Ruth Institute Blog

Of course, you could also perhaps demand of Julius Erving that unless he can produce a doctorate from an actual accredited university…

Intellectual slam dunks? I’ve witnessed your Dr. J getting intellectually slam dunked by mere college students, while she was there to debate a professor.

Sure you have.

I certainly hope this so called institute is not getting ONE PENNY of federal funds for its cockamamie and hateful mission.

Leland, regarding your comment: Right On!

Regarding your blogpost: When I defend marriage, I am not “anti-gay marriage” since the real disagreement is about marriage itself. The SSMers disagree with marriage. They disagree with its core meaning and even with its continued existence as a social institution and with its preferential status. Their disagreement with marriage, and with the Ruth Institute’s defense of the social institution, begins with their own axiomatic beliefs rather than with marriage or with us. They disagree so we must be crushed.

There are very few slam-dunks, and fewer slam-dunkers, when it comes to discussion of the marriage issue. SSMers generally do not have the humility, at least publicly and politically, to leave room for engagement on the actual disagreement. So they constantly change the topic to stuff they’d rather discuss. And when we discuss that stuff wth them, they rely on their axiomatic beliefs as the starting place. And, even at that, their axioms fatally undermine their own pro-SSM argumentation.

Anti-marriage, that’s the SSM campaign. Pro-gay identity politics, that’s the SSM campaign. its argumentation depends on treating as slam-dunks shots and passes that they’ve hurled out-of-bounds.

When the SSM argumentation is stripped of its identity politics, what remains is a call for protections (and possibly a protective status) for a wide range of non-marriage types of relationships and kinds of arrangements that are NOT chiefly defined by the sexualized behavior or even by sexual orientation of the participants, much less by membership in an political identity group.

Just because the SSM side claims to be pro-gay (and very often, given its argumentation, is actually not even that) does not mean that the defenders of marriage, such as the Ruth Institute, is anti-gay or anti-gay marriage. We are not the flip side of the SSM campaign — in more ways than one.

Anti-gay marriage IS anti-gay, because you would deny a whole class of human beings equal protection under the law.

Heidi, under your version of things, would there be no boundaries around marriage such that anyone who’d show up for the license for their type of arrangment can not be denied? On what basis would your version of things discriminate between marriage and non-marriage?

If you would deny marriage for some but not for others, then, your own response above crumbles.

If you would force society (via government) to always issue the license and to deny no one, then, your own response illustrates the deconstruction of marriage as a social institution — even as a legal institution. If you cannot justify discriminating on the basis of marital status, for example, then, you cannot justify marital status.

No, no, no and no. You all miss the constitutional arguments. The government may draw a line between classes of persons, but ONLY if there are at least legitimate government reasons for doing so and the line is drawn in such a way that it is rationally-related to that legitimate government purpose. The religious beliefs of some is not a legitimate government purpose because that is what the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was intended to prevent against: the government’s favoring of one group’s religious ideology at the expense of another group. Animosity is also not a legitimate government purpose.

So, we must compare the stated reasons for discriminating against LGBT persons and ask the following questions:

1. Is the stated reason a legitimate state purpose for denying a fundamental right to an entire class of persons?

2. Is the discriminatory classification rationally related to that legitimate state purpose?

On this basis, you can see why you can deny marriage for some, but not for others, without the “crumbling” of my argument. For example, incestuous marriages can be denied on the grounds that any offspring that result are much more likely to suffer from genetic abnormalities, and the government has a legitimate interest in the health of its citizens. Polygamy can be denied on the grounds that polygamous marriages are more likely to involve abuse against women and children, and the government has a legitimate interest in protecting the welfare of its citizens. But when it comes to same-sex marriage, there is no legitimate government reason for the discriminatory treatment that is rationally related to that discriminatory treatment! You can’t say that it’s because only heterosexual marriages produce children, because children are born outside of marriage every single day and because we don’t have a procreation requirement for a person’s ability to enter into a marriage. You can’t say that it is to ensure that children are raised by their biological parents, because we allow divorce, adoption, and because we allow children to be born via artificial reproductive technology. You can’t say that having same-sex parents is harmful to children, because the studies and relevant reputable organizations refute that claim, as do the children themselves who are being raised and have been raised by same-sex parents. So, tell me, if none of these arguments point to a legitimate government reason for the discriminatory treatment that is rationally related to that discriminatory treatment, on what basis do you believe you have the right to deny your fellow citizen’s constitutional right to marriage?

Moreover, same-sex marriage does not “call for the complete deconstruction of the public, but naturally occurring, institution of marriage.” Heterosexual couples will continue to marry even when their LGBT peers are allowed to do so too. So to claim that expanding marriage to include this class of persons will “destroy marriage” is a fallacious argument.

Finally, and although we may disagree, I would argue that marriage, reduced to its essential meaning, is NOT concerned with the combination of body parts of its members. Instead, the meaning of marriage is a decision between two non-related consenting adults to love, honor and cherish one another, to the exclusion of all others, until death do they part. THAT is the essence of marriage, and for you all to deny that is tragic.

Sara,

You miss the core meaning of marriage. The real question is why does society show preference for the social institution of marriage? Without special reason for special status, society may not legitimately discriminate between marriage and nonmarriage.

And nonmarriage is a far bigger category than your favored subset of nonmarriage. Your own attempts at line-drawing show how your view collapses upon itself. I wonder if you even read your own comments before you hit the submit button.

