That may sound like a joke, but it's exactly what the Sixth Circuit had to consider (among other things) in U.S. v. Dedman. The answer seems to be no in Arkansas, yes in Kentucky, and no (according to Arkansas courts) as to whether there is a constitutional right to enter into such marriages -- though I learned, to my surprise, that Israel v. Allen, 577 P.2d 762, 764 (Colo. 1978), had held there was such a right, even as to marriages between adopted siblings, and though the Sixth Circuit ended up not squarely confronting the constitutional question.
For more on how the case came to federal court, read the opinions. My tentative thought is that the dissent probably has the better view on the sufficiency of the evidence question. Thanks to How Appealing for the pointer.
UPDATE: I originally erroneously said that the Sixth Circuit had upheld the constitutionality of the ban on marriages between people related by adoption; I've revised the post above to correct that. That's what I get for blogging from memory, even day-old memory. Thanks to commenter Doug Sundseth for correcting me on this.
Who are we to pass judgement?
Sigh.
Look, marriage is - and has always been - the union of one man and one woman. Sometimes more than one woman (in which case, it's better understood as multiple separate marriages than as one large group marriage; the latter would permit multiple husbands, a loathsome idea). But restrictions within that definition (ie, limitations on how closely related a married couple can be, age limits, laws banning mixed-race marriages) don't alter the definition of marriage, but merely limit who is allowed access to the franchise. Laws that permit members of the same gender to marry are qualitatively different, because they rewrite what marriage is, rather than merely limit who is allowed to marry.
As I read the opinion, that answer seems to be explicitly avoided by the court:
"Any possible unconstitutionality of Arkansas’s marriage statute is not “clear under current law.” Olano, 507 U.S. at 734. To be explicit, nothing we say today should foreclose any later court from determining the constitutionality of Arkansas’s marriage statute, but today we hold only that a ruling of unconstitutionality would not be clear from the precedent that exists today."
My understanding of that is that there might or might not be a constitutional right to such marriages, but that there was no clear error in regard to the district court's assumption that there was no such right (with a fairly extensive discussion of the difference between "error" and "clear error" previously).
Separately, the dissent has the better argument. Why leave Kentucky, where the marriage between adoptive grandparent and grandchild is legal, in order to have a void marriage ceremony in Arkansas? That makes zero sense--except that there appears to be a genuine desire by the parties to keep the marriage secret.
Look, marriage is - and has always been - the union of two human beings. Usually one man and one woman, but sometimes two men or two women (in which case, it's better understood as "same-sex marriage"). Sometimes more than one woman (in which case, it's better understood as multiple separate marriages than as one large group marriage; the latter would permit multiple husbands, a loathsome idea for some reason). But restrictions within that definition (ie, limitations on how closely related a married couple can be, age limits, laws banning mixed-race marriages, laws banning same-sex marriage) don't alter the definition of marriage, but merely limit who is allowed access to the franchise. Laws that permit members of different species to marry, while hilarious, are qualitatively different, because they rewrite what marriage is, rather than merely limit who is allowed to marry.
One male and one female, yes. If you have any precedent whatsoever for the existence of homosexual 'marriage' before the rise of the homofascist movement in the 60s, please cite it.
"I'm a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist. Marriage means what most people commonly think it means. No more, no less."
How convenient for you not to have any fixed moral principles. For the rest of us, marriage means what God says it means - "Male and female He created them" and all.
Give me a break. You're not sorry at all.
That fine, and I note the word "most." This means if most people don't want marriage extended to same sex couples then a judge should not override what most people want.
It doesn't matter much to me if you believe me or not, but I do in fact regret that in my hasty bemusement about the case, I invoked a wrong stereotype about the residents of southern states as it betrayed my true latte-sipping, Pacific NW egghead, liberal, socialist elitism ;).
Ah, so you favor direct democracy and the abolition of all legislatures and constitutions. Why didn't you say so? Thank you for the clarification.
Zarkov, that doesn't bode well for you. Support for SSM has grown ~2% every 3 years since 1980 (except for a brief downward turn in 2004 due to Mass Supreme Court, which was recovered by 2007). Perhaps the trend will reverse but it doesn't seem likely. Linky
The gay mafia has browbeaten much of the public by a relentless propaganda campaign. Whenever this issue come up they stand poised to strike with their talking points. Of course if SSM is really what the public wants then so be it. But it should not be forced down their throats.
I have no dog in this race. All I can do is stand back and watch western society destroy itself in numerous ways. When people start marrying horses, I can say "I told you so."
