Zeta-Flux:
You have put the unjustified personal comments aside by ignoring them, which I find admirable, and you have dealt with the side issues and irrelevancies which arose from parts of your earlier posting being misunderstood. But I would like to highlight the following exchange which I think is of real importance to the discussion and may require further elucidation.

[QUOTE=Christenson;269770]The sort of discrimination seen with respect to non-standard sex in this culture is nothing if not cruel...and that includes the legal failure to recognise a life-long bond for all that it implies. [...][/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Zeta-Flux;269784]I completely disagree with your assessment that recognizing the difference between marriage and other life-long bonds involving "non-standard sex" is cruel.[/QUOTE]

I would describe failure to recognize same sex marriage on a scale ranging from "discriminatory" all the way up to "cruel and devastating" depending on the effects on the people involved.

When two women or two men succeed in overcoming the societal prejudice and settle together for life, maybe bringing up children as part of their family unit in the process, then they may merely experience the unfairness of not having been able to affirm their lifelong commitment with a wedding in the way that others do, plus they may experience some financial disadvantage compared with families in which the adults have been able to marry. This is discrimination.

When children are removed from their loving same sex parents or the couple themselves are denied the right to live together, we have the other end of the scale. I wonder what you think of [URL="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/09/bradford-wells-anthony-john-makk-deportation_n_922279.html"]this example[/URL] of a couple who have been together for 19 years, married for 7 (ever since this became possible in Massachusetts), and may now be forcibly separated because one of the partners is not a US citizen.

I'll ditto Brian-e here.....failure to legally recognize the strong, lifelong bonds *is* discrimination, and it is decidedly cruel to some of those affected....while I was at a nice restaurant on the way to Santa Cruz last week, there was a wedding party there...I missed that there were 2 joyous grooms holding hands and no bride, until it was pointed out to me by a cousin afterward. I'd just recovered the keys from inside my rental car at the Roaring Camp and Big Trees railroad, on the edge of Henry Cowell State Park.

Brian-E,

I had been planning all day on responding to your post when I got home from work. However, the 1.5 hours of racquetball I played seems to have worn me out quite a bit. I'll try to respond sometime tomorrow.

Cheers,
Zeta-Flux

[QUOTE=Christenson;269855]I missed that there were 2 joyous grooms holding hands and no bride, until it was pointed out to me by a cousin afterward.[/QUOTE]
It will be great when same sex marriages become so universally accepted that anyone might fail to notice the sameness or oppositeness of the genders like you did.:smile:

[QUOTE=Zeta-Flux;269858]Brian-E,

I had been planning all day on responding to your post when I got home from work. However, the 1.5 hours of racquetball I played seems to have worn me out quite a bit. I'll try to respond sometime tomorrow.

Cheers,
Zeta-Flux[/QUOTE]
Thanks.:smile:

[QUOTE=Brian-E;269787]I would describe failure to recognize same sex marriage on a scale ranging from "discriminatory" all the way up to "cruel and devastating" depending on the effects on the people involved.

When two women or two men succeed in overcoming the societal prejudice and settle together for life, maybe bringing up children as part of their family unit in the process, then they may merely experience the unfairness of not having been able to affirm their lifelong commitment with a wedding in the way that others do, plus they may experience some financial disadvantage compared with families in which the adults have been able to marry. This is discrimination.

When children are removed from their loving same sex parents or the couple themselves are denied the right to live together, we have the other end of the scale. I wonder what you think of [URL="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/09/bradford-wells-anthony-john-makk-deportation_n_922279.html"]this example[/URL] of a couple who have been together for 19 years, married for 7 (ever since this became possible in Massachusetts), and may now be forcibly separated because one of the partners is not a US citizen.[/QUOTE]What is marriage? I think you will agree with me that either side must answer this question to make its point. Let me describe what I believe to be some aspects of your side's view.

In their view, marriage is societies way of validating a life-long commitment of two people who love each other and want to make a formal commitment to love only each other. One of the key steps in arguing that homosexuality is just as valid as heterosexual relations is that it arises from natural biological processes, is inherent, and is not a mental illness. So, this separates it from sexual deviancies like pedophilia or bestiality (which are, at least currently, classified as a mental illness) or freely chosen sexual fetishes, which behaviors are not inherent. In particular, they argue that it is unfair to socially repress their natural and unchangeable desires, and that the historic institution of marriage should give way to our expanded understanding of human nature. To do otherwise, they argue, is discriminatory and hateful because there is no essential difference between their relationship and that of any heterosexual couple.

