the findings of this recent study is that those classified as being in “steady relationships” reported an average of 8 casual partners a year in addition to their partner (p. 1032)]
Any article that cites this study in this way is complete and utter BS. This was a study of promiscuous gay men with HIV. Any man who was over 30, was in a monogomous relationship, or did not have HIV was excluded from the study unless they had an HIV-positive partner. Their definition of "steady relationship" was broad enough to apply to any one that had been going out for a few weeks.
These are well known facts about this study and the authors of the article you cite are surely aware of it, but as long as people like you are taken in by the "sciency" presentation and continue to pass on the lies, their job is done.
I hope that now that you are aware of these issues, that you'll stop providing this article to buttress your position.
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quote:I mean, letting gays marry could result in terrible long term problems? Seriously, thats not "straights are better than gays?"
In Geoff's defense, Paul, he's right about this. Letting non-doctors perform operations could result in terrible long-term problems, too, but that doesn't mean that doctors are better than non-doctors at anything besides doctoring.
The problem, from my perspective, is that most -- but, admittedly, not all -- of the projected "long-term problems" depend upon the assumption that homosexuals are inferior. But, again, not all. Imagine that you believe that God, for whatever reason, will withdraw His protection from our country if we decide to permit homosexuals to marry. You might personally have no problem with homosexuality; you might even be homosexual. But if this is what you believe, you'll still fight to prevent same-sex marriage for the sake of God's protection.
I'm hard-pressed to call that direct bigotry. The belief itself is steeped deeply in traditions of bigotry that have been backed up with generations of myth, but the individual believing that belief isn't necessarily a bigot himself.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Tom, to me, the most important evidence is the studies that show that children suffer psychologically without a parent of each gender. That's what I base my case on. I don't think that homosexuals are less capable of loving children - I admire the ones who do well. But I do think that each and every child deserves a mom and a dad. I am a girl who lost her dad to his own decisions, and it tore me apart. As many good, loving women as I've had in my life, I always suffered for not having any good, trustworthy men. I don't want to wish that on any child.
I also don't want the state to force adoption agencies to place children with families without a parent of each gender against their conscience. These are very real, very compelling reasons for me, and while I respect anyone's right to disagree, it hurts me to be misunderstood.
All else being held equal, Paul, I do think that a homosexual is as good a person as a heterosexual. I think that my heterosexual friends who live promiscuous lives are as good a person as me, who does not. I have sins of my own. (I have a particularly hard time putting in an honest day's work for my money, because I'm so easily tempted to waste time on sidetracks, for example) I see the pain that comes to my friends, though, from the choices they make, and I know that I believe the teachings of my church that tell me that repenting of sin makes you happier. I'm not hiding from anything, and it makes me sad that people assume that just because my opinions are different than theirs, I must be couching some secrete malice or nastiness.
The lives of good religious people speak for themselves. Come to my church on any given Sunday. While you won't find a room full of perfect human beings, you'll find a positive, helpful atmosphere. We don't preach hellfire and damnation to any who dare oppose. We teach self-improvement, charity, consideration for others, patience and love. The people there are happy. The people there are kind and helpful. There is not a secret agenda and there is no hate being inculcated in our children. You may disagree with us all you want, but don't try to "reveal" our motives to the world when you don't know us and you certainly don't understand where we're coming from.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
I think part of the problem here is that the word "better" is getting tossed around in a few different contexts, some of which aren't very useful contexts.
As a vaguely secular-humanist-ish (I'm not sure if I understand that belief system well enough to claim to represent it) I wouldn't say "hate the sin, love the sinner" because I don't believe in sin, per se. However, I still believe that all humans are created equal, that no one is "better" than anyone else, that if someone is a criminal or a racist or whatever, that's a problem that needs to be addressed as opposed to something you should punish the person for. It was either inherent in their genetics (which isn't their fault) or part of their upbringing/environment (also not their fault).
That doesn't change the fact that, when dealing with people on a practical level, I don't sort them out in my head. On a practical level, all things being equal, non-racists are better than racists, non-theives are better than thieves, etc.
I don't believe a religious lifestyle is inherently worse than a non-religious lifestyle (I think religion plays an important role for many people) but I would say that people who advocate policies that are detrimental to the human condition are - all other things being equal - worse for society than people who don't.