The reason that's such a bad argument is that marriage is, among many other things, a contract. That, per force, requires capacity to enter into a contract. If and when horses demonstrate the capacity to enter into a contract I may change my mind, but until then the bestiality argument is state of the art smoke blowing.
Polyandry (the marriage of one woman to more than one man) is a traditional practice in Tibet. The husbands are usually brothers.
Ha ha, don't make me laugh. Where's the freedom to negotiate the terms, instead of have them dictated by the state? Where's the freedom from having the government randomly change those terms ex post facto, long after you've made the commitment to the "contract," as happens when the legislature fiddles with the family code every year? Where's the neutral public enforcement of whatever terms the two parties, in good faith agree to, in the beginning? Where's the legal liability of the party that breaks the contract for damages to the party that does not?
Et cetera. Marriage is not a contract, and it's legal treatment varies wildly from an ordinary contract. It's a certain kind of legal ghetto, a characterization like "felon" or "public employee" or "minor" that defines in what ways you are treated differently than others.
Why gay people want this to be part of their life I have no idea. I only wish the California Supreme Court had instead of extended the thing to gay people simply transfered it, so that us reg'lar heterosexual males were forbidden by law from falling (or being tripped) into the hellhole...er, I mean living in our chosen loving arrangements of human dignity and aspiration of the spiritual foobar whatever ho...
You nailed it. Marriage is more properly described as an adhesion than a normal contract. I too don't understand why gay people want to jump into this snake pit. Come back in ten years when enough of them have gone through the meat grinder, and they will rue the day they ever started down the road of SSM.
Some lawyer will get power of attorney for a horse or perhaps all horses and then man and animal can live happily ever after.
If you're in a bad marriage, you have my sincerely condolences. As with every other choice in life, some people choose well and some people choose badly, and some just plain get lucky or unlucky. I've had a same sex domestic partner for 15 years. At one level you have a point; if our relationship crashed and burned we could disentangle a lot more easily than if we were married (though the major assets and liabilities are in both names so it wouldn't be a complete cakewalk).
On the other hand, I live in a state that provides no protections to gay couples at all. I have a law degree and I've drafted the best legal protections for us that I can, and I still worry that I've overlooked something. We have copies of our wills, powers of attorney, abd medical appointments at home, in the glove compartment of each vehicle, and in each of our offices so that if there's an emergency there should be a set close at hand. Whenever we travel a set of those papers is the first thing I pack (and God forbid they're in the hotel room while we're hiking twenty miles away and there's an accident). And you know what? I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the large quantities of time and energy and expense that I go to in an effort to provide us with some of the protections you and your wife got for the price of a marriage license. And that's why gay people are entitled to marriage.
That is the central question for lawmakers.
More loathsome than many wives?
Someone has performance issues!
Now you might disagree with the decision and think the court was mistaken in striking down laws banning same sex marriage but with cases like this it's hard to argue that the courts didn't have a long history of finding constitutional rights to marry.
You can even misleadingly characterize this opinion as a "right to marry your adopted daughter's daughter" just like you can characterize the gay marriage decision as a "right to gay marriage."
Man adopts eight year old girl, home schools her, and teachers her that her duty in life is to grow up to be his obedient sex slave. Once she turns 18, they go to the JP and get married.
The beliefs of false religions don't concern me. (This isn't bigotry. Anyone who genuinely espouses a religion must believe that his religion is somehow truer or more correct than all the others; otherwise why would he be a member of that religion in the first place?)
"More loathsome than many wives?
Someone has performance issues!"
Part of the reason marriage can only be between a man and a woman is because a husband and a wife have distinct roles to play in that marriage. You can have a house with many servants and one master (polygamy) but a house with many masters and one servant (polyandry) is inherently unstable. Husbands in marriage are called to be servant-leaders to their wive(s); in a household with multiple husbands, some of the husbands must subject themselves to the familial authority of another, a concept alien to God's design for the family.
Give him the axe already. It's not funny anymore.
The parable of the elephant and all that . . .
Marriage, in the Christian tradition, is meant to reflect the relationship between Christ and His church. Church, dahlin, is singular. Polygamy would be like having Christ lead the Christian church, then, for fun (and because he has all those urges) leading a band of Wiccans.
Now, my Ryrie Bible has a very extensive index in the back, although it says absolutely nothing about polygamy.
