What is it about "Marriage."

Free Republic | 12/4/03 | ArGee

[ArGee]

Now that the Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional (in that state) to deny marriage to homosexual partners there is a lot of noise about how politicians are reacting. Most of the nine dwarves have declared that they oppose homosexual "marriage" but support "civil unions" that look exactly the same on paper. (President Bush has stated that he supports a maintaining our traditional understanding of marriage without giving us any specifics.)

Does anybody remember the duck test? Civil unions are marriage. This is a semantic shell game. Now, don't get me wrong. I understand Democrats and their semantic shell games. They're caught because most Americans don't support homosexual marriage. But many, if not most, Americans support some kind of civil unions.

If I understand this, Americans are against homosexual marriage, but they are in favor of homosexuals being married in everything but name. Therefore the politicians have to follow the people they want to lead, and come out against homosexual marriage.

Can any FReeper help me understand what's in that name? What is it with marriage that makes it impossible to call a relationship involving sex, shared property, joint custody of children, inheritance rights, and shared benefits marriage?

[Political Junkie Too]

Hey can you post what the benefits statement says

Domestic Partner
To qualify for benefits, you and your domestic partner must sign a notarized affidavit of Domestic Partnership that certifies all of the following qualifications are met:

• your partner is of the same or opposite sex and is not a blood relative;

• you and your partner are financially and emotionally interdependent;

• your partner is over age 18, and of legal age;

• your partner is mentally competent to enter into contracts;

• you and your partner live together and are jointly responsible for each other’s welfare and financial obligations;

• an intimate, committed relationship of mutual caring has existed for at least six months prior to the signing of the affidavit, and is expected to continue indefinitely; and

• neither you nor your partner is married.

[hunter112]

People truly believed blacks were subhuman, primarly thanks to Darwinism (see my tag line).

And I see people here who describe homosexuals as lesser beings, because homosexuality (without applied science, even if its a turkey baster) does not naturally lead to reproduction. As I recall, Darwinism is based on reproduction, too. I think if you forced the issue, many Freepers would consider gays subhuman, too. At least that's the impression I get from reading posts at FR.

However, from what I can tell everywhere I look, those of us who consider homosexuality to be the evidence of a mental illness are strongly in the minority and have no say in society whatsoever.

I remember being outraged myself when I discovered the American Psychological Association took homosexuality off the list of psychopathologies back in the mid 1970's. I was a psych major at the Univ. of WA in Seattle, and was flabbergasted. I even stood up in front of a class of 400 people in 1975 (Psych 210-Human Sexual Behavior), and lambasted a lesbian mother for allowing her kids to grow up in a homosexual household (you'd have been proud of me) and got no support for the idea from my fellow students. Since that time, I've come to agree with the APA, that while there are gay people with neuroses, the gayness is not necessarily a cause of the condition. Rightly or wrongly, the rest of society has also come to that view. About the only people that seem to be opposed to homosexuality are religious people, and in my part of the country, religious ideas that try to express themselves in law are viewed with suspicion. I would suspect such is the case in many urban areas of the country.

Nice liberal rant, by the way. I'd love to discuss affirmative action with you on an affirmative action thread.

You were asking for an honest answer from a Freeper as to why the disconnect between the concepts of marriage and civil union in people's minds. I used AA as an example, not as a solution. I personally feel that AA has become a hinderance to the protected groups, but it was an idea that took root during the civil rights movement, and acceptance of AA can explain aspects of the acceptance of gays. For an answer to your question, you're not going to learn as much from a Freeper who is religiously opposed to homosexuality as you are from a Freeper who is not threatened by homosexual rights. If you dismiss my observations as "liberal rants", then you are left with the analysis of people who post on these threads as a way of "witnessing", they believe their deity is watching this thread, and that they're building up heavenly brownie points.

I've long insisted to conservatives that want to fight gay marriage or its equivalents that they need to understand how not only the liberals think, but how the mushy middle thinks. The fact that there is a disconnect between gay marriage and civil unions in the minds of the middle shows how they are indeed, mushy. While they do not feel comfortable with the most strident homosexual advocates on the left, they are not going to be persuaded by reasons of religion or tradition. Most folks in the middle are unwilling to impose their religious beliefs on others, and resist the efforts of the religious to do so. They've all seen the nature of marriage changing in their own lifetimes, let alone the changes that have taken place since pre-historical times in the institution, and they are unwilling to freeze marriage in stone, so tradition does not play too heavily into their thinking. They'd rather be eased gently into change, and civil union provides that psychological comfort zone. It's much easier in their minds to add an institution than to change an existing one.

If you confront the mushy middle with the idea that gay marriage and civil union are the same thing, and expect them to oppose CU, I think you'll be disappointed. They'll swallow hard, and conclude that maybe gay marriage has reached its time, will not oppose it, and will resent the side that has forced them to confront it. That's how the Republicans can overplay their hand on this issue. If conservatives cannot come up with arguments against either CU or gay marriage that do not involve "natural law" or Biblical doctrine, then they can expect to lose this issue. You cannot exploit the cognitive dissonance that the middle feels about gay marriage vs. civil union to persuade them. This seeming contradiction is just their way of getting used to the idea that gays have as much right as straights do to form stable monogamous relationships. Ben and Jay-Lo have already shredded the image that marriage had when they were kids watching their own families' marriages.

