Looking At Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage

As you may know the California Supreme Court recently spent 3.5 hours listening to arguments on the issue of whether the state law defining marriage as the union of man and a woman is constitutional. This has the potential to be the biggest domestic issues verdict since 1948 when the California court overturned the state's miscegenation law in Perez v Sharp(for those of you suffering from a California public high school education, miscegenation comes from Latin meaning "to mix race" or for a more concrete definition interracial marriage). A ruling is due by June of this year. I have to tell you, after looking at arguments on both sides I have come down on the side that says the marriages should be allowed. This has nothing to do with being gay. As with many other issues I held that separate from the fact-finding and information processing activities. The issue for me comes down on the side of viewing it as a civil matter rather than a religious one. Personally, I think that the government should get out of the marriage business altogether and simply issue certificates of legal partnership. If particular religions wish to have marriages they can have a ceremony but these would have no legal legitimacy, simply being a religious ceremony. Thus the government would have no say whatsoever on whether or not a religion had to perform same-sex marriages and those that were gay friendly would be allowed to do so. What mattered in the eyes of the government for tax and legal purposes would be the certificate of legal partnership (call them civil unions if you wish).

OK, I know this is far too radical for most people to contend with (but thus far I have not heard of any coercive arguments against it), so let's look at the issue of marriage. The issue as it appears to me depends on the how you answer the question "What is the purpose of marriage?" For the moment I am going to remove the religious-based responses, those will be dealt with in a subsequent post. Once we leave the realm of religious responses the most common I have encountered are:

1. Marriage is between one man and one woman.
   
2. Same-sex marriage would threaten the institution of marriage.
   
3. Marriage is for procreation.
   
4. Same-sex relationships are detrimental to children.
   
5. Same-sex marriage would lead us to polygamy, incest, bestiality, etc.
   
6. Granting same-sex marriage creates a special right and you conservatives are against making more of those.
   

Each point deserves its own post but truth be told I'm too lazy to type them and I don't think you want to see all the clutter in the blog so I will try to my utmost to condense my responses to each.

1. This one is easy (remember, no religion as this is strictly a civil matter). Just who says that marriage is between one man and one woman only? Allowing same-sex marriage does not preclude one man/one woman, it just broadens the set of possible marriage combinations. Well, you might say, we needed to draw the line somewhere but I ask you "Why there?" Who gets to say where the line is drawn? Why, the majority you might respond. Be careful of going there especially in California because the polls were 2-1 against allowing interracial marriage when it was struck down. You can read the anti-miscegenation ruling here (and if you do pay close attention to Judge Traynor's opinion). Simply saying that marriage is between one man and one woman gets too close to creating a circular argument to be of much effect.
   
   
2. Just about as easy as the first one. First, how does allowing people to marry threaten marriage? If marriage is such a wonderful institution that carries with it beneficial societal and health benefits, why not encourage it? If we are honest, heterosexuals haven't been the greatest protectors of their ideal of marriage. If nothing else (and there is much more) think of the divorces that would not happen if gay people were allowed to enter into gay marriage rather than a sham heterosexual marriage that can end only in traumatic divorce. And isn't it possible that the other arguments of why marriage is great (such as the domestication effect on promiscuity) could apply at least in part to a male-male or female-female marriage? If you want to protect the institution of heterosexual marriage make divorce almost impossible to exist and make adultery punishable by death.
   
   
3. Oh please. If this were true then lets not allow marriage to those who cannot regardless of the reason, instant divorce to those who have procedures that disallow the creation of children, and make it law that all marriage must produce at least one child within the first three years of marriage else the union in delcared null and void. And who says that children cannot be produced within a same-sex union? A nice gay couple could donate sperm to a nice lesbian couple and voila, children! OK, bit of a stretch but you get the idea.
   
