Why Do I Care?

Before I was so rudely interrupted by life, I was engaged in a talk on Twitter about neutering marriage. It originated with me tweeting out links to columns and the like surrounding the pressuring of Eich to leave Mozilla (the company behind Firefox) because he supported Proposition 8, a duly adopted (and popularly approved) amendment to the California constitution that restricted state marriage licenses to marriage. My tweeting of those columns resulted in many responses from some people on Twitter, and the talk ensued. A longtime reader/commenter of this blog and another to which I've contributed joined in with his thoughtful comments, and plenty of people came and went, some vulgar and trying to take the conversations on tangents, others more focused and civil.

The bulk of the conversation has not been about Eich, but about whether or not state marriage licenses should be neutered so that brideless and groomless couples also get those licenses.

I don't think there is any resolving the conflict, because the basis of my position is that marriage is inherently about uniting the sexes and that state governments have an interest in distinguishing marriage via licensing and the laws that apply to such licensed marriage, and their position appears to be that brideless and groomless unions of two (but not more) people should be licensed as marriages and treated exactly the same as bride+groom unions. For a dialogues to have any meaning, there has to be an agreement on something to begin with. We don't even agree on what rights are. Regardless, although Twitter can accommodate bumper sticker slogans, these topics deserve more than 140 characters.



Readers can decide for themselves if bride+groom pairings are not significantly different enough from brideless pairings and groomless pairings to warrant different treatment in law. I maintain that even if marriage neutering advocates are so successful in their efforts that people no longer tend to assume "marriage" means uniting a bride and groom (as it has throughout all of history worldwide until very recently), the uniting of the sexes is different enough that some other word or phrase will have the be applied. All of us, regardless of sexual orientation, are here because sperm from a man united with an egg from a woman, almost all of us because it happened in an act of coitus, and most of that coitus (though certainly not enough) taking place in a relationship that was already a marriage or heading for marriage. I think it is absurd to say that public policy should essentially ignore something that creates new dependent citizens who have not consented to the situation. We're all better off the more children are raised by their biological mother and father who are husband and wife. Sometimes biological parents are irresponsible or downright abusive and so one or both of them will not be around to be husband & father or wife & mother. Stepparenting and adoption can be great solutions to childbearing or childrearing gone awry. (God bless the great stepparents out there, but statistics actually indicate that if their biological or original adoptive parents are no longer together, the odds are that a minor child is better off NOT having their parent(s) bringing their new lovers in - and likely out of - their lives, often along with stepsiblings or the creation of half siblings. Parents of minor children are better off moving back in with their own parents - provided they are married and not abusive - or in with a married sibling, so the child can have parental figures of both sexes and see the interaction of a bride and groom.)

Yes, some same-sex couples end up with custody of minor children. This is almost always the result of intentions on the part of the adults, and never the result of lasting monogamous coupling or strictly natural processes. If they haven't adopted or used surrogates/donated sperm or eggs (thus intentionally depriving a child of a mother or a father) then it is the result of previous heterosexual relationships. As I've said before, God bless same-sex couples who rescue a child from certain institutionalization. However, if at all possible, children should be placed in a home with a married mother and father. That is a preference state/county authorities or their associates won't be/aren't allowed to make wherever marriage licenses are neutered. That is a real-world consequence of neutering state marriage licenses. There may be a tiny few situations where a woman in a same-sex relationship was raped by man (who, hopefully, was caught, prosecuted, and incarcerated), conceived a child as a result, and opted the keep and raise the child. That would have to be an extremely small percentage of the situations in which a same-sex couple ends up raising children.

I maintain that the ideal when it comes to family is the 1) uniting of a bride and groom in marriage, followed by 2) childbearing by the same, then 3) childrearing by the same. Since this is the natural course of things and has traditionally been supported by general mores, the burden is on the other side to show that there is no societal benefit to public policies that encourage keeping those three things connected in that order, or that there is a greater societal benefit in policies that logically result in separating those things from consideration in relation to each other in our laws, courts, and government programs.

Regardless of how they come about, there is the reality of 1) same-sex couples with at least partial custody of children, and there are 2) same-sex couples who will share their lives childless as well. Since I support their freedom of association and thus their freedom to share their lives in such a way, and recognize that same-sex couples can make certain legal arrangements, I can see that there could be public benefit to allowing them (and others) a shortcut to such arrangements via domestic partnerships. Dismissing this as inequality because domestic partnerships are not marriage misses the reality that brideless or groomless unions aren't equal to bride+groom unions. This is not to say the people in them do not care for each other or love each other every bit as much as those in bride+groom unions. It is just to say from the cold objective perspective of law, the state has more interest in gender-integrating unions than it has in same-sex pairings. The most simple and least intrusive way of being involved is to require the participation of both a man and a woman. While not all such relationships will produce new citizens, they are the only kind that naturally can. As a group, as a rule, and by nature, they are the kind that do, and they usually do. We know that no pairing (or larger grouping) that does not have both sexes involved will. There is no need to test for desire to have children or fertility.

