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The WORDSUM variable in the General Social Survey has a correlation of 0.71 with general intelligence. That is, IQ. As you can see in the figure above the distribution isn’t quite normal, though those with at least a college degree are skewed toward having higher scores. A 10 out of 10 means getting the definition of all 10 vocabulary words on the test correct. A 0 out of 10 means the converse.
It’s often illuminating to see how WORDSUM tracks social views. My rule of thumb is that if an overwhelming skew of the intelligent is toward one particular opinion, that will determine social policy. To me that explains why Creationism has had only spotty traction in this country’s public schools despite relatively broad avowed support for “equal time” in the classrooms in the interests of fairness. While the liberal elites are uniformly opposed to this, the conservative elites are divided.
Looking at attitudes toward abortion by intelligence also sheds some light why this political debate seems to be an eternal feature of the American landscape since the 1970s. I took WORDSUM and combined 0 to 4, 5 to 7, and 8 to 10. You can think of these as the “dumb,” “average”, and “smart.” Then I compared them to the ABANY variable in the 1980s and 2000s. This asks whether respondents think a pregnant woman should be allowed to have an abortion for any reason. The results are below.
As you can see, there is almost no change over the past generation.
Now what about gay marriage? You can probably guess where I’m going with this. No matter what intellectual Christians say I believe that this generation will come to pass such that the vast majority of Christians will accept gay marriage and their faith as compatible. More precisely, I believe that by the year 2100 the majority of the world’s Christian population is likely to be accepting of gay marriage.
Personally it has been interesting to see how attitudes have changed. In my own family individuals who were opposed to gay marriage ten years ago have now put a rainbow filter on their Facebook profile. More starkly, there are those I know from my adolescent years who are excited about gay marriage now. I grew up in a very conservative area (the county routinely votes 70 percent Republican), and remember debates in classrooms about ballot measures which we all termed “anti-gay”. Now some of those children who argued in favor of these measures are putting rainbow filters on their Facebook profiles!
So how have things changed? The GSS has a variable, MARHOMO, which asks if “Homosexual couples should have the right to marry one another.” It was asked in 1988, and then every few years from 2004 on. I combined those who strongly agree and agree that homosexual couples should have the right to marry. Below is a contrast between 1988, and the 2000s and 2010s, by WORDSUM.
So what’s next? Some liberals are now opening the debate about polygamy in the interests of fairness and justice (and more broadly construed polyamory). But as you can see from the map to the left polygamy is already legal in much of the world. This experiment has been done. The satirical slogans write themselves: “In the 7th century love for old rich men for many young women won! Back to the future.” A few years ago I put up a post, Monogamous Societies Superior to Polygamous Societies. That’s obviously a judgment that varies by where you stand. If you are the median human, it seems reasonable to me. Polygamous societies have been around for thousands of years. Almost always polygamous means polygynous, not polyandrous or polyamorous. We know the score. Yes, if you take a narrow liberal and liberal hedonic perspective about individual human flourishing it does seem unjust that those who love more than one individual can’t enter into legally binding relationships with those individuals. But the big picture is not so pretty.
Perhaps this time it will be different. But we have a track record of who enters into polygamous relationships, and who benefits. Polygamy allows extremely powerful and wealthy males to gain access to many women simultaneously. Of course serial monogamy and lack of fidelity show that this isn’t a very tight fix for the perceived problem. But the de jure laws which constrain elite individuals to one official marriage partner serves as a check on this phenomenon.
To put it more plainly, gay marriage has a huge impact on gays, and not much impact on straights (at least non-psychically). Gay marriage is basically an extension of a social-legal apparatus operative among straights to gays. Polygamy is different, in that it tinkers with major parameters of the machinery of the marriage, not simply who can partake. Polygamy does impact straight people, usually in situations where young males must scramble to accrue enough resources to be one of the fortunate men be able to have a wife, and perhaps a few to spare. From the perspective of women they have to consider the option of being a secondary wife of a rich man, as opposed to being the primary wife of a poor man. Enforced monogamy might be a behavioral strategy to dampen status competition and maintain social cohesion for both sexes (in the hunter-gatherer world a sort of serial monogamy was probably the norm). The basic thesis is that mass agricultural society allowed for the evolution of radical inequality, and the social norms of the ethical religions evolved precisely to bring the system back into balance.
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Perhaps this time it will be different
I suspect it will be very different, because now women are going to have the freedom to have multiple partners as well, and because we have things like birth control, paternity testing etc.. (This is one of the reasons I’ve changed my mind and now favour legalized polygamy).
I am going to go out on a limb here and state my view that gender is not a social construct. I think the trend is fewer women marrying once.
I don’t know that anyone’s done a poll, but there are probably millions of women in Brazil, Ukraine, Russia, Thailand, the Philippines and other places who would be willing to be a second wife to a middle or upperclass American, German or other Developed World man. There are probably significant numbers of Developed World guys willing to be polygynous. It’s not likely that all that many people would take advantage of legalized polygamy; it would probably continue to be both expensive and stigmatized. But under legalization, polygyny might become common enough to create winners and losers on an international scale.
I don’t think it has much impact on gays, honestly. There has never been a law against men having marriage-like relationships that I know of, and even before civil partnerships legal arrangements through contract law could have created something very close to marriage for any couple of men or women who chose.
Now that I think of it, when I was a little kid back in the early 80s there was a gay couple that lived next door in an apparently committed relationship (calling most gay marriages “monogamous” would be stretching the term past its limit). I don’t recall much consternation from the neighbors. People just left them alone. The funny thing about them is that they both had the same first name. Scott and Scott or something like that. I wonder whether they’re married now…
“Do you, Scott, take Scott to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
In order for recognizing gay relationships as marriage to have a truly huge impact on gays, there would have to be a miracle that somehow caused them to behave like straights and develop the ability to bear children. I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
So, on the contrary, I don’t think this will make much difference for gays.
The biggest impact will be political, and that will affect straights every bit as much as gays. Some states are already considering pulling out of civil marriage altogether. This is something I fervently hope comes to pass, because nothing has wrecked marriage like state interference in the natural human sexual/reproductive contract it represents. By undermining civil marriage (which does not exist in much of the world), gay marriage could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to straight marriage in this country.
BTW, if you arranged answers according to word sum score on the issue of eugenics in the early 20th century I’d be willing to bet the biggest supporters would have had the highest scores. People with the highest vocabularies tend to follow “enlightened opinion” more closely than others, so they’re more influenced by greater exposure. Their intelligence doesn’t prevent them from being receptive to intellectual fashions, and may actually make them more susceptible to them.
The idea of spontaneously being able to have kids is a side issue, maybe not their own, but certainly foster or adopted situations could be lubricated so-to-speak by the legally binding marriage.
Homosexuals can, and have, also adopt or use surrogates.
So your argument falls flat on its face.
You also may be interested in the book Total Eclipse by John Brunner. First published in 1974, it’s about trying to discover the cause of an alien civilization’s demise and it has a genetics and reproductive strategy angle that you might find interesting and that I think is somewhat relevant here:
Gay writer Justin Raimondo wrote that no one has “explained—and never could explain—why it would make sense for gays to entangle themselves in a regulatory web and risk getting into legal disputes over divorce, alimony, and the division of property.” For the most part, it doesn’t make sense for them, but gays don’t like being denied a right, even if exercising that right will be to their own detriment. Meanwhile I suspect most non-gays really don’t care about gay marriage and only care about being seen as tolerant. When gays themselves realize their marriages don’t work, for some of the same reasons that non-gay marriages don’t work, there will be fewer gay marriages and non-gays will come out of the woodwork to tell gays that “I never thought it would ever work out for you guys but I didn’t want to say anything.”
Speaking of the big picture, how does allowing gays to marry strengthen the generic marriage contract? If gays are much more promiscuous, much more likely to divorce, how does that make a marriage contract more binding? I seem to remember that the groups most opposed to gay marriage were blacks and poor whites–both groups being more likely to divorce than university educated professionals. Perhaps those groups see a marriage contract as fragile and allowing gays to marry making it even more fragile.
gays = men and women. so don't be stupid. ;-) lesbians are not more promiscuous.
Perhaps those groups see a marriage contract as fragile and allowing gays to marry making it even more fragile.
i've seen this argument before. these are not the groups engaging in deep thoughts about the social-structural nature of marriage. rather, the argument about secondary effects comes from intellectuals trying come up with reasons why gay marriage has an effect on non-gays. because intellectuals actually think about contingent causal chains....Replies: @Zach
This would be a case of you having incomplete knowledge. Such laws were widespread in the United States, particularly in “red states” and were upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) (laws banning homosexual sodomy constitutional)
These laws were held unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Lawrence v. Texas (2003) (reversing Bowers).
Many states also adopted state constitutional amendments prohibiting not only marriage but marriage-like arrangements.
Also many of the economic and legal incidents of marriage can only be secured for unmarried persons by statutory change (e.g. joint tax filing status, right to rollover retirement benefits at death, unlimited marital exemption for gift and estate taxation, right to bring suits for wrongful death, right to have tenancy by entirety ownership of property in states that have it, right to sponsor someone for immigration purposes and to allow someone who has immigrated to become a citizen, treatment as a single family for zoning purposes, right to be a co-adopting parent, etc.).
I’ve represented many same sex couples in matters such as estate planning, break ups, and parenting arrangements, and believe me, the impact of legalizing marriage is economically and legally huge for same sex couples.
really? it strikes me that my straight readers surely know all the social/legal debilities that gays in america have faced ;-)Replies: @Bill P
This would bring us to the question of whether and why the state or any corporate (in the broadest, most organic sense of the word) interest ought to be engaged in promoting, even indirectly, non-vaginal intercourse or other forms of mutual sexual gratification? I don't care if people want to experiment, but given that such encounters never produce children in ANY circumstances (to be fair, in certain circumstances vaginal intercourse will not, either, but even our highly sexualized libertine culture rarely promotes such specific circumstances, i.e., when was the last time you heard of a geriatric porno video, marketed toward retired couples?) they would seem rather trivial, at best. In the case of anal penetration QUITE unsanitary, notwithstanding the pretentions of some in the P.C. lobby to the contrary.
Or is the case for gay marriage supposed to be that it will tame and bourgeoisify the famous promiscuity of the gay man and thereby reduce incidence of disease and/or heartbreak? I doubt it, mostly because as a man myself I am skeptical that any man can be sexually tamed without the reliable presence of a woman. As it happens, no less than the New York Times, that voice for the SWPL, has documented considerable anecdotal evidence to bear my suspicions out (see the link above).
I don't think that entirely accurate depiction. The United States, like most countries with a Judeo-Christian background, criminalized non-procreative sex. The Georgia law in Bowers v. Hardwick criminalized oral and anal sex regardless of the gender of the participants, though Hardwick was homosexual.Replies: @Razib Khan, @ohwilleke
As you reveal so plainly below, it isn't about sex of any type (how could it be if gay couples apparently can both be parents of the same child now?), whether reproductive, consensual, anal, what have you, but legal privileges (i.e. human fictions) and cash:As an attorney I'm sure one might hope that an enormous, green tidal wave of cash from gay family litigation is building just over the horizon, but even in the gayest of cities there has not yet been a surge of young gays in the prime of life rushing to the altar to settle down and raise children, and I remain skeptical of its eventual appearance.
Personally, I think the government privileges afforded to married couples were a mistake. "Marriage" - or something like it - is a natural human arrangement. It doesn't need official encouragement. Obviously, it is not an individual right, and cannot be. And, it unfairly discriminates against the unmarried and unmarriageable (not to mention certain ethnic groups with lower marriage rates) when one gives rights to those who are married above those who are not. So if the (civil) benefits of marriage are now a civil right, then why not extend them to all people?
