GarfieldJL
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That is completely irrelevant, this has to do with trying to encourage people to have children, not force them to have children...
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Any secular justification for "Defense of Marriage"?
- Thread starter voltran
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That is completely irrelevant, this has to do with trying to encourage people to have children, not force them to have children...
Queller
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Marriage does not encourage people to have children. people don't need to be married to have children, no do people have to get married to have children. If you feel otherwise feel free to provide evidence for the claim.
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GarfieldJL
Regular Member
Cause it is to encourage them to have children and provide a stable environment to raise said children in.
Look, the OP asked if there were "Any secular justification for "Defense of Marriage?"
Clearly this has been answered because a secular justification has been provided.
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Several of them as a matter of fact. Perhaps the OP should of asked if there were any good secular justifications?
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Skaloop
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But it doesn't do either of those things. Getting married may make it more socially acceptable for them to have children, but it doesn't encourage it. As for a stable environment to raise children, then same-sex couples should be allowed to marry for a stable environment for any children they may have.
No legitimate reasons for preventing same-sex couples from marrying, though.
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David Brider
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I'm really struggling to see the connection you're making here. I mean, I'm not really sure there is a connection, and certainly none of your other posts have helped to clarify why you think there is one. I don't think that by legalising same-sex marriage we're making any comment at all about adoption, positive or negative. The only thing we're saying by legalising same-sex marriage is that it's okay for same-sex couples to get married.
Some of those couples may then wish to adopt children. But whether they should or not has nothing to do with whether they should be allowed to marry in the first place.
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Cearbhall
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There's no functional difference between an opposite-sex couple who chooses not to have children and a same-sex couple who cannot create a child (together).
Not one that's relevant to United States law.
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Ok, so first off we want a secular justification of the claim that marriage has to do with reproduction. And secondly we want an explanation of how allowing SSM changes the definition of marriage. And thirdly, we want to see how changing this definition entails changing our understanding that children are best raised by their own biological parents. Let's see what we can do.
(1) How did marriage come about?
Let's assume a purely secular, atheistic, evolutionary worldview. How did we get the institution of marriage? Most animals don't mate for life, so why do humans do it?
The reason is because humans have a much longer maturation period than most animals. Most animals are mature adults within a year or two, and they don't need to learn a lot of stuff. What they need they can pick up from their mothers. They don't need a father around; his job is to spread his seed as far and wide as he can.
Humans are different. We take over a decade to grow to sexual maturity, and even longer to grow to social maturity. We are highly complex creatures that need nurturing over a long period of time in order to survive at all, let alone to survive well. We need the influences of male and female adults in order to develop as fully rounded individuals.
Evolutionarily, creatures will care most about their own offspring. Therefore, the people who have most interest in ensuring a child's survival and healthy development are the biological parents. In order to keep these interested individuals as the primary figures in the child's life for their whole developmental period, thereby ensuring the child's best chances of both surviving and prospering, the solution that makes most sense is for a male and a female to mate for life, producing all their children together in the same partnership, and living together in the same household as they raise their children and, later, help their children to raise their own children.
If marriage were primarily about the relationship of the two people getting married, there is no need to have such a binding social contract. They can partner for as long or as short a time as they feel they want to, and then move on, no problem. It is only the raising of children that requires the institution of marriage to exist. Moreover, the evolutionary reason for people falling in love in the first place is about reproduction - both having the children in the first place, and being committed enough to it to be willing to stick out the difficulties of living together with another person for decades.
This also explains why sex outside marriage (especially for women) has always been such a taboo. We know that children are best raised by their biological parents, and so society as a whole, and especially the men who are raising children, want to be very sure that the children that are being raised are the biological offspring of the parents who are raising them. It's pretty easy to know who the mother is, but harder to be sure about the father. So faithfulness in marriage is sacrosanct (especially for the women) for this reason.
This is further illustrated by the attitude to sex before marriage. In all cultures up until the latter 20th century, and in most of the world still today, couples who have sex before marriage are generally permitted if they are discreet about it (there is at least more leeway than with adultery), but if the woman gets pregnant then they are expected to marry. It is the raising of children that makes marriage important.
And even in today's society, where couples commonly live together before marriage, perhaps with multiple partners, probably the most common factor that triggers people taking the step of getting married rather than just living together is the desire to start a family.
I think that is enough to demonstrate the first point.
(2) SSM and the definition of marriage
So, in all cultures until recent times, and in most cultures still today, marriage is primarily about raising children. Of course, there are many things that go wrong in the actual world. A partner dies; the parents are not competent to raise their own children; the couple cannot live together harmoniously; a couple cannot have children naturally.