   
4. The literature on this one is at best mixed. The fact is, many gay couples raise children, adopted and occasionally their own from failed attempts at heterosexual marriages and what the literature does seem to indicate is difference is in the quality of the experience, not the sexual identity of the parents. Anecdotally, what seems to be detrimental is that narrow-minded parents raise narrow-minded children who seem to think it is OK to bully and harass children whose parents are gay. Now whose problem is this?
   
   
5. Ah, the famous slippery-slope argument. Lets be frank, allowing marriage at all could be the beginning of the "slippery slope" but that, like this argument against, is a bit silly. The argument is one used to generate fear, but unlike say the argument against allowing a mother to marry her son (which could be made on genetic grounds), allowing two men or two women to marry does not carry those potentially harmful outcomes and unlike polygamy a man-man or woman-woman union would not muddy the waters of rights and responsibilities of those entering the marriage contract. In the words of another writer: If we allowed Terri Schaivo to have two husbands and they disagreed on her care, then who gets the final word? This is exactly the sort of question marriage exists to answer. Polygamy not only wouldn't answer it, it would make it unanswerable. Such issues would not exist within a same-sex marriage.
   
   
6. And now a big one for conservatives like myself, but I don't see the problem that some of my conservative brothers and sisters do. If 95% of the country is already allowed the right to marry (I am assuming 5% of the population is gay because I am not quite convinced of the statistics pointing to the usual 10%), then how is extending that right to the other 5% creating a "special right"? Polygamous heterosexual can still marry a person of a sex they desire, they just have to pick one. The only marriage homosexuals can currently enter into are those that would be shams, lies, and deceitful from the beginning. By not allowing gay men and women to marry the only possible marriage union would be mendacious and fraudulent. so please tell me how this allowance is a "special" right.
   

Do you want to really know the real reasons people are against same-sex marriage? Here it is:

Fear. For some reason many straight people are afraid of "the different" or "the other".

Religious views. Sadly, many people confuse religion with civil law. Granted, many statutes are based on our religious beliefs (and they are wonderful) but some were misguided (prohibitions against interracial marriage or even pro-slavery stands were made on the grounds of some religious interpretation). We must be very careful on how religion carries over into the public square.

In my opinion the biggest is what I call the "ick factor". Rather than thinking of people who are gay, many in our society really view us in terms of how we practice sex (the one difference seems to be how straight men view lesbian sexual practice, something I simply don't understand). Many straight men just can't seem to past the sexual acts of gay people. Sorry, but for those of us on this side of the fence we don't quite understand what you get out of your practices either.

Sad But True

It really is sad what we have come to call "news" these days. Given all the valuable sources of data open to us here in the 21st century, we tailor our "news" to our preconceptions so that what we "already know to be true" is simply reinforced. We have gone from the news supplying information to "infotainment" to (at best) data. We can't call it information any more because information implies context and meaning which our hundreds of channels and millions of Web pages tend not to supply and because when it IS available most people are too intellectually lazy to dig deeper, simply willing to take what is given to them at face value.

What We Call the News | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Easter

People flippantly say "Happy Easter" when they meet you, but Easter is Happy. Why? It's simple:

Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel that I preached to you, that you received and on which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message I preached to you – unless you believed in vain. For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received – that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures... Now if Christ is being preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is futile and your faith is empty. Also, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified against God that he raised Christ from the dead, when in reality he did not raise him, if indeed the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless; you are still in your sins. Furthermore, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished. For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also came through a man. For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:1-4, 12-22)

Or, as a hymn rarely sung these days recounts:

One day when heaven was filled with his praises,
One day when sin was as black as could be,
Jesus came forth to be born of a virgin—
Dwelt amongst men, my example is he!

Living, he loved me; dying, he saved me;
Buried, he carried my sins far away;
Rising, he justified freely, for ever:
One day he's coming—O, glorious day!

One day they led him up Calvary's mountain,
One day they nailed him to die on the tree;
Suffering anguish, despised and rejected:
Bearing our sins, my Redeemer is he!