It's a question that has to be answered now that we've kicked the stool out from under the institution's natural progenitor.Replies: @ohwilleke
Dr Reuben in his famous sex tome explained how it was far easier (in 1969) for two men to get a hotel room together than for an unmarried man and woman.Replies: @Razib Khan
Speaking of the big picture, how does allowing gays to marry strengthen the generic marriage contract? If gays are much more promiscuous, much more likely to divorce, how does that make a marriage contract more binding? I seem to remember that the groups most opposed to gay marriage were blacks and poor whites--both groups being more likely to divorce than university educated professionals. Perhaps those groups see a marriage contract as fragile and allowing gays to marry making it even more fragile.Replies: @Razib Khan
If gays are much more promiscuous,
gays = men and women. so don’t be stupid. 😉 lesbians are not more promiscuous.
Perhaps those groups see a marriage contract as fragile and allowing gays to marry making it even more fragile.
i’ve seen this argument before. these are not the groups engaging in deep thoughts about the social-structural nature of marriage. rather, the argument about secondary effects comes from intellectuals trying come up with reasons why gay marriage has an effect on non-gays. because intellectuals actually think about contingent causal chains….
Non-intellectuals, or non-academicans, are capable of putting together contingent causal chains. Years ago, people would say such and such was as gay as a three dollar bill--a phony. Extending that metaphor, when someone says gay marriage won't affect marriage in general, there are plenty of Joe Blows out there that could retort then that counterfeiting money in their basement wouldn't hurt anyone else either. I don't think opposition to gay marriage is just a knee-jerk objection inspired by scripture.
In addition to IQ, it would be interesting to see how attitudes to gay marriage break down in terms of class. I suspect the comfortable, on the whole, are in favor while the people barely getting by are less in favor.Replies: @Razib Khan
This would be a case of you having incomplete knowledge
really? it strikes me that my straight readers surely know all the social/legal debilities that gays in america have faced 😉
That friend and I disagreed on a lot, but we were close, and our disagreements never influenced my loyalty to him as a friend. I stayed in touch until the end, and he died just a couple months over twenty years ago. He was about my current age at the time, so I can't say it hasn't been on my mind recently.
A lot of people claim opposition to including homosexual relationships in the same class as heterosexual ones is a result of ignorance. Others say it's callousness. In my case it's neither. It's because I know it's false, and wishful or careless thinking cannot make it so. And ultimately falsehoods have consequences.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Nico
The majority of the most intelligent were against gay marriage from the at least the 1980’s to the 2000’s. And a greater percentage of those with low IQs supported gay marriage in the 2010’s than the most intelligent did in 2000’s. It’s kind of scary how people can shift so quickly on an issue. But Hillary was a staunch opponent of gay marriage in 2008, but now, not so much.
You can’t trust the correctness of the majority, even when they side with you. You especially can’t trust the cognitive elites. E.g., 59% of American Jews (top of the WORDSUM graph) supported the war against Iraq. The majority of academics supported the Nazi Party’s rise to power in Germany.
The biggest “big-picture” argument in favor of polygamy is sagging Western birth rates. In the post-war economy, the age of peak fertility closely matched the age of peak earnings. The economy seems to have permanently shifted, and peak earnings probably occurs a decade or later after fertility drop-off. The typical monogamous 30 year old couple cannot afford the prime property necessary for family formation.
One obvious workaround is to have young women married to and supported by older, higher-earning men. But most men will end up married before 45, and the costly process of divorce significantly dampens their economic resources. Finally Schopenhauer’s concept of tetragamy confers these benefits, but avoid the problem of unbalanced sex ratios in the mating market. However it’s such a weird concept that I can’t imagine it gaining a cultural foothold.
i think hillary was lying btw. the political elites have had to lie about things since universal voting rights in the USA since the first half of 19th century.
Relevant to this:
The Rise of Universalism | JayMan’s Blog
Is the attitude towards homosexuality by wordsum broken down by race?
Quite true about polygamy (in reality, polygyny). But as I argued in the post, society could easily tolerate low rates of polygyny (since it effectively already does). It’s when the rate gets too high that we have trouble, as you describe. Though it probably doesn’t have to get very high to cause a problem.
Fascinating. On the one hand the homosexualists have gone out of their way to avoid talking about the sodomy factor in gay marriage (I for my part am summarily denouced every time I attempt to bring up the question of what would happen if a gay or even more ominously lesbian couple attempted to annul a putative same-sex marriage on the grounds of non-consummation). On the other, this particular part of your argument makes sense only if sex and in the case of gays sodomy (or at least some form of mutual masturbation as would necessarily be the case for lesbians) is an inevitable and intrinsic part of marriage.
This would bring us to the question of whether and why the state or any corporate (in the broadest, most organic sense of the word) interest ought to be engaged in promoting, even indirectly, non-vaginal intercourse or other forms of mutual sexual gratification? I don’t care if people want to experiment, but given that such encounters never produce children in ANY circumstances (to be fair, in certain circumstances vaginal intercourse will not, either, but even our highly sexualized libertine culture rarely promotes such specific circumstances, i.e., when was the last time you heard of a geriatric porno video, marketed toward retired couples?) they would seem rather trivial, at best. In the case of anal penetration QUITE unsanitary, notwithstanding the pretentions of some in the P.C. lobby to the contrary.
Or is the case for gay marriage supposed to be that it will tame and bourgeoisify the famous promiscuity of the gay man and thereby reduce incidence of disease and/or heartbreak? I doubt it, mostly because as a man myself I am skeptical that any man can be sexually tamed without the reliable presence of a woman. As it happens, no less than the New York Times, that voice for the SWPL, has documented considerable anecdotal evidence to bear my suspicions out (see the link above).
Doug,
What’s tetragamy?
Also, there are probably a fair number of young men in Senegal or Burkina Faso who would be polyandrous with a rich white European lady. As Razib himself pointed out a couple months ago, much of what we think of as ‘traditional’ sexual ethics (in particular the emphasis on female chastity) has more to do with the rise of agriculture than with human nature.
I suspect it will be very different, because now women are going to have the freedom to have multiple partners as well, and because we have things like birth control, paternity testing etc.. (This is one of the reasons I've changed my mind and now favour legalized polygamy).Replies: @PD Shaw
“now women are going to have the freedom to have multiple partners as well”
I am going to go out on a limb here and state my view that gender is not a social construct. I think the trend is fewer women marrying once.
Do you think selective abortion/genetic engineering will have an effect on % of gays in future generations once genes associated with risk of homosexuality/susceptibility to “gay germ” are discovered? I can not find numbers anywhere on this, just opinion pieces.
25 percent heritable. probably developmental and stochastic. wouldn’t be surprised if one could calculate probability early in utero, at which point pregnancy might be aborted. then again, if you know the biology that well you might have a genuine ‘cure.’
“Such laws were widespread in the United States . . .”
I don’t think that entirely accurate depiction. The United States, like most countries with a Judeo-Christian background, criminalized non-procreative sex. The Georgia law in Bowers v. Hardwick criminalized oral and anal sex regardless of the gender of the participants, though Hardwick was homosexual.
They did historically criminalize non-marital sex of all kinds - both sex between unmarried people, and sex with someone other than a spouse during marriage (although sometimes, only sex with a married woman by someone other than her spouse).
The theory was a combination of the property rights that husbands believed that they had in their wives and fathers believed that they had in their daughters, and functionally as a form a rape prevention by only allowing sex in circumstances where consent had been irrevocably given in advance in a public and well documented way.Replies: @PD Shaw
I don't think that entirely accurate depiction. The United States, like most countries with a Judeo-Christian background, criminalized non-procreative sex. The Georgia law in Bowers v. Hardwick criminalized oral and anal sex regardless of the gender of the participants, though Hardwick was homosexual.Replies: @Razib Khan, @ohwilleke
can we not use the ridiculous term judeo-christian?
I don’t think that gay marriage, per se, is a big deal. The problem is that it’s a cultural victory for SJW-types. They’re insane, and their winning in gay marriage leaves the door open for more suppression of honest, free speech, more promotion of transsexualism and a weakening of healthy sexual mores. SJWs may not be promoting polygamy en masse just yet, but it’ll become an issue once Muslim-Americans demand it.
SJW are followers/enforcers. they don’t push cultural change.
That being said, old style liberal ideals of freedom may have achieved their sell-by date. I hope not!
I would say that they enforce inertial trends, without creating them in the first place. I doubt that SJWs will start demanding polygamy, but if mosques started marrying off several women to individual men, and then Muslims claimed that not recognizing those marriages makes them feel "unsafe" or "excluded," the SJWs would be happy to enforce their case.Replies: @Razib Khan
Perhaps Abrahamic instead?
Like Nico said, what exactly does sodomy have to do with marriage? If marriage isn’t defined by the reproductive act, as gay marriage promoters insist, then how could it be defined by anal sex? It cannot, and therefore anti-sodomy laws have no more bearing on whether or not two men could live in a marriage-like relationship than marital rape laws do on the existence of a legal marriage between a man and wife.
As you reveal so plainly below, it isn’t about sex of any type (how could it be if gay couples apparently can both be parents of the same child now?), whether reproductive, consensual, anal, what have you, but legal privileges (i.e. human fictions) and cash:
As an attorney I’m sure one might hope that an enormous, green tidal wave of cash from gay family litigation is building just over the horizon, but even in the gayest of cities there has not yet been a surge of young gays in the prime of life rushing to the altar to settle down and raise children, and I remain skeptical of its eventual appearance.
Personally, I think the government privileges afforded to married couples were a mistake. “Marriage” – or something like it – is a natural human arrangement. It doesn’t need official encouragement. Obviously, it is not an individual right, and cannot be. And, it unfairly discriminates against the unmarried and unmarriageable (not to mention certain ethnic groups with lower marriage rates) when one gives rights to those who are married above those who are not. So if the (civil) benefits of marriage are now a civil right, then why not extend them to all people?
It’s a question that has to be answered now that we’ve kicked the stool out from under the institution’s natural progenitor.
What's more, the increased exemption in estate taxation has also turned a lot of couples (both opposite sex and same sex) who used to need sophisticated tax planning estate plans into simple will customers.
Now, anyone who knows how to do plain vanilla basic moderate income estate plans with a protective trust or two, and basic divorce and elder law work can serve same sex couples just as well as anyone else.
If Colorado hadn't legalized pot, I'd be hard up for work. Fortunately, this reform has backfilled the lost volume of work for same sex couples and moderate affluent families, as marijuana businesses need immense amounts of tax and business law work. I also still have a couple of polygamous families as clients that need the skill set developed doing work for same sex couples before same sex marriage was legalized. But, each family only needs so much work.
I think polygamy exists in America in terms of access to sex.
Regardless of one’s emotions or beliefs about homosexuality, all citizens of the US should be appalled at how this issue has been handled by the courts:
1. Over a few years time, a few agitators begin misusing words that have had a clear cultural and legal meaning for centuries, – “marriage” “husband” “wife” “spouse” etc., etc.
2. The media promotes this misuse until it becomes commonplace and unchallenged in popular usage.
3. Laws written using this words are now challenged because the meaning of the words have been changed in a popular, if not legal, context.
4. Sympathetic judges allow these challenges (which should have been easily quashed) by misrepresenting existing laws as conforming to these newly popular meanings instead of their original ones.
5. Enough challenges are made until the discrepancies in the interpretation of the laws rises to the Supreme Court.
6. The Supreme Court agrees with the new definitions of the words, and instead of striking down the existing laws as impermissibly discriminatory because of the changes wrought by the new definitions of the words, it rewrites and recasts the law to encompass the newly defined institution of homosexual marriage – something it has no power to do. The justification offered for this abuse is sophomoric reasoning based on “dignity” and “love” rather than any legal principle.
7. Because in popular public opinion “might makes right” and “the ends justify the means,” the new laws written by the activist court are applauded by the vocal minority and the media, and the public at large shrugs its shoulders at its own impotency.
8. Separation of powers under the Constitution is again blatantly ignored, and the Supreme Court is conditions the public in this very notorious instance to be accepted as a legislative body.
