[QUOTE=kladner;403040]Will hell freezing over be an adequate indication that we have waited long enough, in your opinion?[/quote]No. Just long enough for social scientists to do a statistically valid study on some of the key points involved (marriage and divorce rates, etc...).

[quote]You seem willing to give short shrift to equal human and civil rights, aka Equal Protection Under Law. Would you have argued in favor of the state in Loving v Virginia?[/QUOTE]You are probably unaware that I have said previously, and continue to say, that the civil rights aspect (or receiving benefits for being a care-giver of any kind) should be extended to any collection of care-givers. But this should not be conflated with marriage, whose social function is tied to the need in society for healthy law-abiding children being raised to adulthood.

Zeta-Flux, I'd just like to know how personally you'd be prepared to state your views. You must know that there are people here who are in stable, permanent, same-sex relationships (at least 3 active forum members here that I know of). Would you be happy to tell those people that they should not be allowed to get married because if they did it would make fewer other people get married, it would damage the marriage institution and contribute to more children being raised in unsafe or unstable households, and that the status of these people and their partners should be that of "care-givers" in law?

[QUOTE=xilman;402970]Married couples have been screwing up their children's up-bringing long, long before divorce even existed. I still see no evidence that homosexual couples are likely to do a worse job than them.[/QUOTE]

If I may share, my ex-wife and I were determined non-breaders.

But then, after I found out she was cheating on me, we ended the marriage.

No fault -- we simply agreed to go our separate ways. Probably the least expensive divorce possible.

(A few years later her second husband (and the father of her first child) e-mailed me out of the blue asking if I had any advise as to how to stop her from cheating on him. I'm not joking.)

[QUOTE=chalsall;403193]If I may share, my ex-wife and I were determined non-breaders.[/QUOTE]

Was that because of a gluten sensitivity? :smile:

[QUOTE=wblipp;403196]Was that because of a gluten sensitivity? :smile:[/QUOTE]

To be perfectly honest, it was because my ex-wife was a very smart woman.

In rocket terms, I was the first stage.... :smile:

[QUOTE]You are probably unaware that I have said previously, and continue to say, that the civil rights aspect (or receiving benefits for being a care-giver of any kind) should be extended to any collection of care-givers. But this should not be conflated with marriage, whose social function is tied to the need in society for healthy law-abiding children being raised to adulthood. [/QUOTE]

I mentioned Loving v Virginia in particular because it pertains to arbitrary denial of marriage rights based on race. I am rather certain that very similar arguments were made back then; that it would be bad for children to have mixed race parents and genes.

[QUOTE] And, when these people decide to "have children" it often leads to the raising of children away from either their biological father or their mother, which is a social ill (on average). [To be clear, I'm not talking about adoption here.] [/QUOTE]

Why should adoptive parents be excluded from your concerns? It may well be that neither is a biological parent of the children in question.

[QUOTE=Brian-E;403187]Zeta-Flux, I'd just like to know how personally you'd be prepared to state your views. You must know that there are people here who are in stable, permanent, same-sex relationships (at least 3 active forum members here that I know of). Would you be happy to tell those people that they should not be allowed to get married because if they did it would make fewer other people get married, it would damage the marriage institution and contribute to more children being raised in unsafe or unstable households, and that the status of these people and their partners should be that of "care-givers" in law?[/QUOTE]Brian, I think this is a fair question. My simple answer would be, no, I wouldn't tell them that. Because I have repeatedly explained that an individual marriages (per se) does not damage the institution of marriage, or contribute to to those negatives. It is the change in law, and the resulting public perception of the purpose and need for marriage, that is the usual culprit, although there can be other factors on the aggregate.

