Any secular justification for "Defense of Marriage"?

[quatona]

Isn't an argument against marriage in general also an argument against SSM?

Look at the thread title.

 

[LOVEthroughINTELLECT]

I'm aware of that, but you are proposing a standard for legislation that has nothing to do with the American system. There is nothing in the Constitution demanding purely economic justifications for government action...

Where did anybody "propose a standard for legislation"?

Meanwhile, marriage is an economic institution.

And just because the U.S. Constitution does not demand "purely economic justifications" does not mean that economic reasons are not enough to justify a policy.

And speaking of the American system, taxing people is a touchy issue to begin with. Therefore, as even a casual observer of American politics can tell you, how governments spend tax revenue--how they waste or do not waste it; how they invest it wisely or lose money with it; etc.--is a critical concern.

For instance, the end of slavery might have been bad economics, but that wouldn't be a compelling reason to have kept slavery as an institution...

But was slavery government taxing people and redistributing resources?

It is not at all clear that:

1) That is bad economics.
2) Bad economics ought to be the standard of legislation.
3) How precisely this standard is to be defined and understood.

It all just seems to mean what people's values are for society. If one's value is that homosexuals shouldn't get married, then all money spent on gay marriage looks like a waste. If one's value is that they should be able to get married, then all that money looks like money well spent. "Economics" is all about means, not ends, and it doesn't carry any normative weight all by itself.

It could just as easily be that equality is a higher standard for legislation -- for instance, in order to remove special privileges -- and that this is a proper guide to legislators. That would make sense for a liberal republic, and is in the spirit of the end of slavery and other efforts to make people equal under the law.

So, the argument from bad economics seems like a bad one to me.

It is bad economics because resources are being redistributed to where they are not really needed.

If government is going to intervene in the economy and redistribute resources through taxing and spending then such resources should be distributed efficiently and in a way that yields the highest possible return.

Or should government waste resources and spend them frivolously?

It can be defined and understood according to the goals, needs, etc. that are being addressed. If the goal is to, say, make it as easy as possible for two adults to be business partners (again, marriage is an economic institution; "Most marriages are business partnerships with sex", one woman once said) then markets might do a better job of that and government-sanctioned marriage might be a hindrance.

 

[JackofSpades]

Finnish parliament just voted on SSM some days ago and I watched the parliament discussions for while, and these are what people opposing SSM used mostly:

- Kids have right for father and mother of both sexes
- Protecting good old tradition and refusing to re-define institution of marriage.
- Slippery slope, aka "what is next change after we accept this".
- Seeing something problematic about ss-couples adoption rights, which would be logical next step after marriage.
- Suggestion that re-defining marriage leads inderictly to re-definition of gender/sex.

I'm just quoting what was said there. Whether I agree with those or not is irrelevant since thread was about existence of arguments...

 

[Cearbhall]

IF mankind were in danger of dying out then I could come up with a reason. In that case there would be a secular reason.

This. ^ If we lived under a more communal philosophy and we weren't hitting the replacement rate, then you could justify it. But in our society, where opposite-sex couples are free to have or not have children, there's no secular reason.

Why would this be relevant to ethics?

Suppose I and a woman are the last two people on Earth. We decide not to procreate and thus the species ends with us. Why would this be a moral question? Isn't it amoral -- neither good not bad?

You would think. But we had a thread on this, and I was told that even with no one else left in existence, I would have a moral obligation to reproduce for the sake of future humans. As in, the ones that wouldn't ever exist if I were to refuse, and therefore could not suffer as a result of my refusal. Talk about circular reasoning.

 

[KitKatMatt]

This. ^ If we lived under a more communal philosophy and we weren't hitting the replacement rate, then you could justify it

But even if you refused to recognize SSM in a situation where there weren't enough people, it still wouldn't help the population grow.

Those people impacted by it would still be gay, and barring artificial insemination/surrogacy, they still wouldn't reproduce no matter if gay marriage was legal or not.

And if, in this situation, artificial insemination/surrogacy were available, then using that point to not allow SSM would be moot.

 

[Cearbhall]

Finnish parliament just voted on SSM some days ago and I watched the parliament discussions for while, and these are what people opposing SSM used mostly:

- Kids have right for father and mother of both sexes

This one has been used in the US a lot lately, and it always makes me laugh. Are they also in favor of immediately putting kids into foster care if Daddy dies in a car accident? Do these people hear themselves?

 

[Queller]

It is a response to the "we love each other" / "I have the right to marry the person I love" / "people do not choose who they love" argument that has frequently been made specifically in support of legal same-sex marriage.