This is a horrible result and the most dangerous of legal precedents. Now both the presidency and the judiciary are imposing laws on us, and the legislative body utterly acquiesces. This result is bad for everyone.
I would say that’s partially true. I agree that most SJWs have brains like sheep and mouths like dogs. They follow groupthink and viciously attack the people who dissent, but they don’t adhere to the status quo. To say that life in contemporary America is good enough and doesn’t need an overhaul is an extremely “problematic” sentiment for them.
I would say that they enforce inertial trends, without creating them in the first place. I doubt that SJWs will start demanding polygamy, but if mosques started marrying off several women to individual men, and then Muslims claimed that not recognizing those marriages makes them feel “unsafe” or “excluded,” the SJWs would be happy to enforce their case.
they tear at the freshest carcass. there's a reason that neo-nazi activity has strongest appeal in the former GDR aside from the materialist ones. ideology is less important than the thrill of indulging in 2 minutes of hate for a lot of people.
gays = men and women. so don't be stupid. ;-) lesbians are not more promiscuous.
Perhaps those groups see a marriage contract as fragile and allowing gays to marry making it even more fragile.
i've seen this argument before. these are not the groups engaging in deep thoughts about the social-structural nature of marriage. rather, the argument about secondary effects comes from intellectuals trying come up with reasons why gay marriage has an effect on non-gays. because intellectuals actually think about contingent causal chains....Replies: @Zach
Who needs deep thoughts about the social-structural nature of marriage when you have the memory of your grandparents (and popular culture) to tap into? Poor people know their marriages aren’t going to be what their grandparents had, back in the days when divorce and gay marriage were both unthinkable.
Non-intellectuals, or non-academicans, are capable of putting together contingent causal chains. Years ago, people would say such and such was as gay as a three dollar bill–a phony. Extending that metaphor, when someone says gay marriage won’t affect marriage in general, there are plenty of Joe Blows out there that could retort then that counterfeiting money in their basement wouldn’t hurt anyone else either. I don’t think opposition to gay marriage is just a knee-jerk objection inspired by scripture.
In addition to IQ, it would be interesting to see how attitudes to gay marriage break down in terms of class. I suspect the comfortable, on the whole, are in favor while the people barely getting by are less in favor.
“Christian” is perhaps more meaningful. Islam does not proscribe contraceptives, and the sexual ethic continuity between Judaism and Christanity, while undeniable, does not amount to congruency by any stretch. Ashkenazi Jews in 10th-century Europe abandoned polygyny under threat of persecution by their Christian host countries. Sephardic Jews in predominantly Muslim countries have continued to practice polygyny right down to the present day, and they have attempted to get the laws changed when they have moved to Ashkenazi-established Israel.
https://www.unz.com/gnxp/judeo-christian-an-abuse-of-language/Replies: @Nico
Rhode Island law, also to the present day, allows Sephardic Jews (indeed all Jewish men) to marry their nieces.Replies: @Razib Khan
really? it strikes me that my straight readers surely know all the social/legal debilities that gays in america have faced ;-)Replies: @Bill P
Actually, the first person to make the case for gay marriage to me did so over twenty years ago. He was a gay veteran dying of AIDS, and he was a friend of mine. He made a good point about his inability to leave any benefits to a loved one, and I agree with him today. Why should married people have privileges over those who are not married? Sure, it’s unfair to deny that to gays, but isn’t it just as unfair to deny that to the perhaps ten times as many unmarried straight people? Why does a single, childless man have no opportunity to leave as much to a beloved friend, niece or student as he could to a nonexistent wife?
That friend and I disagreed on a lot, but we were close, and our disagreements never influenced my loyalty to him as a friend. I stayed in touch until the end, and he died just a couple months over twenty years ago. He was about my current age at the time, so I can’t say it hasn’t been on my mind recently.
A lot of people claim opposition to including homosexual relationships in the same class as heterosexual ones is a result of ignorance. Others say it’s callousness. In my case it’s neither. It’s because I know it’s false, and wishful or careless thinking cannot make it so. And ultimately falsehoods have consequences.
And this is why the State, even if it does not manage or regulate marriages, nevertheless has a compelling interest in registering them: legitimacy. This is the whole point of marriage. Whether the union is monogamous, polygynous or serially monogamous, the universal rule of all societies until the postmodern West reared its head has been that a woman must be married to the father of her child or this latter will be illegitimate.
The correlation between a fatherless upbringing and nearly every form of societal ill is very high, and the legitimacy encadrement was a very powerful way to reduce such situations. It did tend to place a disproportionate responsibility for pre/extramarital chastity with women, at least early in life, but at least in former times a man who ran off with his whore couldn't so easily disinherit or despoil the wife and children he had abandoned, nor could the mistress or her children hope to benefit from their situation beyond the lifespan of the man she had stolen.
Especially in medieval Europe, where hereditary law was of utmost political significance, marriages had to be registered/recognized in civil law as well as ecclesiastical law (despite the monopoly of this latter on the conducting and validity of marital unions) to govern succession, and a man's capacity to designate his successor was usually limited. (The most extreme example and the purest application of the Salic Law was the King of France, who had NO power to name his successor WHATSOEVER. So much for "absolutism.")
Fast-forwarding back to the future, and getting back to your friend, let's look at it from another angle. Suppose I amass a large fortune, which I leave to my only son. He's gay, and he wants to leave all that to his lover when he dies. Is that justice, that everything I'd work so hard for, this treasure which society had entrusted to me, gets passed off to someone who will never continue it and who might be some decadent clubber? Is it fair to soceity? At the least it would be less offensive to my legacy that it should go to a first or even second cousin. It's not "nice" but I don't think it's unjust, quite the contrary. What is right isn't always "nice."Replies: @Tobus, @ohwilleke
yes, the west was christian, not judeo-christian. jews joined the west only lately
https://www.unz.com/gnxp/judeo-christian-an-abuse-of-language/
I would say that they enforce inertial trends, without creating them in the first place. I doubt that SJWs will start demanding polygamy, but if mosques started marrying off several women to individual men, and then Muslims claimed that not recognizing those marriages makes them feel "unsafe" or "excluded," the SJWs would be happy to enforce their case.Replies: @Razib Khan
I agree that most SJWs have brains like sheep and mouths like dogs.
they tear at the freshest carcass. there’s a reason that neo-nazi activity has strongest appeal in the former GDR aside from the materialist ones. ideology is less important than the thrill of indulging in 2 minutes of hate for a lot of people.
Non-intellectuals, or non-academicans, are capable of putting together contingent causal chains. Years ago, people would say such and such was as gay as a three dollar bill--a phony. Extending that metaphor, when someone says gay marriage won't affect marriage in general, there are plenty of Joe Blows out there that could retort then that counterfeiting money in their basement wouldn't hurt anyone else either. I don't think opposition to gay marriage is just a knee-jerk objection inspired by scripture.
In addition to IQ, it would be interesting to see how attitudes to gay marriage break down in terms of class. I suspect the comfortable, on the whole, are in favor while the people barely getting by are less in favor.Replies: @Razib Khan
I suspect the comfortable, on the whole, are in favor while the people barely getting by are less in favor.
i don’t care what you suspect. you need to use the GSS before you comment again:
http://sda.berkeley.edu/sdaweb/analysis/?dataset=gss14
vars of interest: MARHOMO, INCOME, WEALTH, SEI, REALINC
Now that I think of it, when I was a little kid back in the early 80s there was a gay couple that lived next door in an apparently committed relationship (calling most gay marriages "monogamous" would be stretching the term past its limit). I don't recall much consternation from the neighbors. People just left them alone. The funny thing about them is that they both had the same first name. Scott and Scott or something like that. I wonder whether they're married now...
"Do you, Scott, take Scott to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
In order for recognizing gay relationships as marriage to have a truly huge impact on gays, there would have to be a miracle that somehow caused them to behave like straights and develop the ability to bear children. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
So, on the contrary, I don't think this will make much difference for gays.
The biggest impact will be political, and that will affect straights every bit as much as gays. Some states are already considering pulling out of civil marriage altogether. This is something I fervently hope comes to pass, because nothing has wrecked marriage like state interference in the natural human sexual/reproductive contract it represents. By undermining civil marriage (which does not exist in much of the world), gay marriage could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to straight marriage in this country.
BTW, if you arranged answers according to word sum score on the issue of eugenics in the early 20th century I'd be willing to bet the biggest supporters would have had the highest scores. People with the highest vocabularies tend to follow "enlightened opinion" more closely than others, so they're more influenced by greater exposure. Their intelligence doesn't prevent them from being receptive to intellectual fashions, and may actually make them more susceptible to them.Replies: @Anonymous, @wilzard
The implication that legal gay marriage will have a large impact on gays is because of the legally binding part. Many jobs wouldn’t recognize a gay significant other, insurance companies wouldn’t cover significant others, (I have this problem with my 16+ year hetero fiancee), and other similar issues that a legal marriage certificate would rectify.
The idea of spontaneously being able to have kids is a side issue, maybe not their own, but certainly foster or adopted situations could be lubricated so-to-speak by the legally binding marriage.
That friend and I disagreed on a lot, but we were close, and our disagreements never influenced my loyalty to him as a friend. I stayed in touch until the end, and he died just a couple months over twenty years ago. He was about my current age at the time, so I can't say it hasn't been on my mind recently.
A lot of people claim opposition to including homosexual relationships in the same class as heterosexual ones is a result of ignorance. Others say it's callousness. In my case it's neither. It's because I know it's false, and wishful or careless thinking cannot make it so. And ultimately falsehoods have consequences.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Nico
what is false?
That depends on what Bill means by “marriage-like relationships”. If you know of any old laws against two men sharing living quarters, please cite them. After all, Abraham Lincoln shared not only a home, but a bed with another man for a length of time.
Dr Reuben in his famous sex tome explained how it was far easier (in 1969) for two men to get a hotel room together than for an unmarried man and woman.
that's specious. you know that's not what people are talking about. in some arab countries like saudi arabia male-male relationships are easier for the reasons that were common in the past too.Replies: @syonredux
https://www.unz.com/gnxp/judeo-christian-an-abuse-of-language/Replies: @Nico
The U.S. in the 1950s was perhaps the closest thing to a “Judeo-Christian” country the world had ever seen and yet it clearly was not one. Mormonism, in many ways the quintessential religion of America and of the 1950s, is perhaps not surprisingly the closest thing to a genuine “Judeo-Christian” religion that has ever existed, and yet Mormons are recognized as fellow travelers neither by actual Jews nor by actual Christians.
Having said all that, I have found the vast majority of Mormons I've met to be almost uniformly very nice people and neighbors. But I have not lived in Utah, and all my non-Mormon acquaintances there have alluded to being excluded from social and economics affairs of the communities where the Mormons hold power.Replies: @Anonymous
The idea that there’s no fundamental difference between a gay and a straight relationship.
…
Rhode Island law, also to the present day, allows Sephardic Jews (indeed all Jewish men) to marry their nieces.
That friend and I disagreed on a lot, but we were close, and our disagreements never influenced my loyalty to him as a friend. I stayed in touch until the end, and he died just a couple months over twenty years ago. He was about my current age at the time, so I can't say it hasn't been on my mind recently.
A lot of people claim opposition to including homosexual relationships in the same class as heterosexual ones is a result of ignorance. Others say it's callousness. In my case it's neither. It's because I know it's false, and wishful or careless thinking cannot make it so. And ultimately falsehoods have consequences.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Nico
In the past, the unmarried would have had next-of-kin regardless of their tastes and/or lifestyles.
And this is why the State, even if it does not manage or regulate marriages, nevertheless has a compelling interest in registering them: legitimacy. This is the whole point of marriage. Whether the union is monogamous, polygynous or serially monogamous, the universal rule of all societies until the postmodern West reared its head has been that a woman must be married to the father of her child or this latter will be illegitimate.