Your list of “you can’t say” is a lark. None of it stands against our defense of the core meaning of the social institution of marriage.

* * *

You say there is a legitimate government interest in barring some people because of concerns about procreation within the relationship. Even without going to the opposite-sexed basis of marriage, we can see your view crumble.

You also said that there is no procreation requirement so procreation is not a legitimate basis for line-drawing. You do not even attempt to reconcile this.

Anyway…

On one hand, nothing that an all-male or an all-female arrangement might do sexually would pose the risk of procreation within the relationship. So related same-sex scenarios would not be legitimately barred on your offered basis.

Apparently you would openly discriminate against opposite-sexed related people differently from same-sexed related people. Seems that you have to let them all be eligible in a post-SSM merger since the merger would rely on the disconnection of marriage and responsible procreation.

On the other hand, it may soon be possible to genetically manipulate same-sex gametes to create offspring. But that comes with foreseeable genetic problems that you say form the basis of your own line-drawing. All one-sexed scenarios would thus be ineligible.

Either way, without the core meaning of marriage, you are adrift.

* * *

Regarding polygamy, there is no requirement that married people raise children and there is no proposal that such a requirement be placed on married people should SSM be imposed.

If you meant polygamous procreation, then, you still run afoul of your own argument re procreation, see above.

If you meant polygamous parenting, then, you might outlaw that instead of discriminating against a class of people who may or may not engage in parenting. And, while you are at it, you might also outlaw step-parenting where children have more than two social parents. And outlaw those scenarios in which three persons (two lesbian women and a sperm donor) and certainly dissalow granting them tripartite co-equal parental status. Where such scenarios got tripartite status they said that all three of them were essential to the children’s well-being; and courts have agreed in unpredecented decisions based on same-sex union.

They all shrugged and said, why not? No one raised concern that they’d suddenly start abusing the children and each other. Maybe you should have intervened to make your case against them.

Also, you invoked societal interest in sex integration when you referred to concerns about abuse of women in polygamous scenarios. There is no sex integration where one sex is excluded from the relationship so that would stand against your pro-SSM view.

If you really mean that the polygamous husband is the problem, even when the wives outnumber him, then, what about an all-female scenario with multiple partners? Or an all-male scenario?

Afterall, if this is partly about parenting, then, as per same-sex parenting remarks you have made, more hands make the work lighter and the parenting superior. If two sets of hands is a better parenting scenario, you need to explain how three sets or more sets are inferior. And how marital status would not add protections the children need.

Pointing to divorce, in the manner that you have, does not really help your line against polygamy. Nor even your version of the essence of marriage.

There is a legitimate basis for the line drawn against already-married people, but you’ve rejected that basis and offered nothing solid to replace it. Likewise for divorce.

* * *

I don’t think the word, fallacious, means what you think it means.

You said: “So to claim that expanding marriage to include this class of persons will “destroy marriage” is a fallacious argument.”

You are not proposing that marriage be expanded. You are proposing that recognition of the social institution of marriage be abolished as unjustly discriminatory and then immediately replaced with recognition of some other thing.

That other thing is not differentiated from the rest of the nonmarriage category. And your line-drawing is arbitrary and thus, based on your own remarks, is illegitimate and unconstitutional.

What you call expansion is actually deconstruction of this foundational social institution.

Your closing paragraph explained how you wish to shrink the meaning of marriage not expand it. The goal is to make it mean less and less.

Who said that marriage is reduced to “the combination of body parts of its members”? You said it. You want to argue against and for it at the same time.

1. The sexual basis for consummation, annulment provisons, adultery-divorce, and the marital presumption of paternity certainly speaks against your asexual view of the conjugal type of relationship.

2. Your fellow SSMers, and you also in your own remarks, have emphasized homosexuality and the gay identity group when you denounced the man-woman basis of marriage. Presumably you mean to refer to a sexualized type of one-sexed arrangement. Afterall, a man who’d prefer to have sex with other men might scoff at the idea that body parts are irrelevant to that preference; as might a woman who’d rather form a sexual relationship with another woman and have that treated as marriage.

3. The law, and the culture, and society overall does indeed consider the core meaning of marriage to be more than the crude picture you presented, however, the sexual basis of marriage stands against your asexual or nonsexual assertion about marriage.

And given how much you comment about marriage and how contradictory is your argument, it is unsurprising that your view collapses so easily. Like a flimsy house of cards.

Heidi said: “Anti-gay marriage IS anti-gay, because you would deny a whole class of human beings equal protection under the law.”

Axiomatic assertions.

1. Pro-marriage means standing against the merger of nonmarriage and marriage.

2. This means distinguishing between the two categories, legitimately.

3. You don’t do that. You just demand a merger of nonmarriage with marriage to favor your identity group and you society to surrender to your pro-gay bigotry.

4. If you really are concerned about equal protection, then, stop with the bigoted campaign to impose the SSM-merger (under the minsnomer “marriage equality”) and instead support protection equality for your favored subset and for the rest of the non-marriage category of relationships and arrangements. That is far more inclusive than even the SSM-merger in Massachusetts and it is far more likely to be achieved on the basis of vulnerabilities experienced by families who are outside of marriage.

5. You won’t do that, probably won’t even consider it, because you favor the gaycentric subset of the non-marriage category and would rather discriminate unjustly against the rest of that category. You do so against your own stated standards.