Some thoughts about gay marriage

Some random thoughts about gay marriage, not really building into any particular chain of thought.

:-"The debate about gay marriage" is a slight misnomer. What is being debated is not whether gays should be allowed to get married, but whether they should be allowed to claim the same legal benefits for being married as straight couples are.

:-The standard right-wing argument against this is that the reason straight couples receive legal benefits for getting married is so as to encourage straight couples to get married, because this provides a better foundation to raise children on.

:-This strikes me as flawed in several ways:

*Very few couples take into account the legal benefits when deciding whether or not to get married.

*Even straight couples who won't or even can't have children receive legal benefits for getting married.

*There is (so far as I know - it's something I'm sure most DUers would like to be true, but we should be wary of assuming it to confidently) no reliable evidence that children are better off being brought up by a married couple than by the same couple if they had not married (it *is* clearly the case that, on average, children of married couples are better off than those of other, but that's probably largely a function of which couples choose to get married).

:-I think it's fairly clear that the real, or at least the main, reason married couples are granted legal benefits is because it's in the interest of the people getting married, not because it's in the interests of any prospective children.

:-This also rebuts the argument I often see that the state shouldn't get involved in the legal recognition of *any* marriage. It should, and it should do so because people want legal rights for getting married, and the government should be responsive to the will of the electorate.

:-If this is acknowledged, it's fairly clearly completely iniquitous to deny gay people those same benefits.

:-If gay marriage is one of the principle issues in the coming election, the chances are that the Democrats will lose. It (along with abortion, immigration, and possibly the so-called war on terror, although that may backfire) is one of the few weapons the Republicans have left.

:-Civil unions will be less controversial than gay marriage, but still probably cost the dems a lot more votes than they gain, possibly crucially.

:-If the issue is decided at state level, a few states may legalise gay marriage or something like it, but most won't.

:-I think that probably the strategy most likely to enhance gay rights is to try and avoid the issue entirely until after the election, and then pressure the government once it's been elected. I'm far from confident about that.

:-One of the few issues on which I agree with the anti-gay-rights lobby is that the word "marriage" means, and has always meant, a union between a man and a woman. I'm strongly in favour of both granting gays the right to legal civil unions and of calling them "marriage", but the pedant in me slightly regrets the latter.

:-If gay couples are granted the right to civil unions, even ones with all the legal rights of marriage, it will be much easier for a future government to remove those rights than if they're granted the right to marry.

:-It may be the case that the best way to attain gay marriage is to bring in gay civil unions, wait a few years to prove that the sky hasn't fallen, and then rename them "marriage". I'm not sure about that, thought.

:-I am cautiously optimistic about the prospects of gay marriage in the US if the Democrats win the next election, but fairly pessimistic about their chances of doing so.

:-Gay adoption is not, in my view, primarily a gay rights issue. If the evidence suggested that it were better for children to remain in foster homes than to be placed with gay couples, I would support making it illegal for gays to adopt (and the same is true of any other demographic. Adoption is not for the benefit of the adopter, it's solely for the benefit of the adoptee, so it's not a right full stop, and hence not an X right for all values of X, including "human"). As it is clearly the case that it is, in most cases, much better for children to be placed with pretty much anyone who wants them and is willing and able to bring them up, gay, straight or otherwise, rather than remaining in care homes, I'm strongly in favour of allowing (and encouraging) gay (and straight) couples, married or otherwise, to adopt, whatever happens with gay marriage.

According to the United States Supreme Court, that is.

African Americans and whites.

It is too touchy of a subject for me to be entirely rational about it. :hi:

I don't know if it will happen with the next President no matter who it is
Sadly it took more than 50 years for either blacks of females to have anything like the civil rights they were granted even after Constitutional amendments.
I think that society is changing slowly but in the correct direction

I suspect that if the Republicans win we will see the federal legislation, possibly including a constitutional ammendment if it's Huckabee, to prevent gy marriage or anything like it being recognised by the states.

As the survivor of three failed marriages, I can say I find it highly overrated. That gay unions should receive the same legal benefits as straight ones is a no-brainer.

Granted, same-sex couples rarely (if ever) find themselves in a "family way" without a great deal of planning and preparation, so there is very little of the abuse and neglect one finds from straight parents who are unable or unwilling to raise the children they have.

When compared only to parents who have planned for and wanted all of the children they have, there is no difference in the children's well-being, psychological make-up or ability to adjust to society.

Your statement about marital benefits "for the sake of children" is entirely correct: See the ruling by the Washington State Supreme Court in the matter of Andersen et al. V. King County et al. (PDF document.) The Court found a "legitimate state interest" in reserving marriage solely to mixed-sex couples because they might end up having children. An effort to put this ruling into law and thus point out the idiocy of this ruling unfortunately failed to make the ballot (see Washington's Initiative 957.)

And please stop with the delusion that marriage is a religious institution. If this were the case, the First Amendment would prohibit any and all legal recognition of marriage, in the same way the First Amendment prohibits any all legal recognition of baptism or confirmation. In the United States, marriage is and always has been a CIVIL, SECULAR institution. That ministers are granted by state law the very limited notary function of taking a jurat on marriage certificates does not make it something religious; judges have the exact same authority, and in three states (Maine, South Carolina and Florida) any notary public has that authority too.

For many people (and probably most married Americans) the religious aspect of their marriage is more important to them than the civil part, I suspect.

Marriage as practiced in US law has its origins in the Christian religious ceremony of marriage (which in turn, I guess, has its origins in either Jewish or Roman religious ceremony, although I'm not sure).

I have no problems with religions refusing to acknowledge as valid mixed-sex marriage, or for that matter with them acknowledging e.g. polygamous or otherwise illegal-under-civil-law marriage as valid, provided that they don't demand that those views correspond to which marriages are given legal status.

The First Amendment prohibits such a thing. All legal marriage in the United States is civil and secular. How religious groups and institutions view marriage is entirely irrelevant when speaking of legal marriage.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Christians did not invent marriage; they adopted almost whole-cloth the traditions and customs of the pagan Roman marriage ritual. A Christian religious ceremony does not -- it CANNOT, thanks to the First Amendment -- carry any status not also recognized in Hindu marriage, Jewish marriage, Muslim marriage, Wiccan marriage or a secular marriage officiated by a judge or notary public.

They still call it marriage. I haven't seen the inside of a church in years.

What I claimed was that marriage *as practiced in US law* has its roots in Christianity.

I explicitly pointed out that that, in turn, has its roots in other traditions.

But those traditions did not, in themselves, exert any direct influence on American marriage law, which was originally nearly entirely Christian in its derivation (partially via European legal systems largely based on Christianity), although it has sinced been influenced somewhat by the enlightenment (e.g. in the decriminalisation of adultery).

without a civil license, regardless of what religious mumbo-jumbo was incorporated.