The correlation between a fatherless upbringing and nearly every form of societal ill is very high, and the legitimacy encadrement was a very powerful way to reduce such situations. It did tend to place a disproportionate responsibility for pre/extramarital chastity with women, at least early in life, but at least in former times a man who ran off with his whore couldn’t so easily disinherit or despoil the wife and children he had abandoned, nor could the mistress or her children hope to benefit from their situation beyond the lifespan of the man she had stolen.
Especially in medieval Europe, where hereditary law was of utmost political significance, marriages had to be registered/recognized in civil law as well as ecclesiastical law (despite the monopoly of this latter on the conducting and validity of marital unions) to govern succession, and a man’s capacity to designate his successor was usually limited. (The most extreme example and the purest application of the Salic Law was the King of France, who had NO power to name his successor WHATSOEVER. So much for “absolutism.”)
Fast-forwarding back to the future, and getting back to your friend, let’s look at it from another angle. Suppose I amass a large fortune, which I leave to my only son. He’s gay, and he wants to leave all that to his lover when he dies. Is that justice, that everything I’d work so hard for, this treasure which society had entrusted to me, gets passed off to someone who will never continue it and who might be some decadent clubber? Is it fair to soceity? At the least it would be less offensive to my legacy that it should go to a first or even second cousin. It’s not “nice” but I don’t think it’s unjust, quite the contrary. What is right isn’t always “nice.”
Dr Reuben in his famous sex tome explained how it was far easier (in 1969) for two men to get a hotel room together than for an unmarried man and woman.Replies: @Razib Khan
That depends on what Bill means by “marriage-like relationships”.
that’s specious. you know that’s not what people are talking about. in some arab countries like saudi arabia male-male relationships are easier for the reasons that were common in the past too.
Rhode Island law, also to the present day, allows Sephardic Jews (indeed all Jewish men) to marry their nieces.Replies: @Razib Khan
i once met a yemeni israeli man who was thinking about getting married in morocco and then moving back to israel. (apparently then you couldn’t have a polygamous marriage in israel, but it could be transferred)
Neither do Protestants….
Which suggests that we shouldn’t use “Jewish,” as the divide between Sephardic and Ashkenazic practices is too wide?
The distinction between Ashkenazi and Sephardi is important, but the commonality they share is equally important and in the end far more special than what either one shares with any goy. A hard line Ashkenazi rabbi will eventually admit, if pressed, that there is nothing apart from expediency which would preclude a man from having multiple wives.Replies: @syonredux, @Joe Q.
that's specious. you know that's not what people are talking about. in some arab countries like saudi arabia male-male relationships are easier for the reasons that were common in the past too.Replies: @syonredux
Most Westerners are surprised to see how Trangenderism is viewed in Iran:
Iran >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsexuality_in_Iran
What's tetragamy?
Also, there are probably a fair number of young men in Senegal or Burkina Faso who would be polyandrous with a rich white European lady. As Razib himself pointed out a couple months ago, much of what we think of as 'traditional' sexual ethics (in particular the emphasis on female chastity) has more to do with the rise of agriculture than with human nature.Replies: @theo the kraut
lmgtfy.com/?q=Schopenhauer+tetragamy
Now that I think of it, when I was a little kid back in the early 80s there was a gay couple that lived next door in an apparently committed relationship (calling most gay marriages "monogamous" would be stretching the term past its limit). I don't recall much consternation from the neighbors. People just left them alone. The funny thing about them is that they both had the same first name. Scott and Scott or something like that. I wonder whether they're married now...
"Do you, Scott, take Scott to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
In order for recognizing gay relationships as marriage to have a truly huge impact on gays, there would have to be a miracle that somehow caused them to behave like straights and develop the ability to bear children. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
So, on the contrary, I don't think this will make much difference for gays.
The biggest impact will be political, and that will affect straights every bit as much as gays. Some states are already considering pulling out of civil marriage altogether. This is something I fervently hope comes to pass, because nothing has wrecked marriage like state interference in the natural human sexual/reproductive contract it represents. By undermining civil marriage (which does not exist in much of the world), gay marriage could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to straight marriage in this country.
BTW, if you arranged answers according to word sum score on the issue of eugenics in the early 20th century I'd be willing to bet the biggest supporters would have had the highest scores. People with the highest vocabularies tend to follow "enlightened opinion" more closely than others, so they're more influenced by greater exposure. Their intelligence doesn't prevent them from being receptive to intellectual fashions, and may actually make them more susceptible to them.Replies: @Anonymous, @wilzard
Uh, pretty sure homosexual women already do bear children and there are plenty of homosexual men out there who have fathered children.
Homosexuals can, and have, also adopt or use surrogates.
So your argument falls flat on its face.
And this is why the State, even if it does not manage or regulate marriages, nevertheless has a compelling interest in registering them: legitimacy. This is the whole point of marriage. Whether the union is monogamous, polygynous or serially monogamous, the universal rule of all societies until the postmodern West reared its head has been that a woman must be married to the father of her child or this latter will be illegitimate.
The correlation between a fatherless upbringing and nearly every form of societal ill is very high, and the legitimacy encadrement was a very powerful way to reduce such situations. It did tend to place a disproportionate responsibility for pre/extramarital chastity with women, at least early in life, but at least in former times a man who ran off with his whore couldn't so easily disinherit or despoil the wife and children he had abandoned, nor could the mistress or her children hope to benefit from their situation beyond the lifespan of the man she had stolen.
Especially in medieval Europe, where hereditary law was of utmost political significance, marriages had to be registered/recognized in civil law as well as ecclesiastical law (despite the monopoly of this latter on the conducting and validity of marital unions) to govern succession, and a man's capacity to designate his successor was usually limited. (The most extreme example and the purest application of the Salic Law was the King of France, who had NO power to name his successor WHATSOEVER. So much for "absolutism.")
Fast-forwarding back to the future, and getting back to your friend, let's look at it from another angle. Suppose I amass a large fortune, which I leave to my only son. He's gay, and he wants to leave all that to his lover when he dies. Is that justice, that everything I'd work so hard for, this treasure which society had entrusted to me, gets passed off to someone who will never continue it and who might be some decadent clubber? Is it fair to soceity? At the least it would be less offensive to my legacy that it should go to a first or even second cousin. It's not "nice" but I don't think it's unjust, quite the contrary. What is right isn't always "nice."Replies: @Tobus, @ohwilleke
: Suppose I amass a large fortune, which I leave to my only son. He’s gay, and he wants to leave all that to his lover when he dies. Is that justice, that everything I’d work so hard for, this treasure which society had entrusted to me, gets passed off to someone who will never continue it and who might be some decadent clubber?
This exact same logic can be equally applied to a heterosexual lover – if my heterosexual son marries some meth-addicted whore is it justice that she can inherit my hard earned treasure? The sexuality of the relationship has nothing to do with the “justice” of it, and there are thousands of cases where a family has challenged the estate left to an unsavoury or unpopular heterosexual recipient, be they a mistress/lover/wife or whatever. You are confusing two unrelated issues.
Moreover, your comparison of single cases - one homosexual lover to one crack-addicted wife - isn't sufficient to form a general legal principle. I realize that terminology and practices have become greatly confused these last few decades but I think we can all agree a long-term and formalized relationship is at least more materially stable than a short-term and informalized one. In the past this former was called "marriage."Replies: @Tobus
This will depend on one’s definition of “Christian.” I happen to be a Roman Catholic, and the Church will never accept homosexual “marriage” any more than it will accept abortion (indeed, those who procure or help procure abortion incur automatic excommunication; something similar may be instituted for homosexual “marriage” as well). I would assume a similar stance from the Eastern Churches (whose sacraments are valid for Catholics).
I largely agree with your view that as the U.S. becomes less Christian, the salience of Christianity will become higher as a matter of identity and tribalism of sorts. In that context, I suspect that your prediction may come true only if we construe “Christian” as, in fact, nominally Christian. More likely, as the percentage of self-identified Christians declines in America, those who continue to identify as such will more dogmatically resist the acceptance of homosexual “marriage.” Many among obedient Catholics already see our religion as counter-cultural and have been building parallel institutions (as Paul Weyrich urged in 1999 when he declared that we conservatives had lost the culture war and must now resort to “separatism”), a catacomb or an ark of sorts for the resurgence of Christian faith in the future.
I don’t remember whether it was Rod Dreher or Ross Douthat, but one of two wrote a couple of years ago that “gay marriage” was not so much a causal agent of Christian decline (or dissolution of marriage as an institution), but an indication and a consequence of de-Christianization/re-paganization of the West. I tend to agree with that assessment.
But I would caution you about the historical inevitability on acceptance of homosexual “marriage.” The future tends to be quite stochastic. After all, few would have predicted the state of affairs today regarding this topic 20-30 years ago.
i think that the church is far less likely to cave on abortion. the two issues are structurally different. no matter what some radicals try to assert, even those people who accept the right to an abortion generally concede that it is a morally serious matter.Replies: @Twinkie, @Chuck
But celibacy is an administrative issue that the Vatican can change at any time. There are a handful of married Roman priests now, and Eastern churches with them are in full communion. Ordaining women as priests is something the Church has no authority to do, nor will get before the Second Coming.
Extending marriage, a sacrament, to same-sex couples, or throuples, or nuclear relatives, or the deceased, or the animal, belongs in the second category.Actually, the creation of "gay marriage" reinforces two old Catholic stances: that Protestantism is a heresy that will eventually spend itself like earlier ones, and that marriage, like baptism and burial, is properly the province of the Church, not the State. "The law is a ass."Replies: @Twinkie
I largely agree with your view that as the U.S. becomes less Christian, the salience of Christianity will become higher as a matter of identity and tribalism of sorts. In that context, I suspect that your prediction may come true only if we construe "Christian" as, in fact, nominally Christian. More likely, as the percentage of self-identified Christians declines in America, those who continue to identify as such will more dogmatically resist the acceptance of homosexual "marriage." Many among obedient Catholics already see our religion as counter-cultural and have been building parallel institutions (as Paul Weyrich urged in 1999 when he declared that we conservatives had lost the culture war and must now resort to "separatism"), a catacomb or an ark of sorts for the resurgence of Christian faith in the future.
I don't remember whether it was Rod Dreher or Ross Douthat, but one of two wrote a couple of years ago that "gay marriage" was not so much a causal agent of Christian decline (or dissolution of marriage as an institution), but an indication and a consequence of de-Christianization/re-paganization of the West. I tend to agree with that assessment.
But I would caution you about the historical inevitability on acceptance of homosexual "marriage." The future tends to be quite stochastic. After all, few would have predicted the state of affairs today regarding this topic 20-30 years ago.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Reg Cæsar
and the Church will never accept homosexual “marriage” any more than it will accept abortion
i think that the church is far less likely to cave on abortion. the two issues are structurally different. no matter what some radicals try to assert, even those people who accept the right to an abortion generally concede that it is a morally serious matter.
Read the following, which bears an Imprimatur: http://www.catholic.com/tracts/homosexuality
Acts of homosexuality (but not homosexual impulses) are very sinful and lead to the loss of heaven. The Church is not going to sanctify such a sin with the Sacrament of Matrimony, the purpose of which is both procreative and unitive (cleaving of a man to a woman).They are, from a utilitarian perspective. But in Catholic ethics, there are things "of permanence" that are more important than utilitarian concerns. There are, even, things worse than death.Replies: @Bill P
The catholic church currently understands the destruction of a zygote to be an abortion (Catechism, 2270) and thus a grave moral evil. A future in which it didn't tweak its position (and in which a non-trivial number of the flock remained dogmatic) would be interesting.
When I lived in Uzbekistan (2003-2005) polygamy wasn’t terribly common but it was a well known and accepted social structure. Not sure how official documentation was handled; it was a country where the official registration of stuff (cars, marriages, property, taxes, etc.) wasn’t really done, at least not in the way we might think of it in the west.
And along those lines, Uzbekistan isn’t the sort of country that has or supplies demographic data to anybody, so not surprising that they show up on the map as a non-polygamy country.