Within the framework of marriage, these things can be worked around to make a less-than-ideal but best-of-a-bad-job solution. We make provision for adoptions of children by non-biological parents. Many, perhaps most, adoptions work out really well, and the children and parents love each other. But they still recognise that this was second best. The children want to know who their 'real' parents were, and, if the clock could be turned back and the biological parents were able to look after the child just as well as the adoptive parents had been, we all feel that would have been a better solution. The adoptive parents love their children very much, but if they hadn't suffered from infertility then they would really have preferred to raise their own biological children. (Others may adopt additional children after they have had some of their own, in order to share their good fortune with others who are not so fortunate. But very very few people who are able to have children of their own choose to adopt instead of having their own biological children.)
We also allow remarriages, so that some children have step-parents. But in the re-marriages, the couple getting married will also very often want to have children of their own within that marriage. Even if the remarriage takes place when they have passed child-bearing age, if they could have had children together they would probably have wanted to. We also recognise that step-families are never an ideal situation.
We also support single parents, but we know that statistically children from single-parent backgrounds will face an uphill struggle to prosper as compared with children raised by their biological parents in two parent families.
However, in nearly all cases of marriage, there is a desire for the two people involved to have and raise children together. Sometimes this is not possible because of infertility, old age, the prior existence of other children making it practically difficult to have more, and so on. These are all recognised as non-ideal situations, but they fit within the principle that marriage exists for the procreation and rearing of children. This is the reason that marriage came to exist in the first place, and marriages take place between two people who, all things being ideal, would be able to reproduce and raise a family. Because of this ideal, we allow marriages even if the ideal cannot be realised. (However, as noted before, if the need was only for the two people involved to have companionship, the institution of marriage would never have evolved.)
However, with SSM, the two partners getting married, even in the most ideal of circumstances, cannot possibly procreate in order to be able to raise their biological children together. They are entering a partnership that is designed for the rearing of children by their two biological parents, but are unable, even in the ideal situation, to do so.
I think there are very good arguments in modern society for allowing what in the UK we called 'civil partnerships', which allow all the rights of marriage as are needed for companionship, but stop short of calling it marriage. When civil partnerships were introduced in the UK, it was said that gay marriage wasn't needed and wasn't just around the corner. And the reason for having civil partnerships rather than gay marriage was because it was recognised that marriage is about having children.
By calling homosexual partnerships 'marriage', however, you are saying that they are the same kind of thing as a heterosexual marriage. In order to make this claim, you need to redefine what marriage is understood to be about. It is no longer about raising children; it is about the love of the two people getting married.
3) Who is best at raising children?
Moreover, if all people who are married are to be regarded as having the same status, then differences with regard to the ability to have children need to be removed. We therefore need to get rid of the belief that children are best raised by their two biological parents, and say instead that any two competent adults are just as good at raising children.
So there are two very important changes that have been made:
a) marriage is for raising children -> marriage is about the love of the partners for each other;
b) children are best raised by their two biological parents -> any competent pair of adults is just as good as the biological parents to raise a child.
Now, from a purely secular point of view, if society wants to make such changes to the way it thinks, it can't be stopped from doing so, since there is no moral absolute. But if we are making such a change, it is disingenuous to pretend that no change is being made; rather one should acknowledge the scale of the change that is being made. Moreover, the people should be properly informed about the nature of these changes and properly consulted about whether they really want to make these changes. At least in the UK, that has not happened at all. With regard to the second change in particular, I am pretty sure that most people do not believe that, and would oppose that view if they realised that that is the implication of allowing SSM (rather than just civil partnerships).
Actually, if we really believe that any two competent adults (or, indeed, why does it have to be two? why not one, or three, or seven? but that's a whole nother topic) are just as good as the biological parents at raising children, we actually should take this further, because there are plainly many biological parents who don't do a great job, and many people who can't have children who might raise children quite well. So what we should actually do is have people sit a parenting competency test to judge whether they are going to be good parents. Any children born should immediately be removed from their biological parents, and given to the couple with the highest score on the parenting test (who haven't yet been given a child). That would make society a whole lot better, and everyone would be happy. It's discriminatory against people's right to have a child if they are deprived simply because they are not biologically capable of having one. So this would be the fairest thing all round.
(Do you know what? I started that last paragraph as a joke, but I'm now seriously worried that some people will actually think it's a good idea...)
'Nuff said.
Roonwit
(1) How did marriage come about?