Moving onwards, because this is fun and I can, let's explore some Biblical text that, remarkably, undermines your proposition that men can get it on with multiple women but women can't do the same with men. (By the way, as a little tip for you, you need women in order to make baby Christians. With that attitude, you're going to be facing down a band of earth-worshippers in 20 years.)
Gen. 2:23-24 (NIV):
Well, in that case, polyandry and polygyny are both abhorrent. After all, you can't be "one flesh" with Wife #1 on one day, then be "One Flesh" with another wife the next day.
Last time I checked, furthermore, the sexual parts just aren't made for more than one person at a time. Sex is, by its nature, an act which exclude all other people; you can converse with a group, hug several people, eat with friends, but can only have sex with one other person. If our bodies were designed by a Creator, He would have given men multiple penises if He wished them to have multiple wives. (Arguably, as a woman can certainly have sex in sequence, and, apparently, the orgasms get better and better, there is a "theology of the body"-type argument to be made for polyandry, but not polygyny.)
Anyway, moving onto Christ's commandments for husbands, which you are so intent on missing. That brings us out of Genesis (which, although the first book of the Bible, you apparently have not read) into Ephesians.
5:25
Pray tell, how is a man supposed to:
*Give himself up for more than one woman? Christ DIED for his Church - you may have missed that part of the Bible, but that is God's commandment to man; he must be ready to die for the woman he calls his wife. How to die for more than one woman?
*How can you present a woman as holy and blameless when you're screwing other women? Sorry, doesn't happen.
*Have "two" become "one flesh" and have other women in the picture? Maybe it's the engineer in me, but that's just impossible.
*Symmetry. If there is more than two becoming one flesh, then why not men? After all, this instruction applies only to men, not to women - based on any standard textual interpretation, if polygamy were allowed, it would be polyandry.
*How to love your wife as yourself if there is more than one wife?
Yeah, I'm going with some big-time performance issues. Sadly, for devout Christians, you're hiding behind their religion.
Piling it on, a bit... let's mosey over to Corinthians.
1:7
Perfect symmetry. No way you can be a Christian and believe that one version of polgamy is acceptable and another abhorrent.
And if your rabbi eats pork, is that kosher? Methinks he needs to read up on his Leviticus.
It is arrogance of the highest order for any human being to claim authority to speak from divine truth. We can debate and discuss, and in the end we might disagree (among Jews, disagreement seems to be the norm) but one does not claim the authority to definitively interpret the meaning of a text for others. It's unheard of.
Think of it this way: imagine you buy a house and secure a mortgage with a fixed rate. Then two years later along comes the legislature and passes a law changing your "fixed" rate to something else and the Courts won't let you renegotiate your mortgage or sell your house. Then five years later the same thing happens, and on and on. If the legislature dared to pull that stunt, their heads would be on pikes pretty soon.
No, I don't have an unhappy marriage, or any marriage. Putting myself in the power of the Great State of California and its IQ 90 servants once was plenty.
All the things you cite, the legal mutual rights and such, are not especially important, I think, unless you or your partner have family who hate one or both of you. If you get sick, the hospital is not going to prevent your partner from visiting. If you go into a vegetative state, and have previously discussed at length with your partner what you want done, the doctors (or judge if it comes to that) will follow your partner's instructions, in the absence of contrary demands (e.g. from that evil family if you've got it). The point of having a spouse or close family member make decisions for you is not that they inherently should have this power, but that they are most likely to represent what you would want, if you could speak. That's the only standard, and if the relevant people (doctors and judges) think your partner best represent what you would want, because, well, he does, and no one else (like family) contradicts him, then it doesn't matter whether he's your "spouse" or not.
Everyone needs to write a will, so your situation is no different. If you and your partner buy real estate together, you can both go on the title and have rights of survivorship, the same as a married couple who are both on the title. (And if you don't want to mingle your fortunes, then just like some married couples, you can not have both names on the title, and not have survivor's rights). Whether your employer gives your partner benefits is a private decision, up to the employer. Plenty of employers do not offer regular het spouses benefits. They don't have to.
So what's the really important difference? Frankly, the only important effect the State's definition of and regulation of marriage has is when marriages break up. Then it steps in and makes all kinds of decisions for you, and indeed imposes a decision structure and payoff matrix that is almost guaranteed to make any mere pre-existing dislike turn into bitter hatred. (You need only ask divorcing couples whether their experience with the law made them more or less angry with each other. Do you doubt what they'd say?)