Are you trying to claim that heterosexuals wouldn't use this exact same argument if someone tried to take their right to marriage away?

 

[Queller]

This one has been used in the US a lot lately, and it always makes me laugh. Are they also in favor of immediately putting kids into foster care if Daddy dies in a car accident? Do these people hear themselves?

You would have to go much further than that for this argument to be logical. Starting with the criminalization of divorce.

 

[JackofSpades]

You would have to go much further than that for this argument to be logical. Starting with the criminalization of divorce.

If I was reporter, I would do background check on all those who used that argument and see if anyone of them has divorced while having kids. It would make nice interview with them.

 

[LOVEthroughINTELLECT]

Are you trying to claim that heterosexuals wouldn't use this exact same argument if someone tried to take their right to marriage away?

I have never understood why people say that marriage is a right.

I probably do not know much about constitutional law, but I think that it is safe to say that there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing government-sanctioned marriage. If, say, the state of New Mexico decided to get out of the marriage business and stopped issuing marriage licenses I doubt that the U.S. Supreme court would find such action to be unconstitutional.

I have not read the U.S. Constitution from beginning to end, but I believe that it contains language guaranteeing the right to enter contracts. If the marriage contract was created by states for convenience, and if the U.S. Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law, then every citizen must be given that convenience. But I doubt that there is anything in the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the right to convenience. So if states decided to get out of the business of making a bunch of unrelated legal paperwork convenient and stopped issuing marriage licenses then they would not be violating the letter or the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

But a marriage contract is not just about reducing or streamlining paperwork. A marriage contract, as the debate over same-sex marriage in the U.S. clearly shows, is about resources being redistributed in the form of tax breaks, Social Security benefits going to the surviving spouse rather than back into the system, etc.

Nobody has a "right" to resources redistributed by the government. The government could reduce taxes so much that after spending tax revenue on what is needed for the government to function there would be no money left for anything like Social Security.

Where does anybody get the idea that they have the "right" to marry, let alone the "right" to marry "the one I love"?

Sexual orientation has nothing to do with any of this.

 

[ViaCrucis]

One thing I notice about ethical conversations with Christians is they can give me a non religious explanation for Christian ethics - except when it comes to Gay Marriage, in which case their opposition seems to rest entirely on a handful of bible verses.

Can anyone provide a reason for opposing gay marriage - without invoking scripture or theology?

I can't think of a good religious, theological, or biblical answer as to why same sex marriage should be prohibited, let alone a secular one.

But then I don't share the view that same sex marriage is a problem.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Skaloop]

This. ^ If we lived under a more communal philosophy and we weren't hitting the replacement rate, then you could justify it.

How would preventing same-sex marriages increase the reproduction rate?

 

[barotaro]

Such arguments exist:

The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage - The Tech


eudaimonia,

Mark

Strikes me as very weak logic indeed, for an MIT article no less. Then again it's from 2004 Love as the only basis for marriage would threaten society, cause 3 men 2 women will want to marry? But they can easily find alternatives. The basis for gay marriage is that gay people have no alternative. From a secular view, legal status isn't just about "greater good" but not excluding entire groups from the same legal rights

 

[Belk]

I have never understood why people say that marriage is a right.

I probably do not know much about constitutional law, but I think that it is safe to say that there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing government-sanctioned marriage. If, say, the state of New Mexico decided to get out of the marriage business and stopped issuing marriage licenses I doubt that the U.S. Supreme court would find such action to be unconstitutional.

I have not read the U.S. Constitution from beginning to end, but I believe that it contains language guaranteeing the right to enter contracts. If the marriage contract was created by states for convenience, and if the U.S. Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law, then every citizen must be given that convenience. But I doubt that there is anything in the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the right to convenience. So if states decided to get out of the business of making a bunch of unrelated legal paperwork convenient and stopped issuing marriage licenses then they would not be violating the letter or the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

But a marriage contract is not just about reducing or streamlining paperwork. A marriage contract, as the debate over same-sex marriage in the U.S. clearly shows, is about resources being redistributed in the form of tax breaks, Social Security benefits going to the surviving spouse rather than back into the system, etc.

Nobody has a "right" to resources redistributed by the government. The government could reduce taxes so much that after spending tax revenue on what is needed for the government to function there would be no money left for anything like Social Security.

Where does anybody get the idea that they have the "right" to marry, let alone the "right" to marry "the one I love"?

Sexual orientation has nothing to do with any of this.

The supreme court has ruled it is a right on multiple occasions so I am guessing that is where people get the idea.

 

[Queller]

I have never understood why people say that marriage is a right.

The Supreme Court has said so on many occasions, most notably Loving v Virginia.