Let's assume a purely secular, atheistic, evolutionary worldview. How did we get the institution of marriage? Most animals don't mate for life, so why do humans do it?
The reason is because humans have a much longer maturation period than most animals. Most animals are mature adults within a year or two, and they don't need to learn a lot of stuff. What they need they can pick up from their mothers. They don't need a father around; his job is to spread his seed as far and wide as he can.
Humans are different. We take over a decade to grow to sexual maturity, and even longer to grow to social maturity. We are highly complex creatures that need nurturing over a long period of time in order to survive at all, let alone to survive well. We need the influences of male and female adults in order to develop as fully rounded individuals.
Evolutionarily, creatures will care most about their own offspring. Therefore, the people who have most interest in ensuring a child's survival and healthy development are the biological parents. In order to keep these interested individuals as the primary figures in the child's life for their whole developmental period, thereby ensuring the child's best chances of both surviving and prospering, the solution that makes most sense is for a male and a female to mate for life, producing all their children together in the same partnership, and living together in the same household as they raise their children and, later, help their children to raise their own children.
If marriage were primarily about the relationship of the two people getting married, there is no need to have such a binding social contract. They can partner for as long or as short a time as they feel they want to, and then move on, no problem. It is only the raising of children that requires the institution of marriage to exist. Moreover, the evolutionary reason for people falling in love in the first place is about reproduction - both having the children in the first place, and being committed enough to it to be willing to stick out the difficulties of living together with another person for decades.
This also explains why sex outside marriage (especially for women) has always been such a taboo. We know that children are best raised by their biological parents, and so society as a whole, and especially the men who are raising children, want to be very sure that the children that are being raised are the biological offspring of the parents who are raising them. It's pretty easy to know who the mother is, but harder to be sure about the father. So faithfulness in marriage is sacrosanct (especially for the women) for this reason.
This is further illustrated by the attitude to sex before marriage. In all cultures up until the latter 20th century, and in most of the world still today, couples who have sex before marriage are generally permitted if they are discreet about it (there is at least more leeway than with adultery), but if the woman gets pregnant then they are expected to marry. It is the raising of children that makes marriage important.
And even in today's society, where couples commonly live together before marriage, perhaps with multiple partners, probably the most common factor that triggers people taking the step of getting married rather than just living together is the desire to start a family.
I think that is enough to demonstrate the first point.
(2) SSM and the definition of marriage
So, in all cultures until recent times, and in most cultures still today, marriage is primarily about raising children. Of course, there are many things that go wrong in the actual world. A partner dies; the parents are not competent to raise their own children; the couple cannot live together harmoniously; a couple cannot have children naturally.
Within the framework of marriage, these things can be worked around to make a less-than-ideal but best-of-a-bad-job solution. We make provision for adoptions of children by non-biological parents. Many, perhaps most, adoptions work out really well, and the children and parents love each other. But they still recognise that this was second best. The children want to know who their 'real' parents were, and, if the clock could be turned back and the biological parents were able to look after the child just as well as the adoptive parents had been, we all feel that would have been a better solution. The adoptive parents love their children very much, but if they hadn't suffered from infertility then they would really have preferred to raise their own biological children. (Others may adopt additional children after they have had some of their own, in order to share their good fortune with others who are not so fortunate. But very very few people who are able to have children of their own choose to adopt instead of having their own biological children.)
We also allow remarriages, so that some children have step-parents. But in the re-marriages, the couple getting married will also very often want to have children of their own within that marriage. Even if the remarriage takes place when they have passed child-bearing age, if they could have had children together they would probably have wanted to. We also recognise that step-families are never an ideal situation.
We also support single parents, but we know that statistically children from single-parent backgrounds will face an uphill struggle to prosper as compared with children raised by their biological parents in two parent families.
However, in nearly all cases of marriage, there is a desire for the two people involved to have and raise children together. Sometimes this is not possible because of infertility, old age, the prior existence of other children making it practically difficult to have more, and so on. These are all recognised as non-ideal situations, but they fit within the principle that marriage exists for the procreation and rearing of children. This is the reason that marriage came to exist in the first place, and marriages take place between two people who, all things being ideal, would be able to reproduce and raise a family. Because of this ideal, we allow marriages even if the ideal cannot be realised. (However, as noted before, if the need was only for the two people involved to have companionship, the institution of marriage would never have evolved.)
However, with SSM, the two partners getting married, even in the most ideal of circumstances, cannot possibly procreate in order to be able to raise their biological children together. They are entering a partnership that is designed for the rearing of children by their two biological parents, but are unable, even in the ideal situation, to do so.