If that's what you want -- if calling yourself "married" is worth that massive price, then by all means, be my guest. I think it's a sad fool's gold -- I would rather that heterosexual marriage return to the state you now enjoy, where the deal between the partners is entirely up to them, is defined by they and their families and communities, without reference to what some pack of God-damned fools in Sacramento think, and it's enforced by reason and persuasion and community pressure, and neither party can bring down the massive weight of the State to bludgeon the other half to death. For most of history we didn't need the King, First Citizen, Parlaiment, or local magistrate to bless our marriages to make them valid in our eyes or the eyes of God, and I view the decision to invent that need as one of the Industrial Revolution's bigger mistakes.
... yet, unfortunately, frequently heard.
This actually happened to one of my cousins. His girlfriend (with whom he shared a home) became seriously ill and the hospital enforced an immediate family only rule. No, he couldn't see her until her parents intervened.
There are enough cases to the contrary here, even with non-evil families. If two people do not have a documented relationship, a hospital can't turn over that kind of decision making power. I've got all my paperwork in order (not stupid here), but not everyone does.
Many heterosexual couples choose non-marital cohabitation over marriage. They could marry, but they don't because they don't want the legal entanglements and the extra tax burden. I've done both with same and different people and I can tell you from personal experience non-marital cohabitation, on the whole, is much better.
Today with no fault divorce, a legal marriage hardly provides any security. You can uphold your end of the bargain and still be made to suffer. At least in the old days of fault divorce, the conforming party got some protection. So crazy is the state of California that wives who try to kill their husbands can still get property and support.
Splunge is absolutely right. In California the asymmetrical enforcement of family law makes marriage a really rotten deal for men. Unfortunately most people go into marriage without full knowledge of the extent of the legal entanglement. Once the CA legislature passed a law that would give marriage license applicants a pamphlet outlining their legal obligations. The governor vetoed it, saying few people will want marriage once they this!
Gay California people should go to a law library and read through the Rutter Group Practice Guide for California Family Law.
"In that case human beings would be facing imminent extinction no matter what the point of marriage was."
The extinction wouldn't be "imminent," but ok lets say everyone became immortal, but infertile. Would there be any point to marriage?
This actually happened to one of my cousins. His girlfriend (with whom he shared a home) became seriously ill and the hospital enforced an immediate family only rule. No, he couldn't see her until her parents intervened.
Surely this was something more than a simple visit. Anyone can visit you in the hospital absent some kind of special circumstance. I don't see why you can't vest anyone you want with the power to make medical decisions for you.
There was a case a couple of years ago in which Johns Hopkins University (in Baltimore, not Pascagoula by any means) refused to recognize a gay partner's right to make medical decisions despite the partner having all the paperwork -- they simply refused to recognize it. A lesbian I know was denied access to her partner in the intensive care in a Miami hospital -- the social worker actually told her to her face that she was in an anti-gay hospital in an anti-gay state. And there is ongoing litigation in Indiana right now between the family of a gay man who had a stroke and his long-time partner who has been denied all access to him.
One of the good things marriage does is make clear who has rights and the ability to make decisions. Showing up at the hospital and telling them "we're long-time companions" and telling them "we're married" will evoke two very different responses.
I'm happy to be considered a 'fool for God'. That being said, if you can find any so-called stupidity I've ever posted that isn't supported by a long tradition of Christian scholarship (except in re alimony and associated issues, concerning which I admit bias :P ), please cite it.
"[Off Topic] This rests on the absurd proposition that acknowledging some grain of truth in a different religion somehow denigrates yours -- as if there was only a fixed amount of truth to go around. It is not beyond the power of an omnipotent God to reveal himself in different ways during different times and to different people. "
Of course not, which is why I used 'more correct'. But I believe in the Bible as the literal and infallible Word of God written in His own English; all other religions differ, to a greater or lesser degree, from that Word, and so all other religions are 'less correct'.
"If you're going to troll about Christianity, at least get it right. "
I have been. :)
"Marriage, in the Christian tradition, is meant to reflect the relationship between Christ and His church. Church, dahlin, is singular."
But marriage, as a tradition, began not with Christ but with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and there is a long, long Biblical tradition of patriarchs taking multiple wives with God's full consent. A church, moreover, is a collection of multiple individuals, and it must be remembered that the foundation of Christianity is a personal relationship between Christ and each individual Christian; one bridegroom, but an uncountable number of brides.