Re: Protestants, it is difficult to discern what they condemn or not due to their peculiar (absence of effective) ecclesiastical government but until the 20th century most serious Protestant bodies at least had reservations about contraceptives, if not condemning them outright.
The distinction between Ashkenazi and Sephardi is important, but the commonality they share is equally important and in the end far more special than what either one shares with any goy. A hard line Ashkenazi rabbi will eventually admit, if pressed, that there is nothing apart from expediency which would preclude a man from having multiple wives.
Reminds me of the great quote from Orestes Brownson* (a Catholic convert).Preparing to dine in a room full of Protestants, he loudly asked if anyone knew where a Christian could find a fit meal on a Friday....Well, barring a Gentile convert, one assumes.Of course, in that case, the more Orthodox would tend to question conversion that occurred under Reform auspices.And then there is the vexing question of inherited Jewishness.Reform Jews have shown a growing tendency to accept people as Jewish even if their descent is only on the paternal line....Which leaves open the question of a "soft-line," Reform Ashkenazi rabbi.....
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orestes_BrownsonReplies: @Nico
Differences between Sephardi and Ashkenazi practice are largely confined to some ritual activities and some aspects of dietary law. It's hardly as if they are different religions.
Yemeni Jews continued to practice polygamy until well into the 20th century. Note that Yemeni Jews are not Sephardi (they do not descend from 15th-c. Spanish exiles)Replies: @Nico
No, you misunderstood me. The racket that we now call “family law” has really worked a number on our legal precedents. I would be fully in favor of limiting anew the extent to and circumstances in which legitimate offspring or natural next-of-kin can be disinherited to the profit of others if for no other reasons than to dismantle that racket.
Moreover, your comparison of single cases – one homosexual lover to one crack-addicted wife – isn’t sufficient to form a general legal principle. I realize that terminology and practices have become greatly confused these last few decades but I think we can all agree a long-term and formalized relationship is at least more materially stable than a short-term and informalized one. In the past this former was called “marriage.”
I think you've missed *my* point - there is no comparison of homosexuality to crack-addiction. In your original statement you referred to your son's gay lover as "some decadent clubber" and that's where the comparison lies. The behaviour is the issue, not the sexuality.
What if you son's gay lover used your fortune to find a cure for cancer, or build simple irrigation systems for 3rd world countries etc. etc.? Would you find still find it unjust because he was homosexual? Unless you are trying to posit some a priori belief that homosexuality leads to poor financial choices (which in itself is illogical), there is no logical reason for specifying the gender of your hypothetical son's lover in the scenario you described. That's my point.
As to your final point, that we can all agree long-term relationships and formalised relationships are more material stable, yes, I agree, and that's exactly why long-term committed homosexual relationships need the option to be legally formalised in the same way that heterosexual relationships can be - to protect the genuine desire of the deceased to pass their estate onto the people they trust the most, without disapproving family members being able to claim it as their own, because the homosexual relationship has no recognised value in law.Replies: @Chuck
A couple of times in the past week I have observed mixed messages re polygamy/polyandry from sources in the liberal world. On the one hand commenters are keen to stress that right wing claims homosexual marriage is a slippery slope, leading to polygamy and downwards, is a nonsense argument. On the other liberals speaking to themselves are saying polyandry/polygamy is the next battleground ( this kind of thing http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/gay-marriage-decision-polygamy-119469.html#.VZExyNoaySN). Personally I can’t see how feminist groups within the liberal coalition are going to be able to get past the already existing belief that the Mormon or Islamic model of polygamy is oppressive to women.
I don't think that entirely accurate depiction. The United States, like most countries with a Judeo-Christian background, criminalized non-procreative sex. The Georgia law in Bowers v. Hardwick criminalized oral and anal sex regardless of the gender of the participants, though Hardwick was homosexual.Replies: @Razib Khan, @ohwilleke
Western legal systems have never criminalized non-procreative sex.
They did historically criminalize non-marital sex of all kinds – both sex between unmarried people, and sex with someone other than a spouse during marriage (although sometimes, only sex with a married woman by someone other than her spouse).
The theory was a combination of the property rights that husbands believed that they had in their wives and fathers believed that they had in their daughters, and functionally as a form a rape prevention by only allowing sex in circumstances where consent had been irrevocably given in advance in a public and well documented way.
As you reveal so plainly below, it isn't about sex of any type (how could it be if gay couples apparently can both be parents of the same child now?), whether reproductive, consensual, anal, what have you, but legal privileges (i.e. human fictions) and cash:As an attorney I'm sure one might hope that an enormous, green tidal wave of cash from gay family litigation is building just over the horizon, but even in the gayest of cities there has not yet been a surge of young gays in the prime of life rushing to the altar to settle down and raise children, and I remain skeptical of its eventual appearance.
Personally, I think the government privileges afforded to married couples were a mistake. "Marriage" - or something like it - is a natural human arrangement. It doesn't need official encouragement. Obviously, it is not an individual right, and cannot be. And, it unfairly discriminates against the unmarried and unmarriageable (not to mention certain ethnic groups with lower marriage rates) when one gives rights to those who are married above those who are not. So if the (civil) benefits of marriage are now a civil right, then why not extend them to all people?
It's a question that has to be answered now that we've kicked the stool out from under the institution's natural progenitor.Replies: @ohwilleke
I’m afraid you have the economics backward. In terms of my own personal financial self-interest, there is far more money in the specialized work of finding legal alternatives to be a second best solution to same sex marriage. There used to be elaborate domestic partnership agreements to draft, comprehensive estate plans with special attention to express provision for guardianship and conservatorship issues, wrangling with adoption agencies to permit single parent adoptions where two parent adoptions weren’t legal and home visits revealed that there were really two parents in the picture, complicated interstate choice of law issues, obscure tax code provisions to invoke, and more.
What’s more, the increased exemption in estate taxation has also turned a lot of couples (both opposite sex and same sex) who used to need sophisticated tax planning estate plans into simple will customers.
Now, anyone who knows how to do plain vanilla basic moderate income estate plans with a protective trust or two, and basic divorce and elder law work can serve same sex couples just as well as anyone else.
If Colorado hadn’t legalized pot, I’d be hard up for work. Fortunately, this reform has backfilled the lost volume of work for same sex couples and moderate affluent families, as marijuana businesses need immense amounts of tax and business law work. I also still have a couple of polygamous families as clients that need the skill set developed doing work for same sex couples before same sex marriage was legalized. But, each family only needs so much work.
And this is why the State, even if it does not manage or regulate marriages, nevertheless has a compelling interest in registering them: legitimacy. This is the whole point of marriage. Whether the union is monogamous, polygynous or serially monogamous, the universal rule of all societies until the postmodern West reared its head has been that a woman must be married to the father of her child or this latter will be illegitimate.
The correlation between a fatherless upbringing and nearly every form of societal ill is very high, and the legitimacy encadrement was a very powerful way to reduce such situations. It did tend to place a disproportionate responsibility for pre/extramarital chastity with women, at least early in life, but at least in former times a man who ran off with his whore couldn't so easily disinherit or despoil the wife and children he had abandoned, nor could the mistress or her children hope to benefit from their situation beyond the lifespan of the man she had stolen.
Especially in medieval Europe, where hereditary law was of utmost political significance, marriages had to be registered/recognized in civil law as well as ecclesiastical law (despite the monopoly of this latter on the conducting and validity of marital unions) to govern succession, and a man's capacity to designate his successor was usually limited. (The most extreme example and the purest application of the Salic Law was the King of France, who had NO power to name his successor WHATSOEVER. So much for "absolutism.")
Fast-forwarding back to the future, and getting back to your friend, let's look at it from another angle. Suppose I amass a large fortune, which I leave to my only son. He's gay, and he wants to leave all that to his lover when he dies. Is that justice, that everything I'd work so hard for, this treasure which society had entrusted to me, gets passed off to someone who will never continue it and who might be some decadent clubber? Is it fair to soceity? At the least it would be less offensive to my legacy that it should go to a first or even second cousin. It's not "nice" but I don't think it's unjust, quite the contrary. What is right isn't always "nice."Replies: @Tobus, @ohwilleke
Legitimacy is important, but not in the sense of “legitimate children” a distinction that all but vanished from the law about half a century ago.
Modern technology has made it much harder to keep something that is overtly taboo, but tolerated privately, in the closet.
Homosexuality has existed for eternity, but it took the technologies that have ended privacy to make the hide in the closet strategy no longer viable, forcing people to come out and demand legitimacy instead in order to survive.
Once upon a time, people stayed married and quietly kept mistresses which everyone knew about and no one admitted. Now, we have no fault divorce so that legitimacy can be maintained.
The same can be said for atheism and wicca. Hiding it, which was historically easy, has become more difficult, so people have instead gone public and demanded respect for their views.
Coming out with any potentially concealable and unpopular minority trait or view is always a huge risk , especially for early adopters of the strategy, as the many martyrs for gay rights in the U.S., and for secular rights in places like Bangladesh, have made clear. But, the more difficult it becomes to maintain privacy, the more it becomes the case that there is no alternative but to come out and demand legitimacy.
From what I can gather, you are arguing either that the mass media and communications revolution did nothing but expose previously existing patterns or that whatever tendencies it did augment by dragging them out of the closet were inevitable. I wouldn't agree with the former point. I wouldn't disagree withy he second point, but would nuance it by pointing out that the East Asian tigers have not seen nearly the same collapse of patriarchal structuration that we have. Yes, they have seen some, and yes, their societies are fundamentally different, with peculiar sexual taboos and reproductive hangups not quite congruent to Christian ones, and possibly more closely compatible with "modern" living and communications patterns.
That having been said, Darwinistically speaking it should be clear that the libertine-materialistic hedonist society priding itself on sexual anti-hypocrisy is doomed by its very nature. If it was inevitable in coming, it won't last very long, and its collapse will be due to the lack of will to maintain even a pretense to the primordial discipline the immediate corporeal consequences of which technology had long since dispensed with.
You mean you don’t think the bellum omnium contra omnes that has followed that vanishing is evidence that the formality IS important??
From what I can gather, you are arguing either that the mass media and communications revolution did nothing but expose previously existing patterns or that whatever tendencies it did augment by dragging them out of the closet were inevitable. I wouldn’t agree with the former point. I wouldn’t disagree withy he second point, but would nuance it by pointing out that the East Asian tigers have not seen nearly the same collapse of patriarchal structuration that we have. Yes, they have seen some, and yes, their societies are fundamentally different, with peculiar sexual taboos and reproductive hangups not quite congruent to Christian ones, and possibly more closely compatible with “modern” living and communications patterns.
That having been said, Darwinistically speaking it should be clear that the libertine-materialistic hedonist society priding itself on sexual anti-hypocrisy is doomed by its very nature. If it was inevitable in coming, it won’t last very long, and its collapse will be due to the lack of will to maintain even a pretense to the primordial discipline the immediate corporeal consequences of which technology had long since dispensed with.
Intelligent people have held all sort of stupid beliefs. Having a high IQ does not always confer wisdom. I´d say the opposite is closer to the truth. How many intelligent people supported communism in its heyday, and now support all kinds of crazy ideas?
Gay marriage is probably not a good idea because of the law of unitended consequences..
i think that the church is far less likely to cave on abortion. the two issues are structurally different. no matter what some radicals try to assert, even those people who accept the right to an abortion generally concede that it is a morally serious matter.Replies: @Twinkie, @Chuck
The Church is not going to “cave” on either issue. Both are matters of fundamental, basic moral teachings of the Church. The Catholic Church is not like Mormons or Episcopalians – issues of fundamental dogma and moral teachings cannot be altered to meet the “changing norms” of society.
Read the following, which bears an Imprimatur: http://www.catholic.com/tracts/homosexuality
Acts of homosexuality (but not homosexual impulses) are very sinful and lead to the loss of heaven. The Church is not going to sanctify such a sin with the Sacrament of Matrimony, the purpose of which is both procreative and unitive (cleaving of a man to a woman).