I think there are very good arguments in modern society for allowing what in the UK we called 'civil partnerships', which allow all the rights of marriage as are needed for companionship, but stop short of calling it marriage. When civil partnerships were introduced in the UK, it was said that gay marriage wasn't needed and wasn't just around the corner. And the reason for having civil partnerships rather than gay marriage was because it was recognised that marriage is about having children.
By calling homosexual partnerships 'marriage', however, you are saying that they are the same kind of thing as a heterosexual marriage. In order to make this claim, you need to redefine what marriage is understood to be about. It is no longer about raising children; it is about the love of the two people getting married.
3) Who is best at raising children?
Moreover, if all people who are married are to be regarded as having the same status, then differences with regard to the ability to have children need to be removed. We therefore need to get rid of the belief that children are best raised by their two biological parents, and say instead that any two competent adults are just as good at raising children.
So there are two very important changes that have been made:
a) marriage is for raising children -> marriage is about the love of the partners for each other;
b) children are best raised by their two biological parents -> any competent pair of adults is just as good as the biological parents to raise a child.
Now, from a purely secular point of view, if society wants to make such changes to the way it thinks, it can't be stopped from doing so, since there is no moral absolute. But if we are making such a change, it is disingenuous to pretend that no change is being made; rather one should acknowledge the scale of the change that is being made. Moreover, the people should be properly informed about the nature of these changes and properly consulted about whether they really want to make these changes. At least in the UK, that has not happened at all. With regard to the second change in particular, I am pretty sure that most people do not believe that, and would oppose that view if they realised that that is the implication of allowing SSM (rather than just civil partnerships).
Actually, if we really believe that any two competent adults (or, indeed, why does it have to be two? why not one, or three, or seven? but that's a whole nother topic) are just as good as the biological parents at raising children, we actually should take this further, because there are plainly many biological parents who don't do a great job, and many people who can't have children who might raise children quite well. So what we should actually do is have people sit a parenting competency test to judge whether they are going to be good parents. Any children born should immediately be removed from their biological parents, and given to the couple with the highest score on the parenting test (who haven't yet been given a child). That would make society a whole lot better, and everyone would be happy. It's discriminatory against people's right to have a child if they are deprived simply because they are not biologically capable of having one. So this would be the fairest thing all round.
(Do you know what? I started that last paragraph as a joke, but I'm now seriously worried that some people will actually think it's a good idea...)
'Nuff said.
Roonwit
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KitKatMatt
stupid bleeding heart feminist liberal
I wasn't raised by my biological parents and I turned out as fine as I think is possible for me.
My parents were alcoholics and drug addicts, so...
I realize that's probably going to be touted as "the exception", but seriously, I know so many other people who weren't raised by their parents and they turned out just fine. Whether their parents died, were unfit parents, etc, they turned out happy and well adjusted.
My parents were alcoholics and drug addicts, so...
I realize that's probably going to be touted as "the exception", but seriously, I know so many other people who weren't raised by their parents and they turned out just fine. Whether their parents died, were unfit parents, etc, they turned out happy and well adjusted.
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Clearly adoption has worked out better for you in your case. But if your biological parents had been competent to raise you well, would you choose to have been raised by your biological parents or to be adopted by others instead? (I realise that's quite a significant counterfactual to work through, so perhaps you may not feel able to answer it with any degree of accuracy.)
I don't actually know what the studies show regarding adoption, I'd be interested to find out, but certainly with regard to single parent and step-parent families, children from such backgrounds are (on average) at a significant disadvantage compared to children raised by their two biological parents in the same house.
Roonwit
I don't actually know what the studies show regarding adoption, I'd be interested to find out, but certainly with regard to single parent and step-parent families, children from such backgrounds are (on average) at a significant disadvantage compared to children raised by their two biological parents in the same house.
Roonwit
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KitKatMatt
stupid bleeding heart feminist liberal
I wasn't adopted, but raised by my dad's parents who got custody. I wasn't the only one raised like this either, they also raised my grandmother's nephew (disowned by his mom as a toddler) and my sister.
Really, I wouldn't have cared who raised me. I just needed someone (or two, or four, I don't care) to care for me and love me. My grandma has always told me that bonds matter more than blood, and I believe that's true.
Really, I wouldn't have cared who raised me. I just needed someone (or two, or four, I don't care) to care for me and love me. My grandma has always told me that bonds matter more than blood, and I believe that's true.