Those are two different definitions of the word "better" though, and I don't believe for a second that the vast majority of people who proclaim "hate the sin, love the sinner" don't privately use those two definitions of the word better as well, in their respective contexts.
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quote:Tom, to me, the most important evidence is the studies that show that children suffer psychologically without a parent of each gender.
Can you point out any such studies that aren't comparing single-parent households to two-parent housholds, because these studies (of which there are many) aren't really saying anything about gender makeup.
quote:I also don't want the state to force adoption agencies to place children with families without a parent of each gender against their conscience. These are very real, very compelling reasons for me, and while I respect anyone's right to disagree, it hurts me to be misunderstood.
This is a separate issue from SSM. California, for instance, already prevents discrimination against gays in adoption and had such a policy in place prior to the supreme court ruling that legalized SSM.
Many of the anti-SSM campaign talking points were of this nature. "If you allow SSM, then <bad thing> will happen." when <bad thing> was something that already happened when SSM was not legal.
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quote:Tom, to me, the most important evidence is the studies that show that children suffer psychologically without a parent of each gender.
I have never managed to find a study that confirms this claim while still managing to control for factors I'd consider significant. But this is certainly one of the arguments I consider most sympathetic.
quote:As many good, loving women as I've had in my life, I always suffered for not having any good, trustworthy men.
Having bad men in your life is not the same thing as not having good men.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: But, again, not all. Imagine that you believe that God, for whatever reason, will withdraw His protection from our country if we decide to permit homosexuals to marry. You might personally have no problem with homosexuality; you might even be homosexual. But if this is what you believe, you'll still fight to prevent same-sex marriage for the sake of God's protection.
I'm hard-pressed to call that direct bigotry. The belief itself is steeped deeply in traditions of bigotry that have been backed up with generations of myth, but the individual believing that belief isn't necessarily a bigot himself.
I'm not saying this person is necessarily a bigot. But the person is promoting bigotry. I mean, this line of argument essentially comes down to "Gays are so bad god will withdraw his protection if we let them get married."
As I said in my last post, the bigotry of the position, of the history leading to the position, might be prettied up so they don't recognize it themselves.
But that bigotry is still there. Its a strong informer of the argument presented.
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posted
Annie: could you point me to some studies showing two parents of opposite genders lead to better outcomes than two parents of the same gender? All the studies I'm aware of about the benefits of parents of opposite genders are really comparing to single parents, or to children without role models in both genders (and found that even children of single parents in good situations frequently alleviated the effect by establishing non-parent role models).
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quote:Here's the difference, though: I'm not hiding from my position. You and puppy and tresopax are trying to say that "A person who doesn't want his children taught that homosexual lifestyles are acceptable," isn't saying "a person living a homosexual lifestyle is not as a good a person as a person living a heterosexual life style, all else held equal."
Well, that is a good summary of my position. I don't understand what reason you have to be confident it is hiding an alternative secret position though. Won't you agree that it is at least possible that some people believe that one's goodness as a person is not determined based on one's actions and lifestyle?
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quote: Won't you agree that it is at least possible that some people believe that one's goodness as a person is not determined based on one's actions and lifestyle?
This isn't directed at me, but I think I answered it 5 posts up. I'm pretty confident that if we were talking about murderers or some other group that everyone could agree on as "bad," you'd have no qualms about using "he's a bad person" as shorthand for "he's not really a 'bad person' but I think his lifestyle choices are detrimental to society."
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
I would separate a person's value or worth from whether that person is "good" or "bad." Some people have gone pretty far down the "bad" road to where their actions are predominantly bad and harmful ones. That doesn't change their value, but it certainly changes their relationship to others and their ability to make further choices. Calling someone a bad person is usually shorthand for saying the person does bad things, but it also, maybe unintentionally, characterizes them in their entirety and degrades their basic value as a person. I don't agree with calling anyone bad, or even better or worse than anyone else.
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quote:Calling someone a bad person is usually shorthand for saying the person does bad things, but it also, maybe unintentionally, characterizes them in their entirety and degrades their basic value as a person. I don't agree with calling anyone bad, or even better or worse than anyone else.
I do agree with this. When I am thinking rationally, I make an effort not to get angry at or call people "bad," (although when I have been personally wronged I sometimes I may have a hard time thinking rationally about it).