[Political Junkie Too]

They have children.

If I can pick nits too, let me point out that they don't "have children," they raise somone else's children (adoption) or one is inseminated by a donor's (known or unknown) sperm, or the child is born from a prior heterosexual relationship.

-PJ

[longtermmemmory]

You are not quite correct, why kind of dependent insurance, income tax? If the person is your true financial dependent or just the one who earns less money.

[longtermmemmory]

Which is why a federal marriage amendment is crucial. It eliminates full faith and credit from any notion of civil unions.

[hunter112]

I'm saying that marriage came about by society blessing the couple to have children for the sustainment of the tribe.

Can I supply an alternative theory for you to consider on the origin of marriage?

In preagricultural societies, men had sexual relations with whatever women they could. The determinant of who got what rights to which women was probably rank in the tribe, but I think, based on studies of people who are non-agricultural (hunter/gatherers in tropical regions) where sex and procreation are not connected (the nine month lapse is fairly long), sex does not have the societal consequences it does in modern, post-agricultural societies.

What happened at the dawn of agriculture? Beasts became domesticated, and part of the domestication involved penning animals up, so that their services could be called upon when it was time to till the fields, or harvest the crops. Because of the superior physical strength of men (especially upper body strength, supplied by testosterone), men were the first to realize that if a female animal is penned up without access to a male animal, she will remain barren. Sex with a male animal produced offspring that resembled, in part, the male animal, if you only let one male animal in the pen. This became part of the "sacred knowledge" that the men in the tribe possessed, along with calendars, that were used to figure out proper planting and harvesting times. Yes, the calendar was among the first religious object, as it gave agricultural peoples the knowledge about how to use nature, rather than become at nature's whims.

Similarly, even though the science of genetics was millennia away, the concept of inheritance was born (check out all the "begats" in the Bible). In order for a man to have the concept of "my son" or "my daughter", he had to have exclusive sexual access to a given woman, or group of women. It's my contention that marriage emerged from that observation, and since it was part of the sacred knowledge of the time, it became enshrined in the religious traditions of the era. Men and women, who had been relative equals in the pre-agricultural era (gathering was as important a skill as hunting, and women are better suited to gathering, biologically) became unequal, and to maintain order, women had to become property. Men who gave their loyalty to the tribal chief or leader were given exclusive right to a woman, men who rebelled did not get this right. The leader, or king, always had the right to a harem or concubinage in addition to the wife that he produced legitimate heirs through. (But even the king could cross you, if you were a lesser male in the society. I think some of you know of the story of David, Uriah, and Bathsheba.) Marriage contracts all the way into the last millennium reflected this "property transaction" status of this institution.

Clearly, we've evolved marriage beyond this. Blame it on the Pill if you want, because effective conception control has again separated sex from procreation. No wonder the Vatican opposed birth control, it was obvious the Pill would upset the applecart. Now, we have people of opposite sexes who are free to marry and NOT procreate by choice, it seems that couples that are non-procreative by nature (gay couples) are really not that fundamentally different. I offer that as a reason why there is not significant opposition from the middle to gay civil unions. The qualms about marriage are only "growing pains" for heterosexuals to get used to the idea of societally recognized gay monogamous partnerships. Call it one thing, and its a little too close to home, call it another, and people in the middle can live with it.

[ArGee]

I'm not saying that people cannot get married unless they swear to have children, I'm saying that marriage came about by society blessing the couple to have children for the sustainment of the tribe.

But times change and people change with the times. Do you really think procreation is the big deal between allowing homosexuals to call what they do "marriage?"

Shalom.

[longtermmemmory]

newsflash, it is still the law that a child born in a marriage is presumed the man's. In some states a subsequent DNA test is irrelevant.

Marriage is not about love, it is not about sex. It is about the environment we raise children. It is about the evironement that mothers and fathers provide for children.

Your historical refernces confuse sex with marriage. You could not be further off.

In the days of "tribe" women where chattle, property. The women were an asset to produce babies like a cow produces calves. More hands for the farm or the herdsman.

Even couples who do not procreate are still part of the man is a father and woman is a mother paradign of society. In every marriage on some level the man is father and the woman is mother. This is regardless of the children being or not being there.

Homosexuals are extremely fundamentally different, their sole reason for existence is alternative sex. The homoerotic act. They only wish to take a private sexual behavior are impose public acceptance and encouragment. We do not do the same for other sex acts such as swingers, bondage people, or animal sex people.

There is no reason to institutionalize homosexuality into the public domain.

[ArGee]

That's how the liberals have been able to promote things...

If what you're saying is true (and I can't argue) then there is something in the word "marriage" that broke the liberal propaganda machine.

I fully understand why "baby killing" had to be re-termed "abortion." I fully understand why the term "baby" had to be replaced with "product of conception." I understand all the emotions and connotations those words carried.