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Cush
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Best non religious arguments I have heard against non traditional marriage:
https://www.christforums.org/forum/...d-to-a-gay-man-who-wants-to-redefine-marriage
https://www.christforums.org/forum/...d-to-a-gay-man-who-wants-to-redefine-marriage
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From an evolutionary and a sociological perspective, there are good reasons to suppose that being raised by grandparents would in general be better than being raised by non-related adoptive parents.
Obviously, as you say, love is the most important factor, and I'm glad you were able to get that. Other factors are also likely to be important, though.
Roonwit
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Cush
I just watched the two shorter videos. To save us having to watch an hour-long video, could you summarise the key points of the third one?
I would agree that one other good argument against SSM, or at least a question that needs to be answered before endorsing it, is why its advocates do not also advocate changing the law to allow any kind of consenting adult sexual partnership to be recognised as marriage, including multiple partners. The argument for SSM is often phrased as "if two people love each other then they should be able to get married", but the question that immediately pops into my head is, "so what if three people love each other?" But no-one seems interested in answering that.
Roonwit
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KitKatMatt
stupid bleeding heart feminist liberal
I'm not sure why being raised by non-related adoptive parents would be different than being raised by people you were related to.
The important thing is love, commitment, and patience. Not blood. I don't see how that even factors into the equation at all.
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From an evolutionary perspective, since you share your grandparents' genes, they have a greater interest in your survival than do non-related parents. From a sociological perspective, there is also likely to be less trauma for the child being moved to people they already have some relationship with than to strangers, and also as the child grows, there is less of an identity crisis, since they are within the same family.KitKatMatt said:
Roonwit
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KitKatMatt
stupid bleeding heart feminist liberal
I was one when I was moved into their care, so I don't remember anything about living with my parents (and I'm really glad I don't after hearing how they lived).
I don't really get the argument of interest. If I were to adopt a child right now, I would love them like they had come from my own womb. That's how I love everyone. I would adopt a child to love and care for and raise them to be great people.
It doesn't matter to me that they would not related by blood. What matters is that they need someone to care for them. I don't get why anyone thinks that blood matters at all, really. It confuses the heck out of me. I don't care from what "perspective" makes "interest", it doesn't matter to me.
I don't really get the argument of interest. If I were to adopt a child right now, I would love them like they had come from my own womb. That's how I love everyone. I would adopt a child to love and care for and raise them to be great people.
It doesn't matter to me that they would not related by blood. What matters is that they need someone to care for them. I don't get why anyone thinks that blood matters at all, really. It confuses the heck out of me. I don't care from what "perspective" makes "interest", it doesn't matter to me.
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Just because you don't consciously remember doesn't mean that there was no effect. The early developmental period is known to be extremely important for babies' later development.
From an evolutionary perspective there is every reason to suppose that people will care more for their biological relatives than for non-related people. If that proves not to be the case, it is something that requires explanation as to how that has come about. I could make very good moral arguments that people ought to behave as you describe, but since on this thread I am restricted to secular arguments, I am limiting myself to what we would expect from a purely secular perspective.
There is often a gap between what people believe they do and what they actually do. Just because you believe you would love an unrelated child as much as a biological child doesn't mean you would. (It doesn't mean you wouldn't either. I'm just pointing out that your believing you would is not really evidence that would support your argument here.)
I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong in the claims you are making; just that you are not necessarily right, and that even if you are right it goes against what we would expect from a secular perspective.
Roonwit
From an evolutionary perspective there is every reason to suppose that people will care more for their biological relatives than for non-related people. If that proves not to be the case, it is something that requires explanation as to how that has come about. I could make very good moral arguments that people ought to behave as you describe, but since on this thread I am restricted to secular arguments, I am limiting myself to what we would expect from a purely secular perspective.
There is often a gap between what people believe they do and what they actually do. Just because you believe you would love an unrelated child as much as a biological child doesn't mean you would. (It doesn't mean you wouldn't either. I'm just pointing out that your believing you would is not really evidence that would support your argument here.)
I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong in the claims you are making; just that you are not necessarily right, and that even if you are right it goes against what we would expect from a secular perspective.
Roonwit
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KitKatMatt
stupid bleeding heart feminist liberal
I'd be more concerned of the effect of being raised in a neglectful household before being taken away than any effect that the transition had.
I love my cats like a person loves a child, and they're not even of my own species. So I'm pretty sure I'd love anything else the same way.
I love my cats like a person loves a child, and they're not even of my own species. So I'm pretty sure I'd love anything else the same way.
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