One day they left him alone in the garden,
One day he rested, from suffering free;
Angels came down o'er his tomb to keep vigil;
Hope of the hopeless, my Saviour is he!

One day the grave could conceal him no longer,
One day the stone rolled away from the door;
Then he arose, over death he had conquered;
Now is ascended, my Lord evermore!

One day the trumpet will sound for his coming,
One day the skies with his glories will shine;
Wonderful day, my beloved ones bringing;
Glorious Saviour, this Jesus is mine!


For any who believe how can Easter be anything but happy?

An Interesting Text

Had an interesting text from an acquaintance of mine. This younger guy, after commenting on the attractiveness of someone on a television show, asked me "r (sic) relationships w/goodlooking men possible these days?" Take a moment to let this soak in. I realize this was in a text and it was sent while he was looking at a guy on TV so the scale was skewed, but it seems that this is a rather common question. In hookup circles it is like being asked "Are you goodlooking?" Like many things in life the answer begins with "It depends..." To some people (like Mr. Beau) I am considered goodlooking. However, if you only like twinks or Blacks or Asians or muscle-studs the answer would have to be "No". If your idea of goodlooking is something from "Bear Monthly" then yes, if it is from the now-defunct A&F catalog, it's a resounding no.

Now lets return to the original question. I have to say that I have found EVERY boyfriend/partner goodlooking. Let's face it, we all say looks don't matter but who's kidding whom? Often physical attraction is the first thing to bring two people together (not always, but often). Brains, wit, common viewpoints, mutually enjoyed activities, etc help bring about the second date, but that first is often when you notice someone standing across the room (oops, giving away my age there... I mean, when you first see their nude pic on bootycall.com) and tell yourself "I want to get closer to that guy/gal at least for tonight". So often people you are in a relationship you at least consider them to be goodlooking. But lets go even deeper... a relationship with someone who is goodlooking. It takes TWO to have any type of relationship (even in mathematics you have two or more elements from one or more sets that are needed to be in a relation, even a narcissistic one like the identity function). In all honesty, you would have to know what that "goodlooking guy/gal" is looking for in a relationship and then ask if YOU bring that to the table. I suppose the hidden implication is that goodlooking people do not want relationships or have set such high standards that they will never be fulfilled. Well, as I am in a relationship with someone I consider goodlooking, I can at least say that if those two states are the rule I am lucky to be part of the exception.

Preachers Say Crazy Stuff All The Time

First, the incredibly incendiary crap spewed from the man Obama declared his mentor:



And here we even get a bit of Obama trying to defend the biggot (amazing, he's been there 20 years and claims not to have heard his minister say things like this):



Personally, I like this take...



Ah, those "crazy a**ed preachers". You know though, they are right... it's hard to find a preacher that "ain't a little crazy".

And away we go...

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Book Review: Gods Behaving Badly

I recently finished reading Marie Phillips' book Gods Behaving Badly. Not bad for the first time out of the chute. In this tale Ms. Phillips brings us up to date on what happened to the Greek Pantheon. Seems that after losing the limelight to that young upstart Jesus and the spread of Christianity, Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo and the clan have done a reverse "Beverly Hillbillies" and moved downmarket from Olympus to a tumbledown house in modern day London. It seems that, for reasons only alluded to early in the book, the gods have lost most of their powers, able to barely perform their assigned tasks (or in D&D terms, oversee their portfolio). Apollo can still make the sun rise and set but to work on on television as a TV psychic he has to rely on tricks having lost his ability to prophesy. Poor Demeter can no longer cultivate plants. And Zeus seems to have disappeared completely (you find out where he is later). Mankind is represented by Neil and Alice, two rather ordinary people who go about their lives. Neil is the typical nerdish engineer and Alice works as a cleaner who winds up taking the job of cleaning the townhouse of the gods. Due to squabble between Apollo and Aphrodite the lives of Alice and Neil are turned upside down as they learn what happens when mortals interfere with the gods (or at least those of Greek mythology whose historic exploits are marvelously updated by Ms. Phillips for those who never read Edith Hamilton's works).