They are, from a utilitarian perspective. But in Catholic ethics, there are things “of permanence” that are more important than utilitarian concerns. There are, even, things worse than death.
This is probably the most religiously divisive ruling ever issued by the Supreme Court, and it's going to have serious consequences. Abortion was declared a private matter, and whether or not you believe that it is an individual choice. Marriage, on the other hand, involves community and social acceptance. It is in fact the germ of the community; the most basic of communities. So when the state says to Christians "this is marriage, deal with it" it has a profoundly alienating effect, because the communal nature of marriage makes them participants whether they like it or not.
Ultimately, I think this conflict will weaken both Christianity and the Republic. Too bad -- the supremes could easily have avoided it and left the matter to the people.Replies: @dcite
Mormonism is not Christianity. There is a myriad of reasons for this, including the Mormon rejection of Nicene Creed, the basic tenet of Christian faith. I disagree that Mormonism is “the quintessential religion of America,” but I suppose it is an inevitable consequence of Protestant “reform” which turned every schismatic and heretical crackpot into his own priest and Pope.
Having said all that, I have found the vast majority of Mormons I’ve met to be almost uniformly very nice people and neighbors. But I have not lived in Utah, and all my non-Mormon acquaintances there have alluded to being excluded from social and economics affairs of the communities where the Mormons hold power.
They did historically criminalize non-marital sex of all kinds - both sex between unmarried people, and sex with someone other than a spouse during marriage (although sometimes, only sex with a married woman by someone other than her spouse).
The theory was a combination of the property rights that husbands believed that they had in their wives and fathers believed that they had in their daughters, and functionally as a form a rape prevention by only allowing sex in circumstances where consent had been irrevocably given in advance in a public and well documented way.Replies: @PD Shaw
“Western legal systems have never criminalized non-procreative sex. They did historically criminalize non-marital sex of all kinds.”
Sodomy laws in the United States applied to married people as well: “So, it should be no surprise that marital exemption from sodomy laws is a new concept. Convictions for consensual activity between married spouses in their own home have been affirmed and other courts have rejected marital exemption both before and after the Griswold decision. However, since Griswold, a number of courts have decided that the Supreme Court’s decision meant that the state’s sodomy law could not be applied constitutionally to married couples.”
Basically, until the 1960s, sodomy was seen (at least by U.S. lawmakers) as a misconduct , indecent act, or a form of mental disorder that may require sterilization. It was no more appropriate for married people than unmarried people because the misconduct was not considered isolated, if one could not control one’s private parts, one would not exhibit moral restraint in other areas. There was no sense of “homosexual” identity in these laws, as that has been an emergent phenomena.
The distinction between Ashkenazi and Sephardi is important, but the commonality they share is equally important and in the end far more special than what either one shares with any goy. A hard line Ashkenazi rabbi will eventually admit, if pressed, that there is nothing apart from expediency which would preclude a man from having multiple wives.Replies: @syonredux, @Joe Q.
Another important point of distinction between Catholics and Protestants.
Reservations are not the same as outright bans.As with the important question of church polity, this is another area where the chasm separating Catholic from Protestant is quite deep
Reminds me of the great quote from Orestes Brownson* (a Catholic convert).Preparing to dine in a room full of Protestants, he loudly asked if anyone knew where a Christian could find a fit meal on a Friday….
Well, barring a Gentile convert, one assumes.Of course, in that case, the more Orthodox would tend to question conversion that occurred under Reform auspices.And then there is the vexing question of inherited Jewishness.Reform Jews have shown a growing tendency to accept people as Jewish even if their descent is only on the paternal line….
Which leaves open the question of a “soft-line,” Reform Ashkenazi rabbi…..
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orestes_Brownson
The distinction between Ashkenazi and Sephardi is important, but the commonality they share is equally important and in the end far more special than what either one shares with any goy. A hard line Ashkenazi rabbi will eventually admit, if pressed, that there is nothing apart from expediency which would preclude a man from having multiple wives.Replies: @syonredux, @Joe Q.
This comment overstates the differences between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. All Jewish authorities agree that polygamy is permitted “de jure” — laws of Jewish marriage, divorce, and basic relations between men and women are predicated on the idea that a man may take multiple wives even though “de facto” polygamy has been prohibited in the Ashkenazi world since the Middle Ages by force of decree (from a very influential rabbi of that period). Polygamy has not been common in the Sephardi world for some time as well.
Differences between Sephardi and Ashkenazi practice are largely confined to some ritual activities and some aspects of dietary law. It’s hardly as if they are different religions.
Yemeni Jews continued to practice polygamy until well into the 20th century. Note that Yemeni Jews are not Sephardi (they do not descend from 15th-c. Spanish exiles)
Read the following, which bears an Imprimatur: http://www.catholic.com/tracts/homosexuality
Acts of homosexuality (but not homosexual impulses) are very sinful and lead to the loss of heaven. The Church is not going to sanctify such a sin with the Sacrament of Matrimony, the purpose of which is both procreative and unitive (cleaving of a man to a woman).They are, from a utilitarian perspective. But in Catholic ethics, there are things "of permanence" that are more important than utilitarian concerns. There are, even, things worse than death.Replies: @Bill P
Yes, marriage is fundamental to the idea of the Christian church. The concept of the covenant is often referred to in terms of marriage, and the church is the “bride of Christ.” To cave on the issue of marriage would not only undermine the basis of the church, but completely discredit its origins.
This is probably the most religiously divisive ruling ever issued by the Supreme Court, and it’s going to have serious consequences. Abortion was declared a private matter, and whether or not you believe that it is an individual choice. Marriage, on the other hand, involves community and social acceptance. It is in fact the germ of the community; the most basic of communities. So when the state says to Christians “this is marriage, deal with it” it has a profoundly alienating effect, because the communal nature of marriage makes them participants whether they like it or not.
Ultimately, I think this conflict will weaken both Christianity and the Republic. Too bad — the supremes could easily have avoided it and left the matter to the people.
Abortion is something people have always done in private. 20% , or s0 I've read, of pregnancies in the 19th century, were deliberately terminated. Catholics today have a similar abortion rate to non-Catholics. These days the clergy don't seem to cast too many stones. St. Thomas Aquinus famously opined that male fetuses got a soul at 2 months, and females at 3 months. In the 1980s, a very nice priest just shrugged when he heard that and said, "well it was more a man's world in those days", dismissing the good Saint's bias with a slightly rueful and exasperated shrug. And he was a conservative.
Marriage, otoh, is public. That's explicitly what it is for -- a public declaration, and commitment by two people, to certain rules. These rules are not always easy for those who commit, but it makes things easier for society in general. And in general, (not always of course), it's better for the children.
This "gay marriage" discussion never asks: why the determination to usurp a word so profoundly associated with the sexual union of a male and female? Yeah, we've all heard of the Indian tribes, and Saharan bedouins, etc. who had quasi-boy-man marriages until the man grew up enough (about 40) to marry a female. But they are marginal even in their own cultures. What is wrong with simply having a legal partnership, that would bestow all the property,insurance, and inheritance benefits of any connubial relationship? Adoption has been around forever, with adoptees having much the same legal benefits as biological children.
There is no need for to call homosexual unions "marriages." The nature of the union is different. That they can't accept that, is interesting. Why not just agitate for a civil union status? That's what has always mystified me. I think the social engineers were after the word. The word.
I don't know what the Catholic Church is or isn't doing these days. I know that "trans-gender", "trans-race", and gay "marriage" seemed to be strangely contrived obsessions in the media, coming all at once like an inevitable deluge of change -- or outrage, depending on your pov. It doesn't seem to be accidental. In the past few years, the control of the media by a very, very few people makes me wonder even more. Why certain things get coverage, and others don't? Social engineering is a term that has become a cliche, I guess; but that's what's happening.
It's all beginning to seem like a vast circus. I do agree with Twinkie: never predict the future as simply more of what has recently come down pike. It can transform in the twinkling of an eye.Replies: @Twinkie
“The WORDSUM variable in the General Social Survey has a correlation of 0.71 with general intelligence. ”
WORDSUM is problematic because it doesn’t allow one to investigate measure invariance; as a result, it’s not possible to determine if and to what extent differences are comparable within and between groups or are in g.When we looked at racial differences, we found all sorts of item level biases — rendering even the comparison of summed scores problematic. Who knows about memetically defined groups.
Anyways, presuming latent g differences, what would be your causal model? (I am hard pressed to believe that “ability to reason + logical coherence of the SSM position” mediate.)
Razib –
Not sure if you know this paper by Joe Henrich et al, arguing about the group beneficial (and selective) benefits for monogamy:
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1589/657
The HBE/CE reading group actually did not receive the paper well. One of the objections that a surplus of single men created by polygyny would give single women more power in the mating market, hence forcing single men to behave in the way that women want. If that means “being nice”, then crime might actually go down. Of course the alternative is that the hoardes of single men just kill the successful rich men and take the women anyway. That seems to be the traditional expectation.
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder and her former students have looked at this: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534714000251
Differences between Sephardi and Ashkenazi practice are largely confined to some ritual activities and some aspects of dietary law. It's hardly as if they are different religions.
Yemeni Jews continued to practice polygamy until well into the 20th century. Note that Yemeni Jews are not Sephardi (they do not descend from 15th-c. Spanish exiles)Replies: @Nico
Yes, that’s more or less what I meant. I actually intended to rectify the comment that insinuated there was no basis for lumping the various ethno-liturical bands of Judaism in together, but I may not have gotten that across.
Reminds me of the great quote from Orestes Brownson* (a Catholic convert).Preparing to dine in a room full of Protestants, he loudly asked if anyone knew where a Christian could find a fit meal on a Friday....Well, barring a Gentile convert, one assumes.Of course, in that case, the more Orthodox would tend to question conversion that occurred under Reform auspices.And then there is the vexing question of inherited Jewishness.Reform Jews have shown a growing tendency to accept people as Jewish even if their descent is only on the paternal line....Which leaves open the question of a "soft-line," Reform Ashkenazi rabbi.....
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orestes_BrownsonReplies: @Nico
Again, while you point out true and varyingly impacting sectarian differentials, I don’t think you have come close to showing that, at least if we only count whites, the mass of Christians and the mass of Jews respectively do not have far more in common in terms of global outlook with those in their respective circles than across that line. This is the case in all but the farthest left if either camp and even then you can find surprising cleavage.
If a “gay germ” is discovered, then the claim that gay marriage doesn’t harm straights might be questioned. If homosexuality is communicable, then homophobia makes sense as a means of preventing the spread of disease beyond the gay population.
Moreover, your comparison of single cases - one homosexual lover to one crack-addicted wife - isn't sufficient to form a general legal principle. I realize that terminology and practices have become greatly confused these last few decades but I think we can all agree a long-term and formalized relationship is at least more materially stable than a short-term and informalized one. In the past this former was called "marriage."Replies: @Tobus
: your comparison of single cases – one homosexual lover to one crack-addicted wife
I think you’ve missed *my* point – there is no comparison of homosexuality to crack-addiction. In your original statement you referred to your son’s gay lover as “some decadent clubber” and that’s where the comparison lies. The behaviour is the issue, not the sexuality.
What if you son’s gay lover used your fortune to find a cure for cancer, or build simple irrigation systems for 3rd world countries etc. etc.? Would you find still find it unjust because he was homosexual? Unless you are trying to posit some a priori belief that homosexuality leads to poor financial choices (which in itself is illogical), there is no logical reason for specifying the gender of your hypothetical son’s lover in the scenario you described. That’s my point.
As to your final point, that we can all agree long-term relationships and formalised relationships are more material stable, yes, I agree, and that’s exactly why long-term committed homosexual relationships need the option to be legally formalised in the same way that heterosexual relationships can be – to protect the genuine desire of the deceased to pass their estate onto the people they trust the most, without disapproving family members being able to claim it as their own, because the homosexual relationship has no recognised value in law.