Ideally, laws that serve these other situations would not undermine marriage, nor would they weaken a child's right to her mother and father, nor a mother or father's right to their child. Sadly, what we have is the "marriage equality" movement, which is doing exactly those things. Men and women, masculinity and femininity, mothers and fathers, and the complimentary interaction of those things are all being devalued, downplayed, even derided and replaced with "persons" and "parents".

With that, I will respond to things for which I previously didn't have time.

During this talk, I asked @NotGayDalek "Why just 1? What happened to rights?" I was saying why do we limit people to one legal spouse at a time. This was the response:

MARRIAGE IS A RIGHT THAT IS REGULATED BY THE GOVT. JUST LIKE SPEECH, GUNS, PROPERTY. CAN U LEGALLY DRIVE TWO CARS AT A TIME?

You can have multiple guns and multiple vehicles registered to you at the same time. And people can certainly have sexual encounters with, and love, more than one person at the exact same moment. If marriage is a "right" in the sense that we have a right to have any adult as our legal spouse, if it should be allowed to consenting adults who love each other, if the bride+groom requirement is not inherent to marriage, why is the number of two?

‏@NotGayDalek:

WALRUS CLAIMS MARRIAGES ARE CONTRACTS ENTERED INTO BY TWO CONSENTING ADULTS, THEN CONTRADICTS HIMSELF.

I asked, "Where did I say ANY 2 consenting adults?"

U REPEATEDLY SAY “BRIDE+GROOM” MARRIAGE,NOT “BRIDES+GROOMS” MARRIAGE.

Yes, I say bride+groom = marriage. @NotGayDalek says "any two adults" = marriage. I wanted to know why just two. @SearchCz actually had good considerations about that:

So, when you are incapacitated, to which of your spouses does marriage give decision making authority?

And...

when you pass away, which spouse is designated by virtue of marriage as your principal heir?

Then ‏@NotGayDalek caught on and asked:

IF THERE WAS A DIVORCE BETWEEN A PENTOUPLE WHO WOULD RETAIN KID CUSTODY? INHERITANCE?

Here's where it seems marriage suddenly is not actually a right in the sense they have been claiming, because it could require some changes in laws or legal forms. None of these potential difficulties changes the reality of these people being consenting adults who love each other. These questions appeal to typical laws regarding marriage that are based on someone only having one spouse. However, there are also laws that give default paternity to a woman's spouse. How can that possibly apply when the spouse is a woman? Yet, that doesn't stop judges (and some voters) from neutering state marriage licenses, does it? What exactly is the "right to marry"? Marriage paperwork used to have spaces for a bride and a groom. If that can be changed, so can other elements of paperwork.

In response to my asking of why marriage laws should apply only to couples, and not three or more, ‏@SearchCz wrote:

same-sex couples can do all the things we required of married folk. "Throuples" cannot.

And...

we have data that shows couples raise children well. What's the data on throuples?

I have to wonder exactly what it is that same-sex couples can do that three or more people can't, and what data on raising children has anything to do with marriage?

Finally, @ActivistDalek asked:

WHY DO YOU CARE SO MUCH ABOUT THE ISSUE OF #SSM WHEN IT DOES NOT APPEAR YOU HAVE A PERSONAL STAKE IN IT? OR DO YOU?

Of course I have a personal stake in marriage laws, and not just because I'm married myself. Public policies about family have an impact on all of us. We all have to live with the consequences. They make a difference in what we pass along to the next generation, and since I have children, I have all the more reason to care. As a man, husband, and father, I have an interest in anything that devalues or diminishes those roles and the value of masculinity. I'm also a voter. Undue disenfranchisement is also my concern. I'm a taxpayer, and as the foundations of strong families are further weakened, demands for taxpayer-funded assistance will increase. I have said it before - I truly have no objection from a civic perspective to two men having a ceremony and sharing their lives. However, state licenses are a matter of public policy and as such they are my business, and the business of all voters. Finally, as someone who values liberty, the fascistic tendencies evident in the marriage neutering movement are of concern. Tactics matter. Precedents don't only apply when and how marriage neutering advocates want.

I have written about all of this before. See here, here, here, and here.