Is this a tome for the ages? No, but I did come away with some thoughts particularly in the area of the power of belief (or to "religify" it, faith) and the concept of myth. Let me try to tie the two together without creating too vulgar (in the sense of undeveloped and not that of profanity) an analysis. What Phillips shows her readers (or at least those who care to look) is the consequences of a people who forget the myths and narratives of humanity. Modern man carries on actions without any meaning or context (some of the Christian existentialists like Gabriel Marcel immediately come to mind). In the book Artemis talks about dogs becoming docile and forgetting what it means to be a dog. Sex becomes common to the point where Aphrodite works as a phone-sex operator. Dionysus runs an underground club where he dispenses his special wine. In mythology the gods embody the meaning, the "why" of various human activities. As belief in the gods wane man carries on but there is something lost, the activities become hollow when separated from their raison d'être. For the existentialists this is part of what is referred to as an inauthentic life (for some wonderful analysis I really do recommend Marcel's Man Against Mass Society).

So, is this a "must buy"? No, but if you enjoy anachronism and the figures of myth as I do it does merit consideration for your hard-earned dollars (thanks for giving this to me Eugenia). Ms. Phillip's easy writing styles creates a breezy book that can, if one wants to, make you think and if not you come away not regretting having picked it up. I'm looking forward to seeing what she does for an encore.

Further Tributes to E. Gary Gygax

Thanks for the link Gregg.

How Gary Gygax touched other lives

The following from the theatrical release of "The Fellowship of the Ring" strikes me as poignant:

"The world has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it."
- Galadriel

(Funny, at lunch with Andrew yesterday in which a Callahan's Red was raised to the memory of Gary he mentioned that some artist posted somewhere that he didn't feel much attachment to Gygax, that was his father's time... ah, how soon the young forget that we today stand on the shoulders of giants, where JRRT-EGG provide the foundation).

And sadly, with them both now gone, so does this quote...

"Our list of allies grows thin!"
Elrond (to Gandalf)

And Following Up...

Thanks Gary

Gary Gygax died today. "Gary who?" Gary Gygax, the father of modern gaming, the visionary of what became known as "Dungeons and Dragons". I'm sad for many reasons. The more narcissistic reason is that it means I am getting older. I started playing D&D around 1982 in college and back then Mr. Gygax was still active, still a household name in my burgeoning circle of friends. It's difficult for me to believe that it was 26 years ago that I first "slung dice" with my friends. 26 years ago... I now have friends who weren't even born at that time! The passing of personalities who influenced by life brought on by the passing of time simply reinforces my own feeling of mortality.

I'm sad for other reasons too. Regardless of your views on role playing games, I have to say that some of my most intense and closest friendships were formed over a makeshift table, dice in the form of Platonic solids, pencils, papers, cold pizza and warm soda (later replaced by warm beer). I miss those times, the closeness of those friendships. My college roommate Gregg and I still talk (well, more often the 21st century version of talk) after all this time. I recall quite vividly nights in the dorm room gaming with Gregg, Patrick, and Pete as well as many a Saturday afternoon spent in Brady Commons at Mizzou with the gaming society (and after being kicked out going to The Old Heidelberg to play beer and pretzel games). Through gaming I finally had friends. I had gone the first 18 years of my life without any real friends in it and because of Gary Gygax's desire to expand gaming I finally had friends. And this wasn't the only time either. When I later moved to Kansas City to work on my PhD my first group of friends THERE was created because of gaming. Thomas, Darrin, Van... oh so many Saturday nights spent at Thomas' place gaming, eating pizza, and just having fun. Shoot, gaming even got me a date with someone still special to me. In many ways a connection through gaming brought me my friend Andrew here in San Diego as well. So I owe a lot to gaming and Mr. Gygax because through it I discovered a place where I could fit in and find out what it meant to belong.