This precisely is the problem of homosexual marriage -- it tends to undermine the historic justification for socially privileging the arrangements classically called "married unions" (whether polygamous or monogamous in structure). The justification was, seemingly, always implicitly the reproduction of the next generation -- if not, perhaps some could provide examples otherwise. Homosexual marriage, of course, is compatible with this justification. It just happens that defenders of such marriage seem to be discontent with it. Thus, we now see the justification for the institution -- which no matter how understood necessarily discriminates for the subset of people who agree and qualify to be so bound -- shift. It is now "long-term committed relations" and "the ease of property transfer" -- or, more vapidly, "love" . Notice that the same kind of exceptionalist arguments against the reproductive justification of traditional marriage apply to the "long-term committed relation" and other justifications of progressive marriage; conveniently they are not elucidated. Of course, one could argue that the social good of "long-term committed relations" and of the "ease of property transfer" justifies some marriage-like social institution. And that we should as a society discriminate for e.g., purported "long-termers". But this was an argument that should have been made and debated, not won with a sleight of hand (e.g., "marriage equality"). The rationality of not supporting this new type of marriage -- that it's not sufficiently important to warrant the institutional discrimination involved -- and gay marriage insofar as it undermines the old marriage justification -- is clear. That this position is rarely rationally considered suggests to me that the association between verbal ability and gay marriage support is mediated by clever sillies from the top and media consumption (and with it memetic infection) from the bottom, not inclination for rationality. But we could investigate, I guess -- the Add Health, I believe has the necessary variables for a proper path analysis.
This is probably the most religiously divisive ruling ever issued by the Supreme Court, and it's going to have serious consequences. Abortion was declared a private matter, and whether or not you believe that it is an individual choice. Marriage, on the other hand, involves community and social acceptance. It is in fact the germ of the community; the most basic of communities. So when the state says to Christians "this is marriage, deal with it" it has a profoundly alienating effect, because the communal nature of marriage makes them participants whether they like it or not.
Ultimately, I think this conflict will weaken both Christianity and the Republic. Too bad -- the supremes could easily have avoided it and left the matter to the people.Replies: @dcite
Seems to me they’ve always lived together if they wanted to. It was the lack of legal benefits that made me sympathetic — they didn’t have insurance, etc.
Abortion is something people have always done in private. 20% , or s0 I’ve read, of pregnancies in the 19th century, were deliberately terminated. Catholics today have a similar abortion rate to non-Catholics. These days the clergy don’t seem to cast too many stones. St. Thomas Aquinus famously opined that male fetuses got a soul at 2 months, and females at 3 months. In the 1980s, a very nice priest just shrugged when he heard that and said, “well it was more a man’s world in those days”, dismissing the good Saint’s bias with a slightly rueful and exasperated shrug. And he was a conservative.
Marriage, otoh, is public. That’s explicitly what it is for — a public declaration, and commitment by two people, to certain rules. These rules are not always easy for those who commit, but it makes things easier for society in general. And in general, (not always of course), it’s better for the children.
This “gay marriage” discussion never asks: why the determination to usurp a word so profoundly associated with the sexual union of a male and female? Yeah, we’ve all heard of the Indian tribes, and Saharan bedouins, etc. who had quasi-boy-man marriages until the man grew up enough (about 40) to marry a female. But they are marginal even in their own cultures. What is wrong with simply having a legal partnership, that would bestow all the property,insurance, and inheritance benefits of any connubial relationship? Adoption has been around forever, with adoptees having much the same legal benefits as biological children.
There is no need for to call homosexual unions “marriages.” The nature of the union is different. That they can’t accept that, is interesting. Why not just agitate for a civil union status? That’s what has always mystified me. I think the social engineers were after the word. The word.
I don’t know what the Catholic Church is or isn’t doing these days. I know that “trans-gender”, “trans-race”, and gay “marriage” seemed to be strangely contrived obsessions in the media, coming all at once like an inevitable deluge of change — or outrage, depending on your pov. It doesn’t seem to be accidental. In the past few years, the control of the media by a very, very few people makes me wonder even more. Why certain things get coverage, and others don’t? Social engineering is a term that has become a cliche, I guess; but that’s what’s happening.
It’s all beginning to seem like a vast circus. I do agree with Twinkie: never predict the future as simply more of what has recently come down pike. It can transform in the twinkling of an eye.
A funny version of this idea: https://youtu.be/L5K3QYvC8JM?t=1h17m36s
More seriously, let me repeat once more: procuring or helping to procure an abortion results in automatic excommunication. Even if no one else knew, you know. And God knows. Pretending to be a Catholic in good standing after such a transgression is simply lying to oneself and to God, and compounding the earlier grievous sin.Good pastoral care requires not casting stones. Even those who are excommunicated are encouraged to continue to attend mass (but not partake in the sacraments), participate in the communal life of the parish, and return one day to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. But good pastoral care is not the same as giving absolution for unrepentant sin, or worse, elevating the same to sanctified status. It's much the same way as parents would continue to love and care for wayward children, but stand firm on the principles that they should do good and avoid commission of evil.Not quite. See: http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/did-st-thomas-aquinas-believe-ensoulment-occurred-40-or-80-days-after-conception-maki
The evil of abortion is a crucial part of Catholic moral teachings and dogma, which is enduring. The opinion about when a fetus received a soul was exactly that, an opinion of the time. Frankly where soul is concerned, issues like exact moments of when it begins and such are better left to the mysteries of faith.Who knows? My suspicion is that the main goal of the homosexual lobby isn't so much legal equality as enforced social respect. To be crude about it, they seem to want to rub our noses in their way of life. "You WILL respect how I get off! Or else!"
The mainstream media never report such things, but I know that Mormon temples received numerous bomb threats after Prop 8 passed in California. I have also seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears homosexual "activists" accost defenders of marriage at rallies and even viciously threaten to kidnap the children of the latter.
Such shrill "activists" always struck me as people with deep voids within themselves who seek to fill them by forcing others to confer on them social respect which is otherwise not freely given.Replies: @dcite
. The other legal barrier to a possible love relationship is incest. If the law has no right to proscribe the gender of one’s mate then why should it have the right to proscribe those who are too closely related by blood?
In this day, very few would want to ban even those with serious heritable conditions from marrying and having children. But the possible effects of “in-breeding” is citing as a reason for banning incestual relationships and marriages.
It is well past time to continue to have anti-incest laws.
Talk about an L-shaped, "hockey stick" curve!Replies: @Miguel Madeira
I think you've missed *my* point - there is no comparison of homosexuality to crack-addiction. In your original statement you referred to your son's gay lover as "some decadent clubber" and that's where the comparison lies. The behaviour is the issue, not the sexuality.
What if you son's gay lover used your fortune to find a cure for cancer, or build simple irrigation systems for 3rd world countries etc. etc.? Would you find still find it unjust because he was homosexual? Unless you are trying to posit some a priori belief that homosexuality leads to poor financial choices (which in itself is illogical), there is no logical reason for specifying the gender of your hypothetical son's lover in the scenario you described. That's my point.
As to your final point, that we can all agree long-term relationships and formalised relationships are more material stable, yes, I agree, and that's exactly why long-term committed homosexual relationships need the option to be legally formalised in the same way that heterosexual relationships can be - to protect the genuine desire of the deceased to pass their estate onto the people they trust the most, without disapproving family members being able to claim it as their own, because the homosexual relationship has no recognised value in law.Replies: @Chuck
“As to your final point, that we can all agree long-term relationships and formalised relationships are more material stable, yes, I agree, and that’s exactly why long-term committed homosexual relationships need the option to be legally formalised in the same way that heterosexual relationships can be.”
This precisely is the problem of homosexual marriage — it tends to undermine the historic justification for socially privileging the arrangements classically called “married unions” (whether polygamous or monogamous in structure). The justification was, seemingly, always implicitly the reproduction of the next generation — if not, perhaps some could provide examples otherwise. Homosexual marriage, of course, is compatible with this justification. It just happens that defenders of such marriage seem to be discontent with it. Thus, we now see the justification for the institution — which no matter how understood necessarily discriminates for the subset of people who agree and qualify to be so bound — shift. It is now “long-term committed relations” and “the ease of property transfer” — or, more vapidly, “love” . Notice that the same kind of exceptionalist arguments against the reproductive justification of traditional marriage apply to the “long-term committed relation” and other justifications of progressive marriage; conveniently they are not elucidated. Of course, one could argue that the social good of “long-term committed relations” and of the “ease of property transfer” justifies some marriage-like social institution. And that we should as a society discriminate for e.g., purported “long-termers”. But this was an argument that should have been made and debated, not won with a sleight of hand (e.g., “marriage equality”). The rationality of not supporting this new type of marriage — that it’s not sufficiently important to warrant the institutional discrimination involved — and gay marriage insofar as it undermines the old marriage justification — is clear. That this position is rarely rationally considered suggests to me that the association between verbal ability and gay marriage support is mediated by clever sillies from the top and media consumption (and with it memetic infection) from the bottom, not inclination for rationality. But we could investigate, I guess — the Add Health, I believe has the necessary variables for a proper path analysis.
Having said all that, I have found the vast majority of Mormons I've met to be almost uniformly very nice people and neighbors. But I have not lived in Utah, and all my non-Mormon acquaintances there have alluded to being excluded from social and economics affairs of the communities where the Mormons hold power.Replies: @Anonymous
Amy Chua lists Mormons as one of the groups which produces the most successful people. Given that Mormonism started relatively recently– late 19th century in upstate New York– I don’t know what it’s worth. Then again she champions the Jews, embarrassingly so, and their success only started in the late 18th century when– according to Steve Sailer— they stopped being Jewish.
I suspect her definition of "successful" in this context is entirely materialistic. And it's not entirely clear what her real thoughts are on many of the topic on which she purports to write. She projects a certain persona in her books that is, I suspect, not entirely in line with her actual self.
So I personally do not understand why so many people were angered by her Tiger Mom book. I found it quite funny, and I thought she meant it to be something of a parody. The whole tone of the book is along the lines of "Look how wacky, crazy, and funny I am! But I still think I am a pretty good mom - most of the time."
I largely agree with your view that as the U.S. becomes less Christian, the salience of Christianity will become higher as a matter of identity and tribalism of sorts. In that context, I suspect that your prediction may come true only if we construe "Christian" as, in fact, nominally Christian. More likely, as the percentage of self-identified Christians declines in America, those who continue to identify as such will more dogmatically resist the acceptance of homosexual "marriage." Many among obedient Catholics already see our religion as counter-cultural and have been building parallel institutions (as Paul Weyrich urged in 1999 when he declared that we conservatives had lost the culture war and must now resort to "separatism"), a catacomb or an ark of sorts for the resurgence of Christian faith in the future.
I don't remember whether it was Rod Dreher or Ross Douthat, but one of two wrote a couple of years ago that "gay marriage" was not so much a causal agent of Christian decline (or dissolution of marriage as an institution), but an indication and a consequence of de-Christianization/re-paganization of the West. I tend to agree with that assessment.
But I would caution you about the historical inevitability on acceptance of homosexual "marriage." The future tends to be quite stochastic. After all, few would have predicted the state of affairs today regarding this topic 20-30 years ago.Replies: @Razib Khan, @Reg Cæsar
A good parallel example is the priesthood. People ask, when will we have married priests and women priests, as if they were similar questions.
But celibacy is an administrative issue that the Vatican can change at any time. There are a handful of married Roman priests now, and Eastern churches with them are in full communion. Ordaining women as priests is something the Church has no authority to do, nor will get before the Second Coming.
Extending marriage, a sacrament, to same-sex couples, or throuples, or nuclear relatives, or the deceased, or the animal, belongs in the second category.