But even when you make an effort to say "you are a good person, but your lifestyle is detrimental to society," you might as well be telling the person "you're a bad person who deserves to be treated as a second class citizen" when you say they can't participate in one of the most fundamental human experiences. (yeah, I know they have the "right" to marry, definition of marriage, etc, but that's a pretty useless right when they can only marry people that they don't love)
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quote:This isn't directed at me, but I think I answered it 5 posts up. I'm pretty confident that if we were talking about murderers or some other group that everyone could agree on as "bad," you'd have no qualms about using "he's a bad person" as shorthand for "he's not really a 'bad person' but I think his lifestyle choices are detrimental to society."
I'd definitely have qualms about mixing up "he commits murder" with "he's a bad person." I've said in the past, for instance, that I don't think terrorists are fundamentally bad people, even though they commit monsterous crimes.
Of course, murdering does suggest flaws in a person's more general judgement that other lifestyle choices do not.
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posted
Okay, that's consistent (and I agree with you, for the record) but I don't think most people who claim they only "hate the sin" have really internalized that teaching. Also, I think my slightly previous post (made at the same time you were posting your latest, above) is still relevant here though.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:I don't agree with calling anyone bad, or even better or worse than anyone else.
Without a frame of reference it's not clear what words like bad/better/worse mean. I don't, for example, have a problem saying that Federer is better than me [at tennis].
That being said, if I buy the premise that an objective morality exists, I don't see why an objective system of attaching value to human lives cannot also exist. However, I would have a hard time believing that actions themselves don't factor into this assignment (as against merely being symptoms of the 'underlying/real person'.)
Posts: 644 | Registered: Sep 2008
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posted
...and we have another thread about Objective Morality. Huzzah!
There are definitely people that I consider "better" than me in the sense that they are more valuable to the human race than I am.
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quote:that children suffer psychologically without a parent of each gender.
I started out believing that. I've since changed my belief because the studies don't show this. They show the opposite.
If you want to say that they are not comprehensive enough, that's one thing, but what you are claiming isn't so.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Calling someone a bad person is usually shorthand for saying the person does bad things, but it also, maybe unintentionally, characterizes them in their entirety and degrades their basic value as a person. I don't agree with calling anyone bad, or even better or worse than anyone else.
I do agree with this. When I am thinking rationally, I make an effort not to get angry at or call people "bad," (although when I have been personally wronged I sometimes I may have a hard time thinking rationally about it).
But even when you make an effort to say "you are a good person, but your lifestyle is detrimental to society," you might as well be telling the person "you're a bad person who deserves to be treated as a second class citizen" when you say they can't participate in one of the most fundamental human experiences. (yeah, I know they have the "right" to marry, definition of marriage, etc, but that's a pretty useless right when they can only marry people that they don't love)
The problem with a yes or no vote is that it doesn't give anyone a lot of room to express the breadth of, and thoughts and motives behind, their feelings. Yet once the vote is cast we become characterized and simplified down to "yes" or "no," with entire sets of motives assigned to each by the other side. I think the whole Prop8 thing was like taking a hammer to a delicate and sensitive issue. It forced a lot of people to choose one side or another, and the hammer is now used to bash away at their reasons for the way they leaned, until those reasons are broken up into compartmentalizeable shards.
I neither voted for nor supported Prop8 either way, and I have quite a range of thoughts and feelings on the subject, but how I think is already assumed, with arguments against it set like landmines should I ever jump out of the trench.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
At some point, the nuances of why someone voted no don't really matter. Regardless of their reasoning, they have contributed to a great harm to people. What their motives are does not make that harm less. I don't care if people feel bad because other people misunderstand them or think they are bigots. I want them to feel bad because they a hurting people.
Even if they think that they have the best reasons in the world and that it is for some greater good, they still need to take responsibility for the hurt they have done and are doing.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Yea, like when a judge makes a murderer feel bad bcause he sent him to jail, the judge should feel real bad too. And he should have the decency to say sorry. Mean ole' judge.
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posted
Hey, they're trying to look after our ever-lasting souls. I may not agree with them, but at least I have the decency to thank them for being so considerate.
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"It's for their own good" just adds an obnoxious level of arrogance when talking about adults.
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