I believe I understand this argument. They are arguing that traditional marriage and homosexual unions are fungible. They are interchangeable. There is no real difference. And if we accept their definition of marriage, namely the validation of lifelong commitments between two people, then I think they are right. They are interchangeable if that is all that marriage is.

On my side, we believe that this understanding of what marriage fundamentally is has negative impacts on the institution, separating it from its biologically centered reality that coitus can, and often does, produce children, and thus the act should be protected and limited by social conventions. I think the article I linked to earlier makes a strong case that this understanding of marriage is important to society, and it addresses the charge of discrimination.

But let's ignore that for the moment. I think there is another response to the charge of cruelty. One must keep in mind that gays and lesbians are not the only ones with a stake in this discussion. In fact, the acronym they use-- LGBT -- tells us of another two groups of people interested in this issue. The third letter stands for bisexual. These are people who believe they are inherently attracted to both genders. As someone (I believe it was you) said earlier, some people are attracted at different times with different amounts of attraction to the two genders.

Bisexuals claim that these attractions are inherent, not the sign of mental illness, and biologically motivated. Is it really fair that societal convention has it so that marriages are the union of two people? That seems to cruelly prevent these people from expressing their natural biological desires, and prevents them from enjoying financial benefits. They would have to choose between their partners, and thus deny half of their sexuality. Furthermore, at least historically, there is precedence for having multiple partners--think polygamy.

Personally speaking, if I were to accept that marriage is what the LGBT groups argue it is, I would also have to accept this claim. Even on the heterosexual side, I believe there are natural biologically motivated desires for people to have multiple partners.

Continuing, there is the T in LGBT, standing for transgender. Sometimes a Q is also included, which can stand for queer, but also for questioning. Some of these people are not sure exactly where their interests lie. This uncertainty is not a sign of mental illness, and may be a result of inherent biological processes. Is it really fair that social convention has it so that marriages are life-long? Their natural biological processes make it so that their interests change over time, and so their partners must change also. Social convention should stand aside for our expanded understanding of human biology.

There are also those in the L and G groups who don't want their marriages to be limited to only relations between the two people, but they don't want to share their benefits with these other partners. They want to be in a marriage, and enjoy the benefits therefrom, but they recognize inherent biological needs to have multiple sexual partners, and so they view their marriage as a free one.

And so, what has marriage become? The legal recognition of multiple people joining together for financial gain for a period of time.

I hope that you recognize that this is not a good thing. That at some point one must recognize a purpose/ascpect to marriage which is not served by at least one of these expansions. That even if we recognize the inherent biological claims of these groups, they do not trump the purpose marriage serves to society. At some point inherent biology must give way to a choice to either participate in that institution which we call marriage, or not. And this is not a cruel choice we place on the people. It is simply the fact that their inherent biological activities, even if validated by society, are not marriages. That trying to expand marriage to include those activities would in fact be harmful to the institution of marriage and get in the way of its societal purpose.

[QUOTE=Zeta-Flux;269916]

[ Thoughtful and incisive analysis deleted purely to keep down the size of the post --- pcl]
And so, what has marriage become? The legal recognition of multiple people joining together for financial gain for a period of time.

I hope that you recognize that this is not a good thing. That at some point one must recognize a purpose/ascpect to marriage which is not served by at least one of these expansions. That even if we recognize the inherent biological claims of these groups, they do not trump the purpose marriage serves to society. At some point inherent biology must give way to a choice to either participate in that institution which we call marriage, or not. And this is not a cruel choice we place on the people. It is simply the fact that their inherent biological activities, even if validated by society, are not marriages. That trying to expand marriage to include those activities would in fact be harmful to the institution of marriage and get in the way of its societal purpose.[/QUOTE]I am far from convinced with your claim "financial gain". While it certainly plays a role in some marriages, and an important one too, I believe that it plays a very minor role in many other marriages, so minor as not really to be significant. Further and in-depth analysis of this issue is worthwhile, IMO.

However, I do [b]not[/b] recognize that this is not a good thing. My view is that it may not be a good thing. It may be a good thing. It may be a harmless thing. It may be an irrelevant thing. I shy away from such absolutes because experience has taught me, frequently painfully, that there are very few absolutes in human relationships. (Incidentally, there appear to be very few absolutes in many other species which show at least a minimal level of intellectual activity, examples of which were given in the link I posted earlier.)

My personal opinion is that the term "marriage" carries a meaning given to it by the society within which the "married" persons live. I'm entirely at ease with the situation in which my counterpart at my previous employment was (and still is, AFAIK) married to another guy. [i]De gustibus non disputandem est[/i]

ObDisclosure: I'm male and have been married to a woman for over 20 years.