"(By the way, as a little tip for you, you need women in order to make baby Christians. With that attitude, you're going to be facing down a band of earth-worshippers in 20 years.) "
I don't follow. One man with X number of women produces the same number of children as X number of men with X number of women; how will that put polygamists at a numerical disadvantage? (By the way, one woman with multiple husbands produces only as many children as one woman with one husband - so much for 'be fruitful and multiply').
"If our bodies were designed by a Creator, He would have given men multiple penises if He wished them to have multiple wives."
And if He'd wanted men to blog, He would have given them wrists better suited to typing. :P
Ephesians: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved his Church [...] He would loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church [...]"
Right. The takeaway here is that the husband is to the wife as Christ is to the Christian - a servant-leader, one who loves his wife and will make any sacrifice for her, but, again, an absolute and ultimate authority.
"Give himself up for more than one woman? Christ DIED for his Church[.]"
Christ did NOT die for an organization called the "Church". His sacrifice was a personal and individual one, made for every single individual; as a result, every single individual has the capability to have a personal relationship with Christ through that sacrifice. (Side note: there are many things Christ can do that we, as mortals, cannot. That is why the Christ:Christian::husband:wife analogy is only an analogy.)
Christ, in fact, has multiple 'marriages'; he offers one to every person ever to exist. A person cannot be 'married' to multiple Christs, though. Something about 'having no god before Me', if I recall :)
"*Have "two" become "one flesh" and have other women in the picture? Maybe it's the engineer in me, but that's just impossible. "
You realize that most (Christian) polygamous marriages don't involve everybody getting together in one big orgy, right? Sorry to disappoint you :)
"Symmetry. If there is more than two becoming one flesh, then why not men?"
Marriage is NOT a symmetrical relationship, any more than the relationship between Christ and Christian is a symmetrical one. Christ died to save us; we do not die to save Him. (Also, for the 'one flesh' bit, I refer you to the 'engineer in you' :P )
"*How to love your wife as yourself if there is more than one wife? "
Last I checked, we were told to love our neighbor as we do ourself. Are we expected to only have one neighbor? Or, perhaps, to love one and hate the rest of them?
"Piling it on, a bit... let's mosey over to Corinthians. "
Oh, yes, let's. Corinthians 1.11:
[3] But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
[Women should cover their heads in church:]
[7] For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.
[8] For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.
[9] Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
Perfect symmetry, my hairy yellow butt. A husband serves his wife as Christ serves the Christian; a wife serves her husband as a Christian serves Christ. These are *not* equivalent roles. And just as Christ has uncounted Christians, but each Christian has but one Christ, so can husbands have multiple wives, but wives only one husband.
If you are traveling through rural Mississippi, I am sure Anderson is available to ensure that your legal rights are protected.
The case is far from strange really. People marry for convenience a lot. At least one adoption here was a result of the need for benefits, health in particular. Come to think of it, at least a few movies (and maybe one President?) concerned someone falling in love with their ward. This was not deemed perverse.
An across the board rule banning marriage of people in some fashion connection by adoption seems a rule that probably will have some troubling results. Consider this situation. Say the adopted woman fell in love with a blood relation of her father by adoption. She was adopted as a teen. But, in some states, she could not marry the sibling (even if she was 16 when adopted, and this occurred when she was 21, and the other party was let's say 25).
As with marriage of cousins, "incest" can be a complicated deal.
I agree with you to an extent. At least one adoption was a sham (for health benefits) as was the marriage (for survivor benefits). The case does not describe the reasons for the first adoption, but given the people involved, I am at least suspicious that it may not have been for love either.
All that said, as an adoptive parent (my wife's child from a pervious marriage), I am disturbed and angered at any attempt to make adoption any less in the eyes of the law than a biological relationship.
And frankly, even though New York and some other states allow it, I would be less than thrilled if my son married my niece, even though they share no DNA.
"... Johns Hopkins University (in Baltimore, ... refused to recognize a gay partner's right to make medical decisions ..."
There's an old saying: "Hard cases make bad law," which means we don't let exceptional events dictate policy. From time to time a rogue hospital functionary might try to exceed his authority. That could even happen to SSM couple. What then? They would try to get it corrected, and the same opportunity avails any couple who are not married.
"It's about the money."
Unless the couple has disparate incomes, they will pay more taxes than an unmarried co-habiting couple. There are people who have even divorced just to get their taxes lowered. The IRS has even gone after people for sham divorces. I don't thinks it's about the money. It's about recognition. Some gay people want SSM because they believe that it will confer some kind of symbolic legitimacy for their relationship.
The estate tax thing doesn't hurt either.