On a more academic and philosophical level, D&D opened me up to the realm of fantasy, of myth and legend and what they can mean to a person in modern times. My current love of philosophers who talk about issues of myth and story telling I can trace directly back to D&D. The idea of narrative, the power of story, the search for meaning, the beauty of using your own imagination to create, all of these go back in some manner to playing D&D. It was during D&D games I learned to tell my own stories, to spin tales that others found entertaining, to sharpen my own intellectual tools when questioned, to think quickly and coherently outside of simple college work.

So for all these reasons and many others you will be missed E. Gary Gygax.

Tying Two Books Together

Well, I just finished reading Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within. All the while I was reading this I was reminded of a section in David Frum's most recent opus, Comback where he strongly encourages the next Republican president (and I would say, the next president regardless of party affiliation) to strengthen ties with whomever we consider allies in the east (particularly India) because it may soon be the case that we as a people who love freedom of expression and who enjoy a high level of personal liberty to live our lives as we see fit can no longer count on many of the countries of Europe. Why? Because of the massive growth of radical Islamists in those countries. This is happening because of two major trends. First, after World War Two, the birthrate of Europeans has declined to about 1.45 per couple, well below the rate of 2.1 needed simply to sustain a population. Birthrates to Muslims living in Europe tend to be much higher, about three times as high according to The Council on Foreign Relations. The second trend is that of what are called "fetching marriages" where young Muslim women are betrothed to Muslim men in other countries. The marriage will allow not only the husband but his entire family to emigrate to most European countries. These combine to create a situation of high concentrations of Muslims in many European cities. In a 2005 report the Pew Forum On Religion & Public Life:

they make up at least 25 percent of the populations in
Marseille and Rotterdam, 20 percent in Malmo (in Sweden),
15 percent in Brussels and Birmingham, and 10
percent or more in London, Paris and Copenhagen.
Over the next few decades, a number of large European
cities will likely become majority Muslim.

Now Bawer is NOT some ranting ultra-right-xenophobic writer but a pretty liberal gay man with a Ph.D. in English who left the United States in 1997 to live in Europe and currently resides in Norway. The accounts he describes in the book are a mix of both personal (such as his partner being attacked by a small gang of Muslim youths for being gay) to those of how the European press handled the attacks of 9/11, 7/7, 3/11, up to and including the 2006 uproar over the publishing of cartoon images of Islam and Muhammad which lead to the deaths of about 100 people by the "peace loving" radical followers of Islam. The accounts of how European "leaders" and "intellectuals" submitted to the terrorists are tale of legend. I didn't have time to track down all of the quotes (I do have a day job) but those I did find made me ill and seriously question how we can trust them if push really comes to shove. Shades of Neville Chamberlain... the only question is which city will be the modern version of Munich? Interestingly, Bawer, no huge fan of religion, says that one of Europe's problems in dealing with what is happening is due to the fact that the marginalizing of Christianity has left a vacuum in the souls (and apparently heads) of Europe's intelligentsia. Since they have no place for religion in their own lives they simply do not understand the power religion can have in the lives of others.

One of the largest hurdles to any hope of integration is that most European Muslims seem to not view themselves as citizens of the country of residence but to hold primary allegiance to the greater global Muslim community. Why do they get away with this? In large part it is because rather than trying to be a "melting pot" like the United States, European countries approach immigrants like one would a patchwork quilt where you are not only encouraged to keep a separate identity from your new home country, but often though subtle (and not so subtle) societal pressures made to keep yourselves distinct from the true "native born".

Now some of the gutless wonders of Europe are calling for the implementation (or at least allowance) of Sharia legal system. Technically this is supposed to apply only to Muslims, but as one site promoting religious tolerance says "sometimes this is not the case". Two interesting sites to read about what implementing Sharia would mean can be found here and here.

I know that many of you do not have the time to read Bawer's book, but I do urge you to read his commentary 9/11 Five Years Later: A View from Europe.