Paul

[QUOTE=Zeta-Flux;269916]In their view, marriage is societies way of validating a life-long commitment of two people who love each other and want to make a formal commitment[/QUOTE]

There are many legal matters that have become associated with marriage that are mostly about exactly this, having very little to do with coitus and child-rearing. I'm thinking of end-of-life decisions, inheritance in the absence of a will, retirement pension options. Most of these things can be approximated with contract law, but with great effort, at least modest expense, and less certainty of withstanding legal challenge. One driver in the push for gay marriage is to get easy inexpensive access to these legal matters that are society's way of validating a life-long commitment of two people.

My question for you is, are you opposed to establishing such access for gay couples, or are you only opposed to calling it marriage? Would you be supportive of the establishment of an alternative legal arrangement that gave easy access to such rights?

It's probably not practical - it would be horrendously complex and fractious to identify which rights are "society's validation of life long committment" and which are "supportive of coitus and child rearing." But I think the consideration helps clarify the points of agreement and disagreement.

[QUOTE=xilman;269940]I am far from convinced with your claim "financial gain". While it certainly plays a role in some marriages, and an important one too, I believe that it plays a very minor role in many other marriages, so minor as not really to be significant. Further and in-depth analysis of this issue is worthwhile, IMO.[/quote]Point granted. Feel free to modify my post to something like "And so, what has marriage become? The legal recognition of multiple people joining together for any reason at all, for a period of time."

[quote]However, I do [b]not[/b] recognize that this is not a good thing. My view is that it may not be a good thing. It may be a good thing. It may be a harmless thing. It may be an irrelevant thing. I shy away from such absolutes because experience has taught me, frequently painfully, that there are very few absolutes in human relationships. (Incidentally, there appear to be very few absolutes in many other species which show at least a minimal level of intellectual activity, examples of which were given in the link I posted earlier.)

My personal opinion is that the term "marriage" carries a meaning given to it by the society within which the "married" persons live.[/QUOTE]My statement "I hope that you recognize that this is not a good thing" was meant more for Brian-E, who I hoped would agree with my intuition on that statement so that we had a place to start. I would agree with your implicit criticism that, at that point, I had not really supported the statement. I have the notion in my head that Brian-E's understanding of marriage is similar enough to mine that he wouldn't go to that extreme, and so he can agree with me that at some point social convention trumps inherent biological impulses. But if not, maybe my response to you will be useful.

Let me begin by saying that I agree with you that the word "marriage" carries a meaning given by society.

However, I would argue that there is a biological reality, apart from any social conventions we may or may not invent for coupling or naming of relations, related to the act of procreation, that has a great impact on society. These effects can be measured. Do children do better when raised by their biological parents? What affects, if any, does the lack of a marriage culture centered around the effects of coitus, rather than the needs of the individuals, have on society? What costs are associated to sex outside of societally recognized bounds? And so forth. (And these questions may be phrased better than I have.)

So this goes back to the fundamental question: What is marriage? On one level it is, as you say, simply a social convention that we can make mean whatever we want. It is just like the word "species". It can mean whatever we want it to mean, and that meaning may change over time as our understanding of the world changes.

But on the other hand, marriage's near universality among humans is not an accident. It is my opinion (which I believe is backed up by history) that it arose to address certain biological realities related to the creation of children.

In my opinion, changing "species" to mean "brooms in my closet" would neither change the reality that different organisms can naturally be grouped nor destroy the need for a name of such groupings. Similarly, expanding the institution of marriage to a literally meaningless social contract does not destroy the reality that we need social conventions to prevent the misuse of coitus due to the fact that even casual heterosexual encounters can and often do result in the creation of children, and often at high cost to society and the child.

Feel free to be an agnostic on the question of whether changing marriage to mean "The legal recognition of multiple people joining together for any reason at all, for a period of time" is bad for society. However, I hope you agree that there can be, and have been, studies done to measure the effects of such changes. That the effects on society as a whole, and children in particular, among different cultures with different family structures and marriage laws, can be (and in some cases have been) measured. People may disagree about these measurements, how to interpret the results, or even whether those results apply to our culture in particular. Maybe someday I will be proven wrong, that the change I mentioned (or only the slight changes currently proposed) will not have any negative effects. Maybe it will be like removing from the definition of "species" the phrase "able to procreate and produce viable offspring" (so, we can consider lions and tigers to be the same species). Then again, maybe I'm right, and the evidence will show that such a change had disastrous effects (like no-fault divorce has had).