(1) God is unbounded.
(2) The Bible is bounded
(3) The Bible is therefore an incomplete "description" (quotes because I can't find the right word) of God. It cannot possibly capture the entirety of the divine Word (or Spirit).
Up to here it's a tautology of any monotheism. Not even the Pope claims that his finite mind can encompass and encircle the infinity of the divine. The ecumenical leap, of course, is that other religions might be right concurrently with your religion because they are talking about different aspects of the divine (aspects that we must acknowledge might be lacking in our understanding).
You do God a pretty short shrift by pretending that he's bound up in that book of yours. He would rightly be insulted, if he were capable of taking insult.
I listed, especially the fact that spousal health/pension benefits are non-taxable.
It some cases that's a real benefit, but most professional working couples have separate health insurance through their respective jobs. The pension benefit does not come for free. Generally if you elect a survivor benefit, you reduce the pension. Besides very few jobs provide a defined pension benefit these days. Life insurance is the better way to go because the benefit is not taxable.
"The estate tax thing doesn't hurt either."
It's true that the surviving spouse enjoys a stepped up basis if the couple holds title in the right form, and inheritance taxes don't apply to a surviving spouse. However the current estate tax exemption is $3.5 million. Of course this resets in 2011. We need a sensible estate tax, a separate issue from SSM.
While I have not done a detailed calculation, as a first order approximation, I don't see much if any financial benefit to couples with similar income. If one party has zero income (the traditional marriage, now obsolete) that's another story. In any case for SSM, we are talking about a tiny fraction of the population. Gays are about 3% of the population, and let's say half want marriage. Let's say about 20% of those have disparate incomes. That's .3% of the population. All this fuss over 0.3%. Makes no sense.
If out of this happy union we have a child, then the child is my mother's brother/sister, my grandchildren's uncle/aunt, my son/daughter and my great-grandchild, and the Good Lord only knows what other wacky permutations may arise.
Ignoring marriage law, this is an estate planning nightmare.
Citing chapter and verse means nothing to me. Want to try formulating arguments against gay marriage that aren't based on your interpretation of Judeo-christian text?
I see no difference between a man/man marriage and a man/woman marriage. So I am continually puzzled by those who are opposed to same-sex marriage.
If science reaches the point where same sex partners can produce offspring from their own combined DNA, via a lab process, would comfortable with SSM?
Within the next 50 years, perhaps sooner, I submit that no couple, same sex or otherwise, will be "infertile."
Of course, since neither man can produce an egg it is impossible for them to pass along their mitochondrial DNA but now I'm really just splitting hairs (or mitochonria, as the case may be).
Thanks. I knew the process was out there, but I wasn't sure exactly how it worked.
I'm guessing you know the science a lot better than I do.
The point I'm dancing around is, in principle, eventually no female need actually be involved for two men to have a child that is their genetic ancestor. Correct? We would need to synthesize an egg with mitochondrial DNA and solve the gestation problem, so maybe that is a really long way off.
BUT, as it stands, the science is a lot closer for two women having a child without a man, especially because the egg and gestation problems are non-existent.
"Grab a donor egg"
That's why I said "without reaching out to someone else's genetic material."
Of course one day bio-technology might make marriage unnecessary for everyone, but we still wouldn't need SSM. My larger point being there's no reason for us to have SSM as it provides little or no benefit to 99% of the population. Tell me how I benefit from having the legislature grant SSM?
As far as how you benefit, I think we'd all be happier to give homosexuals equal rights in all respects so that we won't have to listen to the arguments any more. How that?
You are moving the goalpost. You said "Society has an interest in encouraging marriage to induce people to produce children." If science allows same sex couples to produce offspring without an opposite sex partners, then more total offspring with be produced by recognizing SSM, if you believe that married same-sex couples would be more likely to produce children through such a scientific process than the unmarried.
The science for allowing two women to produce offspring without male DNA is much much closer than two men, if my understanding of the science is correct. They would not need to reach out to a male for mitochondrial DNA or for gestation purposes.
"... if you believe that married same-sex couples would be more likely to produce children through such a scientific process than the unmarried."
I doubt they would, and since they need high tech intervention to reproduce, the gains to society would be zero to minimal. It makes more sense to encourage opposite sex couples to reproduce precisely because it's so easy for them do so.
Oren:
I think MtDNA still counts as someone else's generic material.
"... we'd all be happier to give homosexuals equal rights in all respects so that we won't have to listen to the arguments any more."