Actually, the creation of “gay marriage” reinforces two old Catholic stances: that Protestantism is a heresy that will eventually spend itself like earlier ones, and that marriage, like baptism and burial, is properly the province of the Church, not the State. “The law is a ass.”
There are so many misconceptions, half-truths, rumors, falsehood, and outright lies about the Catholic Church among the general public and the media that sometimes it gets enormously tiresome to attempt to correct all these errors. Often they are perpetuated even by those who call themselves Catholics... All that despite the fact that the Catechism of the Church is quite transparent and openly available to all: http://usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church/
i think that the church is far less likely to cave on abortion. the two issues are structurally different. no matter what some radicals try to assert, even those people who accept the right to an abortion generally concede that it is a morally serious matter.Replies: @Twinkie, @Chuck
“i think that the church is far less likely to cave on abortion.”
The catholic church currently understands the destruction of a zygote to be an abortion (Catechism, 2270) and thus a grave moral evil. A future in which it didn’t tweak its position (and in which a non-trivial number of the flock remained dogmatic) would be interesting.
Yes, and the first thing that jumps out at you from that map is the demographic profile of the polygamist lands.
So, where is the corresponding world map for gay marriage? That demographic profile is the 800kg albino gorilla of which nobody is willing to speak. The most developed and powerful sixth of the world is drifting into clinical insanity, and no one wants to talk about it . Not even on HBD sites. Good God, what’s up with that?
Here are maps from Forbes and from Wikipedia.
That’s 85 years. Would a WORDSUM analysis done on a GSS survey in Rome have looked the same in 325 AD? What could have been predicted for 85 years hence? Not this, I presume.
Heteropolygamous relationships. However valid all you have just said about those, it has no bearing on homopolygamous unions. Those have to be judged separately.
If marriage is a right, it can’t be limited by arbitrary standards. Barring heteropolygamy is not arbitrary, for the reasons you list. Just what about homopolygamy would justify our barring that? We’ve removed the only valid reason I can see.
The same is true of consanguinity. Who cares if a couple consists of identical twins? How does that affect the rest of us? It’s not as if they were uncle and niece. Indeed, not every state applies a consanguinity test to same-sex marriages. Why should any?
Abortion is something people have always done in private. 20% , or s0 I've read, of pregnancies in the 19th century, were deliberately terminated. Catholics today have a similar abortion rate to non-Catholics. These days the clergy don't seem to cast too many stones. St. Thomas Aquinus famously opined that male fetuses got a soul at 2 months, and females at 3 months. In the 1980s, a very nice priest just shrugged when he heard that and said, "well it was more a man's world in those days", dismissing the good Saint's bias with a slightly rueful and exasperated shrug. And he was a conservative.
Marriage, otoh, is public. That's explicitly what it is for -- a public declaration, and commitment by two people, to certain rules. These rules are not always easy for those who commit, but it makes things easier for society in general. And in general, (not always of course), it's better for the children.
This "gay marriage" discussion never asks: why the determination to usurp a word so profoundly associated with the sexual union of a male and female? Yeah, we've all heard of the Indian tribes, and Saharan bedouins, etc. who had quasi-boy-man marriages until the man grew up enough (about 40) to marry a female. But they are marginal even in their own cultures. What is wrong with simply having a legal partnership, that would bestow all the property,insurance, and inheritance benefits of any connubial relationship? Adoption has been around forever, with adoptees having much the same legal benefits as biological children.
There is no need for to call homosexual unions "marriages." The nature of the union is different. That they can't accept that, is interesting. Why not just agitate for a civil union status? That's what has always mystified me. I think the social engineers were after the word. The word.
I don't know what the Catholic Church is or isn't doing these days. I know that "trans-gender", "trans-race", and gay "marriage" seemed to be strangely contrived obsessions in the media, coming all at once like an inevitable deluge of change -- or outrage, depending on your pov. It doesn't seem to be accidental. In the past few years, the control of the media by a very, very few people makes me wonder even more. Why certain things get coverage, and others don't? Social engineering is a term that has become a cliche, I guess; but that's what's happening.
It's all beginning to seem like a vast circus. I do agree with Twinkie: never predict the future as simply more of what has recently come down pike. It can transform in the twinkling of an eye.Replies: @Twinkie
A lot of people call themselves Catholics. It doesn’t mean they are (at least not Catholics in good standing). After all, Nancy Pelosi calls herself a Catholic, and even presumes to make pronouncements on what is and is not consistent with the Catholic faith.
A funny version of this idea:
More seriously, let me repeat once more: procuring or helping to procure an abortion results in automatic excommunication. Even if no one else knew, you know. And God knows. Pretending to be a Catholic in good standing after such a transgression is simply lying to oneself and to God, and compounding the earlier grievous sin.
Good pastoral care requires not casting stones. Even those who are excommunicated are encouraged to continue to attend mass (but not partake in the sacraments), participate in the communal life of the parish, and return one day to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. But good pastoral care is not the same as giving absolution for unrepentant sin, or worse, elevating the same to sanctified status. It’s much the same way as parents would continue to love and care for wayward children, but stand firm on the principles that they should do good and avoid commission of evil.
Not quite. See: http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/did-st-thomas-aquinas-believe-ensoulment-occurred-40-or-80-days-after-conception-maki
The evil of abortion is a crucial part of Catholic moral teachings and dogma, which is enduring. The opinion about when a fetus received a soul was exactly that, an opinion of the time. Frankly where soul is concerned, issues like exact moments of when it begins and such are better left to the mysteries of faith.
Who knows? My suspicion is that the main goal of the homosexual lobby isn’t so much legal equality as enforced social respect. To be crude about it, they seem to want to rub our noses in their way of life. “You WILL respect how I get off! Or else!”
The mainstream media never report such things, but I know that Mormon temples received numerous bomb threats after Prop 8 passed in California. I have also seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears homosexual “activists” accost defenders of marriage at rallies and even viciously threaten to kidnap the children of the latter.
Such shrill “activists” always struck me as people with deep voids within themselves who seek to fill them by forcing others to confer on them social respect which is otherwise not freely given.
btw, I too think the Tiger Mom book was meant some tongue in tiger cheek.
But celibacy is an administrative issue that the Vatican can change at any time. There are a handful of married Roman priests now, and Eastern churches with them are in full communion. Ordaining women as priests is something the Church has no authority to do, nor will get before the Second Coming.
Extending marriage, a sacrament, to same-sex couples, or throuples, or nuclear relatives, or the deceased, or the animal, belongs in the second category.Actually, the creation of "gay marriage" reinforces two old Catholic stances: that Protestantism is a heresy that will eventually spend itself like earlier ones, and that marriage, like baptism and burial, is properly the province of the Church, not the State. "The law is a ass."Replies: @Twinkie
I get rather incredulous looks from my Protestant friends and acquaintances when they ask me when the Catholic Church will allow married priests and I tell them that there are already some. Eastern rite churches in full communion with Rome (and thus Catholic) have married priests and there are also married priests who were formerly Anglican clergy. However, there are limitations to “career advancement” to such men.
There are so many misconceptions, half-truths, rumors, falsehood, and outright lies about the Catholic Church among the general public and the media that sometimes it gets enormously tiresome to attempt to correct all these errors. Often they are perpetuated even by those who call themselves Catholics… All that despite the fact that the Catechism of the Church is quite transparent and openly available to all: http://usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church/
Amy Chua is an atheist or an agnostic married to a non-practicing Jew, but her family was (is?) Catholic and she was raised as a Catholic.
I suspect her definition of “successful” in this context is entirely materialistic. And it’s not entirely clear what her real thoughts are on many of the topic on which she purports to write. She projects a certain persona in her books that is, I suspect, not entirely in line with her actual self.
So I personally do not understand why so many people were angered by her Tiger Mom book. I found it quite funny, and I thought she meant it to be something of a parody. The whole tone of the book is along the lines of “Look how wacky, crazy, and funny I am! But I still think I am a pretty good mom – most of the time.”
So, where is the corresponding world map for gay marriage? That demographic profile is the 800kg albino gorilla of which nobody is willing to speak. The most developed and powerful sixth of the world is drifting into clinical insanity, and no one wants to talk about it . Not even on HBD sites. Good God, what's up with that?
Here are maps from Forbes and from Wikipedia.That's 85 years. Would a WORDSUM analysis done on a GSS survey in Rome have looked the same in 325 AD? What could have been predicted for 85 years hence? Not this, I presume.Heteropolygamous relationships. However valid all you have just said about those, it has no bearing on homopolygamous unions. Those have to be judged separately.
If marriage is a right, it can't be limited by arbitrary standards. Barring heteropolygamy is not arbitrary, for the reasons you list. Just what about homopolygamy would justify our barring that? We've removed the only valid reason I can see.
The same is true of consanguinity. Who cares if a couple consists of identical twins? How does that affect the rest of us? It's not as if they were uncle and niece. Indeed, not every state applies a consanguinity test to same-sex marriages. Why should any?Replies: @Twinkie
East Asia has a high level of economic and technological development, on par with Western and Central Europe in some ways, yet there is no sign at all that it will join the homosexual marriage bandwagon.
It does make me wonder how their IQ levels and support for homosexual marriage track.
Is there really an IQ correlations to the latter globally or is it merely an artifact of status or an ideological marker in the West?
In this day, very few would want to ban even those with serious heritable conditions from marrying and having children. But the possible effects of "in-breeding" is citing as a reason for banning incestual relationships and marriages.
It is well past time to continue to have anti-incest laws.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
The incidence of birth defects drops to zero if the couple consists of identical twins.
Talk about an L-shaped, “hockey stick” curve!
Identical twins will not be both from the same sex?Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Talk about an L-shaped, "hockey stick" curve!Replies: @Miguel Madeira
“if the couple consists of identical twins”
Identical twins will not be both from the same sex?
Identical twins will not be both from the same sex?Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Of course they will. That’s why the incidence of unhealthy offspring is zero. Or healthy offspring.
A funny version of this idea: https://youtu.be/L5K3QYvC8JM?t=1h17m36s
More seriously, let me repeat once more: procuring or helping to procure an abortion results in automatic excommunication. Even if no one else knew, you know. And God knows. Pretending to be a Catholic in good standing after such a transgression is simply lying to oneself and to God, and compounding the earlier grievous sin.Good pastoral care requires not casting stones. Even those who are excommunicated are encouraged to continue to attend mass (but not partake in the sacraments), participate in the communal life of the parish, and return one day to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. But good pastoral care is not the same as giving absolution for unrepentant sin, or worse, elevating the same to sanctified status. It's much the same way as parents would continue to love and care for wayward children, but stand firm on the principles that they should do good and avoid commission of evil.Not quite. See: http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/did-st-thomas-aquinas-believe-ensoulment-occurred-40-or-80-days-after-conception-maki
The evil of abortion is a crucial part of Catholic moral teachings and dogma, which is enduring. The opinion about when a fetus received a soul was exactly that, an opinion of the time. Frankly where soul is concerned, issues like exact moments of when it begins and such are better left to the mysteries of faith.Who knows? My suspicion is that the main goal of the homosexual lobby isn't so much legal equality as enforced social respect. To be crude about it, they seem to want to rub our noses in their way of life. "You WILL respect how I get off! Or else!"
The mainstream media never report such things, but I know that Mormon temples received numerous bomb threats after Prop 8 passed in California. I have also seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears homosexual "activists" accost defenders of marriage at rallies and even viciously threaten to kidnap the children of the latter.
Such shrill "activists" always struck me as people with deep voids within themselves who seek to fill them by forcing others to confer on them social respect which is otherwise not freely given.Replies: @dcite
well, you’re a sincere Catholic. Most people these days are buffet members of whatever faith they claim, if they claim any. Even a lot of the clergy. I think it’s best to be sincere when it comes to these things, be it religious or non-religious; some atheists take the non-existence of God more personally than some believers take his existence. You know your own position in the scheme of things,, and others know where you stand.
btw, I too think the Tiger Mom book was meant some tongue in tiger cheek.