But I also hope that at the very least you can agree that my take on marriage laws is rationally motivated, and not a cruel or unjustly discriminatory practice, [i]a priori[/i]; that I have met the burden of proof asked of me by Brian-E and Christenson. In other words, it is rational to suppose that such a change may have a negative impact, and it is rational and uncruel to wait for more information.

Cheers.
Zeta-Flux

P.S. Thank you for calling my previous post a "thoughtful and incisive analysis".

[QUOTE=wblipp;269950]There are many legal matters that have become associated with marriage that are mostly about exactly this, having very little to do with coitus and child-rearing. I'm thinking of end-of-life decisions, inheritance in the absence of a will, retirement pension options. Most of these things can be approximated with contract law, but with great effort, at least modest expense, and less certainty of withstanding legal challenge. One driver in the push for gay marriage is to get easy inexpensive access to these legal matters that are society's way of validating a life-long commitment of two people.

My question for you is, are you opposed to establishing such access for gay couples, or are you only opposed to calling it marriage? Would you be supportive of the establishment of an alternative legal arrangement that gave easy access to such rights?[/quote]I am for simplifying all such contracts, so that any two persons (regardless whether they are in some type of sexual relationship) can make end-of-life decisions, inheritance absent a will, hospital visitations, and other legal contracts easier to make. I would not be opposed to making that process separate from marriage. Any two people would simply go to the court-house with the necessary documentation and fees, check the boxes, and have it witnessed.

Regarding retirement pensions, I think historically the reason for having them is that one of the parents of a child stays home rather than working (or, historically, women were expected not to work even if childless). On the one hand, from an economic standpoint, it wouldn't make sense if I could just pick one of my friends to be the beneficiary of my retirement pension. So my solution above doesn't quite apply. On the other hand, if I'm not mistaken, in some states a single person can adopt and raise a child. What if that person has a friend (say a nanny-like figure) who stays and raises the child while the person works. Should the nanny receive retirement pension money when the person passes? This is an issue I would probably have to think about more before I had an adequate answer for myself. As a preliminary answer, I would like the nanny to be able to get the pension money.

[quote]It's probably not practical - it would be horrendously complex and fractious to identify which rights are "society's validation of life long committment" and which are "supportive of coitus and child rearing." But I think the consideration helps clarify the points of agreement and disagreement.[/QUOTE]I agree.

[QUOTE=Zeta-Flux;269916]And so, what has marriage become? The legal recognition of multiple people joining together for financial gain for a period of time.

I hope that you recognize that this is not a good thing.[/QUOTE]
later amended to:
[QUOTE=Zeta-Flux;269952]Feel free to modify my post to something like "And so, what has marriage become? The legal recognition of multiple people joining together for any reason at all, for a period of time.[/QUOTE]
My take on your well presented and detailed arguments is very brief in contrast. I simply don't agree that marriage has become, or is threatening to become, anything of the sort. The word "multiple" is unjustified: we are talking about marriage between two people. And "any reason at all" is far too broad, just as your original "financial gain" missed the mark: the clear motivation of most marriages is the emotion we call love that the two partners feel for each other and their conviction that they want to devote the rest of their lives to each other. That applies whether they are same sex or opposite sex.

Deviations from this ideal certainly occur: we have all heard of arranged marriages, people who marry for money, "open marriages", marriages of convenience, marriage due to unplanned pregnancy, etc etc. But denying same sex couples the right to marry does nothing to address this degrading of the marriage institution.

[QUOTE=Brian-E;269957]My take on your well presented and detailed arguments is very brief in contrast. I simply don't agree that marriage has become, or is threatening to become, anything of the sort. The word "multiple" is unjustified: we are talking about marriage between two people.[/quote]Are you going to deny bisexuals the right to marry partners from both genders? On what basis do you make that discrimination? Why must a marriage be between only two people? Why aren't you being cruel while you think I am (i.e., what is the difference)?

[quote]And "any reason at all" is far too broad, just as your original "financial gain" missed the mark: the clear motivation of most marriages is the emotion we call love that the two partners feel for each other and their conviction that they want to devote the rest of their lives to each other. That applies whether they are same sex or opposite sex.[/QUOTE]Or polygamists, or bisexuals, or best friends.

At least historically, marriage brought with it the right to sexual relations. If a spouse refused spousal favors the other party could be granted a divorce (back when it was harder to get them). Does your understanding of the institution of marriage have any connections to sex? I'm not talking about whether in any specific marriage it must happen. Rather, if there are (or should be) legal and societal expectations for the institution as a whole, whereby one partner can claim to be defrauded if the other partner does not comply? Or is marriage a sexless institution, which is simply about societally validating life-long commitments?