Who says I don't enjoy listening to and debugging their arguments?
Remark: Thanks to Oren and LA Brave for presenting rational, polite, thoughtful and literate comments and ideas. A far cry from the usual intemperate name calling we unfortunately encounter all too frequently on web blogs. One of my missions in life is to challenge ideas including my own. We all benefit from challenge. That's how one avoids becoming a crackpot.
I'm sure you didn't mean it, L.A. Brave, but this sure did make me snicker.
Oren, since you seem to be familiar with the technology, do you know if the DNA that is popped in can be a precise mixture of 23 male chromosomes from one male and 22 male chromosomes and 1 X chromosome from a different male? In other words, can the genetic material of two males be combined in the proper proportion so that the resulting zygote has ~half of each parents' genes? I haven't kept up with this area and am honestly curious to see how far off the idea is.
If you work from cells that have already undergone meiosis (sperm cells or egg cells), then each one already has only one set of 23 chromosomes. In addition, genetic recombination has already occurred by this point so the cell with 23 chromosomes is already a unique combination of the 23 chromosome pairs from that parent.
The only caveat is of course that at least one of the sets of 23 chromosomes from the two parents must have an X chromosome. I am not sure when the DNA methylation which selectively controls expression of certain genes depending on the sex of the parent occurs. If it happens during meiosis then some way will be needed to redo it.
As far as I know, there is nothing which prevents using paternal mitochondria if you could somehow replace all of the maternal mitochondria with them. The reason that paternal mitochondria are not normally transfered is that when mitochondria from both sexes are mixed in the same egg, they fight it out for which group gets passed on which tends to turn the environment inside of the egg into a battlefield. Some sexually reproducing species actually have this happen.
If marriages for benefits are a sham, what does that make SSM access to health benefits?
As to bad cases, I recall a case from a few years back where following a [stroke?], the hustband of 40 years asked if he could sleep in the room beside his wife. It was denied because, in the eyes of the rest home, he might rape her.
As has been observed above, there are *&^%&*( burocrats all over, and they do not necesarily respect any marriage.
OK ... Can a man or woman marry a corporation?
Corporations enter into contracts, and the law says they're persons (for some purposes, at least). I guess you'd have to find a corporation that had reached the age of consent, though ...
David is absolutely correct about the mitochondria situation although in real terms, there is very little variance in mtDNA and it does not affect the inheritable traits we normally associate with genetic material. Plus, sucking all of em out of a donor egg and replacing them is way beyond our current capabilities.
Sean O'Hara replied:
So this is about some mix of homseschooling, slavery, and sex -- and, more, it is about acknowledging that marriage is far more than a "loving and caring relationship" of "two people".
For if that was the limits of the conjugal relationship was, then, there could be no objection to a commitment of an adult adopted child and the parent of her adoptive parents. In fact, it would be applauded.
* * *
Oren said:
It is how legal systems, religious systems of law, function, contrary to your assertion that this is unheard of.
However, it should be said (and perhaps this was your intended meaning) thatas human beings it is in our nature to seek the truth. And each of us is tasked to do our utmost to learn the lessons, the teachings, the first principles of our belief system -- religous or irreligious -- and to use reason to discern the truth.
For some, revelation (as in scripture) is the sign post by which that search is guided. For all, reason is the vehicle that carries us. Interpretation of religious text is tethered to both revelation and scripture; faith and reason are not at odds.
When it comes to marriage, there are plenty of good reasons to draw lines against the marriage of closely related people. These extend to adopted children, to some extent, but always the concern flows from the core of marriage, the social institution that is the most pro-child that we have.
There are differences that you may have decided to overlook. That makes the puzzle more of your own making than some mystery about those who disagree with the SSM-merger.
Take the case of related people. Some can and do marry. some cannot but would if they could. Yet the lines that make some related people out-of-bounds are drawn from the essentials of marriage.
If we were to put aside the differences that arise with adoption, and focus merely on why some related people are barred but others are not, you might find it best NOT to overlook the differences between one-sex and both-sex twosomes.
Absent either man or woman, a relationship type that has no legal requirement for shared sexual behavior, for instance, is not a sexual union.
With the man-woman criterion we have the marriage presumption of paternity and the integration of the sexes. This makes of the conjugal relationship type a sexual union -- with private and public aspects. The lines drawn against related people is based on protecting 1) the social institution of marriage, 2) existing marriages, and 3) individuals who might enter marriage as a related combination.