But I'm a child of the 60s. I know that sex and marriage have been completely disconnected. For a while there "marriage" was equal to "killing our love."

Since marriage has been effectively dead for at least 30 years, what is it about this word in conjunction with homosexuals that caused the liberal propaganda machine to take a detour?

And I'm not trying to play teacher trying to get someone else to come up with the answer I'm thinking of, I really don't understand.

Shalom.

[ArGee]

Let me put it this way. In the list of windmills at which I think we should tilt, homosexual civil unions fall below heterosexual promiscuity in priority.

I agree with you on what the bigger cause is, but in untying a knot, you always go in the opposite order of the way it was tied.

Shalom.

[longtermmemmory]

Not procreation but all the incidents to raising children.

Making, raising, educating, providing for them while mother and father is alive, and providing for them after mother and father leave this earth.

Homosexuals have no place raising children.

[ArGee]

your partner is of the same or opposite sex and is not a blood relative;

Same or opposite sex???!!! Same or opposite sex????!!!

Are there some other choices!!!!!!!!

Excuse me, sir, are you of the same or opposite sex or not.

There may be no hope for America.

Shalom.

[hunter112]

Which is why a federal marriage amendment is crucial. It eliminates full faith and credit from any notion of civil unions.

Well, the way I see it, the new institution of the gay civil union will not be as immediately recognized in the society. If it does not exist in a state, then what will that state's Supreme Court have to go on?

For example, prositution is legal in parts of Nevada. If I pay for "services" in a licensed establishment (not gonna happen, I have no desire for either that, or the wrath of Mrs. Hunter112!), I may well have rights to sue for nonperformance of the contract. I cannot take my claim to another state's court, even if there is a possible otherwise valid reason to do so (such as paying with a credit card that is to be interpreted as being subject to the laws of a state other than Nevada), they will toss it out, based on the fact that prostitution is not legal in the other state. A court outside of Nevada will not enforce an agreement to trade money for prostitution services.

Now, a marriage certificate, on the other hand, has application in each of the fifty states, they all have marriage laws. A case in my state over a credit card dispute concerning provision of dental services in Nevada, if the court has jurisdiction because of the credit card agreement, will be heard and judged on its merits.

Besides all of the above analysis, I sincerely doubt that a Federal Marriage Amendment could pass both houses of Congress by the enormous majorities required, and further, to be approved by three quarters of the states. Even if it did, it would not stop gay marriage or civil union in the states that have it, it would just stop official recognition of these relationships in the states that had not. Private recognition would still go on, maybe even faster. Recall how donations to the Boy Scouts dropped off, even after the Supreme Court reaffirmed their policies regarding gays. Backlash goes both ways.

[longtermmemmory]

Money, then ceasation of sex.

[ArGee]

They'll swallow hard, and conclude that maybe gay marriage has reached its time

I would rather they do that than the current effort to pretend a pig is a horse.

Shalom.

[ArGee]

If I can pick nits too

You can't pick nits too. I was describing my brother and sister-in-law and all their children were conceived the old-fashoned way (according to my brother).

The fact that you presumed I was describing a homosexual "couple" proves my point.

Shalom.

[longtermmemmory]

Given the overwhelming support of the Defense of Marriage Act during clinton and the fact clinton signed it in 1996. I say the Federal Marriage Amendment has a really good shot at passing.

Also 38 states have DOMA's of their own either statutory or constitutional.

The orginal 1996 was supposed to stop mass' wacko socialist judge from doing what she did. It is now obvious the only way to stop judges is to stop them through the constitution federally. This is no longer a states rights issue.

Black robe fever is real.

[ArGee]

This interesting story ignores the fact that we're moving toward a society where men happily abandon their children.

The idea that a man cares which child is his appears to me to be inexplicable in any story that talks about marriage "evolving."

If men had it their way from the beginning of time, we'd have what we have now, which is a mess.

I can't think of any explanation for marriage other than it is ordained of G-d. (That is not a reason to codify it into law.) Nothing else makes sense.

Women forced men into marriage so they could be protected during pregnancy? Get real. Women are weak and easy prey for men. I can see no pre-marital environment that would lead to marriage evolving. But it could be a problem in my imagination.

Shalom.

[ArGee]

Homosexuals have no place raising children.

While I agree with you, this question has to do with those who oppose homosexual marriage and suppot homosexual civil unions. Those people also believe those homosexuals, so joined, should be able to adopt children (or have them in the case of a female "couple"). So I still don't see procreation as the sticking point that forced the gay propaganda machine to take a detour in redefining marriage.

Love's been redefined. Committment has been redefined. Safe-sex has been redefined. Monagomy has been redefined. Why are they finding it so hard to get marriage redefined?

Shalom. Shalom.

[ArGee]

It is now obvious the only way to stop judges is to stop them through the constitution federally.

How about just impeaching the turkeys then doing what is right?

For that matter, it would be great if the Massachusetts legislature simply said, "You've overstepped your constitutional bounds. You can not dictate to us what laws to pass. We will not comply. If you want to pass laws, run for office. Otherwise, go back to judging by the laws we have written.

Shalom.