Look at it this way. Suppose I was talking to a woman who was in an abusive relationship, and the law didn't let her out of her marriage. Do you think I would tell her that she should have to remain in her abusive relationship, because no-fault divorce laws lead to an unstable marriage culture? Of course not! My opposition to no-fault divorce laws does not stem from a desire to keep her in that relationship. And I would hope that we could come to a [I]reasonable compromise[/I] in the law, to preserve the sanctity/stability of marriage (which affects a huge group of people) while *also* helping this woman and others like her (which is a much smaller group of people) in their individual situations.

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kladner, I'll try to respond to your post later.

Pace, I'm pleased to see your answer to my question. Thank you.

[QUOTE=kladner;403204]I mentioned Loving v Virginia in particular because it pertains to arbitrary denial of marriage rights based on race. I am rather certain that very similar arguments were made back then; that it would be bad for children to have mixed race parents and genes.[/QUOTE]There are some important similarities between Loving v Virginia and the gay marriage cases, but also some important dissimilarities. Some similarities include:

(1) Both are about marriage laws.

(2) Both affect certain minority groups, and have involved supporters who are bigots.

Some important dissimilarities are:
(1) The Virginia laws were, as you said, arbitrarily based. They limited marriages only between "whites" and "blacks", but not between other racial or ethnic groups. The traditional marriage laws are not arbitrary, but based on certain (fairly obvious, and nearly universal) biological realities.

(2) The Virginia laws criminalized behavior. The traditional marriage laws do not criminalize. Rather they afford a benefit only to relationships which serve certain central social purposes, many of which are impossible to be served by same gender couples.

(3) The Virginia laws were passed with the clear and explicit intent to discriminate against a specific minority. Marriage laws limiting the institution to opposed gender couples have existed for [I]millenia[/I], and were not passed with the explicit intent to discriminate. (Recent state law changes have been passed with the intent not to discriminate, but to protect this millenia-old understanding of the institution.)

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Now, to answer your specific question. Would I have argued in favor of the state in Loving v Virginia? I hope not.

I don't reject the idea that mixed race marriages are inherently more unstable. Social science has shown us that, indeed, they [B]are[/B] more unstable (on average). So are mixed culture marriages, mixed religion marriages, and so forth.

But if you think my argument has been "we should pass laws to eliminate types of marriages which on average are less than ideal", then you have failed to understand my argument at its core.

Another quick question, Zeta-Flux. Where do you stand on intersex people and their right to marry? By "intersex", I mean people who identify themselves neither as male nor female.

[QUOTE=Brian-E;403394]Another quick question, Zeta-Flux. Where do you stand on intersex people and their right to marry? By "intersex", I mean people who identify themselves neither as male nor female.[/QUOTE]

A man returned from a long trip to his city to find that in his absence the rules at the local swimming pools had changed. The rules had already been in need of reform, as millions of children suffered serious accidents there each year, with inadequately trained lifeguards. And while the new change in the rules had nearly universal acceptance in the community, it also had the unintended consequence of increasing the rate of drownings and accidents at the pools! Going to his neighbor, the man lamented this affects of this new change in rules, suggesting that serious reform was needed. The neighbor responded: "Yeah, I'm personally worried about the entry ramps to the pools. They are currently handicapped inaccessible. We need to do something about that!"

Maybe you are unaware of how serious this problem is, perhaps because it is not politically correct to talk openly about it. [URL="https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/the-number-of-children-living-in-single-parent-homes-has-nearly-doubled-in"]This article[/URL] is just one of many that may help you understand how serious this is. This is an issue that affects hundreds of millions of people, while yours affects a vanishingly small portion of the population, who are usually either making a personal choice or are suffering mental illness.

So my answer is in return to ask you some pointed rhetorical questions that only you can answer. Are you so absorbed in getting "rights" for people in situations you view similar to your own, that you can't see children don't need gender-confusion added to the mix? Are you ignoring the [B]hundreds of millions[/B] of individuals who have [I][B]no political voice[/B][/I], and are drowning, because those with political voice are passing laws which make marriage all about themselves? What are you doing to change that? Are your efforts [B]in scale[/B], or do you focus on problems that are out of scale?