But minus the essential that makes marriage a sexual union, there is only a threadbare fiction that the relationship type is unjust and ought to be outlawed.
I doubt that even a Supreme Ruler for Life could justly impose a moral code that is arbitrary as well as severed from any and all religous teachings, much less detatched entirely from the commonalities of the major religions of this society.
The laws against incestuous sexual relations sit at an intersection with marriage laws against closely related people. And both encode public morality, first and foremost. But minus that basis, or this root that carries us to this intersection, what's left?
Let's be clear. This would not be human procreation, which is both-sexed.
Rather this would be human manufacture, which instrumentalizes sex and the human reproductive organs.
The choice of words, "genetic material", and "machinery of the egg", are more than analogous to the process of manufacture.
The procurers of a human being made in this manner would be consumers or customers and the labs would be the builders or the factories.
It is odd to see how this prospect is talked about nonchalantly ("been there, done that") in a discussion about the incest prohibitions in the marriage laws. Is there no first principles to which you'd resort or is everything up for grabs?
The marriage presumption of paternity is one of the strongest laws in our legal tradition. It is vigorously enforced. It is a requirement that is entail in the consent to marry.
The man-woman criterion is written into the marriage statutes.
Randy said:
These are requirements, in the law, that the SSM campaign (and also those who demand the demotion of marital status with the cry "diversity"!) attacks as nonessentials. This attack is on multiple fronts even if the SSM campaign is courtcentric.
No. Two persons of the same sex are incapable of forming a conjugal relationship. Whatever the merits of an all-male or an all-female relationship (sexualized or not, gay identified or not), it would lack the essentials of marriage.
It would be intrinsically sex-segregative by its lack of the other sex; it could not provide the contingency for responsible procreation; if children were involved, it would segregate motherhood from fatherhood; the marriage presumption of paternity could not apply; there would be no sex equality within a one-sex-short combo; and so forth.
That is very funny. The SSM campaign has been defeated many times in all branches of government, across the country, through democratic means and yet the SSM campaign still claims that the "whole kit and kaboodle" has acted out of hatred. You again exemplify the worst of the SSM campaign, Randy, and that is probably because you have been taught to adhere first and foremost to identity politics.
I noted the example in Massachusetts. The way that the SSM-merger was imposed there demonstrates that the courtcentric approach of the SSM campaign has been corruptive of all three branches of government in that state. There is a long list of fundamenal problems with each pro-SSM step in the timeline. But look to the most celebrated judicial opinon that is pro-SSM in the USA and that's sufficient to show how the SSM campaign corrupted the judiciary, the executive, and the legislative branches.
You'd depend on the Goodridge decision, obviously, and that was not decided on the basis of sex discrimintion nor on the basis of sexual orientation discrimination. It was not decided on the basis of the state constitution even if much noise and handwaving was made by all of the above.
The judges merely declared that they would retroactively re-write common law marriage -- which has never existed in Massachusetts -- and did so against the principle that statutory law supersedes common-law and that constitutional law trumps statutory law. So you are left with a very poor judicial opinion that merely imposed a social policy result that uprooted marriage from its essentials. Submission to that nonsense is not a great example of republican government and it will stand as a stain on the history of democracy and constitutional jurisprudence in Massachussetts. But this is the prize of the SSM campaign.
What the CA Supreme Court has done, and what the Gov in NYS has recently done, is to compound these fundamental problems.
If this was about endgaminf or some other issue with which you'd disagree, you might see the threat to governance with more clear eyes. As it is, you appear to be impaired by the lense of gay identity politics on this particular issue. And that is the source of the corruption, quite frankly. Identity politics of any sort is not the trumpcard that ought to decide issue of controversy. Not in the courts and not elsewhere.
I object to the SSM campaign both for its goal of a merger of nonmarriage with marriage, its assault on the core of the social institution of marriage, its pressing of identity politics into social policy and especially into the most pro-child institution we have, its insistance that government owns a foundational social institution of civil society, and its undermining of the principles of self-governance in our republican form of government. All these products of the SSM campaign are harms done to society.
If voters reject the CA marriage amendment, then, the merger with SSM will probably be pushed to its completion beyond the borders of CA. I expect the SSM campaign to tell many falsehoods and to cling to its now well-known rhetoric which corrupts the marriage culture and undermines self-governance as well. The strategy of the SSM campaign depends on inducing issue fatigue. SSMers of good faith ought to expect far more from those who speak in favor of their favored reform. But usually they don't and instead they encourage the nonsense. Or excuse it.