I probably do not know much about constitutional law, but I think that it is safe to say that there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing government-sanctioned marriage. If, say, the state of New Mexico decided to get out of the marriage business and stopped issuing marriage licenses I doubt that the U.S. Supreme court would find such action to be unconstitutional.

I have not read the U.S. Constitution from beginning to end, but I believe that it contains language guaranteeing the right to enter contracts. If the marriage contract was created by states for convenience, and if the U.S. Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law, then every citizen must be given that convenience. But I doubt that there is anything in the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the right to convenience. So if states decided to get out of the business of making a bunch of unrelated legal paperwork convenient and stopped issuing marriage licenses then they would not be violating the letter or the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

You are correct that if states got out of the marriage business, that would not be unconstitutional. The problem is that when states do enter into the marriage business, they must do so in a non-discriminatory way.

But a marriage contract is not just about reducing or streamlining paperwork. A marriage contract, as the debate over same-sex marriage in the U.S. clearly shows, is about resources being redistributed in the form of tax breaks, Social Security benefits going to the surviving spouse rather than back into the system, etc.

Tax breaks are not resources, money from taxes are resources. Social security benefits are something a person pays for.

Nobody has a "right" to resources redistributed by the government. The government could reduce taxes so much that after spending tax revenue on what is needed for the government to function there would be no money left for anything like Social Security.

This is completely irrelevant to the question of same-sex marriage. Completely.

Where does anybody get the idea that they have the "right" to marry, let alone the "right" to marry "the one I love"?

As already noted, the idea comes from multiple Supreme Court decision saying exactly that.

Sexual orientation has nothing to do with any of this.

If s group of people are denied their civil rights because of their sexual orientation, then sexual orientation has everything to do with this.

 

[LOVEthroughINTELLECT]

On one hand, people are saying that marriage is a constitutional right.

On the other hand, people are saying that it would not be unconstitutional for states to stop sanctioning marriages.

Which is it?

 

[LOVEthroughINTELLECT]

This is completely irrelevant to the question of same-sex marriage. Completely...

No, if there were no economic benefits to be gained from marriage there most likely never would have been any controversy over same-sex marriage in the first place.

Economic benefits have been a big part of what the debate is about--certainly not "completely irrelevant".

If s group of people are denied their civil rights because of their sexual orientation, then sexual orientation has everything to do with this.

Nobody categorically has the right to a government-sanctioned marriage. If states stopped sanctioning marriages they would not be violating the letter or the spirit of the U.S. Constitution. A person's sexual orientation does not change any of this.

 

[LOVEthroughINTELLECT]

This is from a review of Not the Marrying Kind: A Feminist Critique of Same-Sex Marriage, by Nicola Barker:


"Barker argues that feminist criticisms of marriage aired in the 1970s and 80s have continuing relevance to the political interests of gay, lesbian, and other queer people, and are ignored at their peril. Indeed, in Barker’s view, gay and lesbian marriage advocates’ failure to consider feminist arguments against marriage constitutes a fatal flaw in their thinking. Historically, marriage has offered spouses (and especially husbands) a range of privileges, protections and responsibilities—tax breaks, housing benefits, ‘next of kin’ decision-making, and superannuation benefits, for example. Marriage has also worked as a kind of privacy screen, shielding the exploitation and assault of spouses (usually wives) from scrutiny. Barker argues that such privileges are unfairly attached to marriage, and operate to elevate only one kind of relationship (and sometimes only one partner to that relationship) at the expense of others. Why, for example, should elderly sisters who have lived together for 30 years and wish to bequeath their shared home to each other have to pay an inheritance tax they would avoid if they were a married couple? For Barker, broadening the scope of marriage to include same-sex couples perpetuates its social elevation in ways that are inconsistent with a broader agenda of social justice in which rules should apply to people in similar situations in similar ways, regardless of their relationship status. Barker’s vision is of a social order in which material benefits are not attached to spuriously respectable, state-sanctioned monogamy, but instead exist in a range of diverse and meaningful forms...." (emphasis mine).


Another secular argument against same-sex marriage.

It is the argument that I have been making all along.

 

[David Brider]

I'd love to know what people who are opposed to same-sex marriage think they're defending marriage from.

 

[WindStaff]

I'd love to know what people who are opposed to same-sex marriage think they're defending marriage from.

Mortal sin calling itself holy matrimony is more then enough reason to be opposed to it as a Christian. It isn't even actual marriage- not anymore then marrying a horse- the God of Abreaham does not consider anything other then man and woman being married.

God stoned to death homosexuals, how is homosexual marriage applicable? I would love to what Christians who support same-sex marriage think they are defending marriage from. God?